"I just want you to know," I say to my wife, "that despite my new
nose-and-ear-hair clipper, I have no immediate plans to desert you for a
younger woman."
I have this nifty new battery-operated gadget for clipping hair
from my nose and ears. It's a kind of miniaturized weed-eater small
enough to clear out the excess nasal and auricle foliage, and it makes
me look 30 years younger.
"Oh?" my wife says, not looking up from her crossword puzzle.
"I want to reassure you," I say, "that despite my new youthful
appearance, the miraculous result of no longer having hair protruding
from my nostrils and ears, I am not at this time contemplating trading
you in on a newer model."
She puts down the puzzle and looks at me. I brace myself for the
extravagant gratitude she's about to lavish on me. Instead, she laughs.
It begins as a twitching at the corners of her mouth, a pooching
out of her cheeks and an arching of her brows to accomodate the widening
of her eyes, then progresses to a faint rumbling deep in her esophagus,
grows to something like a suppressed giggle, and finally explodes into a
belly laugh that knocks her off her chair and leaves her rolling on the
floor.
"I've made you very happy," I say. "Haven't I?"
"Let me get this straight," she says after she catches her breath
and gets back in her chair. "You think just not having hair growing out
your nose and ears will make you attractive to some bimbo who hasn't yet
discovered the effect of gravity on the human body? Do I have that
right?"
"Everybody knows," I say, "that the male of the species becomes
more attractive to the younger female as he gracefully ages. It's
nature's way of keeping the gene pool from getting dumb. My
nose-and-ear-hair clipper is just helping me fulfill nature's intent.
It's no big deal."
She guffaws. She convulses. She gets teary-eyed.
"See, it's right here in the paper," I say. "Clint Eastwood's
young wife just had a baby. He's 63. You saw how that young woman in
'Line of Fire' couldn't resist him."
She wipes her eyes and goes back to the crossword puzzle.
"And here's another story," I say, "about Anthony Quinn—78 years
old and he fathers a child by his 30-something secretary."
"What's a six-letter word for macho senility?" she asks.
"It's not macho senility," I say. "It's genetic destiny. Look at
the old guy in 'Northern Exposure'—Holling what's-his-name—and that
high school cheerleader who's so hot for him. Look at those 70-year-old
Ak-Sar-Ben kings and their 18-year-old queens. Look at Strom
Thurmond. What do you say to that?"
I settle back, having once more won the argument with my gracefully
aging male logic. But she's not finished.
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The Truth, Mainly
"What makes you think the January-May business only works with old
men and young women?" she says. "Barbra Streisand is very friendly with
a tennis player less than half her age. Liz Taylor and Cher have found
happiness with callow youths. And if you want to appeal to nature, look
at the mature queen bee and all those young drones servicing her."
"Don't be silly," I say. "Let's talk about something else now."
"Remember what the Wife of Bath said," she says. "The best
husbands are 'meke, yonge, and fresshe a-bedde.' What makes you think I
might not want to have my way with your hypothetical bimbo's
hypothetical brother, then throw him away like a used Kleenex?"
She winks lasciviously. I snort so indignantly that coffee comes
out my nose. It's a minute or so before I can speak.
"I'm just glad," I say, "that the children aren't here to listen to
their mother talk like that. That's the sickest thing I ever heard."
"Why is it sick when I talk like that?" she asks. "You've heard
of sauce for the goose, haven't you?"
"It's perverse," I say. "It's grotesque. It's. . . it's woman's
libber, bra-burning, E.R.A. talk!"
"You missed a grey hair growing out of your left ear," she says.
"It's twitching."
"Gigolo-pandering!" I holler. "Cradle-robbing! Contributing to
the delinquency of a minor!"
"There, there," she says, handing me my new clipper. "You go trim
up and it'll be all better."
I go to the bathroom to get the ear hair I missed, but when I
switch on the clipper, it makes a little buzzing noise like a dying
drone, then expires.
"Oh no," I yell. "I need a recharge. My battery just ran down."
There's five seconds of silence while she digests the tragic
enormity of that news. Then she speaks.
"I wouldn't touch that line," she says, "with a 10-foot pole."
Satterfield is a college professor and writes as a means of discovery.
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