Cupid, roses in hand, cut to the quick
So here we are comparing love stories. About Valentine’s Day. Christmas with hormones.
“When did Valentine’s become like Christmas?” my friend Paul asks. “Used to be a box of chocolates.”
I tell him how I had to race home Friday night, stop at the department store, buy a bunch of things in the wrong size and color, in an effort to impress her with my good taste and thoughtfulness.
“You’re a generous guy,” he notes.
“I have,” I remind him, “a marriage of inconvenience.”
“Flowers?” he asks.
“Roses, 80 bucks. Got them this morning.”
“Eighty?”
“That included a balloon,” I tell him.
I fear I’ve spoiled her forever. Roses. Clothing. Last week, I put new gas logs in the fireplace.
I’ve spoiled her, and what do I get in return? Truck-stop love. A teaspoon or two of passion. Where art thou, Juliet? And can you put down that crying baby for one bleepin’ second?
“Know what you need?” Paul says.
“A lobotomy.”
“A spa massage,” he says.
These days, all the guys are getting massages. Not the illicit variety, though those will always have a following. We’re talking spa massages. In scented emporiums where you can also sit in mud.
“No guy’s touching me like that without a warrant,” I warn Paul.
“It’s not sexual,” Paul says.
Not sexual? You’re lying on the massage table thinking about what exactly? Your taxes?
Of course you are. Taxes. Money. Mortgages. Homes. Wives. Swimsuit editions. Supermodels. Heather Locklear. Marlo Thomas. A normal, healthy sex-thought syllogism.
“It’s not sexual,” Paul says again.
“If another adult touches me, it’s sexual,” I say.
I explain that I like it out here in California but that I still cherish my Midwestern hang-ups.
Back in the Midwest, if a guy lays two hands on you, it’d better be to tackle you after a long run from scrimmage. Or to bury you in God’s good earth. I’ve spent a lifetime developing these hang-ups. I’ll lose them when I’m dead.
“Maybe you’re right,” Paul says.
“I am?”
“Moe Greene died during a massage.”
“When?”
“In ‘The Godfather,’ ” he says.
“See?” I say.
Valentine’s Day reminds us that love is a complicated commodity, even in the suburbs, where my lovely wife spent the morning pacing the kitchen floor carrying the baby, like a milky little Cupid, pasted to her right hip.
She had the vacant stare of a Greek bride headed off for an arranged marriage. Neither she nor Cupid would make eye contact with me. But I’m used to that.
“Supermarket roses? You bought Mom supermarket roses?” my older daughter scolded me later.
“They weren’t from the supermarket!” I screamed.
Second-hand, I heard that my wife was upset with just roses. By phone, I heard this, from the daughter down at college.
“They were 80 bucks,” I explained.
“80 bucks?”
“That included a balloon,” I said.
That very morning, I gulped and bought her roses. In the back of my mind, I knew that the $80 was better off resting in some certificate of deposit, awaiting retirement, when we would need heart medication and liver pills.
“Eighty,” the florist said when she rang up the flowers.
“Eighty?” I gasped.
Marriage. It can be a noun or a verb. It can be a hug or an embrace. It can be a crazed, passionate, lifelong seduction. Or it can be ... a marriage.
“What’d you get Sara?” I ask Paul.
“Wine and a sexy book,” he says.
Who says romance is dead? In our little suburb, some husbands speak in sonnets. We tear blindly at women’s bodices. We sneeze fine perfume.
“You got her porn?” I ask Paul.
“I’m not saying.”
“The ‘Kama Sutra’ ?”
“No comment,” he says.
Sure, Paul’s id is odd. Isn’t everyone’s? But his heart’s in the proper place. He’s seducing his wife with sexy literature.
Meanwhile, my friend Bill used an old standard: dinner and a movie. “How’d it go?” I ask him later.
“She said she was happy that I was finally learning to plan things well in advance,” he says.
“When did you plan things?” I ask.
“The day before.”
*
Chris Erskine’s column is published Wednesdays. He can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.
