Altar'ed States
Fucking while our world turns dark
Whenever there’s a crisis in Minneapolis, I can’t sleep. It’s like the city, the state, is a part of my nervous system. Even if my time zone is 1 to 7 hours different1. But with all this practice the last decade has given me, my body knows a little about how to keep my blood pumping to what matters. I know how to keep love close and below my heart, so as not to lose my life.
I spent more time in parks this week than usual. With one kid, with both kids, with my husband Joe. Even once, while FaceTiming my dad back in MN.
Joe and I had sex a lot.
I was surprised that I felt arousal. When Joe’s hand grabbed my butt as I passed him by the kitchen, I felt it. I knew I wanted him to do it again, but in a specific way. I grabbed his hand and guided him; His finger tips pointing into my diamond — that part where the inner cheeks meet, above where the inner thighs meet.
After putting our kids to bed that night (which I never rushed, not once this week2), I walked out to find Joe reading on the couch, and I told him, “You know, it would be possible for me to get really horny.”
He said, “Could?”
“Yes. If I were touched the right way, I might get desperate for you.”
He looked me up and down and laughed.
I said, “It’s like how you sometimes say you could really go for a cup of tea, and would you put the kettle on. I need you to put the kettle on.”
“I’ll put the kettle on,” he said, and filled the kettle and set it on the stove.
When he walked back out of the kitchen, he said, “Go grab some things.”
“Things?” I said.
“You know, a vibrator of choice.”
So I did. I went to our box(es) of sexual artifacts. The vibrators I kept from the times before him, but never charged. The vibrators we bought together. The glass dildo shaped like a chili pepper. The suede flogger.
Looking at it all, I felt it was unnecessary. I wouldn’t have grabbed anything if it were up to me. I wouldn’t have bothered orgasming at all, actually. He asked, so I obliged. I grabbed the ones that felt beautiful and sturdy.
I lay the gold Crave necklace vibrator, the squishy pink seashell-shaped vibrator, the dark blue glass butt plug, and the silver metal double-sided curved dildo, and then myself on a blanket on the living room rug.
He brought me a Blow Job tea without naming it as such. He added milk to it, which he’d done by accident the other day, and then I asked for on purpose because it felt so comforting. Then he sat beside me.
He wore his forest green LA Apparel cotton shorts and nothing else. His chest looked hairy and broad. His toes had some fluff between them. I stroked his toes, slowly removing the fluffs, as we both drank from our hot cups.
When he finished his drink, he lay on his side alongside me. He reached up under my shirt and petted the side of my body. His hands felt calloused. It was soothing.
“You’re so soft,” he said.
“Mmm,” I said. I did feel myself softening.
“Look at your little altar,” he said.
“Hah,” I said. “I thought they’d look good together.” The word ‘altar’ felt more religious, or woo, than I was, which, I knew, was an arbitrary scale and the narcissism of small differences. So I let go of my biases and thought that indeed, it was an altar.
He told me later, after the altar was used, cleaned, and put back away, that the word altar comes from altitude. It means the things you raise up. I arranged objects to hold up and uphold what is most important in my life — the feeling of love. So that I could keep going. Keep love in my heart, and keep sharing it with other hearts.
What we did with those things might not matter, exactly, but perhaps the recounting will bring some positive recalibration to your life, too.
He said, “Take this off,” nodding to the shirt keeping him from me.
I did. And my trousers. And my underpants, which were the same shade of pink as the vibrator. Then I scootched my butt and lay back along the furry blanket beside my husband.
He guided me onto my side, away from him, so my butt would face him. He raised it up. He kissed me there, from behind. His face into the diamond. He breathed me in.
I sighed.
He rolled me back onto my back, then…
