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The swan obsession
Oh the raven with swan aspiration, an overly simplified natural versus unnatural fable that cannot easily be transferred to a significant pub based anecdote. However, I am one for a challenge so I am going to attempt to tell a little tale about fantasy and orgasms that really is built on a small confession made by Mike.
As you will know, Mike and Jenna have a child, a boy, now seven, who spends Tuesday afternoon with grandma. I am not sure that sitting in the pub ignoring each other is the best way to spend date night, maybe I will make a subtle suggestion of something else they might enjoy. It is difficult to tell if they are content with their situation, or if they are gradually draining the joy from their relationship and once the joy is gone the hope fades too. Jenna certainly has a lot of things she does, she is a busy woman. And Mike, he too does much, though perhaps he is not working hard enough to grasp opportunities when they are just beyond his reach. Perhaps it is easier for Jenna to concentrate on business, it is difficult to get that work-life balance correct. But as I have said before: that is another story.
This is a story about getting stuck in a rut in a whole different place: the bedroom. Their sex life survived the hiatus after childbirth. It survived the days of bed invasion, when it was easier to have their boy in the bed than struggle with sleeplessness. The thing, Mike declared one quiet evening not too long ago, the thing that pushed their sex life into the doldrums was repetition. He is not claiming any moral high ground, he added, he is not averse to repetition, a cheese sandwich is his lunch most days of the week. It was more a question of different expectations and, as it always goes, poor communication. He viewed sex as an adventure, but adventures are journeys moving through situations and stimulations which are new and exciting and, perhaps, leading to another trip to Ann Summers. This was not Jenna’s approach. She enjoyed the comforts of a cuddle, she enjoyed sharing a generous touch at the end of a stressful day.
And as I have said once already, the simple solution to this, and almost any other relationship issue, is clear, honest and kind communication.
But as happens so often, they did not talk about it and so their sexual encounters became fewer and less adventurous.
And less satisfying.
One sided solutions seldom work but it is how people approach relationship problems. Change ourselves, it is the only thing that we can change, without conversation and compromise, that is. Like a stereotypical man, Mike resorted to perusing pornographic websites which provided him with two solutions. Firstly, he would crack one off every now and again in the belief that it would lower his sex drive, and secondly, he would have a fantasy he could grab hold of should he need to perform an orgasm. Isn’t that a sorry state to be in: to view the conjugal as a duty and because it is viewed as a duty it is beset with performance anxieties.
And this is the point in my tale where I tie the tale to the fable. Here we have Mike playing the role of the raven bleaching his feathers to appear swan-like. He is washing his feelings of boredom or inadequacy in baths of online porn. All that is left in the fable is for the raven to die as he obsessively washes and washes until life is wrung away. Well, the conclusion of this tale lies in the small confession I mentioned at the beginning of the story. On one such dutiful conjugal encounter Mike was reaching for a fantasy to aid his orgasm when he found himself fantasising about impregnating Jenna. He was very graphic at this point: he imagined the sperm surfing out of his cock, riding the wave as it tunnelled through the fallopian and crashing against the egg, crashing, crashing until it penetrated, and with the thought of penetration he came. Not so bad, really, as fantasies go, and functional too. But afterwards, when he thought about it, he realised it was an angry fantasy. He was not wishing the joys of parenthood on Jenna, he was wishing for dominance over Jenna in being the sole decision maker of impregnation, and, of course, all the pain associated with pregnancy. When Mike realised his twisted resentment, he immediately vowed not to watch porn again, a vow I believe he has thus far kept.
Well, this may not have been the wallowing in online porn you may have been expecting, but I think it is something more sinister, the anger and misogyny that is insidious in online porn has invaded Mike's psyche, killing that bleaching obsessed raven swiftly and shockingly.
Do you think he will not watch online porn again? I fear there may be a sequel to the raven with the swan obsession.
