Poisonous as Hell, part three:

The Black Widow Spider

Allow me to present my version of the perfect wedding night.

First, of course, my beautiful bride and I will be feted by all our friends and family. There will be tears, there will laughter, there will be dancing, and there will be cake. Formal wear will be required, and those who choose—as so many do in these corrupt days—to sport the ridiculous khaki-clad “business casual” look will be treated to withering stares and smaller-than-usual pieces of Chicken Kiev. I shall be at my most witty, and I will have gotten a haircut at some point within the preceding three weeks. And, to use the SAT form of analogy, my wife will be to gorgeous as Evander Holyfield is to boxing, as Kool Moe Dee is to hip-hip, as Google is to search engines. To be more precise, she will be a witches’ cauldron of hotness. Her hotness, mind you, is not the simple and transparent hotness of some ordinary Czech supermodel, but instead the kind of hotness that accrues from compassion, kindness, insight, wit and brilliance. That isn’t to say, however, that the Czech supermodel kind of hotness will not be present in my wife. It will be. Still, it will be merely one luminous facet in the gigantic diamond of my wife’s inviolate essence.

Several times during the evening, I will turn to her and say things such as that. Things that can’t help but make her mist up at the glory of it all. As the assembled company clink on their wine flutes, we will kiss again and again, and I will not be at all reluctant to bring forth “the tongue”. I will sing Belgian folk songs in her honor, I will feed her bonbons and save her the trouble of chewing by moving her lower jaw around. If anyone makes an inappropriate comment in her presence, I will strike them roughly and have my best man throw them out. She is my dulcet cranberry cream puff from heaven, after all, and I shan’t countenance any crudeness or indelicacy that might sully her memories of the sweet, sweet evening.

But it is the night after where the most lasting impressions will be made.

Our bridal chamber will be appointed in an elegant Provençal style. There will be red wine from the state of Kentucky and there will be fresh-cut flowers in vases made out of plastic that very much resembles real crystal. On the goose-down pillow will be a single truffle, placed there beforehand by a professional truffle-placer brought over from Turkey specifically for this purpose. He will be waiting in the closet in case the truffle slides away from its perfectly-symmetrical position on the pillow. Once my love has eaten the truffle, he may leave. He will be well compensated for his trouble, and tipped extravagantly if he slips out without calling too much attention to himself. Especially if my wife and I are already engaged in the act of physical congress or, as I like to call it, “the naughty what-have-you”.

But before I get to that, I have to bring up a pertinent detail about the bed itself. There will be silk sheets upon it, but there will be no blanket. This is important. At first, however, my wife will be too twitterpated to notice, largely because of the awe she feels in the presence of my freshly-waxed chest and my clever “day of the week” boxer shorts. I will kneel beside her and, alone at last, I will recite her a poem I have laboriously composed in her honor. Discretion prevents me from sharing this poem with you, my anonymous audience, but I can mention that it’s title will probably be “Across A Room Filled With Lesser Women”. Or perhaps “Givin’ Up The Yup-Yup”. Or perhaps “Panoply In Petunia”. The title has not been decided yet.

Regardless, I will then commence to giving her “the business” every which way. Modesty forbids me from relating the styles, velocities, and positions we shall employ, but perhaps the essence of the episode can be gleaned by the following series of metaphors: an eagle wheeling in the sky, a dolphin gliding under the current, a cuckoo clock going through its routine every three minutes, a lone fisherman hauling in his nets, and a thousand dandelions blooming in a dewy meadow. It will be the sort of unbound, unhinged eroticism that would destroy, or at least gravely embarrass, most women. But my wife will enjoy it. Because she’s special.

With this accomplished, we will coo endearments into each others’ ears for at least five hours. Then we will settle in for a long slumber. But there is a problem. My darling little she-sparrow will be cold! This is partially due to the copious sweating brought on by the events of the preceding paragraph, but it is also the result of unseen confederates turning down the thermostat at just the right moment.

“Oh, are you chilly, my delicious ripe apricot of a brand new wife?” I will ask, with the utmost sincerity and solicitousness. When she answers in the affirmative, I will immediately reach beneath the bed and draw out a large Tupperware container. Within this container will be a heavy comforter woven from fibers which manage to be both incredibly soft and awesomely resilient. I will tuck her in under this rare piece of bedding and sidle in next to her, locking her in a manful embrace.

As we lay there, the tinglings that naturally follow six and a half hours of lovemaking ecstacy will naturally subside, replaced by newer, rarer, and far stranger tinglings. The blanket will caress all our naked crevasses, it will press itself to us and warm our chilling bodies with its curious alien warmth. In fact. It will be as if the blanket itself is alive and intent upon massaging us into slumber. “Do you feel that, honey?” I will ask.

“Mmmmm...” she will say, because she’s too happy to form entire words.

“Do you know why the blanket does that, darling?” I will ask then, just as I notice her eyelids trembling in the tell-tale way that suggests sleep is nigh.

“Mmmmm...” she will repeat, and I will plant a delicate kiss on her forehead.

“Because I took out the stuffing and replaced it with two hundred thousand black widow spiders. Because their little legs are so fleet, so warm, so gentle. And because I love you...” I will say at last, and then finally we will both drift off to sleep beneath our writhing, arachnid-filled blanket, dreaming in tandem of the glorious life that will await us only if I didn’t make any mistakes in sewing up the hole that I fed our deadly pets into...