Betrayal at 30,000 Feet

Heading to St. Loo to lunch with Carlos Brito, the Brazilian chief of Anheuser-Busch InBev. Given his notorious parsimony, I'm bringing my own beer and dessert.

On my first leg from SA to D/FW, I fell into a deep sleep. In my dreams my wife Lulu announced that her other, younger husband and she were going to try to have a baby. In my dream it was completely natural that she have another husband and that he be younger. That was somehow okay. But for some reason what infuriated me was the fact that they were planning on having another baby. "But honey," I cried, desperately clutching at her tennis skirt, "we decided years ago that we wouldn't have any more children after Wywy, which is why I got a vasectomy." This part is true. You can read about my humiliation helpful surgery at Salon.com here.

She responded that her younger husband, Jake (I had earlier read an article about Jake Gyllenhaal in the in-flight magazine), wanted children and therefore she was starting a new family ..... with her other husband ..... who is Jarhead. This all seemed completely reasonable to her and horrifyingly real to me in a way only possible in dreams. My anguish was partially cut short by our landing, but even awake I still vaguely felt misused. As I made my way to the Admiral's Club, the airport PA system played the theme to "Love Story", only adding to my dark mood with every doleful piano note. Had I read an article about William Shatner or Wilford Brimley in American Way, I no doubt would've been spared this strife. Damn the luck. But Jake Gyllenhaal? How could she, I thought.

Of course, she hadn't. It was only a dream. But the betrayal stubbornly stuck in my mind. Dreams are storied manifestations of actual deep-seated feelings, right? If my active mind codgered up a dream of betrayal by my rib, naturally there must be some truth in the fact that at some subconscious level, I feel betrayed, however unlikely it is that Lulu is actually secretly practicing bigamy and breeding with Jake Gyllenhaal. I actually consider calling her and confronting her with this betrayal (I imagine talking overly-heated into the phone, "Jake Gyllenhaal is just as self-absorbed as you'd expect a 29 year-old millionaire actor to be! Don't let those puppy eyes fool you, he's a narcissistic pox-ridden smoothie drinking pencil-dick -- is that how you want your unborn child to turn out!?"), before I luckily stopped myself before I made a complete psychotic ass of myself in front of the only woman who has taken the time to actually love me.

I then promptly cast aside thoughts of that genuine love and fantasized about committing bigamy with Miranda Lambert, also featured in the magazine, but then discarded that notion on the grounds that she's a self-described gun lover and most of her songs are about violent retribution for perceived indiscretions.

There was another feature article on Susan Sarandon, who is 63, which actually worked out okay in my fantasy. I've always preferred older women -- they seem like they'd be so appreciative -- in a doting way -- to rate the attentions of such a young buck like myself. She's quite attractive, and probably completely content at her age with 78 seconds of sex a night.  And we could adopt a child from Africa, so that Lulu and Jake's child would have a multicultural friend in the house. And she likes ping pong, my favorite sport. But her charity work and do-goodery would get in the way of my imagined life of Caesar-style pagan revelry -- after all, I'm a bigamist and this is my fantasy.  Said fantasy is interrupted by the call to board my flight -- back to reality -- and the return of a vague sense that I've been wronged by my wife somehow.

What, exactly, is going on here, I wonder?

-Was it the vasectomy, the procedure Lulu insisted I undertake even though it stole my manhood, at the root of this latent resentment? That's hard to believe, since I got it ten years ago, and any loss of manhood is way over-compensated by the hypothetical ability to spread my seed from here to eternity without the least fear of pregnancies and requisite babies.

-Am I jealous of all the men who ogle at her long tan legs on the tennis court, at the mall, in restaurants, and at church for God's sake?  Hardly.  They're all older and fatter than I am, mostly. I doubt any of them can go 60 seconds without passing out. And the younger thinner ones tend to lack, what's the phrase? Self-awareness, or an ability to self-deprecate, or the self-confidence that comes with age, or a sense of humor, or an ability to connect intellectually with women, or…….the list could go on and on and on. In fairness they do have an intense knowledge of sports, particularly professional golf, which I entirely lack (notwithstanding my advice to Tiger). And I don't see myself ever, ever rectifying this weakness. Susan Sarandon doesn't give a fig about golf.

-Am I starting to feel my age, when I flop down gasping for breath and red-faced in mid-apoplexy after our lovemaking, starkly aware that Jake Effing Gyllenhaal could probably go longer than 78 seconds?  Naw.  Besides, who wants to go longer than 78 seconds when there's a new episode of "Modern Family" on the tube?

Look, I tell myself, only Freud would know, and he's dead. So just get over it and concentrate on coming up with interesting and engaging questions to ask Carlos Brito, the most powerful man in the global beer industry. Focus, Harry, focus. I will first ask him what plans he has for the Corona brand in the US should he be able to acquire………. Hey, anybody know how to get in touch with Sarandon's agent?