I didn't even know I needed a Monkey Phone Call.

In the months when we were separated, the little pad beneath my wedding-ring finger used to itch like crazy. I was constantly scratching it, and there’s no good explanation when somebody catches you doing it. What do you say to the person who has to sit next to you in a meeting, watching you feverishly gouge at your palm for two hours? “Darn that poison ivy!”

Co-workers probably chalked it up to a bad case of eczema, which is only slightly less humiliating than the actual explanation for the phantom pain. I’ve mentioned the problem to a few girlfriends, the ones I suspect won’t run screaming from my sideshow disfigurement, but I have yet to find anyone with whom I can form an ad-hoc support group. C’est la vie, I’m used to it now. It’s come to serve as a thermometer of sorts – the worse we fight and the more I feel like I can’t stand it, the more intense the itching. Tuesday: vague sense of dissatisfaction, four to six scratches per day. Sunday: verbal references to our marriage as “an emotional Death Valley,” one scratch per hour.