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!

BlogMeBlogYou II: Dream A Marriage Drawn with Dotted Lines

Push (I push ) until U get 2 higher ground
Hey, push - U're never 2 young, U're never 2 old
Yeah push - don't stop until U go
- Prince [taken entirely out of context]

This is the second in an ongoing series of posts about other blogs I read. These words could be stuck in the "comments" section of the other blog, but really this is less a "reaction" to the original entry than an extensive elaboration.

Married Exploits: Confused

Now that Odysseus and I have opened the window into new sexual adventures and possibilities, I find that it affects what I think and feel when I'm with our friends.

That's Penelope of Married Exploits, kicking off a blog entry that is now more than a month old. (I've hit a crazy-busy patch at work, and that combined with some moonlighting work has made steady blogging quite the challenge.)

A lot of the blogs that I read on a regular basis are chosen because I want to live vicariously through their experience. Some of the bloggers who experiment with sharing their bed are so far out "ahead" that I can't imagine Amy and me doing what they do.

But Odysseus and Penelope -- they're a little newer to this experience. And though we have hardly come as far as this couple, when I read their give-and-take on the blog, I can almost imagine Amy and me sharing very similar thoughts. In other words: I can see Odysseus and Penelope's taillights ... and imagine possibly pulling up beside them someday. (Such heady life goals Denis entertains, you know?)

Anyway. Back to Penelope's thoughts:

In bed, Odysseus and I talk about the friends we are attracted to and the possibilities that could happen with them. This begins to create expectation in my mind and I begin to go into social situations with almost the mind set like I did when I was single. "Is this person a possibility? Should I flirt with them? What if?"

I once posted about a party Amy and I attended where we met an attractive couple. After the party, in a response to my query, Amy indicated the couple's positive "potential" for a foursome/swap/whatever. I put potential in quotes for a reason: I'm pretty sure that Amy was not going beyond the theoretical in that short conversation. While we fantasize during sex about such encounters, I wonder if, for her, this is anything more than an indulgence in my kinks.

I've been tempted to put that to the test — to tell Amy straight out that I am considering asking for a threesome or foursome for my wild-card coupon. I think to myself, What's the harm in putting it out there? "Anything ... Just ask." What's the worst that could happen? A "no?"

That is the worst that could happen. And if it did, certainly life would go on. Except that ... a hard "no" condemns the fantasy to Fantasyland in perpetuity.

I would live a very happy, fulfilled, lucky life without watching Amy suck another man's cock ... without watching Amy fuck another man while I fuck his wife ... without even fucking Amy in front of another person or couple. I mean, it's just a silly fantasy, right?

Yes ... on one level. On another level, it's a kink. A big one for me. And a kink runs deeper, is more potent, weighs heavier than mere fantasy. A lot of seed has been spilled, friends, in the dream-pursuit of the Orgy Of Four. So, while it would not be a tragedy to see that fantasy upended once and for all ... it would be mighty sad nonetheless.

So I'm caught in that oh-so-cliché Purgatory of the Meek: Do I push and take the chance of having a fantasy hobbled once and for all? Or do I stay mum and preserve the insatiable power that the image holds?

Of course I know what you're all going to say: Go for it, you idiot. Maybe I will. Maybe I'll surprise myself.

Then I realize Odysseus and I have awakened this whole other realm of possibility to which most people, in general, are oblivious. They view us as married and sealed off. They view themselves as married or in a relationship and sealed off. The sexual energy, and often energy in general, is completely dormant. They are tired working adults.

In my head, I can't accept that my sexual energy is "sealed off." I view life around me in terms of sensuality. Pleasure. My life is a tide, and I have one insanely strong sex undertow. I'm a closeted libertine.

But I wonder if Penelope is describing my wife. On certain nights, in certain situations, Amy might entertain the thought of pushing that envelope. But, by her own admission, these are not dominant thoughts. I'd say, "Well, that's a difference between men and women," except that this oversimplified assertion wouldn't explain women like ... well, Penelope. And so many others I've come to know since launching this blog. Amy is my life partner, there's no question. But it's hard to think of an area in our relationship where we exist on planes further apart.

So what to do with this dichotomy? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps pushing ... gently.

How I long for — how many of my fellow bloggers long for — a world where the borders of marriage are more fluid. Where a couple can reserve certain emotions, certain intimacies just for themselves ... but still feel the freedom to share a sensuality with others who feel likewise. Oh, I know that this world exists now — many of you prove this. But wouldn't it be wonderful to not have to hide behind our anonymity, to be so scorned by fellow members of society?

Okay, I'll get off of this before I lapse into a rewrite of John Lennon's "Imagine."

I do keep in mind something else that Penelope points out:

If we keep the window open to these things and get aroused thinking and talking about it, reality always might be kind of disappointing. If we actually walk through the door, reality might fuck with our heads and be disappointing too.

There's always the fear of reality shitting upon the fantasy. But it comes down to "nothing wagered, nothing gained," right? So you try it ... and it sucks. Great! Now you can put that one behind you, opening up lots of time to obsess about another kink!

+++
Oh, Pen and Odie ... one more thing:

It has to be with the RIGHT couple, and god knows what this couple is really like.

If Amy and I work slowly down that road ... If I ask her ... If she says "okay ..." In a perfect world, Amy and I would be your right couple. It's not just something to think about; it's something to be fierecely aroused by.

Laying Groundwork.

I received a couple of comments on my blog entry about our night at a formal party that I found a little disturbing. Not "disturbing" in the sense that I was repelled by them; rather, they sent ripples across the surface of my understanding of my sexual relationship ... and of the purpose of this blog. For several days now, I have been turning things over in my head. This entry is more for myself than readers. I'm thinking out loud, I guess.

The first comment came from the illustrious Tom Paine, who, upon reading the entry, simply noted:

Very nice the way you two are moving along. Good luck.

And then, very recently, Mike of Shared Cindy wrote a similar comment:

I am an avid follower of your progress.

Seemingly innocuous notes, maybe; but to me, they force to the front burner an issue that I need to sort out: What, exactly, am I progressing toward? I'm not sure if these readers intended or assumed with their comments that I have a specific sexual goal ... say, inviting others into our bed, or watching Amy fuck another man. While both of these examples are deep-seeded fantasies — shared to an equal or lesser extent by Amy — they're really beside the point.

I'm writing because I want to "explore the issues that grow out of the aging sexual relationship." (A quote from my inaugural post.) Interestingly, I haven't ended up doing a lot of that exploration yet, because I've (unexpectedly) been writing about all the actual sex we've been having. (A pretty great problem to have!) I imagine this more "active" period is fleeting, and that the underlying issues that brought me to this blog in the first place are still there, waiting to be dealt with.

There's a big part of me that is envious of what Tom Paine (and C.) and Mike (and Cindy) have. But so many factors make that kind of relationship entirely unrealistic for Amy and me. Primary among them is Amy's feeling that sex isn't ... well ... as important to her. While she might indulge me in some of my fantasies sometime, the fact remains that her libido is maybe a tenth of mine. She's good, giving, and game ... but not necessarily looking to push the boundaries.

I will keep pushing boundaries, though, both during sex and through conversation. If it's possible, I want to help Amy rediscover her sexual self, to glimpse the woman I find so stimulating, so electrifying. This can't be accomplished if Amy is feeling uncomfortable in any way, so the whole boundary-pushing thing has to be handled with care. No sudden moves. No unexpected surprises. In short: Trust. Now: If, down the line, through further discussion, we discover that there is a more "non-traditional" activity we'd like to really try — say, inviting another couple or individual into our bed — then I would be more than game (if I was convinced that Amy was truly into the experience).

In reality, my expectations are low in that regard. We are a long way from that kind of play. In the meantime, the increased communication that would be part of this examination of our sex life may naturally improve things. As we discover more about what turns us on, what we're willing to do, and what we really want, the quality of the sex could reach a higher level than we've ever imagined.

Ever the optimist, eh, Denis?

Cop a Feel, Show Me the Love.

Amy and I are pretty good at "the communication thing." We talk things out pretty well. But like all couples with a long history, we make our fair share of assumptions without clearly communicating, and we end up in relationship minefields on occasion.

We resort to a lot of "shorthand" typical of marriage ... which is just a different way of making assumptions, I suppose. There is verbal shorthand -- language or phrases familiar only to us. (We refer to our favored way of lying together in bed as "position one.") And there is an emotional shorthand that develops. (Amy calls to me from down the hall, and I can tell from a tone in her voice that she's upset, so I move quickly down the hallway.)

Here's a less obvious example: On Saturday night, I suggested a shower together. Amy paused before answering. A fly on the wall might have assumed she was considering my proposal, but in fact it was being dismissed. To be honest, I knew before I asked -- she had been cleaning up crap around the house all night, obsessing about our home's disorder. Her speech was coming in short, purposeful bursts ("What do you want to do with these magazines?" "I'm getting rid of these socks, they bug me"). She wasn't angry, but neither was her demeanor light. In other words, she probably couldn't have been feeling less like having sex without being in an emergency room waiting area. Still, I had to ask, just in case she was willing to try and shift gears.

When she waffled, I took the burden off of her. What I wanted to do required her full emotional participation. If I didn't have that, I was no longer interested myself. There will be other nights.

Last night, I decided quite spontaneously to break down one of the "shorthands" Amy has built around us. I had propositioned her with oral (of the non-reciprocating variety), and she was semi-interested until she discovered how late it had was. "Sorry to ruin your fun," she said, officially taking sex off the table as she buttoned her pajamas. Already naked in bed, I told her that was fine, that I understood.

After she turned off the lights and climbed into bed, we were having a conversation about something unrelated, and I took her hand and put it on my cock. She didn't move it for a moment or two and we kept talking.

At a break in the conversation, I said: "Play with me for awhile."

"Well ... okay." Her hand moved around a little. The tone in her voice wasn't lost on me.

"Are you reluctant," I asked, "because you think you're going to get me going? That you'll leave me all teased and turned on and frustrated?"

"Well ... yeah," Amy said.

"You know, sometimes I just like being touched. Teased. It doesn't have to mean I want all-out sex."

"Okay," she said, and her hand moved with a little more assurance.

"It's nice to know occasionally that you know it's there, even when it's not gonna get used."

She got it. We talked about something else while she manipulated. My cock was hard. I was happy where I was, just enjoying the feel. This wasn't going anywhere, and that was just fine.

After a few minutes, Amy turned away from me. One might have taken that as shorthand for her being upset with me, but this was not the case. She's just more comfortable sleeping on the side of her body that faces away from me. Every night she does this, and every night I spoon against her after the flip. On this occasion I also thrust my newly aroused shaft against her pajama-covered butt.

"Thank you," I kissed into her ear. "It's nice to have just that once in awhile." Amy sleepily acknowledged.

Not a day goes by that I don't find opportunities to touch Amy in an "adult" way. Usually it involves caressing or grabbing her ass. Sometimes, if the "coast is clear," I'll come up behind her and gently palm a breast. Sometimes the touch is accompanied by a comment, eliciting one of her self-conscious laughs. I'm stealing a chance to fondle my lover -- on the sly, without my wife finding out. The fact that my lover and my wife are one and the same seems immaterial.

Some people would find this touchy habit annoying. Apparently Amy doesn't. In fact, this morning, after dragging a hand across her butt for the third time in less than five minutes as I moved around the kitchen, I apologized: "I'm sorry," I said. "I'll stop touching you."

"You do not have to stop touching me!" she assured.

Well, good, then. I won't!

(Except perhaps I do have to be more careful when I cup her breasts with cold hands. No need to see if she can put a hole in our bedroom ceiling with her head.)

So I have this shorthand with her body as we move through our day together ... but she doesn't return the favor much. She doesn't cop feels. Why is that? Maybe it's just not her thing. She enjoys receiving gropes, but maybe she's not comfortable giving them. Or perhaps it just doesn't occur to her. I'm trying to let her know that it's okay to tease me.

I was thinking about this in the shower this morning. When I got out, I returned to the bedroom where Amy was still snoozing. I woke her with a kiss and then I rubbed her back, which melted her. I reached under the pajama top and caressed a breast. She seemed to be enjoying it, not hurrying to get up. Then she said: "I suddenly need to pee." When she arose, she saw me in my turgid state. "I'm sorry that I'm leaving you with that," she said as she reached down and gave it a couple tugs. She sounded genuinely disappointed.

Off to the bathroom she went ... and off to the bathroom I followed. When she sat down and when she looked up, she was staring directly at my cock. She let out a low chuckle and took the head in her mouth. She sat there for less than a minute, sleepily licking the shaft while my fingers rubbed her head. When she was done peeing, I asked her what she wanted for breakfast, walked out, pulled on my underwear, and started the rest of my day.

Just play. Just fun. A little tease, and another suggestion to her that it doesn't have to go somewhere every time, that we can fool around for a few moments and then return to business as usual. It's hard to find the playful side of our days with the internal and external stresses. And as we go through our days as spouses and parents, it's nice to remember that we are also lovers.

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.

The Mirror, Crack'd

I don't even remember now what precipitated the discussion. All I know is that I felt like we'd been here before. More than once.

The word "discussion" doesn't quite capture its ... essence. It was 1:30 in the morning on a weeknight, in our dark bedroom. Amy was in bed, I standing next to her. Both of us were on the verge of tears. The tone was sharp, but the words were hushed. Our children were asleep, and we were already exhausted. The last thing we needed was to wake them up.

The next-to-last thing we needed was to have this chat again, the one about our sex life. But here we were, so it was happening. As I said, I can't remember how we got there. All I know is that Amy was annoyed with me for doing this now ... annoyed, until I peeled back another layer of my frustration and gave a short monologue:

"I'm not talking about sex at this point, Amy. I'm talking about intimacy. I want to kiss you. I want to touch you. The sex doesn't even matter at this point, I just want to feel intimate, feel close to you!"

Suddenly she didn't seem "annoyed." She sensed the seriousness.

"Do you know what I mean?" I said, mostly to fill the silence, not really expecting her to respond. She did, though, in the affirmative.

"I mean ..." I struggled for a clearer example of my frustration. "... I can't remember the last time we went to bed at night and you were naked, so I could just press against you, skin-to-skin."

"I'm not comfortable being naked," she said quietly.

"Since when?" I fired back.

"Denis," she said, and she spoke more slowly to get it across, "I've never been comfortable being naked."

Struck dumb. Mind whirring.

Is she serious? Wait a minute, is she right? Is that true? Think, think, think ... when was the last time she was ... Holy shit.

"But that wasn't always true!" I insisted. "I remember ..." Yes, I remembered, but I remembered a long, long time ago. "... we used to be naked all the time." I finished the thought, but my stand was losing its footing underneath.

+ + +

I was realizing she was right. Pieces fell into place. I had often walked naked around our homes and apartments all these years, but she almost always had something on. On nights when we had sex before going to sleep -- with a few exceptions -- she would rightside-in all the inside-out clothes that had been hastily tossed off, re-dressing before going to bed. If we had fucked in a different room, she always put something on for the walk from that location back to our bedroom, lest she be seen through a side window by a neighbor.

I was blessed with good genes in the body shape department. I was the kid who got the jokes about the hollow leg or the tapeworm at family holiday dinners. I swallowed everything and went back for seconds, as my metabolism burned off the calories faster than I could consume them. Now in my forties, I'm still within ten pounds of my weight in college. That mercury-like metabolism has only slightly slowed. A little paunch around the middle, but overall, when I'm toweling off after a shower and catch my image in the mirror, I don't think I look too bad. I'm know that keeping in shape gets harder as I get older, but I'm never going to have the battles that other people wage for their lifetimes. I can sympathize with Amy, but empathy, in the sense of "I've been there," will always be hard for me when it comes to body image issues.

I knew that Amy wasn't quite as comfortable showing her body. But somehow I had completely ignored how deep this issue went. I had missed that she wasn't even completely comfortable naked in front of her own husband.

Initially, the deepest blow from this revelation was to my own ego. Had I really been this clueless? How the hell do I spend almost every day of the last decade-and-a-half with a woman and manage to miss this intensely intimate fact? I create this notion that I'm a sensitive lover, in tune with my partner's body and mind ... and I miss the fact that she doesn't like to be naked? So much for Mr. Metrosexual.

Eh. Metrosexuals are suffering from culture backlash anyway.

As I sit here writing about this, I think back to 1991 ... to my first 24 hours with Amy. It was a whirlwind day, involving much mashing of lips, sharing of thoughts, and soulful looks. Actually, it was the "soulful looks" part where I perhaps first noticed an issue.

We were on her black leather couch, fully clothed but engaged in a sensual bit of frottage. Her legs wrapped around me. My fingers working through her hair. And when I locked my gaze on her, she nervously laughed and turned away. This happened two or three more times, until finally I had to ask her:

"What's wrong?"

She kept her eyes closed and almost bashfully said, "I'm just not comfortable when you look at me."

"Oh my God, why? You are ... so beautiful."

Spoken like a true, head-over-heels boy. You have my permission to roll eyes and/or feel nauseous.

She really was uncomfortable with anyone studying her from such close proximity. And that fact long baffled me. Amy is so stunning to me -- and other men have certainly found her so as well -- but that's a long way from saying that Amy felt that way. And you know, it doesn't matter how many other people tell you what you're worth if you have little self-worth.

If you met Amy in the workplace, you wouldn't suspect these insecurities. She is a presence in every room she walks into. She is a fighter. She's the kind of person that, with her quick thinking and steel-trap memory, makes herself quickly indispensable to an organization. She exudes confidence, and bosses recognize this. They give her the inside info and the power to affect their own careers. When she dons the power suit, she owns your ass.

I know this because I'm her husband; I see both sides of this woman. I call her at work, catching her in mid-project, and she says "Hang on," and I listen in as she gives explicit instructions to a co-worker or puts the finishing touches on a new strategy. And then later, in bed, I sense the vulnerability and near-embarrassment of a teenage girl when I pull back a bed sheet to admire her body. Like most of us (those that are human anyway), she's a dichotomy.

But this doesn't stop me, I suppose, from idealizing her in some way. Perhaps I lock in my head those moments when she strips away all caution and becomes unbridled, wanton, hungry for my body, and hungry to be consumed. I start to (want to?) believe she possesses those qualities 24/7/365. Maybe this is an easy trap to fall into when one focuses too much on the fantasies without checking in with the reality.

So nights like that recent chat are necessary to bring me back to Earth. Yes, sometimes as we're fucking, she whispers in my ear how good it would feel to be fucking another man, or how hot it would be to have another woman in bed with us. But the reality is, there is much to overcome psychologically before such fantasies can happen.

One might think that there's enough baggage here for me to break under its weight, to deduce that the taboos that so arouse me will never be broken. But I'm an optimistic guy, and I'm a patient guy. I still see a slow march of progress. After all, Amy is interested in knowing my predilections, and we discuss them. (I ask her often what her predilections are, and she doesn't cop to them. If she does have sexual needs not yet expressed, she may not realize what they are yet.) She knows what gets me off, and she loves me enough to want to do what she can to make them happen.

Likewise, I know what makes her happy, and I do everything in my power to help her experience that happiness. It's just that her happiness isn't necessarily about sex. She loves it, no question, but it's not a driving force as it seems to be with me. We respect the fact that we're in different places, and we know that being in different places doesn't mean we can't help each other in a mutual pursuit of happiness.

+ + +

Amy got more comfortable with my looking at her as she learned to trust me, and there was an extended early part of the relationship when she was very comfortable being naked around me. You know the time I'm talking about: It's usually called the "honeymoon," when not a moment passes that isn't consumed with thoughts of your new love. At some point -- I can't really tell you when -- she reverted to her more modest self. I'm not sure if it was something I did. Maybe it was her weight gain that came on as we got older.

The issue of weight is such a loaded gun for people's esteem, and for the relationships they're in. At her heaviest, Amy was close to 40 pounds more than she was when I met her. (Not counting periods when she was pregnant. Thank God she cut herself slack then, enjoying her body and everything going on inside of it.) So much of Amy's character is attractive to me that it colors the lens through which I see her. Yes, I knew she had gained weight -- I'm not blind, fer chrissakes. But my desire for her never waned, and that desire would often cloud the awareness that she was struggling ... until her frustration would come pouring out of her in an emotional breakdown.

But that didn't mean that I didn't still get diamond-cutting hard-ons when I walked in on her disrobing.

(I have a favorite thing to do: When I'm lying in bed an Amy comes in and changes into her pajamas, I sit up and watch, remarking: "This is always my favorite part of the day." I love having those tits revealed to me. I feel like a 12-year-old seeing his first pair, every time.)

Through Weight Watchers and a lot of work (on both our parts), Amy is back to only ten pounds above her 1991 weight. She's more confident, more sure of herself. But that doesn't mean that she has difficulty finding dozens of things wrong with her. For example: I remember a morning early on when I was thoroughly engrossed in her boobs, my face buried between them, licking, nipping, chewing. She remarked: "I think my nipples are too small for my breasts." Now, years later, she said not too long ago that nursing children has resulted in nipples that "may be too big."

Is there any winning?

Well, yes. There might be some winning. But it takes devotion to the task. This is a lifelong problem for her, so it's a lifelong problem for us. As often as we talk about fulfilling fantasies, we talk about helping her feel better about herself. The two, after all, are closely connected. I continue to throw every bit of support to her that I can. And she continues to look for the thoughts and actions that will steel her confidence and help her see the woman that I see.

Or at least perhaps accept the fact that I'm not bat-shit insane for feeling that way.