a dog is in our future. the first time i seriously raised the topic marty stopped what she was doing, turned towards me giving me her full arms-folded, hip-on-counter attention. surprised by her intentness, i moved forward a little uncertainly with things like:

i think the kids are getting older and more mature

and

they surely don't seem to go in and out of wanting a dog.

and

it's not about us, it's something we do for the kids.

the first thing marty said was ...

i won't do anything to help.

in reply, i asked her to elaborate on what exactly she meant by "anything". she said ...

when you go on your annual weeklong ski trip and the children forget to feed the dog and it is laid out, dehydrated in front of its water bowl and just needs me to pour a glass, a tiny glass, of water into it ... i won't. and the first thing you'll have to do after walking in the door after your annual weeklong ski trip is carry a dead dog into the backyard to bury it.

to this bit of insight, i said ...

oh. i see.

given that marty didn't appear to be "on the fence" about the matter, the getting a dog initiative kinda stalled, indefinitely. a few days ago marty told me about a girlfriend of hers who asked her husband about the family getting a dog. in response, her husband said:

i'd rather you had an affair than brought a dog home.

in the end, it turns out marty is near cuddly on the matter.

excerpt from Jim Harrison's novella The Man Who Gave Up His Name

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. crystal clear

ten minutes before i was to leave for work it began to rain, torrentially. when i was ready to leave, i stood in the open doorway of my home not wanting to begin the nine minute walk to the office. from the kitchen where she was doing dishes, marty called to me that she and anthony could drive me to work. i waved her off saying i didn't want them to bother. three minutes later with me still in the doorway, marty appeared with anthony in her arms saying, "c'mon anfer, we're going to drive dad to work." she flashed me a smile as she and anthony ran out the front door to the van.

we didn't say much on the way to the office. after getting out of the car and just before swinging the door shut, i thanked her for going to the trouble of driving me. she leaned towards me from the drivers seat, "watching the rain in the doorway the way you were, you looked like a girl with a new haircut and i didn't have the heart to send you out in the rain to mess it up."

this is definitely not the manly image i wish to project to my wife and lover.

and i'm not sure that i got the punctuation right on that previous statement, i reckon grammar dave will appear soon enough to let me know, but the "wife and lover" descriptor above is meant to refer to one person and not two ... and certainly not more than two.

although, back-peddling explanations like that probably aren't going to doing much for my manly street-cred either.

excerpt from the shadow of the wind by carlos ruiz zafon

several years ago, i went to a bachelor party. like every bachelor party i get invited to it was not conventional. instead of drunkenness, strippers and vomiting it involved arcades, comedians, and storytelling. at the dinner one of the attendees suggested the married men at the table each offer one piece of marital advice to the groom. we conceded this was a good idea and began. i'm sure mine un-...

shortly before i stopped being a corporate whore, i had an unusual-ish lunch. two things made it odd. first off, i went with five guys, colleagues, i didn't know all that well, only one of which would have even rated as an acquaintance (i usually eat lunch alone or with one or two people i like pretty well). the second curiosity was the conversation itself. it dealt with, of all things, male grooming. when the topic was first floated, and it was not raised by me because such matters aren't even on my radar, i scanned the table thinking in a group of people who push ones and zeros around for a living this subject might have a life-span of 36 seconds. but as i studied the five expressions i didn't see disdain and disinterest but instead mild intrigue and readiness. i almost yelled at the whole lot of them saying they can either like network gaming parties or shaving their genitals but not both.

seeing the subject had legs i turned my attentions to the conversation's sponsor. you groom? down there? unabashedly he said he did. he then asked me. you don't? at all? unabashedly i said i didn't. he asked me why i cut the hair on my head. i said because it would be unprofessional not to. he asked why i shaved my face. i admitted that even though i was still as of yet unable to grow cheek hair if i could i would still shave because i felt face pelts were also unprofessional. he then started asking about marty. and if she shaved and groomed. i said she did but certainly not at my demand. and frankly, i could care less if she did or not. the whole table groaned loudly and recoiled like slugs to salt. what's the big deal i asked. are they afraid of a natural woman? it seems they were afraid of the potential. a few of them had seen movies and were witness to what was in fact possible.

seeing i was getting nowhere with the first guy, i sought support from the rest of the table. one by one i asked them if they owned a male epilady or some such device and one by one they confessed they did, my acquaintance included. i saved my sure bet for last, a contractor straight from the india homeland, arranged marriage country and all. he said to me in the most classic and quintessential accent, "i am sorry troy, but i am unable to help you here." even the indian guy was sitting on the closed-lid toilet, with his knees flayed apart, tweezing groin hairs with his free time. does he know how to tie a slip-knot? has he read the the count of monte christo? can he spin a pencil in crazy ways on his hand? no, but he doesn't have a body hair on the outside of the elastic leg band of his underwear. how admirable is that? as weak as it may appear, that last guy really took the wind out of my sails and in the end, i quit the fight. there were too many of them and they proved immune to any powers of persuasion i thought i may have had. sad to find myself spending time with such a lot, i became morose.

perhaps my despondency drove the guy who started the whole preening debate to share the following story about a friend of his who was uber-manic about his hair removal. it seems this guy's appearance was a real house of cards given his hirsute genes and required more routine care than a fertilized lawn in portland. after he moved in with a girl he'd been dating, he was finding it difficult to find enough private time to keep the hedges at bay. he was having to go to work late or come home for lunch to get his primping time in (sheesh!). one day his girlfriend wasn't feeling well and left work early. after walking in the door and setting her keys and purse down she heard something coming from the bedroom. she moved to the door, listened for a moment and then opened it. she saw her boyfriend lying on the floor, on his back, naked, and with his legs pulled over his head. he had an electronic thing in his hand but she didn't have time to make out what it was or what he was doing with it before he sprang forward into a sitting position, and started yelling at her through bugged-out eyes to get out of the room. she slammed the door shut and stood there with one hand still on the knob and the other covering her mouth. some minutes later he came out of the room fully clothed and aside from a huffiness about him, acting like nothing had happened. seeing that he wasn't going to volunteer an explanation she asked him what he was doing in there. he exploded saying it was none of her business and she should learn to knock on closed doors before entering rooms (her own bedroom included it seems). he never told her he was shaving the hair from between his buttocks and she never recovered from not being told that he was shaving the hair from between his buttocks so they broke up shortly after the incident. if i recall the story correctly, she let him keep the apartment.

i rebounded from the evil outing by imagining the guy in the story was the guy pushing the topic at my lunch table (he was reasonably hirsute). i had to do that because that meal happened four years ago and i still hold an image of a slightly overweight naked guy rolling around on plush carpeting contorting a braun razor in his hand fighting for the last, perfect angle. typically, i'm the stamper of such imagery and not the one having uninvited images pressed into the walls of my brain. call me a sore loser.

there is this interesting book called the five love languages. in it its author, gary chapman, theorizes there are five ways people show love to one another. they are; physical touch, quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, and acts of service. chapman believes that everyone leans towards one of these categories and what that means is that this is how they express their love to an intimate part...

The Coolidge Effect is a phenomenon whereby males exhibit high sexual performance given the introduction of new willing females.

It earned its name many years ago when President Coolidge and his wife were touring a farm. While the President was elsewhere, the farmer proudly showed Mrs. Coolidge a rooster that "could copulate with hens all day long, day after day." Mrs. Coolidge coyly suggested that the farmer tell that to Mr. Coolidge, which he did.

The President thought for a moment and then inquired, "With the same hen?"

"No, sir," replied the farmer.

"Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge," retorted the President.

via kottke ... via defective yeti ... via reuniting

NEIGHBOR LADY
i feel sorry for the first guy to break bella's heart.

TROY
yeah, i hope he wears a cup to the discussion.

an exchange between a neighbor lady and myself while watching bella handle a surly playmate.

excerpt from american experience's documentary on sex researcher, alfred kinsey. here, alice ginott cohn talks about her memory of being interviewed by kinsey.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. smart, smart girl

guy A recently told guy B about how his wife was having twins. guy B excitedly asked when they were expected and guy A said two weeks from friday. guy B, shocked, said he just saw guy A's wife and she didn't look pregnant. this is when guy A said, not those kinds of twins, did a head-nodding wink and with his hands made the universal sign for heaving, cleaving bosoms. guy B said 'ooooohhhhh!, THOSE kinds of twins.'

i've decided the next time i see guy A i'm going to say i heard about their procedure and congratulate him on pulling off this spousal boon to fix what they must have collectively felt was a shortcoming in their relationship. as he beams with pride and before he can reply, i'm then going to ask if it hurt when he got the penis enlargement and however did his wife convince him to go to such drastic measures for something entirely out of his control.

guy A never liked me much to begin with.

emma idessia hoffman-rutman
09.01.1921 - 02.25.2006

in late february my mother and her brother drove halfway across the nation to walk into a country-side nursing home in the evening hours of a sunday night to tell their father that his wife of 66 years, and their mother, had died in her sleep the day before. upon tearfully presenting him with the news he sat quietly in his chair before softly saying 'that is the saddest thing i've ever heard'. and then he wept.

i wish i could say marty was talking to alexander when she said that but she wasn't, she was talking to me. yeah, that's right, i got THE TALK. the one virtually any man is going to get after they begin co-habitating with a lady-friend.

it was suggested that i sit down when i pee, like my friend chris. when chris first announced that he always sat to urinate when at home or friends, i was intrigued, but apparently not as intrigued as marty. little did i know she concocted a five year strategy to get me to do the same. it's so sad really because she's been architecting this move for years only to have its execution marred by the most minor of details; she pulled the trigger as we moved into the fall/winter season. the only reason i'm able to lower my cozy warm skin on the icy cold seat of our toilet once a day is for fear of soiling my pants, bookpimp style. sorry dear, but if it's any consolation there ain't no love in this world i could make such a chilling sacrifice for.

i've previously mentioned how marty treats ziploc baggies in our home. they get the same respect and delicate care as our finest dinnerware. this has always been her fight, never mine. anytime i would see a soiled and stained baggie on the counter, i'd leave it for her. this was understood.

last night i washed my first ziploc baggie.

i didn't want to do it. the whole time i was asking myself, aloud, why are you doing this troy? problem was i had just cleaned the kitchen and it was immaculate, save for this one sad-ass, large-size freezer bag on the counter. i couldn't leave it. i tried. i've left them hundreds of times before without the slightest of pangs. i even started walking out of the kitchen but made the mistake of looking back only to see this crumpled blight on my pristine countertop's landscape. it was here that i slowly turned and walked back to the sink. i held it up by a corner examining it before gingerly turning it inside out so i could wash my first ziploc baggie.

this is a sad day in the world of troy. sad because troy has begun washing his garbage.

there is a game of sorts marty and i have engaged in since the early days of our relationship. we refer to it as THE CHIP. i don't recall who started it or even if it was an original invention. i just know it showed up one day and has been used 3-5 times a year since its inception.

how it works; each of us began the game with an equally scant few chips. chips are given when one of us performs an act of personal sacrifice at the request of the other. for instance, if marty were going out with her girlfriends and asked me to go i could, and oftentimes would, decline. if for some reason my attendance was important to marty on a particular outing, she could simply say my going was worth a chip. with the offer of a chip, it told me that this was, for some personal reason that did not need to be explained, an important matter to marty.

another thing about our chips; the offering of a chip has never been refused.

back in the day chips weren't traded immediately. one person may burn through three chips before ever getting presented one in return. this is not so much the case these days because these days you always got a chip or two you could toss on the counter. and while chips used to mostly involve family functions or events requiring shirts with buttons, they now take a much more pedestrian form. an example of a chip exchange today looks more like this:

MARTY (walking into kitchen where i'm doing dishes)
you got something?

TROY (laughing)
do i have something? sure. go.

MARTY
stop leaving your wet towels on the bed in the morning.

TROY
hang the broom up in the pantry after using it.

MARTY
done.

TROY
done.

and, people say kids complicate life. pre-kid chips were never this simple and painless. for us, kids have simplified our days down to the lowest common denominator of life; survival. and i'm not talking about driving a leased-suv and having the summer place in the outer banks kind of survival, i'm talking about the crouching scared in the back of a dank cave kind of survival.

clarifying points: the chips aren't real, like poker chips or something. they are figurative. no official scorecard has ever been kept because no one has ever thought to abuse the chip system. and this is not out of fear of getting caught (which you would get caught) but out of respect for the good deed it has done for our time together.

a detail i forgot to include in this month's gallery essay is that the day after getting the software, marty mocked me because i had stayed up all night working on my computer and was exhausted the next day. i told her to be nice to me and my new software because Apple's Tiger saved her marriage. she, like the gas-station clerk, indifferently shrugged her shoulders before turning away.

perhaps it's just that everyone but me knows that my seductress was really a prostitute trying to salvage a slow night.

it was almost eleven o'clock on a friday evening and i was driving to the apple store to pick up my copy of their new operating system, tiger. as for the late hour, they were open until midnight in honor of the software's release. i stopped on the way for gas and as i headed inside to pay, a youngish woman jumped out of a parked car and dashed in just before me, beating me to the counter. she purc...

on wednesday i had lunch with some people i just recently met. one of the girls at the table was complaining about the state of her dating life. i gave her the typical 'just got to keep swinging' propoganda speech, you know the one that ends with a hearty, yet assuring, clap on the back.

she responded to my spirited pep talk by sharing a moment from her last outing where her date left her sitting alone at a table while he stepped out to engage in some medieval combat using a weapon made from pvc tubing.

on the good side, at least his mom was letting him stay out late, and this in addition to borrowing the car for the night.

afterthought : if i had to guess where the traditional clap on the back business comes from, i'd attribute it to homophobes who were unable to give hugs to their other phobe friends. if this is true, giving a clap on the back is almost like throwing hail hitler salutes around the workplace. no more claps on the back from me. you are either getting a full-body contact hug or you'll have to lick your wounds all on your own.

last night i listened to a show discussing dream analysis on npr. as i took in the eruditic ponderings of the panel i thought of a dream marty had earlier in the week.

in the dream she woke up in the morning and smelled poop. she called into the kids room asking if anyone needed a diaper change. none did. she then marveled at the proximity and strength of the aroma. she threw the sheets ...

in college when i dated girls, i only went dutch. this was not so much out of principle as out of necessity. as my rusted out 76 volvo attested, i was not a man of leisure or privilege. barely equipped to take myself to burger king once a week, i was in no way prepared or willing to take on another's culinary appetites.

so in these early days of romance, as relationships flourished i would suggest a date. if accepted, i would immediately ask if they minded going dutch. only one did mind but as it turned out, she was a direct descendent of satan so i learned my system had hidden benefits. for added uniquity, at some point on the first date, i would announce that they, the girl, had an astoundingly generous and guilt-free endowment of $15 which they could use in any way they desired; 3 trips to fast food, fifteen shows at the dollar movie house, i was even amenable to putting these funds towards a larger item, the balance of course to be covered by them.

with marty, our first dating encounter was so brief that she didn't exhaust her stipend. the year following our slight flirtation marty spent dating half the ivy league and i passed those days sitting/living in a friend's basement. during a lull in my male-heavy social life, i called marty to notify her that my records indicated she still had six dollars credit with me and that it was about to expire and would she like to exercise her rights to those funds or let them default? laughingly she agreed to use this line of credit and we went out for a second time.

that subsequent date happened 15 years ago today.

we married 8 years later on this same day.

and on this day, today, i consider those fifteen dollars to be the most significant and well-invested to ever pass through my wallet.

happy anniversary walt.

there is a light blue box in the butter tray of my refrigerator that has the words 'vaginal ring' on it. it had some other stuff on there too but i was pretty lost in determining if having this item on my dairy shelf is a good or bad thing for me.

since adolescence, the girls i found most attractive were always strong and independent girls/women, a la marta.

the problem though was the very thing drawing me to them unfortunately made them not only not need me, but in many cases, better off without me.