*
When I was young I shopped at the Army/Navy with the thought that if I bought these clothes and wore them I would prevent some beautiful young man from being killed in the garments. I’m a romantic. I’m writing about the coyotes, the kids, the taxi drivers, the drugs, and the romantic notions because I want to be as honest as I can. As I said, thoughts become material. I want to make truth. It’s too bad I have to say this, but I will: I’m not hysterical or crazy. I’m providing a guided tour to a woman with hormones. Let’s talk about differences. Let’s lay the groundwork for real honesty, for belief, for biology, for no more Really?
*
I had great hopes the threat of Lyme disease would revitalize our sex life. “Will you check me for ticks?” You know, and things would go from there. Grooming each other as monkeys do. In that way, at least for a while, I got him to touch me again and that felt good, but then Lyme disease never really took off in California like it did on the East Coast.
*
Most men I know speak about sex as if their needs are more intense or deeper than women’s needs. Like their penises are on fire and they will die if they can’t extinguish the flames in some damp, tight hole. When I was younger I believed men when they said their desires were more intense than mine because they talked about sex so much through high school and college. I didn’t recognize this talk as a prop of false identity. The men developed entire industries devoted to this desire, this identity. The aches! The suffering of the boys! The shame and mutual responsibility for blue balls. The suffering of the boys. Poor boys, I thought. Poor boys, as if I were being called upon to serve in a war effort, the war against boys not getting any.
Why do people act like boys can’t be human? Like they don’t control their own bodies? It’s not a very nice way to think about boys.
The only desire/constructed identity I have that compares to the way men talk about sex is my devotion to rehashing the past. I relive the exquisite pain of things that no longer exist: my father’s jean jacket, my father, Travolta’s 1977 dark beauty, how it felt to be alone in the house with my mom after my siblings finally left for school, the rotations of my first record player spinning the Osmonds and Paper Lace, the particular odors of a mildewed tent in summertime. Memory as erogenous zone.
But then I, too, started to burn, and while no one wants to hear about middle-aged female sexual desire, I don’t care anymore what no one thinks. There are days I ache so badly, the only remedy beyond a proper plowing, beyond someone using their body to slam all the self out of myself, would be a rusty piece of metal or broken glass to gouge out my hot center from mid-inner thigh all the way up to my larynx. I’d spare my spine, brain, hands, and feet. I’m not irrational.
*
The list of potential reasons for why my husband and I no longer have sex wakes me up at night. If I’m not already awake thinking about the coyotes. The first reason, the wildest, craziest reason, is that maybe my husband is just gone. Maybe one night a while back I kicked him out after a fight and maybe, even if I didn’t mean everything I said, maybe he went away and hasn’t come back yet. That would certainly explain why we don’t have sex. Maybe I’m just imagining him here still. Thoughts making material, etc., etc. Really? etc., etc. It can be hard to tell with men, whether they are actually here or not. Especially a man with a smartphone.
The second reason I develop for why my husband and I no longer have sex is that my husband is, no doubt, gay. A faultless situation, though not without its heartache and deceit.
The third reason I concoct for why my husband and I no longer have sex is that he must be molesting our children when he puts them to bed each night. This reason does a lot of work for me, double duty, cultivating hysterical worry about both my marriage and my kids at the same time. Such efficiency. It is also so insane, so far out to the margin, that some nights it can actually help to reset my brain back to center.
The fourth reason I develop is that now, after pregnancy, I’ve lost the ability to see myself clearly. My feeling is that I probably look like a chubby Victorian maid: bad teeth, mouth agape, drooling ignorance and breast milk. This reason sends me onto the Internet for hours, researching various exercise regimens and diets hawked by self-tanned women with chemically bruised hair. In the middle of the night it’s easy to hate myself as much as the world hates me.
A few years ago my husband bought me a short black wig as part of a sex toy package. His ex-girlfriend has short black hair. I know the chemistry of other people’s desire is not my fault, but the wig, so raw, really hurt.
Finally the last reason I imagine for why my husband and I no longer have sex comes almost as a relief because it requires very little imagination or explanation and after I think it, I can usually go back to sleep. My husband must be having an affair.
I have a friend from college, Susan Pembroke. She’s a real New England WASP with a fantastic secret. Her family pays for all those Lilly Pulitzers, summers on Nantucket, and boarding schools from a fortune made manufacturing dildos and vibrators. I love that secret. One of their biggest sellers is a set of prosthetic monster tongues, some forked, some spiky, most of them green or blue plastic, all of them scaled for the lady’s pleasure, especially ladies with lizard fetishes.
Susan once asked me a greasy question that returns on nights like this one, nights unhinged. “Are you the kind of woman who would want to know if her husband’s cheating on her or not?” And she left the question dangling. Her mouth might have even been open slightly. People cheat because we are no longer running away from saber-toothed tigers. I get that. Adrenaline insists on being taken out for a spin. But there was an indictment inherent in either answer I could give Susan, so I stayed silent and wondered, was she asking because she knew something?
*
We moved out of the city because there’s no room for non-millionaires there anymore. In the country, life is more spacious. We bought a king-sized bed. Some nights we snuggle like people in an igloo, all five of us. Those nights, our giant bed is the center of the universe, the mother ship of bacterial culture. It is populated with blood, breast milk, baby urine, a petri dish of life forms like some hogan of old. Those nights I know we are safe. But when our children sleep in their own room my husband and I are left alone on the vast plain of this oversized bed feeling separate, feeling like ugly Americans who have eaten too much, again.