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| ***BIO*** KARL KOWESKI is the 320th resident of Alabama to read a book and he has accomplished this feat 40 times. An enemy of the Amish everywhere, Karl has death warrants out for him in eight Mennonite communities. His latest collection, a book of smut "Low Life", part of the 69 porn flipbook with Melissa Hansen is out now at Zygote. |
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| Better Living Elsewhere |
| by Karl Koweski |
| The phone rings. I lean over the couch and glance at the caller ID. I’ve always hated answering the phone. Knowing in advance the identity of the caller eases my displeasure not at all. Especially when I see the number belongs to the flower shop where my wife works part time.
She’s calling to ask what I’m doing. I never call her since I don’t care how she occupies her time. If I don’t answer the phone she’ll keep calling and calling until I lose patience and pick up. Then she’ll accuse me of messing around on the internet. In her mind there’s an endless phalanx of horny housewives online breathlessly anticipating my instant messages. I’ve never been able to stay off the computer long enough to assuage her worries. “Hello?” “Hey, whatcha doing?” “Reading.” “You’re not ‘checking your email’?” “No. I checked it all ready.” No one was online and I updated my Facebook status twice to a resounding lack of comments. “I’m reading that Nick Tosches book I got off Ebay for a dollar.” “That’s good.” She hates books almost as much as I hate phone calls. Which doesn’t come close to covering the extent she despises the Dell personal computer set up in the corner of our bedroom like a shrine devoted to the god of better living elsewhere. There’s an oddly uncomfortable silence before I ask “so… uhm… whatcha got going on? Work slow?” “Yeah, I’m here alone. Maggie’s sick and Deidre’s off making deliveries. I made some candles earlier. That’s been about it.” Why is she telling me this? I wonder, when we have so much not to talk about when she’s home. Another awkward silence blossoms. Our garden of conversation has many such blooms. She asks “you wanna talk dirty to me?” “What?” I’m misunderstanding her. She doesn’t even talk dirty in the bedroom. Her silence during sex is so eerie, I almost expect Tubular Bells to start playing in the distance. It’s enough to disengage me from the entire act. Motion denuded of please and meaning, just the rhythmic tapping of the headboard against the wall, and then I begin wondering what the girlfriend is doing. Who is she fucking at this moment? I think, she better not be fucking anybody, though I don’t get a say-so since she lives a thousand miles away and is married to another man. And by the time my mind runs this existential obstacle course, it’s all I can do to finish, without having to masturbate myself to orgasm while she lays there with her eyes closed. “Talk dirty to me, Vic.” I talk dirty to my girlfriend two, three times a week. Mutual masturbation is the closest we come to sex. Almost akin to marriage sex except the wife and I are in the same room when we do it. “What do you want me to say?” I consider describing in erotic detail the unwrapping and slow consumption of a chocolate snack cake. But I fear the humor would be lost on her, followed by the marriage being lost to me. “Talk dirty to me like I’m one of your internet whores.” “I don’t have any internet whores.” Just isolated, neglected housewives, hungry for conversation that doesn’t revolve around child care and financial worry. Women who want to feel sexy, who want to believe there’s still a chance anything can happen on any given day. Instead of the usual nothing. And I always know what to say to them. “What even turns you on, Sera? What do you fantasize about?” I walk into the bedroom, pacing off fifteen steps from the front room. I glance at the bookcase, the books obscured by a maroon shower curtain my wife put up since she believes a library of books is tacky while shower curtains in the bedroom are elegant. Shower curtains. I can’t talk dirty to a woman who prefers vinyl curtains to books. “You there?” I ask. “Sex on a swing,” Sera blurts. “I always wanted to have sex on one of those yard swings like one you promised you’d buy me.” “Sex on a swing?” Where do I go from there? Her dark side is far too pale for me. She said “I like it when you use those lotions I bought at that shop in the mall. The kind that get hot when you blow on it.” “Yeah, I thought you said they get too sticky?” “They were all right.” “Are they even still in your underwear drawer?” “Guess so. They were the last time I looked.” “Maybe you can use them on me some time,” I said. “Maybe. I don’t know. Are you going to talk dirty or what?” “Sera…” “Talk to me like I’m your only woman, Vic. Make me feel like there’s no one else for you.” “I don’t know what you want me to say.” “Don’t say anything then. Don’t say nothing. You want me to pick up some McDonald’s on the way home?” “Yeah. Get me a couple McChickens off the dollar menu.” We hang up and I toss the cordless on the bed. I sit down at the desk and key in my password to unlock my side of the computer. Two clicks of the mouse gets me to my Facebook page. Less than a minute passes before I’m talking dirty with Helen from Chicago. My one and only of the moment. |
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