But the real goat-getter is what I do when Charlie is giving me a précis on the state of things in Iraq38 and the beneficial role that the “Polecat” plays in returning cultural treasures to their countries of origin: I make a gun gesture, squeezing off a few self-righteous rounds, and say, “I’ll tell you what someone needs to do. They need to shoot the fucker.”
Charlie makes a mortified, goose-faced look.
“Oh, Otto. You can’t mean that.”
I am presented with another prospective pullback moment. Again I ignore it. I fire off another imaginary fusillade and say, “I’d do it myself. Shoot him dead dead deadski.”
My childish potshots aren’t helping. Neither is my blood-lust. A third problem is my hard-on.
While Charlie gesticulated at me / toward the TV / to the heavens, the sheet fell away from her. Her hair is pulled back, half in a kind of haphazard, semicoiled, nearly Grecian bun, and half trailing down her strong back and over her beautiful collarbones and between her breasts. When she shakes her head at my disetiquette, her hair and skin spray fragrance into the room, making my dick twitch with interest.
As soon as I feel it I issue immediate orders for detumescence, which, of course, only make it worse. It’s like vascular quicksand: the more I fight the worse it gets. There aren’t many places to hide when all you’re sporting is a towel, and the sight and smell of Charlie naked, her mouth moving at me, is too much, and soon I have an aching, full-salute erection, an exclamation mark made flesh. It won’t go away, it won’t diminish, and, worst of all, it won’t quit pushing at the knot in the towel. I’d like to help it, but I can’t. Charlie is plenty beautiful under normal conditions, but when she’s angry, when she’s fired up about something, then look out. She is absolutely irresistible: proud, passionate, vivid with life. It’s thrilling even when we’re arguing about a subject that rankles as deeply as the Rat Burglar.
Weird? Perhaps.
Convenient? Certainly not.
As I have never been in this situation before, I have no precedent to use as a guide for conduct, and so I choose simply to ignore it. Which isn’t easy. If there is one thing an erection wants, it’s attention. It isn’t reasonable. It strives. It filibusters. It demands to be heard. When I feel the towel slipping it seems to me that I have two options: sue for peace with expedition, or try to nuke the whole thing and storm off before I am disrobed.39 Alas, I do neither. I just stand there as the towel unwraps, falls, snags momentarily and spinnakers proudly in space for a few rebellious seconds, and then slips to the ground.
To those of you for whom this is a novel experience, let me assure you: arguing with the woman you love—in fact, endorsing the murder of the cherished idée fixe of the woman you love— while wagging at her in an imperious manner both finger and cock does not conduce to peacemaking. No it does not.