There’s a meaningful power sleeping with lingerie receipts in your pants pocket. Your wife snuck it in with those jet-fueled prenuptials. She’s bad with money & wanted to protect your property investments for you until she inevitably files for bankruptcy around the time of your retirement. She’s lovely & full of tricks like that she learned while living in the Netherlands with some magician you’ve heard a lot about but never met. When he comes up you just stare at your beautiful wife & try to imagine some fool standing over a box, attempting to saw her in half. He comes up less & less, though each time, you simply gaze at her like a child.
She never reveals how good it made her feel when you looked at her like she was still young & the grey hairs she dyed the color of her youth trapped in high school yearbooks didn’t matter. She just hinted. Talking about bras & panties & garter belts & weird things you never thought about, you just saw in movies’ peripheral scenes just before the flesh exposed its ruthless self. So you worked a little harder & got a larger raise than you thought you deserved so she could melt all over you & drip through the new clothes with your head cocked back against the bed frame you hated. She wants to get dressed up to turn you on when you’re thinking that lingerie is actually just a foolish businessman knocking at your door while you’re trying to eat dinner with the family. One more piece of shit pushing the cake a little farther back. I don’t want to get dressed up to go to bed. I don’t want to put on a different pair of shorts before I jump in the water. I don’t want us to wear a burlap bag over our heads when we make love & I certainly don’t need any more reasons to fall in love with my naked wife. You tell yourself. But hints about the turquoise high thread count shimmering push up with almost matching low cut laced panties are effective so you write it down on the back of your hand & when you get to the store read it verbatim without making eye contact until the tranny behind the counter asks if you need it modeled. It’s obvious she has a dick so you smile & say “of course.”
On the drive home you’re trying to decide whether to tell babe before or after you make love. It’s too good & you would laugh through the sex making it rough for both of you & possibly fucking the desire backwards into the bag or onto the receipt, in your pocket of the pants she’s taken off you. So you decide it’s got to come out so you drive a little faster & speed through a yellow & hustle up the front lawn after finding a great spot in front of the neighbors. But she’s there in the living room waiting for you; kisses & grins & total distraction from your radical evening. She’s sitting & slowly stands up saying that the kids are down the street for the night with that fucked up family that always smells like a vacuumed rug & you try to start your story while rubbing the words off your hand, black bag discreetly dangling from your wrist. & she says, “surprise, babe” even though that’s your pet name for her, & she pulls your large oxford from her shoulders revealing the skin you first saw 20 years ago & fell in love with in the back seat of her car & some lingerie made of pure sex scenes. Jaw drops & body quivers the same way it did two decades ago & reach out your hand, touching her waist with just the tip of your index finger & softly say, “Holy shit, babe, I mixed up the words. I wrote them backwards.” Which you did, you reversed the descriptions. Your seducer pauses as she softly whispers back with a crease across her forehead, “What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Talking. About? Just take me upstairs.” You can’t stop staring at her breasts; she’s your wife & you’ve seen her naked nearly every night since before you were married, but she wasn’t kidding when she talked about this bra. It was all business. It was what LA hair bands meant when they said love in the 80’s – polar opposite of the scene at the store. The tranny crosses your mind. You snap out of this self-induced body coma & start to laugh & look at your watch & barely whisper, “Babe, can I change your life?” She presses up against you & slides her fingers like dangerous talons across your lower back, confirming with cute little moans. She’s agreed. Still whispering you say, “Radical, we only have 15 minutes. Just throw on some sweatpants.”
You didn’t have sex that night. She went to bed & advised you not to. You did tell your brother over a couple beers by his pool & he —being the confused queer with his dick typically in the wrong mouth— agreed to go with you to exchange the lingerie come morning.
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Josh Cornell Williams is expecting. It’s been months but books aren’t made like babies. The touch is different. The movement is different. The sex is different. Though nothing’s on speed trial when the priest is on speed dial. 9 months can be 3 years sometimes. The good liturgy of Morning Star Press is set to release the anthology HEAVEN HATES YOU & HELL IS FOR POSERS later this year. God Bless those rosary punks. Josh’s words can also be found in issues of WIVES EYES, BULIMIC GRATITUDE, & a handful of records by defunct art-damaged trio THIS RUNS ON BLOOD. He is 33 & lives with GET OVER IT & a dog named Memphis in Athens, GA.