Porn Addiction

 

 

She finds the soggy list of credit card charges having slipped out of his pants in the wash. Though she immediately recognizes the amount, obviously it’s not that, unless her dead son has been playing as a ghost for five months, when she had the service immediately cancelled.

 

$15 | 1/12

$15 | 2/12

$15 | 3/12

$15 | 4/12

$15 | 5/12

 

Now the sneaking out of bed makes sense to her.

 

Her first instinct is to call him at work and confront him because she knows that’s what she should do, what other people would do in the same situation. She should be angry. Fuming. Should be. This is perhaps most surprising: why isn’t she angry? Hurt, sure. No excuse for lies. He has never deceived her in the past (but if he has, successfully, how would she know?) She rations: it’s not out of the ordinary. Very common tale, probably: so your husband is addicted to porn. Accept it. She’s known girlfriends whose husbands had it. And why not Max?

 

Since Reuben’s passing, sex has been nonexistent. Even before: almost gone.         

 

Is it not necessary to be touched to feel touched?  Men have needs, even in their time of grieving. Women too, but not her. Not since the new medication. Pink pills that zap the horny away. That, and everything else. 

 

So why should she be angry? What right would she have? Max has needs and who would want to fuck an emotional zombie of a wife? Who would want to fuck a loony toon?

 

When she hears the door, she is quick to shove the bill into her jacket pocket. Later that night she will skip her sleeping pill. She’ll feel the usual shifting, springs recoiling as he creeps, footfalls taking him to the computer room where he’ll remain for several hours until ghosting back to bed, as if nothing ever happened.

 

He has needs, she'll remind herself, deciding Yes: it is necessary to be touched to feel touched.

 

She’ll play along.