Sometimes it takes a nudge,

and sometimes it takes a good shove before I get the message from the Universe. It was after eleven, the lights were out and I'd just pulled the sheet up under my chin. My elbows and knees were flush with the edge of the bed leaving as much space between Byron and I as possible. It had been almost three months since the last time I'd given in and I knew it was only a matter of time before I'd exhausted all my excuses. He knew I couldn't be asleep yet and that was always risky because chances were, he was getting ideas.

The sheet was tugging around from his side of the bed and I could tell he was trying to be stealthy about shedding his Fruit of the Loom's.

"Ugkhh!" I thought. My eyes rolled as the corners of my mouth sunk in disgust. After almost ten years of being married to Byron H. Frazier, the kindness in me was still being wasted on his ego. For reasons I still don't fully understand, I worried I'd hurt his feelings by continuing to reject him even though I knew how many hours of every day I plotted the end of this tourist-trap of a marriage.

"Hey," he said, breaking the silence. "Hey, I wanted to try something." I squeezed my eyes shut trying to will a response into my head. My chin wrinkled up the way it does when I smell something rancid.

"Huh? Whaddju say?" I answered with a hint of sleepy voice, careful to not give away that I knew he might be up to something. I could tell the top end of him was leaning out of the bed and was rummaging around underneath. I felt the bed give when he made it back to the pillow. I didn't hear anything for a minute, then I felt the bed start to jostle like a quarter-fed motel model set on "low".

My mouth was a straight line across my face and my eyes were wide like a bush baby. The rhythm was interrupted and he half-whispered, "CeCe, look."

"Whuh? Oh! What are you doing?" I said with a little nervous laugh.

"Well, the other day I tried this and it felt really good--and it's just the right size. See, it presses down right here and really takes it to another level n' I wondered how it would be with both of us." he said sporting the red ring of our ten month old's Fisher Price stackable toy set.

I simply did not know what to say--or do. Everything inside me wanted to banshee. Was nothing off-limits? How do you get there?

"So let's do it. Look, it's all ready." He said with a peculiar sort of pride.

"Um, seems like that would probably really hurt you if . . . you know."

"Well, I'm just gonna go ahead." And he did. He and the red ring went to town while I pretended not to cinch up into a fetal roll on my end of the smallest queen sized bed in the universe.