365 Nights (4 page)

But no more. Because I work two days a week from 9 to 5 at the office, and conference call, check e-mail, and return calls on the days I'm not, I'm pretty connected to work. I also have two different sitters: my mother-in-law comes on Tuesdays, and another longtime sitter comes on Wednesdays. For them and for me, it's important to have a fair amount of order so that the mile-long to-do list can be tracked and executed. And because my kids have told me time and time again that they don't like my “mean Mommy” voice, I have decided that I need to do all that I can to make mornings run smoother (and afternoons and evenings, for that matter). Everyone is a shade or two happier, and then I can use my artificially sweet Carol Brady Mommy voice. For me, that means a neat kitchen, school clothes laid out, backpacks stored in a locker, and a reasonable amount of clean laundry piled on my bedroom floor for me to pick through as needed.

When it comes to kids, I am pretty vigilant about bedtime. Since my seven-year-old daughter starts school at an unseemly hour (7:30 A.M.) and since we have to get up at about 6:30 A.M., my kids are fed, bathed, and in bed by 7:30 each night (give or take thirty minutes). Girlfriends have been known to call me at 7:42—“I know that I am calling you at the worst possible time, but . . .” Well, no actually, I think, as I sit back, put up my feet, and sink into my down-filled sofa. My kids are in bed, possibly even asleep, and all is good with the world.

So while the day is a hurricane of drama, tears, pressure, activities, chores, phone calls, carpooling, e-mails, and the chronic challenge of putting an edible dinner on the table, the evenings are fairly manageable—
after
7:42 P.M. And while I hustle to get things organized at night, I do have a witching hour. If it's not cleaned up, put away, or stuck in a cubby (or somewhere close enough) by 8 P.M. (okay, 7:42), it's not going to get cleaned up and stuck in a cubby or somewhere close enough. You'll find me in a corner of my couch, trying to regain my sanity in front of a mind-numbing episode of
Entertainment Tonight.
Yes, I could be planning my takeover of the world, or darning socks (really, my mother once asked me to locate my basket of clothes that needed darning . . . can you stand it?), taking a painting class, trying out new recipes, but I need downtime, and by that I mean putting things
down
and then putting my hand on the remote.

This is unusual, I know. My girlfriends who work full-time are just sitting down to a family dinner at 7:30, and my girlfriends with commuting husbands claim any bedtime before 9 P.M. means no one sees Daddy at all. But for now, my kids need ten to twelve hours of sleep, so they don't have early-evening activities, and Brad has a job and a commute that gets him home by 6 for a family dinner. My life is hardly picture-perfect, but on this front, I have no complaints. And I have to say that except for the occasional episode when my daughter is convinced she's going to vomit from some unknown bugaboo, and after all the wailing and drama, she just belches loudly and rolls over and goes to sleep, it works out pretty well.

In the old days, before these daily encounters kicked off, I would hop on the computer, plug into a few mindless hours of television, or read a book. Brad would do the same—we have multiple TVs, two computers, and a lot of books. Sometimes we were together watching TV or reading, and sometimes we were doing our own thing. When we weren't having sex regularly, Brad was always wondering if he was going to have sex anytime this month, and I was guiltily wondering when I was going to have the time, energy, or desire to have sex anytime this month. Sex permeates a relationship
more
when you're not having it. Even snuggling on the couch was sometimes fraught with tension—is this foreplay or simply hanging out? Does he expect this fantastic smooching to be something more than fantastic smooching?

While I was very nervous about how this yearlong project was going to fit into our lives, I discovered we did, indeed, have time for intimacy, and that this everyday business really takes the tension out of nonsexual encounters. I can still get my downtime and Brad can have his downtime, and then we can meet up and have some saucy times together in the bedroom.

Once I acknowledged that I used to try to get out of sex, and once I saw how much happier Brad was as a result of our daily arrangement, I asked him his thoughts about my Dance of the Darting Spouse. Brad shocked me with his simple response.

“Well, hon . . . It really sucks to get rejected all the time.”

“I don't understand . . . It's not like you should take it personally. ” I cringed.

“Why not? I'm your husband. How do you want me to take it?” he replied sharply.

Well, that's a veddy, veddy good question.

My intention was not to reject
him
, per se, but rather his request for intimacy. It never occurred to me that he treated those two points as one in the same. But when I said no to his overture, it was a personal rebuff for Brad, and I venture he's not the only guy who's felt the sting of rejection, especially when it piles up day after day like unclaimed coat-check tickets. I felt crummy. Brad's not a complainer, and while there was tension between us pre-The Gift, it wasn't like we were fighting constantly about our lack of intimacy. He wasn't standing up yelling about his rights as a husband, or demanding that I acknowledge his feelings about the subject. I had made out Brad to be this tall, silent, macho type whose feelings couldn't be hurt . . . and shouldn't be hurt when it comes to sex. I had wrongly assumed that he could shrug off my “not tonight” and immediately intuit that I was worn out, stressed, and simply not in the mood.

I sucked at seeing through that facade, I admit it.

While I felt awful that I couldn't change the way I'd behaved in the past, I could do something about the here and now. I've made a big turnaround. Now, I'm doin' it with my spouse . . . yes, the Dance of the Daily Deed.

In that first month, I took a mental note of how it was going: Pure and simple, my husband loved it, as you would expect. He was just so darned happy that he was very nearly beaming all the time. Me? Well, I was beaming, too . . . What's not to love about your husband acquiring a new little shake in his walk and knowing you had a little something to do with it? Prior to July 3, 2006, there had never been a day (or night, or weekend, for that matter) when I'd had sex with my husband and later considered it a waste of time. On the contrary, when we did and do have sex, I usually say, “Wow, that was really nice. We should do it more often.” Which slays Brad, it really does. And now that it's every day, I still feel that way, only I don't need the “more often” part.

I've definitely noticed how much more attuned we are. I know it sounds corny, but it's true. My husband feels more connected to me because we're getting to it daily, and I feel more connected to my husband because he, well, he's truly digging me right now. And how great is that? Now please know that my husband is a great guy, great father, and great husband, and I didn't enter into this agreement to correct any sort of aberrant behavior in him. Brad is as steady as they come, and doesn't act out, or whine and complain (unless it's a football weekend and his beloved Buckeyes are losing). He fulfills all his roles—dad, husband, employee, son, brother—with aplomb, and not even a knock on the head could set him off his path. My husband is still his great self, but now he's plussed up.

I benefited from his newly energized self almost immediately. The weekend was coming up, and so I asked Brad:

“Hey, honey, what's on tap for you this weekend?”

“Well, I thought we could have some great family time together on Saturday morning, then I could work in the yard in the afternoon, then we could take a nap and have a roll and then I'd love to take you to dinner. You know, I really like that book you gave me on the boxer from South Africa. Maybe we can talk about that tonight at dinner. Isn't he one of your favorite authors? And while we're at it, how about Italian tonight?”

I was speechless. Before The Gift, Brad would have happily gone along with whatever I had planned for the weekend (except for the yard work part) and was quite content to let me plan evenings, confirm the sitter, and make the reservations. And while we generally had a good time together, I'm usually the Julie McCoy, cruise director of our family, looking out for the next fun thing to do, and he happily tags along for the ride. Now all of a sudden he was really plugged into me, and looking at our calendars, and initiating activities. It was like we were dating again . . . ahhh, remember those days, girls, when it was all about
us
?

I realized an unintended beauty of my gift was its unconditionality. My gift was sex every day, no strings attached . . . no need to catch a feel in the bathroom when we're running late for soccer practice, or to wine and dine me at overpriced restaurants, or to even compliment how my shoes and handbag match (they never do). Essentially all the corny things one unenlightened husband might do to guarantee and/or enhance the delivery of sex, well, they didn't matter. I was going to have sex with my husband every day (barring any of the considerations outlined earlier) no matter what. Sure, if he had acted like a complete jerk and had been incredibly rude and offensive, it might have changed things, but it's not in his makeup and therefore not a likely consideration.

But here's the incredible part: There was absolutely no reason for my husband to do things like attentively listen to me drone on and on about my friend's husband's crazy sister, or help me fold laundry (I'm not kidding), or offer to stop by the grocery store on the way home from work, or schedule a surprise massage for me, or take the lead on planning our family vacation . . .
aside from him genuinely wanting to do those things.

And I loved that he wanted this. One afternoon, I looked at Brad with all the joyful giddiness of a girl on a date with the man of her dreams, trying to act casual, but really feeling a little breathless about this great fellow sitting next to her.

I was basking in the glow of Brad's newfound attention. But in the back of my mind lurked a cautionary tale. “
Remember the wings!”
it whispered. As with most cautionary tales, it came from those hazy, crazy young adult days. When I was first living in New York City with my friends from college, we lived on the Upper East Side. My roommate and I lived on the first floor of a five-story walk-up.

To my mind, the best time to live in Manhattan is after college and before you have acquired any actual standard of living. Going from sharing one bedroom with three other girls in college to sharing a 1,200-square-foot (which is mansionlike), one-bedroom apartment was actually a step up. While our teeny living area held only a love seat, a wicker chair, and a television, and our hallway was jammed with a chest of drawers we found at the curb, it seemed larger than the house we shared with thirty-two other women. And the bathroom-to-girl ratio was better (
and
you didn't have the “throw-up” toilet to contend with . . . you all know what I mean).

Two other friends from college conveniently lived on the third floor of the same walk-up. It was like college living, but in the big, bad city. New York was kind to us newbies, though, and we all had landed good jobs that allowed us to cover our outrageous rent. We even had enough left over for dollar drafts at a dozen bars on the Upper West Side. And we could all chip in for our Wednesday night ritual: our embarrassing TV addiction (back in the day of
90210
and
Melrose Place
), a few dozen Atomic Wings, and a pint of Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk Ice Cream. In those days, you could
never
have too many wings, too much ice cream, or too much Heather Locklear.

But one night something went terribly wrong. Was it bad chicken? The stomach flu? I'll never be sure, but all those wings and ice cream no longer agreed with me. After the girls went home, I spewed like a fire hydrant. I have never barfed that violently,
ever
. . . not even when I ran into my aunt's house in the country after playing in the sun and unknowingly chugged from a pint of buttermilk. I have never known an hour that dark and vomitous. I really thought I might die or at least barf up some pretty important internal organs.

It was in the dead of winter and our radiator was pumping hot acrid heat into our little bedroom. I needed some arctic air. So I crawled to the den, opened up the window, and pressed my clammy face against the bars on the window, inhaling giant gulps of noxious city air, and then cried like a baby. I was homesick, wretched and wretching, and really wanted my mommy there to soothe my sweaty brow and rub my tummy.

No wing of any kind has crossed my lips since. And while I do still enjoy Ben & Jerry's, it's now Low Fat Brownie Yogurt. The more important issue is that I learned a valuable lesson . . . too much of a good thing—a superrich, fabulously indulgent thing—is bad.

I wondered if the principle applied to sex as well.

I had no one to go to for advice on what the future held for us. I didn't know if we would hit a wall, like marathon runners do in the middle of the race, or whether we would reach a plateau, like dieters do. There are no sex-every-day gurus out there. At least as far as I know. Friends I could turn to? Well, if there were a lot of married people out there having sex every day, it's certainly not dinner-party chatter in my 'hood. And it's not like I could consult my mother—I love her dearly, but she's not that kind of open, flower-child mom who is breathlessly waiting for me to ask her about her life “with” my dad. That would be enough to make her choke on her chardonnay. Women's magazines, another potential source for information, report that married people are having
way
more sex than single people anyway, but beyond that it's all about twenty ways to have your best orgasm ever. (Numbers on a magazine's cover are very important, have you noticed?)