Husband Technique
by Jon Steinhagen
Stremple is here because it's 10/10/71, which means yesterday was my twenty-ninth birthday (sympathy cards are still being accepted) and I'm a single woman (see prior note about sympathy cards) with my own apartment who's listed in the phonebook and can't get a good night's sleep. Stremple has his own life (I like that about him) and I wanted to cook for a friend and women don't cook for other women, at least none of the women I know, so he's over tonight, for a variety of reasons. The phone rings and I tell Stremple to be prepared, but it's only my mother with Happy Birthday, a day late and a dollar short, so I roll my eyes and tell her I'm cooking and I'll call her back later, and when I hang up Stremple is looking at me sideways from the breadstick he's crunching, his eyebrows up to his hairline. He's never met my mother but he’s heard plenty about her and he knows when not to say anything and I tell him to stop standing so much, sit down, sit down.
The next time the phone rings it's Heavy Breathing, and I can't really use the Husband Technique on Heavy Breathing. I hang up. Stremple asks if I mind if he dips a heel of bread into the sauce and I say sure it's what I do anyway when nobody's looking, which is all the time. He says it smells delicious, but I can't be sure he's smelling the right food.
I live two floors above the pizza joint on Ridge, a couple of blocks away from where Hollywood makes its startling jog to the right to pursue a lazy Northwest route through the city and into Evanston. The shiny-skinned, golden Mexican boys who work in the pizza joint always have a greeting for me when I come home, like someone's rolled out the free Cerveza, their floury fists in the air as the dough hovers over their paper hats. I've never tried the pizza or walked in - the joint is small and the tile yellowed with unwashings - but the warm aromatic fog that saturates my old building always keeps me hungry. Stremple has remarked that he, too, is always starving the few times I've had him over, how he's thirsty, too, and at the moment he's doing a great job of lightening my gallon jug of Gallo (he's awfully cute; I just wish he'd either shave regularly or grow the damn beard already). He sits on my kickstep stool and watches me, his eyelids fluttering with each long inhalation of wine. The phone rings.
"Hey, Leigh, how's about a little you and me tonight?" the caller asks.
My ears go hot and I snap my fingers at Stremple to get his attention. "Let me have you talk to my husband," I say, "maybe I can sneak away if he says it's okay." I pass the phone to Stremple, but I've heard the click before he can say hello.
"You could just hang up," he tells me.
"Hanging up never discourages them," I say. "Husbands, however, do."
"All these cranks want is attention. Don't give it to them."
The thing is, I always know when it's a crank, because cranks call me Lay when my name is pronounced Lee. Friends know me as Lee. Anybody doing business with me knows me as Lee. Some whacko trolling for names in the phonebook sees Leigh and thinks Lay, and I get the calls sodden with lust.
Stremple shovels his way through the spaghetti and meatballs and I follow suit and afterward we wonder what the hell to do with ourselves. It's one of those damp early October nights where the streets are glistening even though it hasn't rained, and neither of us are interested in any of the movies that are showing. He asks if I've got any games and I say Scrabble and Parcheesi, but I'm not sure I have all the tiles for the former and never really learned how to play the latter (it's something my sister left behind). We put on some records and sit in my box of a living room, killing the wine. The phone doesn't ring.
"I wonder if I should practice my husband voice," he says. He thinks he ought to sound august, rumbling; the tones of a three-piece sober suit and a leather briefcase. He practices. "This is the husband," he intones like a radio announcer, and I'm laughing. The record changes, we wait; the needle digs the grooves and the music is perhaps a little too relaxed, because Stremple asks if I want a back rub.
I'm immediately aware of my boobs because my top is tight, not because I wear tight tops but because I've packed on a few pounds since moving up here, maybe because I've been breathing in the pizza joint and have loaded up on the calories through osmosis, but I can't go into the bedroom to change into something looser like my pajama top because that would send an even more invitational message and I deflect him by saying I'm too tense for a massage, I'd break his fingers off. He doesn't press the offer, taking me at my word.
The phone rings, and a new voice says, "Did I wake you?" I snap my fingers at Stremple; he shimmies over. "No," I say, "but you've interrupted some world-class sex between my husband and I. Here, he'll confirm that." But before I can pass the phone to Stremple, the voice says, "My husband and me," and hangs up.
"It doesn't help to engage them," Stremple says. "Be dull. It's your best defense." He's always got advice for everything (I like that about him), but he doesn't come off as a know-it-all (ibid), like my brother. I drink the last of the wine. We stare at the shameful emptiness of the green glass jug. "I should fill that up with pennies," I say, "like my grandfather used to do." Stremple is distracted by the smeared view from my windows and I can't imagine what’s so interesting out there. "I think he wrenched out his back trying to lug his bottled pennies to the bank, once," I continue. The phone rings. "Let me answer it," Stremple says. I let him. He barks a sharp hello and then passes the phone to me. "Your mother," he says.
What follows is a long explanation of not so much what a man is doing in my apartment but who the man is and how long I've known him and what does he do for a living and was something romantic being interrupted. I suffer through the call, as Stremple had the good sense to remove himself to the kitchen to attend to the cleansing of the dishes that would have otherwise gone uncleansed by me until at least the weekend.
It's late and quiet and we could, if we so desired, turn over the stack of records and listen to the B sides for another couple of hours, but once he's stacked my dishes in the cabinet above the sink and upended the wine glasses on the so-called drying towel he's shrugging into his jacket and saying he's got to get up early. He's lingering at the door and my arms go all pimply with a sudden chill. I know it's late, but it could be later, and, soon enough, it will be, and that's when the fun really begins. The most disturbing calls come during the swampiest hours of the night, always when I've slid into a dream I won't remember. If I don't answer, the phone rings and rings, and once I'm up, I'm up, and that's when I need Stremple. He's placid and lovely with a brittle ruggedness and I don't know what I'm saying. My bed, topped as it is with every conceivable blanket and pillow and wedged into a comforting corner could easily accommodate two, if the two are locked in a protective lateral hug and don't move around too much.
But his hands are hidden in the pockets of his jeans, and I'm opening the door to let in a damp wave of oregano and pepperoni. He gallops down the steps, thumping past the door of the fat old lady below me. I bolt my door twice, firstly the original vintage contrivance that came with the apartment, secondly the shiny new blocky battle-ready bolt Stremple had installed before our quiet dinner.
An hour before dawn, the phone rings. A voice says, "Listen, Leigh, either you do everything we say or we're coming over there to rape the shit out of you." I want to say, "If you're coming over, pick up a pizza downstairs on your way up; no anchovies." I want to say, "Well, raping the shit out of me might solve this constipation." I want to say, "Define everything." I want to say, "My husband will be happy to let you in," but I don't have anyone to whom I can pass the phone. Be dull, I think. I say nothing. I can hear myself breathing. Because the caller called me Lee, not Lay.
Jon Steinhagen is a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists and published author (print and online), recently in Monkeybicycle, Wigleaf, SmokeLong Quarterly, Alliterati, and Bodega.
by Jon Steinhagen
Stremple is here because it's 10/10/71, which means yesterday was my twenty-ninth birthday (sympathy cards are still being accepted) and I'm a single woman (see prior note about sympathy cards) with my own apartment who's listed in the phonebook and can't get a good night's sleep. Stremple has his own life (I like that about him) and I wanted to cook for a friend and women don't cook for other women, at least none of the women I know, so he's over tonight, for a variety of reasons. The phone rings and I tell Stremple to be prepared, but it's only my mother with Happy Birthday, a day late and a dollar short, so I roll my eyes and tell her I'm cooking and I'll call her back later, and when I hang up Stremple is looking at me sideways from the breadstick he's crunching, his eyebrows up to his hairline. He's never met my mother but he’s heard plenty about her and he knows when not to say anything and I tell him to stop standing so much, sit down, sit down.
The next time the phone rings it's Heavy Breathing, and I can't really use the Husband Technique on Heavy Breathing. I hang up. Stremple asks if I mind if he dips a heel of bread into the sauce and I say sure it's what I do anyway when nobody's looking, which is all the time. He says it smells delicious, but I can't be sure he's smelling the right food.
I live two floors above the pizza joint on Ridge, a couple of blocks away from where Hollywood makes its startling jog to the right to pursue a lazy Northwest route through the city and into Evanston. The shiny-skinned, golden Mexican boys who work in the pizza joint always have a greeting for me when I come home, like someone's rolled out the free Cerveza, their floury fists in the air as the dough hovers over their paper hats. I've never tried the pizza or walked in - the joint is small and the tile yellowed with unwashings - but the warm aromatic fog that saturates my old building always keeps me hungry. Stremple has remarked that he, too, is always starving the few times I've had him over, how he's thirsty, too, and at the moment he's doing a great job of lightening my gallon jug of Gallo (he's awfully cute; I just wish he'd either shave regularly or grow the damn beard already). He sits on my kickstep stool and watches me, his eyelids fluttering with each long inhalation of wine. The phone rings.
"Hey, Leigh, how's about a little you and me tonight?" the caller asks.
My ears go hot and I snap my fingers at Stremple to get his attention. "Let me have you talk to my husband," I say, "maybe I can sneak away if he says it's okay." I pass the phone to Stremple, but I've heard the click before he can say hello.
"You could just hang up," he tells me.
"Hanging up never discourages them," I say. "Husbands, however, do."
"All these cranks want is attention. Don't give it to them."
The thing is, I always know when it's a crank, because cranks call me Lay when my name is pronounced Lee. Friends know me as Lee. Anybody doing business with me knows me as Lee. Some whacko trolling for names in the phonebook sees Leigh and thinks Lay, and I get the calls sodden with lust.
Stremple shovels his way through the spaghetti and meatballs and I follow suit and afterward we wonder what the hell to do with ourselves. It's one of those damp early October nights where the streets are glistening even though it hasn't rained, and neither of us are interested in any of the movies that are showing. He asks if I've got any games and I say Scrabble and Parcheesi, but I'm not sure I have all the tiles for the former and never really learned how to play the latter (it's something my sister left behind). We put on some records and sit in my box of a living room, killing the wine. The phone doesn't ring.
"I wonder if I should practice my husband voice," he says. He thinks he ought to sound august, rumbling; the tones of a three-piece sober suit and a leather briefcase. He practices. "This is the husband," he intones like a radio announcer, and I'm laughing. The record changes, we wait; the needle digs the grooves and the music is perhaps a little too relaxed, because Stremple asks if I want a back rub.
I'm immediately aware of my boobs because my top is tight, not because I wear tight tops but because I've packed on a few pounds since moving up here, maybe because I've been breathing in the pizza joint and have loaded up on the calories through osmosis, but I can't go into the bedroom to change into something looser like my pajama top because that would send an even more invitational message and I deflect him by saying I'm too tense for a massage, I'd break his fingers off. He doesn't press the offer, taking me at my word.
The phone rings, and a new voice says, "Did I wake you?" I snap my fingers at Stremple; he shimmies over. "No," I say, "but you've interrupted some world-class sex between my husband and I. Here, he'll confirm that." But before I can pass the phone to Stremple, the voice says, "My husband and me," and hangs up.
"It doesn't help to engage them," Stremple says. "Be dull. It's your best defense." He's always got advice for everything (I like that about him), but he doesn't come off as a know-it-all (ibid), like my brother. I drink the last of the wine. We stare at the shameful emptiness of the green glass jug. "I should fill that up with pennies," I say, "like my grandfather used to do." Stremple is distracted by the smeared view from my windows and I can't imagine what’s so interesting out there. "I think he wrenched out his back trying to lug his bottled pennies to the bank, once," I continue. The phone rings. "Let me answer it," Stremple says. I let him. He barks a sharp hello and then passes the phone to me. "Your mother," he says.
What follows is a long explanation of not so much what a man is doing in my apartment but who the man is and how long I've known him and what does he do for a living and was something romantic being interrupted. I suffer through the call, as Stremple had the good sense to remove himself to the kitchen to attend to the cleansing of the dishes that would have otherwise gone uncleansed by me until at least the weekend.
It's late and quiet and we could, if we so desired, turn over the stack of records and listen to the B sides for another couple of hours, but once he's stacked my dishes in the cabinet above the sink and upended the wine glasses on the so-called drying towel he's shrugging into his jacket and saying he's got to get up early. He's lingering at the door and my arms go all pimply with a sudden chill. I know it's late, but it could be later, and, soon enough, it will be, and that's when the fun really begins. The most disturbing calls come during the swampiest hours of the night, always when I've slid into a dream I won't remember. If I don't answer, the phone rings and rings, and once I'm up, I'm up, and that's when I need Stremple. He's placid and lovely with a brittle ruggedness and I don't know what I'm saying. My bed, topped as it is with every conceivable blanket and pillow and wedged into a comforting corner could easily accommodate two, if the two are locked in a protective lateral hug and don't move around too much.
But his hands are hidden in the pockets of his jeans, and I'm opening the door to let in a damp wave of oregano and pepperoni. He gallops down the steps, thumping past the door of the fat old lady below me. I bolt my door twice, firstly the original vintage contrivance that came with the apartment, secondly the shiny new blocky battle-ready bolt Stremple had installed before our quiet dinner.
An hour before dawn, the phone rings. A voice says, "Listen, Leigh, either you do everything we say or we're coming over there to rape the shit out of you." I want to say, "If you're coming over, pick up a pizza downstairs on your way up; no anchovies." I want to say, "Well, raping the shit out of me might solve this constipation." I want to say, "Define everything." I want to say, "My husband will be happy to let you in," but I don't have anyone to whom I can pass the phone. Be dull, I think. I say nothing. I can hear myself breathing. Because the caller called me Lee, not Lay.
Jon Steinhagen is a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists and published author (print and online), recently in Monkeybicycle, Wigleaf, SmokeLong Quarterly, Alliterati, and Bodega.
