Last week I came home early from work and caught my wife having sex with the Cookie Monster.

He was loud and indulgent in bed, and could be heard from the driveway. Frankly, it sounded as if he was devouring a cookie. Below his blaring growls I recognized the persistent and soft tones of my wife in ecstasy. She was clearly enjoying herself.

I stood there for a moment, if only to register what was going on, my heart suddenly jolting into an accelerated rhythm. At first, I didn’t recognize that the male voice booming from our bedroom was Cookie Monster. Maybe the guy was role-playing, I thought, or just letting his inner-animal take over. Yet, as I inched closer to the house I became sure that only one person. . . or thing. . . could make those kind of guttural vocalizations. He was only my all-time favorite television character, for God‘s sake. I used to sit in front of the tube in my white underwear and tear through half a box of Fruity Pebbles, following his lead and recklessly cramming the cereal into my mouth, bits of flavored rice and skim milk decorating the shag carpet around me.

If there was one thing I could rely on every day as a child, it was that Cookie Monster was going to eat the damn cookie no matter how hard he tried to resist it.

Shaking, I entered the house. The screen door shut loudly behind me, and suddenly the ruckus from the bedroom ceased. I stood there, unsure of what to do, frozen with my arms feeling out the space in front of me. I felt caught.

My wife stumbled into the room, almost comically. “Hey Hart,” was all she said. A cigarette dangled from her mouth as she nervously dug into her robe pockets for a lighter.

I could only stare at her. She could easily see that I was in shock, because she was too. An air of acknowledgement passed between us that we were both in very uncomfortable positions. I mean, we knew each other through and through. I could tell exactly what she was thinking, her eyes fidgety and failing to meet mine: How the hell am I gonna get out of this one? How do I take advantage of him?

“Were you fucking who it sounds like you were fucking?” I said, hands still leveled off in front of me.

“I. . .” she began, dropping her hands and sighing. “Do you have a lighter?”

I felt the first waves of hysteria jolt through me. “The fucking Cookie Monster, Jenna?”

She turned her head and looked at the hallway floor. “How did you know?”

“How did I know? Maybe because I could hear him eating your cookie from the street!” I stormed off into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “I mean, what the fuck? How am I supposed to deal with this information? It doesn’t even make sense! Does he even have a penis, Jenna?” I yanked out a jar of salsa from the fridge and slammed it on the counter.

She sighed almost contentedly. “What do you think?”

“I have no fucking clue! I wasn’t just fucking him!”

Jenna leaned forward, her long black hair collapsing on the bowl of fruit in front of her. She seemed to be gaining confidence. “Hart, he has the biggest dick I’ve ever seen in my life. He’s amazing with it, too.”