One of the women in group today had said she was afraid her husband was going to have an affair because she had no interest in having sex with him. She’d admitted she was sort of joking, but sort of not. It hadn’t even occurred to Gwen to worry about Jeff’s sexual frustrations. When she considered him having an affair, she was shocked that it didn’t even bother her. Let another woman service him. It felt like outsourcing a task, like on Instacart.
She set June in her bassinet next to the bed. June rarely slept in there because she much preferred being on Gwen’s body, but she seemed especially passed out, so Gwen took a chance. June squirmed for a few seconds in the bassinet, but then resumed her peaceful slumber. Gwen tiptoed out of the room and down the hall to the master bedroom. Jeff was sitting up in bed, one ankle crossed over the other, hands behind his head, watching a sports recap show on TV.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
He was still sitting on his side of the bed. It had been weeks, and he hadn’t moved to the middle, hadn’t claimed the bed as his alone. Her side looked so sad and empty.
“Yeah. She’s in the bassinet, sleeping.”
“Awesome. Nice job.”
She got into bed, occupying her side for the first time since becoming a mother. Jeff looked surprised, and she hated that he looked surprised, hated that her wanting to be with him was such a novel occurrence.
“I miss this bed,” she said, running her hands along the comforter.
He leaned over, kissed her cheek, put a hand on her thigh.
“It misses you,” he said. “So do I.”
He said it quickly, not in a dramatic, guilt-inducing way. It was enough to make her cry.
“Oh, babe, don’t cry,” he said.
It was what every man said to every woman—don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. Why didn’t they understand that what women wanted was to be held and told to cry, cry, cry?
He pulled her into his side, and she rested her head on his chest. When she looked up, her lips found his, and they were like brand-new lips, lips she had never kissed before. She felt something awaken inside—not desire exactly, but a memory of her own body.
Soon, they were lying beside each other, both on their sides, facing each other, torsos pressed against one another.
“We don’t have to ... you know,” he said. “I mean, I’d love that. But this is fine. Okay?”
She tugged on the waistband of his shorts, her telltale way of saying what she wanted without words. She took off his clothes, and then he took off hers. She watched his face as he did, looking for a sign that he was shocked by what he saw. Her body wasn’t the same, would probably never be again. This was the first time she’d let him see it in its new state. She’d been closing the bathroom door when taking a shower, wrapping herself in a towel on the way to the closet, things she’d never done before. She missed the immodesty of her former self.
When they were naked, he felt inside her with two fingers, as if inspecting that things were the same. She felt a laugh bubbling up inside her. She’d had a C-section, but he clearly wasn’t sure that her vagina was unaltered.
“What?” he asked. He’d no doubt felt the vibration of her chest as she suppressed the giggle.
“I feel like we’re hooking up for the first time.”
“We kind of are.”
“I think I’m more nervous now than I was our first time.”
Back in law school, Gwen and Jeff had been in the same torts class and had started hanging out at Friday happy hours with a group of people from the class. Gwen was dating someone at the time, another lawyer-to-be who was an arrogant asshole. She liked Jeff as a person. He was kind and funny and didn’t seem like someone who should become a lawyer. There was another woman in the program—Melissa, went by Mel—who had a crush on him and made it very obvious. She was pretty in the conventional way—blond hair, generous boobs. Gwen watched her laugh at everything Jeff said and could tell that Jeff was not, for whatever reason, interested. It became cringeworthy over time, the way Mel threw herself at him. During one of the happy hours, after Mel had gone to the bathroom following a particularly heinous display of flirtation, Jeff leaned over to Gwen and said, “How do I get it to stop?”
That was when they started chatting more. Gwen was on the outs with the asshole, and Jeff was there, the good-hearted antidote. He didn’t ask her out on an official date, but they found themselves talking between themselves at more of the gatherings. When he invited her back to his place, she said “Sure” and felt Mel’s eyes on them as they left together.
By that point in her life, Gwen had slept with about a dozen guys. She’d had a few serious relationships lasting a year or more, and lots of not-serious relationships. That first time, she wasn’t sure what Jeff would be—a serious or not-serious. But it meant something that she was so nervous, her hands trembling as he undressed her, blood whooshing in her ears. She was nervous because she cared. It was terrifying to care.
He took his time that first time, and the other times after. She knew good sex from bad, and the sex with Jeff was good. He was attentive and tender. He cared about her pleasure. Unlike many men, who hopped out of bed after as if their skin were on fire, he liked to linger and cuddle. Even after they’d been together a couple of years, when sex for most couples became rote, he lingered and cuddled as if it was their first time together all over again. He never seemed ungrateful.
She closed her eyes now as he went down on her, kissing and licking her between her legs. He always insisted on doing this for her, even when she told him he didn’t have to. “I like it,” he’d always say, and she did her best to believe him.
After a few minutes, she pulled at the hairs on his head, signaling him to come up to her, to kiss her on the mouth and put himself inside her. He obeyed. The moment he entered her, she gasped—and not in a good way. Something was wrong. It didn’t feel right. He was suddenly bigger or she was suddenly smaller. His dick against the walls of her vagina felt like a thumb rubbing against the wall of a Tupperware container. All that was missing was the audible screech.
He continued to go through his usual motions, which in this new body were excruciating, so she placed her palms against his chest, pushed him off as best she could.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
