Suddenly I realized what I had become to my lover. I was like a TV that had lost its signal. He turned my knobs—no good. He fiddled with the volume—nothin’. He flipped through the menu—nope. Finally, he resorted to mindless smacking here and there. It was hopeless. I’ll be the first girl to admit that a nice spanking can bring me right around, and yet, there was no pleasure in that foreplay. I had turned it into a session of following directions. With my demands to remove tenderness and sensuality from the equation, I had reduced everything to the physical, and refused to admit the possibility that something far more metaphysical occurs when lovers come together. I despaired for our marriage.
We went on like that for quite some time, refusing to admit that the routine, the emptiness of our actions was wearing on both of us. He would roll back his sleeves and get to work. I would watch with distant horror. Then, one day, it all fell apart. I said “no.” This may be hard to believe, but in our two years together, I had not once said that word in reference to sex. I had never wanted to. And now, I couldn’t bear the idea of continuing on in this way. His shock deepened when the tears began to roll. I’m not exactly the sensitive type, so this bizarre display of emotion was most disconcerting to him. On my end, it was embarrassing, and I felt a little bit like some Joan Crawford-loony dragging my poor husband along on an emotional roller coaster. Strangely though, my little dive off the deep end was exactly what we needed. We finally admitted that there was a problem. All this fear that the magic was gone simply poured out between us. And then the most beautiful thing happened—we began to touch each other with feeling, with intent, with emotion. “And with his pulsing manhood proud above me, the fireworks lit the night and I was blind to all but the perfection of our glorious union.” Okay…not really. It wasn’t perfect. What is? After all, in marriage a couple has to deal with the frightening eventuality that sex with the same person—day in and day out—is very, very boring on its own. The act itself is somewhat limited in its variations. There’s a phrase oft favored by my father that illustrates it perfectly, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat…but not that many.” Hello Foreplay!
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