101218 The kid said at school one time, Oh yeah, my dad likes to drink that, and the teacher librarian was like, Oh, I’m sorry honey. Later at home of course telling the dad. The dad like Whatever, that sewed up tight ass bitch probly never had an unrestrained actual *good time* in her whole life, what does she know about.... Of course they ended up together. She put such all-but-insurmountable restraints on his advances, such conditions, forced him to go slow and be painfully polite, that for some reason it worked; he’s basically eating out of her fair long slender hand now, every night as the crisp fall air comes in and seasons the salmon chowder and there’s a slow low fire behind the grate and when the kid’s off at college, they cook together and laugh and even sometimes read together. But of course there’s still the gap between eye and eye and sometimes they do fight. Oh yeah? she’d scream. Well you’re an unrepentant old booze hound! And that would be just such a hilarious deflating balloon of an old fashioned insult, he would get even madder for one beat, another—and then he couldn’t help it, some submarine gallon of mirth would just bubble up out of him, blow up the space behind his tensed-up throat like a big frog breath, and a laugh would burst out—and that would make *her* madder for one hot second, and then they would both be laughing. And the next thing you know, they’d both be *seriously* thinking about fucking like dogs. She would chew the end of her little finger like a pencil eraser. Look up at him. He would be like, This. This is what being in love is like.