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The
Beast with Two Backs PAGE
TWO: They call me jaded or immature when I talk about doing the humpty dance, knockin' boots, hiding the pickle (or in some unfortunate cases, the gherkin), riding the express train to O town, or any other number of colloquialisms. I would ask my husband to make love to me but I wouldn't be able to keep a straight face. (I also wouldn't want to find out what his interpretation of making love would be -- what if it involved Meatloaf softly playing "I Would Do Anything for Love -- But I Won't Do That" in the background?) I understand why teenage girls might be starry-eyed about what, at their age, is really just quick, unfinessed sex, but how can my female cohorts downshift from an intellectual debate on PETA (heroic organization or misdirected zealots?) to doling out unsolicited advice on making love that includes white zinfandel, ostrich feathers and a supposedly romantic position called "El Burro." My friend Shelly was a virgin until her 29th year. She had been steadfast in her quest, patiently waiting for the right man to make love to her and spent her abundant free time dreaming of her wedding day. I always chalked up her idealized image of marriage, love, and men to the fact that she worked as a marketing executive for Barbie and was literally looking for Ken. Considering that Ken's sexual preference is suspect at best, I assumed that her search would continue in vain forever, her Barbie Fun House growing dusty and unkempt. I knew her cockeyed optimism had waned when she told me that she thought Ken might be gay. This revelation coincided with a drunken one night stand in Vegas, which resulted in Shelly's lost virginity. I was both thrilled and disheartened when I found out that Shelly had finally given it up -- thrilled that she was now freely throwing around the term sex, disheartened that her Sin City encounter didn't live up to her 29 years of romantic dreaming. Fortunately though, she has been able to move past her impractical fantasies of making love and have some exceptionally fun sex with men who look nothing like Ken. Some women, of course, will always make love, and chances are you, like me, are related to one of them. Perhaps she is your melodramatic cousin who just returned from understudying Ophelia in the Reno, Nevada summer stock performance of Hamlet. Or she is your newly divorced aunt (or quelle horreur, mother) who is experiencing men for the first time since ending her 23-year marriage to "that asshole I gave the thinnest years of my life." These are the burgeoning soap opera queens, nurtured by one too many lonely viewings of All My Children, and an abiding love of Jackie Collins novels. The Dramatic Diva views sex as "passionate, soulful love-making," much as she proclaims the guy who cut her off on the freeway is "a hateful, demonic little man who will burn, burn, burn in hell for what he did." In short, these are the women you will never change. They are the women you love despite their histrionics. And while these women will never climb down from Mt. Love Making, they will break into fits of hysterical theatrics when, at the family reunion, you refer to sex as "the beast with two backs." At least some of my girlfriends are starting to acknowledge that it's hard to hold onto the idea of making love when you're on all fours trying to figure out why your date wants to know "who's your daddy." I still harbor hope for Mr. and Miss Abercrombie & Fitch. Perhaps one day, they will go their separate ways, and the ingénue who inadvertently dry-humped my husband will realize that it is all just sex. Once she has this epiphany, she will be free to have years of sometimes meaningful, but always fun, sex. I hope she has sex with someone whom she loves deeply and who shows her love both in and out of their bedroom, even if the word "love" only comes up while they are clothed. I hope she fulfills her sense of adventure by having sex in exotic locales all over the world -- anywhere but my husband's leg. I have lost all hope for my sister. She still MLs, although she has told me that she no longer abbreviates it in her diary. I try to believe her when she calls it making love -- I honestly want to believe her. There is a large part of me that wants to be just like my big sister, naïve enough to believe each time I give it up to my hubby the earth will move, the heavens will part and Fabio will appear, dressed as a Greek Adonis, ready to pour me a glass of white Zin, tickle me with feathers and ride me, his faithful burro, into the sunset. So occasionally I attempt to make love to my husband. We tried it last night, in fact, and ended up giggling so much that we just went back to our good ol' slap and tickle. After calling out to the good Lord above, we rolled over, spooned each other, and flipped on The Simpsons.
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I
can excuse ML with teenage girls; perhaps it truly is the
vernacular for the young and in-heat, but I have a hard time accepting
that some of my otherwise worldly friends continue to make love
to their partners, insisting, just like the 15-year-old Miss Fitch,
that it is different from sex. These women are the idealistic dreamers,
the hopeless romantics. Much like the newly christened vegan peddling
her "cruelty free" tofurkey dogs to the carnivorous partygoers
at my 4th of July barbecue, these women possess neither a skeptical
nor practical bone in their bodies. 
