H is for ...

Hi again.

[restart]

There has been much speculation (in both blog comments and in my private email) regarding what precipitated my disappearance six months ago (almost to the day). Among them:

• I'd had a relapse of the flu I'd suffered shortly before my hiatus.
• Amy was upset about the blog.
• I'd died (!).
• Amy and I were breaking up.
• Amy was pregnant (!!).

I'm happy to say that none of these suppositions were correct. (Though if I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, there are fleeting moments when I wouldn't mind if Amy were pregnant again. But don't tell her.)

If I were feeling inspired to be dramatic, I could probably spin a yarn about how Amy and her secret lover kidnapped me (after leaving the kids with the neighbors) and took me to their Costa Rican love dungeon, only releasing me lo these months later after I had achieved a sexual nirvana heretofore unexpereienced by humankind.

But it's not that interesting. In fact, it's not even as interesting as what the rest of you came up with. It was just ... life. Among the "lowlights" y'all missed (all of which contributed, in greater or lesser degrees, to my prolonged absence):

• deadlines for major projects at work, taking me out of commission for most of May, August, and part of September;
• two family vacations this summer!
• a ridiculous number of commitments related to a kid's school and extracurricular activities;
• numerous visits to our home by family members; and
  
• many medical- and work-related issues for Amy

Notice anything in particular missing from that list?

Yep. Conspicuously absent would be Energetic, sweaty, ball-slapping fucking like the feral creatures from which I'm sure we evolved.

Most of the items on that second list will explain the lack of cum-dripping adventures, but none more so than the last one. It's been one of those years for Amy where one medical "event" after another has made her feel much, much older than her years. I know that many of you can relate. And all of this preoccupation with her health has put a severe damper on our sexual activity. It's not that there has been zero orgasms; we did "fit it in" (wink wink, nudge nudge) a few times this last half-year. And some of the sex has been truly awesome. But fun nights have been few and far between, and time to document them simply hasn't been there.

Since I defined this blog pretty narrowly from the outset as being about sex ... well, there hasn't been a lot to write about. But if I'm going to be honest, this wasn't the only reason I stopped. Honestly, with the amount I posted for the blog's first four-and-a-half months, it was going to be hard for me under the best of circumstances to keep up that sort of pace. I was feeling burned out.

But I wasn't expecting to take this long of a break. And I also wasn't expecting that the event that would get me off my middle-aged ass and get writing again would be the "hiatus" of one of my all-time favorite bloggers, La fille mariée. The blogosphere was robbed of an important voice when she decided to type the light fantastic. And while I'm not for a minute believing that my voice can in any way fill the void left by her departure, her leaving did make me realize that I didn't want The Concupiscent Husband to die completely.

So, I'm back, if in a slightly less regular form. One of the ways I hope to keep this blog (and myself) fresh is to not feel the need to post as often as before. I'm not short of ideas: I currently have 26 posts in draft form, all different topics, waiting for my attention. And there is such a good amount of material out there from the sex blogs that are out there that I am certain I will be able to take in your experiences and ideas, chew them for awhile, and spit them back into the atmosphere with a new flavor. If, uh, that metaphor of regurgitated sexual philosophy wasn't too disgusting for you to dwell on. Quick, think of big cocks and tits and get back to what you really want to be dwelling on in your office cubicle.

There's something refreshing from starting at Square One again. Maybe I build a whole new audience. Maybe some of you who still find my posts relevant might give me another gander. But this blog thing doesn't really work if I don't write for myself first, and trust that the audience will find me.

I'm actually looking forward to doing this again. Okay, okay. To be honest, I'm actually looking forward to doing that again . . . and then describing that to you in all its energetic, sweaty, ball-slapping, over-wordy detail.

BlogMeBlogYou

Don't get me wrong: I think blogging is, on the whole, a good thing. But for me, something's missing, and I think it's the sense of conversation. A true give-and-take, a back-and-forth, an exchange of ideas.

(There are, of course, other inherent faults and weaknesses to blogging, but for now I'll leave that discussion to critics who wax eloquent on why they embrace/despise the blogosphere.)

The "comments" section of a blog entry attempts to create dialogue, but too often that section ends up being no more than (mostly) lauds or (rarely) condemnations of the entry and its author. Which is fine -- God knows I love praise and criticism, as most of us do.

Some bloggers are really delving, exploring, questioning, pushing your envelopes. And sometimes that strikes a chord with readers, including myself. I'm finding I want to do more than just comment on someone's blog ... I want to "riff off" of that entry on my own blog. I know there are bloggers doing this, but it seems rare. I want to see more of it.

This may become a regular feature of The Concupiscent Husband ... I don't know yet. But at least this week, a couple of items moved me.


Married Exploits: The "Artemis" two-parter (Part 1 | Part 2)

Funnily enough, my first entry of this sort cites a blog entry that does exactly what I'm wishing there was more of! The Married Exploits blog is already a conversation of sorts between a husband and wife, "Odysseus" and "Penelope." And specifically in these two entries, Odysseus was reacting, at least in part, to an entry on the blog The Dark Side of Me. In that entry, Lena briefly bemoans the fact that men must repress one of their most beautiful (in her opinion) qualities: That they think about sex almost constantly. Odysseus "responds" in his own blog:

That's a big reason why I wanted to start this blog. Because there are lots of things that I think about that I feel compelled to repress.... It's kind of backwards to what you might usually think about society and sex. But it's true: men have a lot more thoughts than they are 'allowed' to admit.

Penelope later follows up:

I guess I've always seen it as society and media always bombarding us with sexual images and portraying impossible ideals for women and that in turns creates more lust and sexual thoughts in men. Could it really be the other way around and men are trying to conform to the expectation that they should view women less sexually and it is going against natural urges or instincts? Maybe it is both influences and expectations clashing in male minds.

I think Penelope's on the money here. It's almost as if society itself is operating under its own Madonna-whore complex: Our media and fashion cultures (which, it should be noted, is probably still pretty male-dominated) foists sex upon us at every turn -- because "sex sells" -- and then gets all uppity and pissy when a man is checking out his female co-worker's tits when she's wearing the á la mode low-cut number. There is a built-in expectation of repression.

(And while we're at it: To a lesser extent, doesn't this "syndrome" work its negativity in the other direction? If repressive community mores indicate that a woman is not to be viewed as a sex object, what does this do to the psyche of the woman who sometimes wants to be viewed that way? Is she automatically branded a slut?)

Reading these entries, I realized that Odysseus' motivation to blog is a big part of why I started my blog too. Many of you are led to believe from my entries (so far) that Amy's and my communication is pretty open; perhaps it is, relative to the average relationship. But I feel like I repress a lot of my sexual thoughts.

There are a number of reasons for this, and chief among them is that I don't want to annoy Amy with the already obvious fact that her husband has that stereotypical one-track mind. I worry that an increased discussion of sex in our everyday life would indicate a subtext of wanting more sex from her, heaping more stress on the sizable compost heap she already wields on her shoulders. And while it's true that I do want more sex, just because I'm talking about it doesn't mean I want to jump her bones right then. It's not like I don't feel I can tell her these things; I'm just (over?)sensitive to, you know, when enough's enough already.

I like Odysseus and Penelope's entries because the couple are talking around the fringes of the idea of inviting someone else into their bed. Will it ever really happen? Perhaps. But the outcome doesn't matter much, because the very fact that they're having these discussions is giving a positive sexual charge to their relationship.

+ + +

La fille Mariée: "Beautiful Cock"

Two things occur to me when I read this post.

First, how powerful the word "cock" can be. Almost as powerful, I think sometimes, as "fuck," a word that has been discussed to death by pundit-style eroticists for years. What makes this such a fun read is that you just begin to lose yourself in the poetry of LFM's writing, the sensuous experience she is sharing ... and then you run smack-dab into that word.

Look at "cock." No, not mine, you goof; look at the word. Hard on the outside, and just a little softer in the middle. It's onomatopoeic. It's less exclamation (like "fuck") than punctuation. There's no sweet-talking the word. You can't start to say it and then veer off in another direction, like you can with "fff ... udge." Cock is cock. Right there, in your face, demading to be dealt with.

So to juxtapose "cock" with LFM's prose -- even to juxtapose it with the word "beautiful" -- is a joyous thing. It makes my blood surge, no matter how many times I play the words back over in my head.

The second thing I wanted to say was this: These are the words of (and for) a new lover, on the level of some of the beauty of Song of Solomon. I remember my wife feeling this sort of passion for my body. Maybe she still does, but I'm betting it's not that often. I still feel an incredible depth of passion for hers, but I remember finding more ways to tell her -- ways similar to Mariée's deft post.

This is a new love, I believe, because there are so few loves of many years that can still express this "passion of discovery." That may sound like a forlorn observation, but I think of it more as a melancholy observation -- not melancholy as sadness, but rather as "pensive reflection or contemplation." The early weeks of a new love are frighteningly potent and stimulating. There's no way to maintain that level of energy over years -- embers are bound to cool and will need stoking. Yes, it would be nice if the mercury could be permanently suspended at that higher temperature, but if that were the case we wouldn't appreciate it nearly as much. That's why this kind of "youthful exuberance" should be, I believe, reserved for relationships in their youth.