The marriage bed

Funny how a jealous wife could go amok over the mobile phone on suspicion of her husband's dalliances on the wired world upon seeing a billing for books sent by her husband to me from the west coast of the US midway this year.

I picked up my phone to a call early last week, employing the code of phonetics, only to be badmouthed by a certain Mrs. Engineer Duh upon finding out my friend Engineer Duh sent me a complete set of JRR Tolkien's works - from "The Hobbit" to "Return of the King" - suspecting the Engineer and I have shared virtual intimacy.

Spitefulness begot the spits of another spitfire! Her badmouthing went down the spout perfectly well with my orientation on a helluvah load of expletives and curses matching her fits of fury. But after trading barbs with the jealous wifey - tempest personified - it dawned on me how marriage beds could rock lovingly in celebration of intimacy and how it can, otherwise, creak to the crack of doom for "maling akala" (read: wrong notion; say, "Hey, you got the wrong idea, Mrs. Spermatozoa!")

Small talk, cheap talk, loose talk, trash talk on the wired world

I dunno how plain "hallers" and the exchange of small talk, cheap talk, loose talk, trash talk could transpire to some controversy. What's clear to me is that Engineer Duh got fond of me when we reached some level of profundity after a serving of small talk, cheap talk, loose talk, trash talk as we zeroed in on his childhood, his work, his struggles, his marriage.

The conversation moved about and touched base on sexual intimacy, he said he had only had the heart to open up to me, aside from his peer group of course. Yeppers! Me who is non-family; me who is just another cinder in space; a person he couldn't put a clear face at, at all, because he hadn't met me in person. Am I supposed to take that as pleasure?

The Engineer acknowledged my lending ears and thanked me for the time I spent typing back to him on real-time. In a gesture of felicity, he gave in to my request that for "retainers" as his virtual shock absorber, I would want a set of JRR Tolkien's works.

Yes, he said his married life is not that spiced up anymore with sexual intimacy - and I was processing the logic why marriage beds come devoid of such when marriage is synonymous to union.

At one point, Engineer Duh said he is living all alone because he already parted ways with his wife; at another, with a common-law partner, and lately admitted to really having a wife but treating each other on a civil manner - living in under one roof minus the bond lovers share. He said his marriage has suddenly "gagged him, throttled him, asphyxiated him." And again I was processing how lovers could give up communicating. Is there eloquence in such a silence?

For the umpteenth time, I heard this blame on a wife for her so-called "passive resistance" to the ragings of male testosterone.

The Duhs!

Sexual intimacy

Learning that both of them are dying from the cold within and losing grasp of the substance of intimacy, I would have typed back to Engineer Duh in his private message box to maybe try instructional sex videotapes and help books on sex and sexuality to spice up their sex life as neither of them might not be that creative when it comes to bed play.

I would have given the Engineer the idea that videos or photos of sexual acts produce erotica and maybe just by looking at some illustrations would stimulate him to arousal. Funny thing about our conversations was that I saved my motoh mawth from blurting out a joke: "Get into the sex manuals that extol sexual plays requiring unusual strength or acrobatics, Mr. Spermatozoa!"

Honestly, that time, it was easier to tread the road to perversion. But I never pointed the man to some kind of trap!

Pornography, I read somewhere, develops problems that are associated with self-critical doubts and promiscuous sexual behavior. So that it would be better to just put him off the subtle seduction, or the hook might not only scrape the gills but gouge them all out of his system.

Well, according to sex therapists who recognized the dilemma for years, the training or therapy videos and photographs are done with models who possess exceptional bodies and that consequently one effect of watching the models at work is feeling intimidated that one's own "equipment" just doesn't measure up.

The second negative effect of sex videos and photographs is their tendency to develop an involvement with pornography. As with any addictive stimuli, viewing sexually explicit material leads to tolerance. That is, it takes increasing amounts or intensity of the stimulus to produce the same result. Like a heroin addict who has to increase the dose he takes for the same high, a pornography addict will need more frequent and more tantalizing pictures to produce the desired excitement, this according to a sexual health column on the worldwide web.

The piece went: "The danger is particularly keen in our Internet era. Pornography is simply too available. There reportedly are roughly 350,000 sites on the Internet offering every possible range of pornographic material that's believed to lead to increased lack of intimacy, sexually promiscuous behavior, and adultery.

Talk - not just moan nor groan!

The Engineer bowed down to my idea that the marital problem rooted from lack of loving talk. Moans and groans are sweet to the ears as these are produced by pleasure on a rocking, squeaking marriage bed - but trash talk messed up every vow they had exchanged before some kind of a god they never really quite know well.

From the looks of it, the two just watched the embers of passion die down; and allowed the sizzle of desire to march to the graves. And with the culture today carrying a constant message about the perfect body, such gives attention to imperfection and ugliness, issues on stretch marks and wrinkles, sagging skin and weigh problems - and SDV - sex drive vanished!

When men come to their "screeching halt", nothing is more welcomed than a loving assurance that it was not actually a screech, but more of a sputter. Nothing could ever stand in for acceptance that - well - there is always a terminus to the good things shaping before us and that virility like this state of existence is definitely borrowed too.

Study reveals men are so hesitant to admit problems about their sexuality, and I wonder how does Mrs. Engineer Duh handle that with her stinky mouth that shames the fart of a skunk? How would she deal that both of them must adapt to a decrease in their frequency of intercourse?

With the way they have now repelled from each other, and with the way the jealous wifey had yakked over the phone, joggling my earwax, I found it impossible to discuss diplomatically that her husband is not dead on a hunt for her - some sort of - replacement, but is in thirst for consolation in his desperation that, among all women in this universe, his very own wife couldn't conspire anymore with him to work on achieving closeness in a companionship that's supposedly physically and spiritually satisfying, orgasmic, sweetness to the extreme.

Living without intimacy should not have been the consequence for both had Engineer Duh learned to confide to a wife in trust, and not to some unknown on the wired world. And, too, situations could not have gone complicated had Mrs. Engineer Duh acted positively in reciprocation and better understanding that the marriage bed is not just for muffled ecstatic cries nor spousal wars.

The marriage bed is inanimate, but it is star witness to a union - a supposed blessed union of souls.

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