All That and Then Some

ALICE - Hard To Laugh

I'VE BEEN CATCHING VIC up on the events of the day (face yoga, interrupted by cafe panic, emergency meeting and subsequent supposed fine-ness of finding myself central to an embarrassing viral hashtag). It's 11 pm, and the house is quiet and dark. Although it is pulsing in that way houses do when a teenager is skulking around somewhere in it, sleepless. I love our daughter, but I preferred it when she was skulking around Residence rather than here. I find it hard to sleep when children are awake in the house.

"Do you think she ever sleeps?" I ask my husband in the dark.

"I doubt it," he says. "At least not before 2 am. They have a different clock at that age. Why? Do you feel like making some noise?"

He can't be serious, I think. With all this on my mind?

Vic, who is a man and therefore ill-equipped to understand sex as something you can only do if your mind is unworried and your children are fast asleep, is already inching his way over onto my side of the bed.

"I guarantee you she has headphones on."

"You can't guarantee that!"

He's nuzzling my neck in that way that I like.

"I can guarantee other things..." he says, muffled, into my collarbone.

As he slowly pulls my camisole straps off my shoulders, my distracted mind locks onto a new concern.

"What if my parents see the video?"

"Please don't mention your parents when I'm trying to seduce you," he murmurs into my navel.

"But what if they do?" I gasp, not from sensual pleasure but the fresh horror of my next thought: "Oh my god, what if your parents see it? I would die of embarrassment!"

He stops his slow progression down my body and leans on one elbow.

"So what? You were dancing. How could it be that embarrassing?"

I shake my head in the almost-dark. He hasn't seen it, so he doesn't know. Vic spends almost no time on the internet and couldn't possibly understand how an innocent, private twerk could be recut into a hundred thousand animated gifs that will haunt me for the rest of my professional life. What might possibly remain of it.

"I think," he says with a sly grin, "That you really had better reenact this embarrassing dance for me. Possibly now?"

As if.

"No way," I say, yanking the covers back up over me and rolling away from him.

He sighs. "Okay, no private dancing tonight. Maybe tomorrow."

This reminds me to tell him that I promised to babysit Buddy's toddler tomorrow.

"Fantastic," groans my husband, who rolls back over to his side of the bed, leaving me alone again with my worries, which are many and leave me sleepless as a teenager.

THE NEXT MORNING, I tried to wake up when his alarm went off. While lying sleepless somewhere between 2 and 4 am, I'd decided that I would make up for shutting down his amorous advances last night and try to catch him before his morning run, aiming for a mutually-agreeable outcome in the guaranteed quiet of our sleeping household.

Unfortunately, those sleepless hours took their toll, and by the time I was finally able to crack an eye open, Vic was already up and off on his run.

I'd missed him. Oh well, I thought to myself before snuggling deeper into the warm duvet, I'll get another chance. That's the beauty of marriage. There's always more time, more chances. Things ebb, and they flow, but ultimately, so long as you don't let things ebb too far (forgetting birthdays, having affairs, mentioning your spouse's weight gain or committing any other serious relationship damaging offence), you'll find yourselves back in the flow eventually.