Gettotext.com Woman author Alya Forzen has been married for 23 years – but does she have to look like that? A self-critical view.
Recently, my new friend Birgit wanted to know from me if I had the shoes on during sex. “Huh?” I looked down at my legs, their feet in shoes that Paris Hilton could not even bury. Comfortable at the front, flat at the back, the shoes of a woman who does not walk in graceful tripple, but with an energetic lancing step through life. A wife and mother who shares bed with the same man for 23 years. “I do not mean those treads,” Birgit said, slightly disgusted, “I’m talking about shoes that tickle off the attractive beast in which you make your husband spiteful.”
Which brings us to Birgit’s favorite topic. She thinks that 23 years of marriage are not an excuse for not being able to extract the hottest and fiercest of women’s bodies as a woman. Therefore, she also contributes to the housework overknees with pencil-high heels and in winter no cozy angora under her jeans, but tightest lace lingerie and in the summer preferably nothing. “What do you mean, how erotic it feels, even if nobody knows it,” she says, shaking her head when I mumble something about impending cystitis.
Birgit would never let go
Birgit is 47 and single, and all her erotic antennas are out, I’m 57 and wife, and remember only very darkly that I’ve ever had an antenna. Recently we sat together in the subway when an older man annoying me stared at me. “Do I have a wart on my chin or what?” I asked her. “He’s flirting with you, you ignorant,” said Birgit, “let’s go, flirt back, to practice.” So I twisted the corners of my mouth to a flirty smile that felt as unreal as the upper lip of Chiara Ohoven. “You look like you’re pulling a molar without an anesthetic,” Birgit said as she got out, “you’re really out of practice.”
Even the thought of provocative clothes and phone sex exhausted me.
She is right. As sleepwalking as I am as a housewife, wife and mother, so mistakenly I feel in a role that used to be so natural to me – that of the fun-loving woman, who is aware of her attractiveness. As a woman who enjoys her femininity and likes to flaunt, at some point I simply turned myself off. Out of habit, out of everyday life, from tiredness. Sexy clothes, phone sex with the loved one, a hot Nümmerchen in the hotel room? Already the thought exhausted me.
Which of course is because I live out my wife exclusively with a man whose nasty-gray hair I lovingly cut with a small nail scissors from his earcups.
I know that I did not meet exactly this man 25 years ago in the comfortable sweatpants, which has been my favorite domestic item for two centuries. Where did the attractive beast stay in me? I’m afraid it caught the claws in the course of my marriage and has mutated into a cuddly cat. But since my husband is similar, we actually feel very comfortable with each other. “You sibling, you neutralize yourself, that’s not good!” Exclaims Birgit, who after a hot night with a new lover at dawn renews her make-up and does not think of it in the nightmare, shiny as a bacon rind next to him a book to read how I do it.
If I were to surprise my husband in a black negligee one night, he would surely say, “Is something wrong with your mother?” call. If he suddenly had his breast depilated, I would think he was a stranger.
No erotic luminosity anymore
Yes, it’s nice to get older together, and when I watch my single friends looking for love, I’m glad that I’m not rushing to the phone because I hope the prince will answer. That I’m not sitting opposite a 70-year-old looking for an auspicious online chat who finds me too old. I do not want to be in the open market with my over 50 years old.
On the other hand, I have to admit that the erotic luminosity of my single girlfriends shines much brighter than mine. They are more fashionable, know every new trend, make-up immediately after getting up – glittering Christmas balls, while I’m rather the dry Christmas Kringel. I give up a part of my femininity out of laziness, dimming my womanhood in a very small light, because I have no idea what might still be in me about juice and strength.
Of course, I’ll never feel the same again as when I was 17 when I was immortal and the sky was limitless, and I’m not looking for a lover either. But Birgit says that flirting is not primarily about getting in contact, it’s about being healthy, one that’s fresh and young. And that the outer shell is just important. “Of course not in mother black,” she says, “half of your clothes you can throw away right away.”
So I stood in my dressing room and did a critical inventory. Gosh, what had accumulated in the course of the years of atrocities!
Without question, I looked better
Sleepers, discolored T-shirts, several sweaters for the collection of used clothes. When I finished, I had a lot of space. So I bought some new jeans, which for the first time sat tight as a sausage pelvis, clearly no mummy jeans. And a few boots without cuddly lining, but by my standards very high, thin heels.
Without question, I looked better. And mascara and lipstick did a lot to make me feel so good when I introduced jeans and boots to a restaurant with my 21-year-old daughter. I smiled at the young waiter, he smiled back. On the way to the ladies’ room, I smiled at the handsome man in his mid-forties who was sitting alone at a table. He also smiled back! Very elated, I went back to my table, even my daughter smiled. “Mommy,” she said affectionately, “you walk like a duck shitting in the snow.”
Never mind. I will continue to wear the jeans anyway. The boots with the heels too. Maybe even in bed. If my husband does not fall asleep before.