8:00 A.M.
PETE STANDS BY THE WINDOW.
“Wait for it; wait for it,” he says, watching the kids at the bus stop.
I hover tensely in the doorway.
“Aaaaaaand—they’re on the bus!” he says. Still watching the departing bus, he takes his trousers off. It’s on.
With the children gone, it’s time to start the day with a vital part of our to-do list: the Maintenance Shag.
My friend Sali came up with the concept of the Maintenance Shag—it’s the shag middle-aged people have to schedule because they’re so busy, and have such small children, that if it wasn’t written on the calendar using a special, childproof code (ours is “wocka wocka wocka!” in tribute to Fozzie Bear), it might not happen for months, possibly years. One is still free, of course, to have spontaneous, carefree sex as and when one wishes, but the Maintenance Shag is there just to keep the wheels of commerce oiled, as it were. I think every person in a long-term relationship knows the feeling when it’s been so long since you’ve done it that the whole concept seems like some madly improbable dream you once had—like being Barack Obama, or suddenly flying, or being Barack Obama and flying.
As we’re both freelancers, we can schedule the Maintenance Shag for Fridays at 8 a.m.—as soon as the kids have left for school. We have learned to wait until we have visual confirmation that they’re actually on the bus after the Incident of 2009, wherein someone returning for their net ball kit heard the screamed injunction, “DON’T COME IN THE KITCHEN—WE’RE TRYING TO CATCH A RAT!,” and possibly had their sex education put back five years.
I run upstairs, to “prepare” myself. In the early days of our courtship, my “preparation” would have included washing, leg shaving, toothbrushing, flossing, the application of hold-up stockings, and the lighting of mood-enhancing candles. We might start with an hour of fruity chat, and then gradually slide into a long, languorous sheet-tangling hump lasting many, many hours—with seconds, and then pudding for all.
Fifteen years later, and my preparation entails swilling a blob of Colgate around my mouth, then spitting it out, taking off my pajamas, and fluffing up my pubes so they look a bit less like an old coir doormat, and a bit more like, well, a new coir doormat. I then shout, “COME ON, SEXY—LET’S DO IT! BEFORE THE WINDOW CLEANER COMES!”
Pete runs up the stairs, trouserless, taking off his T-shirt, and stands by the bed.
“So—the delicate dance of seduction begins,” he says.
IN A MARRIAGE, it’s vital to keep the sexual spark going. Every source agrees on this—from Good Housekeeping to an overly frank Uber driver I had once. It acts as a memory bridge to why you got together in the first place—two giddy, young people who once fell in love. For, in almost every respect, those two people will have now disappeared, and what was once forged by the power of your white-hot sexual attraction, now continues on the basis of your ability to remind each other to do vital tasks (“Have you swabbed the cat’s stitches?”) in the least accusatory way possible.
Segueing into this problem is the way female sexuality works. Although there will always be notable exceptions (e.g., The Legendary Spontaneous Pret A Manger Toilet Shag of 2007) by and large, women take a bit longer to get in the mood for sex than men. We have to establish a bit of a vibe, get some kind of scenario going—which is difficult to weave into the everyday schedule of bullshit.
There are ways to do it, of course. Sending each other erotic texts, DMs, or emails during the day is highly recommended by sex therapists. “Spend all day turning up the heat on your libido, until you can’t wait to rip each other’s clothes off,” they say.
That’s because sex therapists love recommending absolutely insane balls—for who of us, in the modern age, does not have a text or email account that duplicates itself to another, forgotten, device? Sending a saucy mid-afternoon belfie can all too easily lead to a Dora the Explorer–seeking child picking up an iPad, asking, “Mommy—why did you send Daddy a picture of two hams pressed together?”
And if photos are difficult, words are harder. So much harder. I am a professional writer who discusses the en-rude-inating aspects of life more than most; but, time and time again, when writing—whether in the pages of The Times, or in a quick pre-pumping text to my husband—I find that when I try to describe something I am thinking, feeling, or wanting, sexually, that I tumble into a void. A silence. I reach out for the word, or phrase—and there is nothing there. Female sexuality has a stunted, almost empty, lexicon.
Let us take, for instance, sexual arousal. Enhornening. The key aspects of female sexual arousal are (1) swelling of the vulva and (2) the production of lubrication. The mirroring aspects in male sexual arousal are (1) the swelling of the penis and (2) ejaculation. OH MY GOD LOOK AT HOW MANY RUDE WORDS THERE ARE IN THOSE TWO SENTENCES.
Consider, for a moment, the ripe lexicon that exists for these male phenomena—a stroll through the vibrant linguistic joy of human inventiveness. Boner, lob-on, schwing, “Kong has awoken,” tumescence, morning glory, hard-on, bonk-on.
Words for ejaculate, meanwhile, triumphantly splatter all over the face of language: spunk, baby gravy, man custard, cum, spaff. You could spend all day recalling synonyms for all the stiffies, and the jizz.
By way of contrast, let us turn to the ladies. How do we talk about getting sexually aroused? What words or phrases do we have? There’s “wide-on”—“Looking at this picture of the young Beastie Boys is giving me a wide-on”—but I’m not sure I’m down with a synonym that makes me sound like I’ve got a massive, gaping fanny. I don’t want something that conjures images of a double garage door swinging open, revealing an admirable storage facility. It doesn’t sound like something to take pride in—the way “raging hard-on” does. Vaginal capaciousness is only a boasting matter if you’re in a room full of women all in the final stages of birth, and you can shout out “Guys, turns out, my vadge is so roomy! I don’t want to boast, but I think I’ve got the biggest vadge here! Fuck you all! This kid’s barely touching the sides! This is gonna be a cinch! I’m gonna sneeze it out!” And they all jealously applaud you.
But in every other situation, we’re supposed to pretend our fannies are so sprightly and tight that we regularly cut off the circulation in our gynecologist’s hands. It’s supposed to be like a mousetrap down there. A clenched fist of sex-joy. “I can’t get the lid off this jam jar! Hang on—let me stick it up my wedge. Plenty of traction up there. It’s grippy!”
So, “wide-on”—no. I don’t feel like that’s empowering me. It doesn’t make me swagger. Wide-on . . . doesn’t give me a wide-on. I don’t feel like I’m conjuring up an unrefusable offer if I text “I am so WIDE right now” to my beloved.
What else do we have? I’ve got a friend who says, “He makes my fanny fizzy”—which vividly describes the disruption in one’s pants one can experience when, e.g., watching the bit in Blade Runner when Harrison Ford puts his finger in his mouth. “Fanny flutters” is another—the phrase coined in 2019’s Love Island by the unashamedly vadge-touting contestant Maura Higgins, and which so delightfully describes that multistarburst explosion a lady experiences when watching Mark Ruffalo e.g., put on a cardigan, whilst looking delightfully rumpled.
“That butters my crumpet” has a pleasing air—one imagines this is the term Miss Marple would use, if she ever met a retired colonel with a twinkle in his eye. And I have a fondness for “lady boner”—why not borrow the words of men? We borrow their shirts and socks. I’m happy to borrow a couple of their sexy words, too.
But it’s not a long-term solution. We need to have dozens of words of our own—invented by us, used by us, to describe us.
Over the years, I’ve had to go off-road in relaying my lady horniness to either (a) friends, during a conversation about someone hot, or (b) to my lovers, so they might know they need to turn off a BBC4 documentary on Talking Heads right now, as they are needed in my basement.
“Call coming through on line Phwoaaaargh,” has been useful; as has, for lovers of the right generation, “Bagpuss is waking up.” I also like “Come into my secret volcano base (by which I mean my vagina).”
Sometimes, I just cut to the chase—I point to my genitals, scream, and say, “Something’s happening! Quick! Help me! With sex!”
But it continues to be a difficult area. Linguistically, I mean. My actual “area” is very straight-forward. It operates on a strict “one in, one out” policy, and its opening times are 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. After that, it ignores all rings on the doorbell, relaxes with a slim volume of improving poetry, lights off by 11 p.m.
HOWEVER, THE LEXICON of female arousal is bountiful compared to the dictionary of female lubrication. Because there are no other words for vaginal lubrication save “vaginal lubrication”—which is simply half a sentence describing it, rather than a handy word we could all use. I am willing to bet no woman on Earth has ever said, erotically, “Feel my bounteous vaginal lubrication,” whilst swanning around in a negligee, feeling ace. I just don’t think that’s ever happened. It couldn’t. It’s scientifically impossible.
“I’m so wet,” is the nearest we get—but it does carry with it the faint inference you might simply have sat on something damp; or, indeed, done a little wee. Also, whilst men saying “I am so hard” is a powerful, positive thing—outside the bedroom, “He’s a hard man” is said admiringly—when someone outside the bedroom is described as “wet,” we are usually referring to either Ross from Friends in “Pathetic Mode” or a Conservative MP from the 1980s, opposed to Margaret Thatcher’s more radical policies. If your vadge has just become dry as a desert whilst reading that last sentence, you are not alone. “Wet” makes me sandy.
As for “moist”—well, in 2017, it was voted the most hated word in the world. There are just two colloquial descriptors for vaginal lubrication, and half of them have been voted the most hated word in the world. That is a massive kick in the vadge—but, also, understandable, as “moist” just isn’t a sexy word. If I think of a “moist vulva”—and I am obviously biting down on a wooden spoon in mortification at this phrase—it conjures up an image of, frankly, mildew. Mildew on a shower curtain. Or else, a vadge that’s just a bit sweaty—like a ham, in Saran wrap, in the fridge. Consequently, a coital event in which either participant uses the word “moist” is a guaranteed disaster. “Moist” is a boner-killing, vadge-closing spell. Within just ten minutes of it being uttered, a couple will find themselves sitting on the edge of the bed, half-dressed, fuckless, and resignedly ordering an Uber. The word moist is a borderline hate crime against the be-vulva’d. “Moist” is the end of all joy.
So, with “wet” and “moist” both out of play, yet again, the horny modern woman has had to embrace the same DIY philosophy as the punk movement, and simply create what she needs, using attitude and, if necessary, spit. If you, or your lover, were raised as Catholics, referring to the moistures of lasciviousness as “The Virgin Mary’s Guilty Tears” might lend a forbidden frisson. Or, if one of you is into mechanics, you could call it your “saucy WD-40.” Fans of The Great British Bake Off could lob in a “This is really greasing my muffin tin,” and if you’re of either a meteorological bent, or a fan of the adult rock group Toto, you could refer to “The rains down in Africa,” whilst playing a punchy little synth stab.
In the years to come, I find things have changed immeasurably. Listening to my now-teenage daughters talking with their friends about who they fancy, it’s clear this is a generation that has created a new vocabulary of female sexuality. Looking at a picture of a party where the male attendees are lackluster, one will sigh, “Man, my eyes have malnutrition. There are no nutrients in that room.” On spotting a single, fetching fellow, another will suddenly yelp, “Oh my God, look at him! I am filling a paddling pool here. Seriously—I can’t walk. I’m going to slip.” And they talk of “thirst” constantly—Bim Adewunmi and Nichole Perkins of the podcast Thirst Aid Kit do sterling work in promoting the tastes of “thirst buckets” and “heaux” in what really turns them on: Timothée Chalamet’s eyelashes, Idris Elba’s arms, Spiderman kissing Mary Jane upside down in the rain, Brad Pitt entering all our lives in Thelma & Louise, and clips of a love-wracked Alan Rickman moaning, “Give me an occupation, or I shall go mad.” As the years go on, the lexicon for female horniness and vulval humidity swells bounteously. To slightly paraphrase Martin Luther King, the arc of the moral universe is long—but does bend toward fruitiness.
HOWEVER, THAT IS of no use to us right now, where, without a ready cache of “James McAvoy as Mr. Tumnus” GIFs, I am finding it hard to concentrate.
I stroke Pete’s face, lovingly—for it’s such a lovely face! What a lovely husband! So perfect—except . . . there’s a blackhead on the side of his nose. Man, it’s a corker.
“Hang on. I’m just gonna get this . . .” I say, going in to squeeze it, whilst squinting. He lies there, patient and noble—like Aslan on the Stone Table, as the White Witch cuts off his mane. We’ve been here before. He knows better than to protest.
“We could . . . leave it for now, and have sex?” he says, reasonably, after a minute, wincing in silent pain. He doesn’t understand I’m grooming him – like monkeys do. This is a vital part of my matng ritual. I can’t have sex with an imperfect nose!
“The water pressure in the bathroom’s really low—I think we might need to bleed the radiators,” I say, chattily, working my thumbnail under the blemish. “And I noticed some moss on the outside of the house, which suggests the gutter might be leaking? Also, the garden center’s doing a flash sale on water butts. Could be good to get one? The two hundred and twenty liter one is only fifty pounds. I like big butts, and I cannot lie.”
Very patiently, Pete takes my hand and says, “Your butt-talk is arousing to me. Shall we—have sex?”
“Yes! Yes! Sorry!” I say, starting to climb on top of him. Then: “Ugh! ARGH! Fuck! Soz—my hip’s playing up a bit. The leg . . . keeps coming . . . out of the socket . . .”
I roll off him and lie next to him, banging the top of my thigh.
“It’ll go back in a minute,” I say, still thumping it. “It’s my fault. I know I should do yoga, and probably some weight lifting—that’s the new thing, isn’t it?—but there’s never time. Once I’ve finished helping Lizzie with this homework project on China, I could start doing yoga in the evening. Oh FUCK! China! Did you get the empty cardboard boxes—to make the Great Wall?”
Pete sighs. We both look at the clock. It’s now 8:27 a.m. Sexy time is slipping away.
“Sorry! I’m going to concentrate now! I’m totally ready to have sex now!”
I stop banging my thigh. I think sexy thoughts. Monkeys on Attenborough. Harrison Ford, frolicking naked in a meadow of long grass. Long grass? Oh! I just remembered! I look at Pete.
“And the lawn mower’s broken!”
THE PROBLEM WITH women living with a permanent to-do list in their head is that . . . it takes a lot to turn it off and commence Cock O’Clock.
Over the years, I’ve been able to compile a list of all the tricks and techniques repeatedly recommended to those in long-term relationships; and I will now review their efficacy and practicality here, thus:
Perhaps it’s 1898, and you are the proprietor of a cake shop, whilst your husband is the village doctor, come to cure you of “hysteria in your pants.” Or maybe he’s a sensitive sailor on shore leave, and you’re the strumpet with a heart of gold, about to give him the time of his life. Who does not want to take part in a sexual story of their own writing? How could this go wrong?
Cons: In practice, unless you happen to be married to one of Britain’s great character actors—Paddy Considine, say, or Jared Harris—suggesting role-play is likely to be an agony you will never forget. Your average forty-five-year-old’s ability to convincingly play, without rehearsal or script, a “hot pirate” is likely to be quite low.
The role you will end up playing, then, after half an hour of self-conscious Scottish accents and hat-wearing, is that of a frustrated Hollywood director, saying, “Let me tell you a bit about Captain Sexington’s backstory. I think it would help give you more range,” whilst your husband sadly detumesces, and daydreams about becoming a member of Equity, so he can make a complaint about hostile working conditions.
Role-play really puts the “amateur” into “amateur dramatics.” If you find it embarrassing watching the school’s sixth-form play—they forget their lines! They look so mortified!—then sexual role-play is just as mortifying, but with the added horror of everyone involved being naked. It’s essentially an anxiety dream, guest-starring a hopeful penis. And that penis will be disappointed.
Cons: Lengthy. Very difficult for asthmatics. Also: A great deal of deep breathing is apt to inadvertently come out sounding like . . . a tetchy sigh.
Cons: When it comes down to it, these are now just more bloody possessions that need dusting, and batteries.
Cons: Until you realize how badly soundproofed your house is, and hear a child outside your door, going, “Mommy—why do you keep . . . clapping?”
Cons: For someone of my age, anal feels a bit . . . I want to say nineties? I associate it with alcoholic lemonade, Wayne’s World, and AllSaints. Things that everyone was into then, but that would seem a bit . . . weird if you were still into them now.
As the years have gone by, I have come to regard anal a bit like doing a wheelie. Really, it’s a pastime for your teens and early twenties—when you have nothing to lose and are laissez-faire about the potential for having an accident and really hurting your arse.
Then you get a bit older, and realize it’s just much more comfortable and efficient to pop both wheels down and ride the bike properly instead. Not least because, that way, stuff doesn’t fall out of your basket.
And yes, that is a metaphor—for, by the very nature of the beast, it is impossible to do anal without, at some point, thinking about, worrying about, or indeed encountering, “something falling out of your basket,” i.e., a poo. Anal sex is, I’m afraid, an unavoidably poo-centric activity. This is because the mechanics could be summed up by changing a few key lyrics from a Bob Dylan song, so that it isn’t “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” but “Knockin’ on the Place Where All the Poo Is.”
Given this, I find it generally takes the enthusiasm and sheer brio of a younger woman to ignore the undeniable poo problem that comes with anal sex, and just carry on regardless. In a way, you still have to be an incorrigible romantic to be into anal. You have to be able to be really carried away by the moment. “Up the bum” is strictly for romance novels.
There are ways, of course, to minimize the poo problem—you can time your meals carefully, and/or have an enema, to make sure the way is clear—but, really, once you reach this stage, you are less “someone with a bumhole,” and more “someone who is basically a full-time zookeeper for their bumhole’s mad schedule of digestion and sex,” and it can be hard to juggle the care of such a high-maintenance anus alongside children, work, and Poldark. Absently eat a hot cross bun at 3 p.m. on a sex day, and suddenly you’ve either got to pop a hose up your bum or cancel the whole shebang. Hole shebang. It all starts to become a bit . . . adminy. This is why, now, I have, essentially, put a sign on my bum that says “THANK YOU TO ALL OUR FAITHFUL CUSTOMERS OVER THE YEARS—BUT MY ARSE iS NOW CLOSED.”
In recent years, I’ve noticed a reassuring trend for eschewing these more effortful and performative elements of sex—the post-Fifty Shades of Grey torture rooms and all-night anal discos—in favor of celebrating chilled, reliable vanilla sex, instead. In Broad City, the category of pornography Ilana loves the most is “Men with Average-Sized Penises.” This celebration of normal, everyday sex gives me joy. It also, let’s face it, makes sex more likely. In your life, the majority of your sexings will be Basic Shags with Average Penises. Learn to love that and, as Mary Poppins says, “SNAP! The job’s a game!”
Hey, look—don’t get me wrong. I am totally supportive of everyone’s kinks. I am pro all the banging. The freakier, the better man. You do you—and everyone else you want to do, too.
But I do feel an ultimate loyalty to the Classic Shag—perhaps because it has become so unfashionable, in the pornographic age. I feel I need to stand up for its old-fashioned yet quintessential charm—possibly by getting the National Trust involved—so that future generations can experience the joy of having some sex, in bed, mainly vadge-based, with a bit of mouth and hand stuff to get things going. I worry that women feel pressurized to become some manner of ever-innovative Sexual Extremes Machines—a cross between a Fleshlight, a courtesan, and Barbarella—in order to not become sexually passé. Ladies—a Classic Shag will never be passé. You know what? If your man is tired of vadge, he is tired of life.
In order to apply this couple to your lackluster sex life, simply visit them for the weekend, or book a cottage holiday in Dorset together. Within twenty minutes of watching their ill-concealed loathing of each other activate over “the best way to light a barbecue,” or “the best route to get to Bridport,” your previously humdrum partner will suddenly look like a glowing, joyous, love-infused sex god, and you’ll be stroking their knackers under the table and winking, before running off to find a downstairs toilet you can have an urgent, life-affirming, filthy shag in, almost certainly ending in a simultaneous orgasmic cry of “Thank GOD we’re not them!”
AND OF COURSE, no matter how fruity and experimental you are, practical things can still get in the way of your sex life. Dog owners, for instance, will often find that their beloved pet has some kind of sixth sense—a sexth sense, perhaps—allowing them to know when you are attempting some manner of Trouser Time. Many breeds of dog seem to respond to human sexual arousal by jumping on the bed and trying to sit on someone’s head whilst looking confused, or by just barking dementedly and endlessly, as if an erect penis were by way of a tiny burglar who’s just broken into your house.
This often exposes a rift in the marriage—with one partner ejecting the dog from the room and locking the door, in order to continue the sex; whilst the other, more easily manipulated partner says things like, “Oh, it’s making sad noises!” and “It might get lonely!,” as if you were some kind of inhumane Dog Rejector. Our family has what is now called “The Cockblockapoo,” but I know others who have “No Sausage Dogs.”
AS YOU CAN see, over twenty years of marriage, we have kept things joyful, experimental, and fruity. We have experienced highs, and lows. We are still, against the odds, having some Lovely Shags.
At exactly 9 a.m., Pete puts his trousers back on as I lie on the bed, giving him the thumbs-up.
“Thanks for the sex,” I say.
“Well, thank you,” he replies, buttoning up his cardigan.
“I would call that an absolutely textbook ‘keeping things going’ shag,” I continue. We both sigh.
“How long do you reckon it is until the combination of work and children eases up, and we’ll be able to bugger off for a dirty weekend in Venice—packing nothing but a small mother-of-pearl vial of MDMA powder and white, silk nightie?” I ask.
Pete calculates, on his fingers. “I think we could start safely planning that in . . . another ten years?”
He puts his shoes on. I get up and make the bed. We kiss for a minute—a sweet, half satisfied, half yearning thing—then pat each other reassuringly, and go about our days, post-shag. Less than a decade to go before we have dangerously amazing sex again! Not long now!