Chapter 2

One of the benefits of teaching is the time off between semesters. Unlike Martha, whose job demanded that she return to work for the week between Christmas and New Years (unless she took it off as vacation), I was off from the third week of December, until the second week of January, for Winter Break.

That was how it came about that several days after the Christmas debacle; I was going out to the grocery store to do some shopping. While we still had a huge amount of left-overs, there were also items that we needed to replenish — diet sodas, a big one, since I drank three or four a day, and we were getting low on my favorite variety. The previous night I had gone through the refrigerator and the cupboards, and made a list of the various foodstuffs where our supplies were running low.

In the morning, after Martha had departed for work, I was dressed and ready to gird my loins and face the crowds at the grocery store. As I walked over to the counter where I had left my list, I saw that Martha had put a list of her shopping needs on top of mine. Shampoo, bath soap, her favored face cream, and perhaps a dozen other items for me to pick up at the store.

I can't really say why I did it, it was just a visceral response, but I picked my list up from beneath hers, and in the process, her list fell, face down and slid under the kitchen table.

I looked at it, but I didn't pick it up. I just left it there on the floor. For the first time that I could remember in our married life, Martha made a request of me, and I simply, intentionally ignored it.

My trip to the store took about an hour, and once I got home, it took me a similar amount of time to bring the groceries into the house, and put them away where they belonged. Once that was done, I made myself a platter of leftovers which I heated in the microwave for lunch, and ate.

The whole afternoon was still open, and rather than do chores, or work around the house, I decided to treat myself, and go to our local bookstore.

It was one of my not-so-secret pleasures to go to the bookstore. This was not one of the small, dark and dingy bookstores of my youth; it was large brightly lit, well staffed with bright young people, with chairs and couches placed in alcoves for reading, as well as its own coffee shop, with a selection of baked goods, all in one large store.

It was designed to be a place for social gatherings; far more than merely a setting for the buying of books! And it always lured me into its seductive web, enticing me with displays of the newest fiction and non-fiction, in both hard-back, or paperback; mysteries, novels, romance, science, biography — in other words, a bibliophile's dream.

Having a cup of coffee there was yet another of my small vices. Yes, in addition to drinking three or four diet sodas a day, it was not unusual for me to have a couple cups of coffee as well. I don't smoke, so I needed my caffeine, otherwise how could I compete with all of the nicotine addicts?

So there I was, sitting alone at one of the tables in the bookstore, sipping java and contemplating.

When I first arrived, I had gone over to peruse the section where they have all of the books on improving your marriage, and heating up your sex life. I looked at them for awhile, until a young woman, accompanied by her equally young boyfriend/husband/significant other walked into the section as well.

Somehow the shame of even being there at my age, after thirty-some-years of marriage, was too much for me to accept — I pretended to be looking at some psychology text book instead, and left as quickly as I could without actually breaking into a run.

As I reflected, getting yet another book wasn't going to help me in any case. I'd read enough of them already, and it had all been for naught.

Even as naive as I had been when we were first married, I knew that there were a lot of sexual practices that other people engaged in that Martha and I didn't. An engineer to the core, I acquired 'manuals' — books on the subject, and read-up.

Understand that I was never contemplating the more 'out there' activities, like swinging, or threesomes, or getting some guy over to have sex with my wife. I got a small smile on my face as I thought of how horrified Martha would have been if I even suggested anything along those lines. Even exhibitionism or voyeurism would have been far over the edge for us, and I mean both of us. We weren't that kind of people, we were quiet, shy, and private.

But I did think that we could try out different positions, and within the framework of marriage, we could certainly engage in oral sex, and even anal sex wouldn't be out of the question.

There were even Christian Ministers who were giving seminars and holding retreats to encourage Christians to have a rich and pleasurable sex life. The old medieval notion that sex was solely for procreation has gone by the wayside long ago and it was widely taught that sex was the ultimate gift of God to couples, to engage in with each other.

And that did include oral and anal sex as well, so long as it wasn't causing pain or being forced onto an unwilling partner.

I even scheduled us to attend one of those seminar/retreats, but Martha nipped that idea in the bud, and I cancelled our reservation.

We did do a certain amount of experimentation. We had sex 'doggie' style, which Martha found to be 'impersonal and undignified, ' whatever that meant; we tried it with her on top, which she found too exhausting. A couple of positions required Martha to be more flexible than she was able. In short, pretty soon it was clear that anything except 'missionary' met with her disapproval for one reason or another.

When the suggestion of 'oral' sex came up, was one of the first times that Martha blew her stack.

The very idea of her using her mouth on my sex organ, that thing that I peed with, was completely disgusting and unacceptable. And how, she asked, could I even think of putting my mouth 'down there'? What was I thinking? Was I some sort of pervert?

Oddly enough, there were a couple of times, when after having a couple of glasses of wine at friend's homes, Martha allowed me to lick her clitoris, and she seemed to get a great deal of pleasure out of it, but by the next morning, she would reproach me for having taken advantage of her, and make it clear that it should never happen again.

I was always suspicious that the real problem was that if she was letting me give her oral pleasure, that she would be under some obligation to reciprocate, and that was her real problem with my using my mouth on her.

I never bothered to hint at trying out anal sex. If my penis or her vagina were too dirty to lick, I couldn't imagine what she would have said about the concept of my inserting my penis into her anus.

Yet, even plain vanilla missionary position sex was better than no sex at all, and that was what I was getting recently. In fact, one of the things that hurt so much was that when a wife denies her husband sex and the intimacy of foreplay, it is telling him that in some profound way, she doesn't love him. At least, not anymore.

In the marriage vows, when the pastor speaks of 'two become one', it seemed to me that there was an undeniable implication of the act of sexual union between a man and a woman. What could be a more intimate union, the coupling of two people, when a woman accepts her husband's penis into her body; or in a complementary fashion, what could tie a man more to a woman than the fact that she is the one with whom he joins, sharing his pleasure as well as putting his seed in her womb?

In fact, my mind wandered on the whole concept of 'two become one'; the arguments about 'when life begins' was actually kind of silly. Because when a man and woman join in a sexual union, it is his live sperm joining with her live eggs — that is a continuation of life, a new generation, but no 'new' life is created. It is the non-ending extension of life, the ultimate example of 'two-becoming-one.'

Granted Martha and I were long past child bearing ages, but when she denied sex to me, she was telling me that she no longer desired that union, that there was something about me that she no longer wanted or needed. And that is about as bruising to a mans ego, self-esteem, whatever you want to call it, as anything I could imagine.

In addition, I found myself feeling humiliated at begging my wife for sex, only to be told no, as if it was some sort of privilege to which I was unworthy. That I was debasing myself to approach her as some sort of supplicant.

Sex between two people provides another vitally important benefit as well.

It is hard for two people to live together for extended periods, under any circumstances. That's why when marriages last for thirty- or forty- or fifty- years or more, it seems so astonishing. There are inevitable frictions in everyday life, disagreements over who should do what around the house; whether to attend activities together that one party enjoys more than the other; a million small compromises always to be made.

If a couple is having regular intimacy and sex, it provides a certain lubricant, a willingness to give a little, to forgive, to worry about doing non-sexual things to please your partner. After all, how can you be angry or irritated for long with the person who joins with you in that most life affirming act of shared pleasure, sex?

My philosophizing was suddenly interrupted by a woman's voice.

"Mark McDonald, is that you?" came the lilting soprano voice.

I looked up, only to see an old family friend, Stephanie Michaels, standing next to the table. I jerked myself to my feet.

"Stephanie! What a pleasure to see you," I said with complete sincerity.

Stephanie took a step closer to me, and gave me a firm hug. She held me for a moment, putting her head on my chest, before standing back a step and looking up at me. Stephanie was 5-feet tall if she wasn't wearing heels, so she was looking up about eleven or twelve inches when I was standing.

"Do you have a minute to join me?" I asked, more hopeful and cheerful than I had been for at least a couple of days.

"Of course," she replied, "Let me get myself a cup of coffee. Can I leave my bag here on the table?"

"Steph, you just sit down here, and I'll get you your coffee. Please?" was my instinctual response.

Stephanie acquiesced, and I fetched her a cup of hot hazelnut coffee, with low-fat milk (not cream) and two packs of non-sugar sweetener.

"Oh, Mark! You are such a gentleman," she laughed gently, as I sat down again, placing the hot cup in front of her.

Stephanie was one of those classic redheads — not just the red hair, but green eyes, and a pale, and in her case, flawless complexion. She was petite, with a small waist, and nicely proportioned hips. Her breasts weren't really large, but on her small frame, they stood out.