flickering

It's been a while.  Over Christmas, we went back to my parents for a little bit.  I took a couple of weeks off from work, and D decided to join us after a few days.  My parents are old and finicky, constantly harassing my children about trivialities.  My old room was converted into a guest room and my brother's room was cleared out for a little in-home gym that nobody ever used.  My day consisted of waking up at 9:30AM, eating a bowl of cereal, going to the backyard, and sometimes lighting a covert cigarette.  One night I called up a good friend, Tommy, from high school and he offered me a joint.  His house is literally 2 blocks down the street.  Tommy is married too now, though still in his old pudgy self and never had the physical metamorphoses that one would expect given how much money he made right before the housing crash as a contractor.  We sat by his large, pristine, artificial, Japanese inspired heated pool, watching the snow weighing on the bleak pine trees in the back, barely made out, covered in a fine, pink crepuscular haze.  He got married way before I did, and his daughter is now in middle school, doing well.  He relayed to me how little sex he's having too, that poor bastard.  I suppose it's normal.  I deeply inhaled, and felt the little ripples rising from deep within my scrotum up my spine, emitting a sad, sour moan.

In any case, I spent many of my days with parents beating off on an air mattress in the guest room, being stuffed with semi-processed food that they love, jogging in that patch of suburbia, not unlikely my own in the Southwest, but covered with the distinct, airy flora of the Northeast.  I remember one day I had a flashback of Lester from American Beauty saying "This is my life...and in one year I'll be dead," jogging in his little anomic paradise... Am I not a bit young for my mid-life crisis?

Lately it's been difficult for me sustain an erection with D.  We had sex perhaps once in January and once in February.  She likes to get it over with quickly, and when I went down on her I felt the dread, the heart pounding, the thought of the imminent collapse of our marriage, and our children being abandoned and kicked around like dreary urchins in a Dickens novel.  I don't have the heart to say anything to anyone.  I tried to create an artificial hard-on, but when I was inside of her I couldn't feel anything, which made me even more distressed.  Perhaps the final verdict is in.  Perhaps I am no longer attracted to my wife.  The lack of feeling only sparked another round of fanatic self-stimulation for penetration, only to be met by a quick, unsatisfying orgasm.  I offered to give her an orgasm by oral, but she said she just wanted to go to bed.  The end.  I lied alone next to her, and I cried.  I actually cried.  Of course she wouldn't know or care.  This is me, 6 foot 1, muscular, in shape, working in the financial services, perfect American life.  This little tableau for some reason brought back memories of Greek life in college, all the clueless meatheads, and my pretension of my disinterest in arts and letters, and my phony jocular mien.  Nothing ever happens in three months, right?