An excerpt from our issue Nonsense Goes To Space!

It all started on a Tuesday evening much like any other. Robert came home from work around 7 PM and I had the roast ready by 7:30. The kids ate dinner with us at the table, I chewed four Xanax, and we adjourned to our rooms come bedtime.

Robert and I were both reading on our own sides of the California King. He nudged his glasses down his greasy nose and looked at me. “Tonight?” he asked, a hint of longing in his voice.

My palms were sweating. I tried to hold my Kindle firmly in my hands, but it began to slip. Christ. “Um…um…” I responded. I reached into my bedside drawer and grabbed another handful of Xanax which I proceed to swallow with a swig of Diet Coke. “Too tired. Sorry, honey.” He sighed deeply and turned over on his side.

“You know what?” he said, “We should go to couple’s counselling. I want sex, Margaret. Good sex. I’m a horny fifty-year-old man. I can keep it up, honey, trust me. Jill and Rick have been seeing a counselor for three months now, and apparently their sex life is spicy. Like Indian food spicy. Like hot curry on hot rice with hot sauce spicy. Real fucking spicy.” He gave a me a look that said, “I know I’ve never had Indian food in my life, but I think it might be spicy, so I’ll just use this analogy in the hopes you’ll let me fail to find your clitoris but convince me that I’ve pleasured you nonetheless.”

The counselor’s office was tightly-packed with sweaty couples – some anxiously holding hands, some, like us, with our legs crossed, sitting on opposite ends of the room, staring at one another, not blinking. The doctor called out our names. Our counselor, Virginia, took us into the room with a suave swish of the hand.

“So what seems to be the problem here, Mr. and Mrs. Jackson?”

“I wanna bust a nut, Virginia. REAL BAD.”

“I see.” She scribbled something into her tiny notebook. “I think I have just the trick.” She paid no attention to my nervous mutterings. She reached into an ancient filing cabinet, which sounded definitively hollow except for the distinct rattling of a DVD case – one of the plastic ones that have those pesky clasps at the top. “Do you see this?” she asked.

“Well, I’ll say,” Robert responded. “It looks like a well-aged, 1993 DVD set of Star Trek: The Next Generation starring the illustrious Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard.”

“Precisely,” she retorted. “Throw this bad boy on the old bedroom TV, get nakey, and let the magic of 1990’s science fiction run through your loins like lava.” She gave it a toss to Robert, who fumbled off the couch, perspiring and heaving, and caught it in his mouth like a dog catching a slice of ham.

That night, we decided to try Virginia’s method. We popped the first DVD into the old Toshiba at the foot of our bed. We stripped ourselves of clothing, save for Robert’s nipple pasties. They came in a daily box set. We arranged our bodies side by side, our arms beside us. I remember feeling like a corpse. It felt good.

I leaned up a little bit from my supine form to turn the TV on with the clicker. As I leaned back, I could hear the words in those sexual, dulcet tones:

Space: the final frontier.

I felt something stirring deep in my lady-bits.

That night, we had sex for fourteen consecutive hours, taking breaks only to switch the DVDs. Our bodies were perpetually intertwined in what I can only call a cosmic ball of ecstasy. I pictured Captain Picard whisking me away, boldly going where no husband has gone before…

We spent a whole week like this. Every night after we tucked the kids into bed, we would get freaky to the adventures of the Starfleet crew. It was bliss. We had to go to Costco to buy a 500 pack of condoms, and a 10-gallon tub of lube. The cashier was disgusted by us. We consummated our love in the greeting card aisle.

It was wonderful until things went sour one night when Robert and I were making the sex. We were on season 5, episode 25 – “The Inner Light.” Captain Jean-Luc Picard, the gorgeous, gorgeous Starfleet captain, was trapped in a delusion, stuck in a foreign village on the distant and unfamiliar planet of Kataan. Something about Patrick Stewart’s Transatlantic accent and glistening bald head aroused me more intensely than my husband ever could. His gleaming orb awakened something deep within me that I could not alleviate. I was caught in a frenzy of ecstasy when I screamed, “Let me lick your head, Captain!” Robert stopped.

“What the hell did you just call me?”

“Captain? Um. Uh. Robert?”

“I think you just called me Captain.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“Are you…” he began to tear up. “Are you fantasizing about Captain Picard when you make the sex to me?”

I shook my head. “No, honey. No, I’m not, I swear.”

“You are!” he screamed. He ran out of the room, through the living room, and into the street. “My wife is cheating on me with the captain of Enterprise NCC-1701-D! I knew you never loved me! Is this,” he paused deeply, breathing in haphazardly, “is this why you insisted on shaving my head while I slept? Is this why you bought me all those red and black mesh long-sleeve shirts? Is this who you want me to become?” His tears fell in pools around his feet. He was still naked.

“Come to your senses, honey! Please come back inside!”

“No! I’ve had enough of this!” He launched his body onto the ground and began rolling around, muttering “The final frontier… the final frontier… the final frontier.”

I dropped to the ground to comfort him. He writhed in pain.

“No more, Margaret, no more. I have no more sex left in my body. Make it end.”

I wept with him in my arms, but they were not sad tears. Oh no, not sad. I rubbed his noggin gently and prepared myself for the task at hand. I removed the Panasonic Pro-Curve Wet/Dry Battery Operated Black Travel Shaver from my blouse’s back pocket. With each touch of the shaver I punched another ray of light through the cave-in that is our marriage. There, he was fixed now. Robert was right. I never loved him. I could only hope from now on that was I could live with this delusion. In the morning, I would be introducing my children to their new father. The transformation was completed.