This Is What Happens When You Watch Two People Making Love in A Minivan
The stars align
“You’ll never guess what I saw today while walking Lucy at the park. It was amazing!” I say this to my husband as I hand him two NyQuil’s while also trying to stay as physically far away from him as possible.
Jamie came down with a terrible bug, and honestly, I can’t afford to get sick right now, so playing nurse (not the fun, sexy kind) has been challenging. Thank God for Lysol wipes and the fact that we have a spare room where I can sleep so I don’t have to breathe in the contaminated air exiting his sickly lungs.
I know, I know, I sound so cold and callous. As a punishment for abandoning my husband in his time of need, a 90-pound German Shepherd has clambered atop me these past two nights and humps my head because the spare room is her room, and she is not good at sharing.
Win some, lose some.
It occurs to me that I probably shouldn’t be telling Jamie the story I am about to tell him because he is far too sick to appreciate it. He’s running a fever, his eyesight is going all wonky, he can’t stop hacking, and there is a nonstop mucus stream draining from his left nostril.
I soldier on.
The great thing about walking Lucy in the park is that it’s expansive. She’s a bad dog because she gets really weird and extra around other dogs.
Like real extra, man.
As soon as my pup hears the pitter-patter of a four-legged friend, she starts jumping wildly in the air — no small feat for such a monstrous beast — and does this odd moaning/howling thing that freaks out fellow dog walkers.
I’ve tried to train this out of her, but it’s a non-starter. Much like my love for Bruce Willis and penchant for self-loathing, Lucy’s reaction to other dogs is woven into the deep fibres of her being.
This is why the park works well for us. We are free to venture off the beaten path and move freely into the green (dead-yellow right now) pastures of the grassy fields beyond.
We are not troubled by other dogs in the grassy area because most dogs are well-trained and do not need to be removed from polite society. But that’s why Lucy is my soul dog — folks like us just don’t fit the haut monde mould.
Example: lately, I’ve been talking to myself more than ever. Of course, I don’t want people to think I’m talking to myself, so I pose the philosophical questions I can’t contain in confines of my brain to my dog.
“Oh Lucy,” I shout because I’m also listening to an audiobook while I walk and need to speak over the literal voices in my head. “What if I hate the overly cheerful cashier at the grocery store because I use false positivity as a mask, and so really, I only hate the cashier because she reminds me of everything I hate in myself?!”
Lucy looks up at me with her dopey dog smile, and I smile back. Except it’s a genuine smile, so I feel good about it.
“Oh, Lucy, I feel like life has been a bit of a crapshoot lately. Getting laid off from work. I feel like I’m at a standstill with the book. Even the houseplants are looking too droopy these days.”
Lucy doesn’t look at me and smile this time. Instead, she locates a slick of goose shit and proceeds to roll all over it.
Ahhhh, bask in the glory of the daily grind, I imagine her saying.
“You’re right, doggo! This feeling of stagnancy must mean I’m on the precipice of something big. Something that will jolt me into action!”
It’s funny how your dog rolling in goose shit by the side of a manmade pond can provide such revelations. This is why I counsel everyone to talk to themselves at least once daily.
Then, a few minutes later, it happens. The BIG THING I’d been waiting for.
(By this point in my tale, Jamie is consistently nodding off and then forcefully waking up as his head falls while his snostril still oozes stream-like and steady.)
As we make our way down a hilly path, a minivan is parked in an out-of-the-way parking lot. Lucy and I are roughly 20 feet away from the van. I see some movement in the middle row of seats and think that some exhausted mother must have abandoned her children in the vehicle while she went to get some shuteye in the nearby rock garden.
But no, what’s this?
Two tiny round seashell faces look out of the windshield toward me — their mouths shaped into alarmed O’s.
The three of us stare at each other for what seems like minutes.
Hours maybe.
Time is no longer relevant.
Moons cross horizons, stars extinguish in supernovae glory, millions of humans on Planet Earth pause for a fraction of a second and think about the connection between love and the universe. My dog does that weird howling moan thing again.
We four — the van-goers, Lucy, and me — are now one.
Then the woman, who is wearing a super cute bra with little kissy lips all over it (I am literally that close to the van, I can make out the pattern on her bra) mouths the words, “Oh fuck!” and dive bombs flat across the seat so I can only see her flustered partner.
It occurs to me that I am the creep in this situation.
These guys had the decency to find a (somewhat) discreet location to bone, and here I am, wandering up on them and staring them down, thinking about the beauty of the universe and shit while they’re just trying to get off.
“Oh Lucy, just keep walking! Stop howling, please. You’re making things worse. Don’t. Make Eye. Contact.”
Lucy looks up at me and smiles while moaning softly.
“So yeah,” I say to my snottastic hubs. “That’s how I came across two people making passionate love in a minivan today.”
“Nice,” Jamie says with as much enthusiasm as he can muster.
And it was nice.
So keep your eyes wide and hearts open, dear readers. You never know when the universe may bestow the gift of two people making love in a minivan to you.