Diary of a Widower

Daily entries by a husband, who stayed behind with his two sons

Archive for the category “Sex”

16 Mar 2013

Where to start? The end

TUESDAY, March 16 – The alarm goes off at 6:15.  I’m tired but fulfilled, as they say. I don’t feel guilty.  At least, I don’t think so.

I walk around the house like a chicken without a head. Don’t know where to start, what to do, which direction to go, and haven’t a clue where it’s all going to end. Administration, taxes, car papers to transfer… there are documents lying around that I have to deal with, but I can’t find the right ones so I can cross them off my list. I focus on Jenn’s car.

Where the fuck is the registration certificate for the Mini Cooper? I decide to give the house a good going-over. Then, after spending an hour and a half vacuuming and giving the toilets a good going-over, I remember that the cleaners are due this afternoon. Bizarre. I’m in control, but not capable of exercising control and I still can’t help crying.  As I search for official paperwork, I come across photos, objects of hers, notes, and memos.

Each discovery is accompanied by memories. Each object, no matter how inconsequential, pierces my heart like a dagger. This is my life, but I’ve lost it. I want her back, but first I have to clear away the final remains of Jennifer’s life and, really, I don’t know how to cope with it all? How to replace her? How to come to terms with all this, and ease the excruciating pain?

Posted in Grieving, Paper work, Sex | Leave a comment
15 Mar 2013
2 Comments

Do I feel guilty after sex?

MONDAY, March 15 – It’s only just after midnight, but let the record show my widower’s virginity has been out asunder. Yep, and it was great. Our emails had crossed, we talked on the phone, and late that evening I dropped by.  Eamonn was already asleep and Sander, who was in the shower, had no objections when I said (ahem) that I was going out for a beer.

I was on my way home when she called. ‘If you have any regrets, I’ll understand.’ That was the last thing that occurred to me!  No fucking way. It was intimate, tender and satisfying, but also difficult. Physically complicated.  To make love is one thing, to come is something else.

‘Do you feel guilty?’ she asked.

Posted in New love, Sex
11 Mar 2013

Feeling a great sensation

WEDNESDAY, March 11 – I text my good friend R:  Let the record show that at 14.30 this afternoon I exchanged passionate kisses with a woman.

It began one evening with coffee, then dinner, a walk and a sidewalk café, and continued this afternoon at her place for a heart-to-heart conversation. Just before I left – there was no turning back – we stood there French-kissing like there was no tomorrow.

A great sensation. It was the intimacy I’d longed for. I leave her house with a big grin on my face. Two hours later it’s still there and my mouth is starting to feel stiff. Can’t get the thing off my face.

He replies: ‘Hear, hear, spring is in the air!’ and as if that isn’t enough, this afternoon the kitchen was installed in our new house.

Posted in New love, Sex | Leave a comment
04 Mar 2013
3 Comments

Stop thinking about sex!

THURSDAY, March 4  – Memo to self: stop thinking about sex!  Stop, stop, stop! I’m becoming obsessed by the thought of some heavy fucking – subject or object makes no difference – and now! Overdiek, turn off that switch in your head. Or go have sex – get someone into your or their bed, whatever. But stop thinking about it, please! Fuck it!

Posted in Grieving, Sex
18 Jan 2013

My libido? Thanks for asking

MONDAY, January 18 – Didn’t get too much sleep. I had dinner with F and it was a bit of a late evening.  It was fun, nothing improper. Woke up just before six, masturbating. The sexual urges have been subdued lately. I’m not as emotionally randy as during the first month, when I often fantasized about my sex life with Jennifer.

After that, I’d been semi-impotent for a while. Titillation had no effect on me – no hard-ons, despite my best efforts. Even now the old libido hasn’t bounced back, although in my more imaginative moments I think about my return to a great sex life in the future. New partners. That alone evokes interesting prospects.

Not long ago M and I drew up a list of potential bedfellows. She was on the list herself, I told her with a grin. I’ve already spent pleasurable evenings with a number of Jenn’s girlfriends that were no more than good conversations, full of warmth. That sort of thing is bound to lead to a pleasurable session of heavy petting.

I can’t help wondering how women ‘function’ in this respect. They’re less focused on the sex itself, I’m guessing. Must admit I’m a bit out of practice when it comes to pursuit, seduction, and conquest. For the time being I’ll make do with a bit of perfunctory masturbation.

Even that isn’t always a great success, due to chronic fatigue. But after a lonely ejaculation, my yearning for the body of a woman continues to increase, and I see this as a good sign at the beginning of a new week.

Posted in Sex | Leave a comment
12 Jan 2013
2 Comments

Men are men. Hello, sex

TUESDAY, January 12 – According to my colleague, herself a widow, more women than men write about the loss of their partner because: ‘Men are much quicker to find themselves a new sex partner.’ Does this mean that I should stop everything and do what is expected of me ‘as a man’?

Being both ambitious and pushy, should I rather focus on two goals at the same time: writing and screwing?  Why the hell not?  Hmmm… it remains to be seen whether I’m up to it since a certain tendency towards impotence has made itself felt this week.  It takes jerking off endlessly, perhaps, suggesting a teensy ejaculation dip. Is this yet something else that mourning does to you?

Posted in Grieving, New love, Sex
26 Nov 2012

Longing for her soft, warm body

THURSDAY, November 26 – How long will it be before these memories slip away or will they remain with me forever? I have to write it all down, right now, so I won’t forget. As quickly as possible and as fully as possible:

The warmth, the softness of her cheek, that dear face that I continued to kiss until it was time to go, time to allow her to die physically as well, to leave the body for what it was and would become.  The earthly frame from which all life, mind and spirit had departed the day before. It was explained to me that her body was optimized at the moment she was declared brain-dead. On that Saturday morning, just before Jenn’s parents and her four brothers arrived, I helped the nurse to freshen up her body. Read more…

Posted in Family & Friends, Grieving, Remembering, Sex | Leave a comment
15 Nov 2012

Feeling a body no longer there

SUNDAY, November 15 – For the first time since the accident, I have trouble sleeping. I wake up to find myself entangled with Eamonn, who at some point has crawled into bed with me. It’s still strange to find him in the spot where Jennifer lay for eighteen years.  We were bedmates, she and I, whereas, Eamonn and I are now fellow sufferers filling the emptiness of that same bed with our combined presence.

I’m confused. My eyes are open but my head isn’t awake yet.  Confused because I’m seeing Eamonn while I’m thinking of Jennifer.  I always used to caress her warm body when I got into bed. Read more…

Posted in Family & Friends, Grieving, Remembering, Sex | Leave a comment
07 Nov 2012
2 Comments

Thinking about death. And sex

SATURDAY, November 7, 8:30 – A long walk with our dog Elsa.  No pressure, nothing that needs seeing to. This gives me the mental leeway to think about ‘good things’, to reflect on how the past week really was. I think about Jenn, her death, her life, our life, myself.  I also think about how strange it is – or perhaps hopeful – the way emotions can have a physical charge.  I have very tangible sexual desires.  I masturbate and fantasize.  Not that I invent a new relationship or a new partner, but I do speculate on how long it will be before I begin to long for someone else. What will it be like to find someone else, to experience that intimacy again?

My thoughts reach further.  Ludicrous, but still there is this sensation that’s both physical and emotional. I look at women, make a list of acquaintances who might be eligible candidates – some day.  For now, my lad, we’re on manual control.  No idea how someone else would fit into our present life.

Would the status of widower have more advantages than disadvantages compared to that of a divorced man?

17:15 – Sander and I have come up with the ‘taking a shit theory’.  What if.  ‘What if’ is constantly going through our head. It’s the question-of-the-week for me, for Sander, for Eamonn, and for all three of us collectively. What if. What if we had done this or what if we hadn’t done that, then…

A few seconds would have made all the difference.  The difference between life and death.  I’d begun to philosophize out loud when Sander, again, asked that maddening question that I was getting a bit tired of thinking about. The very pointlessness of it.  So, I tried a different approach.  ‘Look at it this way: If Mom hadn’t picked up the phone in Januay 1991 when I called her boss in New York, then we would never have met and she would never have come to Holland and we would never have moved to the States and you would never have been born.’

I could see the light dawning in Sander’s head. Time for the philosophical knockout punch.  I reduced that idiotic ‘what if” to the following scenario.  What if I’d gone to take a shit before calling Mom’s boss in New York?  What if.  Mom had told me that she was just about to go home. What if I had taken a shit before calling…?’

It began to get through to him. ‘Gee. You know what, Papa?’ Sander said. ‘When we went to the park with Elsa, I did have to shit.  If I had, then none of it would have happened.’  Exactly, my son, the difference between life and death is a lousy turd.  Shit happens, and even that doesn’t change anything.

Posted in New love, Sex, Three Guys

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