It's hard to keep secrets from a spouse. Marriage, especially with young children, involves so much exhausted time together that sooner or later one's guard slips, and anything rattling around in the back of your mind will slip out.
Such a slip happened recently. The Wife confessed to harboring an attraction to...
wait for it...
Tucker Carlson.
(shudder)
so cold, so very cold...
I'm an adult. I've had relationships before. I know that eyes wander, that shiny objects crossing your field of vision will briefly register, but Tucker Carlson?
Trying to control the damage, she explained that she likes him more since he lost the bowtie (so how long has this been going on, anyway?...), and that the attraction is entirely physical. She ignores what he actually says. He's just a piece of man-candy, a Republican stud-horse roaming the plains of basic cable, desperately in search of a haircut.
I projectile-vomit just thinking about it.
She has confessed crushes before, but none of them was anywhere near so objectionable. In childhood, she admits, there was a crush on Randolph Mantooth, from Emergency. (My answer to that would be Elizabeth Montgomery, from Bewitched.) Harrison Ford, Keifer Sutherland, and Jake Gyllenhaal have all elicited her approval, but none of those bothered me, either. And she tolerates my crushes on Chris Jansing, Winona Ryder, and Maggie Gyllenhaal, so that's cool. (We have to figure out a way to sneak into a Gyllenhaal family reunion. Hmm.)
(We just heard that this season, Tucker will be on Dancing With the Stars. TW says she will watch through her fingers. I'm planning to spend lots of time in other rooms.)
Ever the WASP, my first instinct is just to sit in silent judgment of her, letting the daggers from my eyes and the icicles from my word balloons (“if you like that sort of thing”) do a number on her self-esteem. But I don't want to be divorced, and it's hard to maintain that kind of distance when a five-year-old and a two-year-old are running around.
Clearly, a retaliatory crush is in order. But on whom? The Wife doesn't care about politics, so I can't just watch Fox News, pick some blonde plutocrat, and elicit the same reaction. (“Honey, have you ever noticed how cute Monica Crowley is when she talks about Nixon?” Nope. Can't do it.) Lindsay Lohan or Nicky Hilton would only elicit mild disappointment, rather than the intestinal convulsions that are so clearly called for. Angelina Jolie is simply assumed. No, I need one that would strike her as really gross.
Cher would work, except I'm heterosexual. Courtney Love would gross her out, but she'd gross me out, too. No, I need someone really disturbing, someone who would generate the “I don't know you at all” response to mirror my own.
Hmm.
Martha Stewart? No. Katie Couric? Huh-uh. Hillary Clinton? Getting warmer, but no.
Wait, I've got it!
Jessica Simpson.
The divorced/virgin, Christian/slut, celebrity-for-no-particular-reason herself. That'll work. And I hear she's available!
Revenge shall be mine...
