Virginia's Peculiar Fascination // Chapter 1

A brief interlude while I prepare some more books. This is a fun and short farce called Virginia's Peculiar Fascination.

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Lunchtime at Decker's Grill on North Tryon, Charlotte, North Carolina, a sunny fall day; lobster bisque and G&Ts. Preston Whitmore wasn't hungry so he skipped the bisque and had two G&Ts and watched Billy Morgan eat. They moved to the bar before it was time to head back to the office. They ordered espressos and soda chasers.

Preston leaned close to Billy. "Let me ask you something."

"Go ahead," Billy said.

"You ever in your life hear something like this—”

"Like what?"

Preston leaned his chin in his hand, looking up at one of the TV screens mounted high at the back of the bar. The Charlotte 49ers played the Monmouth Hawks, Charlotte ahead 21-7 at halftime, capitalizing on turnovers in the second quarter.

Billy set his espresso down and looked at Preston. "What is it?"

Preston rose again, shaking his head, exhaling. "You think homosexual men like, uh, testicles?"

Billy stared at him for a long quiet moment, no expression. "That's some question, Preston. Where's this going?"

"You'd never guess."

"Yeah, okay," Billy said, tilting his head back like he was thinking of it. "Yeah, they probably do."

"Oh, you think they do?"

"You don't?"

Preston squeezed his nose and tried to clear his foggy mind. "I thought they might. But, you know, even then, they don't love them. And it's all I kind of think of, you know, who out there might actually like testicles."

Billy said, "This have to do with work, Preston?"

They both chuckled, watching cheerleaders out there on the field at Jerry Richardson Stadium, kicking their sexy legs everywhere and showing their big smiles.

"I don't like balls," Preston said. "I don't even like my own. I won't even let Ginny touch them. I don't like how it feels."

"Should I be writing this down?"

"Don't you dare. I'm going to go out on a limb and say you don't like them."

"I like my own. I let Amanda touch them."

"Does she ever want to?"

Billy laughed. "Hell no."

"You see? To me that's normal."

"So what's the great ball question today, Preston? Don't tell me you got bad news."

"Like at the doctor? No, Billy, it's not like that—but you see, there's another point: I don't even check my own balls for lumps or anything. You do that?"

Billy turned his mouth down and shook his head no.

"I just never in my life ever heard someone say they like balls. I thought there was this universal understanding of, like they're there, deal-with-it kind of fatalism. They're there for a reason, but pretend they're not there."

"Yeah, that suits me fine. So who likes balls? Oh, no, you mean—"

"Ginny? Yeah. Get this: we were at a dinner party in the spring over at the Bramwells, you know, Tom and Darla—”

"The grocery guy, logistics."

"That's them. We're at their place for dinner, Rob Hanley's there with Ellie, it's six of us, and Darla wanted a dog and she and Tom got this ridiculous monster Cane Corso or however you say it, right? They got this dog and the dog's a young male, and now it's time they want to, you know"—he made the motion of snipping with scissors—"neuter this big boy. Tom's kind of lit and he says, 'Too bad—boy's got a nice set on him.'"

Billy chuckled, and Preston smiled, rubbed his chin, eyes drifting up to the screen and the cheerleaders again, now twirling up in the air, hands on hips, hair flaying around in circles.

"Tom's a funny guy," Billy said. "I've never had dinner with him before."

"Yeah, he's a hoot. So Ginny gets up—she can't see from our side of the table, this big dog and his testicles—and she watches the dog walk into the kitchen and she goes, "Yeah, pretty good set. Proportional."

"Proportional? She said that?"

"We're just getting started. So Ginny gets a snicker from Darla and then the conversation veers into testicle talk—”

"It always ends up there in the gutter."

"At least we'd done eating. This is scandalous talk. I work at the bank. We can't have this kind of talk at a table. But it's all very euphemistic, and it's a lot of tittering and innuendo."

"Polite but risqué."

"I can handle that. But the ladies are suggesting that testicles in general are persona non grata or whatever the latin might be, ovo or whatever, and Ginny—”

"Testiculus."

Preston scoffed then smiled. "No it's not. No way."

"Yeah, testiculus."

"Alright then, testiculus non grata—”

"Non gratis, unless you've only got one."

"Yeah, the ladies were saying they wouldn't accept even one. But not Ginny. Ginny's defending them."

"That's what this is about? Ginny's the only lady you know who doesn't hate balls, and you can't stop thinking about it, bringing it up to me like four months later."

"You had to see her. My Ginny, passionate about . . . I can't even say it."

"Could be your balls on the chopping block. At least you know Ginny wouldn't chop them off. That's kind of nice. So, what is it, Preston? You feel bad about not letting Ginny play with your boys?"

"Yeah, I thought about that. Sure, I thought about it. But I can't, you know, change how I feel. It makes me squeamish."

"I'm joking, anyway, Preston. You're married twenty-five years, your kids are in college and graduated college . . . I don't think it matters. Plus, so Ginny defended testicles? She doesn't want the dog to lose his. She's a kind woman."

"No, there was more than that. It wasn't about neutering. Ginny expressed a euphemistic fondness for them."

"She was trying to be funny, Preston. Tag Tom's joke. Play along, you know? Why'd you take it so personal?"

"It's not like I'm angry at her or that it even bothers me—”

"I think it bothers you, Preston."

"Yeah, but not like the way you think maybe. I mean, Ginny was twenty when we were married, and I never thought she was a virgin. And I never cared. I still don't care. I don't know what I'm trying to say, Billy. I can't put it in words."

The game resumed on the TV, the teams returning to the field. Preston checked his watch.

"Oh, shoot, Billy, I gotta run."

"You headed back to the office?"

"I have a meeting this afternoon. Important client." He slipped off the stool and clapped Billy on the back before heading out to the sunny street.

There was a lot more to the story he couldn't tell Billy. Like about the whole conversation with Ginny that night on the ride home from the Bramwells dinner party, Ginny sitting right here next to him in the Audi.

Couldn't help himself that night, the windows open a little, those spring flower smells coming in, Bach on the radio, feeling lifted by the dinner spirit. His mind had worked over that two-minute testicular exchange in the middle of their otherwise fine evening dinner affair. It was a mental bramble, a ragged, disjointed thing seeking to be placed in the otherwise strict order of how he perceived his Ginny.

He spoke it into reality: "Some weird revelations from you tonight, Ginny."

And she'd acted confused, wondering what he was talking about. She pressed him until he framed the right question in his mind, putting it into the best order of words he could imagine. "The statements you made at the table tonight would have one wondering how such calculations were formed."

She'd asked him what calculations he was talking about.

"An opinion is formed through experience and later assessment. Sometimes the experience is ephemeral or conjectural. It's always post-assessment. And sometimes it's both experience and assessment."

She'd been cute and asked him if this was about the thing Darla had said about interest rates and how the bankers were squeezing the blue collar class dry. He'd said it wasn't.

"Your thesis, you know the one: In Defense of Balls. It's that."

"My thesis? Preston, you're a loon."

"I've never heard someone jump to defend a male body part so fast. How do you feel about foreskins?"

"Rhetorical, Preston?" Ginny raised an eyebrow, surmising him as she'd stated: a loon.

They drove for a while without saying a thing.

Ginny broke it, saying, "Was I vulgar?"

"Do you feel vulgar?"

"Preston, are you mad at me?"

He shook his head. "No. No, I'm curious how you came to your viewpoint."

"About what?"

"About balls, Ginny."

"Oh, now you're being vulgar, Preston." She folded her arms.

"You expressed a curious opinion and I'm interested in it."

"If you're just going to make fun of me, I'll turn the music up." She moved her hand nearer the touchscreen, finger extended, showing him she meant business.

"I'm not bullying you, Ginny. Sorry if you think that."

Virginia's hand retreated to her lap. "It feels like you're bullying me."

Ginny's defensiveness surprised him. And unnerved him. It meant testicles and her opinion of such were earnest, and she regretted sharing it a little with their friends and her husband.

He flicked the indicator and pulled off the main thoroughfare, stopping outside the Whole Foods, closed at that time of night. He faced Ginny and she showed him a perturbed expression.

He said, "Proportional. How would you comprehend proportional in that sort of sense?"

"The dog? I don't know, Preston. Isn't it obvious?"

"No," he said, lightening his tone, encouraging Ginny's shields to move in a downward direction. "Not to me. That's why I'm asking you."

Ginny studied his face, big blue eyes flicking from his eyes to his mouth and all around; assessing his intent, his mood. "Were they big? Were they small?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Then they're proportional, Preston. Simple as that."

She held his gaze with a steely grip and he grunted in his throat, meeting her gaze, nodding once. It was kind of her to resist so well the urge to display an appropriate smugness. She'd had him on that point, and he put the car back in gear.

There had been so much more to it, and he'd known it then. In the following weeks he would replay twenty-five years worth of conversations with Virginia, pan-sifting for gold nuggets; remembrances of previous testicular mentions. And he'd found some. Laying in bed at night, sleepless, eyes up at the ceiling, he recalled some pro-testicle gems his wife had uttered.

Back on the village road, Ginny had said, "Yours have a certain charm."

He'd said, "That's nice to hear. Are they proportional?"

"Yes."

"And that means neither big or small."

"Yours are an excellent size."

"More good news," he'd said. "I'd imagine bigger is better."

"Preston, this is clownish. Inappropriate."

"It's an honest question. No ulterior motive. There is a preference. There has to be. I'm guessing it wouldn't be small. That leaves proportional or large."

"What an awful thing to discuss with your wife," she'd muttered.

"There's no shame in any answer, Ginny. I've got no trap planned for you. I'm only curious. You're with someone more than half your life, it's interesting when you find a loose thread you'd never noticed before."

She'd stared at his profile a long time, breathing through her nose, and it took a while to chance a look her way since he was driving. He looked. Not anger. Maybe scrutiny.

"Do you prefer small?" He put his eyes back on the road. "Is that why you're staring at me?"

"Talk about loose threads," she'd said, sitting straight again, looking out the windshield. "I've known you for more than twenty-five years and here I find out my husband is obsessed with testicles."

"Turnaround's fair play? I'm surprised my iron-skinned wife's so timid. I've never heard anyone say Ginny Whitmore holds her tongue."

"Bigger is better," she said.

"Testicles? Really?"

"You asked, Preston."

"I thought it would take much more cajoling. Large it is. As I expected."

"You're impossible."

"I don't know why it took you so long to answer. It wasn't hard was it, in the end?"

"If I asked you how you feel about breast size, how quick would you be admitting your calculation?"

"That's different, Ginny."

"Is it? We're talking about preferences, aren't we?"

"Sure, but testicles are absolutely disgusting. Apples and oranges, love. The better comparative would be ovaries. How do you feel about ovaries, Preston? Like that."

"So you can't answer me?"

"On breasts? Proportional. I'd like proportional. They are not a thing unto themselves, they are dependents upon a whole."

Ginny laughed finally and he'd laughed too. They turned right on Golf Links Drive, heading into their cozy neighborhood.

"Fine, Preston. You want honesty, I'll be honest. I do not think they're disgusting, I think the opposite—”

"You're fond of them."

"Sure, I'm fond of them."

"And the biggest ones are your favorite."

He'd turned the Audi into their cul-de-sac and they'd been quiet. The mood had shifted. Their breaths had deepened.

The sex they'd had that night, still buzzed on chardonnay, bellies full of tenderloin and cake, was hands down the best sex they'd had in a tremendously long time.