Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Sex Lives of the Old and Portly

Last night I was huddled over my laptop, working, while my husband sprawled nearby, reading. He closed his book, yawned, and mentioned that he’d run into a friend of ours earlier in the day. The friend had seemed unusually cheerful, Brian said. There was quite a spring in his step.
“It’s ‘cause he’s getting some,” I told him. “He’s got a new girlfriend.”
“He does?”
There was a brief pause during which I suppose we both imagined what such a relationship might entail for our very overweight, over-fortyish friend.
“So you think they’re doing it?” my husband wanted to know.
“I imagine so,” I said, stopping to push up my glasses. “And I really need to have a discussion with him, because I need to know how in the hell he took his clothes off in front of somebody new.”
“Why's that?”
“Because personally, I’m pretty well figuring that if something ever happens to you, I’m never having sex again.”
“Really? So you figure you’ll just ask him for some tips?”
“Yeah, I mean what’s the secret, you just go out and find somebody even fatter and worse-looking than you are?”
He started laughing. “I guess.”
“Then why would I want to have sex with somebody like that?” I screeched. “It’s like that thing Groucho Marx said about not wanting to join any club that would allow him to be a member. Anybody that’d have sex with me, I wouldn’t want.”
“Well, this really says a lot about your opinion of me,” remarked Brian.
“Doesn’t it? Of course,” I considered, “you and I declined together.”
“Hmm, we declined together,” he repeated. “Interesting.”
“We did,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I’d be way hotter than I am right now, except I was just trying to keep up with you in your declining process.”
“Wow,” said my husband. “Well, you're keeping right up, I have to tell you.”