Thursday 19 December 2013

Real Sex for Grown Ups. Holy Night.

Last night I found myself drifting on the living room sofa, stealthily mesmerised by the Christmas trees lights. Quieted at last.  In the window the dark night was illuminated by a slice of light from the quarter moon, the life in the house dimmed, banked down behind me.  It came to me that I had not stopped to draw a breath since August. Not. Until here I am corralled in the moment, fallen into a little pocket of eternity. The boy's anguished electric guitar sounds break through from time to time and I do believe the boss is singing somewhere in the house. The beautiful one sleeps, my husband is in bed with the Headache, and I am here in my house in this moment..

Sex is all in the mind.
A Headache though! My fault. It was my newly formulated Timetable for Marital Lovemaking that did it. "How often times a week do you think?"  I asked him. "What's average? healthy?, advisable?  Tuesdays, thursdays, sundays, I thought?.. Maybe bonus days!... which can be um awarded. After all dear man, what with chauffeuring, cooking, shopping, cleaning, arguing, laying down the law, cobbling together complex compromises with adolescents and that sort of thing,  not to mention earning a crust, its a tricky thing giving sex the good clear focus it requires, carving out the essential sexual space as it were.. Its like a...a.. sort of rebooting thing Angel,  no need for panic now. The Timetable is like a re-setting, to like grown up, middle aged rumpy pumpy, conjugal coupling and... well...basically... sex."

                              ....actually in your head
Ok,  Ok, I know it was naughty, but on the other hand, his recent complaint made me thoughtful. There is a question begging an answer here. Like how do you do sex with your partner/husband/loverman, when you are grown up? Its not the sweaty anxious obsessive stuff you filled your universe with as a raw young person. That swoon of passion filling a largely empty, available  universe, otherwise flirting with half hearted schooling, alleged educating. But all to soon your careless skitishness is intruded on by a job, a bank loan, troubled broodings on where's its all going?, what's it all mean, and God how it's all empty, actually tedious? I don't say you want to think this, its that pesky universe again.

                                                            ..... your probably quite crazy head.
To illustrate, I once came on a dear friend shivering on a park bench some little distance from our shared house, my accomplice in working hard and living fast back then, one chilly Sunday morning. "What? Why?. Qu'est-ce que c'est" I asked her . She told me with an air of  tragedy that she could not go home until the man brought back by her in triumph the night before had left the house "so I am watching the bus stop I directed him to" she went on," but he doesn't come! I mean it all seemed so lovely last night, but now, oh now he wants us to have breakfast in town. And I can't actually recall his name, and I mean it's all so alien, and all I want to do is go home and curl up in my divinely solitary bed. Oh do you think he'll ever leave!!!! " It seemed she had bounced out of the bed of passion, flung on some clothes and told him she'd be off, early Sunday morning shift in the Chocolate Factory doncha know. Oh and the bus stop's just across the road. hmmm

                                                                                         ..... only in your head
And then there is the rest of your adult life till middle age. Sex mostly sidelined by the fruit of your loins. You might work up the effort when you can face having another one but basically you are too busy, too exhausted, too too distracted.

                                                                                                                  .... sex is in your
But, not for ever. .You're not done yet.! Oh no! You get the last kid upright, physically and mentally. And psychically the pure light gathers force and shines, unnoticed by you,  and here it is again, and its wide and deep, and basically better than you ever knew it could be. Practice, familiarity, passion resurging, makes you wonder if sex was not for making babies after all, but for this, intimacy, union, transformative surrender to the universe of good hot coupling.
                                                                                                                                             head.

Anyway, there's still the cooking, the shopping, the cleaning yada yada  yada, and so the Timetable. And as I hope you can see it was not produced entirely in a spirit of mischief and revenge. I pad upstairs in my bare feet and in to the dim bedroom, hearing the dogs baking in the fields behind the house, the occasional truck swish swishing on the rainy motorway, and slide into the marital bed. My husband's gentle snoring shifts,  stops. "Yeah. Well.  The hell with spontaneity then. Tuesdays, thursdays, sundays, whatever" he mutters.  "And also bonus days my darling" I reply.



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