Jill Emerson - I Am Curious (Thirty)

(I have been sitting here staring at the page. I have to stop now. I don’t know why. A woman ought to be able to write about her husband’s cock. It is, after all, something with which she is hopefully more familiar than anyone else on earth, himself excepted. But something is stopping me. More tomorrow, perhaps.)

I was going to mention some things that have happened over the last couple days but they aren’t important. And the whole point of this is not to write a record, a day book.

I just went over the last entry. It’s odd how I had to stop writing. I suppose you could say that I blocked. I remember the feeling that if I put it all down on paper just as it happened I would be stepping off the edge of a cliff and falling into darkness. I don’t know why.

He was, as I guess I said (as I know I said) rock hard, utterly virile. While I have never much understood the appeal of phallic statuary, there is something magnificent about the penis in full erection, when absolutely every cell of the man’s body is devoted to single-minded sex, when the penis leads and the rest of the body follows. Which is to say that Howie had what you might call an ultimate hard-on.

(Three days ago I was embarrassed. Now — admit it — I’m getting a kick out of this. Maybe I’ll masturbate later. God, it’s working, though, this diary; it opens me up, to myself if to nobody else. I wonder if this is good or bad. I read or heard that all meaningful analysis is self-analysis, and I don’t think I could bring myself to go to a psychoanalyst anyway, even if we could afford it, but I wonder if it is perhaps risky to do this oneself. Maybe so. But I don’t think it is any riskier than not to, if you follow me. Hah! I follow me. That’s what matters.)

So where was I? Ah, yes. In the privacy of my own bedroom, getting fucked by my husband. And, in keeping with the perfection of his erection (an unconscious rhyme, I swear) he had that total control which he has now and then and which was wholly in keeping with the perfect maleness of his erection. In and out, long whistling rippling strokes, in and out, so hard, so big, and with such sweet confidence. I know where the word cocky comes from. I never knew before. I just realized this moment. Cocky. Oh, he was cocky, and he fucked me with these long rippling slow strokes, in and out, in and out, and I suppose I’m being intentionally literary now, arranging words purposefully to create a mood, to create a rhythm, but thus it was, thus indeed it was, in and out, in and out, and the sweet pressure of his body on mine, and his chest just pillowy pressing on my breasts, and his tobacco and booze taste in my mouth, his mouth on my mouth, and fucking me so marvelously well!

And I was so hot, probably as hot as I’ve ever been, if one can keep track, if one can analyze in the heat of the moment the comparative degrees of hotness. And, a-tisket a-tasket, somewhere along the way I lost it.

This is hard to write not out of embarrassment but because I still don’t understand exactly what happened. I had it and I dropped it. It wasn’t anything he did or didn’t do. I’m positive of that. And it wasn’t a matter of getting turned off, actually. It was just that the way things started there was no question in my mind that I would make it, which is to say that I would come, have an orgasm, call it what you will. And then, after I had been fucked long enough and well enough for the average girl to have had several orgasms, and with no letup in passion, I came to realize that I wasn’t going anywhere, or that I wasn’t coming anywhere, or something.

I wasn’t going to make it.

Poor Howard. Whether out of gentlemanliness or male pride, he wasn’t going to let himself go until I was ready to go with him. And somewhere along the way I sensed that he was finding the whole thing frustrating. Here he was, hammering away at me, building up a full head of steam, so to speak, and we just weren’t making it.

So what I ultimately did was fake it.

Not for the first time, although on previous occasions it was passion that was feigned in the bargain. Show me a wife who has never pretended and I’ll show you a wife who is a lot less of a whore than I am.

Oh...

He came like gangbusters, predictably enough, and I hummed along with him, and afterwards I heard a lot of Oh honey oh baby I love you, which is the way the male animal announces that he has enjoyed getting his rocks off. Then he fell asleep and I fell awake. I lay there with his come oozing out of me I wonder if we made a baby. How could one create a good child with a phony fuck? It would seem impossible.

All right, let’s put it all down. Therapy. Afterward I walked to the bathroom, dripping on the carpet as I walked, and cleaned up, and went back to bed, and lay there. And — say it! — finger-fucked myself easily and expertly to a frustrating, demeaning, easily reached little climax.

It’s the middle of the night but I can’t sleep. Howie is asleep now. He bubbled through breakfast, called me once from the office, and was positively bubbling when he got off the train. What ever happened to post coitum tristesse?

I thought we would have another hop in the hay with all that well-being on his part, and I didn’t think I would be up to it. He had felt so good he had a couple of drinks on the train, and two more after he walked in the door, and to fit the festive mood we had a bottle of Montrachet with dinner and brandy afterward. So he told me I was the bestest little girl in all the world, or something along those lines, and then he went upstairs, let his clothes fall where they may, and passed out on top of the bedspread.

Why am I such a bitch?

Marcie came by but didn’t stay long. One of her boys requires orthodontia. If she told me which one — and one would think she would have — then I don’t remember.

Or much care.

Is that all there is? Children with braces on their teeth, meals to prepare, dishes to wash, things, acres of meaningless things to do.

I went shopping this afternoon. To Pathmark for groceries. They were out of leg of lamb. How can a supermarket be out of something like that? Everyone knows it all comes in cellophane packages and they store it in a warehouse in the back.

Enough cuteness.

The same boy carried the bags to the wagon. Absolutely nothing happened, nothing at all, except in my own mind.

(Why am I bothering to write all of this? I just stopped and looked back through what I’ve written. The Chronicle of a Totally Uneventful Life. That’s what I could call it. Why am I bothering to write it all down? Why, for that matter, am I bothering to live it? Oh-oh, girl. Easy, now. There are certain questions one is better off not asking oneself. In college I went with a boy named Ray who told me never to ask a question unless I really wanted to hear the answer, whatever it might be. I had just finished doing unto him what I had done unto no man before, and only to Howie since, and, with the taste of his seed still lingering rather pleasantly, if the truth be known, upon my tongue, I asked him if he loved me. He said that he did not. I, predictably if illogically, cried. Ever since then I have tried to avoid asking such questions, which means that, in the space of a few minutes, Raymond had taught me two things. I wonder which was the more valuable?)

In the supermarket parking lot, then, following this boy ten years my junior, and watching his buttocks move as he walked, and chatting lightly with him, I found myself wanting him to resume the flirting, to say something mildly unpardonable to me. Not, of course, that I intended to do anything about it. Or to let anything happen.