Cupid Is as Cupid Does

Restoring the Luster of Levitan’s Libido

By Corey Levitan

“Sex between a man and a woman can be absolutely wonderful,” Woody Allen once said, “provided you get between the right man and the right woman.”

This year is my eighth as the exclusive romantic partner to my wife, a woman whose beauty is surpassed only by her tolerance (evidenced by the fact that you’re reading this and I’m still married).

We still love each other deeply, but the simian simmer that once rocked our bedroom has — especially since the birth of our daughter last year — mostly relocated to my office laptop.

To commemorate Valentine’s Day, I made a several-pronged attempt to relocate it back.

My wife (who insisted that this article not contain her name so potential future employers can’t Google it) is not into kinky fantasy weirdness. And neither am I — at least when she asks me.

But my theory is that entirely unethical situations and positions can be a turn-on to a conservative woman — as long as she’s with a man she passionately loves.

Until my wife finds that man, it’s up to me. And maybe you can learn from my successes and failures.

 

ROMANTIC NIGHT AWAY

This was actually the wife’s idea. After a fight one afternoon that was my fault — what other kind is there? — she marched into the living room with a piece of paper. Shockingly, it was a bargain website hotel reservation instead of divorce papers to sign. She nabbed a top-floor, Strip-facing suite at the MGM Signature for $200. (Yay, Las Vegas’ economic devastation!)

This was to be our first night away from our infant daughter. My wife had just shed not only all her baby weight, but five extra pounds.

I made excited preparations. They included a trusted babysitter, minty mouthwash and other artificial fluids, and a reservation at our favorite restaurant.

The yumminess of Origin India was a short cab ride away and we knew the evening would be special as soon as we entered the restaurant. That’s because our favorite waiter didn’t forget my name and address me as “boss,” as he usually does.

“Welcome, amigo!” he announced.

Hitting the feathery, 1,500-count sheets under the influence of a stomach-bursting vegetarian feast and only a single Pinot Grigio, I picked a movie I knew we wouldn’t watch: “Hangover 2.”

And that’s the last memory either of us has before awakening the next morning. Something here still needed fixing.

 

THE SEXY OUTFIT

For someone as uncomfortable with his manhood as I am, the frilly façade of Victoria’s Secret is best not penetrated alone. So I enlisted a coach: a not-that-attractive old friend who I pray does not read how I just described her.

I usually grab the first thing I see in an intimate apparel store and make off — after checking that my high-school gym teacher isn’t watching. But a thorough knowledge of camis, teddies, tap pants and body stockings doesn’t make our special friend fall off. In fact, he rises to the occasion at images of how much more significant our other will appear in each new satiny garment of filth.

I mean, we guys spend three months hunting down the perfect computer screen to display our secret Jenna Jameson DVDs. Why can’t we spend an hour on something we will actually touch?

My old friend helped me pick out garter belts and matching bras. “Even if a girl is dressing like a hooker, she’s gonna want to match,” she explained. “And don’t even THINK of shopping before you know her bra and panty sizes. The only thing worse than something too big is something too small.

Following my old friend’s advice, I rummaged through my wife’s underwear drawer while she was at work. (Ladies, we know you suspect us of doing it anyway.)

“It’s so pretty!” the wife said upon opening her correctly fitting red satin bustier with a fake-diamond choker, lacy panties and pair of black do-me pumps.

She’s not supposed to like it, I informed her; it’s a hooker outfit.

Well, at least she hates the shoes.

“How am I supposed to stand in them?” she asked.

“You’re not,” I replied.

This time, neither of us fell asleep. But would this permanently solve our spice shortage or become a crutch? More importantly, I was having too much fun with this journalistic investigation to stop now.

 

TOYS

Excuse me, sir, can you unlock that glass case and grab me that battery-powered exaggerated anatomical thing so everybody in the store can see you do it for me?

Whoever invented Internet shopping, thank God for you.

For extra spice, I also ordered a blindfold, handcuffs and other unprintables from eBay’s “adults only” section. (Look hard for it; it’s hidden.)

“No!” the wife pleaded.

Is that a no that’s good or a no that’s bad? (This is not a sexy question to ask in the moment, incidentally.)

I’m not going to get into specifics, because I know how grossed out you are already.

Later, the wife told me it wasn’t so much the toys she enjoyed, but the surrender of control, the trusting of someone who perhaps shouldn’t be trusted. And fear of the unknown.

“What I really liked was when you reached into the bag,” she said. “When I heard the rustling of the paper, I didn’t know what was going to happen next.”

Nor did our closely spaced next-door neighbor, who still flashes me the thumbs-up when I see him in his driveway.

 

THE SEX TAPE

My Canon’s batteries were as charged as mine when I perched the mini-DVD camcorder on our dresser, aimed it and slinked under the covers.

“You’re gonna erase this, right?” my wife asked.

“Of course,” I lied.

Immediately, I noticed something different about my tendency to give more than receive: It existed. A camera in the bedroom is like someone who sits in the corner and watches. With one small, red-blinking eye. Everything you do is an attempt to impress your viewer as much as your lover.

Even though my wife is the only other viewer this DVD will have — unless one of us becomes famous or makes a dreadful error with the Netflix return envelope — I found myself so proud of the 12 minutes I took, I mugged into the camera like Schneider from “One Day at a Time.”

Alas, our coitus was interruptus-ed. And not by the cry I dreaded from our sleeping daughter’s bedroom. It was by our Dachshund, who is accustomed to conducting the only animal activity in our marital bed. The wife used my setback time to joke, which of course further increased my setback time until it was time to press “stop.”

After production wrapped, we discovered that making and watching your own sex tape are two distinct religions. You really don’t know your body until you see it in action without you.

“How can you desire to do such things to that pale guy with the Buddha belly?” I asked my wife.

“Huh?” she responded. She was busy grimacing at the size of her thighs.

“My nails look good, though,” she said.

 

SEX IN PUBLIC

The wife and I visited Manhattan for Labor Day weekend, leaving the baby with a childhood friend of mine. Proudly, I showed off my old stomping grounds: where John Lennon was murdered, where those rapists went wilding, where Robert Chambers strangled that girl.

You know, the good old days.

Little did the wife know, we were about to create a little criminal history ourselves. Sex in Central Park is indecent exposure, a misdemeanor punishable by arrest and a $250-$500 fine. But how better to top off a romantic ride on the lake than a romantic ride in the surrounding woods?

I began with a tongue sandwich worthy of Katz’s Deli. Then I broke the penal code. Surprisingly, my wife went with the moment. The only hard part was, um, my hard part.

Lyme Disease isn’t sufficiently terrifying to keep me from lying in wildly overgrown underbrush. But it was enough, it turned out, to keep me from finishing a task as quickly as you need to when your nakedness is clearly visible from a side road leading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The final straw was that passing cop car “bwoop bwooping,” albeit for some entirely unrelated reason.

You can scratch this one off your list. It’s better as a fantasy.

 

THREE-WAY

My immediate future doesn’t even include a two-way I can count on. Yet why not try taking this assignment as far as it can possibly go?

After dinner in L.A. one night, the wife thought we were rolling to a bar for a nightcap. This was true. I just didn’t mention that on Friday nights, the bar goes lesbian.

The wife neglected to notice that I was the only man waiting on the long line who was born that way. But the name of tonight’s temporary club, projected in white letters against a dark wall in the lobby, finally betrayed my secret.

“One drink and that’s it!” she commanded as we entered the Girl Bar.

The woman with blonde braids dancing alone in front of the nearest open table looked like a model. In fact, her look was beyond model; it was mannequin. (I think I noticed little lines on her shoulders where the arms snapped on.)

Unfortunately, she danced in that empty-eyed, off-balance kind of way you don’t want to take advantage of because she might be drunk or a mental patient.

Perfect!

“No girls!” the wife insisted.

I nodded as I ordered two red wines.

Other than its lack of other biological males, the Girl Bar distinguished itself in another way from every other bar I’ve ever patronized: an attractive female was staring at me. It was Drunk and/or Crazy Bo Derek. And she waved. Then she actually approached!

This was not a dream. I double-checked.

Her name was Myla. I invited her to sit and ordered her another Absolut Mandarin and Red Bull. She was staring at me, she said, because she was embarrassed to look at my wife.

“I knew if I looked directly at you,” Myla told her, “I would break my concentration and I couldn’t dance right.”

My wife thanked her and uncomfortably introduced herself.

“You’re a good dancer,” she told Myla.

I suggested that we hit the dance floor. My wife declined, then pulled me aside. I signaled Myla to hang.

“It’s not that I think sex with a woman is gross,” she told me. “I just love you so much and I know that sex with another person would get in the way.”

Her eyes began tearing. There was not enough red wine in the world to pull this off.

But the story didn’t end when we exited the bar. A couple of days later, my wife awoke and asked me to guess what she just had a dream about.

“You and me with our girlfriend.”