Thursday Night Movie Club

Once a month, for maybe two years now, husband goes over to Neil's house for "Thursday night bad movie club." They are joined by two other women, Miranda and Deedee. It is an odd collection and I am suspicious.

First of all, they call it Thursday night bad movie club but they only meet once a month. Moreover, it's not always on a Thursday. They watch bad movies on Neil's uber-sized flat screen TV entertainment tangle. Neil is a bachelor which is why he owns these things. Bad movies – like zombie movies and sci-fi horror things – crap movies, dark and foul and cheaply made. My husband Arthur – the snooty intellectual who would spit on a Tom Clancy book and label Mozart a "superficial populist," – he adores these horrible films. He will take me to any museum or concert or play, but he will not watch any "good" sort of movie, any normal thing that comes to the Cineplex even though I ask him to take me.

I will not watch the ugly movies at Neil's house, I think they are vile. But I was initially glad he found a little outlet, a little group to enjoy them with. I was happy for him, but now I am suspicious.

It is not a natural grouping. They all work at the same huge company, at the headquarters. Miranda is a director of engineering. Neil is a manager of sales. Husband is a director of finance and Deedee is an executive secretary. Miranda is married; Deedee is divorced. On some projects or events, a couple of them work together, but not very often. Their names are not the usual characters mentioned in Arthur's everyday post-work harangues.

Once a month he disappears for the evening to the movie "club" (like it's even a club or something) and comes back after I am in bed and almost asleep. He comes back happy but not drunk, which is strange because he is usually only happy when drunk. He offers to tell me what nasty little movies they watched but I refuse to hear, leave the room when he gleefully begins to report on the BRAINSUCKING THING or the NAKED DECAPITATED GIRL or god knows what.

It is never more than once a month that they meet.

Even though I made I clear I wanted nothing to do with the Thursday night bad movie club I feel hurt that he does not invite me, even though I have insisted that he not ever invite me or tell me about it. I am his wife after all; this is how we feel things.

I am getting pissed at Miranda. We are friends, nothing to do with the big company. We met shortly after we moved here and Miranda and I hang out now and then, do volunteer work sometimes and several times a year we go to the city and shop at the expensive stores downtown and eat Mid-eastern food in curious little holes in the wall, stuff that cannot be found here in our quiet bland white suburb.

The last time we were out in the city, plopping down sacks full of clothes and doo-dads at a retro sushi bar full of shiny diner décor and old Japanese movie posters, I asked about the Thursday night bad movie club and she just shrugged. She said they sat around, ate popcorn and drank some beer and yelled shit at the screen, cheered for the zombies and the mutants and the aliens, booed at the "heroes." That was all, nothing more.

Oooh – I am SO suspicious! I know they are up to something. And that means they are up to something naughty I just know it. There is no reason for a group of people like that to hang out together watching stupid crappy movies unless there is trouble brewing.

******

When Miranda and I go out together we are like Laurel and Hardy. I am little and short and round. Short but big round on top, big round on the bottom, but not bad in the middle. I have black black hair and a streak of blaze just like Veronica (like from Archie and Betty and Jughead). I am all circles, straight up to my round moon face. My big fat streak of blaze and my boobs are my best parts. Blaze is genetic you know. It can be faked but mine is real.

Miranda is tall for a girl, maybe six foot and she is slender and moves like a flamingo – all straight flowing lines and grace and she walks and moves her arms languid and smooth. She is topped with a thick black ball of hair, black as mine, but unruly and comical.

Like Laurel and Hardy, the two of us.

I love her like a girlfriend but she is painfully vague about the Thursday night bad movie club which makes me so suspicious like a wife should be. When a girl isn't beautiful, and I am not, we are suspicious of all women who aren't horribly ugly and stupid.

******

I am thirty eight now and have dirty thoughts all the time. Even more than when I was a teenager. Arthur and I play hard in bed. We have done crazy shit, stuff with other people, with strangers. What was getting me pissed about the movie club wasn't so much that Arthur was up to something; it was that I wasn't included. I am an extroverted girl – I hate not being included.

******

I overheard my husband once at a dinner party, talking to some Belgians. He said, laughing, that "talkative girls put out."

I am a talkative girl.

******

On a Friday night in August, a night before the meeting of the (non sequitur) Thursday night bad movie club – that's when I threw my fit. I had asked for details all week on the movie club – what they did, what they were going to watch, was Neil trying to get in Deedee's skirt, all that. And Arthur was just so goddamn non-responsive, except for this little smile, this little self-congratulatory smile he gets sometimes.

"I want to see this stupid movie club thing!" I was sniping.

"You won't like it."

"I don't care I just want to go I want to see it!" I said, higher pitched, I could feel my own cheeks getting flush red and hated that I was losing my temper.

"Baby, it's like a club, you're not really....." he paused, looking right at me, "invited.....you know."

That just did it. I did the whole girl thing – slammed kitchen cabinet doors, slammed my iced tea down on the counter and started – god I'm embarrassed to say it – but I started bawling, my attempt to scream at him modulating upward, losing force and rolling into a soft squeal.....a choked breath.....and then downward into great heaving sobs, shaking my knees, bent over the counter.

His arms warm around me, trying to comfort me while I am accusing him of horrible things, of not loving me, of not caring about me, while he tries to hold me and I am sobbing into the crook of him arm, losing myself in pity and imagined fears of abandonment and destitution while he tries to hold tighter to me with love and then I am out of breath and fire now, embarrassed and wordless.

******

He holds me still and now I am steady and the tears are drying and itchy on my cheeks. We are in the kitchen and everything is so silent I can hear the low hum of the ceiling fan in the bedroom upstairs.

"Okay," he whispers to me, his mouth at the back of my neck, over and over "okay, okay," his pace slowing, slowing to the tempo my own heart beat. "Okay." His hand through my hair. A pause.

And he loosens his grip around me, and I am breathing normally again, his words behind me, in a convivial tone. "Maxine, would you like to go to the Thursday night bad movie club with me tomorrow?"

"Yes." I whisper back, demure and helpless like a hurt helpless wife.

"Okay, Trixie."

******

Ooops. Trixie. That's a trigger word for us. A word that changes everything.

For better or worse, he says "Trixie."

******

I don't know how we got there; don't really know how the word came to be, because we have been married a long time. But Trixie is a naughty word. A dirty word. Trixie, Trixie. Does he really mean "tricksy" when he says it? (Like as in "Hobbits is tricksy" says the little frog man in that movie). It is an action word, a code word. It is like hypnosis. He does not use that word often, and I know that its scarcity is what has kept it powerful. When my husband calls for Trixie something happens.

Something thrilling.

I get to be a different girl.

******

"Okay, Trixie, we'll go to the movie club together tomorrow. You're not a member; you'll need to be initiated."

Mother fucker, my knees are trembling when he whispers this in his controlled voice, reminding me with tone alone who is really in control of everything when he wants to be.

"Tomorrow Trixie sees the movie club. The Thursday night bad movie club." He says it in that voice – that goddamn calm serene voice, full of wit and menace. This voice that his business associates hear all the time which is why they dread him. I just hate that with that word (Trixie Trixie Trixie) and that voice that he can get me like this. It lands like those little candies that explode on your tongue all screaming with sour and then mellow sugar and melt quietly. Wet and hot and – yet again after fifteen years – bothered and scared and hot and jealous and nervous. Thrilling. To teeter on the edge of the sub space again.

He is not usually an evasive controlling prick. But when he is I find him sexier and that's just so wrong and but true true true!

******

Cool and distant now. He goes up to bed early even though I want him now, want his arms around me, on top of me. I've hugged on him and brought him warm bread and Gouda and a scotch but nothing back from him except that Dom smile and a pat on the head. Shit! Pisses me off that I am all of a sudden trying to get his attention like a little kitty, which is exactly how he pats my head.

He leaves me to go to sleep even though I am wide awake and – this is so stupid so stupid so stupid for me to admit it – I start surfing the internet for porn. I am thirty eight and a good hot wife stuck in a big city suburb in a nice house and it's 1:30 AM now and I am still going between writing this all down and surfing porn on the net, with one hand on the mouse and the other pulling my panties up into me and pushing hard onto my clit. It's stupid but it's true and I will write it all down because I tell the truth.

I feel so dirty and dumb looking at porno which is fine sometimes. It's what Trixie is; dirty and stupid, pulling up her underpants into a hard wedge into her and rocking back and forth against it. But I am also relieved and self-righteous now. There has been something going on, you know, something naughty at the Thursday night bad movie club. Knew it all along, or at least for awhile now.

Sometimes I look at lesbian porno.

Like right now.

I have to go

****** Part two

******

On the drive over I am getting ready for disappointment. Arthur acts totally goofy, like a little kid going to see a stupid movie with his stupid friends. Not Dom at all, like he was last night. He wouldn't let me dress up or anything – I am just wearing a denim skirt and pink simple top (3 buttons open at the top so can show a little bit of cleavage at least). He wouldn't let me wear any kind of heels at all, just some cheap flats. He's in jeans and rugby, totally boring.

I am trying to picture Deedee and Neil who I do not see often at all, unlike Miranda. Deedee is artificially brown NS with great big brown pretty eyeballs and a high forehead. She has dark red hair that is a waterfall of little curly ringlets. It is natural; all the boys love her hair, including Arthur. She looks like a young Elizabethan duchess, like she would look fine in a museum portrait. She is always laughing.

Neil is big, big and tall and with the huge shoulders and pot belly of a former college jock. He has a big steam shovel jaw, the jaw of a super hero and talks loud like an ex jock, like a sales manager which he is. He is always friendly and looks at my boobs whenever I have been around him, which is not often. Lots of boys look at my boobs, I wear stuff so that they do. I am smart and hate stupid boys but I am stupid because I still wear things so they look there instead of my big round butt or my plain happy face.

It is late summer and warm, but an early fog is out even as the sun is setting, around 8:30 by now. It's a good fog, settling thick in the dips of the landscape, and it collects at the edge of the streets, growing thicker and bolder as the sun retreats. The fog (steam?) gathering like the promise of romance...or better yet, mystery. Worse yet, like a zombie movie. Ugh.

We pull up to Neil's house, not too large but modern and with a generous curving driveway, in one of those newer subdivisions where you have to pay extra for them to add grass and trees. Miranda's familiar Grand Cherokee is there, as well as a blue Mustang which must be Deedee's.

Arthur pulls in and the Lex slows then stops quiet as mist. He won't let me dress up for tonight, but the son of a bitch drives the Lex over even though ninety percent of the time he just slums around town in his old shitty Explorer. Show off. A show off to the Thursday night bad movie club.

Neil comes to the door waving us inside with big huge gestures. He is even bigger than I remember, must be close to six and a half feet tall and weigh better than an eighth of a ton. I wonder what it would be like to have a man that big on top of a little woman like me. I just wonder shit like that all the time.

"Hello, hello, come on in guys!" his voice is a booming low cannon. "Come on Arthur, come on Trixie!"

******

Trixie. He called me Trixie.

Oooh – trouble.

I have met Neil maybe four times at company functions, and he would know my name because salesmen remember those things and he would know me as my actual name Maxine but he called me Trixie and this is very naughty.

Arthur set him up for this.

Trixie is a private word, a secret and Arthur has set me up. Oh hell yes, baby, there has been trouble brewing all right and I knew it KNEW it all along with the Thursday night bad movie club.

But Neil just called me Trixie and there is no practical way to show how pissed off I am right now at my wicked manipulative husband because I am suddenly, pathetically damp. Yes. Warm and damp in my underpants and I am embarrassed but I have to tell the truth. And because he called me Trixie and now there's nothing to say I just have to listen and do what I am told.

Bastards!

God I hate it but love it when my husband is a bastard.

******

We are in the kitchen now with Miranda and Deedee. They are making popcorn the very old fashioned way – cooking and almost burning it in a big skillet with coconut oil and real butter. They talk loudly over the rattle and smell.

I am hungry.

When you are a girl with a big butt, you just hate to hungry in front of other people but the smell is warm and buttery and I am hungry for everything now, a physical sensation pulling at me.

"Hi guys," says Miranda, jiggling the skillet, not looking up.

"Hi Arthur, Hi Trixie," says Deedee, loud and laughing, holding one of several big stainless bowls full of popcorn.

Shit! Another jolt that she calls me this too. I am the butt of a joke maybe and want to be mad but that word...that word. My husband has planned this. She calls me that name and she is not even big or scary like Neil and she calls me that name and I am distracted away from my empty tummy and feeling my pussy again, it's so humiliating to say how a word can make you wet. A magic word, not benign magic.

They are chatting and I pull Miranda aside and she says all friendly like "Hey Trixie, what's up?"

I tell her, voice low, "That is a secret word."

"Not if you want to join the club," and she says it real smooth, smooth and shimmery, all stainless steel, like the girl equivalent of how Arthur talks business.

******

We are down in the basement of Neil's house now. It's a beautiful and expensive home theater room, decorated much too tastefully – all warm beige and dark green accents – for Neil to have thought up himself. A huge monitor on the wall, as wide as I am tall (although I am not tall, only a little over five feet) with lovely recessed lighting.

There are drinks in hand for everyone. Arthur is drinking expensive scotch and Neil drinks a beer and has more of them close at hand. Deedee is drinking something pink and neon and Miranda has something clear in a tall fluted glass – vodka I would guess. Arthur puts something in front of me, a glass as short and round as Miranda's is tall and thin. It is amber colored and syrupy over ice. Drambuie.

I have no tolerance for Drambuie because I like it too much. Thick and honeyed and rich, like me, like how I look. I should not, I hesitate. I estimate that two out of every five bad decisions in my life involve Drambuie.

"Drink up, Trixie," says Miranda so I just do it because she says the word Trixie and it goes down hot and sweet and already I start to relax.

Neil is fooling with the DVD thing, and some credits come up on the screen for some horrible movie which I will hate. All that expensive equipment to render some movie made for less money than what Neil's TV cost him. The movie is called "Dead and Buried" and looks creepy and nasty. They – the movie club – immediately start whooping their approval for the opening credits and yelling at the screen.

I am so hungry now, I try to tune out the movie and start stuffing popcorn into my mouth, salty and hot and burnt and moist. I hope I do not look like I am trying to eat too fast like a fat girl and I purposefully stop to take another sip of Drambuie and then I am fading, fading.

"Trixie's sleeeeepy," I hear my husband say, but he is miles away now.

******

I fade to gray, dreamless gray but not black. There are voices in the background, some movement around me. The movie sounds are gone now, just the sound of voices.

Someone is pulling me up, up on my feet. It is a thing I feel, I observe with my eyes closed, like watching a movie without seeing it.

"Trixie," a voice, not mean but kind. "Trixie, Trixie, baby," a voice, light and silvery, familiar. Miranda

My eyes are fluttering open. We are in the same room, the lights still dim but the movie has stopped and it is quiet. "Up and at 'em Trixie," says a low booming voice, Neil speaking. I am getting awake now, a sort of awake state. I feel woozy but not bad. Not sick or gross or anything. I feel detached a bit, ironic or something, the way I think Arthur feels all the time about life. Detached and amused.

They keep saying it, over and over, Trixie Trixie Trixie like it was my real name or something and even though I know it is stupid and manipulative, I just hear it like Trixie (sub) Trixie (sub) Trixie (sub) and then just Sub sub sub sub sub.

"Who drugged me?" I ask, quiet, not even mad.

"We all did, sweetie," says Deedee happily.

"It'll wear off shortly, Trixie," affirms Neil in a loud agreeable voice, it is he that is holding me up although now I feel okay to stand by myself.

"Initiation, Trixie," says husband. That prick. I love guys like that. Cocky and confident like Neil and husband are right now. I love them both. It doesn't make sense, I don't defend it. Maxine is a confident modern college educated woman, but Trixie is just a stupid bimbo that just does whatever, needs guys around as long as they are great big like Neil or maybe super smart and mean like Arthur.

*******

I am steadier now and I am walking by myself, following them down a little corridor in Neil's basement, to a plain white wooden door. They all go in ahead of me and close the door behind them, save husband, who is now standing behind me. He has quietly, without me really realizing it, pinned my hands behind me as I am facing the plain white door. I hear music behind it.

"I love you Maxine," he whispers behind me, into my ear, his breath warm. "I love you so much. I love everything we've done and regret nothing." I am swooning a little, I love him, I am dependent on him for everything and he called me Maxine again.

"I love you," I say (whimper?).

"If you step in through that door, you will step in as Trixie."