A New Mother Recovers Her Sensual Self

by Elizabeth Uppman

I left Anne’s that day with a mission. I was going to solve this problem that Chucho and I had allowed to lie dormant between us. We had fumed in private and been cordial in public, pretending that it would go away by itself, but neither of us had actively searched for a solution.

Until now. I logged onto Xandria, an online sex shop. In the women’s section, I chose a DVD called The Voyeur. After entering a fake phone number and grumbling at the $9 shipping and handling charge, I pressed “Buy.” A shiver went down my spine. Then a key rattled in the front door and I leaped up, aghast. With trembling hands I opened solitaire, so that when Chucho came bustling in he found me blandly putting a red seven on a black eight.

Later that evening I began to think I had been silly to hide my purchase from him. Wouldn’t sharing my plan create a yummy sense of mutual anticipation? So after the kids went to bed, as we finished the supper dishes, I told him. “I bought something online today. A video. You know. That kind of video.” He said nothing. I felt a stab of remorse. Was my husband disappointed in me? Did he think I was polluting our marriage? But then, scrubbing a pot, he asked, “And when is this video going to get here?” The carefulness with which he said it—the deliberate way he avoided making eye contact—told me he was intrigued.

About an hour later, he stood at the foot of the bed and asked if we could have a “muertito.” This was our private slang for the dull, workmanlike sex we had been having for the past year or so. “Certainly,” I said, hoping to make up in politeness what I lacked in libido. But you know what? It came back. That old horny snaggletoothed friend, desire, came sliding back between the sheets, sprinkling Chucho with the ineffable attractiveness and magnetism that makes a person want to rip another person’s clothes off.

What is up with that? I thought afterwards, my leg intertwined with his in the pleasantly rumpled bed. Where did it come from? And why now? I puzzled over all of this in the bright light of the next morning. I felt foolish, like Dorothy when she finds out that all she needed to do was click her heels together. But at the same time I felt magical, having conjured lust out of empty air.