He doesn’t quite know what to do with me.
I lie beside him twitching in bed
and he says, “Is it your leg again?”
Oh no my love, it’s another cramping.
Year after year I’ve eaten him away
with the tyranny of niceness, Now now
calm down, no rage, no negativity…
that American wife thing I’ve done to
him, whom I could barely look at once
without fainting, heart thudding, throat tight with all
the crazy words that flung themselves like silken
spinnerets against him, who caught hold
and saved me— And now we have spun this shimmering
wide net which is dawn with cardinals singing
in the privet, which is our white bed
beneath the window, pillows rumpled, quilt
heavy and warm with the valley of cats,
which is his leg with its bony knee pressed
into me, my leg thrown over his, soft
cock fluttering sleepily in my hand now
his furred belly warms my back, he’s my bear—
But I miss the teeth that would grip my throat
once, the blood on the marble floor, me skidding
like a fish as we thrashed in my meness,
and the proud mark I bore, see, bruises, then
we showered where water flung to the four walls,
drenching the sink, salt-white towels, toilet,
in that bare Santorini bathroom,
nothing but the sea around—sea sea sea sea,
outside the window.
Come back to me,
My splendid furred beast, your curled lip snarling.
After Twenty Years, Ann Fisher-Wirth
please don’t actually use this card to propose marriage, i, ryan north, internet cartoonist guy, am begging you
(via qwantz)
Dromeciomimus knows what’s going on in panel 3.
The 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey
Of the 3,500 American adults surveyed, here are a few major findings:
- Adultery is the exception rather than the rule. Both men and women are remarkably faithful to their partners. Nearly 75 percent of married men and 85 percent of married women say they have never been unfaithful. Over a lifetime, a typical man has six partners, a typical woman two.
- People in this country are divided into three categories according to how often they have sex. One-third have sex twice a week or more, one-third a few times a month, and one-third a few times a year or not at all.
- Married couples have the most sex, they enjoy it the most, and they are the most likely to have orgasms when they do. Nearly 40 percent of married people have sex twice a week, compared to 25 percent for singles.
These statistics paint a rosier picture with regard to faithfulness in relationships than I would have expected. I wonder how well this data has aged, 17 years on.
I think I’ve heard this kind of statistic quoted differently in the past. I’ve heard things like, “one in four men, one in seven women have cheated on their spouses.” That sounds a lot worse to me, despite being the same data from the survey.
