Sex-y Spouses

Seems there are well-worn paths and covert plans of action that coupling parents must engage in in order to have clandestine sex when sharing the house with teenagers-- teenagers who are too drunk on their own hormones to question why they're miraculously getting another thirty minutes to stay out after curfew.

I have one very young son and no husband to speak of, so at a dinner party this summer, I was enlightened. We sat, thigh to thigh, six or so couples and myself surrounding a centerpiece of white, summer garden hydrangea. No strangers among us, we were all friends; old friends married to childhood friends. The comments grew ribald, the laughter rolled and crescendoed and I had little to add on the subject, so I listened.

I listened carefully to their tone and noticed when they reached for their wine glasses. I looked at their spouses and tried to catch the signals-- shifts in posture, the timing of their sips, small smiles lit by candlelight-- and took it all in. I scanned the long, rectangular table and looked at their eyes for traces of something that might tell me more than what was being said. But I caught nothing because there was nothing to catch. Their smiles remained genuine and no one snapped or scolded. Maybe they do at home-- in fact I'm sure of it-- but here, at this dinner party, they laughed. They were simply folks who'd married their best friends. Under a spectacular seashell chandelier, rubbing elbows as they carved their fillet, they were well-fed and contented, and at this moment, they were in love.

Not dewy-eyed in love or Hey-world-we're-in-love, these couples had logged twelve, sixteen, eighteen years of marriage. They weren't trying to get pregnant and they weren't in competition, they just enjoy having sex with each other and so they do from time to time. They drive each other batty and go through painful, dark, rough patches but they work it out somehow and eventually wind up giggling together as they sneak around, in the dead of night, to the far guest bathroom while their in-laws lay sleeping.

The candles burned down as their banter trailed off. Then one of them announced that they'd all gotten together and hatched a plan to fix me up with one of the local, universally-understood-to-be-closeted gay men. I reached for my wine glass, took a breath, then a sip. I asked them why, if this man is such a catch, didn't any of them snap him up? For ten years, while they were all single and dating they could have had him. "How did such a gem of a guy slip by every single one of you," I asked, "and why is he so perfect for me?"

I know that they just want to see me happy and that their suggestion comes with the best of intentions, but haven't I illustrated, quite dramatically at times, that being married to the wrong person makes me unhappy? Don't they get that being with Any Guy or Some Guy is not the solution to being single? And isn't the greater problem the possible issue that being single, in their eyes, seems to be something that needs a solution and must be fixed at all costs and right away? Like that adhesive stripping that people stick around the cracks in their window jams in the winter. Quick, do something, anything.

I put down my glass and collected my thoughts. I explained that if I were going to be fixed up with a gay man that he'd better be a big queen. He'd better be hi-larious, love to dance and do my hair for special occasions. He'd better want to cook for me, travel with me and stop at every single yard sale from here to Bora-Bora. He'd better be gay with a capital G so loud that it jumps out of a cake wearing pasties. Otherwise, I'll pass on the mearly whelming patch job, thank you.

In the meantime, I find comfort knowing that there are husbands who go home to their families on Friday nights or who dance with their wives the whole time. I relish the minutia, I'm thrilled it exists. I see husbands cross the lawns at bar-b-ques with a glass in each hand and wordlessly give their wives the drink they didn't have to ask for. "It's cold, take my jacket." "When you're tired, we'll go." I'm privy to their pleases, thank- yous and, "Great haircut, Honey,"s and I log these moments with invisible ink. They've been doing it for so long that it's rote now: the non-verbal endearments; their knee-jerk kindness; the quiet, faceless kisses. The love.

I have a friend who's so crazy for his wife-- after seventeen years-- so flabbergasted that he caught such a dish, that he'll tell you outright, "I'm the luckiest bastard." Then shake his head in wonderment. Another guy I know was describing his life to me a while ago. He said offhandedly, "I get to commute in to work with my wife every day." He didn't say, "I commute in," or, "I have to commute in," but "I get to commute in." With my wife. Every day. What fortune, what a coup, what a life.

I know that their arguments have been fierce and their venom can be strong. I know there is imbalance and want. I can spot a floundering marriage from fifty yards away now, so attuned is my misery-dar in light of it's recent recalibration. But when a man touches the small of his wife's back as they cross a quiet street with no car in sight, or burrows his feet under her warm thigh from the chair next to the couch, where she's turning the page, just to be touching her, just to be near, just because he likes her, I'm comforted. That's my goal, if I must have one, to like and be liked. The love is easy.

Back at the dinner party, birthday candles were being blown out. When given the chance to sit anywhere, my friends had all chosen to sit next to their spouses. And why not, (they don't wonder), this is the person I chose. So until some one chooses me and I them, until that some one finds that sort of comfort in me, I'll pass. The view from where I'm sitting has it's fair share of perks. It may not be my first choice, but it's my choice at last and my standards haven't been lowered. On the contrary. The bar's been raised by the very same childhood friends passing plates of cake counter-clockwise. I want my cake and will eat it, too. Until then, I'm just fine.