By Tom ’back rub king’ Waters
August
1 , 2007
I 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.
