then he would tell me: B.i.b.a.w.y.l.o. and I w.w.y.t.b.w.’
Day or night I would do my best to follow his instructions exactly; I would be in
bed asleep with my legs open and wait for him to wake me the best way, but I always
took the precaution of bathing first and my sleep might be only that I closed my
eyes and held still when I heard him unlock the front door. Then as he got into bed
with me he might call me by some outlandish name, `Mrs Krausemeyer,’ or `Battleship
Kate,’ or `Lady Pushbottom’ – and I would pretend to wake up, and call him anything
but Brian – `Hubert’ or ‘Giovanni’ or `Fritz’ – and perhaps enquire, still with my
eyes closed, whether or not he had placed five dollars on the dresser… whereupon
he would scold me for trying to run up the price of tail in Missouri and I would get
busier than ever, trying to prove that I was so worth five dollars.
Then, sated but still coupled, we would argue over whether or not I had put on a
five-dollar performance. Which could result in tickling, biting, wrestling,
spanking, laughing, and another go at it, with much bawdy joking throghout. I
delighted in trying to be that duchess in the drawing-room, economist in the
kitchen, and whore in the bedroom that is the classic definition of the ideal wife.
Perhaps I was never perfect at it, but I was happiest working hard at all three
aspects of that trinity.
Brian also enjoyed singing bawdy songs while coupling, songs with plenty of rhythm
to them, a beat that could be matched to the tempo of coition and speeded up or
slowed down at will, songs like:
Bang away, my Lulu!
Bang away good and strong!
Oh, what’ll I do for a bang away
When my Lulu’s dead and gone!
Then endless verses, each bawdier than the last:
My Lulu had a chicken,
My Lulu had a duck.
She took them into bed with her
And taught them how to –
BANG! away my Lulu!
Bang away good and strong!
Until at last Briney couldn’t stretch it out any longer and had to spend.
While he was resting and recovering, he might demand of me a bedtime story, wanting
to know how I had improved each shining hour with a little creative adultery.
He didn’t mean what I may have done with Nelson and or Betty Lou; that was all in
the family and didn’t count. ‘What’s new, Mo? Are you getting to be a dead arse in
your old age? You, the Scandal of Thebes County? Tell me it’s not true!’
Now believe me, friends, between dishes and nappies, cooking and cleaning, sewing
and darning, wiping poses and soothing children’s tragedies, I didn’t have time to
commit enough adultery to interest even a young priest. After that ridiculous and
embarrassing contretemps with Reverend Zeke I can’t recall any illicit bed-bouncing
Maureen did between 1906 and 1918 that my husband did not initiate and condone in
advance… and not much of that as Briney was if anything even busier than I.
I must have been a great disappointment to Mrs Grundy (several of her lived in our
block, many of her went to our church) as, during those ten years leading up to the
war that eventually was called World War One or War of the Collapse, First Phase –
during that decade I not only tried to simulate the perfect, conservative,
Bible-belt lady and housewife, I actually was that sexless, modest, church-oriented
creature – except in bed with the door locked, alone or with my husband or, on rare
and utterly safe occasions, in bed with someone else but with my husband’s
permission and approval and usually with his chaperonage.
Page 91
Heinlein, Robert A – To Sail Beyond the Sunset.txt
Besides which, only a robot can stay coupled enough hours out of the year to matter.
Even Galahad, tireless as he is, spends most of his time being the leader of
Ishtar’s best surgical team. (Galahad… Galahad reminds me of Nelson. Not just in
appearance; the two are twins in temperament and attitudes – even in body odour now