Aunt Carol's Pubic Display of Affection

(continued from "Candy's Christmas Kick, Dec. 28/2011")

Aunt Carol had good reason to be critical of Candy. She said to Candy’s mother and father while she swept up the smashed Christmas glass, “You know I have good reason to be critical of Candy.”

This was the first Christmas since the local newspaper informed the public of the untimely death of Carol’s husband Grant. His death resulted from the slippery combination of a bar of Lever 2000 soap and a toilet.

If you saw Carol at the bank or in the town library or driving the speed limit in her 1999 Silver Civic—if you saw her you might imagine that her house was decorated in forest greens and tepid pinks. But Carol liked browns and blues. She preferred leather to wicker; hardwood to ceramic tiles.

In spite of the boldness of her tastes, Carol was frightened by many things. She was afraid of her body’s ability to embarrass her, that she might fart by accident in public or be seen through a window dying the gray out of her shoulder-length hair. Her worst fear was that she’d be overwhelmed by an urge to vomit in a community space—that she might be forced (as her brother-in-law puts it) to “park a tiger” in a public garbage can at the local shopping mall.

Carol lay awake on her individually-pocketed coil mattress at least one night each week. She would lie flat on her back, mulling over the letter to the editor she sent to her local newspaper (The Open-Door Daily). It was in response to an editorial he wrote about “public displays of affection.” Carol absent-mindedly misspelled the word “public," as in “a pubic display of affection.” 

The reason it kept her awake at night was because it was more than just a spelling mistake. It was a Freudian slip.        

Carol had a pretty heavy crush on the editor of the newspaper. His name was _____. Her intention in writing the letter was to dazzle him with her writing prowess. He lived alone in a small house with a blue spruce a few doors down from her on Social Street. He was 12 years younger than she. He could be regularly seen jogging along the Social sidewalk in spandex shorts that were tight around his bum like “two cantaloupes in a carry bag” (she devised the simile but never actually spoken it aloud for fear she would blush).

But on more than one occasion, Aunt Carol had spied Candy entering and leaving his small house with its blue spruce during the late hours of the night and the early hours of the morning…