trying to void my lips of the slimy source of the mothball stench, while Ken was robotically touching parts of my body, like a terrified virgin or a sleepwalker.
Bored and cold, we awkwardly made our way into the bedroom where I basically masturbated on his lifeless body in the glow of the muted Channel Two Action News for all of three minutes before he unexpectedly and unceremoniously blew his load.
Goddamn it.
Ever the optimist, I pressed on, grinding my clit harder into his lean pelvis and squeezing my pussy tighter in a desperate attempt to hold on to his rapidly shrinking cock, passionately licking and sucking his neck, his lips, his tongue, only to be met with…nothing. I felt like a reluctant necrophiliac.
Hoping a change in locale would inspire a little more gusto, I yanked Ken’s ass off the bed and slowly walked backward, making sultry eye contact and pulling him toward me by his hard biceps, until I was sandwiched between him and the wall. Wrapping one leg around his waist, I tilted my head back and placed his hand between my thighs, hoping he would accept the invitation to kiss and nuzzle my neck. Instead, I was caressed by a frigid blast from the air conditioner, which found plenty of space for swirling in the chasm between us.
So, there I was, throbbing and freezing and posed like a Grecian goddess on the front of a Harlequin Romance novel, while Ken was absentmindedly fiddling with my clit, staring at the reflection of the TV in a framed wedding photo just above my head. Knowing the Braves highlights were on, I even gave him the benefit of the doubt and waited a full two minutes until the sports segment was over to see if his enthusiasm would improve—it didn’t—before sending him on the vibrator mission of shame.
I should have just gotten it myself and left him alone with Bryant Gumbel. Somehow, the battery-operated appendage, coupled with Ken’s unyielding apathy, made him seem like even more of a robot. Eventually, I just gave up and retreated to the shower to brood.
Ken’s inability to show me so much as a whisper of intimacy felt like a roundhouse kick to the gut. And it made me want to roundhouse kick him in the nuts.
Somebody Call Oprah
December 7
Dear Journal,
I just had an aha moment. For a solid decade, I’ve been under the impression that Ken was just tolerating my affection because he liked having a dual income.
Then, last night, during one of his particularly corpselike performances in the bedroom, I accidentally blurted out, “I feel like you’re just not into this.”
That phrase has been on the tip of my tongue since 2003.
And that’s when Ken huffed out the five words that would change my life forever, “I’m trying not to come.”
It was like a bomb exploded in the room.
Kapow!
Those five words echoed and ricocheted in my head until their meaning slowly began to emerge.
So…wait. This means that, for ten years, Ken has been lying underneath me, doing his best impersonation of someone getting a CT scan, not because he’s not into it, but because he’s too into it? Okay…so, this means that he does want to pull my hair and claw my ass and claim my mouth and grab me by my hips while he thrusts into me faster, faster, faster, but he fights the urge because he’ll come too quickly?
It was all coming together—no pun intended.
I thought about the mind-blowing sex we’d had in the shower a few weeks ago that lasted all of two minutes and the recent vulneraboner he’d gotten when he was sick on the couch. During both of those encounters, Ken had actually allowed himself to get into it a little bit. Have a feeling. Cop a feel. And on both occasions, he’d come pretty quickly and gotten all flustered about it.
That’s it! Holy shit, Journal! This motherfucker has been acting like a beached porpoise in the sack since the Clinton administration because he was trying to avoid that exact scenario!
The blank look on his face, the muted TV, the lifeless prone body—it’s all just been an exercise in self-control! (Only, I was the one doing all the exercising, thank you very much.) It’s like he thinks the only way he can outlast me is to pretend he’s watching a baseball game on the ceiling of a dentist’s office while being waterboarded!
Ugh! I’ve been feeling inadequate and undesirable and upset for a fucking decade over his lack of enthusiasm when