"Monica!" Chandler finally knocked on their bedroom door. "Come on, let me in."
She didn't respond, just sitting sadly on the bed.
He knocked again. "Please be reasonable! I'm your husband."
"Yeah, my incredibly gay husband!" Why couldn't he just leave her alone tonight and sleep in the guest room, like any other time they had a fight?
"I'm not gay!" He sounded exasperated. "Look, I thought we were trying to make a baby! You said this was your last day of ovulation this month. Don't you still want a baby?"
Of course she did! But not like this. Having a baby would only complicate their divorce. Yes, Ross, Carol, Susan, and Ben had a great untraditional family now, but Monica doubted that she and Chandler could be as successful, with him being so freakishly closeted.
"Mon!" he whined.
She was becoming fed up. "I don't want you to touch me anymore! You know what? All those times you got jealous over Richard, it was just to distract me from the fact that I should be jealous about Joey."
"That's not true! Come on, Monica, why'd you marry me if I'm supposedly gay?"
"Apparently I had the same blind spot that Ross had with Carol."
"Will you listen to me? I'm not Carol. I'm not my dad. How do I get through to you? How--"
"Shut up!" she screamed again. Getting up from the bed, she furiously unlocked the door and yanked it open. "Fine, you wanna prove you're not gay?"
"Yes! Just tell me how."
"Oh, I'll tell you, all right!" Some of her old competitive streak was returning, and she issued the sudden threat, "We're having a threesome with Joey."
"What?!"
"You heard me. I'm gonna invite Joey to come join us, and then we'll all see whose name you moan."
"Are you nuts?"
She simply went to her mirror and started to clean up the traces of tears on her face. "I won't even tell him about the tape, so it'll be a nice little surprise."
"Monica!" He went to grab her shoulders.
She shook him off. "I said don't touch me! Look, Chandler, I can divorce you and get on with my life just fine..."
"Hey!" He was offended that she could talk so lightly about divorcing him.
She dismissed his outburst. "I can find some new guy to love, or even just forget about that and get a sperm donor so that I can have a baby already. But you--you can't do this to another woman, or to yourself. Somebody's got to fix you before you sink any deeper into this delusion of yours."
"And a threesome is how you fix me?" His voice dripped of sarcasm.
She looked vindictive. "I bet you won't come up with excuses so easy if you actually found yourself in bed with Joey, and the blood suddenly left your brain!"
He sputtered at the mental image. "W-we're not having a threesome!"
"Why, are you scared?!" she taunted him.
"No! Nothing would happen except me throwing Joey out of the bed. He, he wouldn't agree to a threesome anyway."
"Oh really?"
"Yes, really! Unlike *some people*, he has respect for our marriage vows!"
"Don't be so sure! Joey's had threesomes before, and he's wanted me for years, ever since he first moved in with you and got naked in my living room. I mean, do you remember how he asked me to sleep with him, in exchange for keeping our secret? And you told me yourself that Joey asked you what sex with me was like, and you've seen him still giving me the eyes even after you and I got married."
"So, so you're gonna have sex with him?!" Chandler stared at her wide-eyed. "To get revenge on me?"
"No! I just have to make him think that I'll have sex with him! I'll tell him that you and I have agreed to do one last wild, crazy thing before we have a baby: a threesome with him! Can you imagine what he'd be like if he got *permission* from you? When Joey tries to do it with me, I'll say that first he has turn me on by kissing you--with tongue--for one whole minute!"
"What?!"
"Oh, he'll have you moaning and begging in half that time!"
"He will not! He--What makes you even think I am gonna sit by and cooperate with this?"
"Because if you don't, I am gonna divorce you so fast, and tell every stranger who'll listen just how gay and in denial you are! Once that gossip spreads through the city, there won't be any unsuspecting women left for you to fool!" She scoffed. "Who knows? Maybe it'll even force you to deal with your feelings for Joey."
"I don't have feelings--!"
"You have the Hoover Dam of repressed feelings for Joey, ready to burst through at any moment! Your 'Joey' sex moans are just the first cracks in the dam!"
"Arggh!" He felt like pulling out his hair and kicking something.
"So what's it gonna be?" she demanded. "Are you gonna do the threesome, or should I just divorce you and let you work this out with a shrink for God knows how many years?"
"There's nothing *to* work out, except for your paranoid jealousy!"
"If you're so sure of yourself, Chandler, why don't you put your money where your mouth is? Just go along with the threesome and let Joey kiss you. If I'm right, you'll love it and maybe even have a major emotional breakthrough. If I'm wrong--like that'll happen!--I'll go see a doctor, a shrink, a marriage counselor, whatever you think I need."
"And the threesome?!"
She shrugged. "I'm only asking Joey to kiss you, not do you! It's me he'll be after, and I can just tell him 'Sorry, I don't think I can do this after all.' I'm too nervous or I'm not really that wild."
Chandler couldn't believe that she could gloss over the threesome so casually, as if it were a minor point. "That's a fine way to treat our friend, whom you've invited over for sex!"
She rolled her eyes and mocked him. "Why do you care? Do you *love* him?"
"No!" He became defensive again.
"Joey will be fine! It's not like he can't go out and put together another threesome for himself. It's not like I'm Rachel and he's got a crush on me."
"You're the one who said he's wanted you for years."
"Yeah, but he flirts with me like he flirts with Phoebe. Or like he flirted with Rachel before he got all emotionally involved."
Chandler folded his arms stubbornly. "It's still a rotten plan, and I'm not gonna play along!"
"Fine! Then I guess we'll do it the hard way. I'll call Ross and get the number of his divorce lawyer."
"Mon!" How had their fight escalated this far? "Why are you throwing away our marriage so quickly? Don't you love me?"
She pointed at him. "Hey, my love for you is not in doubt, Mister! It's your love and your sexuality that have been misrepresented." She started dialing.
"Mon!" he grabbed the phone from her.
"Don't touch me!" she shouted, dropping the phone on his foot. "God, why can't you do something healthy, like go across the hall and hump Joey?"
At least the phone was hung up before she said that. Chandler sat on their bed, wincing and cradling his foot. "You have a sick, sick brain!"
"If you love Joey, it's not sick. Who knows, maybe he even wants you back? It's not like you guys have never been in compromising positions before."
"We never had sex!"
"But you have kissed!"
"Once, at New Year's! He caught me off guard!"
"Yes, and guess who has a reprint of the photo, in his private stash under his gym bag, in the back of closet!"
"You've been snooping! You--" He realized belatedly that he should stop, because why should he hide that photo, or have a secret stash at all?
"Suddenly you run out of excuses, huh? Phoebe and Rachel found that stash years ago, and they told me all about the old letters from your gay dad, the embarrassing family pictures, and the engraved 'to my best bud' bracelet. All I did was find the secret compartment to your jewelry box!"
Chandler wouldn't look at her, nor answer, and he got very quiet.
Was that all it took to silence him? The mention of that photo? Why? All their friends knew about that New Year's kiss, and Ross's photo of it, just like they all knew about the gold bracelet that Joey once bought for Chandler. Why should the mention of these harmless relics upset Chandler this much?
When he first began moaning Joey's name, and she believed he was deliberately lying to her, Monica had ransacked his stash hoping to find an incriminating diary, or photos of Joey naked, but there was nothing definitely sexual nor recent in the embarrassing stash, so she had resorted to the tape recorder for her proof.
Apparently, though, the bracelet and the photo *were* damning proof in Chandler's eyes. Clearly, these keepsakes haunted him deeply, to the point where he couldn't acknowledge them or even throw them away after all these years.
"You love him," she repeated quietly, watching his face.
He still wouldn't answer, completely withdrawn.
She came closer and spoke gently, "If you're scared Joey will reject you, if that's what's been holding you back--"
"Stop it, stop it!" he finally responded. "It doesn't mean anything! Those--those were just things that I wanted to forget, and I have forgotten, and I'm not like that."
"Chandler!"
He was breaking down. "If you were any kind of wife, you'd help me forget, not drag it all up!"
"I'm not dragging it up! You're doing it yourself. The tape says 'Joey'."
"It doesn't!" He desperately ran out of the room and into the guest room. By the time he remembered that the door had no lock, it was too late to run for the bathroom, so he retreated to the far side of the bed and curled into a ball on the floor.
Monica came in and found him there sobbing. "Chandler," she whispered.
"He doesn't love me," he whimpered, hiding his face. "He doesn't-- All those girls and he never once..."
She sighed and couldn't help wanting to comfort him. She did still love him, after all. "Maybe, maybe he didn't know what you wanted. You should've told him."
"I couldn't, I--" Chandler swallowed and moaned a little.
"Then tell him now. Ask him how he feels."
"No," Chandler choked miserably. "No, he's straight."
Monica persisted. "Maybe not completely. He could be bisexual, you know?"
Chandler shook his head. If Joey were bi, why wouldn't he be as much of a slut with guys as he was with women?
"You know, um, while you were in Tulsa, Joey used to come by at night to steal your pillow from the bed. I woke up once while he was taking it and nearly screamed, thinking he was a burglar or a rapist. But then I recognized him, and saw him sniff the pillow for your scent, before he sneaked out with it. I thought it was child-like, the way he missed you. But maybe I was wrong about that, like I was wrong about marrying you."
Chandler didn't know if he wanted to believe her or not.
"We, um, we can still do that threesome thing, you know? Not to prove you're gay, but to test his feelings. I mean, if he agrees to it and looks at you... differently, I guess--"
Chandler interrupted discouragingly. "We talked about a threesome before."
"You did?"
He nodded. "Chloe, that girl from the Xerox place, invited us both to a nightclub. We talked about what we'd do if she wasn't kidding about a threesome. Joey assumed we'd both do Chloe, and we discussed rules so that we wouldn't see or touch each other."
"Oh," she frowned. "Did you ever go through with it?"
"No. That was the night she went home with Ross."
"Well, how do you know Joey wasn't just trying to put you at ease? How do you know he wasn't just waiting to see how you'd respond? I mean, did you ever talk about it again?"
Chandler shook his head.
"Then you don't know. Let's, let's just try the threesome. I'll ask him to kiss you, and you can tell if he likes it or not. Maybe he'll moan too." She shrugged and whispered, "Even if he doesn't want you back, we can tell him that you just got excited in the heat of the moment and still end the threesome. No harm done, and you can go back to being friends."
Chandler slowly turned and looked at her.
She didn't respond, just sitting sadly on the bed.
He knocked again. "Please be reasonable! I'm your husband."
"Yeah, my incredibly gay husband!" Why couldn't he just leave her alone tonight and sleep in the guest room, like any other time they had a fight?
"I'm not gay!" He sounded exasperated. "Look, I thought we were trying to make a baby! You said this was your last day of ovulation this month. Don't you still want a baby?"
Of course she did! But not like this. Having a baby would only complicate their divorce. Yes, Ross, Carol, Susan, and Ben had a great untraditional family now, but Monica doubted that she and Chandler could be as successful, with him being so freakishly closeted.
"Mon!" he whined.
She was becoming fed up. "I don't want you to touch me anymore! You know what? All those times you got jealous over Richard, it was just to distract me from the fact that I should be jealous about Joey."
"That's not true! Come on, Monica, why'd you marry me if I'm supposedly gay?"
"Apparently I had the same blind spot that Ross had with Carol."
"Will you listen to me? I'm not Carol. I'm not my dad. How do I get through to you? How--"
"Shut up!" she screamed again. Getting up from the bed, she furiously unlocked the door and yanked it open. "Fine, you wanna prove you're not gay?"
"Yes! Just tell me how."
"Oh, I'll tell you, all right!" Some of her old competitive streak was returning, and she issued the sudden threat, "We're having a threesome with Joey."
"What?!"
"You heard me. I'm gonna invite Joey to come join us, and then we'll all see whose name you moan."
"Are you nuts?"
She simply went to her mirror and started to clean up the traces of tears on her face. "I won't even tell him about the tape, so it'll be a nice little surprise."
"Monica!" He went to grab her shoulders.
She shook him off. "I said don't touch me! Look, Chandler, I can divorce you and get on with my life just fine..."
"Hey!" He was offended that she could talk so lightly about divorcing him.
She dismissed his outburst. "I can find some new guy to love, or even just forget about that and get a sperm donor so that I can have a baby already. But you--you can't do this to another woman, or to yourself. Somebody's got to fix you before you sink any deeper into this delusion of yours."
"And a threesome is how you fix me?" His voice dripped of sarcasm.
She looked vindictive. "I bet you won't come up with excuses so easy if you actually found yourself in bed with Joey, and the blood suddenly left your brain!"
He sputtered at the mental image. "W-we're not having a threesome!"
"Why, are you scared?!" she taunted him.
"No! Nothing would happen except me throwing Joey out of the bed. He, he wouldn't agree to a threesome anyway."
"Oh really?"
"Yes, really! Unlike *some people*, he has respect for our marriage vows!"
"Don't be so sure! Joey's had threesomes before, and he's wanted me for years, ever since he first moved in with you and got naked in my living room. I mean, do you remember how he asked me to sleep with him, in exchange for keeping our secret? And you told me yourself that Joey asked you what sex with me was like, and you've seen him still giving me the eyes even after you and I got married."
"So, so you're gonna have sex with him?!" Chandler stared at her wide-eyed. "To get revenge on me?"
"No! I just have to make him think that I'll have sex with him! I'll tell him that you and I have agreed to do one last wild, crazy thing before we have a baby: a threesome with him! Can you imagine what he'd be like if he got *permission* from you? When Joey tries to do it with me, I'll say that first he has turn me on by kissing you--with tongue--for one whole minute!"
"What?!"
"Oh, he'll have you moaning and begging in half that time!"
"He will not! He--What makes you even think I am gonna sit by and cooperate with this?"
"Because if you don't, I am gonna divorce you so fast, and tell every stranger who'll listen just how gay and in denial you are! Once that gossip spreads through the city, there won't be any unsuspecting women left for you to fool!" She scoffed. "Who knows? Maybe it'll even force you to deal with your feelings for Joey."
"I don't have feelings--!"
"You have the Hoover Dam of repressed feelings for Joey, ready to burst through at any moment! Your 'Joey' sex moans are just the first cracks in the dam!"
"Arggh!" He felt like pulling out his hair and kicking something.
"So what's it gonna be?" she demanded. "Are you gonna do the threesome, or should I just divorce you and let you work this out with a shrink for God knows how many years?"
"There's nothing *to* work out, except for your paranoid jealousy!"
"If you're so sure of yourself, Chandler, why don't you put your money where your mouth is? Just go along with the threesome and let Joey kiss you. If I'm right, you'll love it and maybe even have a major emotional breakthrough. If I'm wrong--like that'll happen!--I'll go see a doctor, a shrink, a marriage counselor, whatever you think I need."
"And the threesome?!"
She shrugged. "I'm only asking Joey to kiss you, not do you! It's me he'll be after, and I can just tell him 'Sorry, I don't think I can do this after all.' I'm too nervous or I'm not really that wild."
Chandler couldn't believe that she could gloss over the threesome so casually, as if it were a minor point. "That's a fine way to treat our friend, whom you've invited over for sex!"
She rolled her eyes and mocked him. "Why do you care? Do you *love* him?"
"No!" He became defensive again.
"Joey will be fine! It's not like he can't go out and put together another threesome for himself. It's not like I'm Rachel and he's got a crush on me."
"You're the one who said he's wanted you for years."
"Yeah, but he flirts with me like he flirts with Phoebe. Or like he flirted with Rachel before he got all emotionally involved."
Chandler folded his arms stubbornly. "It's still a rotten plan, and I'm not gonna play along!"
"Fine! Then I guess we'll do it the hard way. I'll call Ross and get the number of his divorce lawyer."
"Mon!" How had their fight escalated this far? "Why are you throwing away our marriage so quickly? Don't you love me?"
She pointed at him. "Hey, my love for you is not in doubt, Mister! It's your love and your sexuality that have been misrepresented." She started dialing.
"Mon!" he grabbed the phone from her.
"Don't touch me!" she shouted, dropping the phone on his foot. "God, why can't you do something healthy, like go across the hall and hump Joey?"
At least the phone was hung up before she said that. Chandler sat on their bed, wincing and cradling his foot. "You have a sick, sick brain!"
"If you love Joey, it's not sick. Who knows, maybe he even wants you back? It's not like you guys have never been in compromising positions before."
"We never had sex!"
"But you have kissed!"
"Once, at New Year's! He caught me off guard!"
"Yes, and guess who has a reprint of the photo, in his private stash under his gym bag, in the back of closet!"
"You've been snooping! You--" He realized belatedly that he should stop, because why should he hide that photo, or have a secret stash at all?
"Suddenly you run out of excuses, huh? Phoebe and Rachel found that stash years ago, and they told me all about the old letters from your gay dad, the embarrassing family pictures, and the engraved 'to my best bud' bracelet. All I did was find the secret compartment to your jewelry box!"
Chandler wouldn't look at her, nor answer, and he got very quiet.
Was that all it took to silence him? The mention of that photo? Why? All their friends knew about that New Year's kiss, and Ross's photo of it, just like they all knew about the gold bracelet that Joey once bought for Chandler. Why should the mention of these harmless relics upset Chandler this much?
When he first began moaning Joey's name, and she believed he was deliberately lying to her, Monica had ransacked his stash hoping to find an incriminating diary, or photos of Joey naked, but there was nothing definitely sexual nor recent in the embarrassing stash, so she had resorted to the tape recorder for her proof.
Apparently, though, the bracelet and the photo *were* damning proof in Chandler's eyes. Clearly, these keepsakes haunted him deeply, to the point where he couldn't acknowledge them or even throw them away after all these years.
"You love him," she repeated quietly, watching his face.
He still wouldn't answer, completely withdrawn.
She came closer and spoke gently, "If you're scared Joey will reject you, if that's what's been holding you back--"
"Stop it, stop it!" he finally responded. "It doesn't mean anything! Those--those were just things that I wanted to forget, and I have forgotten, and I'm not like that."
"Chandler!"
He was breaking down. "If you were any kind of wife, you'd help me forget, not drag it all up!"
"I'm not dragging it up! You're doing it yourself. The tape says 'Joey'."
"It doesn't!" He desperately ran out of the room and into the guest room. By the time he remembered that the door had no lock, it was too late to run for the bathroom, so he retreated to the far side of the bed and curled into a ball on the floor.
Monica came in and found him there sobbing. "Chandler," she whispered.
"He doesn't love me," he whimpered, hiding his face. "He doesn't-- All those girls and he never once..."
She sighed and couldn't help wanting to comfort him. She did still love him, after all. "Maybe, maybe he didn't know what you wanted. You should've told him."
"I couldn't, I--" Chandler swallowed and moaned a little.
"Then tell him now. Ask him how he feels."
"No," Chandler choked miserably. "No, he's straight."
Monica persisted. "Maybe not completely. He could be bisexual, you know?"
Chandler shook his head. If Joey were bi, why wouldn't he be as much of a slut with guys as he was with women?
"You know, um, while you were in Tulsa, Joey used to come by at night to steal your pillow from the bed. I woke up once while he was taking it and nearly screamed, thinking he was a burglar or a rapist. But then I recognized him, and saw him sniff the pillow for your scent, before he sneaked out with it. I thought it was child-like, the way he missed you. But maybe I was wrong about that, like I was wrong about marrying you."
Chandler didn't know if he wanted to believe her or not.
"We, um, we can still do that threesome thing, you know? Not to prove you're gay, but to test his feelings. I mean, if he agrees to it and looks at you... differently, I guess--"
Chandler interrupted discouragingly. "We talked about a threesome before."
"You did?"
He nodded. "Chloe, that girl from the Xerox place, invited us both to a nightclub. We talked about what we'd do if she wasn't kidding about a threesome. Joey assumed we'd both do Chloe, and we discussed rules so that we wouldn't see or touch each other."
"Oh," she frowned. "Did you ever go through with it?"
"No. That was the night she went home with Ross."
"Well, how do you know Joey wasn't just trying to put you at ease? How do you know he wasn't just waiting to see how you'd respond? I mean, did you ever talk about it again?"
Chandler shook his head.
"Then you don't know. Let's, let's just try the threesome. I'll ask him to kiss you, and you can tell if he likes it or not. Maybe he'll moan too." She shrugged and whispered, "Even if he doesn't want you back, we can tell him that you just got excited in the heat of the moment and still end the threesome. No harm done, and you can go back to being friends."
Chandler slowly turned and looked at her.