If It Was Easy, They'd Call the Whole Damn Thing a Honeymoon

by Jenna McCarthy

  “I’m too tired.”

  “I’m too fat.”

  “You didn’t shave tonight.”

  “I haven’t shaved in a week.”

  “The kids are awake.”

  “The kids could wake up.”

  “Modern Family is on.”

  “The dog is watching.”

  “It’s too cold in here.”

  “It’s too hot in here.”

  “I’m too drunk.”

  “I’m too sober.”

  “Aunt Flo is in town.”

  “You never listen to a word I say and you spend too much time at the office and I’m sick of picking up the constant trail of shit you leave in your wake because you don’t have an ounce of respect for me and I did not want a toaster oven for my birthday!”

  Comedian Billy Crystal is famous for saying that women need a reason to have sex; men just need a place. The only reason that this is funny is because it is true. A male friend of mine—a well-known author who is married to another well-known author—recently regaled me with the following private exchange he had with his wife:

  HIM: “Hey, honey, let’s have sex!”

  HER: “I’d love to but I’m really tired and I have to . . . Hey, did I tell you what happened when I went to—wait, I have to write something down before I forget—and by the way you never asked me how my day went today and did you get my thirty-five texts because I don’t recall you sending me any, which I have to say really hurts my feelings—”

  HIM: “Get in the bed.”

  HER: “Wait, we have all of these things to talk about!”

  HIM: “Now!”

  HIM [to me, earnestly]: “This really happened, I swear.”

  ME [to him, solemnly]: “I don’t doubt it for one second, buddy.”

  “At Least You’re Not Married to Him”

  My husband is always “in the mood.” He wants to know over six A.M.

  coffee if we are doing it that night. That is the last thing on my mind. I

  got home the other day around lunchtime and of course he wanted to

  go have sex. He even said I could close my eyes and think of someone

  else. Jeeeeeez! Are all guys this way?

  LYNN

  It’s a widely accepted belief that human beings—men in particular—were not meant to be monogamous. Think about how the male body was designed: When he is stimulated, which barely takes more than a hearty wind gust in some cases, he quickly and effortlessly produces millions of sperm cells. If one of those lucky little sperms fertilizes a waiting egg, nothing really changes for him. His body doesn’t stop producing more sperm, which means he can go on to fertilize another egg, and then another, and another and another and on and on indefinitely or until he catches something nasty and the resulting rash makes it too painful to even wear pants, let alone even think about finding and seducing another hapless egg. For the ladies, it’s a whole different story, one you can’t understand fully unless you have been pregnant or at least tuned in to the Learning Channel’s A Baby Story a few times.

  In scientific circles, it’s repeatedly noted that males—of pretty much every species that has ever been studied—who have lost interest in their sexual partner consistently rebound with astonishing prowess when given the opportunity to hump new and eager partners. The phenomenon even has a name, the Coolidge Effect, in honor of the illustrious former president. According to legend, as Calvin and his wife were touring a poultry farm, the first lady asked the farmer how so few roosters could produce so many fertile eggs. The farmer replied that the roosters copulated all day long, day after day.

  “Tell that to Mr. Coolidge,” Mrs. Coolidge reportedly said.

  Thusly informed, the president asked the farmer, “With the same hen each time?”

  “No,” said the farmer. “Each rooster has dozens of hens to choose from.”

  “Tell that to the First Lady,” Coolidge is said to have replied.

  Ba dum bum ching.

  Even us ladies with our one lousy egg a month would benefit from having not just a single partner but a stable of babydaddies on hand to help stoke the fire, mow the lawn, and cover the cost of our brood’s combined braces, broken bones, and car insurance tabs. We could mate with a smart guy this year and an athletic guy next year and a breathtakingly handsome guy the year after that, and maybe—just maybe—one of the resulting offspring would become rich and famous and buy us a castle in Italy in which to luxuriate in our golden years.

  And yet, even though it doesn’t make sense for people of either gender to limit their sexual exposure to just one other person, here we all are, reading books and lighting candles and popping pills and shimmying into crotchless chaps and slutty nurse outfits (er, some of us) in an effort to make marital sex remotely resemble the stuff we see in the movies and therefore assume everyone else is having.

  When the planets align perfectly and everyone is showered and shaved and the kids are asleep and all of the laundry has been put away and it’s not too late and I’m not under the gun of an imminent deadline, I enjoy consistently excellent sex. And if we’re being honest here, after a decade and a half of practice, Joe and I are pretty . . . efficient. What I’m saying is that sex is fun and doesn’t consume hours of my precious time. It’s physically beneficial for both of us—relieving stress, burning calories, boosting immunity, and even reducing the risk of having a fatal heart attack—and we’re almost always nicer to each other afterward (at least for a few minutes). So why, for the love of lube, does it take such a herculean effort to get me to give in to it in the first place? And why on earth should my poor husband have to beg me to put down my boring book and do the one thing in the world that I can do to him that nobody else can?

  Here’s a metaphor for the best explanation I can come up with: Imagine I was walking down the street and a guy in a big overcoat walked up really close behind me and whispered into my ear, “Pssssst. Lady. You want some air? I got all sorts of air right here. This is good shit, too. You want some? I’ll give you a good deal.” Do you think I would be tempted by this in the least? Of course not! I can get air for free any old time I want. My house is filled with air. I can’t imagine paying for air! At the end of the day, sex is pretty much like air. I take it for granted because it’s always right there, at my disposal. It’s not like if I decide I’m not really in the mood, I couldn’t change my mind in five minutes. Anatomically, women are blessed. We don’t get spontaneous erections that demand satisfying, and if we go a week or ninety without experiencing the physical release of orgasm, life chugs right along. Not like the poor ferret. Did you know that a female ferret will die if she goes into heat and can’t find a mate? It’s true. Can you imagine if that were the case with humans?

  ME: “Joe, get in here right now and do me!”

  JOE: “I’m watching the game. It’s almost over.”

  ME: “But I’m going to die!”

  JOE: “I need something to eat—I didn’t have lunch at all today and—Aw, crap. Overtime! Gimme fifteen more minutes, okay?”

  ME: “Dying . . . (gasp) . . . over . . . (wheeze) . . . here . . .”

  JOE: “Hey, honey, do we have any more of that really good spicy Dijon mustard? The kind with the seeds in it? I was just going to make a sandwich and I used the last of the jar that was in the fridge yesterday.”

  ME: [dead ]

  JOE: “So no? We don’t have any? Damn. I guess I could use mayo. Do we have any mayo?”

  ME: [still dead ]

  Of course, that scenario would play out only if he happened to be watching a sporting match when I went into do-me-or-die heat. In every other instance, it would look like this:

  ME: “Joe, get in here right now and do me!”

  JOE: “On my way!”

  I hate to admit this for fear of being judged by the company I keep, but several of our friends’ marriages have been ripped apart by infidelity in recent years. Every single time this happens, my first thought is, Really? You’re throw
ing your family and your house and your lifestyle away . . . over sex? I mean, I realize that good sex is great and great sex is spectacular, but we’re talking about a relatively minute fraction of your time, even if you’re doing it daily. (And guess what, cheaters? It may be extraordinarily exciting now, but call me again in eighteen months or so and we’ll see how that’s holding up.) If you really stop to think about the act itself—how downright ridiculous it is to repeatedly jab at a hole in another person’s body with a body part of your own—it’s almost shocking that the whole subject gets as much play as it does.

  People often complain (most loudly after they’ve been busted having one of the aforementioned affairs) that their married sex has gotten old and routine. Well, frankly, so has brushing your teeth after lo these many years, but you keep doing it because it’s good for you. Besides, that’s why God invented vacation sex! You surely have noticed that the same old routine you rely on at home is approximately 380 percent more exciting when you’re performing it anywhere else. This is, of course, because someone else has been cooking for you. Plus you may have finally been able to put your feet up for five minutes, possibly sleep in, and maybe even read a steamy book or trashy magazine. My sister swears that three days is the minimum for any getaway, as it takes two days to fully relax and catch up on your sleep before you even want to think about being intimate. If you commit to going somewhere glorious (or hell, even somewhere crappy—as long as there’s no kitchen, it’ll do) a few times a year, you’ll have those superlative sessions to conjure up when you need a little mental push to do it back at the ranch. And even if you have one or two ho-hum getaway trysts, they’re still a hell of a lot more fun than couples therapy.

  CHAPTER NINE

  It’ s Only Money, Honey

  Money will buy you a fine dog,

  but only love will make it wag its tail.

  • KINKY FRIEDMAN •

  I grew up very comfortable, financially. Even though Dad was a high school dropout, he was a brilliant man and a tireless worker. With his brother he started a hugely successful—and enormously profitable—custom home-building business. As I grew, so did the size of our own home, along with the number of fancy new cars in the driveway. My family had a weekend house and a very large boat (the snooty might call it a yacht) and several pretty cool toys including a dune buggy and a couple of Jet Skis. We went skiing in the winters and island hopping in the summers, and I am pretty sure I was the only sixteen-year-old junior in my high school driving her very own candy apple red Porsche 944. (Hey, Porsches were cool in the eighties.)

  I know what you’re thinking. Spoiled rotten brat.

  But here’s the thing: Other than the cars and the boat and the toys and the trips, you would never have known we had money. (I know that sounds absurd, but I’m talking about the day-to-day realities of living here.) My mom wasn’t dripping in jewels or designer labels, Dad insisted on buying his own clothes at Pic-N-Save, and the invariable answer to “Can I have it?”—whether “it” was a magazine subscription or the hot-pink beach cruiser I wanted more than I had ever wanted anything in my life—was an emphatic No. We went to matinees and sneaked in our own candy, and traded hand-me-down clothes with our cousins. New clothes were an infrequent luxury—purchased only out of absolute necessity and always plucked from the clearance rack. Even then, we’d have to leave the bags in the trunk if Dad was home and sneak them into the house later. (“Are these new shoes? Goodness, no! They’ve been sitting in the car for a week!”) Going to Red Lobster for the early bird special was considered a major splurge, and we never, ever ordered appetizers or dessert. Mom ran the house and Dad’s business, and you got the distinct feeling she felt dramatically underpaid in both positions. There was much talk of saving for rainy days, but even during a deluge I couldn’t get anyone to fork over for a Walkman. Our parents reminded us all of the time how much everything cost and, frequently, how entitled and ungrateful we were.

  I am not complaining about any of this or looking for sympathy; in retrospect, I agree that I was a spoiled rotten brat and unquestionably I had far more than most. What’s more, I was a sassy little back-talker and didn’t deserve most of the stuff I pined for anyhow. I am including this peek into my fiscally conflicted childhood for one reason only: It may help explain my lingering love-hate relationship with money.

  When I began earning my own dough, I embraced my parents’ financial lessons and rebelled against them at the same time. I lived below my means—in shitty, unsafe apartments decorated with thrift-store finds—so that I could sock away cash and also pick up the occasional obscene dinner tab. I brought brown-bag lunches to my hoity-toity magazine job and shopped at god-awful sample sales so that I could at least remotely resemble my well-heeled colleagues; then I’d take a cab home with my bags because I worked hard and I deserved it. By the time I met Joe, I was pulling in an impressive salary and had squirreled away a sizable lump in my savings account, too. Because we were in that lovey-dovey new-lust phase where the other person’s quirks (that will be maddening someday) still seem delightfully charming, Joe was tickled by the fact that I would take the time to clip and use supermarket coupons and then spend $200 on a pair of jeans.

  His amusement didn’t last very long.

  I was in an extreme shabby-chic phase when we bought our first house, and Joe—who’d grown up in the country—was appalled at my foolish, squandering ways.

  “You didn’t pay for that, did you?” he asked earnestly, inspecting the rusty, dented watering can I’d picked up at an antiques store. I was planning to use it as a planter, and I thought it was just darling.

  “No, honey, they gave it to me for free,” I replied sarcastically. Well, I mean, honestly.

  “I hope so,” he muttered. “Next time we go to my dad’s, you should poke around in the shed. It’s filled with a bunch of banged-up, corroded crap. You’ll love it.”

  The epithet for the recurring economic debates in our house became “form versus function.” (You can probably guess which one I favored.) Joe would come into the house, filthy from working in the yard, and look as if he were actually going to sit down on the creamy white linen sofa.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” I’d scold. “Get a towel if you’re going to sit in here!”

  “I can’t even sit down on my own goddamned couches,” he’d roar. “Who the hell buys white couches?”

  “I do!” I’d yell back, and the game would be on.

  “At Least You’re Not Married to Him”

  My husband is the biggest banking hypocrite ever. We are both spenders, no doubt about that. Neither of us pines over making purchases; most times we just do it. But I do not have exorbitant tastes, dress well, or eat out often. My indulgences come with the big red Target emblem or from a big-box store, and 85 percent of the time they are for my children. My husband, on the other hand, spends as he pleases, but only makes purchases for himself and takes enormous amounts of money out of the ATM. The worst part is that he constantly monitors my purchases, demands to know how I spent $598 at Costco (we have four kids who eat like six adults, dumbshit) and $18 at Walgreens (a prescription and Red Vines, thank you very much), and why I wrote a $100 check to the guy who has been coaching our kids’ soccer for six years (annual fees). Meanwhile, he is completely unsupervised in his own spending. As you can imagine, I suspect that the bulk of his money goes to greens fees and hamburgers. I really don’t want to know, or else I would.

  VICTORIA

  When we married, the very fact of our separate checking accounts drove Joe mad. We lived like a pair of very civil and laid-back roommates—he’d pay the mortgage and the car insurance, I’d pay property tax and all of the utilities. Because this allowed me some measure of control, I would have been perfectly happy to continue this way forever, but Joe felt a burning need to establish financial solidarity. Though we agreed that “our money” belonged to both of us, we couldn’t seem to settle on a mutually satisfying accounting system.

  “We sho
uld have one joint account,” Joe would gripe. But my husband was unconditionally loyal to the little mom-andpop bank where he had once worked, and I liked the convenience of my behemoth institution. (We had online banking and cooler checks.) And then there were the logistics: Who would keep the register? Who would be responsible for the monthly balancing? Would we pay bills my way (immediately upon their arrival) or Joe’s way (file them away to be paid at the last possible minute)? It was all too much.

  Eventually he wore me down and I agreed to try a joint account—if I could keep my own for the trial period. I wrote one check out of our joint account. It bounced.

  “This is why two people can’t share one account!” I wailed, indignant. “You didn’t record the last check you wrote and I was stupid enough to believe the balance in the register was accurate! I have never bounced a check in my entire life!”

  “Well, now you have,” Joe said agreeably, clearly not as traumatized by this blemish on my otherwise pristine record as I was. After that I would write checks from the account at his request, but I refused to use it otherwise. Eventually he closed the joint account and we came up with the system we use now, which is that Joe pays all of the bills from his personal account and asks me for money when he needs it. I don’t even have to look at all of those bothersome bills, a perk that has made giving up my precious control infinitely easier.