Dumpster-Dancer

His gleeful wife bounded into our kitchen, a huge smile on her face, waving our Hitachi Magic Wand vibrator and a bottle of Gun Oil 100% silicone vaginal lube. “Look honey, maybe something like this can help get me warmed up.”

A bunch of us long married, post-menopausal couples were meeting every month to fine tune our relationship skills. As usual all the men had been hiding out in the game room bragging about their vehicles. Their lonesome wives and I had been in the living room talking about stuff that matters like relationships, feelings, emotions, kids, problems . . . Somehow my wife mentioned being on hormone replacement therapy HRT. As the cupcakes dwindled and couples left, Sarah sidled over to us and shyly asked if the HRT helped with “dryness.”

It turns out she and her husband hadn't had sex in over a year due to her “dryness.” “What kind of lube do you guys use?” I asked. Her blank stare answered that. “Does a lot of foreplay help?” My wife probed. “But we're married.” She replied.

After everyone else had left my sweetie gave her a little sample size bottle of Silicone lube and let her run our Magic Wand on her shoulders to get a feel of the vibrations. Sarah bounced into the kitchen with it where her husband and I had been cleaning up. “Look Honey!” She told him she thought the vibrator might help get her “warmed up” and solve her problem. I added that the Magic Wand can be a bit intense, so it's best to run it over her clothing or, better yet, place a thumb on her clit and then run the Wand on the back of your thumb. It's more intimate that way too.

He'd looked a little uncomfortable during the conversation, but as soon as I said the word “clit” he just shut down. End of conversation.

In keeping with the Christian theme of our meeting, I talked about the passage in Song of Solomon in the Bible where man is reminded to “knock at the door” and wait for “the dew” before entering his woman . . . but he was gone . . . slam the door, bar it shut, lalalalalalala gone.

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Up to this time, our mega-Church had been assigning a relationship type book like “Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti” (Will and Pam Farrell) each year. There would also be little study guides with relationship questions for us to discuss. With couples discussing relationships, intimate issues like infidelity, porn, and poor communication arose at almost every meeting. There was some tension, but overall, marriages were improving. My own certainly did. #church_helps And the church was growing, fast.

In the months after we'd showed his wife a vibrator, the prudish husband went on a campaign to get the Church “back into the WORD OF GOD.” He talked to the elders and the pastor. He pressured the other men to do so as well. So far as I know he never said a word about vibrator or lube. Instead he just pushed the importance of keeping the Church “in the WORD.” The next year it was announced that, henceforth, couple's groups were to be normal Bible studies. The study guides would now have theological topics, not relational ones.

That was a decade ago. The marriage oriented Associate Pastors got reassigned to other churches. The deacon board hired newer, more dogmatic, ones. The church has since dwindled from many huge weekend services to a few smaller ones.

Neither HRT nor lube helped the wife's “dryness” problem . . . but they did get a huge new RV and jeep to tow behind it. I guess that way they can spread his misery further and faster. She remains the dutiful wife but seems a bit sad when we see her.

There's nothing in any Christian teaching that would make it wrong to use a vibrator in foreplay or a bit of lube. There's nothing that makes it wrong to use the word “clit” in the context of improving a marriage. Certainly there's nothing wrong with using the wisdom from Song of Solomon to address a problem.

The outside world often sees Christian churches as dogmatic institutions intent on imposing rules on everyone. I see a few prudes uncomfortable with their own humanity using the Church as a tool to beat everyone else into silence on uncomfortable topics.

And the prudes hold just as much sway in the secular world. Have you ever seen the hero in a #romance_novel use lube before entering a woman? No, in that world everything just happens by magic. No wonder real women are disappointed by real men, and vice versa. The prudes are busy behind the scenes brainwashing us to believe that intimate things just take care of themselves without us having to work or learn, share or try.