Rain. How is one supposed to concentrate on work when it is raining? Rain makes me want to curl up in my house under a blanket, eating cheesy mashed potatoes and writing in my journal. It isn't truly autumn until it has rained. Telling the seasons in California 101. Grey skies turn my thoughts easily to introspection.

I had the most wonderful night. I got home a bit early and G wasn't home yet so I got a lot of cleaning done. The house has been a disaster zone since I started playing disc golf. I've been on a wife-strike (no wifely duties) and G certainly hasn't filled the gap yet ;) I cleaned up the computer room in preparation for the Nov novel writing challenge. I cooked dinner--sometimes one of my favorite things. I love the smell of sautéing onions and how it suddenly makes a house homey. I enjoy multi-tasking, the feeling of accomplishment from washing dishes, cleaning counters and floor, while getting a good satisfying meal cooked. I was tempted by the bottle of red wine on the counter, but decided the evening was complete without alcohol.

G got home and we curled up on the couch, watching football with the sound off so that we could talk, his head on my legs. We have fallen into the habit of television again and sit on separate couches most nights. We had a nice long conversation and got sleepy and headed for bed. I had difficulty believing it was only 8PM, this time change is lovely in some ways. I started to read Anais Nin and G started to fall sleep, so I leaned over to give him a good night kiss.

That led to sex--better sex than we have had in ages. It was I-just-met-you sex, I-have-unquinchable-passion-for-you sex. Who replaced my husband? Whether he was jealous about yesterday (is spending hours imagining your wife having sex with another man an aphrodisiac?), or just hadn't had sex recently, I don't know--but I liked the result. Over the last few months I have grown scared, feeling that perhaps I'm not excited by G anymore. I was more excited flirting with men I'd never sleep with than kissing my own husband. But last night, just kissing him and him starting to caress me--it felt like sex in the backseat of a car. I think body memory of first forays into the sexual world don't fade easily. The evening was reminiscent of the first kiss, the first explorations with a man--the excitement of wondering--where will this lead, what is that feeling, oh-my-god-I-didn't know-it-would-feel-like this!

I was reading parts of Anais Nin's journals last night and realize how poor my writing skills are. I have a long way to go to even approach her talent (I should remind myself how many years she worked at her craft and how she wrote and re-wrote her journals). I don't want to write exactly like her, I just would love to be able to describe some of the emotions and feelings of last night without sounding so crude. I think of Doris Lessing, Anna in the Golden Notebook, writing about her period. How she knows as she writes the word "blood" that it will be misconstrued and take on emotions and feelings that she doesn't intend just because it is the word "blood" is such an emotionally laden word. That is what writing about sex is like. You write the word "sex" and everyone that reads it immediately brings in all their past experience and emotions about the word.

Well so, delve deeper.

I have deeply felt lately the spiritual bindings that tie G and I together. I had pagan friends in college that did a handfasting ritual--an ceremony in which the couple are literally tied together in a ceremony and they stay tied for 24 hours. Afterwords, they are handfasted--married for a year and a day. I think this is a true-ceremony--a human ritual that touches a deep truth about relationships. When you are in a relationship for a long time, invisible bonds twine between the two of you. These bonds can be draining, or give power, but regardless, they are always there.

I feel that surface bonds between G and I have lately grown fragile and strained (even though the deeper bonds remain strong.) We have been having difficulty connecting emotionally. In our relationship, part of the problem is sexual. G is a sexual being. I sometimes imagine that lust is one of his fundamental building blocks, an integral part of his being. And I had become frigid. I am unthawing.

{What a word--frigid--what the hell is it supposed to mean anyway? Websters: "(3) habitually failing to become sexually aroused, or abnormally repelled by sexual activity: said of a woman." I love how even the dictionary throws the word, "abnormal" into it. As if the "normal" state of a woman is to be continually aroused sexual. A sexual being. }

I have been thinking lately that the core of my sexuality revolves around power. Perhaps all girls that spent years, unfulfilled, fantasizing about relationships--having a relationship with a "boy"--grow into women that get aroused simply from the joy of being woman and the growing understanding of the power woman hold over men just by being Woman. These girls watch their kate moss, lanky bodies, blossom into curves and gradually come to understand that when men look at their breasts instead of their eyes when they talk--it is a form of power: a great strength to control men. I grew into this power in college: experimenting with my first boyfriend, changing the way that I dressed, eventually through affairs--lapping up experiences with different kinds of men. I grew into an understanding of the what it means when men look at you and wonder, "perhaps". Knowing how to draw them in with my eyes. I love this power. Meeting G, I learned to love. He taught me new things about emotions and my body that in many ways had nothing to do with this power. That was not a bad thing--it was simply an expansion of myself and who I am.

Something frightened me last year and I withdrew into myself. G's sexuality frightened me. My reaction and actions frightened me. I began to doubt my emotions, myself, my beauty, my strength. I started to work harder and harder towards figuring out what he wants instead of what I want. I found myself withdrawn into an inner world that put walls around my sexuality that I could not climb anymore. I was unmoved. I had no desire. The few times I did have sex with G, it was an effort. And finding that he was unaware of that effort--that he found the experience still wonderful--it practically unraveled me.

And then I found my lost boys. Which is a story for another day.
  ¶ 9:52 AM