“Can’t I just do something nice for my husband?”

“Keep talking. When it finally comes out and I tell you that I told you so, I am going to give you so much shit. But we can’t go into witness protection until the Kid graduates. I won’t uproot his life like that.”

“Bear, I’m not in the mafia.”

“I wasn’t thinking that!”

He waited.

“Okay, I was thinking that a little, but you’re acting strange, and now I’m getting nervous.” I took another drink of wine through a mouthful of chicken Alfredo.

“You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing.”

“Is it a kinky sex thing?” I blurted out. “If it’s a kinky sex thing involving a traffic cone, I don’t know if I can do that. I mean, do you know how much lube you’d have to use for that? And where the hell would we even get a traffic cone? It’s not like we can steal one from a construction site, because they’d all be dirty, and I won’t put dirty traffic cones up my ass, Otter, I really won’t. I don’t want to have to go to the emergency room to have to explain to a doctor why I need to have gravel extracted from my asshole. And if that happens, I am going to blame it all on you, because I won’t be taking the blame for it. I won’t. You will be there holding my hand while they take dirty asshole rocks out of me because you couldn’t take the time to order a goddamn traffic cone online, if that’s even possible. And you know I’m okay with trying new things, but I still get freaked out over that video we saw with the two guys on the seesaw that had those obscene dildos on either end and they kept seesawing them into each other’s asses, and why would anyone even think about doing that? Why would you take a piece of child’s playground equipment and make it sexual? I mean, yeah, there’s sex swings, and that’s fine, but a seesaw? A seesaw, Otter. With dildos on it. Who does that? What’s next? A slide made of anal beads? Hanging from the monkey bars by nipple clamps? And that’s another thing! How do I know what nipple clamps are? We’ve never used them. We’re so normal, we’re not even vanilla. We’re vanilla bean. That’s what this is, isn’t it? You’re getting me drunk so you can tell me we need to have a kinkier sex life. Oh my god. I knew you were up to something. All I wanted to do was come home after dealing with little shits all day who apparently can’t survive an hour without checking their Myspace or sending their twatterings about how everything is hard because they’re fourteen years old and no one will ever understand them. I wanted to come home and just forget about that, but now I have Alfredo sauce on my face while you are talking about sticking a sounding rod in my dick and—how the fuck do I know what a sounding rod is?”