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I'm Obsessed With My Wife.
BY NICOLE STEINBERG
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Her lips are a very dark pink. The homeless are especially nice to my wife. She gives money to every beggar she sees, smiles at each God bless you, child. She doesn't have to be naked to get a man's attention. All of Brooklyn loves her. I read
the funny pages to her every morning, then read the rest of the paper myself. We hold our mugs with outstretched pinkies. I saw an ad for the Miss Brooklyn beauty pageant last week and thought, My wife would be perfect for that! Still half-naked, I ran to the phone and registered her. For God's
sake, she said, blushing like a winsome goddess. Her cheeks were as red as her naked pink ass after her "Bad Wife" spankings. (Sometimes nightlife is scarce in Brooklyn.)
I would never win Miss Brooklynite, she said. Miss Brooklyn, I corrected her. Thank God for her low self-esteem; with minor cajoling, my wife agreed. After I read the sports section, we bought a pink dress. The fabric was flimsy; it made her look naked.
One contestant arrived naked from the waist up. Not unusual for Brooklyn, though the pageant was held in Manhattan. My spouse pinked me in the arm with a fingernail, anxious. God forbid we do something I wanted to do. Read my lips, said my wife.
I want to leave, said my wife. Please—we'll go home, you'll read and I'll lie naked on the couch. She cried as we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, bawling ungodly noises. Her tears stained her dress a pretty dark pink.
Have I told you how I met my wife? Two years before Brooklyn; I was halfway through Naked Lunch. She'd never heard of it. God, I said, don't you read? No, she said. Her cheeks went pink.
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