The guilty sexual conscience

So in as much as I’d like to believe that I am cool with this thing ‘sexuality’ and ‘sex’ and most particularly how they work within a marriage setting, it seems I am not as enlightened and uninhibited as I might like to think. And here’s how I discovered it. It’s my own real life story this week!

It was a Sunday afternoon. Not a particularly unusual one. A slow day, spent sleeping in and reading and cuddling with my husband. I might have put Lord of the Rings on if we hadn’t had to go out later. So cuddling led to further intimacy and ultimately to sex. Pretty wonderful, deeply connected stuff, actually. There may have been some erotica involved also. And some healthy vocal expression of enjoyment, shall we say. Nothing too crazy, just the usual oohs an aahs.

No shame in being a sexy wife like Betty, right?

In the midst of this wondrous and seemingly uninhibited joy – a sharp rapping on our front door stops us in our sweaty tracks. The mute function goes on the erotica quick-smart. Husband and I look at each other in alarm and embarrassment. Is it the police? Our neighbours? Are we being too loud? Is it some religious extremist taking a stand against the erotica he/she has overheard passing by our apartment door?

“Don’t answer it” – my husband mouthes to me. I had absolutely no intention of doing so.

The rapping gets louder. Knock knock knock. Knock Knock KNOCK. KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

Good gawd. What is it? Who is it? What do they want with us? What is so bad about a husband and wife sharing the love? Isn’t this perfectly acceptable. Why can’t we do this in our own home on a Sunday afternoon? Damn society and its terribly judgemental ways, where neighbours find very soft noises of pleasure offensive and worth complaining about.

Our neighbour gives up the knocking eventually and we hear them walk on to their apartment next door and hear their front door shut. It sounds like an angry slam.

“They definitely sounded angry”, my husband whispers to me. “Can we not even do this in our own marital home? Geez!”

“I know! I feel so oppressed. I’m not sure we can live here anymore,” I whisper back. We don’t seem to have realised that we can’t hear people talk through the walls, so there’s really no need to whisper, but we’re still feeling so embarrassed and violated, we can’t stop.

“What is the world coming to,” I say.

A little while later, after showers, and a lingering sense of the tragedy and ridiculousness of societal sexual repression, we go to leave the house for dinner. My husband hunts around for his keys. Everywhere, all over, and still they don’t turn up.

“I wonder…” he says, going to the front door. He turns the handle, opens the door, and there they are, stuck in keyhole on the outside, where he’d left them, accidentally, that morning.

“Oh,” he says.

“Oh.” I say.

“So they were just trying to return our keys.”

“They were just being really nice and concerned.”

“Oh.”

Giggles.

“We’re such idiots.”

“Yep.”

“Must have been our guilty consciences, right? Feeling like we were doing something wrong, and that could be the only reason for someone urgently rapping on our door?”

“Maybe.”

So, the sexual guilty conscience remains down there, deep down maybe. If it wasn’t that – why were we so quick to presume that society was judging us, as opposed to helping us?

Geez. Long way to go for me still. I’d love some opinions on this one, or to hear a story from anyone else who’s experience something similar!

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