From The Vault

This one is a favorite of mine written a couple years back and recently rediscovered. Enjoy...

'A Woman Sinks a Man'



I was washing dishes in the kitchen when he shuffled into the room. I glanced up from the sink and said, "Hey Grandpa." He didn't look at me but he offered a half wave as he sat down at the kitchen table. He did not say a word he just sat and stared out the window at nothing in particular. I continued to wash the dishes and finish scrubbing the pots and pans. Twenty minutes rolled by and I periodically would glance over my shoulder to see if he was still sitting there. He just sat there, motionless and continued to stare out the window at nothing. I finished scrubbing the last pot, turned off the water and sat at the table across from my Grandfather. As if we had been in the middle of a conversation he glanced at me and suddenly spit out,

"A woman can sink a man."

He sighed and opened his mouth a second as if to continue but seemed to think better and closed his mouth and returned his gaze to somewhere outside. I was not clear as to what he meant but figured it may have something to do with his Navy days. Grandpa would sometimes talk about his ship, serving in the navy, the big one, what have you fairly randomly. Is this what he meant now?

"Was that the ship you were on Grandpa?"

He seemed to snap to on that and his steel grey eyes flicked to my face, then squinted in what may have been suspicion.

"A ship? What are you talking about, boy?"

Embarrassment quickly slapped my face and I felt it run hot as it turned red.

"I, uh, I thought um...Well, what were you talking about, Pa?"

A small bolt of frustration flitted through his eyes.

"What am I talking about?" He grunted, "A woman. You know what they are, don't you?"

"Um, yeah?"

"Well, a woman can sink a man, OK? That's what I am saying."

I searched the surface of the table for some explanation. My eyes appeared as clueless as I was and Grandpa noticed.

"I'm sunk, son. Your Grandmother sunk me." This realization seemed to sadden Grandpa an his eyes appeared to twinkle as tears began to well up. He fought them away by sniffing sharply and rubbing them out of his eyes. I still did not fully understand but I nodded anyway.

"Ya see, boy, marriage is a bitch."

This suprised me as I seldom, if ever, hear my Grandfather swear. An occasional 'bastard' here or 'dammit' there but even those were rare and most often related to traffic. He continued.

"They start out so young and pretty, don't they? You'd do anything in the world to make them smile. Then after a year or two that all starts to fade, the sex life goes out the window and you wake up one day and realize that your marriage has become some kind of competition. A competition that you can only lose! Everything becomes an argument. Everything becomes a God damn compromise."

I raised my eyebrows, which seemed to register slightly with Grandpa but he continued anyway, getting angrier as he went.

"For forty years I have had to do everything her way. This morning I woke up and noticed that my life went down a sinkhole...I don't know when it did, I didn't even notice I was suffocated until today."

He paused a moment and stared into my still not really understanding eyes. He studied me another moment, looked back out the window and then back again with some intention of continuing. He seemed to think better of this and looked back out the window.

"Grandpa? Why are you telling me this?"

He didn't look at me this time.

"For the love of God, boy, do yourself a favor don't get married." He turned back to me with a very intent look. "Can you promise me that? If I ever taught you anything I taught you to never get fucking married! Ok?"

My mouth dropped open, I can see dammit, bastard and I can forgive bitch. I'll even ignore the reference to his 'sex life,' which is something I definitely do not want to know about, but the 'F word?' That's a little too much.

"Grandpa, you're swearing, Mom wouldn't like to know..."

He cutt me off abruptly.

"Better leave your Mom out of this, 'kay sport. I'm talking here, to you. Just me and you, alright? Man to man, and I am telling you the best advice I got right now. Do not get married, boy. Hear me? Don't do it. It will suck your life away. You may not know about getting laid now..."

"I know what it is!"

"Oh yeah? You been with some women already?"

"Well, no but I know what it means."

"Good, now shut up and listen, once you start doing it you're not going to stop, ok? You're not gonna' want to stop. Then one day you're gonna' meet this real looker. You're gonna' meet her and you're gonna' fall in love with her. The sex is gonna' seem perfect and you're gonna' lay awake some nights and you're gonna' think about what a great life you're gonna' have together. You're gonna' start buying her shit, you're gonna' take her to the zoo, or some art museum that you normally wouldn't be caught dead in. You'll skip and dance and hold hands and kiss her ass right in the middle of Marshall Field's God forsaken appliance department. Then, without even questioning what you are doing, you will find yourself standing at that alter with a big stupid grin on your face and you will be sure to think that you got yourself some steady pussy for the rest of your life!"

My eyes went wide as I covered my mouth in shock; My grandpa just said 'pussy!' As if he read my mind he paused a second and said,

"That's right, boy, I just said pussy and I'll say it again! Pussy, pussy, pussy. A great, big, hairy pussy! You like that!? Never thought you'd hear Grandpa say that, did you?"

He laughed. I shook my head in disbelief, not knowing how to respond to this. Naturally, I have heard the word from friends and cousins thousands of times but it was coming from my Grandpa's mouth and it just didn't seem natural.

"Oh come on boy! It's just a word. It's not as if I am telling you about your Grandmother's pussy?"

I waved a hand in his face and closed my eyes in protest. This made him chuckle.

"Relax boy, were having a man to man here. You'll value this talk a lot more down the road. Well, here's the news, boy. Marriage is not the cavalcade of pussy that you'd think it was. Oh no, for maybe the first six months it's sex paradise then a year goes by, then two, then ten, and you won't even know what happened! It just stops! You don't have sex anymore and instead you have matching towels and rugs in your bathroom. You're getting yelled at for using the wrong soap. Your shelves become entirely filled with six thousand different bullshit porcelain statues. Then, one day a huge, God Damn, crucified Jesus Christ appears over your bed and, should a bleedin' miracle occur, and you actually do have sex with your wife. You gotta' watch fucking Jesus Christ himself watch you get it on. Can you imagine how terrible that is?"

His face was beet red and he had been pounding the kitchen table to punctuate just how terrible he thought it was to be sexually evaluated by Jesus Christ. I, however, was in a mild state of shock that this litany of profanity and personal information was spilling out of my Grandfather. He stopped speaking and looked at me with furious eyes, he seemed to expect a response.

"I, um, I don't know what to say?"

Grandpa seemed incredulous.

"Say you'll never get married, boy! Say that you hear me! Say that once you start fucking women you don't stop! Don't pick one to hang on to, she'll just suck your soul dry, boy. Fuck 'em long, fuck 'em hard and get the fuck outta' there, boy! There's something I learned in the navy, boy. How do ya like that?"

My mouth fell open again, I was dismayed, confused, offended all at once. Just then I heard my Grandmother call from upstairs.

"Arthur are you down there?"

Grandpa rolled his eyes.

"Oh God Dammit, would you tell her I went for a God damn walk?"

He stood up and shuffled over to the door and let himself outside, muttering to himself, "God damn Jesus, God damn Christ, God dammit..." He snapped the door closed behind him and I watched him disappear down the front walk. I stared after him while feeling as if I had just been slapped. My Grandmother appeared from the living room.

"Where's your Grandpa?" She said in a short manner. I looked at her with my eyes wider than usual.

"He said he was going for a God Damn walk."

Grandma's mouth dropped open a second, her eyes wnet wide but quickly wnet back into a skeptical squint.

"He said that?"

I nodded.

"Hmm. Well, did he happen to tell you what he did with our crucifix? It disappeared this morning and when I asked him about it he started carrying on and yelling liek a crazy person. He didn't swear at you, did he?"

I nodded.

"Oh Joseph and Mary, I am sorry sweetie he has been a crotchity old man latley. So, he didn't mention the crucifix?"

I shook my head, "Maybe it's in the garbage?" Grandma looked at me doubtfully.

"Why would you say that?"

"Dunno, I just get the impression he was mad about that and maybe he threw it away?"

Grandma crossed herself and murmured, "lets just see" under her breath. Sure enough she found her crucifix broken in the garbage can behind their house. She was not pleased and when she cam back into the kitchen she thanked me for visiting, gave me five dollars for helping with the dishes and asked me to leave as she and Grandpa were going to need to talk alone. I took my money and left. My Grandpa never spoke to me like that again. Nor did he ever mention what he said to me again. No apologies either. I never looked at him quite the same way after that night.