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Dealbreaker
Sometimes, straddling my husband in bed, I drag my fingertips down his chest, over the smooth pale skin of his torso and then up again to his collarbone, down the center, over the scar. The scar is seven inches long, shaped like an exclamation point with its period floating an inch below, pink like his nipples, fat and flat like an earthworm that has been slowly sinking, over the last year and a half, deeper into his body. It is a little wider in the middle I think, perhaps, from the rib spreaders. Maybe that is where the surgeon's hands went in.

"Does it look okay?" he usually asks.

"It's sexy," I say. The Christmas tree lights hung above our bed reflect off my wedding ring. He had the open-heart surgery seventeen days after we were married, when he was twenty-five and I was twenty-three.

When it was new, the scar was puckered from the stitches on the inside; they'd sewn him up like the seam of a pillow. His sternum had been sawed in half and wired back together with twistie ties. He wasn't allowed to drive for six weeks for fear of damaging the bone before it re-knit, but when he came home from the hospital five days after the surgery, we had sex anyway, me precariously perched on top and making sure not to touch his chest. I was afraid I would slip and cave him in like a trap door or the flaps of a cardboard box. Everyone would say, "Well, what did you expect to happen?"

But I was leaving in nine days I had to fuck him while I could. We had scheduled both the wedding and surgery during my winter break from grad school. One plane ticket, that way I was living in New York and he was still in Kansas, and I had to get back for the spring semester.

When he came to New York to interview for jobs three weeks later, he was still in his recovery period. You couldn't tell with his shirt on. In bed, I pulled his undershirt off and studied the new ridge running down the center of him, the new skin soft and hard at the same time, both alien and him.

"Are you still attracted to me?" he asked.

I kissed his belly and licked the scar from bottom to top, dragging my body across his newly healed chest.

He moved to New York and we moved into our own apartment and I watched the scar sink into his chest. With my nose pressed between his pecs and the scar under my lips, I could feel his heat rising against my face and smell him all around me the same smell I fell in love with when I first met him, when I was sixteen and he was eighteen and his chest was hard and flat, like skin over slate. He had been 5'8" and 113 pounds and rebelling flamboyantly against his parents and adolescence and I had thought him sophisticated and eccentric and some sort of embodiment of sex. When he told me the aortic valve in his heart was deformed, I considered it the metaphorical root and physical manifestation of his unhappiness and a turn-on. He was doomed, the Byronic hero I had been looking for.

Back then, he lived as if he wouldn't live long, with a fast little sports car he drove at parked cars and cement pillars, dodging them at the last minute, and a propensity for feuds and conflict. He was the first boy to introduce sex matter-of-factly when making out with me, rolling on top of me one night as we kissed in his bed, his body between my bent legs, the possibility of the act both unspoken and unsubtle. I felt light-headed panic when I realized I was about to do too much, and yet there was the opportunity to do even more. My fingers and feet and head were numb and seemingly inoperable as all my Hooksexup-endings shrank inward toward my stomach, the nausea of over-stimulation coursing upward, catching in my throat and making it hard to breathe, hard to say no, to say anything at all, especially when there weren't any questions being asked.

We didn't do more than kiss that night, but it was the first time I spent the night with a man, slept in the same bed as if we were lovers, and I fell asleep with my head cradled comfortably by his hard chest in a way I could never get right with anyone else after, no matter how many pillows I propped around us or how many times I positioned my head. We were lovers soon, but there was an after, and others. Byronic heroes might be good in bed, but they can't be bothered with routine relationship maintenance, and it wasn't long before it had been a long time since we had spoken.


        



 

34 Comments

Stunning. Riveting. All the adjectives that I wouold ever want a piece of writing to be.

bc commented on 10/31

Fucking amazing.

commented on 10/31

wow. really great read.

commented on 10/31

the longest relationship i ever had was with c, a man who had open heart surgury at the age of fourteen. we'd lay in bed at night and i'd trace it, where the skin was pinched by the clamps and the stitches were less defined. beautiful story.

cc. commented on 10/31

beautiful story.

mlf commented on 10/31

What a lovely, lovely piece of writing. I've always felt that scars, both literal and figurative, are sexy. Anyone over the age of about 25 has some kind of scar, though many times it's an internal one; a scar on the soul. Our imperfections are what make us fully human, and if you look for the scar in someone, often you can better understand who they are, what roads they've traveled. That's sexy; to know and accept someone's full humanity....that's sexy. I look forward to more from this very sensitive and talented young writer.

CR commented on 11/01

This story could not be improved on - Thank you for sharing it with us!

EAD commented on 11/01

This is a truly incredible piece -- nothing that could be improved on.

EL commented on 11/06

How funny, while looking for something else, to come across something written by my sister. The WWW is such a small place after all. Congrats sis. love Kirk

KBD commented on 11/30

excellent.

mro commented on 11/30

this kind of love, the kind where you are as enamoured with the fucked up details as the "perfect spouse" ones--it is the rare love of a true artist....your claim on your husband and his scars and his heart is beautiful, and being one who appreciates a scar (as much for its beauty, it's contrast next to the skin on which it lies, as much as for the story--because every scar has a story--behind it. mmm....i thought this essay was fabulous; you deserve to get rich (money, too, not just emotionally or whatever) for how great you write! keep in touch, and write sometime... [email protected]....

km commented on 11/30

Whoa. Some (a very precious few) relationships are truly historical. Yours is one. Thank you for loving him like that.

cw commented on 12/10

truly incredible devotion and love. Its all in the way you view something.

E.L commented on 02/14

Nice story. I liked the part about thanksgiving it always nice to fuck during the holidays. Especially when visiting family in a boring place like Independence, MO. ;)

JMS commented on 06/09

That is the most touching story I have read in ages. I felt as if I was right there and knew you both. All those other girls don't have shit on you, they didn't love him fully as you have. He is a lucky man to have you. It is obvious you have unconditional love for him....a kind of love we all need and want. Good luck to you both, I hope your marriage will last beyond your years on this earth. My love to you both - Bev King

BK commented on 07/16

This is the first decent writing I've read on here in months. Nice.

SM commented on 11/27

im a female and i have a scar just like that because i had a heart transplant. you are great to appreciate it because it makes the person who they are!

RA commented on 11/27

That was a genuinely beautiful and moving article.

LM commented on 11/27

That was hot. I felt very illicit reading it at work.

AM commented on 11/27

hi to the writer. great stuff i have been run over and often wonder what folks would say if they saw the scars. but my wife seems to think im in good shape. super writing!keep going.

rb commented on 11/27

hmm. reads a bit like a grocery store book flap.

cc commented on 11/27

Remarkable.

JL commented on 11/27

Bah! In tears.

AW commented on 11/27

Lovely, lovely, lovely. Such an affirmation, and a reminder that we can be loved not only in spite of but because of our individual imperfections....They make us, well, us.

HL commented on 11/27

What a sweet and honest story, nicely done, both in terms of the writing and the marriage!

MD commented on 11/27

I love this piece. Unfortunately, however, this is from the archives, not the work of a new writer on Hooksexup. I remember reading this several months ago, when I devoured the back-issues upon discovering this site.

VW commented on 11/27

As the sister of a burn patient, and as a medical provider, I ALWAYS tell my young patients that chicks (and dudes) dig scars...and it's true. I sure do...

AFC commented on 11/27

I wonder how things would have been different if (considering where it would be located) he'd had an appendicitis scar instead?

QX commented on 11/27

The best thing I've read on Hooksexup in a long time. It's actually about something other than nueroses and promiscuity.

L commented on 11/28

And how is he as a father?

Krzc commented on 11/28

My father had his aortic valve replaced, too. There's nothing scarier. The rate of failure even after a successful operation is dismal. You're a lucky woman and you seem to know it.

LC commented on 11/29

One of the best things I have ever read on Hooksexup.

MSJ commented on 11/29

This is why we like ER etc. Make it hot and the tears will follow. Poor guy was exploited by his wife.

sb commented on 11/29

This hit so close to home it confused me. I was a brooding teen with a bad heart and had the same procedure at the same age and my wife taught me to love the scar in the same way.

Rp commented on 12/01
 

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