Learning to Like Our Deal.

My wife and I were having problems. Not the kind that are talked out, or even talked of – rather, the kind of problems where, when we look at each other, it is plain that we both would prefer to be looking at something else. The wall, maybe, or the sink, if it is not full of dishes. At any rate, the passion was gone. That’s how she phrased it, one night, during one of our rare verbal outbursts. "The passion is gone!" she declared with a jabbing finger. "The love between us has grown stale."

I responded that I did not like it when she got "Fresh" with me, which was a witty and fresh thing to say, doubly so because her irrationality had set in as we were deciding what to order for dinner. She had thrown the menus to the floor and huffed that I “always have to over-qualify everything!” Well, I’m sorry. Sorry that I fail to find remote geographical justice in the fact that there can be tons of Canadian bacon on a pizza, but they throw a few piddling slices of canned pineapple on there and suddenly the whole pizza is “Hawaiian?” It’s a nonsense arrangement. Canada is always being forgotten.

Lois was right, though: The passion was gone. Inasmuch as the passion was ever there, was ever not-gone between two people who had agreed to hasten their wedding when the Mother-of-the-Bride’s gout went into unexpected remission.

She told her sister about the Pizza Incident without telling me that she had told her, which was smart, actually, because her sister is an unconscionable snoop and I cannot. Tolerate. Her. And sure enough: Just three days after the PI, we received a call from a self-described “Interactional Sufficiency Counselor” by the name of Professor Ford Spink. Not a “telephone" call, mind you. This was an old-fashioned, “here-I-am-at-your-doorstep, don’t-mind-if-I-push-my-way-into-your-sitting-room" call. His face glistened with oil and his thick, wild mustache evoked the facial stylings of a close-minded walrus. Before he had said a word I knew he was an associate of Lois’s sister, probably someone she had met at the local Lyon’s Club. He sat us down on either side of him and got straight to the business of pitching us on his Program, which promised to “restore an acceptable level of intimacy” to our relationship. I looked at Ford Spink, then past him at Lois, who had an appallingly congenial look on her face. But then he began to lay out the details of the Program, many of which were about doing the sex more often. Or, more accurately, thinking about doing more of the sex. This appealed to me, so I allowed him to continue without riposte.

The most intriguing element of the Program was a series of step-by-step guides he gave to each of us: Mine were under the heading “His Wild Behaviors” and the ones for Lois were called “Her Dark Places.” Ford was quite persuasive, and, after clarifying that he would accept payment in installments, we agreed to his conditionally-guaranteed 20-day Program to bring “something not unlike affection” back into our lives. We walked Professor Spink out to his Vespa, and, filled with the optimism that comes as you embark on something new and risky, we went straight to our separate bedrooms and spent the night devising ways to enjoy each other.

Not wanting to rush things, we had decided that our first foray into Project Learning to Like Our Deal (PLLOD) would happen two days hence. Steps 1, 2, and 3 fell under the heading “Choose the Other’s Adventure,” and involved composing a series of multiple-choice lists from which the other would select whichever choice they most fancied. At the agreed-upon time, we convened in the sitting room. I moved the furniture and arranged some couch pillows on the floor while Lois lit a votive candle and some incense she had purchased from the Target. When we were settled we looked at each other with apprehension. This was a slightly different sort of apprehension than I was used to, though – it was concerned with what she might say rather than if she might say something.

“Ready?” we asked at once, then traded lists and took up our pens. The directions for each of our lists were the same, and read as follows. Pet names are the centerpiece of establishing a viable connection between Man and Woman. Choose one of the following 5 options, created by your partner, which will be the nickname for your genitalia for the duration of Phase 1 of the Program. Trust is yet to be established at this early stage. Therefore, once the choices have been made (in silence), this task is complete. The next is to address in turn the other’s genitalia genially. Following introductions, you may ask if it would like to be engaged in some way, perhaps even fondled. Only after the re-naming has taken hold is this task complete.

We would not make it to Step Three that night.

For my Penis Nickname, Louis had given me the following choices:

1. Skewer Stick
2. Biscotti
3. Drain Rooter
4. Rolling Pin
5. Warner

I was disheartened. None of these choices were remotely acceptable: While Lois's shining attribute was her skill in navigating the kitchen, it was expressly not my domain, and the notion of applying any of those choices to my bedfellow was grimace-worthy. "Rolling Pin" had momentarily appealed to me – what with it being round and dense and thick – but it brought on the image of Lois in her apple-red apron, humming to herself as she applied an even coating of flour to my penis. "Drain Rooter" had an element of vigorous expulsion, but it conjured a visual of long, thin tubing covered in thick wiry hairs that was hardly appealing. Desperate to participate, I lightly sketched a question mark next to it. Perhaps the venture could be saved: I, at least, had invented for her a range of vaginal nicknames with nuance and specific evocative power.

But when I looked up I could see her straining. When at last she started to write something, her knuckles quickly grew white around her red #3 pencil and she began to scribble frantically. She stopped and looked up at me, her eyes ablaze. Her lips had disappeared into her mouth. I gazed back at her evenly, with a calm I might call "Zen-like" if "Zen" were not a word for hippies. We stared at each other for quite some time, an uncomfortable lack of space between our faces. A steady curl of rank incense smoke curled up from its home on the floor next to us. Lois had told me earlier that, at the store, she had had trouble choosing; apparently she had decided to go with the "Dirty Beach" scent. At last I spoke.

"Do you want to say something?"

She shook her head, but then held up her list to me, the paper trembling violently in her clenched fist. "What," she said, "what are these?"

"They are the choices for your vagina," I replied in a mistakenly optimistic tone.

The paper shook even more as she extended it toward me, mere inches from my face. The page was covered with the tiny random-seeming scribbles of her pencil, but beneath those lay the choices I had given her:

1. Foxhole
2. Little Bighorn
3. Operation Iron Triangle
4. Dakota's Canyon
5. Fort Sumter

Lois's whole body was shaking with emotion, but this coolness, this Zen-without-the-pussiness calm had taken hold of me. "I like 'Operation Iron Triangle'," I said. "Although admittedly much of that is because "OIT" is a fun acronym. And you know how I love a good acronym. 'Dakota's Canyon' is probably my favorite. It has the most power."

"It's a fucking canyon!" she screamed.

My voice softened in response. "Yes. And it does reference essentially the same thing as 'Little Bighorn', I realize," I said. "But it implies the broader range of Cheyenne stomping grounds, which gives it more metaphorical oomph."

"I know what it is!" yelled Lois. "I can't help but know! You never shut up about those stupid sad Western Indian battles that no one cares about!"

This struck me to the core. "Only two of the five are Native American battle references. 'Sumter', you should know, is Civil War, and OIT is Vietnam. And what about 'Foxhole'? It has 'fox' right there in it, and 'fox' is supposedly a sexy word."

"Hole is not! And if I have to tell you,” she said as she sucked in a frantic breath, “if I have to tell you that 'hole' is not a word i want associated with my girl-part –"

But I cut her off, my Zen-ness evaporated. "You want to tell me about 'Skewer Stick' then? You want to explain to me 'Biscotti' or 'Rolling Pin' or how all of your choices relegate my man parts to your beloved goddamned kitchen?" Lois recoiled, literally – she drew her knees to her chest and looked at the floor.

"What about 'Warner'?" she asked, her tone unexpectedly meek. "You like the name Warner.”

"I do," I answered. "It took me some years, but I have grown a certain fondness for it. And I'm glad I did, seeing as how it's my middle name." She looked at me, then, and I would swear that in that second she saw what I saw. She looked very tired.

Simultaneously we began to stand and without thinking I offered her my palm; we pulled each other to our feet. Lois sniffled; I drew a long, deep breath through my nose, which I do when I get emotional. We looked at each other a second more, then started to move away to our usual bedrooms. But Louis could not stop herself; she reached out and touched my shoulder:

“'Foxhole'? Really? The best name you could give my wetty-wet is the place you go to hide from bombs?”

I said, "You left me only with 'Warner.' And it is already a name I have. So what about that."

“I can’t stand the thought of it,” she said. The distance between us was miniscule. We stood there for some time, our eyes leveled, unchanging. I could not recall ever having been part of a literal stand-off, and for the first time it occurred to me that I would be quite good at it. Never mind the “stand-on” or the “stand-around” – the stand-off I could do.

But then her grip tightened around my arm and she pulled me towards her. Her hips pressed into mine, just slightly, but with a suggestion that was almost foreign. I froze, stunned. It felt good and I was stunned.

"Goodnight, Warner," she cooed. My pelvis retracted from hers in an instant. Was her sass deliberate or just willfully ignorant?

Either way, I would get off the last shot. "Goodnight, Operation Iron Triangle," I said. “I’ll see you in the foxhole at oh-five hundred.” With that I turned away, and with a little faux-goosestep I began to march down the hall.

“See you then,” she called after me, “Make sure your skewer stick is polished, Private!”

“Plenty of room for it in the foxhole!” I kept marching.