Paradigm Shift

GOING GREEN MEANS SACRIFICE. FOR TWO BORED BABY BOOM­ERS IT ALSO MEANS MORE SEX

One thing Mary Lou Harris-DeLong could not understand about her husband, Dave, was his reluctance to make any changes at all to their household infrastructure. First and foremost, there were the spiral lightbulbs. Mary Lou bought the daylight, the soft white and the traditional greenish, a dozen of each from Costco at a good price, and she screwed one of them into the lamp on Dave's bedside table. That night, about five minutes into reading his book about a man who spent a year living according to all the rules in the Old Testament, Dave looked up, and then looked at his lamp. He said, more or less to himself, "What's wrong with that

thing?" and then he peeked under the shade. He turned to Mary Lou, openly scowling. "You changed the bulb!"

"It took you five minutes to notice."

"Only because I would never have thought you could be so sneaky. It was sheer disbelief that prevented me from noticing."

Irritated at this blatant excuse, Mary Lou snapped, "Well, spank me! You voted for Al Gore! It's been seven years------"

He spanked her, hard, square on the right cheek of her ass, which was turned toward him in the bed (Mary Lou had been reading too—Vasily Grossman about Stalin). It hurt. Mary Lou hadn't been spanked in many decades. She whipped up her nightgown. She exclaimed, "I can't believe you did that! The skin's all red!"

"It's not red." He looked a little abashed.

"It's red." She smoothed her hand over the spot, which had nearly, but not quite, stopped stinging, pulled down her nightgown and ostentatiously went back to her book. It was the Second World War, in Russia. People were starving.

The room was quiet for what seemed like a long time.

Dave said, "Sorry."

Mary Lou said, "Don't be sorry. Just don't change the lightbulb."

He didn't change the lightbulb.

Instead, he woke her up in the middle of the night with an erection that meant business. By the time she was fully conscious, she could already hear the sound of him smooth­ing the Astroglide over it, a sound she always found arous­ing. She stretched and sighed, to indicate she was awake, and he entered her right then, from behind, his right hand partially covering the spot that suddenly tingled from the spank. The moon was shining in the window; the weather was nice enough so that they were using neither the central heating nor the air-conditioning. The worst that could be said about their carbon footprint was that all of their turned-off appliances and digital clocks were drawing a few standby watts. His erection was extra-firm and piercing in a way that Mary Lou liked, all too rare these days. In the morning she changed all of the incandescent lightbulbs, putting the tradi­tional greenish in out-of-the-way sockets, the soft whites next to armchairs and above tables and the outdoor models near windows and doors. Dave didn't object, and, in fact, about a week later, he mentioned that the soft whites weren't bad at all. She overheard him say it to his sister on the phone.

The thing with the shopping bags started simply enough. One day, she was at the Safeway, and she realized after the groceries were checked through that she had left the bags in the car. The line behind her was a long one, and so, rather than run out to the car for her bags or send Dave out to the car (Dave was thumbing through a magazine), she said to the checker, "Just give me a couple of those black shopping bags. They're only, what, a buck apiece? That's a dime in 1960 dollars." This was one of Dave's favorite concepts—whenever something seemed expensive, you divided the cost by 10 and thought about that amount. Some things then seemed cheap (underwear, T-shirts), other things then seemed expensive (a pack of cigarettes, though neither of them had smoked in 10 years). If it was worth what you would have paid in 1960 dollars, then------

He looked up from his magazine and said, "You have 20 of those things already."

"You can put these in your car."

"I don't want them in my car. I never remember them."

"Then," she had an idea, "keep buying them until you do. It would be a mnemonic device." She spoke lightly.

The checker packed the groceries, and he carried one bag to the car. She carried the other. Same when they got home—he carried in one, she carried in the other. He was still annoyed. She could tell by the way he slammed the cupboard doors a bit when he was putting away the whole wheat-flaxseed pasta and the canned tomatoes. He muttered to himself, "I don't see...."

So she turned her back to him, set her feet a little wide and

bent forward slightly. Then she unzipped her jeans and pulled them down, and her underpants, too. She made herself not look around. When he had finished arranging the boxes in the cupboard, he slammed the door one last time. There was a moment of silence, an intake of breath followed by a laugh. It was a laugh, actually cheerful. Then he smacked her one, right on the swelling of her gluteus. It stung and knocked her off balance a bit, but she kept her feet. Then he carried the bags—those and a few others that were lying on the coun­ter—out to the car. She pulled up her jeans and watched him out the window. He put four bags in her car and two bags in his own. He was in a good mood for the rest of the day.

Dave was a clean guy. Her own nose was a perfect index to his cleanliness—there was no other man she had ever known who didn't stink sometimes, at least to her. But Dave never did. She had always seen this as a virtue to be cherished. Now, though, she came to feel that such a clean person did not need to wash his clothes every time he wore them—even, come to think of it, his shorts. One day, she went through the laundry basket and pulled out everything he had thrown

in there. It was as if he had taken each thing off the shelf, crumpled it up and tossed it in the basket. Day by day. as he threw clothes into the basket and took showers, she grew more preoccupied with his water usage. And toothbrushing! He left the water on while he was brushing. She walked past him one morning, turned it off, and he took a swipe at her. She ran into the bedroom, and he followed, toothbrush in hand. She lifted her shirt and waggled her breasts at him, so he set down his toothbrush right there and they fucked like mad, laughing the whole time, though he was late for work. After that, he remembered to turn off the water while he was brushing. Still, the clothes—it was hard to broach the subject of the clothes. Dave's mother was just the same way—no cats on the furni­ture, shoes off in the house and every cloth napkin washed after a single use. It took an article about a global-warming guru to give her that last bit of gumption: She read that this man, who lived in Colorado, had built himself a house with a large glass-block-enclosed central atrium, and there he hung his laundry (himself, apparently). That very night, as Dave was yet again filling the laundry basket, she said, mildly, "You could wear some of that again. All of it, really."

He pulled his head out of his T-shirt. He said. "Make an offer."

"Socks, French kiss each, T-shirt, a little frottage. Umm, shorts...." She held her hand out for his shorts. He handed them to her. They weren't even wrinkled, much less smelly. She said, "Blow job for the shorts, but you have to wear them two more days." (continued on page 129)

PARADIGM SHIFT

(continuedJrom page 82) "Payment up front?" "At the back end, as it were." "I want an advance." She didn't mind that.

Upholding her end of the laundry deal was rather time-consuming, but the serendipitous result was that, more active than they had been, Mary Lou lost 10 pounds, and Dave lost five. When Mary Lou was doing Dave's laundry now, she could scent him—the phcromones spurred her to redouble her efforts to reduce their water usage. The key was to anticipate at least one of his two daily showers.

The first time, of course, he was annoyed to find her in the bath—she had used all the hot water, and now he had to wait 40 minutes to take his shower! She pushed her hair back and slid down in the tub, then lifted her chin and emerged. She was aiming for that effect you always see in ads for Carib­bean vacations—mysterious girl rises from the deep—and since she had lost those 10 pounds she did look more like a girl and more mysterious. She took a deep breath. "Get in with me. It's nice." She had poured in a capful of Bulgarian rosewater (the best kind, but of course it had not been manufactured within 150 miles; however, those who manufactured it needed capitalism to work for them). The rich fragrance wafted upward, and she pulled up her knees.

He hung his towel over the shower door and got in. For a moment it was awkward, but then she extended her legs, he extended his legs, and they were sitting, entwined, face-to-face. She took her washcloth and squeezed the subtly redolent bathwater over his stomach and legs. Pretty soon he yawned, and then he yawned again. She said, "I'll wash you; you can relax." The good thing about their bathtub, other than the fact that it was large, was that it was an old-fashioned one, with the spigot on the long side. It was perfect for this proj­ect. She smoothed the soap (made by a local craftswoman from olive oil—no palm oil—and ground almonds) over his chest and shoulders, and then, of course, downward. He sighed and closed his eyes. The sun lloated lower in the win­dow, and they didn't get out of the tub until the water was cool. Nor did she go straight into the kitchen to begin cooking dinner. In fact, they didn't eat until after nine. In four days, she had weaned him oft that second shower.

She said to her friend Sophie, "Green living is definitely more of an effort."

Sophie said. "You have to get jazzed about it. You can't do it just because you think you have to. You have to get your adrenaline pumping."

"That's true," said Mary Lou. "But do you think it's better to drive to the farmer's market or to order things online?'

"I think it's better to take the bus to the farmer's market.'

Mary Lou wasn't sure she would ever get him on the bus, so she decided to address the beef question. The beef ques­tion had recurred, on many levels, time and again—cholesterol, animal rights, mad cow disease, hormones and antibiot­ics, E. coli contamination—and Dave had always said that (a) she was exaggerating and (b) he didn't care about any of those issues, and why should he? His LDL was steady at 140, and his HDL was almost 100. Nevertheless, the carbon hoofprint of a beef steer was daunting—3,700 liters of water per kilogram of boneless beef. Since they ate about a kilo and a half of beef every week, averaged over the year, that was 277,000 liters of water just in steaks and pot roasts and bur­gers. He didn't like tofu (though, to tell the truth, soybean production was very suspect also); he could take only so many souffles and quiches; he had accepted whole-grain pasta reluctantly; he thought chicken was boring.

One night, instead of getting out of the bathtub, drying off and going into the bedroom. Mary Lou went into the kitchen. She put on an old apron for safety's sake and then whipped up riga-toni with toasted pine nuts, sauteed shal­lots and cremini mushrooms, roasted finocchio and whole garlic cloves, olive oil, salt, pepper, fresh basil and a touch of Parmesan. She was careful not to drop any pots on her bare toes, and yes, she did look a bit odd with her nipples peeking out to either side of her apron, apron strings dangling down between her cheeks and oven mitts almost up to her elbows, but when he came out in his towel, he was happy to sit at the counter drinking a glass of wine and watching her. The bonus was that naked vegetari­anism proved yet another way to cut down on the laundry.

Winter came on.

Dave liked the thermostat set at 72 during the day and 68 at night. In this, he considered himself nearly heroic. In his mother's house, if the temperature dipped below 78, Dave's mom put on a sweater, and if there was a power failure and it dropped into the (JOs, she put on a coat. However, Mary Lou had taken plenty of hikes with Dave and their dog, Max. and she knew that exercise warmed him up quickly and thoroughly. But that was not where she started. She started with Cole Porter. It was late November, but they were already having a little cold snap. Not long after dinner, just as they were getting ready to watch The Colbert Report, she saw him turn up the thermostat. During the show, she could hear the warm air pour out of the reg­isters. By the end of it, she could feel

the difference. She took off her own sweater. Dave said, "Hot flash, huh?"

"I haven't had one of those in months.'

He didn't say anything.

"Anyway. I think those are over."

He made a kiss in her direction, then said, "Good." Nevertheless, she had to wait for a while for him to forget that idea, so they watched TV longer than usual, all the way through the late show­ing of The Daily Show. She began sighing as soon as they stood up, and also dis­carding her clothes, dropping them as she walked toward the bedroom, like a trail of crumbs. But while he was letting out the dog, she found the CD in her bedside table. When he came into the

bedroom, she was sprawled on the bed in just her underpants, and Ella Fitzger­ald was singing. "But I ain't up to my baby tonight,/'cause it's too darn hot." Ella went on. By this time, three months after the first spiral lightbulb. Dave was more used to erotic abundance than he had been, so he took her posture as an invitation. She had expected this and had provided herself with a little spritz of water, over the forehead and upper lip, and also across her breasts. When he put a hand on her, she said, "I'm hot. Aren't you hot?"

He shook his head, still intent.

"I'm actually sweating." She wiped the back of her hand over her forehead.

He said, "I guess you are."

"You're sure you aren't hot?" She filtered her fingertips upward through his hair and sang along with F.lla. It was a lengthy song, and she had set it on repeat. Finally, he put his hand on her breast—kindly, affectionately, eagerly, it was true—and although it hurt her to say it, she said. "Ohhh. I just don't think I can. honey.'

He sat back. After a moment, he said. "Maybe I'll turn down the thermostat.'

"That would be a good idea.'

He stood up.

"At least tour degrees. No more than 68, really." She would get it down to 62 in stages, she thought.

He pretended to shiver, but he made his way toward the thermostat with a spring in his step.

By the first of the year, every time he lowered the temperature in the house, he got a hard-on.

Sometime in January. Mary Lou real­ized that there were only so many hours in the day. The difficulty was not maintenance—in addition to her Dave campaign, she had. of course, acted independently to make over those areas that were primarily her domain, such as household cleaning products, soaps and shampoos, fruits and vegetables. She had cut back on vacuuming and he had neither noticed nor offered to vacuum himself. She bunched her errands now', almost without thinking, and was more organized about stocking up. No, main­tenance was no problem. The question was about launching bigger projects. She wanted solar panels on the roof.

It was Max who gave her the answer. Max. a good-natured mystery mix with a face like a boxer and a bodv like an .Airedale, was, at Dave's insistence, very well trained. He had gone to puppy school, he had taken the intermediate course (long stay, off leash at the mall) and the advanced course (discriminat­ing among objects, navigating a short agility course). As far as Mary Lou was concerned, Max's best trick took place at dinner. When they sat down to eat. Max went over and lay down, facing away from them. He stayed like this, relaxed, never importuning them, because every so often one of them tossed him a crouton or a noodle. As far as Max was concerned, treats fell from the ceil­ing like manna once in a while when he wasn't thinking about them. This. Mary Lou knew, was the law of intermittent rewards. Or, as the dog trainer had said, "Even a dog gets tired of cheddar cheese if it comes like clockwork." Here Mary Lou saw her flaw and her redemption. That night, she fell asleep before he got to bed—truly she did. she wasn't fak­ing—he turned down the heat, brought a big one to bed. and she wasn't awake to see it. though when he told her about it in the morning, she cooed various

appreciative responses. That very eve­ning she had agreed to go to a play with Sophie—Dave didn't care lor plays—and because they took the bus, she actually didn't get home until almost midnight. Dave was already asleep, and she was careful not to wake him. The next morn­ing was Saturday, and he woke up with what amounted to a hair trigger—all she had to do was run her forefinger down his spine and kiss him on the back of the neck and he was ready. But sleepy—she handed him the Astroglide because he was too drowsy to find it himself, and she offered her backside because he said, "Open the red door," the utterance of a dream. He woke up moaning and fuck­ing, overwhelmed in a way that almost never happened when he was fully con­scious. She made it last, too—by the time they were finished, he had to lie back and take some deep breaths. He said, "Maybe I'll go back to sleep. Wow."

She sat up and stroked the hair off his forehead—gently, oh so gently— saying, "You know, I think we should look into solar panels."

He mumbled, "Okay." and slept un­til noon.

Solar panels, before the rebate, were $40,000. It was a long way from the "okay" to the electric meter spinning backward, but "okay" was a start. While he slept, she stroked his forehead in pure gratitude.

The hardest part, in fact, was hold­ing herself back. She had been condi­tioned too. When she did the laundry, she couldn't help imagining his shirt, his pants, his socks, his shorts, coming off one by one. When the temperature was low, she saw (in her mind) his chesl hair bristle in the cold and him hurry lo the bed, where he snuggled his chilly hands against her breasts or between her thighs, which made her laugh and was exciting as well as startling. Just looking at the red bag from Trader Joe's or the black bag from Safeway gave her a lusty little frisson. And as for erections, well, in the course of her campaign, (here had been erections all over the house, and it was as if every one of them had left a little ghost of itself imprinted on the air. But solar panels, she thought, were a greater good. When it was going lo lake five or six or 10 years to earn back the initial investment, self-control was what would be rewarded. So she went to another play with Sophie (bicycle, bus, walk a mile, bus, bicycle—good thing it was a matinee), spent at least a week look­ing for I.KI) outdoor lights from a local business, baked and froze many loaves of bread (convection oven, full freezer) and put all of their appliances, including the ones she was unsure about, like the pencil sharpener, on surge-arrest strips. She ripped out a sweater she had knitted thai didn't fit and rolled all the yarn into balls rather than ordering new yarn, and she went around and recauIked all I he

windows. She read some used books by the light of the soft-white fluorescent, and when she had done all of these things, she was breathless with desire. Judging by their subsequent weekend in bed, they were back where they had started years before, when she was 20 and had hair down to her ass and he was 24 and had hair down to his shoul­ders. On Monday, she called and made an appointment with the solar guy for the next really nice day.

The "solar guy" turned out to be a woman, about 30, all business, but with springy chestnut tendrils, a beautiful long neck and lips like Angelina Jolie's. The fact that she wore glasses, which she kept pushing up her nose, had an earnest manner and spouted numbers and technical information with a Bill Gates sort of expertise only enhanced her appeal. Mary Lou said, "Just a moment," and went inside. It was Satur­day, and Dave was watching the hockey game. She said, "Honey, I think you should come out for a bit."

"You can tell me about it."

"I think it might mean more to you if you heard the spiel."

He got up from the couch. He was a little grumpy until he saw her—Daphne, her name was. She walked them all

over their roof and the hill behind their house. She demonstrated the arc of the sun through the course of the year with large gestures. She pushed her hair out of her face. She borrowed a ladder and climbed it. and he watched her from below. She said that her sisters were in the business too.

"How many sisters?" said Dave.

"There are four of us. We have the area about covered now. and really, we have our hands full with all the new installations." She flashed a big smile. "We do all the work ourselves."

Mary Lou might have been jealous if Dave had even hesitated for five min­utes, but as soon as Daphne's Prius dis­appeared down the driveway, he hustled her into the bedroom, threw back the covers, stripped off her sweater and jeans and nearly exploded. At one time, she had thought piggybacking on the charms of another woman would have offended her, but by now she was too old and real­istic for that, and also, the UN had issued a climate report saying that without dras­tic cuts in emissions, civilization was in grave danger. Daphne was clearly in a growth industry. She also offered resi­dential wind power.

When the sisters showed up (Daphne, Chloe, Esme and Thalia), Dave, who

was not a hammer-wielding son of guv. offered eagerly (o help, and Max olfered to watch—he stood with his lorepaws on the third rung of the ladder, staring slavishly upward. Occasionally, one of the sisters would toss a ball off the roof, and Max would race and tumble down the hill to fetch it. He would then return to the loot of the ladder and stare at the underside of the gutter, the ball between his two hind paws. The girls worked with fluid grace, and all four ol them could heft tools and materials up and down the ladder as if up and down a staircase. Daphne was friendly, but when Mary Lou asked about her family, she talked about them in entirely sociological terms. Mary Lou decided that she was the best-look­ing nerd she had ever seen but possibly also the nerdiest. up to and including her nephew Roger, who refurbished hard drives for a living.

Thalia was the boss, and she had no hesitation about finding Dave's work lacking in skill. More than once she said. "Here, you hold the dumb end of the stick, Dave." She also said things like "Moveover," "Watch it," 'Jesus H. Christ," "What the fuck." Her thong showed every time she leaned over to pick up the end of a solar panel. Chloe was no less firm, but more explanatory: "Okay. now. Dave, let's

look at the screw and the screwdriver. See how that is a slot head while the screw is a Phillips head? You've got to actually pay attention to what you are doing. Now set it in straight, even though it takes a little more time. You don't want to strip the threads. Great. Now try it again." Mary Lou could hear her through the open windows. L'sme was more reserved. She didn't say much, and she spent her breaks smoking something that didn't look like cigarettes and was probably grown within 150 miles. When Daphne saw Mary Lou looking at her, she sighed and said, "She'd rather be doing extreme recycling."

"What's that?"

"Oh, you know, you take things like shipping containers and pieces of broken-up highway and old pallets and build houses out of them. She loves straightening nails."

All in all, the sisters were overwhelm­ing. They seemed to swarm over the house, all legs, all hair, all cleavage. They were there from dawn until dark, and when they left, Dave sank exhausted into bed—no double baths and no icy hands between her thighs. No doubt, thought Mary Lou, sitting up late in the living room with her knitting in her lap, watching Max pine by the front door, I am getting what I deserve for not being forthright, for using femi­nine wiles, for playing a double game, for, dammit, arousing all that lust that had been quietly going to sleep. A few tears dripped into her sport-weight cot­ton yarn. Why was she reknitting this sweater, anyway? She had never for one minute liked the color.

Alter live long days, Thalia tromped

into the living room and presented them the bill. The sisters trailed after her, dusty and sweaty but voluptuous. Daphne said, "All hooked up and running."

Dave said, a little breathlessly, "1 got the check from the bank. It's in the desk here."

"Yeah," said Thalia. "Now look, don't forget to do the paperwork for the rebate. You're getting a tidy sum. And I'm leav­ing maintenance instructions here on the counter. Read them." Her manner was extra brusque. Mary Lou would have left it right there, but she saw, jealously, that Dave couldn't resist. He was nearly swooning as he uttered, "Is there some­thing wrong?"

"Well, since you ask, there is." Thalia took a deep breath and her nostrils flared. She threw her tumbling hair back over her shoulder with an impatient gesture, put her hands on her ideal hips and went on, "I'll tell you what, Dave. You have a perfect spot here for this. Southern ori­entation, no tree cover. You should have done this at least three years ago. Two things make me mad, and one of them is people who don't feed electricity back into the grid, when it's so easy."

"What's the other?" Dave looked like he could hardly breathe, he was so turned on.

"The other is you baby boomers-----"

"Thalia," said Daphne, her voice voluptuously sharp.

Chloe and Esme were shaking their heads at Mary Lou, as if to say, sorry, she's so crazy. Their luxuriant hair popped out of their barrettes and flew about.

Thalia's chest inside her T-shirt swelled aggressively. In spite of herself.

Mary Lou liked the decisiveness with which the girl had cut away the collar and slit the sides up the seams. "No. you should know. When I think of the price of oil in 1970, what a chance that was for you baby boomers to wake up. it just steams me. 1 was three years old. What the fuck were you waiting for?" Because she was so dramatically indig­nant, everyone now turned to stare at Dave, including Mary Lou.

Dave handed her the check, open-mouthed. Then he said. "I don't know."

Esme and Daphne hustled, or maybe you could say shouldered her out of there. Chloe brought up the rear, first straight­ening papers, then rolling her eyes and looking amused. Dave jumped up and held the door lor her. Chloe (Chloe! thought Mary Lou. How did 1 get stuck with Mary Lou, when others got Chloe?) stopped and gave him a little shrug.

Then Dave kissed her on the cheek, right in front of Mary Lou. After that, he and Max followed the sisters to their truck (a Chevy hybrid) and watched as they drove away.

Mary Lou got up and peeked out the window at this, then sighed.

Dave came back in, flopped on the couch and said. "Wow."

"So," said Mary Lou, "which one was your favorite?"

"Oh, that one. Chloe. She taught me-----"

"To screw?" Mary Lou knew she was saying this in a bitchy tone.

Dave looked at her for a moment, then said, "No, hon. To set a screw is all." After another moment, he said. "You okay?"

"I got what I wanted."

"You did."

They both know she sounded shocked, even disappointed. Possibly. Dave hadn't gotten what he wanted. Possibly, he would get it.

She picked up her knitting.

He picked up the remote.

Then he put the remote on the cof­fee table, and said, "Let's go look." He pulled her up out of the couch. He went ahead of her out the door. He did not stop for a kiss on the cheek.

Outside, Dave opened the cover on the electric meter. The sun was shining. The meter was running backward. Just then, Dave put his arms around her and kissed her on the forehead. Only on the forehead. He kissed his mother on the forehead. All four of the little dials were turning at different rates. As they watched, even the slow one clicked leftward. Dave said, "Pretty tough, those girls."

"I guess," said Mary Lou. "Maybe too tough?"

"I don't know that you can be too tough for the future these days."

"Maybe not," said Mary Lou. She gave him a little kiss on the cheek and undid the snap on her jeans. Dave smiled.