“So, condoms still suck the big one. THAT hasn’t changed!!!”
There I was, a woman with FIVE YEARS of sexual frustration built up inside, and the time is here … and then … that damn wrapper. “Come ONNN already!!!! Open it!!!!!” Both of our hands are shaking as we take turns trying to unwrap this nonsense. Finally, you try to bite it off, then you resort to scissors. You get the thing open, then you gotta figure out how the hell the condom goes on. Then you start to remember how you had forgotten what a giant pain in the ass condoms were. And then the guy tries to make it all sexy by asking me to put it on him, and so now I’m the one fumbling all over the place trying to pretend like I know what the hell I’m doing. You finally get it on, and the timing has to be EXACTLY PERFECTLY CORRECT, or the whole thing is ruined and you gotta start the whole damn process again. If its one second too soon, then you’re not quite ready to have sex yet and you’re still working on some foreplay, but who the hell wants to give oral to a shield of rubbery stinky latex? Gross. And if its one second too late, then he starts going soft again and the damn thing starts falling off, and life is a bitch with no sense of humor. Suddenly, you’ve gone through half a dozen condoms, and you still haven’t had sex. Whether you’re a 45 year old widow like me, or a single and young girl of 21 – condoms are equally shitty for everyone.
“HOLY SHIT!!! IM HAVING SEX!!!!”
I told you, it was on a constant loop in my head. Followed by a steady stream of: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SEX FUCKING RULES!!!!! THIS IS SOOOOO AWESOME!!!!! Ahhhhhhhh!!!!!!! Can I just do this everyday, every night, all the time??? Maybe I could even get PAID for it …….. No, wait.”
“How weird is it that we are literally doing it on top of a quilt that is COVERED with pictures of me and my dead husband?”
Ummm, yeah. So as I’m in the midst of enjoying and having the sex, I start looking around my room and realize that it’s pretty much a shrine to my husband. On the wall is a giant painting made by my artist friend, of me and Don and all our kitties, alive and dead. My nightstand has our wedding picture, his EMS badge, the American flag I was given at the funeral, his certificate for being an organ donor. Underneath the nightstand is a christmas tin, where I keep his cremains. Should I keep going? Would you be turned on yet, if you were in my bedroom with me? Would this collection of creepy momentos of a dead spouse do it for you? If not, just wait for the grand finale. As we are making out heavily and rolling around on top of one another, it suddenly occurs to me that I just rolled over onto my late husband’s face. I am now kissing someone on top of him. Well, a picture of him, but still. It’s him. Suddenly I find this absolutely hilarious, and I burst out laughing in the middle of kissing. Luckily, the person that I lost my widow virginity to is also widowed, so he started laughing too. He wasn’t at all freaked out by it or thrown by it, but I suddenly was. At least for a minute or two. It just felt …. weird. But it wasn’t upsetting, and I didn’t feel guilt. No guilt on the quilt. And then things got hot again, and I forgot about it, and we continued, amongst the beautiful quilt of pictures and memories of me and my beloved husband. I’ll take “Things Only Other Widowed People Would Understand for $100, Alex.” Yeah. Weird.
“I can’t WAIT to tell all my widowed friends that I FINALLY GOT LAID!!!!!”
Not like I was planning on announcing it from a rooftop or anything crazy, but when you lose your partner right smack in the middle of your life together, you essentially lose your family. The family you knew and had, is forever dismantled and changed. So, if you are lucky enough to befriend other widowed people, they sort of become like a second family, and we all support each other and root for each other. When someone in our family finds love again, it gives others hope. When someone lives a dream or accomplishes something big and they have to do it without their person there, the rest of us hold them up and celebrate that accomplishment with them. And when one of us loses our widow virginity after 5 years, her close friends are beaming for her that she is finally in a place to enjoy that again, without feeling like she might throw up.