You are a woman. A sexy woman. You are not a shapeless blob that shuffles around all day meeting needs like a need-meeting-robot. You are sexy. Really super-duper sexy.
All the children are asleep. They’ve had their snack, brushed their teeth, been read to, snuggled with, prayed for and kissed. It’s 10 o’clock and finally, all is quiet on the western front. It’s time to get your game face on. Try on your favorite lingerie. Look at yourself in the mirror, then dim the lights a little more. Perfect.
Decide you have time for a bath. He has a meeting tonight and won’t be home for another hour. Tiptoe to the bathroom and throw back the shower curtain. Pick up thirty-six dripping Barbies from the tub floor and line them up along the sides. Now that you can see the tub floor quite clearly, grab a scrub brush and some baking soda. Scrub until you feel like you can take a bath without feeling nauseated.
Turn on some sexy tunes. Lana del Rey is perfect for this. Place your iPhone on the back of the toilet, which is not sexy, but is both a) the perfect location for you to be able to reach it when Pandora loses its mind and harshes your vibe with Barry Manilow, and b) a safe distance from the splash zone.
Light some candles, flip the lights and slither in under the water. Futilely attempt to fully recline, realize you can’t, and settle for a half-reclined position with your knees bent. Stare, in dismay, at all the parts of you that aren’t covered by water.
Now that the mood is set, close your eyes, listen to Lana and indulge in one standard–issue fantasy. Imagine you are the headliner at a swanky, 1930’s night club and you’re singing this song to your guy. Picture the dress, the darkened room, your dashing husband: his fedora is tipped just right, and a wingtip shoe is lazily crossed over one knee. Is he smoking? Most likely it‘s safe since it’s just a fantasy, but you frown at him from behind your microphone anyway. Your lips are painted a come-and-get-me red, all the better for looking sultry and disapproving, and your hair is perfectly coiffed in pin curls.
In the bathtub, the parts of you that aren’t covered are starting to feel chilly. You miss two bars of your ballad (Lana graciously carries on without you) while rearranging yourself. You fold your legs criss-cross applesauce and find you are mostly submerged. In ten minutes, you won’t be able to feel your legs, but life is all about compromise.
Back at the nightclub, things are anything but chilly. In fact, you’re putting on quite the show. Everyone is captivated by you, especially your husband who is not yet your husband. He is serendipitously seated at the front, so you glance his way, oblige him with more eye contact than is seemly, then look away as if bored.
You laugh about how men will never understand 90% of intimacy for women is head game: if you don’t feel sexy, you can’t act sexy, and no threadbare lingerie can change it. Lose track of all the times you’ve tried to explain: to capture for him the bone weariness that naturally comes from taking care of children all day; from loving all of them more than yourself.
You’ve overdone it on the hot water and made an accidental sauna of your tiny bathroom. What seemed pleasantly warm and intimate only a few minutes ago is now stifling and claustrophobic. You scoot up to a seated position to get some air, and shriek like a twenty-year-old blond in a horror flick when you accidentally knock over a shampoo bottle full of icy, old bathwater directly onto your chest. Suddenly your sauna doesn’t seem so stifling.
Where were we? Oh, yes. Sexy.
Things are a bit on the tepid side back at the club. You’ve lost some of your gusto and they’re starting to notice. Your favorite spectator changes into a time traveler and starts fiddling with his iPhone.
Plastic dinosaurs that your sons had balanced, ever so carefully on the edges of the tub take turns toppling onto you. It’s Armageddon. The bath is revolting against you and pointy plastic dinosaurs prove to be worthy opponents when you’re naked. You give up, pull the plug out of the drain, and line all the dinosaurs and Barbies back along the side.
Getting your game face on is a whole lot harder than it used to be. It’s worth it though because he’s still your mysterious stranger in a nightclub, your Greg Brady and your quarterback of the football team. And even if you can’t seem to locate your inner bombshell these days, he seems to be able to see her just fine.
Kelly writes from her home in Mount Vernon, Ohio where she is wife to her college sweetheart and mother to four tiny humans. She is a former accountant, processed food eating champion, and bikini wearer. None of the previous is now possible. In addition to her love for writing, she also has a passion for gardening, eating, running off what she has eaten, and supporting those suffering through infant loss. Her essay, “Do No Harm” was awarded the Best Essay Prize by the literary magazine, Creative Nonfiction and appears in the Spring 2015 Memoir issue. You can find more of her work in the book, Three Minus One: Parents’ Stories of Love and Loss, and online at The Huffington Post, Literary Mama, and The Christian Science Monitor. Visit Kelly at www.whaleletters.com.
