Guilty Pleasures

If Diane didn’t change our sheets we’d never have clean ones. It’s not that I don’t like the feel of freshly laundered linen, or that I enjoy sleeping on miscellaneous specks of dried blood, it’s just not something I “see.” I see peeling paint on my house, and I can sense when the oil needs to be changed in my truck, but when it comes to my bed if I count three pillows and two quilts I’m happy.

Lately, I’ve been helping Diane make our bed. As we tossed the crusty sheets onto the floor (”Don’t throw the dirty ones on the clean ones,” she yelps.) I ask her about her day. She’d been gone for hours with Ginger, first to do their pool walking at the Thoreau Club, then a long lunch at the 99, and finally a stop at Diane’s favorite store, T.J.’s.

“What did you eat for lunch?” I asked.

“I had steak tips and Ginger had a hankering for Scrod.”

“And, what did you talk about?”

“You.”

“Me? What about me?”

“We didn’t really. No, we did, but not that much.”

“But what about me?”

I don’t normally fish so, but I’d spent the last month working at Ginger and Mark’s house and felt like I’d been doing a lot of blabbing during our long, Ginger-provided lunches.

“We talked about that dopamine study.”

I must say that it doesn’t matter that I hadn’t read the article. I know just enough about dopamine (more makes you happy, less makes you depressed) to play along.

“What about it?” I asked.

“A dopamine usually chooses another dopamine. You’re a … .”

“Dope?”

“Yes, and I’m not. Dopamines have lots of creative energy and are constantly trying new things. That’s not me.”

“Then why are we together?”

“I think it’s an estrogen testosterone match. Estrogens are matchmakers and connectors.”

“And me”?

“You’re a pig headed jackass.”

This doubled us both over. It always does. It’s obvious why Diane laughs. She wanted to shorten the fishing trip. I laugh, in part, because she blushes so crimson.