It’s summer in New York City, and my husband K. and I have just checked in to the Library Hotel at 41st and Madison. We’re on the seventh floor — Geography & History — in the Asian History room. Above the bed are black-and-white photos of Mao and Hirohito. City workers are ripping up the sidewalk below, and across the street, behind a row of windows, dozens of office workers sit in tiny cubicles, in front of big computers, doing who knows what.
K. hasn’t seen me naked in more than a month. I’ve been doing a one-semester visiting writer stint at a Midwestern university, and he’s been back home in the Bay Area. Meanwhile, I’ve been packing on the pounds. I have two excuses for this: one, I’ve been in Ohio, where there’s nothing to do but eat, and two, well, that is a bit more complicated.
About three weeks ago I called K. at 6 in the morning Pacific time with the news. I’d just peed on a plastic strip, and the results had been a bit shocking: two pink lines.
When I told K. the news, he said, “Wow.”
I said, “Is that all you have to say?”
He said, “I’m thinking about it.”
We decided to meet in New York to celebrate. Though neither of us admitted it, I think we were also coming together to mourn the end of romance. People say sex tapers off after the vows are exchanged. Three and a half years into my marriage, I beg to differ. But they also say that sex pretty much ends after the first child is born, at least for a year or two, and that, I fear, may be an accurate appraisal. I can’t imagine anyone who’s old enough to form an intelligent thought coming anywhere near my nipples while I’m breast-feeding.
But I digress. So here we are in the Library Hotel, looking forward to visiting our old haunts — Rain on the Upper West Side, the Ziegfeld theater, John’s Pizza in the West Village. K. goes to brush his teeth while I peruse the books arranged neatly on the bedside tables. The titles don’t exactly get me hot: “When the Allies Entered Peking,” “The March to Lhasa,” “A Leaf in the Bitter Wind: A Memoir.” We could have asked for the erotica room, I suppose, but that would have seemed so obvious.
“Let’s get this over with,” I say, when K. comes back into the room.
Lest you find me unromantic, I’m not referring to the sex itself, but to the unveiling of the stomach. For my entire adult life I have had a 24-inch waist. Now, only two and a half months into the pregnancy, I’m sporting a definite pot belly. I lift my shirt, a bit ashamed to reveal that my jeans are held together with a safety pin at the top, because I can no longer button them. K. grins and pokes my belly. “Hello, fatty.”
“Watch it. You’re the one who got me this way.”
“I should hope so.”
“Are my boobs bigger?” I ask, lifting my shirt higher.
He cups them with his hands, makes a serious face, as if he’s really deliberating. “Yes,” he says finally. “Your boobs are definitely bigger.”
“Let’s take a nap.”
“Splendid idea.”
Soon we’re under the covers, K. in his boxers, me in my — well, I used to call them undies, but that is far too dainty a term for what a woman wears when she is pregnant. I am in my underwear. “Let’s make out,” I say.
“OK.”
The construction workers are drilling on the street, a round-faced Mao is glaring down at us from a photo above the bed, we are kissing and engaging in what the health instructor used to call heavy petting and all of a sudden something happens. This something goes on for about 27 blissful seconds.
“Wow,” K. says. “Was that –”
“Yes.”
“But we haven’t even –”
“I know.”
“Can we still –”
“Of course.”
To be honest, I’ve never been a big fan of the multiple orgasm. Once I’m finished, I’m finished, and I’m ready to move on. How much pleasure can one girl take? This, at least, has always been my philosophy. But not today. Today I’m ready for more. “Get out of these,” I say, fumbling with K.’s boxers. He happily complies.
We have just gotten into position when it occurs to me that this would be a good time to consult the pregnant woman’s bible, “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.”
“Wait,” I say, climbing out of bed.
“What are you doing?”
I unzip the outside pocket of my messenger bag. “Pregnant sex is different, you know. There are rules.”
I bring the book back to bed, check the index under sex, positions for, turn to Page 238, and read aloud. “Side-lying positions are often most comfortable … Ditto woman on top … Rear entry can work well, too.”
“Interesting,” K. says. “Which position would you prefer?”
I check my watch. “The movie doesn’t start until 7:30. Why don’t we try all of them?”
It isn’t necessary here to go into details. Suffice it to say that we do, indeed, try every one of the recommended positions, and every one leads to orgasm. I’m not talking mini-orgasms. Each one is full and lengthy, shaking me to my very bones. By the time we’re finished I feel warm and fluid, as if my entire body has melted into the sheets. K. is very patient about the entire thing, although he does seem a bit stunned and exhausted.
“OK,” I say, once we’ve moved on to position three and I have had my multiple fun, “your turn.”
Afterward, we lie panting in the big white bed. Outside our window, New York goes about its business, unaware of the phenomenal sex that has just occurred on the seventh floor of the Library Hotel.
“Do you think that had something to do with the prenatal vitamins?” K. asks after we’ve both caught our breath, “or are you just happy to see me?”
“There must be a scientific explanation.”
I consult the book again — sex, interest in. I flip to Page 234, to the subhead “The Engorgement of Genitals.” “It says here that ‘increased blood flow to the pelvic area, caused by hormonal changes of pregnancy, can heighten sexual response in some women.’”
“And we’ve got how long to go?”
“Seven months.”
“Seven,” he repeats, a bit sheepishly.
I can’t read his tone. Is that excitement I hear, or terror?
That night, we catch a movie at the Ziegfeld. It’s “The Alamo,” starring Billy Bob Thornton. It’s an abominable movie with no plot or characterization, and very little acting, but there is at least one amusing moment when Billy Bob postpones a bloody attack by standing on the fortress wall and playing the fiddle for the enemy. During the movie, my mind wanders, as it so often does these days.
I begin to think about pregnancy sex, and to wonder why no one ever told me how amazing it could be. Is this a secret women keep because it is too dangerous for public knowledge? Do they fear that otherwise-intelligent, career-minded young ladies would be rushing headlong into pregnancy if they knew the truth? Or is the deafening silence on this issue motivated by more selfish reasons? Is it possible that women are simply stingy with the Multiple O?
I am here to break the silence, to shout it to the world. Pregnancy sex makes any other sex you’ve ever had seem like a trip to the dentist. Pregnancy sex is enough to make a nymphomaniac blush. You won’t need any fancy props, no lacy lingerie or mood music. Just you and a partner in the sack, preferably the one who got you pregnant in the first place.
Another bit of wisdom: enjoy it while it lasts, because every pleasure has its price. Once your 40 weeks of prenatal lust have passed and you have seven pounds of baby flesh clutching at your breast, it may be a very, very long time before your next trip to the magical land of O.
It’s December now, and the Christmas tree industry’s booming, and I just can’t get my mind around shopping and party hopping, Johnny Mathis and candy canes and marshmallows by the fire. This time of year, I can’t seem to think about anything but that most spectacular of species, the Christmas Tree Boy — that erotic masterpiece, with his athletic swagger, his quick grin, thumbs hooked through his belt loops as he guides customers through the mysteries of Christmas tree buying.
For one blissful month, I see these tall firm boys everywhere — in dreary parking lots underneath optimistically striped tents, on sweetly scented tree farms that sidle up to two-lane roads north of the city. I even see them slouching curbside at the big discount chain stores. Truth be told, I could probably do without the tree, which is only going to shed and die, but as for the Christmas Tree Boys — there’d be no Christmas without them.
Where do they come from, these strapping young men with their tight blue jeans, their big hands that smell of evergreen, their scuffed boots and tattered belts, their tousled hair sprinkled with pine straw? You can have your Nautilus men, your gym boys with their bubbling biceps and straining quads; in a test of strength and general stuff, I’ll put my money on the Christmas Tree Boys, who make up for what they lack in bulk with their style and sex appeal.
Sadly, the older I get, the more forbidden they seem. They’re so young, these holiday lumberjacks — just boys, really, their faces still flushed from the stress of final exams. I see them and think of picket fences; surely sweet mothers await them with batches of gingerbread cookies, gallons of virgin eggnog. I think of their girlfriends too, who must be blond young things in ribbons and sweater sets. These boys, my lord, they seem to be of another century.
I remember my very first erotic encounter with a Christmas Tree Boy. It was on the Gulf Coast, a balmy winter in my 14th year. I’d driven to the outskirts of Mobile, Ala., with my parents and two sisters, and we’d just stepped out of the big yellow Galaxy 500 when I saw him. He was wearing a blue T-shirt with “Panthers” emblazoned across the chest, an old pair of form-fitting Levi’s, and Converse low-tops with holes rubbed in the fabric. While my mother set out with my two sisters in search of the biggest tree and my father headed for the shabby discount ones huddled near the pump house, lumberjack boy sidled up to me, ran a hand through his thick black hair, and said, “Come on, I’ll show you our prime stock.”
Together we traipsed to the back 40. He had this Swiss Army Knife that he kept thwacking open and closed against his palm as he walked. At one point he drew blood — just the tiniest trickle, but it was blood all right — and as he brought his hand to his mouth and sucked at the fresh wound, I thought I’d be happy to give up telephone, TV and all my Madonna albums for five minutes alone with him. As we walked he asked me where I went to school, and what grade I was in, and if I had a boyfriend.
By the time we got to last year’s trees — the ones they’d never cut and that had grown too tall and wild to be smuggled into anyone’s home — both of us knew what we were after. He pulled me behind a Douglas fir and crushed his mouth against mine, and he’d already gotten my bra unhooked and slid one hand underneath the waistband of my jeans when I heard my mother calling my name. I scribbled my phone number on his forearm; he never called. To this day, I can’t trim a tree without thinking of that boy’s calloused fingers circling my nipples, his hand fumbling frantically with my button-fly.
Fifteen years after that first encounter, I found myself shopping for a tree one frigid December night in New York. It was a week before Christmas, and the snow had turned to ice. I didn’t have a car, so a trip to a tree farm was out. Instead, I walked to the dirty neighborhood grocery store, Gristede’s, where a ragtag band of jolly youths had set up shop by the curb. The kids were living in an old white van and selling scrawny trees on the sidewalk. The haphazard nature of their operation and the poor health of their trees did nothing to diminish the appeal of the Christmas Tree Boys.
It was a guy named Sven who sold me a little number not 2 feet tall that was nailed to a piece of plywood. As he wrapped the tree in newspaper, Sven winked at me and said, “So you won’t hurt your hands on the needles, love.” He had a slight and endearing accent — Swedish, maybe, or possibly Finnish — and his sweater was slightly off: too bright, too small, the kind of sweater no self-respecting New York City guy would ever wear. It occurred to me that perhaps, in New York, there weren’t enough Christmas Tree Boys to go around, and so extras were imported each year from the small cold villages of Europe, where this type of boy surely exists in great number. I paid Sven 40 bucks (this was, after all, New York) and shook his big warm hand. That night I sat alone by my Charlie Brown tree and drank shot after shot of whiskey while visions of Christmas Tree Boys danced in my head.
I know for certain that I am not alone. What red-blooded American girl has not shuddered with delight at the sight of one of these woodsy, wondrous boys kneeling before the very tree she has chosen, sawing right through its hard brown heart to deliver that poor tree, its days now numbered, to her waiting trunk? Or, upon choosing a pre-cut tree from the lot, what otherwise faithful wife has not watched the boy sliding the tree through the bailing hoop and wished for a moment that she could be the tree, supine, submitting to his capable hands? Oh, one cannot help but think, to be tied up in just this way by him!
Unfortunately, the inevitable always happens: Christmas Eve comes, and the boys pack up their saws and gloves and Swiss Army Knives, their ropes and bailing wire. They climb into their trucks and drive away, a sweet scent of pine and wood chips lingering. And then there’s the anticlimax of Christmas morning, a tree decked out in finery but devoid of any genuine sex appeal. That big green thing that once came shuddering and rustling from the brawny hands of some miraculous Christmas Tree Boy is nothing, on Christmas morning, but a gaudily glittering ornament. It is sad and somehow fitting that the holidays should end this way, with a tugging melancholy, followed by that tingly feeling in the gut and elsewhere — a feeling that comes from knowing that, like Santa Claus and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” like the Macy’s Day Sale and roasted chestnuts, the Christmas Tree Boys will be back next year. And while I’ll be one year older, they’ll be just the same as they always have been: a little too young, a little too good-looking, a little too sexy for a family holiday.
Once, on LaVista Boulevard in Atlanta, a guy I’d never seen before slammed his car into mine. The accident happened only a few hundred yards from my house, so we pulled our cars into my driveway and went inside to call the police.
We were standing in the kitchen, the spiral phone cord stretched between us, when one of the spaghetti straps on my sundress snapped. He reached up, plucked the two broken ends of the strap delicately from my shoulders, and slowly tied them together in a bow. I was amazed by the gentle precision of his hands, following so quickly the clumsiness with which he had crashed into my car. I hung up the phone and we walked to a café, where we drank fresh-squeezed lemonade and considered the odds of finding each other like that. Later that night I found myself in a small rowboat on a lake in Macon, Ga. The guy who had crashed into my car was handling the oars, and I couldn’t help but wonder how he might handle me. We floated for most of the night, then spent three months together. My car never entirely recovered.
My confession, then: I have gone to bed with men, in part, for the beauty or agility or originality of their hands. Some women fall for the curve of a thigh, the slope of a shoulder, the broad welcoming plane of a chest. I fall, instead, for hands. There is an erotic expressiveness in hands that cannot be found in any other part of the body. A hand in slow motion, a hand lifted to push the hair from someone’s eyes, a hand doing something it does naturally and well — this is, for me, the apex of desire.
In a poorly lit apartment above a Mexican restaurant in a small Georgia town, a girl named Kate reached down and tied my shoelaces. We were sitting on her mattress, which lay on the floor and took up most of the room. She had convinced me to try on her Doc Martens, and I’d agreed, on the condition that she take a walk around the apartment in my strappy yellow sandals. As she tied the laces, her hands shook slightly, and I noticed that her fingernails were gnawed to the quick. At that moment, I thought I might pass out for love of her. I was 24 years old. It had never before occurred to me that I might feel such things for a woman.
Once, in Miami, a Cuban man I’d met on the beach invited me to his condo for lunch. In the kitchen he took plantains out of the fridge, rinsed them under running water. He arranged the plantains on a cutting board and began to slice. His hands were quick and powerful, and I had the feeling he’d been slicing plantains his whole life. I was transfixed by the stately length of his fingers against the wooden handle of the knife. I imagined those hands in the small of my back, on the curve of my neck, pressed hard between my thighs. “I have to go,” I said, and rushed out into the blinding sunlight before he’d even got the plantains into the pan. I had a boyfriend at the time, and I was trying hard to make it work, and I knew too well where a good pair of hands might lead me.
My romantic memory overflows with snapshots of hands frozen in some weighty moment. Case in point: I am 12, sitting on the balcony of a big church in Alabama. Next to me is Hobie, a blond boy one year older, whom I love. The pastor is miles away, at the front of the church, praying into the microphone. The lights in the church are low. The choir is singing “Have Thine Own Way,” and Hobie stretches out his hand, palm up. It hovers above my lap. It occurs to me that he would like for me to hold his hand, but I’ve never held hands with a boy before and don’t know how to go about it. We are supposed to be praying, but I am thinking of Hobie’s beautiful hand, tiny blond hairs just beginning to form at the base of the wrist. I am 12 years old in a church in Alabama, and I am thinking, quite plainly, about having sex with Hobie — despite the fact that this is something I have never done before, and wouldn’t know how to do. The shape of his hand hovering there is enough to plunge me into erotic bliss.
I fell in love with my husband’s hands long before I fell in love with him. The first time I saw him, he was sitting in a windowless college classroom in Arkansas. His hands were on top of the desk, one folded inside the other, as if he were readying himself for prayer. There was something disconcertingly feminine about his hands. A few weeks after that first meeting, he lay breathing heavily in my bed. He lay on his back, his hands resting on his stomach, and they seemed to be perfectly alert and precisely posed, while the rest of his body sighed and shifted in his masculine and ungraceful sleep. Even now, seven years and one marriage certificate later, I will catch a glimpse of his hands — which at times are so alive as to seem disembodied from him — and I will feel as undone by him as if we had just met, and we’d yet to share intimacies.
I don’t know exactly when my love affair with hands began. Perhaps it stems from belonging to a family whose hands are unusual. My older sister was born with no thumb on her left hand; the side of the hand where her thumb should be is smooth and straight as a ruler. My father’s second finger on his right hand ends just above the knuckle, tapering neatly as a sausage. I grew up believing that all sisters had no thumb, that all fathers had only half of a second finger.
When I think of my sister I think of her playing piano, the second finger expertly reaching, doing everything a thumb should do. When I think of my father, I imagine him pointing to some unnamable thing in the distance, pointing with his half-finger, that rounded thing without a nail. And when I conjure my mother it is her hands I see most clearly, the broad fingers wrapped around the lid of a Mason jar, the veins popping up like miniature mountain ranges, the biggest veins I’ve ever seen. My own hands are small and utilitarian, with crevices so deep and numerous you’d think I’d lived for a hundred years.
Perhaps in some other life I was a reader of palms, someone who could see the scope of a life within the intricate folds of a hand. In this life, though, what I see in the hands of strangers is more often than not rated R. Recently, while stopped at a red light, I looked over to the truck in the next lane and saw a boy a good 10 years my junior, his deeply tanned hand thumping the steering wheel, beating out the rhythm to some song that played too loudly on his radio. In that moment, waiting for the light to change, I was eaten up with longing. He looked over and caught me staring, gave me a slight and knowing smile, a nod. The light turned green, the truck sped on ahead, and all the way home I thought of him, of the things his hands could do.
