Switcheroo

Typical - I say it's slow these days and all of a sudden, I've got loads of backed-up writing pouring out of my brain... Standard creative writing disclaimer...

*****

He needs me, and he hates that he needs me. I represent his weakness, his craving for closeness and comfort, his pent-up desire, and his neglected wants. I am his shame and satisfaction clothed in flesh. He alternately turns to me and spurns me, as his shame waxes and wanes. I can read it in his eyes when he comes to me, in the stance of his naked body as he stands still and waits for me to approach.

I know that he thinks of his wife when he closes his eyes. When he feels my touch, I know he wishes it were her fingers trailing along his skin, her lips teasing his nipple, her teeth gently nipping his thigh. My body becomes hers when seen in his mind's eye, and he resists touching me intimately, confining his hands to safe areas where there are no obvious differences - my sides, the flat of my back, the swell of my calf. He comes to me because she won't give him what I willingly surrender.

Even though his touch is neutral, I still receive pleasure in his embrace. It's a twisted pleasure, though, more mental than physical, though the physical is intense. It's a triumphant fist in the air ever time he throws his head back in ecstasy. It's fireworks exploding on the Fourth of July when he groans my name. I celebrate the fact that I can produce that euphoria, that I can bring him to that peak, as my own husband finds little use for my talents.

For my husband, I am a figure, a symbol. I am a wife and mother, no longer a lover. Our trysting days are long past. The tender explorations of our courtship have been long since relegated to memory. I am the drudge that cooks and cleans. I hang his laundry and do his shopping, my womanhood sacrificed on the altar of his comfort. He wastes no affection on me. Weeks will pass without a kiss, the merest sign of matrimonial contentment, let alone anything greater. Sex requires too much time and exertion more fruitfully spent on other activities.

And so we close our eyes, my lover and I, each yearning for the ones who vowed before God and Man to have, hold, and love us until death do us part to do exactly that. We close our eyes and have each other in the way that lets us both stay in those marriages. Sweet kisses temper the bitter truth that a marriage can last longer than the love that inspired it.