Pictures tell lies. They trap a moving, changing moment into a single frame that points to a vague encapsulation of the truth. I saw a picture of Barack and Michele Obama dancing face to face at the inaugural ball, and I immediately started wondering if they were going to have sex on inauguration night. I can't fully imagine what it must be like to be so close to a lifemate after having gone through such a dramatic transformation, from gangly law student to American figurehead. Does sex have place in that world anymore? Is there time for physical intimacy with so many dire threads dangling on the periphery of the celebration?
Watching someone evolve is inevitable in long-term relationships. For many that I know, this constitutes a kind of gradual slackening. Getting married is a finish line, a celebratory goal after which two people can give over to the pursuits of property management, consumption, and an annual vacation to a postcard somewhere in South Western Bavaria or the West Indes. How many people get to see their partners actually excel over time? How many loving spouses watch their mate become more than he or she was as an awkward undergrad?
This is me projecting, but seeing the Obama's dancing against a blue sea of heads gazing up in the darkness, it's hard not see the sex there between them. Barack's forward-leaning posture, his chin jutting hungrily into Michelle's face, I can almost see the thoughts in his head. The wetness, the warm touching of skin, the rhythmic thrust inwards, straining to ascend, the hips rising in anticipation of his momentum. The arch up, the coming together, the falling back, the dilated pupils, the clenched hands, fingers interlocked.
It all becomes a metaphor in the picture when I look at it, the two people there project sexual silhouettes, stuck in the gaze of a political machine, but still holding onto the mundane mystery of a human relationship.
One of my greatest fears about long-term relationships is thinking about the ways that I'll change over time. I don't feel any different inside now than I did when I was a boy, but pictures tell me that I have changed. I can only imagine what changes are left for me in the coming decades. This image terrifies me: a woman looking at me in twenty years, wondering where the wave broke, wondering when the man I used to be transformed into the slouching, wrinkled reduction sitting on the couch.
It makes me woozy to imagine a relationship that is still on the upslope twenty years later, cresting unimagined territory, moving forward in tandem. I can't imagine experiencing it from that height without needing the expression of affection to take a physical form, to put in primal action all the things words miss.
But it's just a picture in the end. A stolen frame, a fraction of a second in a night that must also be larded with hand shaking, obsequious coddling, political ingratiation, and impersonal pomp. How much of that momentary flush of desire can be left after a maelstrom of toothy smiles and flashing bulbs? I don't know. When I imagine myself in that position, the secret service is guarding the door while I'm in the bathroom fucking my wife, trying to hold on, in momentary freefall.
Previous Posts:
Sex Machine: If You Can Get Me Hard I'll Show You A Good Time
Date Machine: Tool Academy, or Watching TV with Your Girlfriend
Sex Machine: Getting Laid
Love Machine: I Was a Six Year-Old Virgin, or Is There A Happy Ending?
Date Machine: Getting Pierced on a Date
Love Machine: Hitting Snooze on the Morning After
Date Machine: Let Me Seduce You With The Cardigans
Date Machine: I'm Too Sexy For Your Blog
Love Machine: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, or Leaving Home
Date Machine: Super Macho Man Slumber Party
Sex Machine: Having Sex in Your Parents' House During the Holidays
Date Night: Trying to Behave on a Boring Coffee Date
Sex Machine: Sex with Older Women, or How I Would Make Love to Gloria Swanson
Love Machine: Using Your Words, or I Like Pap
Date Machine: Drunk Emailing with J, or How To Fail at Seduction
Sex Machine: Listening to the Neighbors Have Sex
Date Night: In Which I Try To Believe In Aliens
Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines Redux
Love Machine: Loyal as a Dog
Date Machine: Rate My Politics
High School Machine: Ten-Year Reunion Fantasies
Date Machine: Setting Up Your Friends
Sex Machine: Having Sex at Weddings Redux
Love Machine: Making Love to ESPN
Date Machine: 5 Things I'm Thankful For