The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1410 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

So, we finished bantering and went to bed. Simon, my one track minded bedmate, had but one thing on his mind, whilst I was still trying to understand what had happened at the university.

Thankfully, they didn’t recognise me–I was without makeup and my hair tied back–so I hope I looked plain and uninteresting. I’d have to remember to wear some smarter clothes and makeup when I went back to my department, so I wouldn’t be remembered as the boring woman with the megawatt output.

As soon as we were in bed, I began to worry that I might be dangerous to my family. What would happen if I did microwave Si while he was on the job? Yeah, I know he’s only half baked so it wouldn’t make a lot of difference, but seriously, I could kill him.

“C’mon, girl, get ‘em off.”

“I’m not really in the mood, Si.”

“You never are these days.”

“I’m sorry too much going on in my head.”

“All that multi-tasking, see, sometimes there are advantages to having only one functioning brain cell.”

“I guess I’m just not that much of a sexual animal–that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it but it seems I’m not as interested in it as you.”

“Yeah, seems to be the story of my life–being attracted to women who can live without sex for years at a time.”

“I’m not that bad, am I?”

“No, but one of my previous girlfriends was–I began to think if she was in training to be a nun in a closed order.”

“Was she?”

“No, she left uni early because she got herself pregnant by one of the lecturers.”

“Oh, so how come you and–um–I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“I know.”

I felt very guilty. Here was my long suffering hubby, suffering again but it wasn’t really my fault–I just wasn’t that much into sex–well not tonight. Yes, I did get periods of being more interested and they did seem to form a regular pattern but was that wishful thinking and self delusion or was it real and possibly attributable to the hormones?

I sat up and kissed him, he began stroking my nipple and kissed me back. I took the aggressor’s role and pushed him back onto the bed and began working to arouse him–it didn’t take long. Neither did the next bit, and ten minutes later I was washing myself before returning to bed and slipping alongside my sleeping spouse.

I sat and watched him for a short time, I did love him but today I didn’t fancy him or anyone else for that matter. If Johnny Depp or George Clooney had come into the bedroom I’d probably have preferred to talk to them about film making than wanting to bed them. Next week it could be different, but I doubt it. A few days each month is about all I seem to have and that wasn’t too long ago if I remember.

But then I’ve never been that interested. As a kid I didn’t know who I fancied and for what, I was far more rapt in my own thoughts studying girls because I so badly wanted to be them. There was a girl in our road who used to wear far too much makeup, especially mascara but I so badly wanted to be her. I’m sure she thought I was weird because I used to stare at her–taking in her clothes, the changes in her body as puberty took off–hers not mine–the way she did her makeup and her hair and the clothes she wore.

In hindsight, I can see that she was the town bike, she dressed and acted like a slag but she was a contemporary role model, unlike my mother who seemed to be more chaste than the Virgin Mary. I know they must have done it at least once–because I was born–but I could never imagine my parents actually doing it. They probably did, I was just unaware because their generation tended to be more private than my own about personal matters.

I remember Hawkeye Pearce–yeah, he was nicknamed after the Mash series on TV, I suppose I was lucky I wasn’t called Klinger–anyway, he always bragged as if he was getting it every night and twice on Sundays. However, one day he came o school and something was different about him–he’d lost his swagger a bit, but there was a more mature confidence about him–he’d managed to get his leg over at last and the reality was something far more powerful than he realised.

It meant nothing to me then other than as an outsider I could observe more objectively than most of them–a little like the thing with girls–I watched them much more closely than most boys did–yet if one of them had offered to take my virginity, I’d have run a mile, probably two. Lust was something that appeared in my little life much later than my contemporaries from what I could understand at least. Okay, now and again I see someone who does something to me–as Gareth did at the first meeting–but that must have coincided with my little window of desire–a couple of days per month.

Simon’s eyes were moving under his closed eyelids, so I concluded he was dreaming–I wondered if it was about me and what we had just done–or was it about his work or something completely different.

One day we might have machines that can be plugged into the head to show what is going on inside the head, complete with pictures–though I’m not sure I’d want anyone looking inside my head. I suppose it would finally resolve the old chestnut of what dreams are about and how different men’s and women’s brains really are–probably not very different at all.

I remember reading some research which suggested that we were more alike than we liked to think and differences, apart from being pushed by the psycho-pop people to sell their books, were very small if anything, and that the application to life was the major difference. Women think about babies because they live in that environment traditionally, follow tradition in wanting babies and so on. Boys only thought of football or sex all the time because they were following stereotypes and it was what they assumed all other boys did. They were wrong because at least one boy in my school was thinking more about babies than football–except, I suppose I don’t fulfil the usual criterion for identifying boys and never did.

Of course all these research papers tend to have critics who found the exact opposite in their research. Money was sure that sex and gender behaviour was learned and possibly influenced by things like hormones–but it seems he could have been wrong in at least one case–which implies it must be inherent, genetically programmed. At least that’s what most of us afflicted by contrary gender impulses tend to claim–so who am I to disagree?

I felt my eyes getting tired and my head was nodding, so I cuddled down next to Simon, he of course turned over towards me, so I faced away from him and allowed him to put his arm round me, even though he was fast asleep. His apparent need to protect me even when asleep, gave me a tremendous sense of love for him and I fell asleep thinking about how much I loved him rather than the more difficult experiences of the day.