By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. New York’s Sex Diaries series asks anonymous city dwellers to record a week in their sex lives — with comic, tragic, often sexy, and always revealing results. This week, a middle-aged mom with a passionless marriage, stagnant career, and an active imagination: 39, straight, parochial school nurse, San Francisco.3:45 a.m. I’m lying awake, as usual.
2:15 p.m. I’m a nurse at an elementary school, and today’s been a boring one, no broken bones, not even a scraped knee. I’m in a post-lunch afternoon slump, and browsing the web; romantic, looking at international Airbnb stays that I’ll probably never experience in person. 9:45 p.m. Sliding into bed after what seems like an endless day. They all seem that way. My husband never comes to bed when I do. He always has “some important stuff to do” in his home office, which takes him long into the night.3:45 a.m. I’m lying awake, as usual. Instead of getting off silently, like I typically might at this hour, I find myself thinking about my tweenaged son, and wondering what his life is going to be like.
I have to pack for the day: snacks, lunch, snacks, change of clothes, more snacks. This is not Vegas. 4:05 a.m. The room is quiet now, and my mind wanders to a friend of mine, a man I used to work with long before I was a nurse. I haven’t seen him in 15 years. He lives in Chicago. He doesn’t know I think of him … He’s perfect, really. Intelligent, philosophically deep. Hyper-Ivy League educated, and there’s really nothing more attractive to me than genius. In a romantic fantasy, I can see us together. He’s married. And he’s a Buddhist, so, he’s driven by karma; he’d never be interested.