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.



Thursday 12 December 2013

Screwed not Dancing.

The boss on this her fourteenth birthday takes herself and girlfriends to see The Hunger Games,  and likes it very much. "A bit darkish, maybe?" I probe, "a bit edgier than the first film?".  "Darkish, yeah. It was.  Dark.  Better.  It was great!"  Right. Better because darker then. Afterwards they eat in Eddie Rockets. That too she says was great and also better, " 'cos we like went on our own, and I mean I paid, and after we got the cab home you sent  together on our own.  And thank you.  It was you know independent,  grown up. So yeah, thank you. It was, we all felt, great."

"I mean it's an unlikely and precious thing to be given thanks, to be permitted to warm oneself a little in a rare fine glow of appreciation. Without one's own prompting! It's actually quite disconcerting!" I puzzle to my husband. "So, right, do you think  I've cracked it this time? Do you think in fact that this time maybe this one will dance with me through the adolescent quagmire. Step light with me over the bruising terrain. On this my fourth and final try?  Do you think?".  "Nope!" he said "Screwed!" he said. Just face it, baby, chances are, not dancing you're screwed".

He tells me how she'll dance me dizzy, dizzy, how she'll  twirl me round in circles till I know that everything I thought I knew about her was a story,  just a shadow of her shimmering, her solipsistic   truth. Says he wants it on the record when I find that she is leading, deftly spinning me and others that he warned me, he's Cassandra, yeah he warned me that I'd better watch my glide"!   "Yes... but... no but.. NOT this time, angel,  this time, I think dancing".  "Maybe baby BUT and for the record I think you will find, actually screwed".

Oh. Well we'll see. And he undertakes to pick up the pieces. Should the need arise.