Thomas Madison was a small man in many ways, but still I loved him. He was short, just sixty-five inches high (we said sixty-five inches because it sounded more impressive than five-foot-five), and his arms and legs dangled from his body like a puppet held up by strings.
And he was short between his legs, too. His penis was just a little nub, three inches, if that. Thomas had measured it before but I ignored him when he did it, which was usually when we were in bed together. He stalked into the bedroom, ruler in hand, shutting the door behind him noisily, and then he would jump into bed. This was after he had gone on some sort of quick-growth plan, usually some new vitamin system he picked up at the health food store in Lincoln. After thirty days, it was time to measure. All I knew was I did not want to be there when it happened, so it was: I have to go to the bathroom, I have to call my mother, Did you close the windows on the back balcony because it sure looks like rain out there. I would wait it out for a few minutes out back until I would hear something, usually a sigh of disappointment.
I remember once waiting outside another minute after that sigh, instead of rushing to my gloomy husband. I heard the back door open at the diner down below, and saw that it was Timber. Depending on the day of the week, it was either Timber or the man he switched off shifts with, an older Mexican man everyone called Papi. He and Timber got along great. They went to the movie theater across the street together on Sunday nights after the restaurant closed early. They saw the same movie over and over again, they did not care. It was their one night they could hang out.
I leaned over the balcony and said, “Evening, sir.”
“Mrs. Madison,” he said, and tipped his hand at me.
“What’s looking good today?” I said.
“Why, everything, ma’am,” he said.
And then we both laughed, even though I did not know what was so funny about it, maybe just that I was up so high, and he was down below, and we used to sit right next to each other in algebra class, not too long ago. We were playing at our grown-up lives, even though there was not much difference between now and then. We were still there, in the same town, just different locations.
Timber’s folks owned the restaurant, and one day he would take it over. He had done his time in the military and then gone to school in Iowa for a year but had been drinking too much, so he came back. Now he was taking night courses in business over in Lincoln and starting from the ground up, back in the kitchen.
I appreciated that small exchange between Timber and myself while my husband measured his tiny penis in the bedroom. I forgot for a moment what was going on in there, that the man I loved was so dissatisfied with himself. I had been numbing myself for years against his pain. It was something I was good at. I had been doing it for so long, what with my mother always squawking like a wounded bird herself. I numbed myself on everyone else’s behalf.
I had even tried to get him off the Internet, all those terrible e-mails in his spam folder talking about things he could do to make himself a bigger man. Every time he got online, he ended up in tears afterward. I said, What do you need a computer for? You’re a farmer. He said, “You’re right, Moonpie, the Internet rots your brain anyway.” And then I bought him an Xbox for Christmas.
I did not care about size! I told him that a million times. I loved our sex. I loved the way he kissed me, the way he would lick and bite my lips, turning a million nerve endings into molten gold. He would pinch my nipples and the flesh around my hips and press his hands on my belly. The sticky sweet would start to churn inside me and then spread down and around me. I could even smell it, and so could Thomas, and he would get excited by the smell, his little nub would press up against my leg, like a skipping stone in a pocket. He would kiss all the parts of me he had just pinched and then he would keep on kissing, on the bones that stuck out of me, on the insides of my thighs. “Oh, I can smell you, you smell so good,” he would say, and he was frenzied then, and warm. The temperature on his hands shot up and I would wonder if he would leave behind burn marks on my skin, an imprint of his fingertips on my flesh forever. I would not mind that, as long as they were his.
“Moonie, my moon,” he would say, and then he would dive into the wetness with his tongue, and it was electric. It did, it felt that way, like he had just plugged me into something. And then there were ripples of everything, every area he had pinched and licked on the outside came alive, like he had left a trail of dynamite behind my body, and with one lick, he could set it on fire. Me and Thomas, parts fitting together, moon and stars in one big sky. And by the time he was ready to slide his penis inside me, him letting out a long, satisfied sigh, the breath coming out blowing back my hair from my face, I did not care that I could not feel a thing. A slight pressure around the thighs, but that was just from the weight of him on top of me. But nothing else. I clenched, and then I was numb. And he knew it, too, that it was just numb in there. And I did not care, but he did.