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.

Saturday Night Living

"Wanna fool around?"

I was lying on the couch; Amy was on top of me. She responded: "I thought you wanted to watch SNL."

I had wanted to, ever since I'd found out that Scarlett Johansson was hosting and Bjork was the musical guest. That's a lot of hotness squeezed into one standard-definition TV screen. How could I resist?

But then the show started, and Scarlett hit the stage for the opening monologue in a black mini-skirtish sort of number with a neckline that was — and I'm sure this was purely coincidence — designed to accentuate her beautiful, um, tracts of land. And then there were the black stockings. Oh, and pumps with four-inch heels. I barely remember the skit (she sung something with an actor doing Sanjaya). Once Scarlett was on stage, all I could think about was doing Amy.

I explained it much more simply to Amy: "I did want to watch it ... until I saw Scarlett. Now I just want to fool around."

"Um ... Okay."

+++
In case you didn't pick it up from her response, Amy wasn't fully on board. Maybe she felt some innate pressure since it was technically still (for the next few minutes, anyway) the anniversary of when we met.

It used to bug me a lot when Amy would "concede" to sex. "Never mind" would be my passive-aggressive reaction. But my thinking has evolved over time such that I've come to terms with this. I now understand that sometimes — sometimes, mind you — it's okay to go ahead and take when the giver is not gung-ho but still willing to go with it.

It's probably not an apt comparison, but there are plenty of other areas in our lives where I happily concede to do things for Amy that I'm not thrilled about. Shopping for clothes for her comes to mind — but not for the reason you might figure. I love shopping for clothes with her. But these days, my job on shopping excursions is de facto babysitter, keeping the kids from bothering her too much so that she can accomplish something. I happily make dinners she likes that I'm not necessarily wild about. I really have no interest in gardening, but I obediently play her weekend worker-bee as she plants and weeds in our yard. (To put it in more sexual terms, her gardening libido is much stronger than mine.¹)

These examples I bring up are, of course, the typical sort of give-and-take concessions that anyone in a healthy relationship regularly performs. So why does sex seem different?

Your response might be: "Well, Denis, sex should be more than an errand, more than a chore." Well, yeah. Ideally sex is an intimate, enthusiastic act that helps people connect on a romantic, or carnal, or — dare I say — spiritual level. But let's face it, for some women (and some men), sex is, on some occasions, an obligatory part of the relationship, performed for the good of the relationship. So while it might be a little pathetic to compare my conceding to weed a flower bed to my wife conceding to fuck me, when you get down to brass tacks, that's just the way it goes sometimes.

I had a good (female) friend once who joked about how, sometimes late at night when her husband was rearin' to go, she'd tell him: "You can do anything you want to me — just don't wake me up." She admitted that there was an underlying truth to the joke: She would occasionally consent to sex when she wasn't really into it. And that was fine. As long as the rest of the relationship is relatively healthy, and as long as it doesn't always seem like drudgery, one-sided sex is perfectly acceptable. (This is probably not a revelation to many of you; for me, guilt-ridden and over-libidoed, it's a relatively new concept for me to struggle with.)

And who knows: Once things get going, maybe she'll like it! In fact, when these circumstances arise, she often does. Which brings me to thought (or "justification," if you prefer) number two: On occasions when I am aware that Amy has agreed to sex with a degree of ambivalence, let it be known that I work my ass off to make sure it's worth her while. Ha — that statement sounds like a distant cousin to that age-old (and hilarious) belief that some men have: "If I could just sleep with that hot lesbian, I could turn her straight!" While I might not succeed every time, my chances of success are much better than those idiots'.

+++
"Did you see if we got a package today?" Amy asked as we tossed the back couch cushions onto the floor so that we could lie side-by-side.

I knew what she was really asking. "You mean, did we get the next movie?" We'd ordered another porn video, but it hadn't arrived yet. The very fact that she was asking indicated to me that she was looking for "assistance," an arousal pick-me-up. "Do you want to watch one of our other ones?" I asked.

"No, that's fine. I just wondered."

We started with gentle kissing. I was thinking momentarily about what it was like to kiss her that first time all those years ago. Either too much time has passed or my brain wasn't up to the task, but I couldn't really recapture that experience in my head. Part of the problem with my failed reverie was that Amy had removed her shirt, and her breasts were now sort of spilling delectably out of her bra. I paid them considerable attention, working along the edge of the bra with tongue and teeth. Then to the neck, then back to her mouth, then an ear ... nice and slow. Amy released the bra's front clasp, and I pulled back the bra with my teeth. Some tonguing of her nipples, and I was starting to hear actual sounds of interest.

She rolled me on my back, sat up, and then laid back on my legs. She kicked in the air as she pulled off her jeans and panties in one motion, and then, lying back, spread wide. There wasn't much I could do with her on top of my legs! Awkwardly, I pulled them out from underneath her (I wondered if this clumsy seduction hearkened back to our first night together!) and removed my own jeans. My dick bobbed and pointed like Dionysus' own divining rod ... right to where my mouth wanted to be.

I sucked and nibbled on her labia, working them open and finding Amy's clit. I began working my tongue flat against her, slow circles, occasionally throwing in more pointed tongue-dances down the length of her slit. I thought she was getting into it when all of a sudden, she said:

"Do you know what I want to see?"

I looked up from between her legs. "What?"

"I want to see that scene from that movie we watched the other night, when he has her tied up."

Her wish; my command. Off I went to retrieve The Masseuse, along with the lube.

Here was an odd situation: I was more interested in playing with Amy than watching the movie. I can't recall her ever being more into the porn than me. Oh, I found ways to amuse myself. Moving slightly to one side, I pushed my dick toward her mouth, and it was willingly accepted and lightly sucked while she watched. She occasionally looked up at me, smiled, and ran her tongue up and down the shaft before returning her focus to the movie.

I went down on her again and then moved into a position where I could tease her clit with the head of my cock. Amy picked right up on this, grabbing the dick herself and "using" me to masturbate. I love it when she does this, when she makes it more about her pleasure than mine. I would occasionally glance at the screen, but 95% of the time, I was watching Amy get into the scene.

At one point, I buried my head in her neck again. I whispered: "Tell me what's happening."

"She's sucking his cock now," Amy said. This was the final shot of the scene: While still tied to her crossbar, Jenna's mouth is fucked until Justin unloads a creamy cumshot on her mouth and chin. Just like the first time she watched this scene, Amy was impressed. She pushed my cock the rest of the way inside her. The scene over, we moved down on the couch and picked up our own tempo.

"So," I asked, "would you like to be tied up like that sometime?"

"Um ... Yeah," she said, as if the thought of it was both revelatory and genuinely arousing.

"I'll make sure that happens sometime soon," I said.

She reached down between us and began masturbating as we fucked.

"Yeah," I whispered, moving up so she could get her hands down there, and so I could watch. "Bring yourself off. I wanna see you come."

She worked herself for awhile as I continued my slow fucking, but then she abandoned that in favor of pulling me back on top of her. I was close to coming already from watching her, and this dramatic move on her part finished me off. I felt my cock pulse five or six times deep inside her.

"You aren't finished!" I announced heroically, and we both laughed as I made my way back down her belly, found her clit, and began a no-nonsense muffing that brought her to a quick and jerky climax.

She sighed. Stretched out on the couch. Accepted my head in the crook of her shoulder. And said: "So .... You wanna go back to watching Saturday Night Live?"

I didn't. I was certain that the show's mediocre quality would interfere with the moment we had just had. (Turns out I was right: I finished watching the episode last night, and it was horrendous.) We went to bed.

At the risk of being too nostalgic over the last 48 hours, I said to her one last time in bed: "I'm really glad you agreed to kiss me that night." She mumbled something affirmative, but she was already falling asleep.

It hadn't been a fireworks-inducing evening, like it might have been in, say, 1991. But really, is that even possible? There's no question that the way we love each other has changed as we've taken on different roles in different chapters of our life together. But there's also no question that the intensity of my love for this woman — and, let's face it, the sheer carnal lust for her — has not abated one iota.

--
¹ Let's stretch the metaphor too far: I'm not a size queen or anything, but my wife has a very large green thumb! [Return]

The Great Divide

Well, I'm sick. With a stupid, energy-depleting cold, and it's been a struggle to concentrate long on anything. This is particularly frustrating, since a new sex toy and movie arrived in the mail on Friday, but I just haven't had the energy to check this stuff out with Amy. Hopefully you'll be hearing about that soon ... but apparently not this weekend.

Finding the time to write — or the privacy to have sex — is going to get tricky this coming week, as my mom is coming to visit. Looks like it might be a good time to spring the "100 things" list.

+++
A few weeks ago, Dan Savage had a column that took me by surprise. The topic was what to do about differing libidos — specifically, what a high-libidoed male does when paired with a low-libidoed female. The man had recently discovered the existence of Joan Sewell's I'd Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido, and he was understandably worried. "My spouse can now point at this book," he wrote, "and say, 'I'm normal, live with it....'"

Dan's response caught me totally off guard: He first restated the basic premise of the book — "Women have naturally lower sex drives.... [M]en are hornier—and all the Sex and the City repeats in the world aren't going to change that," he explains of her premise — and then ... he didn't refute it.

Dammit. Et tu, Dan?

The column really got my dander up, and I was fighting to write a blog entry here. But work and my natural laziness kept me from ever writing that. This was lucky, because the next week, Dan's true endgame was revealed: His "silence is assent" approach was only a setup to guarantee that lots of oversexed women would write in and unveil their unbridled lust. Really, how silly of me to not see this coming! I've been reading Dan for years — he's a sort of hero for me. Perhaps I was blinded by my empathy for the writer (though let's face it, I do significantly better than his "5-20 times a year" he gets from his wife). Nevertheless, I was happy to see the outpouring of mail that Dan received. Clearly, I was the only one not in on the joke.

An example: "... I wanted to pipe up as one woman who has never—I mean never—met a man whose libido could match mine," one wrote. "If it were up to me, I’d be having sex twice a day. I’ve never met a man who could handle sex once a day (every day) after the first flush of lust."

I'm not afraid to admit, as I read that one, that I thought: You never met me! But the truth is, I don't really know; I've never been with a woman as insatiable as some of the ladies who star in these letters. Which, I suppose, lends credence to Sewell's book's premise. These are probably the exceptions to the rule.

If I feel any sense of "hope," it's the same kind of hope that writing this blog and (especially) reading other sex blogs has given me: That I'm not the only one dealing with this problem ... that others out there dealing with it have seen improvement (at least when both partners want to change the situation) ... and that I've seen little signs for the better right here at home.

And I'm thinking that the start of blogging and the sudden somewhat-more-regular sex may not have been coincidental. Amy's and my differing libidos seemed to be a locked-in reality. But Amy had suddenly expressed a desire for desiring more sex, to be more of the "old" Amy. It's too early to tell if we've really turned a corner, but the will is there, and that's really all one could ask for, right?

If Savage is to be believed, I should be expecting more:

The one thing that hasn't changed in the wake of Sewell's book is my advice to women with low libidos: You can have strict monogamy or you can have a low libido, ladies, but you can't have both. If monogamy is a priority, you're gonna have to put out, i.e., regular vaginal intercourse and the occasional tide-him-over handjob and/or blowjob, cheerfully given.

I understand where he's coming from here, but this is not a message that I believe can be delivered as an ultimatum. This is something that needs to be realized — by both partners. There needs to be an understanding. Perhaps it's a conversation that Amy and I will have one day. The thought of a context in which such a conversation were to occur ... it frankly scares me.

But I'm thinking. Thinking. Thinking.

One of the libido-related issues that seems to keep coming up for us is the fact that simply having sex makes me want more. If Amy fucks me on a Friday night, I'm all over her all day Saturday, trying to set up another tryst for that night. For her, it seems to be more like a "We've done that already!" It's a chemical thing, I think: Energetic, passionate sex raises my testosterone levels, thus making me even hornier. But I can't possibly expect the same thing to happen to her — not as intensely, at least.

A couple of weekends ago, we had amazing sex on a Saturday night. Sunday, I knew, was going to be all about getting "domestic" things done — errands, work around the house, etc. But I woke up with one thought on my mind: If we have an incredibly productive day and get all that stuff done, we could go another round on Sunday night. Amy gently spurned my flirting and groping that morning, easily saw my goal, and warned me up front that this wasn't going to be happening.

I became a petulant child for quite a bit of the rest of that morning. And the only thing worse than acting this way is knowing that you're being an asshole. I was finally able to turn my attitude that day around, but it wasn't easy for me. As we drove to a mall, Amy called me on my pissy attitude, and I admitted that it was this "sex breeds the desire for more sex" thing that I always seem to have.

"And when I act this way," I said, "I'm afraid that you're going to think you don't want to bother having sex with me at all, because you know you're just going to be asked for more right away."

The issue didn't get resolved, but at least it was out on the table. I'm sure it'll get revisited sometime.

I had to laugh, though, when I noticed this letter among the responses to Savage's column:

I love my husband. I love fucking him. I also know that I do say no more often than yes. I’m working on this. I wish he would cut down on the sulking. He’d get fucked a lot more “if only” he would.

Hey! I think Amy wrote in!

Detached

We were on the couch last night, Amy and me,¹ and it was getting on the later side (so what's new). This was how I put it:

"I'm not sure if you were thinking we were having sex tonight. Do you wanna do anything?"

A note to ladies reading this: I understand if my powers of seduction, exhibited in this steamy proposition to my wife, overwhelm you with moist desire. Please, take as much time as you need to "take care of bidness" before continuing with this entry.

"I mean ..." I continue, my libido twisting in the wind, "... I don't want to do anything you're not in the mood for. It's not that big a deal." This is sort of true. But even so: What the hell am I thinking when I say this?

There are two opposite forces at work here.

The first force is a simple, testosterone-based need. It's been a week since I've had any sex that didn't feature my hand in the starring role. Now we stand on the precipice of another work week. The odds of sex before next Saturday are slim to none. Some part of my brain screams: You have to try!

The counterforce is the knowledge that Amy hasn't responded to my overtures all day. These gestures have spanned the gamut, from simple (a caress of the ass, a kiss in the hollow of her neck) to heavy-handed (After repairing a child's toy that Amy [inadvertently] broke, thus silencing a 15-minute tantrum/pouting session, I whisper in Amy's ear: "You owe me an amazing blowjob tonight for this one!").

We had a stupid-busy weekend which included a to-do list that proved size does matter. The only way to gain ground was to split forces. Amy and one kid get a haircut while I take the other kid with me grocery shopping. I take one kid to a birthday party while Amy does yard work. We were detached for the whole weekend. And even when we were together, one or the other of us worked on different chores or dealt with different kids. We weren't spouses these last few days, we were co-workers.

And then there are the examples of the sexual disconnect:

- While watching Rome, I comment: "Man, do Atia's breasts get larger with every episode?" Amy's reply is a question: "Does your mind always have to be on that one track?" She kind-of-apologizes when I point out that such observations about women's bodies on TV usually come from her.

- We hear an ad for a Viagra-style product on the radio, and Amy muses: "How come they don't make a drug that lessens a man's sex drive?" Me: "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Her: (defensive) "It was a joke." Me: "Um, so was mine." This is one of those cases, I think, where that maxim about some truth in every joke might be applicable.

And still — after all this evidence! — "Don Juan" here barreled ahead with a proposition for sex.

Anyroad² ... If you think my come-on was sexy, just wait 'til you get a load of Amy's response:

"I could probably be talked into something."

I'm not sure that she physically shrugged, but I swear I could hear it.

+++
And the red flags just kept popping up.

I got ready for bed while Amy stayed in front of the television, watching cake decorating. Friends, this never happens.

I was in bed when Amy came into the bedroom, and she asked if we could work on a crossword for awhile. It was almost 1:00 a.m. Any sane man would take the hint; any sane husband would gracefully bow out, letting his wife off the hook.

I hate to give away the ending to my story, but you all know where this is going, don't you?

+++
Lights off, we started kissing. And everything felt a little ... off. Like we'd been away from each other, lost our groove. I commented on this.

"I've felt so disconnected from you." I wasn't sure where this was going, but I hoped she could help me get there. But it was a dead end: Amy acknowledged that we've been really busy recently. End of discussion.

My hands worked around her body. My tongue traveled from neck to ear. I was gettin' ... nothin'.

As she stroked my chest, she said: "My hand is hurting a lot from this eczema thing tonight. I'm sorry, but I can't really touch you a lot." I told her that's fine. But the thought that it hurt to touch me dug deeper than I let on. I crave Amy's touch. Often, when she slips a hand under my shirt and strokes my back, there is a physical release of stress. I'm sure she thinks I'm overdramatizing when I react. It's as if I discovered a delicious treat I had no idea I was hungry for.

I slipped a hand inside her panties, and she giggled. "You're tickling me!" she said between laughs.

"I'm not doing anything! I'm not even being that gentle!"

"I'm sorry," she said. "You just went in soft and swiftly."

"Then let me try it again. This time I'll go in hard and clumsily," I joked.

"Well, that definitely won't tickle."

I try again, and again, she writhed in ticklish laughter. "I'm sorry, but your hand is just doing that to me tonight!"

I sit up and roughly start to pull off her panties. "Let's see what my tongue does to you, then."

I stayed knelt by her side, my head lowered to her pussy. A typical "69" position, except that my cock is off to the side. Usually she manually plays with me, but not tonight. My tongue went to work, but momentarily she bucked me off in another fit of laughter. One more try: This time her legs squeezed my face as she laughed into the pillow.

"You have got to be kidding me," I said, a little irked now.

She collected herself and finally allowed me in. I was all business. I had something to prove! What, exactly, I'm not sure. She had a pretty good orgasm. And then I did something slightly passive-aggressive: Instead of backing off after her orgasm, I locked my mouth over her cunt and continued to go at her like she still had somewhere to go. I guess I was trying to give her a second one, show her how good this could be. Whatever I was thinking (and calling it "thinking" is charitable), she finally had to force me off. I fell back on the bed panting.

Amy sat up and pulled off my boxer-briefs. With no preface, she came right down on my cock and went to work. It was really nice at first — some variation up and down the sides and underside of the shaft, combined with taking me deep. I slipped my hand into her hair and did some mild guiding. She winced.

"Gentler," she whispered in between sucks.

"Sorry," I said, and decided not to chance hurting her.

Instead, I slipped a hand between her legs, let a thumb stray into her ass crack. Immediately, she clinched and moved away. "Okay," I whispered, getting the message.

My hand slinked up her sides to her tank-covered breasts. I gently teased one, stimulating a nipples. Again, she flinched.

"I can't do that either?" The words came out of my mouth before I could stop myself. I think I was whining.

"I'm really sorry," she said. She repositioned herself between my legs, putting her bits out of reach. I sighed and put my hands over my head, grabbing the footboard of the bed.

I stared at the ceiling, realizing there was no way I was coming now. I was completely out of the mood. What's more, Amy, was totally overblowing me at this point. She was going up and down at breakneck pace on my dick, and the teeth were slowly creeping into play, more than they should. It was getting uncomfortable. (Perhaps she was just returning my passive aggression!) When she came up for air, I slipped a hand onto my cock and started jacking, encouraging her to work my balls instead.

But it was already over. Shortly, she came up beside me. She started licking my nipples as I continued to jack myself.

"Tell me something dirty," I suggested. With a good spate of slutchat from Amy, I could probably come off quickly.

"I was thinking about Cleopatra's small tits," she said, another reference to Rome. "What it would be like to have small tits like those. The kind that are barely there. Where you would just be able to suck on my nipples and really nothing else...."

This was the oddest direction she'd ever gone with such talk. She must have known that, because she abandoned it.

"It's just not my night," she sighed.

"No, I guess it's not," I acknowledged, though lovingly. I kissed her head. "You should just go to sleep."

With little hesitation, she flipped around, putting her head back at the top of the bed. "Are you going to finish?" she asked.

"I don't know. Maybe. Yes." But ten strokes later, my erection was gone. I turned around too.

I tried to talk a little more about the disconnection. I commented on feeling far away from her.

"Well, you stay up late, and I get up early," she said. And all I could think was, I'm not the one falling asleep at 9:00 every night! But saying that out loud would have definitely started a fight, and it would have been unfair anyway. Instead, I redirected my frustration, putting the burden on the child who hasn't been sleeping well. Amy didn't respond. She was falling asleep.

I looked at the clock. It was 1:45 a.m. I stared into darkness. I thought about the fact that there are going to be nights like these; we just hadn't had one in a long, long time. I thought about how borderline-petulant I was acting about all of this. I thought about masturbating again. But all masturbatory fantasies lead back to Amy, and any "fantasy Amy" would morph into tonight's Amy. The only possibility was a raunchy porn video to drown out my overactive head. But I didn't move. I just lay there and stewed.

I looked at the clock again. It was 3:02 a.m.

+++
"It's 6:51," said Amy, cuing me to get out of bed. I showered, the previous evening's events slowly coming back to me. Back in the bedroom, I stood at my dresser, pulling on underwear.

"It's a miracle," Amy said behind me, "that none of the kids have woken up."

"Yeah, that's cool," I said. I reached for an undershirt.

"So," she said, "you want to try again?"

I froze. Laughed. Shook my head. Walked over to the bed. "Bless you for that," I said. "But I have a hard time believing we won't be interrupted."

"But we could try," she said.

"You don't have to do this," I said.

"I want to do this," she said. Convincingly.

So, how cool is that?

I tossed the undershirt on the bed, stepped out of my underwear. Before I could say, "Alright, we can try," she had my flaccid cock in her mouth.

Three sucks later, it was rock-hard. I stood next to the bed as she lay down, encouraging me to fuck her mouth. I kept it gentle. This morning felt like it needed gentle.

"You keep yourself good and hard," she said after a moment, "and I'll be right back." She peed while I stretched on the bed, lazily jacking. She returned with a wicked grin and attacked my dick with gusto. It took just a few minutes before I quietly came. It was the thought that counted.

"Wow," she commented, "they're still not awake."

"Yeah," I said, slipping my underwear back on.

"So you could get me off again."

I turned around, and now she was stretched out, her hand already warming things up. I fell between her legs.

After several minutes of bringing her to the edge, she would fall away again. Finally, she pounded the mattress with a fist. "I don't know what's wrong! I get close, and then I lose it. I feel like I'm a long way away!"

"For what it's worth," I offered, "I'm having a hell of a time finding the pocket and getting a rhythm."

She pulled me up beside her. "Thanks anyway."

"No, thank you," I said. "This was a nice surprise."

She kissed me. "Gotta get moving." She headed to the shower.

"Breakfast?" I asked.

"Oh ... oatmeal or smoothie. Whichever you want."

I headed down the hall to the kitchen. We had managed to delay the start of the week by some twenty minutes, but now it was officially here.


--
¹ Sometimes I think I could rename this blog "A Marriage Held on the Couch." [Return]

² My new favorite word. I picked it up from Rome. Which, sadly, ended its run on HBO last night. Damn, I'm gonna miss that series. Even if there wasn't much of a series left, as all but three of the main characters were dead by the final credits. [Return]

Interlude

Last night. We're on the couch. Amy says, "Could you get me some ice cream?"

"Only if you let me go down on you later," I reply.

She smirks. I don't move.

"It'll be good for you," says Dr. Denis.

She gives me a pleading look. I don't move.

"You won't regret it." I say this in a you-know-this-from-personal-experience-so-stop-fucking-with-me sort of way.

She offers: "How about I give you a 'distinct possibility?'"

I lock eyes on her. I give her the impression that I'm studying her, trying to ascertain if her "distinct possibility" is a smokescreen to keep me out of her pants. Of course, this is utter bullshit. I'd take "distinct possibility" any day of the week. She got her ice cream lickety-split ... and I set my sights on my lickety-split later.

Cut to bedtime. It's later than we both wanted, but we had work to do. I'm already in bed, and she comes to me and starts like this:

"It's not like I don't want to...."

Here we go, I think. My eyes think it too, and she reads them. Which gives her explanation more of an edge. It got late ... we have an extra-early day tomorrow ... we've been up really, really late the last few nights, and she'd like to feel rested going into the week. And she really wants to do this, she just wants to be smart about it.

And none of this can I argue with. So I don't.

"I just want to be into it," she says, almost pleadingly, now almost making me feel guilty.

"I want you to be into it too," I tell her. "I'm not interested if you aren't going to be into it." It's hard for me not to get huffy about this.

"Don't be mad at me."

"I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at the six million things we had to do tonight that are now keeping this from happening."

"How about if I sleep naked tonight?" she offers. Amy, The Great Compromiser. Naked is almost as good as sex.

And all of this over eating pussy! Really, I just want to get her off, down and dirty. I hadn't gotten the chance to do it when we'd had sex over the weekend. All day long, I had imagined a scenario where I unexpectedly yanked down her jeans, pushed her down on the nearest furniture, and ate to my heart's (and her orgasm's) content. No talk. Well, no coherent talk, anyway.

We're miles away from that now.

In the dark, spooned against her, a breast filling one palm, I realize the dichotomy of this situation: I live to have our naked bodies pressed together, but the whole thing has become such a tease now. I whisper, "I'm getting you in the morning."

She giggles. "Okay. Sounds good."

***
It's seven this morning. One child ensconced in front of the television. The other blissfully asleep -- hopefully for awhile, still. I've already showered and breakfast is in the works. I take a break to sit on the side of the bed, gently wake her up.

"I don't wanna get up," she says sleepily.

"Then let me wake you up slowly." Clearly, I really, really want to eat this woman.

"You can do that," she says, even sounding like she thinks it's a good idea.

And it is. It's a glorious, deep, warm, wet, sweet, raw, impassioned, quivering, juicy, session of gobble. She starts by pulling the covers over me, up to her chest, on the off-chance that a child would stroll in. (It hasn't happened yet, knock wood.) But by the end, she's tossed them away, and she's writhing as quietly as she can, and not too successfully. I watch her nipples grow as my tongue and lips bring her up and over the mountain.

It's a quick descent, by necessity. Only ten minutes have passed, but every minute in the mornings is valuable. She embraces me, kisses me deeply.

"Thank you," I say as I head back to the kitchen.

"The pleasure was all mine," she responds on her way to the bathroom.

"That's what you think."

But she's out of earshot.

Rain Check for Services Rendered

Late yesterday afternoon, I got a call from our babysitter at home: The electricity was out. After a brief consultation over the phone, it was clear that I needed to go home and take care of this, or at worst, call an electrician to get this fixed.

Amy and I were headed to a lecture that evening, so this had suddenly gotten tricky: Instead of picking her up, I was now headed the other direction; Amy would have to get her own ride to the lecture. I was going to be lucky if I made it at all. I arrived home in the chaos of a babysitter changing-of-the-guard while the kids went ape about the power outage.

LongStoryShort: I got the power back on relatively quickly. That's always a relief, based on the money we had just saved. Amy was going to be glad.

Hmmmm, I thought. Amy was going to be glad.

How glad?

I called her. She was still en route to the lecture.

"It's back on," I said. "Everything seems to be fine."

"Great!" she said. "So you can still make it?"

"I'm on my way out the door." I paused. "You know, I'm billing you $130 for this." She laughed. "But don't worry about it," I assured her. "I'm certain we can work out an arrangement for compensation that doesn't have to involve money." She laughed again. We talked for another couple of minutes as I got my coat on, and as the little one talked to her briefly on the phone, but before I hung up, I whispered: "Yesssssss! I get to save a coupon! It's a freebie!"

+ + +

Several hours later, Amy and I were home, my head in her lap, the kids asleep. Because we had been out and hadn't had to go through the usual (exhausting) ritual of getting little ones to bed, she was exceedingly awake.

"I'm thinking about submitting my bill for the electrical work," I told her. She laughed and kissed me. "What do you think?" I pushed.

She avoided a direct answer for a few minutes as we talked about other things, and then finally said, "You know, I don't think I'm in the mood. How can you be in the mood after that intense lecture tonight?"

"That's a whole different part of my brain. It has nothing to do with the part working right now."

"But it was such a cerebral night," she said. "It doesn't put me in the frame of mind for this."

Cerebral? Was she kidding?

I pointed out that cerebral things were exactly the kind of things that tend to turn me on ... and I thought that was the case with her too.

"It does, but ... not that way. It's just that--"

"You know what?" I cut her off. "I'm whining. I hear myself whining about this. That's totally not what I want to be doing. This was supposed to be a fun thing, and it's going the wrong way. So I'm totally cool with a rain check."

That was that. In the same way that every grope doesn't have to turn to sex, every rejection of advances does not have to turn into another lengthy discussion about our unbalanced libidos.

But I did warn her about a simple fact of business: If she doesn't remit, I'm coming back later to collect. With interest.

A Saturday, and A Sunday

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The Coupons.

It was Christmas night, and Amy and I had settled on the couch with the contents of our unopened stockings. The kids were nearby, playing with various items from the morning's spoils. We had been so busy with the holiday hoopla that our stockings had gone neglected, so we took a moment of (relative) quiet to enjoy the few trinkets stuffed into the felt.

Amy disclaimed my stocking up front with a warning that many of the items were "re-gifts." Basically, she'd raided our pantry for little food items that would fit in. I had barely had time to pull together her stocking in one hurried afternoon at a local Cost Plus, and it wasn't feeling inspired: a decorative wine cork, some almonds, a small vacuum-packed bag of French roast coffee, a Toblerone bar, etc. But Amy had had no time to shop so she had really had to wing it at 3 a.m. the night before, after we had finally finished wrapping and assembling the kid's gifts.

Sure enough, there was a Crunchie candy bar, some chocolate coins that must have been from last Christmas, a small kitchen gadget ... stuff that would fit.

Near the bottom of the stocking, I discovered envelopes. Six of them. Solid, dark pastelish stationery that I had seen lying around the office desk for the last umpteen years. And here they were. Numbered one through six. I couldn't even guess what was contained therein.

I opened the one labeled "#1:"

Good for one mind-blowing BJ
(not just your run-of-the-mill blowjob)
Best used when sinus condition is not present

My breath hitched. My cock stirred. This was going to be tricky if this was only the first coupon. What state would I be in by #6? And here were my kids playing, not to mention another relative close by. Suddenly I wished we were somewhere private. At least I had my back to everyone else. Facing Amy, I could smile, look to Heaven, and mouth "Thank you!"

I'll expound on this more later, but it may even go without saying (after all, we are a middle-aged couple with jobs and kids): There has been some occasional tension regarding the frequency of sex. It doesn't exhibit as anger (I don't get mad easily), but more as guilt from both parties: me for my seemingly constant "nagging" for more, and Amy (who insists that I don't nag) for feeling like she is way too often tired, distracted, not-feeling-sexy-enough to give it to me.

There have been some pretty intense discussions about this in bed over the last few weeks. Tears shed, honest feelings discussed in the halting whispers of a couple simultaneously feeling deep emotion and trying not to wake up sleeping children. At least we're both communicating honestly and openly, but some possibly disturbing revelations have come about through these discussions. And we're still not sure what to do about the lack of parity on our libidos.

So the coupons blindsided me, in a good way. They were an amazing gesture. The "sex coupon" is a decades-old stand-by -- you can buy them gag gift stores or find any number of online sites that provide ideas for this way too cutesy idea. I think I even did a set for my high-school girlfriend once (lo those many years ago). Amy's were so special, I think, not only because they were somewhat "personalized" to my interests, but because they gave a sense of "hope" for the future. That we were going to keep working on this. And more importantly, as Dan Savage says, Amy was "good, giving and game."

I opened up the next coupon -- #2:

Good for some ass-action
(Need I say more?)
Ply liberally with wine or other lubricant

Anal has been a recent introduction to our repertoire, though it has been a long-term fantasy of mine.

#3:

Good for some morning sex —
even if it makes us late for work
(It makes us so happy while we're there)

Nice to find some good use for my "morning wood" one day soon. Though honestly, I have to wonder when this would happen, since one of the kids usually beats us awake every morning. I guess it won't always be that way, right?

Right?

Onward to the fourth:

Good for raunchy sex with
lots of dirty talk
(Pornos require advance notice)

Porn certainly isn't a necessity for me in this case, but it might be for Amy. She's a bit self-conscious about dirty talk, though she knows how much I love it. On nights when she's too tired to fuck but willing to help me get myself off, she knows I come faster if she nestles in next to my ear and spins a fantasy about her fucking one or another of our more attractive friends. With a dirty movie, she can really get rolling. It's taken awhile to work her up to it, but she can be pretty nasty when she sets her mind (mouth?) to it.

Number five had me dropping my jaw to the ground -- at first:

Good for a threesome, or
foursome, with Shelley and
Jon (if they let us)

Sorry, just kidding.

Oh wow. Shelley and Jon are parents of a schoolmate of one of our kids. Shelley has an exotic look to her -- and an amazing chest. Jon has an accent and is incredibly good-looking. We have joked and fantasized before about them, and wondered at first if there would be any interest there. We have since discovered that Shelley is extremely Catholic, so we don't hold out much hope. Still, great fodder between the sheets.

Amy almost apologized for the last coupon -- she said that she was having a hard time coming up with six ideas. So out of desperation, she wrote this:

Good for one new thing —
of your choosing.
Just ask.

Her desperation turned out to be the best coupon of all -- the very definition of "good, giving and game." It was so open-ended that I was immediately hard as a rock (and damned uncomfortable there in our living room!) with the possibilities. It was like having my whole life pass in front of my eyes -- except that instead of my life it was all of the fantasies I've had for the two of us. And one of them was going to get fulfilled.

I couldn't thank Amy enough for this gift. It was by far my favorite Christmas present this year. And not just because it's going to provide for some great, messy, dirty sex, but because of how it speaks to her commitment to find our way through the tricky sexual imbalance we're experiencing.

This is gonna be fun.

Justify My (Blog's) Existence

I won't lie: Her breasts had a lot to do with the initial attraction.

I've never been the kind of guy who was getting so much sex that he could pick and choose his partners. I don't believe that many guys like that exist. But I definitely have predilections, and a good-sized chest was something that I favor, should the opportunity arise. While Amy wasn't the kind of woman whose breasts introduced themselves before she did, it didn't take long to sense another "presence" in the room. For me, it was a short hop from acknowledgment to outright desire.

And, at the risk of making Amy sound slutty, it was not a long trip from that initial desire for her breasts to my first opportunity to play with them. Within hours of our introduction, after a fascinating and complex evening of events (a story that may be expounded on another occasion), we lay on the futon on the floor of her bedroom. Her fuchsia t-shirt was pulled up over her tits, revealed in their supple, succulent glory to my hands and lips for the first time. Her hands were simultaneously inside the pair of shorts she had loaned me earlier that morning, getting acquainted with my own equipment.

We were in our mid-twenties, and we thoroughly enjoyed those first months of simultaneous love/lust in a most cliché way. We spent every spare moment together, essentially cutting out the rest of our friends (and family too) as we obsessively experienced every aspect of each other. I'm speaking mostly sexually here, let's be honest. She had heard from a mutual friend how much I enjoyed extended sessions of eating pussy. She showed herself equally talented when it came to oral exploits. Which was a nice change for me from my previous girlfriend, who seemed to begrudgingly fellate me. Amy helped me make up for lost time.

We jokingly kept track of orgasms for probably the first fifty or so. We slyly played with each other in public settings like movie theaters and restaurants. We shared music, books, and rug burns. We cooked for each other. We would find ourselves overcome with emotion for how lucky we were to have found each other. We made our rug burns much worse in a typically twentysomething effort to express said emotions.

Our lives were not solely defined by sex, but there is no denying that it was a huge part of those early years. Simply put, we loved fucking.

+ + +

Amy and I are now in our forties. We are married. We have children. And like so many other couples who have walked a similar path, we chuckle with a vague yearning about how free those times in our twenties seemed. In so many respects, we are happy where we are now. But -- and trust me, I know how cliché this aspect of our relationship is as well -- the amount of sex has lessened dramatically. By cliché I mean "normal." A dropoff is to be expected for the vast majority of relationships that follow our trajectory.

We are struggling to find that balance between work and family, and somewhere in there we also need to nourish the needs of the primary relationship, the one between Amy and me. Intimacy still plays a major role, though now it seems to be defined more by its elusiveness.

Libidos have fallen out of balance. Mine seems as strong as ever, but the demands on Amy are such that she frankly is not as interested. This is not to say that when we do make the time that she's not an enthusiastic and thoroughly pleasing lover. But there is no question that I am the initiator in 95% of the encounters -- which themselves seem few and far between.

This blog is not meant to be a place for me to complain; that would be so deadly dull that even I wouldn't read it. But I am hoping that I might garner a readership of men and women in similar circumstances, and that my thoughts (and yours) might help us explore the issues that grow out of the aging sexual relationship.

Though there will probably be a certain amount of analysis and self-study, I am hoping that this blog will titillate too. I enjoy writing erotica, and I plan on discussing, in frank and usually prurient language, Amy's and my past and future encounters, as well as our fantasies.

Not unlike the way my marriage is a balance between my needs and my wife's, I will try to counterweight my exploration of our relationship's sexual psyche with my (imagined?) audience's desire for a little arousal. On the day that I'm writing this, I have no earthly idea if I'll be able to pull this off. It'll be fun trying, though!