Waiting For Generic Viagra

“It’s been fifteen minutes and I don’t feel anything,” he said.

Her heart plummeted, but she kept her tone light and cheerful. “Of course you don’t, it hasn’t been long enough. Generic Cialis has to work its way through your digestive system. I bet it’s stuck right here.” She tickled his stomach.

He grunted and moved away. “I didn’t take Generic Cialis. I took Generic Viagra. Do you think I chose the wrong one?”

“I think they’re about the same. Now come on, love, stop worrying. Doesn’t it feel good when I put my hand here?”

“Not especially.”

She tried to keep the reproach out of her voice. “Remember, the doctor said the Generic Viagra won’t do all the work by itself. You have to be attracted to me. Are you attracted to me?”

“I’m trying.”

“Thanks a lot!”

He caught her hand, “Aw, honey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. This whole damn problem’s playing with my head. What kind of a man can’t…?”

She was almost too occupied with the feel of the skin of his hand against hers, the first time he’d touched her in weeks, to pay attention to what he was saying. It took sheer effort to answer in the calm, light tone she suspected people adopted when talking to terminal cancer patients, “Lots of men can’t. Bob Dole couldn’t. Because of his prostate or something, wasn’t it?”

“Ugh. Thanks for the visual.” But at least he was smiling, if only for a moment.

“The doctor said it was a bad idea to sit here and wait for things to start to happen,” she prompted. “He said we should do something romantic together, like dance, or take a walk, or make out like a couple of teenagers and that things would start to happen naturally.” For sixty to seventy percent of men. She pushed the thought of the other thirty to forty percent firmly out of her mind. “I’m too nervous to dance,” he said.

“Yeah, me too, I guess.”

“So what will we do if this Generic Cialis or Generic Viagra thing doesn’t work? Will you divorce me?”

“No,” she said, even though in the most secret places of her heart she had considered the idea. “‘For better for worse…in sickness and in health,’ remember?”

“It’s been twenty-five minutes,” he said dolefully.

“You’re working at it too hard. It isn’t supposed to be work.”

“What, then?”

“Fun, for God’s sake,” she said. “Remember how much fun it used to be? Remember when we moved in here ten years ago and christened every room in the house, even the laundry room…”

Another of those rare smiles. “…And the doorbell rang…”

“…And it was the Derring’s dropping over to welcome us to the neighborhood…”

“…And you had to go and invite them to stay for tea.”

She giggled. “Well, I was trying to be polite. But the whole time I couldn’t wait for them to leave you could ravish me again. And again.”

“When you laugh, you look just like that eighteen year old girl I married.”

“Honey,” she said, “do you realize that is the first nice thing you’ve said to me in weeks?”

“You’re beautiful,” he said. “I love you.” And then, wonderingly, “Oh, my God.” She caught her breath. It couldn’t be. Could it? She hardly dared to ask. “The laundry room?”

“The laundry room. Now!”

The Generic Viagra had done its work.