Misogamists of the world unite! We have for you today a cautionary tale, with sex, prescription drugs, and lite-rock – it’s the world of married-people sex. So turn on your radios – tune in to Delilah After Dark, get your sloppy slow-groove on, get your Craigslist on, and get your shit a–poppin’. Because today you’re gonna learn how it goes down with the marrieds, and how they got that way, and why they’re so stubbornly, if not vengefully horny by the time they get to you on your friendly neighborhood Craigslist.
You see, dear reader (citation needed), marrieds don’t sex it up the same as the rest of us do. Married sex is a constant tug of war between a sincere lack of enthusiasm and a begrudging familiarity. And the rope is slicked-up with lube.
When it comes to married people and sex, it all starts with The Suggestion. The Suggestion, for those clinically unaware or noologically unmarried, is not an act of suavity or even surety. You are the Wife. You have, in order of haggardness, completed a full day’s work, cooking dinner, doing the dishes, and are halfway through five loads of laundry. You are just logging off from doing some bill-paying, when his head pops out from around the corner. In his eye you can see the lightbulb pop into incandescence – he’s noticing you for the very first time that day. A sense of dread overcomes you. You know what he wants, but you’re hoping that if you ignore it, it’ll go away.
As you’re toweling off the last of the wine glasses, a clumsy pair of hands clasp onto your hips in an act of pre-suggestion that feels more like a seasick passenger trying not to fall off the ferryboat. This is immediately followed by a jumbled series (re: 3) kisses on the neck, and the inescapable mumble of Manifest Husbandry: “you wanna do it?”
This is the first attention you’ve received from him in the better part of thirty-six hours, like a high-speed Ethernet connection receiving only 5kb/sec. It’s not hot; it’s not getting anything done, and there’s laundry to be folded. You now have two choices:
Choice Number One. Acquiesce now and get it over with.
Choice Number Two. Drag it out over a couple of hours of whining, and then acquiesce, just to shut him up/get it over with.
It all depends on how much you want to fuck with him (not fuck him; you’re far too busy and over-tired for that lumbering nonsense) tonight.
Upon acquiescence you enter into a wholly different time zone than the one you live in. It is not unlike sidereal time, except for the fact that your cornmeal-dry vagina is the earth on its axis, and this rotation lasts for exactly 12 minutes, from foreplay to after-cuddling.
You as the Wife get ready for bed as you prepare for sex; the two tasks at this point are interchangeable: you put on your ugliest bed-wear – tattered t-shirt/nightgown, period-panties, maybe the hint of a mud mask to, you know, heighten the mood. You return to the marital chamber and assume the position: flat on your back.
The first minute and forty-five seconds are the Foreplay Round: a bit of sloppy kissing, spasmodic dry-humping, and a half-hearted nipple-tweak. This is Husband’s way of ‘getting you ready’.
You know the scene is about to start when you hear the snap of the lube-cap like an intern on the snap-board yelling “take twenty-four!” And let it be said that every married couple must not only own at all times a jet-pack sized keg of lube, but that they should wholeheartedly invest in the lube business, be it KY or Astroglide – you’re going to need it, as will every other married couple from now until the end of time. So you might as well make some scratch from it right? Yeah, it is a little like war profiteering, but in this war, nobody gets firebombed. Usually.
Your Husband’s application of the lube will be, in a word, generous. It is in fact a vaginal waterboarding of lube. So hope it’s the water-soluble kind. And he will continue oiling you up to the point where you could conceivably install a telephone pole inside your vagina without too much discomfort. He will grease-gun you like Dr. Venkman in Ghostbusters trying to trap all the oogey-boogeys but only succeeding in sliming you and everything else up in the process. This vaginal-gunking eats up 15 seconds of your allotted revolution.
And once you’re all slimed-up, it’s time for the Kiss-n’-Pounce portion of the festivities. You will smile politely through the allotted five minutes of fucking, while also listening for the timer on the dryer. This is also your out to wriggle out from underneath him whilst he’s laying atop you as part of The After-Cuddle – “I have to go get the laundry.”
If the 12 minutes are exceeded, you the Wife will employ your secret weapon: the shoulder-tap. At which point he will nod, grunt, and finish. Because that much time-loss will not be tolerated by a married woman. Not when there is laundry to fold.
And now come the questions. “That was awesome, yeah? Did you like it? Did you come?”
You lie; he goes to get a pudding cup; you wait for him to pad away and then finish yourself off. Upon his return he doesn’t notice that you’re far rosier now than during or après-fuck. He offers you a pudding-streaked kiss and belly-rolls into bed beside you. The axis is complete. There’s 12 minutes that you’ll never get back. Again.
You fold that last load of clothes and return to bed, where you talk about what’s for dinner tomorrow.
If familiarity breeds contempt, then married sex breeds an apathetic sort of tolerance, as well as a beeline towards Craigslist. And once they (because they’re both doing it) hit the open market of Casual Encounters and subsequently seal the deal, it’s like two death-row inmates on their last conjugal visit. It is the realm of fantasy realized. You the Wife get your aggregate freak, kink, nasty and drank on. He the Husband will do likewise in his own tryst. And meanwhile, the both of you will complain to your clandestine partners how the other Just Won’t Do Those Things For You.
That’s what being married is all about. It’s just a lubing-up period of interminable length to get you ready for your eventual coming-out party on Craigslist.
Because every act of fury needs motivation.
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