The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm

(My third child, Winston. He has nothing to do with turning 46, but I love him. My milk came in when I held him.)

Today I’m 46. 

Shit. Forty. Six. (well, it was yesterday, but I just got around to posting).

I’ve been around a while. Long enough to forget a lot of things. Like what I did for most of my birthdays. 13^th birthday … I got nothin’. 

I think my braces were off by then because Jeff Kerr kissed me that year and I didn’t shred his lips.

I do remember my 11^th birthday. My mom took my sister, two friends and I to the drive-in to see Star Wars. I was going to marry Luke Skywalker. 

Have you seen that guy? Mole city. 

Back then moles didn’t bug me. Now they might be cancerous. I have one under my right breast that I haven’t taken a good look at in about ten years. Just a sec … still small and white. Whew!

Here’s what I know at 46.

Kids are people you can mess up. I have a friend who was dating a 36-year old woman who really wanted him to get off his butt and marry her so she could have a baby. He was 30 and a wee bit callow, lovably so, but callow all the same. 

He didn’t want to marry her, but asked me if I thought he ought to just knock her up to make her happy, then go ahead and move across the country for his job. 

I very much adore this man, but I had to bitch-slap him. It just hadn’t occurred to him that the baby would actually be a person who would grow up one day and wonder where the hell his dad was and what he’d done to scare the guy off?

When I was 36 I had no clue babies were people because I didn’t have one. It was a rather rude awakening when Clare landed on my chest having almost died in utero, stared at me cross-eyed and I fell like a chicken-on-the-chopping-block in love.]

Here’s what else I know at 46.

Marriage is fragile. Even if you’re married to a chestalicious, funny, blue-eyed Irishman who makes you want to be a better woman (as I am). There are a lot of things you can do to screw your marriage up. 

Like flirting with someone you spend a lot of time with who isn’t your husband. I love to flirt. It’s kind of my default. So I flirt with straight women now. I’m a straight woman too so there’s not a lot of trouble I can get into. 

There are several hot moms at our elementary school. Here is an example of our conversations. 

“Girl, those pants give you a hot-butter-biscuit-booty!” “Oh, no, no, I’m so fat in these pants it makes me sick.” “Girl, if that’s fat just throw it on the grill and cook it till it sizzles.” Etc.

It’s when I flirt with men that I have to get real with myself. 

There was a lovely man I thought about sharing office space with a few years back. This lovely man had a six-pack and smelled really nice. 

I went to look at the office space by myself. There was a desk in it. 

I had a brief flash of the two of us on top of this desk, then my husband divorcing me, Clare growing up to be a stripper named Shelby Buffington and Bridget growing up to open fire from a bell tower overlooking a Mother’s Day buffet at a junior college near a maximum security prison.

I love my husband, but I’m human. Always take your humanity seriously if you want to stay married. (Do you hear that, honey??)

Here’s the last of what I know at 46:

1. One day I’ll need diapers again.

2. If a “friend” brings chocolate eclairs to my house it’s an Act of Aggression.

3. John Malkovich really was ridiculously sexy in Dangerous Liaisons. That fey walk, that dripping sarcasm. Take me now!

4. There’s no such thing as a vaginal orgasm. This is simply penis propaganda. I dare anyone to disprove this.

5. If you meet three assholes in one day you might be one of them.

6. Jon Stewart’s unusually large cranium is disconcerting in profile, but oddly attractive dead on.

7. Having a child who turns out badly is worse than defecating in public while takng a college exam you haven’t studied for. Which makes it extremely difficult to parent-without-an-agenda (which should not be confused with letting the kids run the ship), so that your child can blossom into their own unique personhood.

8. I will try to parent-without-an-agenda so my kids will turn out great and everyone will revere me.

9. I will never again illustrate Henry’s and my honeymoon to house guests by wearing the pink, frilly panties I wore during our honeymoon on my head while serving the leg of lamb.  Henry doesn’t think it’s funny.  (even if it is)

10. I don’t actually know anything … but secretly think I do. No I don’t. Yes I do! No, I don’t.

Happy Birthday to Me!