by Leah Holden
I took a deep breath and looked at Todd again.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Todd said, “Gotta empty the one-eyed snake.”
Mr. Romantic strikes again! All hope was being replaced by what now felt more like desperation.
I got into bed alone. I felt like a sixty-year-old who’d been married for forty of those years and this was our bi-weekly arrangement to meet a need of habit.
Todd had been in the bathroom for a while and I started drumming my fingers on the bedside cabinet. How long could it take one individual to take a piss? I sure wasn’t recalling any one-eyed anaconda type appendage while in his presence previously.
I turned over and was nearly asleep when he finally came into the bedroom.
“Took you long enough,” I mumbled.
Any need or any other motive I might have had for actually being in a bedroom with Todd had long since evaporated. The desperation had long since been replaced by annoyance.
‘Uhuh,” he grunted, coming over to the bed. At least he had stripped down to his boxers which were perhaps the one thing I was finding mildly sexy about him.
I moved over and planted a kiss on his lips.
He let me.
“You gonna give me a BJ?”
I stared at him for a second.
“And if I do, what do I get in return?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.
I shrugged.
I knew of no reason why I should be dishing out blow-jobs to all and sundry when my own needs tended to remain totally un-met; it was time for me to get assertive because, as far as Todd was concerned, it had been a while since I’d been on the receiving end of anything pleasurable. So, as far as I could see, we had now entered a do unto others as you would have them do to you phase in our ‘oh-so-amazing’ relationship.
“It means I’m not all that sure about the whole oral scenario. I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that there could be long-term consequences.”
“You mean, like long-term fun?”
“Whatever!” I said. I strongly suspected that he was now totally focused on his own fulfillment and I would have a job getting any real sense out of him.
In the end, I gave up trying to persuade him to do me any vaguely similar favors because, knowing my luck, he’d probably accidentally bite off some vital part of my anatomy and then I wouldn’t be able to have sex with anyone else for the rest of my life. With that thought in mind, I was actually beginning to count myself lucky that I had him at all.
“Are we gonna do this or not?”
I assumed that by ‘this’ he meant was I going to go on top and ride away until he was fulfilled.
“What about some fore-play?” I muttered as I leaned over and kissed his neck.
In return, he rubbed his hand up and down my back.
Okay then, so they’ve started making women with G-spots in their backs now? All this time I’d been thinking it might have shifted as part of the natural aging process!
“Maybe you could move your hands down a bit?” I said in between kissing his neck, his chest, his belly. Todd wasn’t very fond of French kissing and I wasn’t enough of a teacher to indoctrinate him into the ‘Joys of Sex’.
He moved his hands to my mid-back and kept them there.
I gave up on the suggestions. It was best to just let things flow as naturally as possible.
So, anyway, and I swear I cannot to this day remember how it happened, I found myself pinned beneath his hundred and ninety pounds.
I moved a little to the side and reached down to find his package. This was after all the fountain of all baby-making goodies.
“It’s not very hard,” I said.
Todd apparently didn’t hear that part of the conversation.
“Do you wanna go back on top?” he asked hopefully.
“Not really.”
Well, not today, anyway.
If my research was correct, that would be totally the wrong position to be in if I wanted to get pregnant. It was so totally against Mother Nature and gravity.
He shifted position so that we were in some kind of hybrid missionary style and I was sort of pinned beneath him with my face stuck in his neck. I forced myself not to complain because this was the baby-making missionary position that I’d been reading up on.
I was secretly thinking that I was a true missionary here. You know the number of chances I kept giving this guy—I could probably technically qualify for sainthood by now.
“Move your leg a bit,” he said.
“I can’t… Jesus Christ, that hurts—you’re going to break off my frigging leg.”
“Stop complaining already, will you!”
“Well, my leg isn’t detachable, you know.”
He remained silent, his eyes closed in exaggerated patience.
I was far from happy. The fact is that bad stuff happens to your body once you start the slide towards forty. Part of that stuff was a lack of agility, apparently.
Truthfully though, Todd needed to stop feeling self-satisfied. I made a mental note to tell him some time that, for the record, size wasn’t everything—you’ve really gotta know what to do with stuff if you’re going to approach a desperate woman—period!
It definitely proved to be a personal sacrifice as I tried to position myself just like I’d read on the website. And just when things were getting interesting, Todd bolted upright and shifted so that he could fish out a condom from somewhere in his clothing that had been laid neatly on the chest at the foot of the bed.
I thought for a moment then that if I were the type to keep a weapon in my bedroom, this guy would never have made it out of my house alive.
For crying out loud—I just wanted to get laid. How hard could that be in this age of free sex and free love? I wasn’t sure I could wait till he got his game together—did a girl have to do everything herself?
I was also beginning to think that I should have taken Shellie up on her offer of some mechanical device from the local smut shop.
“Let’s just do this,” said Todd.
I swear this is the last time.
I silently made the standard vow that usually preceded every session with Todd.
As things were, I tried to work out my ovulation cycle in my head. For all I knew, I could be fertile right now. If the internet site was right, sperm could live for up to seven days, so by next week when I would really be ovulating, I could get pregnant—just like that!
The problem was how to get the sperm through the condom.
“What’s wrong?” asked Todd suddenly.
Shit! I’d been so preoccupied with the more challenging problems of our little union that I’d completely forgotten I was in the middle of a hot love scene.
“Hmm ...”
“What?”
“Well—it’s just that I think I’m allergic to the latex in the condom,” I said.
“What do you mean allergic?”
“You know, they make me go numb, I can’t feel anything.”
Pause.
Shit.
Okay, so I didn’t want to hurt his feelings and kill his erection…again, but, oh what the hell…
“I mean, I can’t feel anything at all—it’s a bit like someone gave me a mega epidural.”
“Alright, already, jeez…I get the picture.”
He turned to stare at me.
I stared back.
Long pause. We were making rare eye contact.
Maybe this was how it felt to look deep into someone’s soul; it was pretty scary. It was even scarier when I realized I was feeling nothing for this guy. No racing of the heart. No temptation to do things that would make my mother disown me. No stoking of fires that I would have difficulty extinguishing. It was like being washed up on a desert island with a paper raft.
In the dim lighting, he could have been anyone.
Oh, the irony of this situation. The internet was oozing men and I was stuck with the one dude who didn’t do romance.
I did. You just never listen!
“I’ve told you several times before, it hurts.”
“You never said you were allergic.”
So, it’s okay for me to feel pain but not to be allergic?
“Well, I think I could be; I mean I’m not a doctor or anything.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t wanna take it off and get you pregnant.”
OMG! You gigantic asshole—why do you think I’m doing this in the first place?
“I know—I know—I don’t especially want to get pregnant either, look, this is day nine of my cycle—I won’t get pregnant.”
I tried to cross my fingers behind his back. I prayed that my treachery would not come back to haunt me.
“You sure?”
Oh, crap…if I knew that for sure, I’d be pregnant already and we wouldn’t be having this frigging stupid conversation.
The problem with Todd was that he could sometimes turn me on, especially if I hadn’t seen him for a couple of months, by which time even a piece of paper could turn me on. Unfortunately for both of us, this was not one of those times.
“Look, Todd, I don’t think this is going to work.”
There, I’d said those long over-due words.
Todd was so still that I wondered if he’d fainted.
“Did you hear me?”
He lay beside me still wordless.
“Todd?”
“Hmm?”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“I think the whole damned street heard you.”
I was immediately defensive. This guy could never ever cut me some slack.
“I didn’t exactly shout it out.”
“What do you mean it’s not working?”
“This relationship. You and me.”
He got up from the bed then and slowly started to gather his gear.
He was taking it pretty well—either that or he simply didn’t understand that we were over for good.”
I sat up in bed and watched him put his clothes on.
“Todd, you do get what I’m saying don’t you?”
“I believe you want me to leave.”
“Well, you don’t have to leave just at this precise moment. I just want to know if you get my position.”
“Do you want me to leave or not?”
I grunted because I was so horny that I was almost beyond speech. Todd just wasn’t doing it for me right then.
“You’d better be leaving,” I said wearily.
“I guess you need to go pick Josh up?”
I was tempted to say yes. Man, what was it about this guy? I was in danger of becoming a pathological liar around him. It was probably near midnight, how could I be picking up my kid in the rain at such an ungodly hour? Did he know nothing?
“No, I just think you should leave. I hope you understand.”
“Yeah, you’re breaking up with me.”
Wow—talk about a cold fish! There was no emotion, not even anger.
“I’m sorry Todd. I guess there’s been very little between us for a long time.”
“Okay, I get that you’re in a bit of a mood. Call me when you calm down.”
Now how was he treating me like I was some air head that had no clue what she was talking about? He really wasn’t getting it and I was too pissed to care. This guy lived in a state of oblivion and this gal was done for sure. It wasn’t even like he’d given me an engagement ring so I had nothing to fling back at him melodramatically to help get my point across. It was best to try to stay calm, to keep things as stress-free as possible.
I got out of bed because now I just wanted him gone. I was woman enough to know when I was beaten. Todd was never going to understand me. He was never going to be right for me. We were never ever going to be right in bed. Todd was from Venus or Mars, or cloud cuckoo land and I had no idea where I even wanted to be at that moment. The only thing I knew for sure was that I no longer wanted to be with him.
“You’re just going through a bad patch right now,” he said looking at me, with what I assumed was understanding, for the first time.
Let him go, Shaniah. You can only take so much crap sex. It ain’t never gonna be good!
“Yes, I am.”
When I saw him to the front door, he tried to kiss me but I skillfully turned my head so that it landed on my cheek.
“Call me,” he said and rested his forehead against mine for a few seconds.
I forced a tight little smile because I just wanted it to be all over.
I was glad to close the door behind him. The sound of the key in the lock gave me an odd feeling of finality as I brushed away a lone tear that escaped before I could suppress it.
Maybe Todd just wasn’t good at expressing his needs either. Maybe he had connection issues because of his upbringing. I could relate to that. I blamed my own parents for their rather austere views on life that had restricted my own emotional development. Nevertheless, my self-esteem had not been this low before the failure of my relationship with Josh’s father. Before that, I had felt worthy of the best that life had to offer.
Perhaps I felt safe with Todd because he was so low key. Maybe I felt that his chances of cheating were somehow diminished because I didn’t think he was such a great catch.
I knew Todd’s mother had struggled with mental illness and he and his siblings had been largely raised by their grandparents. I knew that he had a brother who had been married and divorced three times. He also had a sister who struggled with drugs and whom he rarely mentioned.
The problem was that because he’d never wanted to talk much about himself, I had no way of knowing just how much he’d been affected.
It did dawn on me then though that maybe I’d put up with Todd because of Josh. I was so used to compensating for Josh’s health needs or even his difficulties at school that somewhere along the line I had transferred this empathy to Todd. Somewhere along the line, I’d learnt to give people too many second chances.
I thought of myself as a fairly compassionate person—well, when I needed to be, but I wasn’t a trained psychologist and I had enough of my own issues to deal with.
Maybe I’d phone Todd in a few days to make sure he was okay. Maybe we could even be friends because we were not meant to be lovers—that much I was sure about.
I had been pretty sure that there was no force on earth that could have derailed my baby-making plans. However, Todd was achieving the impossible as I was now seriously having second thoughts about getting pregnant—at least with him. But I was beginning to suspect that Todd was living in a different world from the rest of us humans who craved good sex.
I stared at my reflection in the hallway mirror for a while. Maybe I could rethink the baby idea because it was affecting my judgment and I was fresh out of any new ideas to push my life forward.
I wondered if life was this hard, this disappointing and this stressful for everyone or was I just this particular failure who was apparently incapable of achieving even the very basic human needs in life?
I sighed heavily. I definitely needed a new strategy because I was now effectively man-less, baby-less and plan-less.
I went into the kitchen and seized a half empty bottle of wine that I had abandoned on the countertop earlier. It was a big decision as I eyed up the wine glass, but in the end, the depression won and I raised the bottle to my parched lips.
CHAPTER TEN
I had no great ideas for a new Plan B. But maybe that was a good thing because I was beginning to think that Plans B’s were over-rated. Perhaps I was supposed to move on and start working on Plan C.
In the meantime, I had other pressures on my mind. My new life consisted of taking Josh to the see my family doctor, who gave me a long-awaited referral to ‘Sick Kids’ to check out his developmental milestones. The pediatrician strongly suspected that Josh might be somewhere on the autism spectrum, albeit at the high functioning end.
&
nbsp; I was not a happy bunny because I had been suggesting that he was somewhere off center for the past five years and now they chose to tell me that there were signs that he had multiple exceptionalities—some learning difficulties. I hardly needed a trained medical professional to tell me that. I thought back to all the melt-downs over his homework.
However, I was grateful as it meant we were moving towards a diagnosis which would perhaps lessen some of the pressure on me in the long term.
In the short term, however, it kind of stressed me out. The referral was apparently just to be on the safe side. It was just another thing to add to the list since Josh had been born. He had never been a straightforward child and it took mental and physical energy to keep going.
This new step forward in our lives left me with nagging doubts. Was it wise to attempt to have another baby as a single mother? What if the new child had learning issues? However, I thought that it might not be good for me to dwell on such thoughts for too long. It was best to keep moving forward—less of the thinking.
Instead, I did some job hunting—half-heartedly, because I no longer trusted employers. I was in my current economic predicament because my old employers had failed to care about my career as much as I had.
I was favoring the thought of self-employment. Why not? This was yet another idea that had been taking root in the back of my mind for the last few months and I decided it was time to give it free rein. I retrieved my business plan and started to work on it in earnest, giving myself a deadline until the end of the month to complete it.
Despite this hive of activity, I was still a bit restless. I couldn’t work on a business plan twenty-four-seven and, in the meantime, my other plan of motherhood was falling by the wayside.
Had Todd not been such a poor bargain, totally lacking in any romantic ambition, I might have fallen back into my regular pattern of calling him up now that the going had got pretty tough.
However, I didn’t want another session where I would surely be comparing his kiss to Jared’s for example, or his every move to any other imaginary lover I could possibly be meeting online. I was now deeply disappointed and annoyed with myself for my inability to get it together.
