Looking Like Your Mother

Everybody Wants to Know ...

I was working on photographs when I overheard something on E!, something about Pamela Anderson and her famous sex tapes and "Everybody wants to know how celebrities are doing it."

I start thinking that there is a stand up routing here, something like celebrities nobody wants to see...something...then to sort of grease the brain wheels I start turning the pages of an old New York Magazine and spot the Hotdoll, the sex doll for dogs. I jump track and begin wondering how many of these things have been left behind at the ER?  Wait, I tell myself, get back to the celebrity sex routine. "Everybody wants to know" is such a lead. But then I have to google the dog machine. Why is the hole pink, I wonder. Aren't dogs color blind? Are these really for dogs? Someone suggests that a cat would be cheaper. Put a post through it to make a floor lamp, conversation piece and exerciser in one.

How can being alone in my own home be so distracting?

Sex Matters

I have one rule about humor: I take the hit, no one else. Sometimes I include the kids, but let's just say they owe me. Because sex, is, for the most part, a joint effort, an article devoted to it means dragging in another soul, kicking and scratching - and not in a good way - over the notion of being column fodder. So writing about sex has never felt like much of an option.  Still, now and then it's nice to be able to throw a peanut to the elephant in the room. I mean, what exactly is the point of the business of vanity if not to assure your partner that you don't have any immediate plans on turning into the co-ed version of John Belushi. Unless that's what he or she likes, of course.

Besides, this time, I couldn't help myself. There I was, looking through a magazine for recipe ideas I would turn into chicken mush when I saw the beginning of this text: "For a better sex life, stop spending money on all those anti-aging schemes and spas . . ." and I threw the magazine down. "Hey, hey, hey! Those schemes are my schemes, thank you very much," I thought, taking quick offense and shaking my head over the milquetoast cures I knew the article would list. I didn't bother finishing the lead. All these pieces were the same, full of ideas promising to spice up a twenty-eight-year marriage through plenty of bustier or worse embarrassment. I could do better.

Watch provocative films, these articles direct. I knew they meant less Birth of a Nation, more Debbie Does Dallas, but I could offer little insight. Years ago, when asked what movie the family should see, my recently sex-educated daughter at first thought Wild Wild West, but then remembered the images of the saloon girls she had seen on the trailer. Concerned that the movie might prove too much stimulation for her parents and result in, yuch, something she did not want to contemplate, she begged for Chicken Run instead.  She confessed her matinee maneuver to me at about the same time a friend described her daughter's discovery of the father's x-rated videos. "Here's your exercise tapes, Daddy," the little cherub piped, marching the heavier-by-the-step entertainment across the room under the mom's now-crossed arms. The unfortunate result is that now when I hear "adult film," I think Will Smith in a cowboy suit, claymation hens with British accents, and Jane Fonda in leg warmers and I can't seem to move from there. 

I have the same attention-redirection disorder when it comes to adult play toys. Days into our new home, I came up from the basement workbench holding what looked like an oversized roll-on deoderant. "Look what the owners left behind," I said to my husband, wondering out loud what it could be. He laughed and explained. So now, when I hear the word "vibrator," I think of my discovery, wonder why it was in the basement, contemplate why it was left behind, and know that there can never be a good explanation as to why I was the only one of the two of us not to know what it was - so I won't ask. Plus, instead of visualizing something sensual at the sound of the word, everything around me turns Craftsman yellow and steel blade grey sharp.

I was beginning to realize I had a problem. This was not the kind of letting go that is encouraged by these articles. In fact, this was kind of the opposite of letting go.

The articles also tell the reader to get out of the bedroom, to be adventurous and have sex everywhere. But to me, airplanes seem unnecessary. Mile High Clubbers are just show-offs; extremely thin and without compunction when it comes to lavatory germs, but mostly just show-offs. Then there is the regular outdoors. As far as public offenses go, I don't suppose it's the worst thing in the world to get caught having sex outside. I mean, it's not like shoplifting. You won't have to come up with some drug abuse or personality disorder to have any hope of avoiding complete humiliation. Your crime is passion and, well, bad timing and poor decorum, yes, but what I'm saying is, things could be worse. You could be having sex on your dinner table where I might be invited to eat one day. That would be worse. Come to think of it, with all these articles in all these magazines and all these women following this advise, it must be true that everybody's dining room table has been the situs of pure bliss, which is something to think about the next time you go to someone's home for dinner. Instead of sitting there feeling shy and awkward, try to imagine your host and hostess having at it under the chandelier. But then this would be an article about resolving social phobias instead of one about having an active sex life though the years and although the two issues could be related, I'll save the thought.

There is the role play option. "You can borrow my French maid costume," one daughter offered one Halloween, "if you promise not to use it, use it."  "Who raised them?" I wonder. Ironically, I insist, "I am not a maid!" on a daily basis, but in reality I am one. In fact, I cannot imagine a role I haven't played for real, which makes the "pretend for fun" kind of foreplay, kind of impossible.

Nurse? Oh, please. There isn't a medicine to save him from the death that follows the onset of his common cold. Student? I've spent the last four decades failing algebra. Cheerleader? The biggest to a fault. Indian Guide? On every vacation and no matter how much leather it's never pretty.

"Maybe one of the partners has a daily routine that interferes with sex," my oldest offers, when I tell her that I am writing about sex and long relationships. "You know, like they want their socks to be in the right order in the drawer and they can't relax and have sex until the socks are clean and lined up and folded and put in the right place in that drawer." I thank her for her help and make a mental note to worry about her next week.    

Then I came across the article that started me thinking about all this. "Here's that piece," I told a colleague. "The one that said forget getting in shape, buy sexy underwear instead."

"It doesn't say that," my colleague laughed. "It says throw your face creams away because there is a Scottish study that claims having more sex will keep you younger looking." She kept laughing as she walked out of my office, presumably to find the nearest unsuspecting aging antidote. 

All right then. Now that we are all on the same page, here are a few other suggestions for having more sex. Get some air together once a day. Keep the skin soft and keep the clothes even softer. Sit together a few times a week doing whatever he wants - even if it means watching the weather, NASCAR or Bloomberg station. Dab on a combination of potato chip oil, A-1 sauce, and blue cheese dressing to give the pheranomes a boost. Cut back on everything by one-third, such as number of words spoken, food items consumed, and busy body things to do, except for listening. Increase listening.

It seems like a lot of work, but it is so much easier than doing all the snaps on a dominatrix suit and it hardly costs a dime.

Phonesexatron

Here is a system that really is time-proof.  I read about this in Wired.