A sex story about rekindling the flame
"Going Down," erotica by Ellen Neuborne
I keep telling myself to stop counting. That it’s not helping. That I’m only making it worse. That these are just numbers and they don’t mean anything. But it’s not working.
Three how-to books.
Four lace teddies.
One cock ring.
Stop it! Stop counting!
And so it goes.
In the brand new elevator, our co-op went into debt to buy, and I can barely feel the upward motion. The digital screen above the door tells me: 4, 5, 6, but I can’t get the big number out of my head. The mega. The scary one. The Number That Must Not Be Named: 365.
365 days.
When it’s been 365 days, the gig is up.
“Once a couple hasn’t had sex for a year, it may as well be forever.”
I came up with that quote myself last month, sized it at a nice, obnoxious 24-point font and deftly clicked it into place on the page.
“Nice one, Suzanne. That’ll scare the hell out them,” said Evan Karp, senior articles editor, as he stood over me while we did final layout on the special report: Turn Him On Now!
You have no idea, I thought as I finished the page and moved on to the next story, “Thinner Thighs Without Exercise: Our Experts Tell All.”
And now the day was here. Day 365 since the last time Ben and I had sex. And it’s either the last day of my dry spell, or the first day of the rest of my married, celibate life.
I shift my bags and place them onto the gleaming hip-high wood and chrome shelf on the elevator’s back wall.
“A handbag rest,” gushed Cindy Hartman, from apartment #3, on the night the board approved the Infinity X111 Luxury Lift – a full service transport system complete with dual action auto/manual control and a fully computerized security system.
Board chairman, Fritz Miller, gave a 20-minute Power Point on the system – emphasizing, among other things, the fact that our elevator opens directly into our apartments – no hallway. “This elevator is the window to our souls,” he intoned. I really didn’t think we needed a fancy elevator. We’re just ten apartments – one per floor – in what used to be a button factory. I’d voted for a hot tub on the roof. No sale.
Now, going up, I brace my purse on the handbag rest and I pull out the plain brown envelope – my sixth order from KissMeBiteMeMakeMeHowl.com. I tear the corner off and peek at the black satin inside. “Okay, No. 6,” I say to the tiny, shiny contents, “it’s now or never.”
Nat Babydoll by Nic Marchant available from Obsession Art
It takes me a little longer than I expected to shimmy into the two-piece bad girl baby doll, so I’m a little rushed making final preparations. I light the scented candles, dim the overheads and stuff my work clothes into my closet. It’s harder than it sounds, since my closet is filled with the multitude of items I’ve purchased that have failed to light Ben’s fire: the Chocolate Marshmallow Body Butter; the Scratch and Sniff Explorer Kit; the pink velvet sex pillow. It looks like Hugh Hefner’s garage sale in there. But I kick the last of my belongings inside and shut the door quickly to keep any from spilling out.
Tonight’s the night, I think, smoothing the leatherette ribbons over the silver studded seams. At least it’d better be.
“Have you thought about talking to Ben about your needs?” Chelsea had asked me earlier. Chelsea is my third therapist in four years.
“When I talk to Ben about sex, he says, sure, fine, whenever you want. You’d think there would be plenty of opportunity, now that Chris is off at college. And then whenever never happens.”
Chelsea leaned forward and tapped her nail-bitten finger on my knee.
“So, what do you have to do to make whenever happen?”
It wasn’t always this complicated. In the beginning, it was easy. In the very beginning, it was a revelation. The night in the basement of D Tau, I was sipping lemonade-laced grain alcohol trying to look sexy perched on a blue plastic milk crate. Ben had plunked himself down next to me and yelled in my ear above the pounding music his inner-most thoughts on art, social justice and the possibility that the Boston Red Sox were really the devil. When "Shout" dipped down to its brief whisper stanza, he'd made his move. "Want to get out of here?"
I followed him home.
Back at his dorm, with a sock on the door, I broke all my rules. Down on my knees, taking him in, I moved my lips in time with REM playing on his boom box. I kept listening for the guy sounds that would tell me I was doing it right, breathing in the moment of connection between us.
"Awesome," he said, when it was over. I started looking around his room for some kind of conversation starter. "Think Buckner got a raw deal?" I asked, moving to sit on his beanbag chair.
"Wait," he said, reaching out and tucking his fingers into the front pocket of my jeans. "First things first. Your turn."
He unzipped my jeans and peeled them off, following them down to the floor, using both hands to slip my feet through and reveal my bare legs.
"What do you like?" he asked, running his tongue over my kneecap.
I looked down at the top of his head, full of brown curls. "I have no idea," I told him truthfully.
"That's cool," he said, nudging me backwards to his bed. Laying me down with a soft thud, he looked into my eyes as I began to sink into the rumpled plaid comforter. "Let's try this, and you rate it, on a scale of one to ten."
He dropped his face between my knees, disappearing into the fantasy I never knew I had, erasing everything I'd ever been, everything I'd ever done, the world, the rules, the language all went away. Except for the one word I remember saying over and over: "Ten."
I march back out into my foyer—to where the new shiny techno elevator will open directly into my apartment—and stretch out in what I can only hope is a fetching position on the velveteen settee. And wait.
At 6:30, no sign of Ben.
At 7, I am so nervous I make a quick run down the hall to the liquor cabinet and then race back to my post, Grey Goose in hand. I needn’t have hurried.
7:45, four shots, no Ben. Eleven fantasies of what might have happened to him on the way home. All of them gruesome. I shake my head to dislodge the image of him flattened by a city bus. Impaled by a bike messenger. Pinned in the closing doors of the eastbound L train. I reach my free hand down to the easy-access portal of my outfit. I move my hand in a circle.
Think about something else.
I move my fingers slowly, faster, harder.
So what?
Around and around. Harder. Faster.
So what he's not here?
I feel my orgasm waking, stirring, rising.
Not like I need him.
Faster, harder.
At all. At all. Not at all.
"Meow."
My eyes pop open. Errol, our silver tabby, is sitting at my feet on the chaise, watching.
I stop. I feel the unspent tension seep back into my bones.
"I don't need him, " I tell Errol. "But it is more fun that way."
I take another sip of the vodka and lean back.
Ben, electrocuted by a live wired manhole.
Stop it!
I down the rest of the shot and close my eyes to crunch out the evil images. When I open them again, it’s dark. What time is it?
I sit up. At the other end of the apartment, I hear….counting?
“And the count is two and one to David Wright.”
I walk down the darkened hall to the living room. Ben is on the couch, munching a bag of pretzels, watching baseball.
“Hey, babe. Rough day at the office? You were totally sacked out when I got home.”
I stand there, a vertical mass of creased polyester and drooping bustier and say nothing.
The game ends and Ben stands. “I’ll take the garbage down before bed.”
He walks past me, gathers up the trash bags, and heads for the elevator. I hear the ping – the only noise it makes. I look up at the clock. 11:56 pm. By the time he gets back, it will be tomorrow.
I sprint after him and duck into the elevator just as the stainless steel doors are closing.
“What? Did I forget something?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, as the elevator begins to descend. “Yes. You’ve forgotten that I am not your roommate. You have forgotten that sex is part of the deal. You’ve forgotten all our signals. You’ve forgotten everything, apparently.”
I strip off my top, unhook my bra and start working on the lower half of my outfit.
“But I haven’t forgotten. And I am still here. I remember. And I am not willing to forget that sex exists so we can sail sexlessly off into the sunset. Because I’m not old enough for that and neither are you.”
I have to bend over to get my panties off and as I straighten up, now completely naked, I punch the stop button and the car dips a bit with the sudden halt.
“There no pretending that we’re the hot young things that we were at 21. And that’s just fine. But who are we? Can you even answer that?”
Ben, a trash bag balanced on his right arm, has not moved an inch since my clothing began to come off. Now he takes a breath.
“I don’t know who you are,” he says, barely audible.
I have gone too far.
He speaks again. “I, on the other hand, am a guy about to get lucky in an elevator.”
The trash bag thumps to the floor.
I step up to him, moving my hands under his shirt, following the lines of his body down. He feels totally unfamiliar to me. I feel an anticipatory jolt – like I'm holding a still-wrapped present. He's shedding his clothes.
“I’ve been waiting for this,” he says.
“You’ve been waiting,” I say, feeling the warmth of his skin against mine like a static shock. “Waiting for what?”
“For you to be done with all this stuff,” he says, kicking the tiny pile of fabric at my feet aside, reaching his hands back over my shoulders, down my back, all the way down to my now-naked buttocks. “It’s been like the Home Shopping Porn Channel in here the last few months.”
“Year,” I say to him.
“Whatever.” Now he’s lifted me up on to the polished genuine Mahoganite of Cindy Hartman's handbag shelf.
“If you didn’t like the stuff,” I manage to gasp, “why didn’t you say so?”
“I thought you were exploring.”
“But you could have said something.”
“I was being quietly supportive.”
“Un-fucking-believable.”
Connected, I am holding on, arms and legs and 20 years since this was so easy, I hardly noticed it happening. Eyes open now, looking into his, lit by the gold glow of the overhead eco-bulb. I hear the thud of our bodies on the wall, the scuff of his feet on the carpet. I hear my name. His name. My name again.
But it’s not our voices.
“Suzanne! Ben! Are you okay?
Voices from the lobby are wafting up the shaft.
“Are you sure it’s them?”
“Yes, the computer says it stopped at their apartment last and then between floors.”
“Oh, God,” I say.
Ben seems deaf to the commotion.
“Suzanne! Ben! Don’t panic, we’ll get you out of there.”
I start to push back, but Ben pulls me closer.
“Ben, the neighbors.”
“Let them get their own dates.”
“Ben!”
“I want you right now and I don’t care who knows it.”
The car shudders. Or maybe it’s me. The lights flash. Or maybe that’s our sparks flying.
“Are we going down?”
“No way, baby. We are going up, up, up.”
Originally published June 2010