Well, I’ll never be able to watch that show again.
Ken climaxes and then coughs some more. I don’t think Khaleesi got off, and since Ken is now on his back, panting, I don’t think she will.
Somewhere, Gloria Steinem is shaking her head—appalled. Angela Davis has revoked my woman card. Lynda Carter wants to confiscate all of my cuff bracelets and star-adorned blue panties before hanging me with her Wonder Woman lasso.
Thirty minutes ago, I was thoroughly prepared for life in jail.
It seemed heroic, even.
But if you were really going to kill Ken, why ruin the humidor and cigars?
Ah, smart reader, you know me better than I know myself.
And now it all seems like a practical joke.
My collected experiences thus far have no weight and are of no consequence whatsoever.
I start laughing and I cannot stop.
I’m powerless against the comedy of my life.
My mind flashes to the first time I met Ken, across the state in Miami. I was wearing a red sundress, a Coppertone tan, and my old knock-off Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses, sitting on a veranda at a Cuban restaurant with a waitressing friend, basking in the unearned royalty of our already fading but still technically passable youth. We were eating the best black bean dip and still-warm-from-the-fryer plantains—amazing the details I recall under duress—and Ken walked right up to us and offered Carissa $500 for her seat.
“Will you trade places with me?” is how he put it.
Carissa and I both laughed until he fanned the money out on the table—crisp, never-been-folded hundreds that he pulled from the inside pocket of his jacket, like some Colombian drug lord.
He was dressed in a white suit and was carrying a ridiculous cane with an ivory handle, which should have been my first clue.
I mean—a cane, in 2002?
But he was knee-weakeningly handsome.
That’s how he does it.
Earnest eyes.
Confidence.
Money.
A fuck-all fashion sense, gaudy and entitled enough for a plantation owner of old.
When I gave Carissa a kick under the table, she scooped up the five hundred-dollar bills, tapped them even, and said she’d meet me at the terrible tiny, smoky cockroach-infested hotel room we had booked for a week. Then Ken sat down and said, “I’m going to marry you.”
“Are you now?” I said, oblivious to my doom.
Flattered even.
Ten years later I’m drunk in my own closet watching him fuck a teenager and I’m laughing my head off, because what is the alternative?
They call this life.
Beware, young women who may be reading.
It happens in a flash.
One day you’re a young cub roaming the forest free, without a care in the world—and then bam! Your hind leg’s bleeding in a bear trap, and before you know it, your claws and teeth have been removed, they’ve got you addicted to drugs, and you’re performing tricks in a Russian circus, being whipped by your trainer—who is always a man—as cotton-candy-sticky children point and jeer.
Again, I’ve been drinking.
“What the hell?” Ken says as he rips opens the closet. “Whoa.” He takes a step back with his palms in the air, his eyes on the mouth of his beloved Colt, which is unsteadily aimed at the sticky, mauve, spade-shaped head of his now-deflated penis.
Before an accident can occur, I toss the impossibly heavy gun into the corner of the closet.
Jail time for this joke of a man?
I think not.
“I’d never be able to hit such a small target anyway, Ken,” I say and then giggle my drunk ass off.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” says Khaleesi, covering her perfect vanilla-ice-cream-cone breasts with one of my Calvin Klein decorative throw pillows.
I can’t stop laughing.
“What are you doing in the closet?” Ken asks. “I thought you were going to visit your—Listen.” He’s holding his palms in the air, and his fingers are spread wide. “I can explain. Really, I can. We can work our way through this, Portia. Trust me. Everything is going to be okay.”
Hilarious!
“Why are you laughing like that?” Ken says. “Are you okay?”
Khaleesi says, “I better go.”
“No, no, no, sweetie. Stay. Please. I insist. My husband hasn’t even made you come yet,” I say. “I’m leaving anyway. So make yourself at home. You can fuck Ken as many times as you like. If he can get it up again, that is. But spoiler alert! It doesn’t get any better than what you’ve already experienced.”
I laugh so hard tears spill from my eyes as I stand and exit the closet.
I start stuffing underwear and bras into my Michael Kors weekend bag.
Naked Ken watches me with his mouth hanging open, like I have just invented fire.
I shake my head.
Fucking caveman.
How did this happen to me?
“Portia,” he says. “Portia, come on. Where are you going?”
“E.T. phone home,” I say, using the E.T. voice, and then laugh until I cough and gag.
“Portia,” Ken says. “You’re scaring me. Are you okay?”
I stop packing and look him dead in the eyes. “I’ve never been better in my entire life, Ken. Thank you. Seriously. Thank you so much for being this awful. I might have stayed if you were even a tiny bit more human. But you’ve spared me from all that. My hero. Thank you. Thank you one million times.”
I decide to pull a suitcase from the walk-in and pack enough for a few weeks.
“Do you need any help?” Khaleesi asks, the sweetheart. And I realize that she is even dumber than she looks. I actually start to like her. Maybe I pity her, to be more precise. I imagine saving her from Ken and becoming her mentor. We could join some sort of group for women addicted to horrible men.