He was an old man, very short. He stood to the shoulder of his daughter, who had box burgundy hair, who stood to my shoulder. But the second time he told me, “It was from ‘75 to ‘95,” I was sitting, so they wouldn’t have known.

Both times, he asked me if I owned the building, which was flattering, given that it must be worth 5 million, or maybe it was just a generous assumption from someone hoping for commonality. I said, “No, we rent one floor,” both times. But the second time, I added, “But we’re actually moving next week.”

I didn’t know we were moving when I first met him.

“Why is that?” they said.

“The landlords want their daughter to have the apartment.”

“Oh,” they said.

I said, “We’ve been lucky to be here for five years,” then my face got red, as it had every time I discussed the move, from trying to hold in my grief.

The daughter who could’ve been my mom smiled sympathetically.

This conversation transpired on our last Friday in the apartment. My kid, Henry, was playing in the dirt – a small patch of garden to the side of the stoop. I watched him smash a large chunk of cement against smaller chunks for an hour. There were a dozen piles of dust by the time the old owner arrived.

Our new apartment is on the second floor, like our current one, but it won’t have a little garden. It doesn’t even have a stoop – just two steps. I used to complain about this garden. I often said that Brooklyn dirt wasn’t real dirt; it was dust from all the car exhaust and sidewalk garbage off-gas. But now, seeing the smashed cement on top of the dirt, I knew that wasn’t accurate. It was all finely crumbled rock, but it was fun nevertheless.

Speaking of things turning to dust, the same day our landlords gave us notice, our eldest neighbor died. Someone set a four-foot Mets baseball-shaped floral display on their stoop, where he waved to us over the last five years. He’d say, “Hi, baby,” to Henry. Then he did the same to our secondborn, Louis. Then he stopped calling anyone in my party “baby.” Then we stopped seeing him outside.

When the old owner of our building stood outside our garden, I saw tears in his eyes, too. But he also smiled. Our two inner experiences didn’t make for great chat, so he said, “Well, I wish you all the best!” I smiled and said, “Same.” Then a neighbor girl, Henry’s age, walked up with her dad and said “hi” to Henry. She told us she was going to have Italian ice from the bakery around the corner. I almost stopped them to share the news, as they were one of the few neighbors I’d not yet told, but it didn’t feel like time yet. With them, I knew our relationship would be the same. Smiles and greetings on the way to the school, where all our kids would continue to go.

As my eyes traveled from the little girl back to Henry in our garden, I caught the eye of a man whose gaze I usually avoided. A helicopter overhead cut off the words from his mouth, but I smiled, looking at his mouth and the American flag mask around his chin, as if I heard him. Then I heard, “I never used GPS, but I always got where I needed to go.”

I said, “As we always do, eh?”

He nodded back and smiled.

The thematic resonance occurred to me mid-sentence, and my eyes and face reddened for the second time in fifteen minutes.

He was holding a pizza box from the shop around the corner. My family goes there nearly weekly.

“Good old-fashioned fun,” he said, nodding toward Henry. “You don’t see that much these days.”

“Yeah,” I said. Then my red eyes welled up, so I just smiled and nodded. The unmasked man noticed, I think, because normally he didn’t walk away without a discussion of Jesus, but that day he did.

The day our landlords gave us notice, a different miracle happened. A baby was born down the road. I knew because there was a human-sized plywood stork with the infant’s name and birth date out front. They do that for people who’ve lived in this neighborhood long enough to know the person who has the stork. Or, that’s what I assume. We’ve only been here five years. It has been my kid’s whole life, though, so maybe their kids will have a stork if they stick around.

The baby was born in the apartment where Henry’s best friend’s dad grew up. Her grandpa reminds us of this most Tuesdays when we see him at school pick-up. The building is supervised by Larry, who does handyman work for our landlords on the side. He fixed up our apartment before we moved in and will fix it up after we leave. We met Larry at Thanksgiving at our landlord’s apartment, underneath ours. They invited us the year Louis was born. He was one month old and had never left this building. Larry smiled at our baby, which was when I noticed he was missing his front four teeth. He’s been smiling more and more around me these days. Like the other day, the day before my second encounter with the building’s old owner, when Larry gave me advice on where to move, despite knowing we’d already committed to a spot. He thought our rent was too high. He told me to speak with the magician who lived around the corner. He said he’d help me get a good deal. But nothing in this neighborhood near our kids’ school with two bedrooms goes for less than $6,500. “We even toured places for $10k,” I said, “And a dozen people applied on the first day.”

My husband, Joe, found our new apartment just three days after our landlord gave us notice. He’d spent those days looking at a dozen places in person, after surveying Zillow, StreetEasy, Compass, Craigslist, etc., etc., etc., and even combing back through the last two months of rentals, for information’s sake. “This is the best we’ll find,” he said, after we looked at the apartment without a stoop. But I wasn’t ready to commit, let alone consider. All I could see were the negatives: a 20-minute walk to school instead of 2 minutes. Joe said, “A two-minute walk isn’t an option anymore.” And I said, “But it could be, if we waited.” I wanted to wallow for longer. The grief of the news wore hard on me, but the stress of the instability wore hard on him.

A lot has changed around here since we moved in in 2021. The neighborhood now ranks among the 5 highest-rent areas, says the newspaper of record. So much so that the neighborhood we had to avoid when house hunting previously is now the one we can better afford. Our local pizza shop will change. Our local bodega, too. Our neighbors. Everything, really. And also, nothing. We’ll walk past our old block on the way to the same school. More importantly, we’ll be together, of course.

My kids were concerned about our things – the couch, their toys, the TV.

“We’re taking everything but the fridge and stove with us,” I told them.

“My stuffies?”

“Of course, the stuffed animals are coming.”

“My bed?”

“Yes, the bed too.”

But as the weeks between notice day and moving day went on, they started saying things like “I’ll miss this apartment. I don’t want to leave.”

I said, “I know, baby. I don’t either. But sometimes life goes on like this, even if we’re not ready. We just have to trust we will be when we land.” And they didn’t respond, which I didn’t blame them for, because even my own words felt insufficient for myself. So I said, “And if we’re not, we’ll have another cuddle.”

I’ve never found it hard to trust the universe. Even on notice night, I cried on Joe’s shoulder, but I didn’t want to fight it. It was sad. I didn’t want it. But it was what was happening.

There were many times in the last five years when I thought about leaving, though, and finding a bigger spot with more space, a dishwasher, and a laundry machine. But I knew my control-freak nature was trying to exert control during upheaval, like when my husband needed a new job. Or when my body shrank too much, then lost a pregnancy, then grew larger from another. So I deleted the Zillow app and made myself celebrate what I already had in front of me. The tiny apartment where we cuddled through thick and thin.

Once a move wasn’t an option but the only option, I didn’t seek control through action; I wanted to do nothing at all. My husband and I’s different coping mechanisms seemed like a positive at first. I could have a little cry and keep the house moving while he invested all available mental space into the house hunt. But once I realized that meant more major life decisions would be made without my direct oversight and direction, the quaint idea of being an easygoing woman who entrusted the universe and her husband to carry her through existence evaporated. The inner control freak had a death cry. I felt like a kid. I felt like a trad. I wanted to sabotage everything, subconsciously. But I didn’t. I chose to trust the man I found smarter than anyone I knew, the man I felt was meant for me in ways that defy the laws of probability, even though it felt like a knife in my gut, which felt like the first time I’d really trusted anything, ever.

I kept mumbling, “What if it’s the wrong choice. What if we’re not happy there? What if the little issues build into a big, unresolvable issue?”

Joe said it was the right choice. And if it were wrong, we’d figure it out.

I was, I am, afraid how a new space and a new neighborhood might rock all the good we have going. I can’t help but feel like our happiness is my responsibility. Self-dependence isn’t an issue, of course. Until, or unless, it pushes you away from the people you want to be happy with.

Last night, on our last Sunday at our apartment, all four of us sat out on the stoop. I picked up a pop for each of us from the bodega. Our kids ran over from the garden patch with dirty hands to collect their Martinelli’s sparkling apple juice. I tried to crack open the glass bottle of Coca-Cola for my husband on the fence, but failed, so we shared my Italian orange soda.

“I’ll miss our orange home,” Henry said.

“Home. Miss. Me too,” Louis said.

We packed all that weekend. Rented pink boxes with vacuum-sealed stuffed animals and board books in towers through our 750 square feet.

Our neighbor, Tom, a gay man in his 70s who was our kids’ first non-familial friend, walked up from their basement laundry.

“You’ll have your own laundry soon,” he said.

I smiled. It was true. Come Thursday, we’ll have a dishwasher, laundry machines, a few more square feet, and a view from the bedroom window full of trees and vines and fire escapes. We’ll be near Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Hudson River. We’ll have an office to sequester into during video calls.

When we told Tom about the move, he called our landlords rats.

“I loved living here,” I said. “They’ve been good to us. It’s just a bummer.”

He agreed.

Joe said, “We’ll still bring you pavlova. And Henry will come weed your garden.”

We gave Tom a homemade block print today. It was of a home with a flower. Henry wrote, “We’ll miss having you as a neighbor,” on the back. Then we saw that little girl come out of the apartment above Tom’s. Her parents said Tom told them we were moving. We talked about it, and I didn’t get red or teary. Maybe it was because I’d finally taken down all the kids’ art from our walls. Or that we’d reached a percentage of packing that made this home no longer feel like ours. Maybe it’s just the exhaustion, and the exhaustion-influenced argument Joe and I had last night. Or maybe it’s the Aeon card reading I did for myself and Henry’s best friend’s mom, which told me that I’d been viewing this move as a prison sentence, but it would create the opposite – not punishment and solitude, but togetherness.

I wanted certainty that we’d be happy. But how can I ever be sure of anyone’s feelings? All that mattered was being together. This tiny apartment did that for us because of its limited space. And of the life and death that transpired here. It’s hard to see how it could get better. But it’s always hard to see what you haven’t seen before. To get where I need to go, I can’t use a map.

The first time I met this building’s old owner, my boys crawled out of our wagon, and Joe hefted grocery bags onto his shoulders. The old man stood there, looking up at the burnt-orange-painted brownstone with his family. I guessed that looking at the home he spent twenty years of his life inside would feel a lot like looking back in time. You can’t be within what’s passed.

We wrote a letter to this apartment: Thank you, house, for taking care of us. We love you so much. You did a good job helping us grow and pop out our boys. We’ll always remember you fondly. We wish we didn’t have to say goodbye. But we know it’s time.

We each signed it: Henry, L~~~~~, Joe (Dad), Mom (Abby)

Maybe we’ll get to walk past in forty years. Maybe my kids will be tall. Maybe I’ll only reach their shoulders. Maybe I’ll remember when they only reached my hip, or were born from between them. I bet I’ll think about how lucky we were, we are. To be here. And to keep growing, together.

Thank you for being a part of my non-geographic community, and thank you for reading the ramblings of a tired mom who has bonked her head three times this week.

I hope that your world is more zen than mine, and if it’s not, or if it’s even more chaotic, know I’m with you.

All my love I have to spare xoxoxoxoxo

The hottest role-play doesn’t involve a nurse costume, step-family trope, or a handiman script. Dressing up as Barbarella is fun, don’t get me wrong, but that superficial play is never as erotic as the sex that excavates your Self.

My husband and I’s secret to role-play is that we treat it like Individuation.

It’s hot. It’s deep as fuck. And it has exponential erotic benefit.

We don’t have to be full Jungians to recognize that archetypal characters reside within our psyches. Within myself, I have the mother, the maiden, the child, the hero. I wear a persona mask intentionally and unintentionally. Both my shadow and my ego are present in my life, and especially in my sex life. (If you’ve read the Happy Endings deep cut, “The Psyche is in Sex Position Preferences,” you’ll know how.) These are heavy topics that I could sit, clothed with a stranger, analyzing. But I’d far rather strip myself back literally and figuratively with the love of my life.

My husband and I do this via character-driven archetypes. This isn’t something we named literally before delving in. We didn’t create scripts and roles. It formed naturally. One of us took on a persona, the other took on the mirror persona, we got frisky, and by the end, we found ourselves with a greater understanding of our individual wholeness and collective connection. After this happened a few times, it became a favorite, secret, role-play style.

Here are a few ways you (with a lover, or on your own) could do the same:

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I’m not above the allure of a gift, so I bit. I watched a few of her reels. It entertained me.

I told my husband about her that night. He didn’t quite get what “high vibration” meant, so I did a little performance.

“Hi, babe,” I said, breathless with a head tilt and eye flutter. “I took a moment to reflect on my mood lately. I know I haven’t been the positive, peace-spreading wife you deserve. I’m going to do better for you.” I pinched my entire face like those cutsie people do.

He put a hand on his crotch. He thought I was initiating role play.

“Okay,” I said, dropping character. “Now fast-forward a week.” Back in character, I said, “Hi baby, I’m so grateful for how well you take care of me. I know you feel the same. For Mother’s Day, I’d like a Porosus Birken. You can choose the color. I love you!”1 Then I did a couple air kisses, without touching him.

This, as thirty minutes of research taught me, is a high-vibration woman. She is dutiful, but has boundaries. She’s positive femininity incarnate, but with an undercurrent of masculine authority. The kind of woman who lets her partner order for her, but only after training him with overt and subversive tactics.

It’s a little hot. But it is not me. That’s why my husband assumed it was roleplay.

I am not a high-vibration woman. I am not constantly cheerful. When I spread peace, it’s after I’ve spread a low hum of anxiety. My vibrations are in flux. I contribute high vibes to our relationship and home life, but they’re intermittent. And if I aspired to any stasis, it would not be high. I aspire to be a low-vibration woman.

A low-vibration woman, as my imagination defines it, has an uncurated personality not because she’s ‘cool’ or anything, but because curation itself is far too much energy for her. She is too consumed with savoring the (sometimes sweet, sometimes sour) flavors of her inner and outer worlds to even have a preferred restaurant order, let alone deal with the orchestration of instilling that in another human. She’s a gently plucked C minor on bass. A head rocking to Lana Del Rey.

I complain. I have moods I don’t conceal. And never aim to. Sometimes I lean fully into said moods and do a wee pity party and pout. This isn’t an inconvenience to deal with in private and wrap up in toilet paper to discreetly dispose of like a bloody tampon. It’s opportunity.2 For my spouse and children to see me dust myself off, do a dance, move on, and through. Not in a manic pixie way.3 The low-vibration woman does these things intentionally because she is too lazy to deal with the repercussions of suppressed emotions – how they build into ugly things like resentment and numbness and loss of self – and she knows that concealing these feelings, or pushing through them rapidly in private, deprives both herself and her partner from being/seeing herself. Which is also laziness – she teaches and trains simply by being.

Yes, this means that my stress vibes send my children into flight-or-cling states, and makes my husband say, “What is wrong with you?” in that way that makes me glare and say, “Nothing!” until I’m ready to explain (once I myself recognize what exactly is wrong). The low-vibration wife hums up and down, and because of the lack of resistance to the downward hum, she maintains a grounded wave. The kind that feels like a children’s smile and fresh lake breeze. Not a fluttered eyelash. She rolls with and through her emotions, letting that low frequency keep her closer to the floor rather than manufacturing an airborne state.

I don’t want to elevate my home. I like to bring my husband down, ideally to the bed or couch, but the ground works too. Isn’t that also hot?

The impulse to hide our ‘bad’ vibrations from a partner is understandable. But being bratty doesn’t make me a bad wife. It makes me an honest one. One who doesn’t require a strategic, manufactured perfection to train my spouse to provide me with my desired gifts, or baseline safety and acceptance.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t shit on transactional relationships. Every communion among humans is defined by give-and-take, and those who realize this are often better for it. But I like my exchange to operate on a separate plane from my state of being.4

Aspiring to be a ‘low-vibration wife’ isn’t an avoidance of personal growth. I long for an evermore reliable state of zen, an increasing aptitude to notice my triggers, pluck the chord I’d rather vibrate at, and to more gracefully express fear. Like the other day, when my husband said, “Oh, did Henry pee already?” and I, in the midst of fear manifesting as anger, said, “How could you possibly think that?” I don’t want to be snappy, or even the less hostile version, snippy. But I would never, ever, consider intermittent moodiness or any non-exclusively positive vibration to be a bad thing. Expressing myself with unmanicured insecurities allows my partner to see me, so he can know me, and help me be a better me.

Some people are, as I’ve been fortunate enough to witness, innate positive angels. Bless them. But even angels experience strife! And angels deserve a patient partner to bear witness to their bitchiness, too. Because then, with their full demigod humanity in view, perhaps fewer people will expect others to be exclusively heaven-sent, and fewer people will pretend to be perfect themselves.

I am positive. I do exude peace. But high vibrations aren’t meant to be constant.

It’s not just me, it’s science! Good vibrations are only ‘good’ in short doses. Low-magnitude, high-frequency vibrations help with pain, circulation, relaxation, and even (unsubstantiated claim!) DNA repair or curing diseases. But turn that high wave into a high magnitude, or a full-time high-vibration, and we no longer have a useful, or even entertaining frequency. We have tinnitus.5

Perpetual high vibrations are not human. The front makes me wonder what’s hidden.6 Pretending, outside of the container of roleplay or showtime, is a lie. It is non-disclosing parts of oneself for a convenient narrative. It’s diminishing one’s wholeness into palatability. That is a fear-based behavior, too – constructing oneself so loved ones stay with them, and reward them with luxury goods as evidence of their value. And it is manipulation. It’s a strategy, not intimacy. Besides, the partner who expects perfection in mood is the person who doesn’t accept imperfection in the physical. And who wants that?

I want a partner who takes me at my intermittently bitchy, and realizes it’s not only a natural ebb on my zen cycle, but also an opportunity to coquettishly request his steadfast guidance. Which is what my husband thought I was doing that evening when I told him about the high-vibration wife.

First, I sucked his dick, and then let him fuck me, but I never let him use me, and had strict guidelines for how he could touch me. The sex was fine.

My husband said in the morning that he found it confusing. He felt he had to treat me a certain way, and he’d rather be himself – a man who likes his bratty wife in the streets, and wounded bird in the sheets. A man who likes to use me, and doesn’t mind if I do the same with him – because in that mutually selfish dance, we become even better, together. Knowing him – and getting to see his fantasies, and the fears and insecurities behind them – is more valuable than a Birken. Genuine intimacy is priceless.

I don’t know that beautiful freckle woman’s real relationship, only what she shares online, but pretending to be her reminded me how lucky I am to be me.

Thank you for reading this exhibition of love. I hope it’s brought aspirationally accessible amorous living to your life. Your support — whether in paid subscriptions, likes, comments, shares (publicly or privately) — is immensely appreciated. I’m sending love to you (literally)!

The soundtrack for this piece is, unsurprisingly, the following:

I called it Monster Mommy. I haven’t done it in a while. I have new tactics. But I used to get down on all fours and growl a little, and the kids would scamper from me. Sometimes we’d all laugh, but sometimes they’d say, “Please stop.” So I would.

This might seem cute, or it might seem troubling. I consider it a coping mechanism.

The new coping mechanism looks like this:

After lying on my back in a child’s size bed for an hour, I said to my husband, “Can we go to sleep?” I was crabby. I was shattered. I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

He said, “No, babe, it’s a quarter to nine.”

My brain moved in such a way that it needed to do the math. A quarter is fifteen, minus 9:00 equals eight forty-five. I couldn’t argue with him — it was too early to go to sleep. But I wanted to argue. So I squatted and pouted at the edge of the couch that he sat on. I had a lip a bird could poop on, as my dad used to say.

“Why are you being so cute?” my husband said.

“I’m not being cute. I’m pouting,” I said with a glare.

“We can’t go to sleep before 9:00,” he said.

I hmpf’d. “If you’re going to make me stay up…” I said, unsure how I’d finish the sentence, “You need to pound me awake.”

He chuckled. “Is that right?”

I watched his little cheeky smile form, which was probably the reason I said it in the first place. I like to be monstrous to him. To get a rise out of him.

Then he said, “Look at your cheeky smile.”

“I was looking at yours,” I said. I crawled toward him. I raised up onto my knees. The pout still on my bottom lip. Then, without thinking about it, I punched his arm.

“Is it going to be like that, then?” he said.

“Does this hurt?” I said. I braced my fist in its best, untrained form, and punched him again.

“No,” he said, smiling an extra cheeky smile. I could see the child in him.

“How about this one?” I said, punching the other arm. He tensed before that one. I could tell he felt nothing. It didn’t frustrate me, though. I liked it like that. And I knew it would be so. We did this whole routine now and again. He found it silly, and it comforted me to remember that no matter how hopelessly unrestrained I was, it wouldn’t move him.

“And this one?” I said. But as my fist moved toward his chest, he grabbed my forearm, mid-air. “You bastard,” I said. My eyes felt alive, but I squinted them like the whiny, pouty bitch I was.

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When I want to feel horny but don’t want to meditate on erotic thought-starters while listening to Divinyls and circling my hips like Patrick Swayze, I get non-sexually literal and touch myself.

Not nipples or lips or pelvic creases. No treasure trails or ears or erogenous zones. No spanking or tickling or flogging me softly with his suede fringe.

This is my list of the sort of body parts, and how to touch them, that gets me straight where the hottest orgasms live — in my body. This is my go-to for when I’m craving arousal, but it’s evading me slightly. Try one or all six… I think you will enjoy them, too:

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He smiled. “That was out of nowhere,” he said, grabbing his can of Modelo.

It was. But it wasn’t. Earlier that day, I decided I needed to determine whether my new boyfriend would be the right father for my children. Because three weeks before, we stopped using condoms. A few times, we hadn’t even pulled out. It felt great. It was exciting. It was closeness. It left a noticeable need for discussion.

“As you may have noticed,” he said. “I already am.”

I huffed a laugh from my nose and took a sip of my mezcal margarita.

We were at a restaurant in Mexico City. The trip was to visit a friend of mine. But the day I booked my flights was the day before my new boyfriend and I started having unprotected sex, which was two days after we verbally declared what we’d nonverbally known – our mutual love for one another. We didn’t want condoms or oceans between us.

“Would you circumcise your child?” I clarified.

“Honestly, I don’t have strong opinions on the matter,” he said.

“That’s a first,” I said, with a wink.

He and I always talked, but rarely about us or our future. We talked about ideas and didn’t always agree. But that week, we hadn’t had much time alone, let alone time to talk alone. My friend was with us. She took the bus in from a more distant village and stayed in the Airbnb I booked. For seven days, the three of us did everything together except sleep.

Back when she and I lived in the same Midwestern town, when she and I were concurrently healing from juvenile heartbreaks, we’d sometimes even sleep together. It was messy. Life was. We drank and danced and tried to grow up, but sometimes it was down. When we both moved to different countries – she followed a guy, I followed a job – I thought it was a good thing.

“I have a proposition for this meal,” I said.

“Beyond the eight courses of tacos?”

“Yes, and beyond cleansing ourselves of this trip,” I said.

He laughed.

The vacation wasn’t fun. It wasn’t exactly meant to be. I’d warned him of this in advance. I said, “It’s an intervention masquerading as a reunion. You can be my moral support.”

The man my friend followed to Mexico stopped sharing his heart with her soon after her arrival. Her preexisting condition, a dependence on spirits to maintain her spirits, filled his place. Back in the Midwest, I never acknowledged that. I knew she was hurting. I wanted to help. But I also didn’t want to push her away.

On our reunion, she wanted it to be like old times. But it wasn’t. The first night, she blacked out and tried to kiss my new boyfriend. The next day, she made sure he knew she’d done even more with me. “She must have told you,” I heard her say when I got back from the bathroom. I hadn’t.

I apologized to him that night in bed. I didn’t want to stir shit up. I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted to say what needed to be said when it needed to be said, but I was still figuring out how.

Our server arrived. “Are you ready to order?”

I said yes. Then my new boyfriend ordered us sixteen tacos.

We were seated next to the window of the second floor of a converted warehouse. I looked out past the streetlights below us. Wind blew in, bending the tea light’s flame sideways. I thanked the server as he left, then I looked my new boyfriend in the eyes and said, “Given our recent foray into unprotected intercourse, I wondered if you’d be up for discussing the hypothetical questions someone like me would discuss with someone she might have a baby with.”

“So,” my new boyfriend said. “Circumcision.”

I smiled. He recounted how his English mother took him to a Mohel in Derby to remove his foreskin. It was too tight and made his urine spray. He said he’d prefer his theoretical son to avoid that pain, but he was open to his partners’ perspective.

“Boy or girl?” he said.

“Good question.”

I knew we should have discussed whether a pregnancy was wanted before reciting the recipe for procreation. But it was better late than never. I wasn’t sure I felt that way about my period. My period was late, but nothing about me was regular. My family and the friends I once depended upon were buses and plane rides away. I was in the midst of starting a monogamous relationship, even though I considered myself a relationship anarchist. And despite the madness of being prepared to create life with a man I met months before, I was not worried. Not about myself.

“Not a boy,” I said.

He said, “I think it’s natural to want what you know.”

“How did you feel after that circumcision anyway?”

“I thought the Rabbi turned my tip into a lychee fruit,” he said.

“How did you know about lychees at six? I hadn’t even tried mango until I was an adult.”

He told me how his dad would surprise him and his siblings with exotic fruits “like coconuts” for special occasions. I thought about my friend’s parents. So many of her stories included them not being around.

I asked, “Do you worry about your parents’ influence on how you might parent one day?”

“What do you mean?” he said.

I told him about how I didn’t really know what moms were like in private. I saw moms on TV, my aunts at parties, and my friends’ moms when I was a guest in their home. But I wondered if I was missing some fundamental experience.

He said, “Parents don’t have to be perfect. They just have to be there.”

I smiled to myself. We agreed on this.

Ever since he’d taken me to meet his aunt in his hometown the month before, I knew family was at least not not important to him. But very little in our lives could have shown me whether our idea of parenting – and even, if it came to that, co-parenting – was compatible. And given all death and distance taught me about depending on the status quo, I wanted to know if our contingency plans were compatible.

I kept swirling the last ice cubes in my watered-down cocktail. I asked if he wanted to try it. He said it tasted like “ham juice.” I couldn’t believe he’d limit the flavor of smoke to meat.

Our first tacos arrived. Chicken. We both liked them. The next was steak. He liked it, and I thought it was fine. The bean one, the opposite. He had another beer. I didn’t.

We spoke about private education, childcare, and date nights. We knew we knew so little, but our hearts were in good places, I thought. Not equivalent perspectives, but compatible.

Carne asada was served. Then cactus. Pescado.

I wondered whether my friend’s bus had gotten back to her town safely. If her dog was waiting for her. I wished I could’ve kept following her. I wondered if I was wrong to bring my new boyfriend. I knew she’d have done the same, but what did that mean? I watched his eyes grow soft as the restaurant’s lights dimmed. The tablecloth tickled my bare thigh.

“I have another question,” I said.

“I’m ready,” he said.

“Talking hypothetically here,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Ten years from now. We have kids. You’re not happy. I’m not happy. We decide there’s not much else we can try other than separating for our mutual joy. How do we manage this?”

He nodded as he wiped his mouth. He scrunched his eyebrows in a way that told me he was thinking, not judging. I took a bite to conceal my eagerness. This was my only dealbreaker.

“This is a good question,” he said, continuing to eat.

“I think kids need their mom. So that would have to be a priority.”

“What if I moved back to Minnesota?”

“Then they’d have to be in Minnesota.”

It was what I needed to hear. And I didn’t think that’s why he said it.

“And, you know, if I died,” I said, looking down, but aware his face pinched up in worry. “Would you keep my dad in the picture?”

“Of course,” he said.

I smiled toothlessly. He did too.

“Do you think you’re pregnant?”

“What would you say if I were?”

“You know, it’s mental. It’d be insane. But,” he said. “I’d be excited.”

“I feel the same way.” My stomach felt light, despite being full. Then sick, for feeling excited for my future while worried for others. “I’m probably not,” I said. “It’s just a few days. I blame the stress.”

“It’s sure been something.”

“Thanks for coming,” I said. “You really got a glimpse of my past.”

“We all have one.”

On our winding drive from the restaurant, I texted her: Let me know when you’re home. I love you.

She responded: I’ll be ok. I love you. Abby = Family.

Then: BTW, I like him for you.

After my new boyfriend and I got through airport security, we went to a convenience stall to buy water bottles and saw pregnancy tests behind the counter. I asked the airport kiosk attendant for a “prueba de embarazada,” and blushed. Not because of the purchase, but because I was unsure if that was the correct phrasing. The Spanish word for ‘embarrassment’ is so similar to the word ‘pregnancy.’

She smiled. She understood me. She was so happy for my new boyfriend and me. She didn’t know we weren’t pregnant.

Flying back to London, my new boyfriend, Joe, shared his headphones with me. I leaned my head on his shoulder as he clicked play on “Waterloo Sunset.”

We started trying, or at least not not trying, the next week.

That’s all we can do.

Soundtrack:

Thank you, reader.

You could be doing a million things, but you read this, and I’m sincerely touched to have spent that time in your head.

If you’d like to keep me in your thoughts, check out the below. If you’re on to the next moment, may love follow you.

When I’m an object for them, I retain independence of mind. Chairs are free to think chair thoughts while upholding chair responsibilities. But frequently those thoughts are on other chair responsibilities.

So, I’m a chair.

I like to be my children’s radio. If they want to listen to someone counting to 999, I count. They count along. I’ve sang row row row your boat for hours on end with a sore throat while driving on a highway at night through road construction and torrential rain. It comforted them. I teach them. This pleases me. Plus, it’s meditative.

I do set boundaries. I no longer night drive with babies.

But mostly I am a mother object. Even with a sore throat.

I pick up snacks for them. I pick up snack wrappers after them. I pick them up from school, then unpack their snack boxes.

I heat their bodies in bed in the morning. I heat their bodies in bed at night.

In the mornings, I think how am I so lucky? It is a truth.

On some evenings, I lie on the dirty part of our dining room rug, and tears spring to my eyes, not from sadness, but exhaustion. It is a truth.

When I reflect on the exhaustion and consider offloading some of these duties, the thought brings the sad type of tears to my eyes.

So, I’m a tap.

I read somewhere it’s the estrogen that makes me do this. It elicits a sacrificial response for women of childbearing age.

But even as my battery, with its diminishing endurance, recharges on the dirty rug, I know that if the ‘mother object’ were a pill, I’d take the drug recreationally. In fact, on drugs, I’ve reclined in far worse. And then, there was never a five-year-old who found me, reached out their hand, kissed my cheek, and said: “Here, lovely mother, let me help you stand back up.”

Then we lie on his bottom bunk with his little brother on my other side, and read a book that I used to find a terribly dangerous tale of self-sacrificial generosity.

And as my children drifted off to sleep, I thought to myself, take my time, my mind, my body, my apples, my leaves, my branches.

I have everything. I am a mom.

P.S. I also enjoy being an object for my husband. You may consider any of the following part two:

Buying something to fix a problem is a coping mechanism I’m not unfamiliar with. The whole parenting industrial complex runs off of it. Call it my Midwestern work ethic or my learned, lower-middle-class thriftiness, but I actively fight this impulse.

I know I could’ve saved myself a lot of discomfort if I’d just bought an umbrella attachment for our stroller instead of jimmying a couple into the crevices. But when it comes to my sex life, my self-dependence has served me well.

Nobody can buy their way to better sex. A vibrator can help you come, of course, and my husband and my lingerie habit is not cheap, but no external tool (neither our new silicone dildo nor any garter belt) has improved my pleasure so much as internal work.

It’s not sexy. But (stay with me!) it will be sexy.

To feel things I’d never felt, these are the things I prioritize(d)1:

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That thing you each put your mind and heart and body against, beyond each other. It could be your obsession with weightlifting, or being amateur critics for your local music scene, or crossword puzzles… It doesn’t matter what, but I’m starting to believe that if one wants to feel close to one’s partner, a shared preoccupation is a prerequisite.

The relationship itself is, of course, a group project. The ultimate project, if you will. And for that highest pursuit to be satisfactory at worst and stimulating at best, an external activity — for which you both share interest, and have the potential for passion and excitement — is necessary. Because in those superfluous, not explicitly relationship-coded, pastimes is when two people connect. We’re in this random thing together, and so we’re in it together.

It’s not exclusive to romance, of course. It’s why half my friends I’ve met in writing groups. It’s why corporations that only care about profit, and want their employees to make them as much money as possible, still spend money on random bonding activities because they know they’ll be more committed to their colleagues if they take a pottery class with them.

It’s why in films, to visually demonstrate two characters quickly developing a closeness, they cycle through home-building vignettes. The couple is painting, then assembling bookshelves, laughing as one drops the tiny Ikea wrench down their shirt. These external projects implicate the internal project. Two grow closer.

Even sharing a meal together is a group activity. The etymology of ‘companionship’ supports this – to break bread together is to be together.

And when there is no shared bread or passion projects, and all a couple has is the relationship itself, that relationship has fewer legs to stand on. The phrase “growing apart” even implies a lack of shared activity.

I don’t share this perspective to set a new benchmark for you to measure yourself against. I don’t want anyone to feel something lacking in their life that makes them believe they need to buy or look beyond themselves for answers to their problems. Because that itself is the root of many problems. The trick is that only you can judge whether you’re satisfied, decide what brings you passion and excitement, and discover what that may be with your partner.

It can be activism, gardening, spectating art, or creating art. It could be watching sunsets, swimming, or recipe testing, even if only one partner is the chef and the other is the appreciator. It could be camping, pub trivia, puzzles, or collecting antique vases. For some, the house-building persists beyond those early years into a perpetual nesting, renovation, and decorating as a prolonged bonding ritual.

For my husband Joe and me, well, we love being together, so we have an unreasonable amount of projects: our unending ideas debates, backgammon, curating and dancing to late 70’s disco mixes, repairing clothing, our sex life (which I wouldn’t have normally classified as a project except for the depth with which we treat it as a hobby (the videos, the scenes, the outfits, the audits)), and this publication — we have a creative fixation with entreprenuerial endeavors, so we discuss his and mine, and theoretical ones that we may or may never make, and we share support. (I might’ve added our children, but I don’t believe that considering any relationship to be a superfluous project is a positive thing. People aren’t means to ends, after all.)

And without those things, I wouldn’t know him. Not really. Because when we debated, in our early courtship months, whether social media’s democratization of attention has been a net positive for the arts, I learned how his mind works. And when I got angry with him about his perspective, I learned how he resolved differences. And when we discuss the ventures he and I are dabbling in, I see how he responds to opportunities and inevitable problems. And I can help him. And over the years, through our individual and collective changes, our closeness has deepened from these group projects. Even the banal ones, like finding the perfect potatoes and helping my spine feel more nimble.

It’s through the group projects that we affirm the point of it all. Our team-man-ship. That we’re not doing this whole living thing alone. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We are just group project people.

How about you??

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When this song hits, I’m initiating a mid-afternoon dance.

This was one of those evenings.

I walked into the living room after putting our boys to sleep. I found him, my husband, on the couch. And I dropped my body around his.

The collapse was like a hug. A straddle. A languid scissoring, but not the sex version — the thing kids do on swings.

I wasn’t planning to. When collapse is on the mind, mounting isn’t usually the first association. But his response to my arrival was enthusiastic. Oh, hey, baby, I think. The greeting beckoned me, and my lifeless body answered.

He said nothing after my collapse, and neither did I. At least for a while. He wrapped his arms around me, one at a time, and squeezed a little. His hands held his biceps, or his elbows — I don’t know, I couldn’t see. He kept me upright, and I closed my eyes.

After I didn’t even know how long of muscleless sitting, I said, “You’re getting me horny.”

He laughed. He wasn’t doing anything. But the contact and the relaxation aroused me. I started grinding on him.

“You still on your period?” he said.

“Yes, but I don’t mind,” I said.

I turned my face into the side of his. He turned his face into mine. Our lips touched. I pressed my bottom one between his. They smacked together. I kept grinding. His pelvis tilted up toward mine. His arms unlocked. He felt me up my back and down.

The whole room felt right. Objects were out of place, sure, but the lights were dim, and my husband was warm, and his mouth tasted like him.

We made out for long enough for me to moan with sincerity. An “mmm” came out of my mouth after traveling up from the bottom of my spine. I licked his earlobe. Then I said, “I will lick you every day of my life.”

He said, “I thought that’s what you wanted me to do to you.”

“Well. I do,” I said. “Let’s come. Me first. Then you.” I stood up before him, still in my faded cotton lounge clothes. “Unless you’re scared,” I said, joking about our habit of avoiding penetration during menstruation due to mess, my tender vaginal walls, and the stinging sensation of blood in his urethra. Then I said, “Unless you want to fuck me with something else?”

“Funny you should say that,” he said. “Look in that package on the shelf.”

We unboxed a small parcel addressed to him, with no sender's name. Inside was a metal butt plug, a marbled blue silicone dildo, and a promotional keychain of a hand in a gesture that’d make the dildo superfluous.

I asked him what the occasion was, and he said, “We only had the one butt plug,” which made sense to me. I told him so and that I claimed the keychain. He didn’t argue.

I was naked on the ground covered with a blanket, beside the lube and vibrator he laid out, when I laughed and said, “This is how my favorite type of sex looks.”

“What’s that?” he said.

“Fully concealed under a blanket.”

He chuckled. He pulled his shirt off.

“Take those off too,” I said, nodding toward his shorts.

He did so and pulled his cock down with his hand.

“I love you,” I said. “I love this.” My eyes grew misty.

“Me preparing to service you?” he said.

“Yes. Watching from here,” I said. “This. Well, it might be the best feeling of my life.”

It was. But then it was matched and surpassed…

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One of my favorite feelings is when a rush of arousal hits me. Like getting goosebumps, but inside of you.

Some depend upon visual stimuli to do this trick, but my husband and I prefer when the sensation comes from inside our minds. It lasts longer. It goes deeper.

I’ve compiled a list of 16 below that I bet will spark your erotic imagination.

Think of it like a writing prompt, but for getting carried away with yourself, or letting the mood linger all day, building up in you until you burst with someone you adore.

Imagine catching someone you crush on staring at you, and they don’t avert their eye contact.

Imagine a kiss on your hip bone.

Imagine your pants/skirt is made of a loose-weave linen, or cotton, or silk, and the breeze carries through it, past that part of your genitals with the highest proportion of nerve endings, sending a chill through you.

Imagine getting a text that said, “I dreamt of you last night.”

Read more

Abby:

So, husband, I think we would agree that sex shouldn’t be a reward, or something your spouse has to “earn,” in general, right?

Joe:

It depends on the sex that is the reward, I guess?

Abby:

I’m saying “in general” — meaning, if every time we had sex, period, it was something you had to earn. That would be pretty toxic, right?

Joe:

Yeah, that wouldn’t really be a healthy place for a relationship to be in my opinion.

Abby:

Like how I wrote about maintenance sex last week. Sex is a positive for every individual. So if someone is using it as a punishment device, that’s pretty twisted.

BUT… a few times I’ve offered a surprise, extra special blow job as a reward for you to accomplish something I’ve noticed weighs on you. A tempting carrot to lure you through a shitty work task. Do you remember the first time I did that? How did you feel about it?

Joe:

Well, that felt great obviously, and I think that is the thing really with this whole idea of reward sex, that can’t be like vanilla missionary sex begrudgingly offered — the idea that is even a reward is a bit of a humiliating punishment in itself.

Abby:

Lol, tell me more.

Joe:

The implication there is like, the relationship is not balanced, I guess. One person thinks the other is so lucky to have them that they need to work for and be thankful for what, in a healthy relationship, is normal.

There really isn’t anything more humiliating than being dedicated to someone who thinks you should be thankful for their time.

Weird tangent here, but it’s a lot like Trump and his cronies — how pathetic are these people who seek his approval and then he throws them under the bus.

Like he did with the DHS woman recently and a hundred others.

Like I said — weird tangent but same principle.

Abby:

He also just said he prefers hanging out with losers because they let him talk about his successes instead of having to let another person talk about theirs. This is what people who prefer to be with someone who is lucky to have them are like… they are afraid to question their own validity, in a way.

Joe:

Yeah, that is exactly it.

Abby:

So we both feel equally lucky to be with each other. We have good sex. And we don’t hold it against the other. Most of the time.

(There are times, of course, when one of us gets a little indignant when we’re stressed and feel like life is unbalanced in general, and then blames the other for not being balanced or some shit. And sometimes we play with that imbalance.)

So, in this context, reward sex can be a fun tool for a relationship instead of a problematic function. Or maybe we call it bribery sex?

Joe:

Yeah, the thing is that the ‘reward’ element has got to feel like a reward, I suppose. It can’t be something that is just what you both enjoy, or the natural ‘organic’ sex that just happens.

Abby:

How has the reward sex, or bribery sex, helped you?

Joe:

Well, first, I’m thinking of you…

Because, I think for us, it doesn’t really work the other way around. The things that you really like, that fall into that category, are more like sex in a public place or sneaking around or something spontaneous, which aren’t well-suited to a reward-type thing.

Plus, I think you also prefer the idea of being ‘spoiled’ over being rewarded. Or kept on your toes.

You prefer surprise to knowing.

Whereas I prefer to know than be surprised.

The thing I really like about reward or bribery sex is knowing that I am going to get what I want. To that above exact point. Knowing what’s coming (insert the easy joke there) is the best part.

Abby:

Yes, I don’t think that carroting me would ever work, you’re right. I’d get crabby with you. I like to know I have my baseline of requirements met in order to be a productive and happy person. And yes, being spoiled as a surprise is the best. A surprise trophy would be better for me lol.

For you, when I’ve noticed you’re really pissed about finishing something. I’ve said, ok, stay home instead of going to swim class, and if you’ve finished by the time we’re back, you get your dream BJ. If you’re not, you only get a casual BJ, right? Has it helped?

Joe:

Yeah, definitely, but the good part is definitely in knowing that the reward is there and attainable. If that makes sense. Like it wouldn’t work as a reward if it were a chance-based thing. For me at least.

‘All you have to do to get this thing you want, exactly how you want it, is to do this thing’ — that is a hot proposition.

And also the offer itself is good too, like it’s a way of saying ‘I know you really want this thing and I want to give you that.’

And also looking at things from the other perspective, it probably gives the giver of the reward a good way in for doing things that they might not be particularly into themselves, but just enjoy being able to do something a bit different from the usual.

Abby:

Yes definitely. And you accomplish the BS you had to do. Win-win.

Joe:

And maybe now thinking about it, I am pretty sure that any kind of out-of-the-ordinary thing would work as a reward, really. Like, say nipple clamps, because that’s not something I have ever really thought about. If you said, ‘I will let you use these nipple clamps on me if you redecorate the kitchen,’ that I would find hot. Even though I have no prior interest in nipple clamps.

Abby:

Lol. Ok. I’ll get back to this nipple clamps kitchen thing.

I feel like sex is a great tool to help people in life. Like the obvious example is when I have a great o, I’m a happier, more chill woman. But more extreme is like the other day, I could tell you were needing to be more of a decisive hard ass, so I made you do that to get what you wanted from me sexually. The sex energy translates into life energy.

Joe:

Yeah, but I would also say that having an orgasm falls into the more like, common or garden stuff, that is just a given.

Also worth saying that you don’t really suffer from procrastination or need rewards as motivation. If anything, you have the opposite problem. I need to intervene in your life by literally forcing you to stop spinning your wheels on things.

And I can’t really be like, ‘hey, if you sit down and have a cup of tea and just chill out for 45 minutes, I will reward you with an orgasm.’ It’s more like, I need to make you stop spinning your wheels to even be capable of having an orgasm in the first place.

And there it’s tricky because if I were to say even the word orgasm, that would lead to even more wheel spinning.

So for me, on the flipside, it isn’t about giving you direct certainty and like ‘do this get this’ — it’s the opposite, where there are a hundred tiny and individually imperceptible nudges to help you be more relaxed.

Like bringing you coffee in bed every morning isn’t a direct lay up to an orgasm, but if I didn’t do that, then ultimately you wouldn’t probably have as many orgasms because in general you would be less relaxed and therefore less into the idea of having sex.

Abby:

Yes, you know, even these chats tee up orgasms for both of us because when I notice and see how tangibly you understand and notice me, it turns me on and sets me at ease and makes me feel loved and loving too. Like, I’m a bit emotional right now just reading that from you.

And I guess that’s what I’m doing for you with the bribes. I’m noticing your needs and trying to help you achieve them. We support each other. And sex is a tool to do that in a basic and not basic way.

Joe:

Yeah, that is very smart.

It’s noticing the flaws and the wants and aligning them, really.

I start more things than I finish, and I want to know what’s coming — you align that up.

You get tightly wound up in your head, and your body wants to be able to relax — I try to nudge things into alignment.

And sex is a good way to either build that alignment in my case, or benefit from it in yours.

Abby:

Yeah, exactly. But back to your nipple clamps and kitchen redesign shit. That is actually completely different. But also something I wanted to discuss.

It’s when we take this a step further, and maybe more toward the true meaning of rewards and bribes. It’s that shit that I selfishly want. And maybe ultimately you do too, but not as much as me. Doing tasks for the house is a good example. A better one, and one that I’ve been teasing at this last month, and TO MY UTTER SURPRISE AND DELIGHT, you spontaneously brought up and said you’d like to do in April… the BJ-supported vape weening.

These are hard things. Not things that can be fit within the timeframe of swim class. And I think we agree that carroting sexy things can benefit the process?

Joe:

This is interesting to me because I tend to think the everyday stuff is more important.

Abby:

Yes, I agree. Which is why the kitchen example is a different thing. But it’s another convo, which I also wanted to have.

[We have an extended aside about our child’s swim school, bikinis, grocery shopping, and the evening’s ragu. Then we have sex (I wore the Lara Croft suit with a patent leather fixation harness over the top).]

Can we keep this going now?

Joe:

Yes.

With the vape quitting, the bribe is good, yeah. Because it’s something you have to do alone, and it is kind of shitty vibes.

The reward seems to be best when it is just about pushing through the pain-in-the-arse type stuff.

And devising a system of sexual acts that align with the nicotine withdrawal process seemed like a perfect way to motivate me there.

It makes me think of Dante’s circles of hell:

And obviously the Gustave Doré illustrations:

Like, is this ^ day 7?

Abby:

Lol. Yes. And day 8 is Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights:”

We’ll bring you through the depths of human experience, baby.

Who wouldn’t want that?

Especially when, in the end, you will only be a slave to your desire and the system, not the plastic “depression stick” bodega run 3x/week.

Joe:

Don’t forget being a slave to the rhythm:

Abby:

Lmao.

Ok, and, FYI, I don’t think I’ll be making any bribes about any renovations. That’ll have to be a team effort. And maybe a surprise reward will come if I’m particularly proud of your effort 😘

Joe:

Yeah, I agree there. You’d be better doing some kind of handyman role play lol.

Abby:

Yes. Hot.

We’ll keep the bribes for the sloggy shit. And home care as ‘fun team activity.’

Speaking of… [cliff hanger for next week!!!!!!]

(Joe says this song is a northern [English] guy’s idea of romance. Which is probably exactly why I’m so romanced by him, my northern Englishman.)

SERIOUSLY. THANK YOU. I’m really so grateful to have you all communing here with me, enabling me to transcribe the conversations my husband and I so enjoy having.

It’s not that I think it’s bad. It’s that the phrase’s implication is backwards.

Some people call it duty sex. It’s the concept of getting intimate out of obligation, not innate desire. It’s a byproduct of (heterosexual) long-term relationships. One partner, with a not-all-bad, natural impulse to peace-keep (consider the contentment of their partner and the stability of their domain), initiates sex. But in their peace-keeping perspective, they see sex as an offering, a gift, or a duty to something external to themselves.

My problem with ‘maintenance sex’ is its implication of that external duty – an outward interest, instead of self-interest – while simultaneously implying the discontent of prioritizing others before yourself.

I get it. I’ve been there (I’ll get to that). But isn’t it ironic that in our desire to care for others, even the language we’ve crafted to complain about that impulse forgets about ourselves?

It’s not an all bad impulse. It’s good to care for others. It’s just also good to care for ourselves.

All humans benefit from regular sex. And with sexual health, as with mental health, and even airline oxygen masks, it is far harder to take care of others if we don’t take care of ourselves first.

I don’t have a problem with seeing sex as a function to maintain. In fact, I do… but for myself.

Sex is a task, like grocery shopping or dish washing, that must happen for every individual human who wants to thrive, not just get by on junk. Grocery shopping, dishwashing, and sex can sure be seen as a slog. A chore. A burden. Something to maintain for others. Or it can be ridiculously goofy, absurdly romantic, mutually, excessively self-serving, or medicinal (in a hot way). However sex is served, it’s an integral ingredient of a joyful, healthy life.

Ignoring the personal potential in the routine, uneconomic endeavors of life isn’t in anyone's self-interest.

Maintenance isn’t a burden. It’s care. It’s opportunity. It’s a gesture of appreciation. For the objects you wash and mend. For the self you tend.

Maintenance sex is an apple a day.

And when that’s forgotten, and one sees maintenance as a burden — something for others — well, that’s when I knew I was not well. Which was, coincidentally, when I needed that maintenance more than ever.

How about you?

I write about sex because I like sex. But I’m still a human woman who gets tired, and wants someone (my man) to take the lead.

My husband and I once plotted out the most effective ways to seduce me, no matter what state of mind/body/spirit I’m in, into three routes.

We’re not sex nerds who think eroticism is mathematical, or anything. But with the hopes of better knowing myself, my sexuality, and my partner understanding the same, both the conversation and this seduction guide have been useful.

Besides, isn’t it plain hot to talk about what makes you hot?

I recommend crafting your own guide — for yourself, or with your lover. And I also wonder, would you like to try mine?

It’s playful, sexy, and sweet.

Here it is…

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It’s a simple story, really. I like wool. Merino. Lambswool. Shetland. Cashmere. Alpaca. I like wool. Recently, I needed a pillow. We also needed sheets. Joe bought sheets, and the company sold pillows. Specifically, a wool pillow. He bought it for me.

I got you a pillow. It’s a fancy pillow.

What kind?

It’s wool.

I’d never used a wool pillow. I’d used feathers and hadn’t liked them. They got too condensed, even hard, after some time. I’d used faux down. They’re supposed to not get dense. But it got too light and dispersed. I don’t know how it works, but I didn’t like it. So why not wool? I love wool.

The pillow arrived, and I was excited. I was truly excited about this pillow. It could’ve been something. Really something.

But it smelled. And I don’t know why I didn’t see that coming. I’ve had sweaters that have smelled. It’s always the ones from Scotland. I’m sorry, but it’s true. The pillow smelled like a Scottish sweater. Like a sheep. A wet sheep.

The pillow wasn’t wet. It was dry and bouncy. Actually, the give was perfect.

I gave it a shot. I slept with my nose pointing up that night. The morning after, my head smelled like Scottish wool.

The smell is musky. But not musty. It’s airy. But it’s air filtered through sheep’s hair. A little like mud and grass, and it got into my hair and also my pajamas. I didn’t want to wear my pajamas for a second night, as I usually did.

I washed my pajamas after that one wear. Then I left the pillow on our kids’ unused top bunk. They kicked it off. Then I left the pillow on our bean bag chair. I passed it every day. I checked on it every week or so. The smell didn’t change with time.

After a month, I started using it again. I wondered if it needed a head to wear it in. I figured my husband would’ve told me if the sheep smell bothered him. It didn’t bother him.

One night turned to two. I re-wore my pajamas.

One week turned to two. I woke without even a grimace. I put the pajamas on the next night without grimacing.

I woke, smelled my hair, and kind of smiled. I got in bed and squeezed the pillow between my arms and rested my cheek on it, and the smell wafted up into my face, and I smiled.

I smiled about the dirt, and dried grass, and the international sheep’s hair smell. I flicked my hair and smelt a bonfire. I closed my eyes and was outside.

It was many months before I read the label and saw the pillow was made of 100% British wool.

Now I wonder what this all says about me. About my adoration for the once unbearable. For the pillow I sleep with that once repulsed me. I wonder what it says about love. Or if it says anything at all.

What does it mean when love grows on you? Can adoration come from persistence and wearing down? Or is it the wearing in that adapts something imperfect to your specific needs? Is love looking past the superficial for what’s pure and true, and deeply, not necessarily densely, there?

I’m not the one to say. I just like wool. Even Scottish wool, when it’s a gift from my husband, who happens to be English. He wasn’t born in Scotland, but our last name is Burns.

I’ve made my bed. And so I lay in it.

I hope reading Happy Endings feels like writing Happy Endings — a way to reflect on love and keep it an active part of your week.

Your attention feels like love to me, too. Thank you for reading and supporting this practice.

Speaking of practice... My Praxxxis series — putting Happy Endings into practice — returns for its fifth installment this Thursday.

As my eyelids shook at 1 am on a red-eye flight, while my husband and two children slept around me, this statistical phenomenon, questionable causality aside, was on my mind.

That week, a women’s hormone expert that I follow on Instagram criticized women in relationships for taking on labor that contributes to the mortality of coupled women, suggesting we demean ourselves to our own demise.2

As I contorted myself – reaching behind my seat to pull a blanket over my child, seated beside my sleeping husband, with my arm that wasn’t cradling a sleeping baby and tingling from blood loss – I considered the Influencer’s case.

I certainly was depriving myself of rest for them. And even though sleep deprivation makes me crabby, I still – STILL – thought to myself: I’d do it again and again and again.

What the influencer might not know, given her demographic status, is that I cannot not.3

There’s a problem with the suggestion that coupled women simply stop doing the labor that theoretically plucks years off our lives. Sure, the data paints a grim picture. But the report, and this Influencer, doesn’t get what it’s like to live it. To be the married mom who loves someone so fudging much that she can’t go to sleep until she knows everyone she loves is comfortable.

And my, can that sometimes be uncomfortable. Grim, even. I likely get less sleep than the average single woman. I likely have more stress. I can absolutely see how it might cut a few years off my life. It probably will. But if I live fewer years than my peers of different relational status, it’ll be worth the cost.

The years I do have will be filled with the kind of love that is literally stretching my heart beyond its limits. And smiling, squishy, well-rested baby faces. And the pride and soul-level contentment of knowing I helped them get that sleep. No spare year is worth trading for this heart-size-growing love that makes you the sort of crazy that forgets you too are a human who needs sleep.

People could argue that I should, or could, work on that insanity. The subconscious attachment that needs to know my children, and even my husband, are asleep, breathing, and tucked in before I feel comfortable doing the same. The mother’s condition could absolutely be painted as psychosis in an absurdist suspense film. It wouldn’t even be absurdist.

But I don’t want to fight it. I like it. This love compels me, yes, but that compulsion doesn’t preclude choice. When you love people this much, the distinction collapses. And in this season of life, that’s my natural cycle. And isn’t that what that hormone Influencer’s account is actually all about?

I’m not saying I’m perpetually satisfied with my twitching eyelids. Sometimes the sleep deprivation and stress skews my gratitude. Sometimes I wonder why I’m optimally organizing children’s airplane backpacks when I could be lathering lotion so the cabin pressure doesn’t accelerate the wrinkles that came on extra quickly since delivering my children. And sure, in those moments, I think: where is the person packing my backpack? And did these munchkins say thank you enough? And does my husband acknowledge and appreciate all I do to keep this family going?

But on my deathbed, those few years premature, I don’t think I will be tallying moments of potentially unnoticed labor. I definitely won’t care what my face looks like. I’ll want to look into someone I love’s eyes and remember how happy we all were.4

Before then, I’m not longevity-maxxing. I’m not looks-maxxing. I’m love-maxxing.

Because love might make you forget you’re human. But prioritizing lifespan and looks, above all else, is not natural.5

So if you see me picking up socks in the afternoon and being the last to fall asleep, know I have someone bringing me coffee when I finally wake up after sleeping in late. Or don’t think of me at all. I have enough people thinking of me. I’ve filled my days with love.

Besides – and I saved this for last because it’s besides the point – there are also reports that parents live longer. But don’t go telling the longevitymaxxers. They’re making too many decisions based on data rather than the heart.6

It’s hard to deny my body’s biological desire to reproduce. I’ve written much about my cream pie preoccupation of late (1, 2, 3 (I’m not sorry)).

If I’m not penetrated, by even just a finger, before a sexual interchange ends, I’m disappointed.

But even still, I have other erotic activities that come first.

My favorite sexual moments start with these five activities.

And I bet I’m not alone…

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I hope you enjoy it too.

Remember, if a paid sub isn’t something you can afford, you’re welcome to dm me for a comp.

This week, I have another Praxxxis post coming.

Next week, I have (totally free) thoughts on maternal mortality and lovemaxxing coming…

You knew you’d have unfucking believable sex that night when you hugged him that morning. First Choice was playing. You two locked hip bones and moved in sync with the beat. Then made out in front of your kids. You laughed. The sun was in your eyes, but you looked into his.

That full-body high stayed with you all day. Radiating out from your chest, crotch, and the skin on your face. Until you were alone…

The sun is down. Your kids are asleep, passed out far earlier than usual due to jet lag. You’d spent weeks in other beds, prioritizing other people, outside of your routine. So when he shuts the kids’ door, and leads you to the bed — your bed — you only think of yourselves. How badly you want his mouth on you and yours on him.

You take off all your clothes. No thinking. No hesitation. You crawl on top of him. You pull the duvet over. It feels surreal to be there, hidden from everything.

Your bodies are freshly bathed. The sheets are clean. Everything feels soft, and dry, and fresh. You fold around one another, rubbing up and down and around. The cuddling, fondling, dial the body high up. You are buzzing.

He grabs your hips and shoves you up the bed. You smile at his casual strength and control. He shifts your hips, stacking them, so he can bring his face against you while still admiring your butt. He loves your butt.

He kisses you between the legs. You yank the duvet back over you, where you thought it belonged. You stretch your legs out, looping your ankles around his calves, petting the backs of them with the tops of your feet.

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Whenever I’m in homes filled with photos of generations, I often get happy tears. Even the first time I went to my sister's boyfriend's parents' home (the second time I met them), I cried when his dad showed me a photo of his parents on one of their early dates.

Tears streamed down my face as I held the framed black-and-white photo of a young Wisconsin couple I’d never met. Because if it wasn’t for those dates going well enough to warrant a photograph, they wouldn’t have made my sister’s boyfriend’s dad, and he wouldn’t have met my sister’s boyfriends’s mom, and they wouldn’t have made the boyfriend and my sister wouldn’t have met him at university and I wouldn’t be here at their farm with my young family.

I call this the butterfly effect of relationships.

I think of it here, with photos of my husband, Joe, as a child — before his brother hit him in the face with a WWI rifle and knocked his teeth out of order, how they were when I met him at The Cock Tavern in Hackney.

This weekend, we went out for drinks with Joe’s teenage bandmates, who’d each taken different paths in life. One started a mechanics business since we’d last seen him — his wife even quit her job to work behind the desk. He looks thinner and tanner and says now he and his Mrs. work the same hours, their sex life is better than ever in their 18 years. The other is now dating a “Bobby,” and his kid turns 18 this year. They waxed on about their fourth bandmember, who’d died not long after Joe and I met.

Seeing people age, and die, and make life makes me reflect on my path. Particularly those throwaway moments that amounted to the best things in my life — inconsequential days and decisions that, if it weren’t for, I wouldn’t be here in the Midlands of England with the love of my life, the people who made him, and the people we made.

It looks like this…

I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t married my husband, Joe, because international couples can’t simply be in the same country without legal commitments.

I wouldn’t have married Joe if I hadn’t confessed I loved him, lying beside him in his dark bedroom.

… which I wouldn’t have done if my ex hadn’t visited the week before that, which took me away from Joe and showed me a mirror of what we had.

… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t told Joe I was a relationship anarchist on our first date, tee-ing up a period of time where I thought this was just another temporary or temporal or non-life-path-and-belief-system-altering relationship.

… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t gotten a pint with him on a Saturday afternoon at The Cock Tavern.

… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t messaged him immediately upon swiping right on his profile on Tinder earlier that morning, my first day at my new flat in London, because I was dazzled by the serendipity that I was humming the song out loud that I’d see on his profile.

… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t helped my dad upload his newest musical obsessions — including that specific song — to his music library earlier that week.

… which I wouldn’t have done if my grandma hadn’t died the week before that (see “Life is all about timing”(!)), prompting me to travel back home and stay with my dad.

… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t already planned to move from Barcelona to London to escape the Schengen Region.

… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t texted that guy with the soul musician’s name that I met at that music venue in Barcelona, while I was at the erotic writing conference in London, and saw how fun it would be to live in London.

… which then wouldn’t have given Joe the chance to swipe right on me long before my first morning living in London, because, as I later discovered, the flat of the guy named after the soul musician was blocks away from Joe’s.

… which wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t shown up at the Razmataz in Barcelona to see if Tommy Cash was as bizarre and creative in person as he was online on a microdose of LSD and waved at a stranger across the room.

… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t gotten the nerve to buy the one-way ticket to Barcelona for that interview with Erika Lust.

… which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t noticed my discontent in Duluth, Minnesota, and asked myself a customized riddle to propel my path.

Or maybe it has nothing to do with self-crafted riddles and meet-cutes and butterfly wings. Perhaps, it’s a domino effect. A predetermined Rube Goldberg machine. However it is, I’m glad it is.

And freedom of global movement and immigration sure helped.

Dear reader, I’m grateful for your readership. That time and attention is a form of love. I hope it’s sent back to you and that your week is filled with love in all its forms.

Tell me… How did you get where you are?

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It’s a lofty claim that I, a (relative) stranger, might be able to impact your sex life.

In general, I think ‘tips’ are one-size-fits-all rubbish and a cop-out of your (erotic) responsibility. But everyone (ok, me) needs an annual (or seasonal) EKG jolt to their routines, even if just by taping a few reminders to their bathroom mirror.

For my sex life, these are what I’ve written on my (metaphorical) sticky notes.

To help spread the joy of sex, I’ll give a free 1-month upgrade to the first five people who restack this post xxxx.

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