Ugh- nothing has gone right this month, I thought to myself, as I stripped down to my bra and underwear, my tanned summer skin slick with sweat. It was August and 90 degrees outside, and the AC decided now was a good time to break.
I'm Jenna, and my husband John and I just bought our first condo together last month. John was ecstatic to move in together, and I was too -- or at least I tried to be. This was the natural next step for us, right? We're high school sweethearts, together since junior year, each others' "first and only" in everything -- love, kiss, sex. We just made sense together, so it never occurred to either of us to not be together. We had the same values, same hobbies, same friends, and same desire for a big family someday. Everything went according to plan for us -- we checked all the boxes at all the right times. We both graduated from the same college with honors, me with a degree in nursing, him in engineering, and worked our asses off for six years, saving up so we could start our lives together.
Now at 28 years old and married for over a year, we figured this was the time to start trying for our first baby. Amazing, right? All our loved ones praised us for our successful life planning and functional adult relationship, and we were certainly ahead of the curve relative to some of our friends, who were still getting black out drunk on the weekends and having serial one-night-stands. But instead of feeling happy with my "perfect" life, I was increasingly jealous of the reckless, untethered lives of our friends. Of course, I still loved John, but not like he loved me. I could tell from how he looked into my eyes before he kissed me, from how devoted he was from the very beginning, that I was his forever without question, and I told him I felt the same.
But ever since getting married, my dark twisted fantasies of another life, a life without him, had become almost impossible to ignore. I could trace these fantasies back to my early childhood, when I saw an animated movie in which a female character was kidnapped and bound. Soon after, at seven years old, I figured out how to masturbate, and whenever I knew my parents weren't around, I was vigorously rubbing my clit over my underwear while lying facedown, calling this act "rubbing" or "green lighting," as I conceptualized being turned on as the "green light" and orgasm the "red light," forever eroticizing stop lights in my mind, perhaps explaining my obsession with giving road head.
As I got older, my fantasies evolved, born out of cinematic depictions of kidnapping, domination, and coercion. I also became preoccupied with erotic girl-on-girl encounters, like imagining two beautiful women topless in a heated pool at night, passionately kissing while steam rises off the water. Recently, I was fixated on reading online Literotica about consensual nonconsent, sexual servitude, and anal sex, to name a few, quickly erasing my search history after finishing -- you fucking freak, I thought to myself afterwards. These fantasies left me with an acute sense of disgust and confusion. What kind of person is turned on by such things? Further, was I gay? But that didn't make sense -- I was boy-obsessed from an early age, though often too afraid to act on my crushes. That, combined with being a hardcore nerd and late-bloomer, ensured I stayed single and sexually frustrated until John.
Though even after John and I started having sex, I remained frustrated -- it was nothing like my fantasies. Underwhelming and vanilla, just like our relationship. We would kiss briefly, then take our own clothes off as if preparing for an annual physical. I would lie face-up on the bed as he climbed on top of me, pumping away for a couple minutes before finishing, while I looked up at the ceiling, gyrating and moaning for him at all the right times, waiting for the second I could run to the bathroom and clean up. I never orgasmed, but he didn't know that. If there's one thing that watching porn taught me, it was how to fake it.
That's what my sex life was -- a fake. I never learned how to communicate my wants and needs -- sexual or otherwise. I was the ultimate people pleaser, and I had just about reached my limit. Since I'm ovulating this week, we've had sex every day, far exceeding our typical once-weekly scheduled session on Saturday morning, and last night while he was inside me, I had a moment of clarity -- what the FUCK was I doing? Life is too short for shitty sex, and I couldn't fathom another second, not to mention a whole lifetime, of this.
"Choke me, baby," I moaned, thinking of one of my favorite Literotica stories. John immediately stopped and stared at me in disbelief.
"Why would you want me to do that? I could never hurt you like that, Jenna!" he exclaimed.
My face flushed, filled with the same shame and embarrassment I felt after masturbating. John's response was all the confirmation I needed that I was disgusting, flawed, and beyond repair. "Oh, it was just something stupid I saw in a movie... I'm not actually into that. I said it without thinking. Please, can we forget it?"
"Sure, babe. And just so you know, I love our sex the way it is, without all that weird shit... don't you? I mean, I thought so, since you finish every time."
I was frozen, incapable of telling him the truth, as if doing so would cause my whole world to crumble. "Of course I love it. I really don't know why I even said that -- it was so stupid. Who would actually be into that kinda thing anyway?"
John laughed. "Exactly! For a second, I thought you were one of those Fifty Shades of Grey freaks! Now come here so we can finish what we started. Let's make a baby, baby!"
So, that was the end of my sexual exploration with John. I felt numb, ashamed, and hopeless, while also grappling with the idea that this was simply what a married sex life looked like -- all the movies, books, and Reddit threads said so. I should be grateful for John, and the life we built together. It was clear to me now, this morning, sweating in my AC-less condo, that I was the problem. I'll just keep myself distracted with work, being a good wife, and planning for our family, and masturbate when I have to, in private, never sharing my fantasies with another soul, I thought to myself.
Time to address the problem at hand -- this damn AC. I called the nearest HVAC service, and a technician would be coming out in an hour. Just enough time for me to do my hair and make-up before John got home from work, as I was off today. As per Operation Be the Perfect Wife to Forget About My Sexual Depravity, I wanted to get all dolled up and cook him his favorite meal. I wanted to show him that I was still the "normal" girl he married, at least normal enough to be the mother of his super normal future children.
