It’s the first weekend of a new month, which means I can ask for sex again without her getting annoyed. Not that she’d say anything, of course. Not that she ever does. But after twenty years of marriage, I know her moods, I know her gestures, and the way her jaw tightens when she’s humoring me.

She fucks me to humor me.

That’s not really right.

She fucks me because she loves me.

I know she loves me. I see it in the way she smiles and the way we cuddle and in so many every day gestures. The way she sets aside my favorite soap. The way she brings me tea in the morning when I’m still groggy and tired. The way a bad day in the office becomes a comfort meal by the time I come home.

She loves me. She just doesn’t love sex.

Oh, she gets some pleasure from it. Mostly from my pleasure. She loves to feel me come inside her. She likes watching my face as I orgasm. But beyond that, she doesn’t much care. She hasn’t had an orgasm of her own without her trusty Hitachi in years. She hasn’t had one with it in months.

If I didn’t need sex, I think she’d give it up entirely.

But I do need it, and there’s the rub.

And we’ve been married far too long for me to consider getting it elsewhere. I can’t cheat on her, I’m not that kind of man. I’d shame her and hurt her if I got caught, and I’m the kind of guy who always gets caught. I can’t lie to save my life.

And ‘alternative arrangements’ just aren’t for us. We’re both too Middle American middle class. Too much creatures of conventionality. We said ‘until death do us part’ and we meant it.

Both of us.

Because I do love her.

I love the way she smiles when she sees a rainbow or triumphs over the Sunday Times Crossword. I love the way she cries when one of our children gets hurt. I love the way she breathes in her sleep, the silent breaths across the pillow that don’t quite add up to a snore.

I love her.

It’s just…

It’s just that somewhere in twenty years and two kids and eight thousand loads of laundry and two hundred thousand miles of schlepping children around… somewhere in all that her ‘get up and go’ just went.

So she picks up the evening clutter while I do the dishes. Then she says good night while I wipe down the counters. She’s asleep before I take out the trash.

And so, by the dim glow of my computer screen, I take care of things myself.

It’s not too lonely. In my mind, I can do anything. Orgies. Models. Kinky sex that I’d never dare suggest to my wife. It’s all there, and it’s all good for a come.

But it gets old. And I get tired of it. And I don’t know what to say.

Until a new month begins.

Then it’s a “hey, why don’t you wait up for me?” with a lilt in my voice and a leer in my eye.

And she recites her line, “Mmm, sounds like fun.”

And we have fun, or at least I do. I can pretend she’s not indulging me, at least long enough to come.

Then it’s clean up, and make sure we don’t leave a wet spot, and ‘did you check that the front door was locked?’ before we finally settle into our regular spoons for sleep.

And inside I’m hollow, feeling like I should feel ashamed but I don’t.

And now it’s the first weekend of the month again.

She won’t be annoyed if I ask for sex.

But maybe… maybe… I should ask for something more.

If I could ever figure out what that was.

© 2016 Big Ed Magusson. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.