Girls Column: Sex In The Sticks

Lauren Johns

28/08/08

Lauren gets a very unexpected urge...

I have a confession to make.

If you had been a fly on my wall on Tuesday night, you would have found me starring into a full length mirror, holding a pillow and trying to imagine how I would look as a mother cradling a baby.

As a far as fantasies go, this is the first one that I’ve had one that begins with
four stone of weight gain and ends with permanent disfigurement to my
under-carriage.

Don’t get me wrong - I see children as being a major part of my future life - I just
don’t want any yet. So, why (if I have already made my pact with nature) am I
suddenly turning pillows into toddlers and ‘coochy cooing’ over the baby pictures in
the autumn/winter Next catalogue?

My musing didn’t last long.

‘It’s your age.’ (My mother’s standard reply to every question that I have asked her post twenty-five.)

‘Mother, it’s not my age, I’ve only been feeling this way for the last few days.’

‘Well, your body knows when the time’s right - even if your mind needs to catch up.'

My mother's words didn‘t provide any consolation. They did however confirm my growing suspicion that my primitive body (in a military style coup) is attempting to override the rational choices of my civilised mind.

No clubbing, no holidays, no career, no money, no energy, no life and the real possibility that everything will be ten times harder with a 'chubby little funster’ in tow. Why would I choose this right now? And, if I don’t - will my body choose for me?

Lying in bed that night (trying to ignore the sound of my ovaries singing) a thought struck me. Perhaps my broodiness stems from being single? Maybe, its not the lack of bun in the oven that my body is worried about but more the lack of an opportunity to put one there?

The thought of my body making a drama out of a sex crisis is at least a little more reassuring than the notion that my biological clock could explode at any minute and splatter my remains all over the windows of Mothercare. Why? Because I can mentally write it an I.O.U.

In the mean time, I’m going to continue packing my suitcase for my girly holiday (making space for the industrial size box of condoms that my ex left) and hope that before I start waking up to a nine-pound energy thief, I will be waking up to a few more bad men.

After all - practise makes perfect.