sex. (a rant i will regret posting no doubt)
When I was contacted by Current TV last month to be part of a project involving the dictation of sex diaries in a nifty little digital-cam I asked, why?
Why on earth would anyone be interested in the sex life of an 8 week post-partum mother of three? A post-partum depressed new mother of three? What sort of sick show is this? Our viewers are just about on the cusp to commit, to marriage and perhaps parenthood. This can give them a taste of what it’s really like.
***
In glimpses here and there, for the last month, I’d share into a small digital camera. I’d go on walks through the woods when the big girls snoozed in the double stroller and the littlest one bound tightly around my front, drooling into my cleavage and I would talk into a camera while hiking up a hill. Sometimes in the car a thought would come to me and I’d pop open The Flip, knowing the hum of the road passing underneath would be heard on the recording making myself less than audible. At night I’d sneak into the bathroom and sit on the floor privately sharing my thoughts on sex. Regard less of where I was, the same thing usually came out of my mouth, before anything else: shit, I’m tired…And then I’d continue to talk but never really about my sex life because, I’ll be honest here, I don’t have one. Not really, not yet. Not in the typical penetration, body entwined with body, orgasmic kind of way. And that’s a taste of what it’s really like. I am exactly 3 months post-partum now and I can honestly say that sex isn’t the last thing on my mind, but it certainly isn’t the first, or the tenth, or the twentieth either. From 1 to 100, it’s got to be about 65 and perhaps that was obvious in my so-called Sex Diaries. At one point when communicating with the Creative Force in charge of this Current TV project, she mentioned that she was interested in quality over quantity.
For a moment there I wanted to scream: QUALITY? Like how utterly sexy it is to drink 1 cup of nasty tasting oils and a handful of pills and a million drops of tincture every morning, hoping and praying the despair and depression stay away for one more day? Sexy like having so many dirty dishes exploding out of the sink, nothing is left in the drawers and cupboards, leaving the only clean thing to cut apples is a newly sharpened filet knife? And how sexy it was to the get cut by a filet knife, blood dripping on apples, but being in such a hurry that I just licked the blood off and served it to them anyway? And the the sexy 5 small meals and 2 baths (none of which were for me), 3 loads of laundry, a trip to 2 different markets, one stop at a kids creative movement class, 24 ounces of milk production and feeding (in an array of on-the-go positions), exactly ½ hour to check emails, get a smidge of writing done, pay bills and meet with a mortgage broker (with all three kids) before finally getting to have some down time playing 2-4 year old style dress-up in play silks that smelled like someone had rubbed them with week old cottage cheese? How sexy is that? But for some real quality I better talk about the steamy hot sex I had in 17 different positions in 3 different rooms with 6 full orgasims and after we were done, we continued to have hours of afterplay that turned into foreplay and then we did it again and can you believe that none of the girls woke up to my high volume ecstatic moans or his primal grunts? Or did she want more of a realistic sense of quality; we fucked for 6.7 minutes and then passed out cold but hey, at least we fucked and maybe even a little milk squirted him in the eye…he likes that. Or even more along the lines of a full-time mother quality; I finally agreed to blow him after ½ hour of listening to his whining and begging for me to get him off and the whole time all i could think about was if my favorite pair of pants that fit where in the dryer or still in the wash.
And yet none of those sex scenes make up the quality meat in my life. Except the passed out cold part. And so that is what my month long of sex diaries was about: the truth. Personal truth is quality.
Recording almost every day for a month wasn’t easy, especially since most days I have to fight for time to take a piss in private. So what the camera will play back is the real me, my real life. And I just assume my realness has got to be quite disturbing for those who have a different vision of what living as a sexual being and a new mother is like; those who think sex lives won’t change and their libido won’t shift and their attraction to the person they used to throb for has turned into a distant pitter. I don’t know many mothers in my post partum position who are wearing garter belts to bed, holding a big old dildo in one hand and handcuffs in the other (If you are? Can I come over?) and having video quality sex let alone sex on a regular basis at all. And really, sex isn’t even close to what I want right now, it’s not what my body or soul or spirit asks for. And I am not suggesting that’s what anybody was dmeanding of me to diary about, but I highly doubt they ("the creatives" for the vlogging) got what they thought they wanted by inviting me to participate. My fantasies involve using big-people words again and sleeping eight hours straight and someone inventing a self-cleaning kiddy potty. The small bits of my life that I shared for this project were rooted in the moment, interrupted most of the time, sloppy all of the time, bags under the eyes and knotty hair, wearing the same clothes day after day, cervical cap untouched in original box: this is what my life is.Now it wasn’t always like this, it’s not like I am some unkempt prude.
I won’t go into my sexual history, but for the first 27 months of my relationship with my man we just stayed in bed full-time, and it was the kind of love that was best-seller how-to-book hot. I had fallen into a pit of hot lava love. Something about his double Scorpio nature, his drummer and sculptor hands, his tattoos, his deep sea diving, his adoration for a girl with a bottom, his ability to flip a record over while inside me, and his obvious devotion to even the most manic parts of me; I. Could. Not. Get. Enough. And apparently neither could he. We did 3 times a night. We did it 2 more times in the morning. We’d call in sick to fuck during El Nino season. We’d tangle in passion on fallen trees and at the beach, in small resorts and under the stars in a yellow tent. We did it on friend’s floors and parent’s bathrooms. We used toys and foods and fabrics and wax. We did not have three small children. I don’t even think we had a dog yet.
And now that we do have kids? What could I possibly reveal on camera that could compare to the romping of our early twenties? Or the long tantric evenings just before the kids were conceived? The funniest thing is I never had to speak (on camera) of what life was like after kids. I’d start to talk about anything sex-in-theme on camera and would be interrupted within 1 minute by a crying baby, a screaming toddler standing in a puddle of pee, or a child frantically trying to pull too small tights over their too big jeans. The camera got turned on and off, cutting my streams of thought in half and then in half again, to attend to a child. Quality thoughts turned into many small and randomd snipets; it became quantity. The quality needs to be found inside the bits and pieces of my fragmented life.
But there has been an awakening that happened for me with motherhood. And it’s good and real, too and I would be doing a diservive to myself and all mothers who allowed themselves to ripen and ruby as they became initiated.
There is a strong and not so subtle sexuality that motherhood seems to harvest. Underneath the spit-up and yellow grainy poops, the elastic waistbands that now fill the wardrobe, and the collection of “comfy” shoes on the shelf, the glam-less eyelashes looking into the rearview mirror behind the seat of the minivan and in between making almond butter banana boats, there is a cord running from my head down through my root, pulsing with a new kind of Hot. It’s raw and different, not billboard model or lingerie catalogue or Betty Page pin-up or adult movie star. It’s more like the suppleness of velvet, the interior flesh of the womb has been molded and lived in and even though it’s empty now, it’s redness, it’ spiral, it’s secret has become me. I have had something, a taste of the apple, a chance at creation, a reason to moan life forth and the guts to stand there and do it; knowing well enough I am playing the game of Life and Death but caring so much that I decide to take my turn in the endless circle. My body pulses with a purpose as the home ground, the wet ground, the growing ground, the battleground stripped with wavy scars and cascading curves. It holds breasts heavy with milk and a yoni with a faint yet lingering scent of bloody and earthy birth. And while my body expanded with motherhood, slowly, at its own pace comes back to a version of me; my ribs reveal themselves under my thinning flesh, I have cheekbones again, I can sit on the floor and get back up on my own, I lean into a backbend and fold forward and grab onto my toes. I lie flat on my stomach. It may not be hot by today’s standards, but it’s primal and it’s intuitive and its a greatly provocative to allow it to be all that it has been; lover, shelter, warrior, mother. Its not Movie Star Mother On Tabloid Cover, but my type of motherhood turns me on. It’s dirty, exhausting and it’s real.
When I smear a bit of red gloss across my lips and thread metal earrings through my ears and drop thick amber oil on my wrists, and slide my lime green aviator sunglasses across my eyes, I feel it intensely. Sometimes when I sit down to nurse my baby and milk rushes down and relief comes over me I morph so powerfully wet and nourishing and attractive and needed I am almost over fulfilled. On good days when we walk through the store with my hair a little brushed and all three kids and myself are in such smooth flow and together we hold and examine fresh ripe produce and decide what to make for dinner and maybe even nibble on a bit of dark chocolate while in the check-out line, it lives in me and comes through me and the hormones are wildy tasty, roaringly loud. When I open up and enjoy parenting, even in the thick of screaming tantrums and unacceptable kicking, I become pure energy, vibration of mother-knowledge; I hold it as my own sensual prowess. When I collapse in bed at night, a few breaths away from a deep sleep and my cold feet are wrapped around his and my face is buried in his soft back, it’s there heating us both up through to the next day. When I think about how I pushed my third daughter out with screams and howls and my nails digging into the microfiber of my couch and my head thrown , my back arched, somewhere between Hell and Ecstasy, it’s there. This is my life; and it’s all really sexy to me. But it’s not SEX.
It was easy to judge myself: my life has become painfully boring and sexually dry, and it’s unhealthy. we used to make time for sex even for a super-quickie, here and there. 34 years old and in some sort of prime and I haven’t done it in a very, very (very) long time. Why don’t we create more time for sex? Is it just the exhaustion or does it go deeper and a place we’re too scared to explore? Why don’t we decide to retreat into the bedroom and get kinky? Instead we fall onto the couch with the laptop in front of us, excited to catch up on Lost episodes? When we do get a sitter, which is so rare, why don’t we go somewhere and have sex in the minivan on some lonely forest road instead of going to the brewery to have beers and talk about our future in our new house, new music we like, writing projects that are pending, the behavior of our four year old, politics, the weather? Oh. Yeah. We just had a baby.The baby part makes it easy to release the judgments with a few stumbles and tries; we can’t beat ourselves up for having our arms full of life. I spent many years where sexual exploration was at the forefront of my relationships. Being someones partner now involves so many other passions besides how many times I cum. It involves raising children. It involves integrating into a new community. It involves just trying to stay good friends and harmonious roommates with each other. And it involves sexy moments; glances when one of us steps out of the shower, slick with water and slathered in oil, or butt smacks when he wears the silly hot pink American Apparel underwear Mia picked out for him on his birthday. It’s him looking at my cleavage while we sit at dinner and my new big milk boobs are spilling out my too tight shirt from all day nursing or watching him teach Mia and Sula the progression of ska to modern dancehall through record flipping and dancing and singing. It’s when we chop carrots together to make a soup . It involves loving my body for the work it’s done, the temple it has been for me and my children; the way it has opened up regardless of how scared I am to be truly seen. Sometimes it’s the too tight pants I wear and how the seam rubs into my clitoris, or maybe the silkiness of the shirt brushing up against my own nipples, or seeing a person whose energy makes me turn my head and suck in my breath. It’s finally buying a home on ½ acre; fertile land surrounded by rivers and mountains gives him a hard-on and certainly makes me dripping wet. Our climax is sitting late night on the couch with Z in our laps and cooing with her, nuzzling our noses in her double chin and smelling between her stinky toes. Feeling so in love with our children and landing such a lucky life, more charmed as it ages; not perfect by any means, but it is what it is and accepting that, with humor and tenderness, it’s what makes our crotches tingle. Our quality is being with our kids in each moment; experiencing the other and ourselves authentically in any way we can. It’s erotic and naked and revealing; no penetration required.
***And I am not saying that soon I won’t be one of the many people who are considered sexually active by today’s standard. These times will pass quickly and the exhaustion will fade and our time will be freed and some hot sticky night, no doubt we will begin humping again. But for now we aren’t because we are doing other things, making other things, loving in other ways. That is how it really is. I’m sure Current TV isn’t super excited for paying me to say that kind of stuff every day for a month, but I gave them the truth.
This was such an amazing post. The kind of truth I need to hear, for my own sanity - but let me promise you, I have NEVER been that hot. Pardon me for vicariousness.
Comment by sweetsalty kate — May 4, 2008 @ 11:01 am
“Our climax is sitting late night on the couch with Z in our laps and cooing with her, nuzzling our noses in her double chin and smelling between her stinky toes.”
This is such a great post, MB. Every time I hear statistics about average sex, I turn to H and say, “are we okay?” and he says, “do you feel okay?” and I say yes, and we move on. Do I miss the earth-shattering nights? Yes. Would I trade what I have now to have them again right now? No. I like our life together and recognize that we’re in a different season now, no less important or meaningful than any other season–probably more meaningful, really.
And seriously, how annoying is it that they want the point of view of a postpartum mother, but don’t really want THAT point of view.
Comment by Heather Terrell — May 4, 2008 @ 2:31 pm
Oh, I almost forgot–tell us more about this 1/2 acre place…
and, double Scorpio? I don’t know whether to envy you or pity you, LOL
Comment by Heather Terrell — May 4, 2008 @ 2:34 pm
How refreshingly honest and just what I needed to hear as my husband and I struggle to reconnect and find time to spend alone with each other now that we have 2 kids. I am now 10 months post partum and I have had sex exactly 3 times since my last child was born. Thanks for helping me to feel normal.
Comment by Chelsea — May 4, 2008 @ 4:02 pm
Thank you for your raw honesty. My son is 2 and we have not returned to hot or steamy. We return occasionally to good and less frequently to great.
When I was two months post-partum, I asked a friend who had her son three weeks prior to our birth about her sex life. She said (with no irony), “It’s great. We’re back on a regular schedule several times a week. It was painful at first but we just kept at it. And before the six week mark, I was giving a lot of blow jobs.” My jaw dropped. “What. The. Fuck???!” At that point, my husband had received several non-subtle hints that taking care of business himself might be in his best interest. We had sex exactly once- six weeks to the day post-delivery. That day I also went for a jog. Neither of those things happened on a regular basis (or even one more time) for months. I proved to myself that I wasn’t ready on any level. There were certainly no blow jobs. Even now- not very many.
Maybe part of it was achieving that deep connection and understanding in other ways. Maybe I was touched out. Maybe my hot and steamy boobs were worn out and done for the day by the time there was a quiet moment.
Thanks again for great, unbridled, sexy honesty.
Comment by Anna — May 4, 2008 @ 4:08 pm
Thank you. Some days I feel like I should be working harder at bringing back our old sex life. Other days, we’ll have a hot night and I’ll remember — it’s there, it just can’t be No. 1 anymore, 3 babies later. I think a lot of mothers feel inadequate about their bodies and their sex lives and it’s true: plenty of things besides penetration are sexy.
Comment by Beth — May 4, 2008 @ 9:23 pm
Even I have never had sex in a mini-van. But we did buy an SUV with leather seats and a DVD player that I keep trying to get laid in…
It does get better. It sounds like you already know that, but I just wanted to reinforce that belief.
Comment by Karen — May 4, 2008 @ 11:32 pm
what an amazing and courageous post…your writing inspires me. there is a earthy sexiness in motherhood i feel, it wasnt until after becoming a mama that I felt it and it seems to grow and ripen. i’ve noticed small changes lately with my partner as approach two years together, we are focused on our garden and other things a little more than sex now…i’m learning to go with the flow of it. blessings~
Comment by oregondreams — May 5, 2008 @ 5:16 am
I love this post. I wonder if some of the decrease in female libido after babies is that there is simply less need for physical contact. All day long you are inundated by physical touches, carry the baby, hold the baby, nurse the baby… I just don’t crave the skin to skin touch as deeply as I once did. I think its just being fulfilled by the baby. Once baby is older and clings to me less perhaps the desire for contact will resurge?
Lovely post.
H
Comment by Heather O — May 5, 2008 @ 3:28 pm
I loved every. single. word. of this post.
As a 4 day postpartum mama, it was exactly what I needed to hear.
Comment by gearhead mama — May 5, 2008 @ 5:27 pm
Wonderful post. Its the awareness of sex that I think is perhaps more important than the regular actual sessions of sex during the early parenthood years. Like, I know we need sex, I want sex, but its not happening. But I still recognize its importance and want it. And we’ll get there.
Again, great post.
Comment by Awake — May 5, 2008 @ 6:11 pm
This was absolutely amazing. Truly. You have a gift for giving voice to the profound, evocative, sexy, unsexy, erotic, messy nature of motherhood. You amaze me.
Comment by Jane — May 5, 2008 @ 7:16 pm
The really fascinating part about sex is not the truth of yours. No, the really fascinating part about sex is our fascination with the sex we imagine everyone else to be having, our use of sex as a lens through which we view everything entertaining, informative and hell, they even call this educational now?! “We want to show people what it’s really like,” they say. Bullshit. We all know what it’s really like and it’s not ever (or for very long) what we think it is supposed to be like, that blink of time in the puppy dog days, and so then what? Even when we don’t even want it, we somehow aren’t having enough and so we’re not measuring up. Says who? The sex counters on high? No one ever believes the obvious about sex: it’s not about sex! Like you, what comes out of my mouth as I watch the world spin endlessly, greedily, insanely, savagely, around and about sex, which is the most intimate, honest and divine part of ourselves, I can only say, “Shit, I’m tired.”
Comment by Karen — May 6, 2008 @ 12:07 am
While my husband and I did have a roaring sex life soon after both births (I didn’t breastfeed, which likely made a difference) I still loved this post. The things that make me pant and wag after him now include watching him with his children, feeling that warm current between all of us, a secret club. And butt smacks.
Loved this. Glad I saw the link in Kate’s delicious.
Comment by thordora — May 6, 2008 @ 12:15 am
sex? motherhood? doesn’t.compute.
after ten months, i believe we’ve had sex about 7 times.
not only are the hormones out of whack with breastfeeding, but a 3rd degree tear takes a looooong time to heal. ouch.
you are sexy no matter what - you’ve always been. but your rawness in describing the transformation of sex on the timeline of parenthood is spot on and so vivid.
and ya know what’s really sexy? a mama reading something like this from another mama that emits laughter and head nods throughout.
xoxo
Comment by meremortal — May 6, 2008 @ 4:35 am
I loved this post. Every word.
John and I generally return to our regular sex life within a few weeks of a new baby, the thing that annoys me is the very idea of a standard. What’s normal is what’s normal for YOU. And that will be different for everybody and that’s okay.
Sex is different after parenthood. It just is. For me, it’s not worse or better. It just is what it is at this moment in my life and I like it that way.
Comment by radical mama — May 6, 2008 @ 2:36 pm
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant rant.
Comment by Sanne — May 6, 2008 @ 9:01 pm
i love your honesty and the pure clarity in your connection with you. it is strikingly air-suckingly stunningly beautiful.
four words: write. that. book. dammit.
Comment by jouette — May 6, 2008 @ 10:15 pm
I think this is exactly what the ‘viewers on the cusp to commit, marriage, and parenthood’ need to hear/read/experience. It’s real, and raw, and normal. It’s everyday boring, draining, and something I fantasize to have. I think that more women need to be open and honest about life after baby 1…and baby 2 baby 3 and husband on top. no pun intended. Motherhood is it’s own club-you all have your own secrets, your bodies have changed and…well, we need those details-the nitty gritty. I get a little soft spot for those mama’s blogging–telling us what it’s like to push your baby out, the fear of pooping on the table during. the sour milk and body odour. yeast infections and sleep deprivation. Most of them aren’t willing to delve into their sex life, or lack of; they won’t speak of the stitches, the appearance, the fear etc… No regrets about posting, please. Because the truths in your video diaries, of not having time to talk to the camera, of being interrupted, of having a drooling baby strapped to your chest-The video diary represents your sex life, and as much time as you had for it; in the bathroom, between napping and feeding, 1 minute here and there…well, isn’t that the real quality-the honesty-the message that these viewers on the cusp should see?
Comment by e.darcy — May 7, 2008 @ 12:11 am
I think truth is sexy.
Because it is raw and real and vulnerable and gritty.
Thank-you for speaking yours.
Comment by bella — May 7, 2008 @ 3:17 pm
bravo mary-beth, bravo! being a mom i can understand every fucking brilliant word, and if i had read this before i got pregnant, i don’t know if i would have got pregnant. but the truth about the truth is that it’s subjective and always better when you live it yourself instead of through someon else’s experience. if current tv is going for reality, this is it baby!
and your PPD, well i understand that all too well. i’m thinking about you as your resurrect yourself through each day until ‘normal’ returns.
peace,
Lil
Comment by Lil — May 7, 2008 @ 4:34 pm
Thanks for your honesty. It can be hard to accept what is perfectly normal when you are bombarded by the “Yummy Mummy” staring at you from every mainstream media corner. Who the hell are these women wearing zipper pants and carrying an infant?
Comment by jessica — May 9, 2008 @ 2:47 pm
god. what can i say to this. i went through tears and sighs and closing my eyes when reading this post. “the way it has opened up regardless of how scared I am to be truly seen.”
this IS quality. this is breath takingly sexy.
you know so much dear soul.
Comment by jessamyn — May 12, 2008 @ 9:20 pm
Thank you for this. I am in my mid-thirties, with no children and no urge for them at the moment (but with older friends who have recently turned baby crazy, so who knows what will happen in the future) but you have answered many of the questions that my friends with babies have only answered with a “um, well, sex is…….different now.” and then they smile weak smiles and change the subject.
It is wonderful to read such honest words - and I looove that your man is teaching your kids the history of ska and dancehall! Hurray for music and dancing and loving!
Comment by french panic — May 24, 2008 @ 11:56 pm