Maybe I did say something like that. At the time, it probably seemed true to me. Maybe I really felt it, or maybe I was trying to pry a rare handjob out of her. I only asked for a blowjob once, and got nowhere.
“And you are!” I said. But it sounded a lot like a lie wrapped up in a whine. A lie even I could recognize.
Now the pout. This was the pout with the arms folded, doubly hard to negotiate her out of. This is where she usually made me beg or crawl or confess or plead.
This was the wrong day for that. I had actually been involved in more important things that morning. And I had actually been talking to a SANE woman about making joint decisions, a woman who actually valued my thoughts and opinions.
This was the wrong morning to be testing me.
“Maybe we should just break up,” I said, surprising myself.
“What? No! Mike!” she said in a bewildered, ambushed voice. She started crying and ran up to her room. The door slam cracked through the house.
Mrs. Branch came rushing out of the bathroom. She had on her dance leotard, skin tight blue with white stocking. If not for her face (which showed its age, and did I say she was ugly?) she looked like a female athlete who just graduated college. Especially her legs. And her tits, which were just-right big.
“What did you do to Lori. Are you being cruel again, young man.”
She used “young man” to intimidate. It worked in the past, but not today. And, in my estimation, I had never been cruel to Lori.
“Lori’s too sensitive, if you ask me.”
“Who are you to judge my daughter? Do you know what you need, young man?”
I didn’t wait for her to lecture me. All the tension of the morning caught up with me and I let go:
“I don’t care what you think I need. You know what you need? You need a guy to let some of that mean out of you. You waltz around in that outfit and you are so proud of that dancer’s body you have. What you need is some guy to have the courage to want to see you without that body stocking. See you naked. You need some guy to appreciate what you have and then let some of that energy you have stored up out by letting you feel like a woman again and not just a widow and mother and dance dictator.”
“How dare you talk to me like that. It’s my business and my business alone that I choose to honor my dead husband. No one can take his place. Remember that!”
I was using all the ammunition Lori had whined to me over the past year about her mother. All the intimate details her mother had complained to her about.
“It’s not honoring him if you just let yourself boil down and dry up into some frustrated old lady before your time and take it out on everyone else. Including Lori. And including me.”
“You have no right to talk with me that way, or my body, or my sexual choices.”
“Maybe it’s time you MADE some sex choices—like to have some before it’s too late. Use that thing,” I said and waved at her body from toe to head. “Even I admit it’s gorgeous. And I know you don’t like me, and because of that—I don’t like you.”
“You’ll have some respect for your elders. I’m three times your age, remember!”