The Best Sex Ever

When you're going through a divorce, your girlfriends (and in my case, my parents and sister) are your rock. They see you through grief-stricken tears and somehow turn them into tears of laughter. I'm blessed with an amazing group of girlfriends who are like family to me. Over glasses of wine (ok, bottles) or vodkatinis, we tell each other the latest stories of our complicated lives and inevitably end up doubled over in spasms of laughter, even when circumstances, well, frankly.... suck.

Lauren has been one of my best friends for years and we're like sisters. We've seen each other through a lot of suffering, but we've seen each other through even more side-splitting laughter than I can fathom. She's one of those women who's not only beautiful (both outside and in), but smart, with a quicker wit than I've ever seen in another human being, and she's infamous for her one-liners. She's been responsible for me spitting out whatever I happen to be drinking on more occasions than I care to remember.

Lauren has been divorced for years after a short marriage (replete with hilarious stories of its own, which I will discuss in future posts) and she is wise in matters of contentious situations with men. She and I were chatting the other day and I was telling her the latest saga of Ex's finagling out of having to appear in court yet again, while I took a day off of work and got up at an unearthly hour in order to prepare my documents and make it in time. I was so upset, aggravated and anxious in telling her this story and reliving it in my head for the umpteenth time, but she disarmed the teary lump in my throat with one sentence and turned what was another end-of-the-world moment for me into a cosmic joke.

I have to give you a little history in order for you to understand her comment. In my first post, I mentioned that Ex lost interest in sex. To be specific, he basically refused me for over a year and I later found out that the commencement of my sexual desert (not to be confused with "dessert".... waaaay different) coincided with his porn account registration. OK, seriously, to be refused by your own husband for a year? At my age??? I wondered for awhile if there was something wrong with me.... had I gained weight? (No.) Had I grown a third nipple? (Not that I could find.) And as far as I could tell, I hadn't transformed into some hideously frightening hogbeast from which a man would want to run and cry in his mommy's skirt. Nevertheless, I wasn't getting any.

Funny enough, when I faced the fact that the marriage was deteriorating and that I was miserably unhappy, Ex sensed this (probably because I told him I was unhappy.... that seemed to do the trick) and he suddenly wanted to hop in the sack. That's just a side note, though, and maybe I'll elaborate on that in a future post. The point is, I went for a long period of time without sex. As a married woman. Approaching my sexual peak. Isn't that supposed to be one of the benefits of marriage, that you get to have sex on a regular basis? Well, not for me. Bottom line, we ended up never having sex again.

When I was wailing to Lauren about how horribly anxiety-provoking this process is, and how insanely pissed off I was that Ex had once again wiggled out of a court appearance, she started laughing. Lauren has this infectious laugh that, even in your worst moment, catches you up and you end up laughing uproariously with her. I began laughing even before she delivered her one-liner, but when she did, I had another one of those spit-out-your-drink-and-choke-laughing moments. After she was able to contain herself enough to speak, she said.....

"Almost Free, if you have the chance, you need to say, 'Ex, in all the years we've known each other, the past 7 months have been the best f*ck you've ever given me.'"

Thank God for girlfriends and laughter!