11 posts tagged “sex”
Yesterday was a banner day. Got my income tax refund, finally, only a month after it should have arrived. And I got laid. What more can a guy ask for?
Oh, went riding on the bicycle today. A large band of thunderstorms was making its was across the south side. From my perspective up north, I saw a beautiful sunset reflecting off the large cumulus clouds to the south. They were tall and menacing; a dark purple in color, but tinged with the bright orange light of sunset. Plus the sure knowledge (from weather.com) that they weren't going to rain on me, so they looked absolutely amazing. Ominous without being directly threatening. I almost stopped riding for a few minute to watch. Truly gorgeous.
My new tagline, If you have more sex, all of a sudden the rest of your life opens up, comes from an interview with Jacquie Noelle Greaux, author of Better Sex Through Yoga, on an episode of the podcast Sex With Emily. My first reaction upon hearing it was to laugh, but then I started to think about it a little more. I haven't seen both sides of the coin in a long time (but I remain hopeful the situation will change. It is getting better) but I can see it being like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Until the basic needs are met (and for guys, sex is a basic need, only slightly above air and water) it's hard to concentrate on anything else (job, self actualization, etc.). Once the sex need is met, you're happier, more confident and alive, and ready to take on any challenge the world throws at you.
Two days to go in the countdown to major pregnancy attempt number two (I call it that to distinguish from other attempts at pregnancy, where we simply monitor Wife's cycle and have sex at the appropriate time). We report to the doctors' office Monday at 11:30. I'm supposed to be "saving up" my sperm for 48 to 72 hours beforehand. The problem is, I'm getting really horny right NOW. Wife is asleep in the next room, and I need to make an awesomely high save to not find some juicy smut on the web and relieve myself. This is the definition of frustrating. The truly ironic part will come Monday, when I "have" to perform in the nice clinical doctor's office. I'm sure by then I'll be so nervous and generally spastic that, with the additional indignity of being sent to a bathroom that's right next to a busy waiting room filled with prospective parents and told to "Go for it!", I'm sure I'll have NO trouble whatsoever ejaculating on command. Add in a couple of audience members and some lights and it's just like being a porn star.
In other news, I'm meeting with Mr. Accountant Dude Wednesday morning, so I absolutely must have my shit pulled together by then. I started gathering receipts tonight, and was amazed depressed at how much money we spent on pharmecuticals last year. I haven't done all the math yet, but I'll let you know the numbers tomorrow. This is the physical evidence. Honest Injun -- it's all legit. We're sickos.
New Year's eve was one of those "Interesting" nights. The kind that gets better as more time passes and you have more emotional distance from it, but don't necessarily want to repeat.
We'd planned a quiet dinner
at home; just us, the cats, and lots of wine.
I was going to make chicken tits with spinach and goat cheese, but while
shopping at the local organic market I saw they had them pre-made and ready to
bake (albeit with feta, which is a distant second to goat cheese). I'm into lazy easy so I bought a
couple, got stuff for a salad, some bread and cheese, lots of chocolate, and
head on home to start cooking.
I walk in the door, and
immediately sense something different.
The house is warm and dark; lit only by candles. Everywhere.
Candles in the dining room, living room, hallway, even in the
bathroom. Wife is waiting for me at the
table with two glasses of red wine, and she's wearing black lingerie. Garters, stockings, a
lacey top thing (I don't even know what it's called) and high heels--the whole nine yards. I was utterly stunned.
Two things you need to know here. One: Wife never wears high heels. Not to work, not out in the evenings, never. I didn't even know she owned a pair! She also has body issues, and pretty much never wears sexy undies. This was all completely out of her normal operating mode. Two: I'd made a joke a while back that my fantasy (or one of them) was to come home at night and have her waiting for me in a sexy outfit with dinner ready on the table (the Darren Stevens from Bewitched ideal 50s family fantasy). She took me at my word, and made it come true.
It took me a minute to get my bearings. Right at that moment I was tired, hungry and (believe it or not) not really into sex. I tried to be expressive of my feelings though -- I complimented her on the effort that it took to put herself in the getup, and on making the effort. I told her she looked hot, and I really do think it was great, but somehow I don't think she believed me, or the message didn't get through. I fondled her ass. We started cooking dinner. I caressed her breasts. We made the salad. I fondled her ass some more. Somehow, it still felt weird, though. I'm so used to seeing her in a t-shirt, baggy shorts, and glasses; not makeup and garters.
We had a wonderful dinner, and lots of wine (I'll post something on that later). Then we took a little sex break. By that time my brain and defrosted and I was into it. Third time in three days, so for once I can't complain.
Afterwards, we go back to the couch and continue drinking. Etcetera. It's now getting late, I'm tired, drunk, and ready for bed. So I go to bed. Wife stays up and continues drinking. Hugely. I'm trying to get to sleep, and every 15 minutes she comes stumbling into the bedroom sounding like a heard of elephants, hugs me, and tells me she loves me again and just stands there; half in bed, half out. Not in a cuddly, "awww, isn't that cute" sort of way, but in a clingy, insecure, emotionally whiney kind of way. Enough already. I get the point. You love me, I love you. Peachy. Just leave me alone and let me sleep. If you want to stay up and be a drunk idiot, that's fine. Seriously. But sit your ass down on the couch and watch TV like a normal person. Don't pace back and forth, nervously trying to clean. Don't wash delicate glasses. Just relax.
It's very hard for me to see her when she gets that way. I don't have a protective, nurturing response. Just the opposite. It makes me sick, like watching a wounded deer on Discovery Channel that's about to get killed by the lion. I want to scream, “GET A BACKBONE” at her. Come at me from a position of strength, not weakness.
At some point she finally comes to bed, after only waking me up four times. She's so drunk she literally falls out of bed and hits her head on the nightstand. After making sure she's ok and not bleeding, I figure there's no way I'm going to move her, and she's safer right where she is. I get her a pillow, cover her with a blanket, and (finally) go to sleep myself. Around 3 am the real fun begins. I wake up every hour with night sweats. I'm hot, I feel nauseous. I'm up again at 7am, still feeling like death warmed over. I go to the bathroom and spew out of all three orifices. As much as I love my salad dressing, it tastes much better going down than it does coming back up again. Trust me on this.
I manage to eat a power bar, drink some fruit juice, and throw down three Ibuprofen tablets. Then it's back to bed, where I'm finally able to sleep for six straight hours. I feel almost human now. Wife, of course, feels fine. No ill effects from her binging. This probably makes me sound like a horrible, insensitive Ogre of a husband, which I’m not. I care. I’m trying. It’s just some of her behaviors bring out the worst in me.
When you wake up on Sunday morning feeling amorous and Wife says, "Let's do a quickie -- kickoff is in 10 minutes."
A recent movie review described sex as "the ultimate vehicle for transcendence, self-knowledge and healing".
Is this correct, or incredibly naive? Discuss amongst yourselves. Or email me, Zeliotrope "at symbol" yahoo.com.
Wife and I had a long talk before I left. She REALLY wants kids, and really wants to try at least the first couple of steps towards having them. Otherwise, she feels that over the long term she'll grow to resent me. I don't want her to feel angry or resentful towards me (hell, I have more than enough towards her for both of us), so I think we're going to go ahead with at least one round of IVF. Wife will call Monday to see when the clinic starts their cycle. Hopfully, since her insurance is pretty good, most of it will be covered. We just have to figure out little things like:
- where are we going to put a child? Our place is a small, two bedroom one bath condo.
- what are we going to name it?
- who is going to take care of it while we're both working?
- where are we going to get the money for child birth and child care?
- How am I going to be convinced that this is really the right choice, rather than going along with it to placate her, which is what I'm doing at the moment. Maybe I should ask for something in return, like sex at LEAST 3 times per week. That's not SO horrible, right?
I'm both excited and scared at the same time.
P.S. I must say that I have absolutely the cutest neice and nephew in the entire North American continent. I'd post pictures, but they're only 2.5, so I don't want to violate their rights or privacy. Just trust me on this one. I'm talking pretty fucking adorable.
Leaving early (hopefully) tomorrow for DC. I think wife and I came to a significant decision tonight. Then had tired, lazy, sex. Worked for me, but I'm a guy, so I'm easy. Details in the next day or so.
We actually made it to our 7 AM appointment with the fertility doctor in something vaguely approaching timeliness, which is mightily impressive for me. Except that when we got there it turned out they didn't have any record of our appointment on their books. I'm sorry, if I get my sorry ass out of bed that early, we're gonna talk. One way or another.
The clinic decides to make nice, and the doctor sees us. She's young (prolly 30s), nicely (but unusually) dressed in long knits, and very pretty. She reviews the tests results, which are that the Wife's plumming is fine and mine is somewhat clogged (see It's not you, it's me. Honest. for details). Given our rapidly advancing age (about 40), the Doctor lady recommended jumping right to Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) or In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). We have all sorts of pamphlets and legal documents to read and sign before we go ahead with either of these. Both methods involve wife getting hormone injections to encourage multiple eggs to grow in a defined time period.
With IVI we would fertlize the eggs inside her, or with IVF the eggs would be harvested (sounds just like lunch, eh?), cleaned and pressed. My sperm would also get harvested, cleand, a spin dry cycle, then pressed and only the very best-looking ones selected and throw together with the eggs in a petri dish where they all mingle and have a really swell mixer. Hopefully a few lucky couples (now called zygotes will hit it off, then be taken out for further gene testing, and, if they pass, get plugged back into Wife's uturus and hope they grow.
We now have to check with our insurance company. Granted, cost should not be a primary motivating factor on such topics, but it is important. IVI is several thousand dollers per try. IVF is more -- maybe $4k - $10k, depending on what insurance covers, which we dont know yet. Success rates vary from 20% to 40%, so we would like have to try multiple times. This gets into BIG money real fast.
Then there's what I think of all this. Honestly, I really don't know yet. I'm still processing all the information and looking for some good guidelines. The chemicals Wife would have to take effect her behavior and mood. I don't get to do much any more, except have sex occasionally (always an admirable goal) or jerk off into another container. Gee, do the sperm come out stronger and healthier if I fantasize about Katie Holmes or Keira Knightly? This may require further investigation...
Afterwards, we went our separate ways. She off to her job way up north, me off to mine way south. We met up again exactly 10 hours later, at our semi-weekly marital therapy session. Trying to understand all the medical jargon, and figure out what we *can* do, versus what we *want* to do, and where the differences lie. And yes, what will this end up costing us (not that money should be the deciding factor)? Lots of unknowns, and it's scary because it's forcing me to take the next step towards parenthood. Getting a bunch of tests is easy -- the male part isn't very invasive, and the result's are going to be more paperwork. Now, the next steps are hard. They involve needles and expensive hormones, and are quite likely to result in pregenancy. Which is what we're supposed to want.
Are my anxiety and ambivilance coming through strongly enough? Hellllpppp! I really don't know what to do. I'm scared of having children, and (in different ways) I'm scared of not having children. How do you choose? How do you know?
Well, I finally got the results of my sperm analysys test. I don't have a lot of detail or context to put them in, but they don't look good. My motility number is around 38% (it should be at least 50%, but percent of what I don't know) and the total count is 13.3 million of the little buggers, when there should have been 20 million plus. I don't know exactly how bad this is, what it implies for next steps, or what I can do to change any of it until we meet with Dr. B for a full consultation next Tuesday morning. As in 7 AM, which is waaaayy the fuck too early in the morning for me.
Yet, on some level, it's a little bit frightening. My first thought after getting the bad news was, "wait, can I take it over? I know I can do better!" I realize these results doesn't change who I am as a person, as a husband, or as a friend; yet on some very basic, brain-stem level it does have an affect. Men are taught, or at least indirectly socialized, to be products of our dicks. So when it doesn't work to extreme effacicy, that's questioning something at the core of our biological selves. I need years more therapy before I can even begin to understand it, but I'm sure that processing this emotionally won't be dull or boring.
