The Bait and Switch

I perched smugly on the patio of Primo’s one evening a few years back listening to my Girl’s Night crowd complain in stereo about the general “maleness” of their husbands and significant others.  “Now, football season is starting again,” one said with frozen margarita dripping down her chin, “and baseball, never seems to end…”  “Hockey!” exclaimed a member of the sisterhood to no one in particular.  “And, the endless golf…”  “And what’s the deal with extreme fighting?” They suddenly turned their attention to me, “You’re awfully quiet for a change…”  “Girls, please,” I shook my head, “my man doesn’t watch sports or any of that.  He’s not that way at all.” 

“Is he gay?” Their mocking chorus drilled into me.

“No, it just so happens, he’s not,” my hackles were up now, “we actually like the same things.”  I couldn’t help it if they had unwisely chosen mates.  “Yeah, well, you better pray he never catches the hunting bug…” warned one of the sisters.   

“My James would never shoot anything, why he doesn’t even know how,” they sat watching me, blinking slowly.  Someone snickered.  “He’s a very gentle soul, with the heart of an artist…”  In unison, they began tossing tequila-laden straws my direction.  They were just jealous. 

James was a rare male specimen.  He had this great dichotomy, college athlete vs. artist.  Masculine but sensitive.  I knew he was truly special when he participated in the planning of our nuptials.  We would stroll through museums and galleries on the weekends.  He talked about art, music, and actually had useful and productive feedback on my wardrobe choices.  James organized the “Perfect Friday Night,” a standing date at an antiques auction house.  We would excitedly pour over the previews of impending container shipments from Europe.  I swelled with pride one particular auction evening, when I returned from powdering my nose, James leaned in close and whispered, “I just bought an Art Deco sideboard, English, I wanted to surprise you.”  I was one lucky girl.

“Ugh,” he sighed, tying the laces of a very cute pair of Kenneth Cole oxfords, “I wish I didn’t have to go, but clients will be there and…”  I interrupted, “No, don’t be ridiculous, you might even have fun,” I coaxed, reassuring him that going to a basketball game with his friends was the right thing to do.  It was a grown man’s version of a play date.  It was healthy, after all, for him to have friends and interests other than me, right?  In my heart, I knew that my darling James would rather be at home with me, perusing the latest Horchow catalog and faux finishing something.  As his car pulled away from the house, I thought, he should be home before I finish the second coat of glaze.  It was a win-win.

By 1 a.m., I was rinsing my brushes, admiring my handiwork, and a little hint of doubt began to creep into my thoughts. I was thinking of the Girl’s Night patio trash talk.  There was that one fishing trip, but that happened before we were married, before James truly knew how special our life together in Girl World could be.   One time, just once, we went fishing, we didn’t enjoy it, and we didn’t like sporty outdoor activities… But, then again, maybe I did see a little glimmer of something in him that day? 

I was being silly.  Just then, the front door crashed open, “Effin’ A!” he exclaimed, clutching a giant foam finger, “double FREAKING overtime!”  I could have just died.  “Shhh!  You’ll wake the baby,” I hissed.  I offered my limp hand to his hearty “high 5.”  “C’mon, down low, on the side…” he chided gyrating sporty moves.  Where was this coming from? Did I smell beer? 

 James was a metrosexual before it was even being metrosexual.  This was unfair!  I had been duped! Tricked!

The next morning, James seemed fine.  The beast remained dormant inside him for several more years, only occasionally roaring out for basketball, hockey, or the re-telling of the tales of Jeff.  He had this friend, a work friend, Jeff the Enabler.  Jeff is a man’s man.  He drives a real truck.  He wears plaid, a lot of plaid.  He does boy things all the time.  “Sounds great,” I would mutter while chopping garlic in an increasingly violent manner for our evening meal. “They sat in the blind, for like, 8 or 9 hours, and then right when they had given up, 5 deer came up to the feeder, and BAM,”  James made a shooting gesture, “the biggest 8 point he’d ever seen…”  Jeff the Enabler would wake the beast once and for all.  Still, I was one lucky girl.

James was in the driveway one crisp fall Friday afternoon 4 years ago when I returned from my version of a hunting trip.  He was cleaning out our BMW, but I could see some olive green something or other poking out of a shopping bag.  Good, I thought, someone else has been shopping, too!  I really wish he would consult me though, green, any shade, is a difficult color for him. 

I went into the house heaving my bags, and he didn’t even offer to help. He barely even noticed me.     Puzzled, I began unpacking and cutting tags from the mall harvest when I heard him rustling in the closet.  “The new Marc Jacobs!”  I gushed as I swept my prize from a Neiman’s tote, and at least 10 sheets of that glorious cream colored tissue cascaded to the ground.  When the air cleared, James stood before me, “It’s a purse?”  A purse?  Was he kidding?   

“It’s a handbag…” I shot back.  He was wearing camouflage.  The look on my face must have betrayed my inner thoughts. 

“What?”  His eyebrows were flexed upward in an expression that said “I dare you”.  Wait, I get it! We’re going to a costume party!  How cute!  He planned something special…

James had made special plans for the weekend.  Hunting with Jeff the Enabler!

“But,” I stammered, “but you’ll miss yoga…” I moped around the house for the next two days.  My journey as a hunting widow, joining the sisterhood of the sports widows, began.

The hunting cabin, a “deer lease,”, belonging to Jeff, was somewhere west of Dallas.  That town didn’t have a cell tower, apparently.  Half wounded, half perturbed, I busied myself with gardening and general self beautification.  What’s Jeff the Enabler got that I don’t?  I busied myself with fall planting of pansies, but my mind raced.  I bet Jeff the Enabler drinks beer out of a can… I beautified, and dabbed green mud mask from between my eyes.  Jeff this, Jeff that…next time I see him, I would tell him a thing or two…  My thoughts were interrupted by the ringing phone late Sunday afternoon. 

“Did you know that there’s a Starbuck’s in Weatherford?  With a drive thru” he asked.  And with that, I had hopes that my James would come back to me.

So far, it has been false hope.  That first weekend, he bagged a doe.   It sealed the deal.  The next year, he was on the lease as a bona fide Bambi Killer.  I would tape pictures of cute little deer all around the house with Sharpie scrawl, “Don’t Kill Me”, “I Have a Wife and Children”, and “Violence Solves Nothing.”  Regardless, at any moment there could be antlers and jaw bones drying on my fence.  Or worse, a voice mail from James’ taxidermist.  “Come and git your mount…”

This is home décor?  I think not.

 “Nice rack,” says Jeff the Enabler, after yet another stuffed cadaver takes its place on our walls.  I never know if he is if he is talking about the antlers or saying something vulgar.  

My efforts to curtail hunting activities are, so far, in vain.  James began looking at my pet, a greyhound, making completely inappropriate comments such as, “In the right light, she looks just like a doe.” I took a stand two Christmases ago, when, while playing with his new rifle, he aimed it, unloaded, at the dog curled up lazily on the coach, “Just like a doe…” 

“Stop it!  No guns in the house!” I wailed and left the room.  When I returned, he had placed a pair of green and red felt antlers, motion activated, that played “Jingle Bells,” on my greyhound. My hound had a worried expression, frozen in fear, when he said “Look, Wifey, now she’s a 12 point.”  And that was another thing, he started calling me Wifey.   

Wifey soon learned that after deer season, turkey season starts.  And pigs, giant feral hogs, are always game.  Don’t get me started on audads.  And, then there are the hunting shows on TV, the ones with all the cinematic interest of an autopsy film, filmed Blair Witch style by a man with two first names, Billy Wayne, Jimmy Stan, Duane Earl.  It never ends…just like sports.

Basketball and hockey outings, I would now gladly accept, but James set out on a mission to recruit other metrosexuals into the hunting cult.  Lance the Florist, who is also not gay, lives in Los Angeles.  He is, however, every Jewish mother’s dream.  Handsome and successful, he passed through Dallas two summers ago for a florist’s convention.  We invited Lance to stay for a few days.  I was hoping to get some tips on floral arrangements.   That didn’t exactly happen. 

When they walked in, I could sense that something was afoot.  Lance the Florist and my husband began trying on matching hunting outfits, and informed me that they would be departing for the lease.  “What season is it?”  I was skeptical. 

Lance’s chest was puffed out in his borrowed ensemble, “I’m gonna kick it Old Testament, baby!”

“Dude,” my husband slapped Lance’s back, “this is like Biblical…”  They were going pig hunting.

One grainy photo from that excursion remains.  Lance was posed proudly behind a pile of dead pork, his foot hiked up on the bumper of a 4-wheeler.   The very next time I am in L.A., I’m going to mail that, anonymously to his rabbi…  Lance the Florist had a devilish look in his eye, but I had seen that look before.

That day, years ago, when we went fishing, was actually quite different than my edited memories.  It was a fishing expedition that took us 150 miles into the Gulf of Mexico.  I thought it would be fun, us, together on a boat, a romantic cruise.  My hopes that day were dashed when I realized we would be eating bologna sandwiches hatched in a filthy cooler with a side of soggy Fritos, and choking all that down with warm Pepsi.  About 50 miles out, James strapped on a giant harness, and began to flit from side to side of the boat calling out, “Here fishy, fishy, fishy….”  I spent the entire day pouting on the boat’s tower, slathering sunscreen on my pink shoulders.  “Look at this damn fine fish!” he called out to me.  I peered down.  “There’s gonna be some good eatin’ tonight,” he squinted up at me.  What I saw chilled me to the core.  As he shifted into the shadow of the tower, his eyes fully opened.   James’ eyes flashed like a hound from hell.

It was in him all along.  I just refused to see it.

“I don’t get it…” I exhaled after his long, drawn out description of a roadside diner near the lease famous for serving calf fries.  “Why would you pick that as a hobby?”  

James wore his new favorite outfit, a polyester blend t-shirt and gimme cap from a sheet metal shop.  He took a swig off his domestic beer can, “Wifey, I don’t get it, either.  I just have this overwhelming instinct to hunt, you know, to kill something.”  Better a deer than my dog or me, I say. 

Our X5 is long gone, replaced by a Jeep with monster tires, and a “lift”, which means nothing more to me than I can’t climb in while wearing my four inch wedge heels.  His stylish leather oxfords have been replaced by camouflage lug soled boots. 

Posted around my house are Polaroids of my beloved James cradling a dead animal, the same way I used to lay my head on his lap to watch a movie.  Just the two of us, watching a subtitled foreign film…I was one lucky girl.