3. Lost Her to Facebook

Julian sat on the battered old couch in their fucking old house (which they adored, but seemed to be coping always with the leak of the week) and looked with fond regard at the voluptuous form of his wife, Dana. She was sitting on the cattycornered couch, not quite as decrepit. She had her laptop open and her blouse undone and that magnificent bosom was going to waste as she ranted away on Facebook. Let’s ponder her fullness. She is a professor at the same little community college. Unlike Julian, Dana is beloved by her peers. She’s the go-to person in a crisis. Her competence is beyond question, her ethics beyond reproach. Even her name is heroic and womanly: Dana Josephina La Famina. She uses the whole name, rather than his surname, with pride in her heritage. It is a name that he can whisper into her ear and it turns the both of them on. She’s a goddess. She marches right on. She’s a bit forceful and manic in the mornings. She’s easy to get along with and to get to know. She has a lot of friends. She has a lot of Facebook Friends. She’s very focused on details, and right now, she’s furiously typing away at her taskforce workgroup on Facebook.

So Julian pondered for a moment. He opened his own laptop and thought that he might try to flirt with his wife by messaging her. Instead, he turned his attention to resurrecting his blogging life, the one that his Dean and colleagues had disapproved of. He’d already set up a new site and taken a pseudonym. No more the exposed professor. As “André Amos” (invert Amos and Andy, make the Christian name French), he now took his vitriol and wisdom underground. He had started to post at school, but…