Sex. Obviously, I've had it. We don't have to talk about how much I've had it — I happen to have grown up in a town where your two leisure choices were having sex or entering your low-rider in a competition. But rest assured you can trust me, person you just met on the Internet, when I tell you that I am a perfectly qualified judge, and that the greatest sex I ever had was when I was pregnant.
But how can that be possible, you might ask? Weren't you the grossest, fattest version of yourself that you ever were when knocked up, and isn't that the opposite of what makes sex good? Excellent question. The answer is yes, when I was pregnant I was both the grossest and fattest I ever was (not counting the Gross-a-thon that occurred from the years 1987 to 1990).
But we all know by now that in spite of everything we've ever seen or been told, that what looks good and what feels good are often two entirely different things. At least, that's what that guy in college said who wanted me to stroke him with a piece of rabbit fur followed by a piece of metal. Sorry, dude, I get it now. Because somehow, nothing made yours truly wanna get up on a D more than when I had the least amount of control over how I looked or felt. Touche, nature. Touche.
Was it pregnancy-induced lack of inhibition? Nature's cruel game? Or the mere fact that I had hit the age — my 30s — where women are supposed to feel more comfortable with their bodies? Apparently all it took was me getting knocked up and putting on 60 pounds to become Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters. Post-Zuul possession, natch.
Maybe it was the thrill of new life, maybe it was a last hurrah before accepting the realities of impending parenthood. Or as my husband remembers, "What was going to happen — you were going to get more pregnant?"
Ergo, we had sex everywhere, all the time during the first trimester. It was as if we were participating in some kind of commercial audition for having sex and needed to do it a lot in a lot of different ways to exhibit range. Morning sickness remained respectfully at bay, and everything felt surging and alive. New hormones, new excitement, the same old positions but minus all the worry!
Then, suddenly, two months in and without warning, I was closed for business. Put the goods away, sir, as I am retiring for the duration, I seemed to say.
My husband refers to this middle period as "The Thing" for some reason, but I just ate like a jackal and had a lot of emergency feelings that I needed to be addressed immediately the second they occurred.
This, I believe, is what you'd refer to as a hard-off. And for the next three months, I was completely asexual, a lumbering beast hauling fluids and fetus through time and space like a slow motion, self-contained, brooding wonder — a woman in repose.
I used the time, though. This is when I learned a lot of random things about being pregnant, like that a pregnant woman's blood volume DOUBLES. And there's a thing called lactation porn and people are INTO IT and they are GROSS PEOPLE. That you're not supposed to lay flat on your back for very long after the first trimester because of the possible compression of a major vein. That pregnancy will have you driving across town in the middle of a bona fide blizzard for a coney dog from Sonic because by. God. you. will. have. your. self. a. coney. dog.
Then, in the last trimester, as if activated like some kind of sex-bot sleeper cell, nature reached into my loins and flipped her almighty switch again, and suddenly it was get-up-on-a-D-time again, Maximum Overdrive edition. The world was my Viagra, and I was a rabid she-beast who was filled with pure, insatiable desire.
There were weird, vivid sex dreams about old boyfriends, complete strangers, extremely undesirable coworkers, nurses, various functional fruit. I guess it's like what a real horny dude is like in the 8th grade or what Gene Simmons is like all the time? You tell me.
It's also the only time I've ever felt like a captive audience to arbitrary desire — as if I was experiencing some bizarro world pregnant libido version of the Clockwork Orange force-eyed aversion therapy scene. Everything was gonna seem real hot to me whether I wanted it to or not.
Luckily, I had a dude to get up on, and that dude was my husband. We'd hit the good times jackpot, and we did what any newly married and pregnant couple would do when given such a pass: we got on the highway and took this little number out for a spin.
True, she was quick to overheat, but points were frequently awarded for effort and enthusiasm. Seriously, though: in spite of being the sort of person who felt sure I'd had the self-esteem to have great sex already, this was hella different. It was consciousness-raising sex.
No longer responsible for my body's shape, size, various fluids or logistical difficulties, I was merely an incredibly turned on vessel of biology and impulse. No alcohol needed, no state of mind, no warm-up period, no gettin' in the mood. Whether it was sexy or not was beside the point. Somehow, merely being alive in these moments was beyond sexy — it was transcendent.
In simpler terms: I didn't give a pregnant shit how I looked or sounded. I just wanted to get it on. Move over, Samantha. I think THIS is having sex like a dude. Right? Amirite? Like, dudes are hilariously unselfconscious about like, everything as it is. Sex is like pathologically self-serving dude go-time.
Anywho, this visceral spree went on right up till the very end, but I never really did figure out why the pregnant woman is sometimes subjected to such a possessed craving. I know there's hormones and increased sensitivity and engorgement and all that, but what biological purpose would it actually serve?
Nature, of course, is cyclical, not to mention a saucily good keeper of her own secrets. So perhaps it's no coincidence that as the pregnancy advanced, friends, midwives and other mothers began to mention sex with a wink and a nod along with eating spicy food and long walks around the neighborhood to kick-start labor. Turns out that something in semen is said to have a ripening effect on the cervix. I guess it makes sense — after all, jizz got you into this hot biological mess in the first place. The least it can do is help warm up the car on the way out.
Tracy Moore is a writer living in Los Angeles. She's probably having sex right now.
Image via Jana Guothova/Shutterstock.