Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Married Read online

  Jennifer Johnson Is Sick

  of Being Married

  Heather McElhatton

  Dedication

  For

  J. C. Smith

  and all who sailed with him.

  First mate of the schooner Appledore

  June 6, 1986–January 17, 2012

  Contents

  Dedication

  On Your Marks

  1 - Paradise Lost

  2 - Home Is Where the Hell Is

  3 - Queen of Keller’s

  4 - Operation Hotdish

  5 - Grace Under Fire

  6 - Selling It Like It Is

  7 - Fishwife

  Get Ready/Get Set

  8 - Rule of Thumb

  9 - Onward, Christian Shoppers

  10 - The Cuntry Club

  11 - Army Wives

  12 - Faux Halcyon

  13 - Yokemate

  14 - Queen of Hearts

  Go

  15 - A Walnut in the Muffin

  16 - On Fire for Jesus

  17 - Odd Man Out

  18 - Operation Awful Wife

  19 - The Ice Empress

  20 - Wayward and Wanton

  21 - Elegantly Invincible

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Heather McElhatton

  Back Ad

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  On Your Marks

  1

  Paradise Lost

  Not all honeymoons are erotic carnivals. They’re not all bliss. Champagne, roses, and sex may or may not be a part of your honeymoon experience.

  There are no guarantees in this world.

  I went on my honeymoon with a few expectations. Kill me. After decades of consuming popular honeymoon images featuring white-sand beaches, tranquil breezes, and newlyweds barely able to contain their matrimonial lust for each other, I pretty much thought that was what happened. I’d hung on to the possibility that a few moments in life might be perfect, really should be perfect if God loved us even the smallest, tiniest, teensiest bit. He doesn’t. He’s a bored trickster with a penchant for ironic calamity, just dreaming up new ways to ruin us.

  Our honeymoon did not include any of the aforementioned fun qualities, but did include illness, injury, and the unrelenting soundtrack of severe gastric distress and loud calypso music being performed live in the lobby at all hours of the day and night. Sharp, tinny, percussive beats that tapped like a wasp inside your skull. An inescapable rhythm audible anywhere you went, including the hotel room and the marble floor of our bathroom with several towels wrapped around your head. They say you attract the things that happen to you. Maybe it’s true, and if it is, I must search out the specific mistakes that allowed my honeymoon from hell to happen. Perhaps uncovering the choices that led our prepaid, nonrefundable little piece of heaven to transmogrify into a baffling personal hell will prevent it from happening again.

  So here we go.

  Mistake #1: Letting Brad’s parents plan the honeymoon. Brad’s parents are generous, rich, religious, and controlling. They paid for our wedding, which is why we had “Mary and Joseph” (the most popular couple in the Bible) as the theme at our reception and little hay mangers for table centerpieces, each one with a clothespin Baby Jesus.

  They also paid for our honeymoon, which is why it was at a Caribbean Christian resort called In His Palms on Saint John island. Brad was happy about it. He’d just gotten his dive certificate . . . well, he’d almost gotten it. He hadn’t finished all the classes, but his stupid dive-instructor buddy gave it to him as a wedding present, just handed it over even though Brad hadn’t learned all the hand signals. I was livid. What if something went wrong down there and Brad died because he didn’t know the hand signal for some critical message, like:

  “APOLOGIES, FELLOW DIVERS. I JUST SHAT MYSELF.”

  “HAS ANYONE SEEN THAT BALD GUY WE WERE DIVING WITH? WE GOT A LITTLE TANGLED UP EARLIER AND I JUST REALIZED I’M STILL HOLDING HIS MASK. ”

  “DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE A SAND DOLLAR’S ANUS IS? THIS ONE EITHER SPAT AT ME OR POOPED STRAIGHT UP AT MY FACE AND I WANT TO KNOW WHICH.”

  “HELLO, NEW FRIENDS! I NEED ASSISTANCE. I LOST MY ORIGINAL DIVE GROUP AFTER BECOMING FASCINATED BY A WEIRD-LOOKING TURTLE WHO LED ME, ALMOST KNOWINGLY, INTO A STRONG UNDERWATER CURRENT WHICH WHISKED ME AWAY AND SHOT ME OUT INTO A VAST KELP BED. THERE I BECAME LOST AND WAS FORCED TO OUTSMART A MEAN DOLPHIN AND A PARTICULARLY INTELLIGENT GROUP OF STARFISH, WHO MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE POOPED AT ME REPEATEDLY. MIGHT I JOIN YOUR GROUP? IF NOT, I WILL DEFINITELY DIE, NOT THAT IT’S DEFINITELY YOUR PROBLEM. THE LAWS AT SEA ARE TRICKY. MAY WE PLEASE HURRY, THOUGH? THE STARFISH WILL BE BACK. ”

  Mistake #2: Going to the Caribbean in the summer. We got married on June 10 and were in Saint John the next day. We stepped off the plane and into a solid wall of humid steamy air. It felt like walking around Africa with damp wool blankets wrapped around your body and heaped on your head. It was like being inside someone’s mouth.

  Mistake #3: Checking our luggage. Bad weather on the first leg of our flight left us circling over Miami for two hours. Once we’d landed, we were forced to sit on the runway for another hour with babies crying and toilets overflowing. It was the kind of situation 20/20 does investigative stories about. By the time we got to a gate, we’d missed our connecting flight, as had most everybody else. I thought we should spend the night in Miami and fly out the next day. Brad, however, was determined to get us to Saint John that night, so as passengers lined up en masse at a ticket counter in the terminal, Brad used some new travel app he had on his phone and found us two seats on the last flight leaving Miami.

  “Got it!” he said. “I got it!”

  He booked two seats on a flight leaving for the neighboring island of Saint Thomas . . . which was leaving from a different terminal, of course, located somewhere on the other side of the globe, and was departing . . . in about forty-two microseconds.

  I told him I didn’t want to run. He said running would be good for me. Then he snatched up his bag and just took off without me. Suddenly I was standing there in the Miami International Airport by myself, watching Brad’s quickly receding figure. In an instant, he was gone.

  I blinked. Then I shouted, “Brad! Wait!” and fumbled to grab my stuff and bolt down the corridor after him. By the time I caught up with him at the connecting gate, I was furious. Teary-eyed, I refused to speak. Did Brad notice the distraught condition of his new bride? He did not. He was too busy congratulating himself on his victory of finding a new flight.

  I managed to hold my fury down for about half the flight. Brad finally nudged my arm and said, “Hon, you okay?” I maintained my pensive stare and refused to look at him, while studying his every expression closely in his reflection in the dark window. Finally I lifted my chin defiantly and said, “I’m fine.” He of course assumed that meant I was actually fine . . . and he went to sleep.

  WIFE-TO-ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

  WHEN A WIFE SAYS: WHAT SHE REALLY MEANS IS:

  (Nothing . . . is silent) She is gathering evidence and ammunition before issuing punishment.

  “It’s fine.” “You will pay.”

  “Am I pretty?” “I opened an online dating account.”

  “It’s no big deal.” “You ruin everything.”

  “I’m going out with the girls.” “I’m going out with the girls to tell them about your weird testicles.”

  HUSBAND-TO-ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

  WHEN A HUSBAND SAYS: WHAT HE REALLY MEANS IS:

  “I’m good.” “When will you stop talking?”

  “No, he’s the kicker.” “For the love
of Christ . . . leave.”

  “Your mother is coming?” “Prostitutes make sense.”

  “I guess we could go.” “This’ll cost you a blow job.”

  “You guys go on ahead. I’ve got work to do.” “You guys go on ahead. I’ll watch porn with the dog.”

  Brad slept for the rest of the flight while I ground my molars into a fine powder. When we landed in Saint Thomas and learned that our luggage had in fact been left behind in Miami, I already had my reaction planned. I stared stoically off into space and said nothing. Brad proceeded to tell me everything was fine. They’d deliver our bags in a few days. He wasn’t surprised they had lost our bags; they never could’ve gotten them on board our new flight. It took off in forty-two microseconds, after all. Remember?

  I smiled at him and felt rage.

  We took a ferry from Saint Thomas to the smaller island of Saint John. As we crossed over the water in a jolly wooden boat painted aquamarine and yellow, I silently and furiously inventoried all the contents of my luggage: carefully selected resort wear, tropical-hued makeup, complicated lingerie, industrial-strength foundation garments—items all selected to make our honeymoon perfect. Items that were irreplaceable, absolutely essential, and officially no longer in play. Of course Brad thought it was no big deal. But I needed my luggage. He could stagger around wearing dirty boxers all week, but I couldn’t. Men can stop shaving and wear rumpled clothes and people think they look rugged. Women do that and the only people who acknowledge them are stray dogs and lesbian folksingers.

  When Brad asked why I was being so quiet for the third time, I uttered a small teeny-tiny concern that our honeymoon was now ruined. Brad thought I was being high-maintenance. He said they’d probably deliver our luggage in the morning, which they did not. In fact, they did not deliver it all week. In fact, we never saw our luggage again.

  Mistake #4: Staying at an all-inclusive resort. “All-inclusive resort” is another way of saying “friendly prison.” We arrived quite late at the In His Palms resort and found the harried concierge barely had time to give us our ID key cards and a hefty list of rules. You had to carry ID on you at all times. You were discouraged from leaving the resort grounds at any time. The Olympic-size pool, which was in the shape of a giant cross, closed every night at nine. The hot tub was for “married couples only,” not that anyone would take a Jacuzzi in that heat. There were also an ominous number of signs indicating forced jocularity and management-controlled merriment.

  SMILE, YOU’RE IN PARADISE!

  AND ON 24-HOUR SURVEILLANCE CAMERA!

  TRY OUR NEW LIME TAFFY NO-BIG-BANG DAIQUIRI!

  YUMMY AND ALCOHOL-FREE!

  BIBLE BINGO AND CHRISTIAN SCRABBLE NIGHT!

  PRIZES INCLUDE:

  •“IN HIS PALMS” TOWEL VEST

  •36-OZ. TUB OF OUR PATENTED

  “NOW I LAY ME DOWN TO TAN” SUNSCREEN

  •RAPE WHISTLE

  •GROOVY “WALKIN’ WITH THE J-DOG” FLIP-FLOPS

  TRY JOY-GA

  NON-SATANIC YOGA!

  YOU’VE STRETCHED WITH THE DEVIL . . . NOW REACH FOR THE

  LIGHT!

  DAILY/10 A.M./JOY-GA STUDIO (BEHIND DUMPSTERS)

  FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND SUNRISE BEACH WALK!

  IF HE CAN GET UP EARLY, YOU CAN TOO!

  VISIT THE HOLY WATER PARK . . .

  WHERE FUN IS CONTAGIOUS!

  SO ARE GERMS! DON’T FORGET TO APPLY BLEACH SOLUTION

  BEFORE YOUR SWIM!

  Worse than all this, however, worse than the heat, the enforced fun, and the number of judging Christians all around me, was that to my complete dismay the resort was 100 percent alcohol-free. There was not a drop of liquor anywhere on the premises. Nor was a drop allowed to be brought on. An hour after we arrived, I looked at my new husband and said, “Darling, get me a drink or I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”

  Brad paid the guy at the front desk ten dollars and he told us there was a bar just down the road that stayed open until about two A.M. We found the bar, which had no name, and it was a small plywood hut with teal-blue walls, metal road sign tables, and a rotating fan nailed to the ceiling. Nobody was there but the bartender. He made us cocktails, a rich touristy drink for me, with Appleton rum, canned pineapple juice, and room-temperature cream, and a virgin Bloody Mary for Brad, who doesn’t drink anymore. He poured our drinks into two beat-up-looking coconut shells. I loved them. Brad did too. We clunked our coconuts together and kissed. This was the moment I’d been waiting for. We were newlyweds in paradise. We were happy. Our romantic honeymoon had finally begun.

  Mistake #5: Accidentally going to a sex club. On the way back to the resort, we passed a sign on the road that said CHICKEN. The sign had an arrow pointing up toward a white stucco building with dark windows and a muscle-bound bouncer at the front door. “Are you hungry?” Brad asked, and I said, “Famished!” So we went into what we thought was a restaurant that served chicken. Inside, the music was low and thumping. Figures moved around on the dance floor. We found an open booth on the far side of the room, and I peripherally caught the strange shapes and jerking motions occurring at the tables and booths we were walking past.

  “Did you see that guy wearing a mask?” Brad whispered when we sat down.

  “What guy?” I looked around as our waitress arrived and asked what we wanted. Having no menu, I shrugged and asked if they had chicken. She nodded and said it was ten dollars for ten minutes. I didn’t understand her. She repeated herself. “Ten minutes of . . . chicken?” I looked over at Brad, whose eyes were suddenly wide, wide open. “Hon,” he said. “We’re in a sex club.” I scanned the room and forced my eyes to focus. It was true. People were screwing all over the room. On the tables, in the booths, against the walls. My horrified eyes accidentally locked on the pear-shaped ass of a big chubby white guy wearing nothing except a fanny pack. His fat rolls jiggled as he banged a corpulent black girl, whose ass was lodged in the salad bar’s lettuce bin. It was like watching giant lumping albino walruses slapping squid-bits together. I will never get the images out of my head.

  Mistake #6: Forgetting our ID cards. Our walk back to the resort took forever. Traffic whizzed by, kicking up gravel and dust and skittering beer cans across the road. Then the resort’s front gates were locked. We hollered until the front desk guy came out and said we needed our ID key cards to get in. We’d left them in the room. After twenty minutes Brad wadded up a hundred-dollar bill and chucked it at the guard’s little hut. Moments later, the gates swung open and Brad started to argue with the guard, threatening to tell management.

  I calmed Brad down and steered him toward the restaurant, promising we’d both feel better after we finally ate. Unfortunately the restaurant was closed and the kitchen staff had all gone home. Room service stopped at eleven P.M. I told the front desk guy we were really sorry to inconvenience him, but we were really hungry and could he heat us up some soup? He agreed, after I gave him twenty bucks, and asked what kind of soup we wanted. Spicy black bean or creamy crayfish bisque? Well, anyone who orders beans before their first night on their honeymoon is insane. We ordered two bowls of the crayfish bisque and the desk clerk smiled and bowed his head. “The bisque,” he said. “Excellent choice.”

  Mistake #7: Ordering the crayfish bisque. The cramps didn’t set in until we were asleep. After wolfing down two large bowls of crayfish bisque and then adjourning to our honeymoon bed, we passed out. I woke around two A.M. feeling hot. There were frogs outside our window, croaking through the slats, sometimes in unison, sometimes in a baffling cacophony of independent sounds. They dominated the world, it seemed, controlled the airspace in our heads. (Brad said he liked the sound, it was soothing. It made me feel insane.) I lay there and listened to them while I stared at the ceiling fan and wished it was on. Suddenly my stomach gurgled. A stabbing sensation tore through my bowels and felt like a saltwater-taffy-pulling machine had hold of my intestinal tract and was now twisting it into loops. I doubled over in pain.
The frogs outside croaked louder.

  When the first wave hit, I managed to make it to the bathroom . . . but barely. I rivaled any Olympic gymnast as I bounded across the room and planted my posterior on the bowl just in time. Brad, however, was not so lucky. Twenty minutes into one of the most violent bathroom episodes I’ve ever experienced, Brad started pounding on the door. He was shouting something desperately at me; I couldn’t say what, because for once in my life I’d had enough sense to lock the door. He begged me to let him in, but there was no way. Unable to stand, I was only able to shout through the door in short telegram-like sentences. “Can’t . . . move,” I shouted. “Can’t stand . . . up. The crayfish did . . . it. Oh . . . Jesus.” I doubled over in pain. Eventually, the pounding ceased. Brad bolted for the nearest toilet, which was downstairs in the lobby.

  That night, we hardly slept. We just lay there groaning and gurgling and cramping up and wanting to die and listening to the death frogs, all the while intermittently lunging for the bathroom. I took carefully worded guesses at what had caused our gastric distress. There were the turbulent flights, the mismatched alcohol, the warm dairy products. Upon hearing those words, “warm dairy products,” Brad groaned loudly and gripped the bed.

  “No crayfish bisque ever again,” he said. “No crayfish anything.”

  We lay there and panted as we speculated and sweated and tried to keep still. Moving was tricky; roll too fast or far and the crayfish insurgency was right there to rise up and meet you. Fail to shift the voluminous gas building up inside you and it stabbed like a knife. This is how we spent the first night of our honeymoon. The smell alone made it something we’d want to forget. Around dawn we fell asleep in twisted-up, foul-smelling, and sweaty sheets.

  The next day we staggered downstairs pale and weak, our bones like sharp glass. We went to the resort’s mirth-free brunch, with virgin Bloody Marys and the “no-touch conga line.” I ordered weak tea and dry toast in the dazzlingly bright dining room, which, judging by the sudden sharp warning gurgles in my stomach, was already pushing it. Then my brother-in-law, Lenny, and my sister, Hailey, came bounding toward our table. I’d almost forgotten they were there. My mother-in-law had sent them along with us. They had more energy than golden retrievers and were so tanned and smiley I wanted to vomit. They’d caught their flight and gotten in early. They’d already been snorkeling and had seen dolphins and a huge sea turtle.