Dignity Into a Wall at 500 Mph

Let me set the scene for you;

Dinner is finished, and Caren is going over our finance…stuff, I have no idea what it is, at the dining room table. I'm finishing up the dishes with the cd player on, singing Air Supply’s Two Less Lonely People a little too loudly while I sipped the last dregs of my third MacEwen’s Scotch Ale and digested the most amazing Veal Saltimbocca and Capers (served over spicy Polenta with a side of garlic string beans) I think I've ever cooked, when Caren stuck her head in the kitchen foyer.

"Hon? Do you mind if I change this to something else? I don’t really like Queen." She asked.

"No, you can't," I said, a little perturbed that my stadium-rocking reverie had been interrupted. “And besides, that’s not Queen, as any amoebic life on Saturn can tell you. That’s Air Supply.”

“Two less lonely people in the world, and it’s gonna be fine…”

"Well, the needing air part I believe, whoever it is it sounds like they need some oxygen. I can’t work to this, baby.”

“…In my life where everything is wrong, something finally went ri—“ I sang “Well, I can’t work to Sarah McLachlan. I’m doing the dishes, not ovulating.” I retorted, bemused that my wife of 11 years would dare to enter a musical debate with me. She knows how these things end, you’d think she would have learned by now.

“Now there’s two less lonely peee-poowle in the wooorrllld…tooooo-niiiiight!”

Caren cocked an eyebrow at me, apparently bemused that I had momentarily forgotten in my masculine show of colors who controls the sex in this house.

“Yes, and I’m trying to fill out our mortgage application and get it into the website without a mistake. Since you’re unemployed we need the money, and since it’s electronic I have to make sure everything is perfect or they’ll reject it out of hand. The finances trump your karaoke dish review.”

Very reasonable, but I’m not going down without a fight. “Okay, how about if I turn it down?”

"You mean, as in the same way I’m going to turn down your offer of a penis in an hour? Or just lower the volume?”

Stunned silence.

Air Supply ended, and Asia began: "I never meant to be so bad to you . . ."

I took out my “Bobbe’s Favorite Mixes of the 80’s” and put in “Whipped Dog sings the Lonely Blues After He’s Put in His Place”.

“You’re building a mystereeeee…”

Godammit.