A number of times in my life, during personally traumatic times, I’ve experienced the impulse to climb under large  pieces of furniture for emotional comfort.

When I was in college and overwhelmed by homework and tests and the panic and paralysis I felt about writing, I was once in a lecture hall and couldn’t restrain myself from climbing under a bank of theater-style seats.  Luckily, I was early to class and no one else was there.

Later, when I was in the process of moving out of the apartment I shared with Husband Number One, and overcome with the weight of my first marital failure, I used to climb under my desk at work to comfort myself.  I locked my office door so that no one would discover me.

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Maybe this impulse to climb under large items of furniture originates from a lifetime lived in earthquake country.  I can remember earthquake drills as early as the first grade.  A bell would ring and our entire class of five- and six-year olds calmly scooted back our chairs and curled up into little balls under our desks, our arms wrapped around our heads to protect our little brains.

So you see I learned very early the lesson that when the earth is shaking beneath you, when your dearest possessions are flying across the room and breaking into a million pieces, when the couch that used to be in that corner is now on the other side of the room in that other corner, you climb under something sturdy.  And that is precisely what I do.

When I am feeling all at sea, I climb under a bank of chairs… a desk… or sometimes a nice, big, sturdy man.

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I didn’t realize how at sea I was feeling today, until I looked around and found that I was crouched under my desk at work.  This was a weird one.  In the past, I’d contemplated the climbing under furniture for long, painful stretches before actually succumbing.  In other instances I would first try to talk myself out of it.  I would resist.

This time, I found myself looking out from under my desk before I had even quite realized I wanted to crawl under.  I’m going to go ahead and consider that personal progress.

What, you may wonder, is happening with me that’s got me climbing under my desk?  Oh, you know, the Horny Housewife usual: Things got weird and creepy with my thirty-year old boyfriend of three months.  Let’s call him Peter. (We’ve never had a Peter before, have we?)  So I went back to constant, addictive, electronic communication with Donny (whom I’m still madly in love with, despite the fact thate he lives with his girlfriend) and so last night, in a boozy effort to forget them both, I got into a sexy and honest exchange with Detective Kurt.  Then today I got into a fight with my ex-husband, who decided not to bring my son to school today because he felt like sleeping in, and then I crawled right under my desk.  That sums it up.

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Why am I telling you all this?  I’m not sure.  I felt like sharing.  Actually, I felt like my head was going to explode, and the last time I felt like that was about three years ago when I started this blog.

Also, I’d had a very nice e-mail from someone on the other side of the world named Edward, who kind of reminded me that I used to do this.

So we’ll try it out again.  It’s cheaper than therapy.

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Remember today, when I was underneath my desk?  (I know, we’re all a lot older than we were in 2008, but you can remember just a few paragraphs ago, can’t you?) When I was under my desk I texted GOC.  He is one of my best friends now, and one of the only people in the world I would reach out to under such odd circumstances.  He was there for me, of course.

Just now he texted me before he went to bed to make sure I was all right.  ”I tried it under my desk,” he said.  ”It was nice.”

It’s good to have friends.

HH

www.morethanapiece.wordpress.com

Today is my 36th birthday.  Exactly one year ago today, on my 35th birthday, laden with lies, lust, confusion, and yearning, I first sat down at my desk and wrote you all my secrets.  

I wanted to tell someone that I was having an affair.  I wanted to rejoice in the passion.  I wanted to worry out loud that he didn’t love me.  I wanted to organize the chaos in my head and sort the fantasy from the reality.  But looking back now, I see that I had one even stronger, even more secret longing.  I wanted to write.   

I hadn’t written in fifteen years.  I was constantly writing in my head, but when I sat down at my computer and tried to commit those sentences to print, I always stopped myself.  I was afraid it would be too hard.  I was afraid it wouldn’t be good enough.  I was afraid it would hurt. 

Is there some connection between my association with writing hurting and my desire to be on the receiving end of sadistic sex?   Who knows. 

The thing that I didn’t see then, but am willing to admit now is that, more than I wanted love from Detective Curt and Qirky Ted; more than I wanted sex from Sergeant Shane and Valentine Dave; and even more than I wanted to be No-Nickname Mike’s sex slave; I wanted you to want me. 

I began this blog by telling you about how much I had been yearning for sex, and what it was like to finally get it.  But for me, writing this blog was about yearning to write, and finally doing it. 

I thank you for helping me.  I thank you for listening.  I thank you for being interested.  I thank you for commenting.  I thank you for being my true friends.  I thank you for giving me what a writer needs most in the world: readers. 

Today, for my birthday, I am giving myself a new blog.   I really mean it this time.  “The Real Life of a Woman” was a reaction.  It wasn’t about who I wanted to be.  It was about who I didn’t want to be anymore. 

The title of my new blog is “More“

I once promised you this about “Secret Memoirs of a Horny Housewife”:  “You and I have a lot ahead of us.  I can see it all now.  It will be sexy.  It will be raw.  It will be 100% the real me.” 

I can’t make you that promise about “More.”  It might not be so sexy and so raw, but I am no longer quite so sexy or quite so raw.  I can, however, promise you that “More” will be 100% the real me, and I’m hoping the real me will be enough for both of us. 

I love you,

The Horny Housewife

I’m not happy with that last post.  It doesn’t do justice to how tender and loving things are between Donny and me.  How he kisses me tenderly, how he asks me if he can get me anything when I’m sick.  How good it feels with him.  How right things often are.   How happy I’ve been. 

A friend told me that the front part of your heart is the part you show to the world; the part that holds the love you give and get.  She said the back side of your heart is the part you keep just for yourself.  It is private and precious and special.  I think I connect to the back side of my heart here in this blog.  That’s why you have been so important to me. 

So that last post wasn’t exactly what I wanted to say about my relationship with Donny.  But I also can’t completely disregard what I wrote.  After all, it was the back of my heart talking to me. 

HH

I remind myself that just because I feel love for Donny, that doesn’t mean I should spend my whole life with him.  As I’ve written before, I am an extremest.  My mind tends to wander towards the most extreme outcome for any situation, and then my wits work to plot a strategy for getting to that most extreme point.  I have to stop that.  

Things are most passionate, loving, and satisfying between Donny and me when we are laying in bed together.  Outside of that, things are nice, but not fabulous. 

There is another man.  Let’s call him Bill.  I think about going to meet him sometimes.  I think someday I will, but not while I am still seeing Donny.  That’s not the person I want to be anymore. 

So for now, I’ll wait and see and enjoy everything I have.  (I have so much.)  I worry about how I will know when the time to end things with Donny will be.  I worry I won’t be able to let go of everything that’s good with him, although my instincts tell me I should, that he is wonderful, but that we are not right for each other.   I love lying in his arms.  I love fucking him.  I love how he holds me and kisses me.  I’m not sure how he feels about me.  Do I really want to know, or am I just looking for a notch to fill my ever-hungry heart? 

I don’t know.  But when I talk to myself, here is what I say: “focus on the flow, horny housewife, focus on the flow.”

 A short story that gives a flavor of things between Donny and me…

They dozed after sex.  At one point, Bobby woke up and said to her, “I just had the coolest dream.”  Florence opened her eyes.  The room was dark.  The light from the street outside the window shone through the blinds of Bobby’s empty apartment just enough for her to see the black shadows where his blue eyes would be.

“There were these little Catholic school girls and they were hunting teddy bears with uzis” he said.

A whole world opened up before her: his religious southern upbringing; his disgust with anything falsely sentimental or cute; his love of violent Japanese karate films; the harsh language his mother used to communicate with him.  To Florence, Bobby’s dream was a wonderful web of clues to his psyche, and if she could scale the sticky, intricate network of clues, then when she reached the center she would understand not only him, but his motivations.  That just might lead her to the answer to the question that seemed constantly in the back of her brain, like a hungry, pulsating bell: “ding, dong, ding, dong, what do I mean to you, Bobby?”

“Why do you think you dreamed that?” she asked him.

“I don’t know, but it was cool,” he answered. 

“Well, don’t you want to understand it, to know what it means?” she pressured.

“No, not really,” he said.  “I like that it doesn’t make any sense.  It’s just random.  It’s like a ride I can take in my mind.  If I knew what it meant, then I wouldn’t be riding it anymore; it would be riding me.” 

Bobby thought about the women before Florence: the professional boxer who needed him to hold her after each of her bouts while she cried; the suicidal Ph.D. student who finally had slit her wrists, relieving him of the responsibility for keeping her alive; the lawyer who insisted he tie her up while they had sex.  To Bobby, the women of his life seemed like an endless parade of requirements.  Florence was different.   

Bobby was different for Florence, as well: he was accessible.  Her parade had featured an actor who recited lines convincingly, but wasn’t intelligent enough to follow anything she said; a husband who had lived alone for five years in the bedroom next to hers; and then a string of married men whose bodies were hers for an afternoon, until they went back to belonging to their wives. 

After Florence’s divorce, she and Bobby had met online.  Their conversation was challenging, but relaxed.  The sex was close, hushed, intense, and satisfying.  It had been almost three months. 

Florence spoke again.  “You’d just prefer not to understand it?” she asked him once more.  It was dark in his bed, but she felt him nod “yes.” 

“Okay,” she whispered, and she let go of the web.  She closed her eyes and felt herself begin to float out into space.  Her trajectory was slow and pleasant, but nonetheless disconcerting.  The stickiness of the web had been soothing, if confining. 

The teddy bears and the Catholic school girls with their uzis were calling Bobby back.  He looked at Florence.  Her brown eyes were closed.  He could see she was trying to get somewhere, and he knew she needed him.  She opened her eyes.  He rested his warm lips on her forehead and held her hands in his. 

They lay in bed like that for a long time, holding hands in the dark, and looking into what they were sure were each other’s eyes. 

My blog is not about politics.  It is about love and sex and being a parent and figuring out how to do that and not lose yourself or go crazy in the process.  That is also what California Prop 8 is about. 

Same-sex marriage became legal in California this last June.  Living in a place where any couple who loves each other can be legally married made me feel proud to be a Californian and an American.  Proposition 8 threatens to amend our State Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry. 

“Who would vote for that?!” I thought.  And then they began to appear.  Remember in August I wrote that ants slowly appeared in my kitchen, and then one morning I woke up and they were everywhere?  On my kitchen counter, in my shoes, in my refrigerator and freezer, swarming, annoying, infuriating?  That is what those people on the street corners of my neighborhood, holding “Yes on Prop 8” signs are like.  They are everywhere.  And they want our food, our piece of mind, our sense of ourselves, our confidence in our families, and our right to love. 

If you live in California, please VOTE NO ON PROP 8.

If you do not live in California, call someone you know here and urge him or her to vote no on Prop 8.  

No matter where you live, consider going to www.noonprop8.com/ and reading up or making a donation. 

You may know me as the Horny Housewife or as the Real Woman,  but if you know me you know I know love.  Please consider my advice:

Vote for love. 

Vote no on Prop 8.

http://thereallifeofawoman.wordpress.com

When I was starving, I looked out into the world and saw only food that I could not eat.  I fell asleep at night salivating, imagining I could almost taste the oranges that hung, juicy and plump, on trees my hungry fingers could not quite reach.  My long-empty stomach longed for sustenance. 

When I did find food, I ate greedily.  I gulped down drinks without tasting them.  I swallowed chunks without chewing them.  I never considered whether I really wanted whatever it was my mouth was full of.  I only thought about where I could find more, as I temporarily revelled in the relieved, full feeling of my tummy.

Love was my food and my heart was starving.  So was my mind and my mouth and my ego and the passenger seat in my car.  I was married and I had five lovers and yet I always was alone.  I had a big, impressive refrigerator, but it was almost always empty. 

My husband moved out of my house two months ago and things are better, massively better.  But of course, I am still struggling.  I struggle to learn how to live as though I am not starving.   I lived like a starving refugee for so long.  It’s hard to really believe that I will wake up tomorrow and find my refrigerator full of food.  Sleeping with Donny on our fist date was the act of a starving woman.

Baby, you don’t have to live like a REFUGEE.

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I have been seeing a lot of Donny lately.  Do you remember how I first described Donny to you?:

“Incredibly handsome, smart, quirky, ironic, good job, thoughtful, sweet, complementary, 31 (THIRTY-ONE!!!  A child by my normal standards),  considerate.  I sat through lunch, nervous, uncomfortable, not enjoying myself, and not connecting.  Afterward, he asked me if I wanted to go out with him on a real date, but he also said it seemed like I felt nervous, so he wasn’t sure whether or not I was in to him.” 

All of those adjectives I used to describe Donny were good, yet all of my reactions were bad.  Why was that? 

Do you remember how I described date number two, later that night?:

“51, brilliant, funny, a mess, slightly mentally ill, dirty hair, a little down-on-his-luck, sweet, nervous.  A writer, for God’s sake…The longer I sat with him, talking about Hepburn and Tracy, blow jobs and kissing, love and death and happiness, the more I thought maybe I wanted him.  But I don’t.  I don’t.  I don’t.  That is not what I want anymore for my life.  Even if it’s who I want, it’s not what I want.  Not anymore.” 

Packed with descriptors indicating Date Number Two was wrong for me, and yet full of yearning and hunger.  Starving.  Why? 

Because I am more comfortable starving than I am nourishing myself.   

Donny was available to me, in his heart, in his head, and in his body.  He was an all-you-can eat, twenty-four hour buffet, and he handed me a Free Admission ticket.  Because he liked me.  I didn’t know how to handle that. 

“You mean,” I asked him, “I can just come on in any time and eat and drink, and you’ve got soup, salad, bread, sandwiches, and chocolate dessert?!  A well-rounded meal?!  No comprendo,” I said. ”I don’t know how not to starve.”

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I just got off the phone with No-Nickname Mike.   About a week ago I told him everything.  How I’d had sex with Donny.  How it wasn’t good.  How I regretted betraying him.  How I like Donny now, more than I ever thought I would.  How Donny offers both Peanut Butter and Apples. 

No-Nickname Mike was fairly understanding.  He told me he wanted to continue with our master-slave sexual relationship, even with Donny in the unknowing picture.  I told him I needed to think about that. 

The conclusion I came to was that I don’t want to live like a refugee anymore.  I want to become accustomed to nourishment.  I don’t want to see Mike anymore.    

When I told him, Mike went on the offensive.  He said I’d strung him along.  (Those were his words.)  That I’d been “flakey” and “selfish.”  I know.  I can see your face, Constance.  (Or, what I’ve always imagined is your face.)  It was unfair and unfortunate.  It was like he expected me to go on with our sexual relationship even though I didn’t want to anymore.  It’s crazy.  

But do you want to hear something even crazier?  The whole time Mike was telling me how bad I was and how he was right and I was wrong, I was masturbating.  It turned me on.  I know.  Weird.  And when we got off the phone I made myself come.  And then, of course, I felt very bad and mucho confused.  

I sat down at my computer.  There was a new e-mail from Donny.  (There is always a new e-mail from Donny.  We are in constant electronic communication.  I love it.)  I felt so bad that I just wrote “I need a hug” and pressed send.  I almost didn’t send it.  There was nothing snarky about it, or ironic, or funny.  It was just honest and emotional and needy.  And needy means I was hungry and I asked for food.  That’s new for me.  You know what happened? 

Donny was on my IM in an instant.  He was sweet and concerned and he sent me this picture:

He came right over WITH A FLOWER FOR ME!  Unbelievable.  I told Donny I was feeling a bit peckish and he arrived with a feast.  I knew I’d made the right decision about Mike. 

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I’ve been studying meditation and Buddhism just a little recently.  (I know you’re pleased, Lankrypt.)  One of the most profound concepts that I’ve learned, in a nutshell, is this: all of life is suffering, and suffering is caused by craving. 

Over and over, I have organized my life so that I was craving or suffering or starving, but now I am ready to accept that nourishment, satisfaction, and happiness are possible.  I just need to decide that I want them.  

A bountiful feast is at my disposal.   I can wander the earth, begging for food, or I can just go home and set my table.  

I am trusting that there will be vegetables and bread and meats and even some chocolate.  It will be nurturing, rather than hedonistic and it will be delicious.  

Finally, my friends, my fellow seekers, my lurkers and commenters, first timers, and readers from way back, I will save a seat for each of you.  

Much love,

A Woman

Maybe with illicit sex, the cheating is the connection, but with sex where you’re not cheating, you need to connect and get to know each other first. 

I know: sounds obvious.  But once again, it wasn’t.