I want to have a tawdry affair.
No, it's not because I desperately, desperately need to get laid, honest Mom. It's because I like the phrase so much. I want to have one so I can use “tawdry affair” whenever I want: “You remember, 2006, the year I had my tawdry affair with Lucy.”
The phrase “a tawdry affair” conjures up many things in my mind when I use it. I imagine myself to be a sullen and world-weary old man with no job, no money and no morals. That's quite a stretch of the imagination, I know, but bear with me. Somehow I manage to seduce some middle-aged housewife, probably by snagging her in Costello's Bar during Deer Opener. We begin our tawdry affair. The sex is at best mediocre and at worst is worse than no sex at all. Again,hard to imagine, but hang in there.
The cuckolded husband (don't get to use that word much; either of them, come to think of it) works as an actuary at Saint Paul Life and leaves the house every morning promptly at 7 AM. I wander over to Lucy's about 10:30 or so, unshaven, hung over and wearing stinky socks. Lucy answers the door in her house dress, called that not because of where it's worn but because of how big it is. The house dress is stained and threadbare and has a loud floral pattern on it that severely aggravates my hangover. It smells like bacon grease.
I stumble inside the house and Lucy bitches sort of half-heartedly about her husband for a while over coffee, then we go upstairs and have Rabbit Sex (“This won't take long, did it?”). I go back downstairs and mix myself a drink while Lucy tosses my socks in the washer. I slam down a second scotch (albeit cheap scotch) and Lucy comes into the kitchen and we start yelling at each other, neither of us really knowing or caring how it started....
Okay, okay, I'll stop. But that's what I think of when I think of a tawdry affair. And God how I hate that dress! And I can't believe the stupid bitch left my socks in the laundry where her husband found them. (“Lucy, whose socks are these? And why do they smell like that? Sweet Jesus, you're having an affair with someone who has questionable personal hygiene, aren't you! I'm going to kill him before he reaches 58.9 years of age!”)
Lies, all lies, of course, I'm making all this up. Actually, since I went to the trouble of making it up, maybe I'll just pretend I had a tawdry affair and hold out for great sex with a succulent twenty-something Brazilian nymphomaniac named Itsac who answers the door in a loud floral-print house dress....
Damn it! Why does she have one too? What are the odds? Do they shop at the same K-Mart? Are there K-Marts in Brazil? I guess I'll have to dump Itsac after we have great sex one or thirty-five more times.
Sigh. More lies, of course. I suppose I'll have to remain a horny but lovable anchorite for a while longer. (Don't get to use that one much either, go Hulles!) Better that than the house dress.
God, how I hate that dress!
-- Hulles
