Oragazmi

          "I don't think you understand..." Joey said, correcting the cashier behind the counter.
"...this Raisin Bran IS supposed to be 40 cents off." he added, tapping his finger to the coupon on the counter top. 
'Firmly, not aggressively...' he thought to himself.  'Don't want to blow my cool here...After all, why appear angry when obviously I'm just correcting her innocent mistake.'
"Actually no Sir...because this coupon right here?  This is for the 12 ounce size.  See, you got the bonus extra 18 ounces free package.  So THAT one is not on sale. $5.35," she said, never breaking eye contact with him. 
'Saucy devil..' he thought. 'She knows this coupon is expired...she's toying with me.  I never thought she was a Jedi like myself, I mean, her eyes are all wrong...but my god...she can even hide it.  Better get out now old man...'
"Fine! Because with 18 ounces free it's like I only ended up paying for 3 ounces!  And that's practically stealing!" Joey yelled while turning slightly to his right, making sure to gauge the reactions of the customers behind him in line.  While shaking his head from left to right and making sure to make his trademarked "gettaloadathis!" face, he slid the coupon back across the counter and stuffed it inside his coat pocket. 
"Double bag that, one paper, one plastic, you decide which comes first."
The Cashier snapped her gum as she rang Joey's $10 bill and plunked his change on the counter.  The box never left the counter-top. Joey again turned to the growing line behind him.
"And the matter...of the bags?" Joey repeated, now smirking and applying a ridiculous British accent as he pointed to the cereal. The cashier, now texting on her cell phone, let out a sigh.
"We're outta bags. Next!"
'Oh this one is good' Joey thought and couldn't help but smile on how she had played him at his own game.
"Did they take the coupon?" Met yelled out the window over the exhaust system as Joey made his way to the back of the van.
"They couldn't resist me!" Joey shouted, holding up the box.
"And you got the bonus size?" Met added.
"Yeah...18 ounces free" he grunted, hoisting himself in the back. "Lets get out of here."
         As the van chugged down the road, Joey bounced around in the back seat lying to Met.
"Oh you should've seen it!  She wasn't going to take it at first!  I even had to point to the big, red letters on it!  You think they'd TRAIN these people!" he babbled on, unaware that Met couldn't hear a single word he was saying over the noise of the muffler.  For her credit, Met never led on that she couldn't hear a word.  She just nodded and made sure to keep eye contact in the rear-view mirror with her husband.  She figured it's the least she could do.
'Just keep talking...smooth as ever Joey D.' he kept repeating over and over in his head.
          Now alone and inside, Joey was parked in front of his ship in a bottle that had yet to begin it's assembly.  Now with his guard down, he sighed.  He could hear Met in the kitchen on the phone, talking excitedly, laughing and carrying on.
'I bet she's talking to Dan again...' Joey thought.  'Is there anything she DOESN'T share with him?'
Joey knew he had drifted apart from Met in the last few months.  They used to be not only husband and wife, but the very best of friends.  Now paralyzed from the waist down, unable to even hug his own wife, Joey couldn't even seem to hold a decent conversation with her anymore.  And here she was, talking more and more to this strange guy on the phone who just seemed to appear in Met's life out of nowhere, a man Joey had yet to even meet. 
'I bet she's gonna tell him SHE went in and got the raisin bran.  I bet she will say that I was DIFFICULT and UNCOOPERATIVE and that...'
Joey's train of thought was derailed by the sudden slam of the upstairs bedroom door.  Now he could only hear the muffled remains of her laughter.  Sighing again, Joey flung his jacket over a nearby chair, only to have the unused coupon flutter out of the pocket and back into his face.
"RAISIN BRAN!" he screamed, snatching the slip from his face and crumpling it in his hands.  Whipping it onto the ground, Joey lost control, screaming, spitting and yelling at the coupon, rolling over it back and forth, grinding it down under his wheels.  Laughing and coughing and crying all at the same time, he stopped to catch his breath.  Several deep, cleansing breaths later, Joey calmed down and was ready to get some revenge on the raisin bran by eating it.  But just as he started out the door, Joey was jerked to a sudden halt; the coupon was now stuck in his gears.  Screaming again, he flailed both arms onto the wheel, ripping and tearing the paper out.
"Die! Die! Die!" Joey screamed as he twisted and smashed the paper with both hands.  Laughing maniacally, he opened his hands and began taunting the paper.
"Not so tough now are you!" he snarled, now studying it.  "Yeah!...you!...paper!..." Joey trailed off, slowly realizing he had been yelling at a coupon.  But on further inspection, he couldn't help but notice certain details to the ball.  He snapped back into the moment.  The texture, the lines, the curves, the colors.  Every bend and flap now seemed to mean something. Poking it, smoothing out edges here and there, Joey sculpted the ball over and over, feeling less and less anger with each movement. Hours went by and before he knew it, Joey had made a miniature sculpture of he and Met making love down by the ocean, complete with action pull tab flap.  His smile grew wide as he played with it in his hands, again and again.
"MET!  COME HERE!  THIS IS BIG!"
"What?" she asked from the doorway with her hands on her hips.
"Come here and look!" Joey said, holding out his hands like a dove, presenting the sculpture to her.  Awkward silence filled the room as Met looked at the paper and then back to Joey, back and forth several times, before crooking her mouth to one side.
"Look honey, it's us!" he said enthusiastically, pulling the tab to show Met just how lifelike the scene of them was.  "See!  See! That's me! That's you!"  The long awkward pause continued until finally Met broke the silence.
"I thought you said you used that coupon...?" she asked, confused.  Joey's smile melted.
"So it wasn't on sale?  You said you used the coupon and got the cereal with it. That's what you said! Isn't that what you said?! That's what you said!" she rattled on, getting louder and louder with each word.
"Well yeah!  But no, but that's not the point!  Forget about the coupon!  It doesn't have to be a coupon!  It is, but that's not what THIS is!  What I'm saying is that this is just a regular piece of paper!  Right!  And look what I made out of it!  For you!  For us!" he urged, pushing his outstretched hands towards her repeatedly.
"Don't change the subject!  You DIDN'T use the coupon?! After you EXPLICITLY TOLD ME you got the ONE THING I told you to get, AND TO USE THE ONE COUPON I GAVE YOU...I see...and you're SO proud that you crumpled it into a ball, thinking you could literally SHOW me the evidence, and have me either forget or not care that you don't listen to me, don't pay attention to me, and really could care less about me! Oh just WAIT until Dan hears about THIS!" she yelled, storming out of the room, slamming the door behind her.  Silence again filled the room, but Joey's thoughts were too loud for him to ignore.
'She's right you know...it is just a coupon.  Let's show her what we mean...'
          Hours later, the silence in the house was broken by Met's house-keys in the front door.  "Honey, I'm back.  Dan says hi." she said, flipping on the lights.
"In here!" Joey yelled back from the bedroom.
"Isn't it great??!!" he exclaimed, presenting the room to Met as she walked in. Her eyes shot around the room, back and forth, trying to take it all in.  After a moment, she fell to her knees.
"I know you didn't get it earlier, you know.  The whole origami thing...and you know what?  That's on me!  My bad!" Joey laughed, slapping his knee with delight.
"I mean, I saw it, because I created it!  But I can see from the look on your face that you sure get it now!" He joined Met in the middle of the room, hugging her shoulder.
"The paint really adds a nice touch doesn't it?  Now you can tell which one is me and which one is you...and you can tell on all the others that way too!"
"I mean now compared to that little hunk of paper, this is just so much better isn't it?  It's like a museum now!  Look over here!"  He pointed to the bed.
"This is the very bed where we slept for EIGHT YEARS!  Well, YOU still sleep there, but even though we don't share it anymore, the pillows and sheets and blankets all together represent us!  Us at our best!  From that night when you finally graduated!  God it was magical!" Met shook her head in horror.
"And over here!" he continued, "that awful ship in a bottle you bought me!  That thing?! That thing that you thought would replace all the hours of time we actually spent together!  That thing?!!! I hated it!  But now look!  I smashed the bottle and twisted the bits and pieces into just the right formation!  When the light hits it, you can VISUALIZE the sunset!  The sunset we watched on the beach the night we made love!" Met gasped looking up, staring hard at Joey's hands.
"Oh the blood!  The blood is from the glass!  Duh!" he laughed "I mean it's red now, but I tell you, when the light hits it like I told you it really looks orange and yellow, like that sunset!  Just you wait!  Oh...and you haven't even seen the other rooms!"
Joey grabbed Met's hand and dragged her into the living room.  He clapped twice, turning on the lights, revealing the ball of twisted, broken furniture and curtains in the middle of the room.
"This is us having dinner!  Remember?!  See there I am having the steak and you can't decide!  That was the night we made love on the beach!  But we had dinner first!  That was so much fun!" he continued, "Oooh!  Oooh!  But come let me show you my FAVORITE!" Met began to cry as they both passed through hallways filled with stacks of carefully arranged toothpicks, piles of sculpted dirty laundry, and statues made out of rotting food. Ending in the garage, Joey slammed on his brakes.
"Are you ready?!" he announced, clapping, and turning on the halogen lights, revealing overturned trashcans piled on top of twisted garden hoses.  Paint cans leaking and dented pouring onto the ground, dozens of garden tools stuck into the exposed foam insulation of the walls.
'Oh MAN!  She is LOVING this!' Joey thought, smiling bigger than ever.  'This is the new beginning...who needs sex...we got something BETTER!  Something unique!  This is all us!  All our own!'
"Happy anniversary....to youuuuu.  Haaaappy aaaaaaniverrrrsary toooo youuuuu" Joey began to sing.  "Ha!  I know it's not our anniversary, I'm just joshin you.  But god it should be!  We should celebrate today!  Not just today!  This should be a yearly thing!  No!  A DAILY thing!  Because I know that Dan guy listens to you and talks about your feelings and everything, but can he do stuff like THIS?"  Tears fell down Met's face.
'Tears of joy...I knew it...I got to her...she's totally feeling it.' Joey reasoned, going to hug his wife.  But just as he embraced her waist, she shoved him violently, spinning him out of his chair and sending him crashing to the floor.
"I'm done Joey...I swear to god I'm done this time.  I stuck by you...even after the accident.  But you...you and your crazy ideas...the truth is no.  No, you CAN'T do the things Dan can!  And the one big thing that comes to mind now is THINK RATIONALLY!  You're a liar, a loser, and now you're just plain destructive.  It's OVER!" Met screamed, ripping off her wedding ring and throwing it down into the shadows. 
          She bolted out the open garage door and just ran.  She ran and ran and ran.  She ran all the way downtown.  She knew Dan would understand what a lunatic Joey had been to her.  She knew that he'd understand her situation completely and she knew that Dan would never ever dare do anything this insane to her.  Sure enough, Dan was exactly where he had been where she had left him.  He was still in the same store, on the bottom shelf, third row in, like always, and as always, he was smiling up at her.
'Consistency...now that's a man'  Met thought, laughing as she perched the dummy on her knee.
"I told you not to go back to that house.  I told you that guy was crazy!  You've always been too good for him.  You can do so much better." Met mumbled out of the corner of her mouth in a deep, soothing voice as she clacked on the lever hidden underneath his jacket in the back.
"Oh Dan," Met cooed, "you always know just what to say to make me feel better."