I feel a cool waft of air swirl through the bathroom, and a moment later, the shower door slides open. Jonah stands on the other side of the stall, naked as the day he was born, smiling at me.
“Showering at night?” he asks slyly. “Want some company?”
He might as well have asked if I want to get laid. I can tell by the low, lascivious tone of his voice, his nakedness, and the fact that the head of his penis is pointing directly at me.
“Always,” I say. Although, in truth, sex in the shower is not one of my favorite pastimes. Unless your partner is six-five and can support all of your weight during the act, the sheer logistics are next to impossible to work out. And forget about oral, unless you have an affinity for drowning. But, in the interests of pretending to be spontaneous and carefree, I take his hand and lead him under the hot spray.
He immediately palms my breast, a move I anticipate since it is always his first. His thumb slides over my areola, and I am surprised by the sudden heat that courses through me. This is the man I have been making love to for the past fourteen years, without exception, and it is difficult to believe that such a small, overused action can still arouse me. His hand slides down to my waist, coming to rest for just a moment on the spot where my torso begins to curve outward toward my hips. Then it continues its journey, around my hips and down to the top of my ass. Jonah grasps my left cheek and pulls me into him. I can feel his penis against my belly, hard and ready and twitching impatiently.
Sex with Jonah has always been satisfying. We met in our late twenties, so our coupling was never the animalistic, firework-inspiring romp that postpubescents boast about and that I myself have never had the occasion to experience. But from the beginning, he and I fit together well, physically and emotionally. He is not selfish but is concerned with my pleasure. No matter how turned on he is, or how close to the brink he gets, he dutifully holds himself back until I have climaxed before he allows himself to come, shuddering spasmodically and making that low, guttural noise that brings to mind the onset of food poisoning.
As in most relationships, the frequency of lovemaking in ours has lessened. During our courtship and our early married years, four or five times a week was the rule, and we enjoyed lazy sessions that stretched on for hours, occasionally requiring snack breaks to refuel our spent energy. Now, we carve out fifteen-minute tête-à-têtes when we can manage it, after the kids are down. I know this is merely the natural progression of a married person’s sex life. And yet, for some reason, perhaps the fact that menopause is looming in my not-so-distant future and wreaking havoc on my hormone balance, I am suddenly overcome with a sense of loss. Even as my husband pushes himself inside me with his usual sharp intake of breath, I feel a quiet desperation, an anger at all of the unfulfilled promises and shattered illusions that saturate the lives of the middle-aged.
I am middle-aged. I know they say that forty is the new twenty-five. But they are full of shit. Forty is forty, and forty-two suddenly seems fucking old.
“Are you okay?” Jonah’s voice is a hushed whisper. I look up to find him staring intently at me, his rhythmic thrusts temporarily suspended.
I nod and smile reassuringly, hoping that the hot water from the showerhead is camouflaging my tears. I reach my hands around his waist, noting that his has not expanded much over the past few years—well, at least not as much as mine has. Grabbing his ass, I pull him against me, forcing him deeper inside me, and the sudden pressure in my loins causes a grunt to escape my lips. That’s all it takes. Jonah immediately returns to his task, the task of giving me pleasure. Eyes at half mast, his breath comes in ragged gasps as he presses me against the tile. Pumping into me, speaking into my ear about how much he loves me and how good I feel and how well we fit together.
I make all the right noises, but I just can’t seem to give myself completely over to the act. It is as though my mind is detached from my body. My limbs are responding to the commands I give them: lift right leg and intertwine it with Jonah’s (carefully, so as not to catch any of his hair in my ragged toenails); squeeze Jonah’s buttocks with both hands (trying not to think about Charmin toilet paper); undulate like a belly dancer on PCP (does the local rec park offer classes?); moan lasciviously and say “Give it to me” and “Oh baby oh baby” and “Oh my god oh my god ohmygod” over and over again.
But I am merely an actor in a play, a bad actor at that, waiting for that blessed moment when I can exit stage left. I know that Jonah won’t finish until I am sated, and I also know that a comet will crash into earth and wipe out mankind before I actually will come, so I pretend increasing fervor, forcefully hitching my breathing and sinking my fingernails into the soft flesh of Jonah’s ass, gasping urgently as I nearly tear a chunk out of his earlobe with my teeth. I clench my thighs tightly around him and shudder spasmodically, crying out, “Yes yes YES!” All the while thinking that Meg Ryan deserved a fucking Oscar for the deli scene in When Harry Met Sally. I know it’s pathetic that my thoughts are centered on a romantic comedy from 1989 while my husband is about to explode inside me. Yet I am relieved that this will all be over in about eight and a half seconds. And although I can’t help but feel slightly guilty, I am well aware of one of the most basic truths known to wives the world over: A fake orgasm can be a woman’s best friend.
• Five •
I have found that the only peace and quiet and absolute privacy I can get while my husband and children are awake and at home is when I’m in the bathroom. My kids learned early on that when Mommy is “making number two,” she is not to be disturbed. And over the years since then, I have milked this edict for everything it’s worth. Which is why I am on the toilet for the fourth time this morning, clutching the Ladies Living-Well Journal in my hands and pretending to go, yet again.
In the beginning, Jonah got so concerned about my colon that he insisted I see an internist.
“It’s not normal,” he said, looking at me like he’d just been sent over from the local hospice. “You know, to make…well, you know…to have a…you know…to poop so much.”
I laughed so hard I almost pooped my pants. I assured him that I was fine, but he remained unconvinced. I had to suffer through a week of his sidelong glances, which ranged from wistful to tremulous to downright panicked. It was then I realized that Jonah was terrified of losing me. Actually, he probably was less concerned about losing me than about being left alone with three kids under five whose greatest influences at the time were an annoying six-foot-tall purple dinosaur and an annoying two-foot-tall furry red Muppet named Elmo. (La la la la, la la la la, Jonah’s World!) That would scare the poop out of anyone.
So I finally let him off the hook and explained to him that le toilette offered me a moment’s reprieve from the demands of motherhood. To which he replied, “Why do you need a reprieve?” (At which I may have considered kicking him in the balls.)
By seven fifteen on this Friday morning, I have already endured three juvenile meltdowns and an uncharacteristic postcoital argument with my spouse. Jonah had awakened me with an insistent erection at five forty-five, which I dutifully accepted despite my complete lack of interest. (A week has passed since our shower copulation and my impersonation of a sexual automaton, and although at the time I vowed never to have sex with my husband again, sometimes it’s easier to just let them have a go.) This morning, I thought that I might actually get some pleasure out of the deal and that my dreamlike stupor would promote a happy ending for both of us, but I was wrong. I could not, for the life of me, become aroused enough to climax, and the more I tried, the further from orgasm I got. I was finally so chafed, physically and mentally, that I had to fake it again. Not that Jonah noticed. He came with a thunderous groan that I was sure would wake up the children, leaving me to wonder why my libido had suddenly taken a vaycay and whether I should investigate some kind of sexual therapy. Well, at least Jonah was satisfied.
I had been vertical for only ten minutes when the day went from bad to worse. It began before brea
kfast with Jessie’s tirade about her beloved denim skirt that had not yet made it through the laundry cycle. The way she ranted and raved about my failings as a mother, I could have sworn my eight-year-old daughter was having her period. This was followed by Matthew’s tearful proclamation that his Target boxer briefs were a “travesty” and “unacceptable” in the boys’ locker room and that only Calvin Kleins would be suitable garments to encase his decidedly scrawny nether parts. Then Connor sent me over the edge by turning on the Wii before school, which I consider a mutinous and grievous act rooted in his tween obligation to rebel against his parents at any and every opportunity.
After threatening to disconnect the contraption, I regained a modicum of control only to be informed by my husband that he had a client dinner tonight which he had failed to mention earlier. “What’s the big deal?” he asked when I complained. “It’s not like you have some big Friday night planned.”
“No, Jonah,” I replied, attempting to keep my voice calm and steady. “I have book club tonight. It’s on the calendar. You put it in your friggin’ Outlook, for God’s sake.” I swear, Jonah would forget to pee without a reminder from his scheduling software.
“What am I supposed to do, cancel? This is the CEO of the Irvine Company. So you miss one book club.”
He showed little or no remorse when I told him that six other people were counting on me, especially Jill. He merely rolled his eyes and revealed his blatant skepticism that book club has any intrinsic value whatsoever.
“You have no idea what book club is all about,” I told him, seething. “It’s a communal experience, a chance for us to connect and discuss topics outside our own limited lives. It’s like church.” Okay, maybe that was a bit much, but still. Jonah hasn’t read a book since the Paleolithic era. He really has no concept of what books mean to me.
“Book club is an excuse for you and your friends to drink wine and gossip,” he proclaimed, as if he were the King Poobah of Universal Wisdom. I really hate that tone of voice. So I clamped my mouth shut and escaped to the loo.
And here I sit, musing about the sorry state of my hemorrhoids as I flip through my cousin’s magazine. I have managed to avoid reading it for more than a week now, but my excuses to Jill are starting to sound pathetic even to my own ears. (“No, I didn’t look at the competition guidelines today, I had to clean my lint trap.” “No, I didn’t read the competition guidelines because I was busy realigning my fifth chakra.”)
I am now twelve days into Operation Ellen, and feeling fine, but it has not been as cathartic as I thought it would. I still feel like me. Not that I expected to be transformed into some higher being, or Angelina Jolie or anything, but I thought I would somehow feel different. I have been eating right and exercising regularly and trying to have a positive, can-do attitude, and it’s true that my skin is looking good and my waistbands are slightly looser and I have a slight bounce in my step, but I haven’t yet reached transcendency. Perhaps I should have aimed lower with the whole reinvention thing.
I turn pages of the magazine mindlessly. I bypass the article on spicing up your sex life, although after this morning, I could use some advice in that area. I briefly scan a two-page piece about a miracle cleanse that will scrub your intestines so clean you could eat off them and cause your colon to whistle “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” I’m not supportive of any diet or fast that erases wine from my daily consumption since, let’s face it, wine is a housewife’s heroin, and withdrawal symptoms include random crying jags over particularly sappy e-mails, littering the kitchen floor with every single pot and pan in the cupboard whilst screeching about how dinner is not going to cook itself, and beating the crap out of my kids—figuratively, of course. In my opinion, it’s better to have dirty intestines and a nonwhistling colon.
A few pages later, I find myself staring down at the competition guidelines. You could win $10,000 and write for our magazine! the headline announces. Create a blog at Ladieslivingwelljournal.com, write about what you know, and the blog that receives the most hits wins!
I stare at the wall across from the toilet for a moment, searching through the cavernous recesses of my brain in an attempt to come up with at least one idea for a blog. The write about what you know part puts me at a disadvantage because I can’t for the life of me come up with something interesting that I actually know about. I have spent the last thirteen years as a wife and mother and have done little else. I know how to change a diaper (though even that skill is a bit rusty now), I can make a cake in the shape of the Empire State Building (but who can’t nowadays, thanks to the friggin’ Ace of Cakes), and I can tell you the best places to go for a good bounce: the G-rated, inflatable, kid-kind of bounce, not the lascivious, consenting-adults kind of bounce. But who wants to read about such banal things? Don’t people want to be informed and inspired, made to really think and ponder things, to find enlightenment, to be hit with an emotional impact that causes catharsis?
I know what my friend Mia would say. She’d say, “Girl, you are overestimating the intelligence of the inhabitants of planet earth. Most of these people have the IQ of a pork chop. They don’t want to be enlightened. Not really. Oh, they might say they want that, to sound cool and all, but what they really want is to be entertained. Even the smart ones. For God’s sake, my husband loved, and I mean loved, Jackass 3D and he went to Harvard!”
A tentative tap-tap-tap sounds at the bathroom door, followed by an even more tentative “Honey?” My husband. He did not go to Harvard. Although he, too, loved Jackass 3D.
“What?” I retort, glancing at my watch. I note with dismay that I have managed to get only three minutes and twenty-seven seconds of alone time before the cursed knock.
“I know you’re probably in the middle of the mother of all poops.” I can detect a note of derision in his voice, but he is doing his best to mask it, knows he ought to err on the side of not pissing me off any further. “Want me to take the kids to school?”
A conciliatory gesture. No dice, pal.
“Yup,” I reply. Jonah hates it when I answer him with curt, one-syllable replies. Therefore, I do it whenever I know that he knows that I am displeased with him.
“Are you going to be okay about tonight?” he asks. He is making a concerted effort to pretend to care about my squashed plans.
“Yup.” In truth I have no idea what I am going to do about book club, but I realize that it’s not a crisis on the same level as, say, the polar ice caps melting.
“You sure?”
“Sure,” I snap, rolling my eyes at him through the closed door.
He sighs. I can’t hear the actual sigh, but I know Jonah. He always sighs. Another ten seconds go by. I count them down like Houston approaching liftoff. Just as I think, Blast-off, he says, “Okay, then. Have a good day.”
“Fuck you.” I whisper it so that he can’t hear me. “Bye,” I say, aloud, then return my attention to the magazine.
By the time I have finished reading all of the fine print of the competition, I am fairly certain that my house is empty. I am also fairly certain that there is no way in hell I can ever enter this blog contest. I mean, seriously. A blog post a day for fourteen days? That’s fourteen ideas, and I can’t even come up with one. And anyway, the deadline for the first blog post is today.
I know Jill will be disappointed, but she’ll just have to get over it. As our Grandma Phyllis used to say, you cannot suck water from a stone.
I exit the bathroom, toss the magazine in the trash can, and wander down to the kitchen to find that Jonah has left me about a third of a cup of brown sludge in the bottom of the coffee carafe. I turn off the machine, let Sally out the back door, and head for the fridge. Then I pull out a low-fat raspberry yogurt that is about to reach its drop-dead date and head for the little alcove off the kitchen, where I boot up my computer. I know I have to call Jill and tell her I can’t attend book club tonight because my husband is a fink, but I also know that she will go ballistic, so I put off making the call by going t
hrough my e-mails. As usual, I have a ton of spam, and several “special offers” from companies that I subscribed to in moments of weakness but from which I will never buy anything. I delete them all and am left with two PTA notifications, a short e-mail from my father that says “Hey girl” and nothing else, and a long e-mail from my sister, Lisa. She lives in Riverside and is conflicted about whether to have a tummy tuck and a boob lift, which her husband has offered to pay for. Lisa thinks that surgery is a cop-out and possibly a sin, but at a particular age, like, say, mine, or my sister’s, who is eleven months younger than I am, a woman should take all the help she can get. In my opinion, not taking help is the sin. Gravity is a bitch. Metabolism slows to the pace of a snail on downers, and the imbalance of hormones causes women’s bellies to bloat to barrel proportions. And once you pass a certain point, there is no going back, no matter how many fucking crunches you do.
I take a moment to reply that I think Lisa is crazy not to take Malcolm up on his offer and that if she doesn’t, I will in her stead. Who gives a crap about cop-outs? I ask her. Sin-shmin! Anyone gives you a hard time, just tell them to go to hell, and then go get your new navel pierced!
Now, I love my sister, but she is very much influenced by her peers. And a large percentage of her peers belong to her church, which I call the Praise the Lord Church of the Word of God. I have nothing against good Christians, but the bulk of the women who attend Praise the Lord have made holy rites of quilting bees and bake sales and resembling giant pears, and they believe that anything a woman does that is not related to pleasing God is a sin punishable by ostracism. Taking care of yourself, applying makeup, and trying to look attractive is considered vanity with a capital V. Plastic surgery equals downright harlotry. I have told Lisa numerous times that she is still a vibrant woman who has the right to look and feel good. She is beautiful, I tell her. She just needs a little professional assistance to reach her potential. In my opinion, if God wanted people to be fat, He wouldn’t have invented liposuction.
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