Form of…A Spoon!
By Tom ’back rub king’ Waters
August 1 , 2007I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’ve reached a stage in my life and my relationship where sex is no longer the driving force of my waking (and sleeping) thoughts. Until Lindsay, I hadn’t been with someone for longer than six months in almost fifteen years, so it’s been confusing for me. Some time over the summer (when we closed in on the two year mark), it just became less of a priority. I started to worry, so I consulted other guys, and this is the way it goes. Maybe it’s evolution, maybe it’s some crazy law of proximity, but I don’t spend every available second engaged in, fantasizing about or pursuing an orgasm. Now that we’re at the half way point to three years, I’m no longer worried about it.
It’s gotta be evolution, though. When we first met, we were like jack rabbits hopped up on Spanish Fly during a porn festival. Two or three times a day, eight and nine times a week. Sometimes I initiated things so that I didn’t have to talk, which is definitely a guy thing. Why open your feelings up when you can open up your button fly? Sex is the ultimate topic changer! That, and you need to mark your territory and leave your scent. Be a complete dynamo in the sack so that she never entertains the notion of other guys. There’s your insecurity. I’ve never subscribed to 'waiting' or 'taking my time to give the relationship time to grow'. Fuck that. Any girl who’s held out for longer than a month is a girl whose…name I can’t remember because they didn’t make the cut. I need to test drive the merchandise. If a woman is lousy in bed then she has no purpose in the world. Kidding. Honestly, though, I’m not going to commit, settle down and fall in love with a woman’s brain if they can’t leave me exhausted, sweaty and embarrassed with my body image afterwards.
The two minute conversation in 'Sex, Lies and Videotape' says it all. Andy McDowell and James Spader are sitting in a coffee house having a frank conversation with each other when they agree that men learn to love the women they’re attracted to while women become attracted to the men that they fall in love with. The outcome is the same and the approach is different. Guys grow up watching big guns go off and sharing dirty magazines; women are spoon fed on fairy tales and dream date board games. Yeah, yeah, it’s not that linear, but you get the point. Even in a post-modern, pro-feminist, everyone-is-their-own-person world, kids are still raised with sex role typing. Hence my one month rule.
That, and I’m getting older. Guys reach their physical and developmental prime at the age of 23 and then the decay begins. The libido spikes, drops off and takes an unplanned nap in an easy chair with a wooden handle with a newspaper in it’s lap. When I was 14, I was like a chimpanzee at the zoo. Say no more. Nowadays, there are quite a few times where I’d genuinely rather go to bed early and get a good night’s sleep than even think about the exhaustion, planning, coordination and physical exertion that goes into getting it on. There are no quickies in our bedroom.
I can’t do the quick draw. That’s just the way I’m built. That, and I’m meticulous when it comes to hygiene. So you’re looking at showers all around, mood lighting, foreplay (which no man is a fan of, don’t believe them), soft kisses, back rubs and all that other garbage. Cigarettes before, cigarettes afterwards, pillow placement, multiple positions and so forth. Just writing this paragraph is wearing me out. I’m going to take a nap and we’ll reconvene.
We’re both busy, too. We work full time jobs and have devoted hobbies that demand a lot of time. Then you’ve got housework, bills, fidelity to quality prime time programming, phone calls, email answering, and if we’ve got enough time left in our days, some hot monkey love. When we met, it was easily seven days a week. Now we clock in around twice a week on average, which is okay for me. That’s enough to boost the endorphins, up the seratonin levels, exercise the heart rate and promote a healthy sleep cycle (because we both know that I’m conking out in t minus five minutes after the deed is done).
Relationships have an evolutionary cycle. Couples rut like barnyard animals, nest, build, congregate and go from there. There’s a natural progress to the way we interact with each other. Plus she got me fat. On purpose. This little trick that women play on men still boggles my mind. Watch out for it but don’t bother trying to do anything about it because it’s not going to happen. Pawning off the part of dinner she didn’t eat. Suggesting ice cream on a whim. Doing the double family meal. All these things add up. I wasn’t even big on sweets before we met, preferring salted snack treats and fried anything, but now I’ve incorporated chocolate and ice cream and fudge into my weekly diet. Damn you, devil woman!
And then there’s our social life to consider. We go out a few times a week with friends, have people over, and take turns having other couples over to our house or going to their house. There are only two or three nights out of the week when we’re not entertaining or being entertained. And we both get up early in the morning. That first time rush of working the sheets of the bed and launching pillows onto the floor followed by conversations about religion, politics and ethics is over for better or worse. We know each others’ likes and dislikes and there are only a few slots left on the punch card for kooky things that we haven’t tried in the boudoir. I’m saving the swinging harnesses, edible body paint and the Vietnamese boys for the day when she has a Mrs. in the front of her name. I was joking about the Vietnamese boys. I actually meant Slavic aardvarks and Arabian hamsters.
I just don’t have the energy or the wherewithal to stay up late during the week anymore. Now that we share the bills, I’ve got that internal drive to succeed at work and in life that men statistically adopt in relationships and that leaves me pretty beat by midnight. Her internal clock is my internal clock, and vice versa. I wake up at seven in the morning now five minutes before her alarm goes off and she conks right out five minutes before I drift off to sleep at night. We are one fully functioning unit, just like Voltron or the Wonder Twins.
An old therapist once told me that couples need to plan 'dates' after a few years just to make time together and he was right. Every Monday, we watch a block of sitcoms, make dinner together, cuddle up on the couch and then I tear it up. You can set your watch to it. Then we’ve got a few wild cards later in the week, give or take. I can always tell when she’s gone too long because she gets wound up and pissy with life in general, and then I take her to the submarine races for the good of mankind.
It’s amazing how much you can accomplish as a faithful man, though. What’s ironic is that I’ve spent the majority of my young life trying to figure out how to get regular ass and now that I have it, I don’t destroy it as often as I dreamed of. She’s still my trophy girlfriend and my hot piece of ass, but there are quite a few days where a long hug when we get home for work or a nice home-cooked meal together makes me feel just as good. Did you hear that popping noise? That was the sound of me officially becoming uncool. Well, I can get it whenever I want and you can’t, so I guess that makes me cool enough.
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