wed

April 3, 2012

In celebration of our thirteen-year relationship and our third wedding anniversary.

wed

he sits civilly in his two-hundred-pound puma man suit and I galumph up, flash my bush, and bump and grind like an elephant with a disjointed hip on its hind legs

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he quietly protests the wicker coasters by putting them away

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I belch, and he gavels his mug on the red felt coaster

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“dat’s okay,” he says huffily

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he runs his fingers through my hair till I’m a pile of mush in a pile of hair

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I buy him peanuts (all nuts), lemonade (any juice), bread, and cheese; and he makes sober sandwiches

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as we whine about people in general, the harmonica in Belle and Sebastian’s “Fuck This Shit” begins whining

he tells me the first time when we’re exhausted and we’ve lost the trail in the snow at night on an island miles away from anything else in the Pacific

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at the crack and in nothing but boxers, he and Manuel scrape our tire tracks in the desert with the rakes the ranger gave them

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at Lake Mead, I worm onto the dock and snag my towel, fig-leafing my unshaven shame hair

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the pink, lace, glitter, dolls of my room embarrass me

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scudding heart sends breath-frothed blood tingling when he takes off my sneakers in the shared kitchen of the frat row Victorian

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he makes stop motion marshmallow movies about urban violence

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masking tape art on the walls; cigarettes, beer cans, and a sleeping mat on the floor

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I cry into, then eat his nachos

he slips a letter underneath my door

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he fingers me on paths through leaning grasses

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we tryst in Chicago as he telecommutes

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we sleep together on Tinus’s floor in Groningen

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in the old power station filled with modern art, I am disillusioned

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in Yeosu, we are both waegukin

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we take the same pictures of the monolithic bridges over Hangang

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I press a fork to my neck and rave

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he licks champagne off my breasts

he hopes we can see each other again in 2010—in five years

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I call his parents on a phone that picks up Spanish-language evangelical radio

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listening to Glass’s loops and stutters, we eat Swedish pancakes with maple syrup

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serving whiskey sours and grilled cheese, he pauses to arm-wrestle his guests

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“I heard Canadians can talk about beavers for hours,” he tells the visiting Canuck

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as the tick gnaws, we talk with an off-duty ranger about bears guzzling chicken coops

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he laughs as my knees buckle beyond Yellowstone

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we sleep deeply in gutted buses with whale murals

after a long mute train ride, he ditches me at Stockholm Central, and I tell him to go rot in a cubicle

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by the gorillas in Artis, he learns he can return

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eating a block of cheese and drinking a carton of soy milk makes him feel “ranchy”

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the cellphone skids across the floor and busts

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the cellphone is at the bottom of the sea and has no minutes and no charge

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we hang pictures of our couch and plant and my backpack, not of family and friends

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he takes a picture of the weather widget showing eighteen below

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the mucous in our nostrils freezes

he gives me the best jacket

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we plan our escape while hiking between smokestacks and a freeway in the Indiana dunes near the former murder capital

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we rev our pretend motorcycles on clear stretches of trail

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he revs the Charger

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we link arms during the river crossings, moving diagonally with the current

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he holds onto my hand and pulls me up when my leap falls short

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explaining why he deserves more food, he says, “I’m bigger than you”; still we split the soup sachets in half

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the officiant tells us to turn off our cell phones, and I forget to put my purse down for the ceremony

eating beet dust and strawberry pizza

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watering our potted herbs

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his sailing booties stink of the funky life in the sewer runoff that goes into the bay

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we snicker listening to his mother say “special” ambiguously

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we purge the unused stuff

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bored out of our gourds, we lean against each other to form an upside-down vee

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he picks the callouses on his palms

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I micromanage the kitchen

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craning to kiss him

watching flat land and sensible people; watching Bas Jan Ader fall off his bicycle into a canal and lose himself at sea

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I cut his hair and shave the shabangs he twists

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he holds me when broodjes bring me to tears

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he wears away his poor eyebrow with rubbing

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“Piepertje,” he says; “Pooks,” I say

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when he has shaven, he says he’s shoved

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I learn his hair, scars, moles, pores with nightly grooming

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I scoop up a handful of dick and smacka the booty

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we rebrand “Date Night” as “Going Out Night”

after bed sheet, hair, and limb tousling, he rests

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his hair sticks up happily, flattens sadly

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he’s downed a bottle of wine and wants to make me tea; “it’s okay,” I say and hold him

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he riffs on the floppy sexy dance

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resting our saddle sores, we exchange knowing looks about the tourists passing through

You’re my lovertje, Pooky-butt.