Firemen

What is it with women and their obsession with firemen? I think every woman hankers for a mustached man in blue to appear in her second story window and carry her, ass in air, down to safety. Okay, maybe not every woman, but at least half. Or perhaps just half of the women I know personally - or of the women I have asked, who I already suspected were like me in that way.

I used to talk about my "thing" for firemen around my husband. It never occurred to me that it would bother him. At first it didn't. But then, like everything I do, it eventually became too much.  I think that fireman-lust seemed a safe topic to share with him because he is a sort of honorary fireman in my book. He could be a fireman if he wanted to. He has all the bravery, the super-strength and whatever specific caveman elemental intelligence I've assumed fireman must be anointed with.

The end of my crass-disregard for my husband's peace of mind began a few years ago when my husband was working on a job near our house.  We both heard sirens - me at home, him on the job site. The fire was close by.  I, in my preternatural desire to be close to heroic men and the smell of their sweat wandered, zombie eyed, outside, sniffing my way to the scene. Luck would shine on me that day as the fire was about six houses away from mine.

Meanwhile, my could-a-been-a-fireman husband, naturally concerned for his family's safety, called our home phone. No answer. He tried my cell phone. Nothing. No one answered because no one was there to hear the ringing. Maybe the kids were were home but I wouldn't know because my mind was elsewhere. I spent the next thirty minutes bathing in the manly aura that is firemen at work and at play (because I get the feeling that when the fire is all under control and those obligatory end of the job details are being tended to, firemen are having a pretty good time being adored by the throngs of lustful housewives and envious men who hang around those big red trucks like groupies at a rock show).

Later that night, my husband told a joke that was funny at first but soon (once I took the joke as my own to tell) lost it's innocence and began to just fall flat. He said essentially that he knows better than to try to call me if he hears sirens near by because I won't be home - I will be outside checking out the firemen. When he told this story he was giving tacit approval and showing an understanding and tolerance of my fantasies about other men. When I told the story, especially in front of him, it was just emasculating. And it made me look dumb and insensitive. It took me some time after this little joke was born to stop telling it every single time we were gathered in a group and a fire truck would drive by or show up. Every block party, fourth of July fair, fundraiser or actual emergency for which firemen were present you could find me, stupidly patting my husband on the arm as I told a group of friends about what a total asshole I really was.

Because I am dense when it comes to other people's feelings, my poor husband's irritation was invisible to me. Hell, I was right there with him, checking out women and their cute butts wiggling by in skin tight leggings wasn't I? I was usually the one to tap him on the shoulder and point out someone I thought he would think was gorgeous. He and I had long since learned what was and wasn't acceptable in terms of inviting each other's green eyes monster. Or so I thought.

Recently my husband told me that only a few months into our relationship he figured out that if we were going to stay together then he had better do nothing, nothing, nothing, to make me jealous. He had seen me jealous and he didn't like it. At all. I guess there were two or three really ugly and one might call hysterical outbursts involving slamming down phones on his female friends, swearing, standing outside in the dark when he arrived home and lots of dirty looks and shrieking. It wasn't that my husband thought he was wrong and I was right. No. I really do wish that was true. I do. Because this is embarrassing. He was so turned off by my outbursts and knew that if I continued on in this fashion it would be a "deal breaker" for him. He tells me now that he determined he would be so careful, so protective of this jealousy of mine, that I would never come unglued again. And that is exactly what happened.

So much time has passed since our first, second and third apartments that until my husband recently revived my memory, I had erased from my self-concept utterly these ugly parts of me. I had come to believe that I was a very relaxed, sane, confident and secure wife. Yup. I could ogle women secretly with my husband from the safety of our tinted-windowed mini-van. I could talk about his ex's with fascination and empathy (poor her, she didn't know what she had in him). I even rented movies, on purpose, with Marisa Tomei, whom I knew he was really into, just for his enjoyment.

It seems to me now that my unconscious rule went something like this: If the woman was an abstraction then she was not a threat to me. If the woman was real then I went crazy. Women he would never meet or see again, were fine. Women who actually called our phone or gave him a ride in an old VW bug, they were not at all fine. And always, always, my husband was careful to point out that he was only attracted to women with bodies shaped exactly like mine, who were precisely my age and with the same kind of (name your feature). He was so careful and so convincing that I reshaped my own ideas about myself. I even went so far as to feel sorry for other couples who had problems with jealousy.

And then one day I went on Facebook. And I "friended" my old boyfriend from high school. You know the one. The One. Him. That was pretty cool. It was good to see that he had kids, was married, was seemingly happy and well. It was amending and made me feel like a grown up. Until I noticed that he was a...you guessed it, fireman.

I told my husband in the shower. "You are never going to believe..." He responded, only half jokingly that I might as well just leave now, he was obviously doomed. And for the next couple of weeks as I silently sorted out the emotional upheaval that occurs when we ask Facebook's assistance in the painful dredging up of the wreckage of the past, there were some pointed questions asked. I could feel his real core jealousy. He was worried and it didn't feel at all good. This situation certainly broke my "what is and isn't going to make your spouse jealous" rules. This was a real person from my real past really on Facebook. And he was a fireman.

I have had no revelation beyond the obvious here.  I have done the trite and predictable thing that we all must do.  Maturing and shedding old ideas about what and how we are is not as painful as I thought it would be - that is if I ever even thought I might one day succumb to social conventions or take the advice of someone with more experience than I.  A wise friend said to me not that long ago, "There are some things that are just better left unsaid."