“Oh my God, this road is horrible!”
I pressed my nose to the cracked window sucking in fresh air. Sheri was barreling down the Saw Mill Parkway which is a lengthy two lane highway running through New York full of S-curves. I was on the verge of seeing spots in front of my eyes I was getting so car sick. Sweat was starting to pool in the small of my back and I wrenched off my sneakers and socks to try to cool my rising body temperature.
“Aarrruugghhh. I’m getting sticky. I hate this road! I am about to be sick!”
Sheri was howling with laughter in the driver seat. “You look like a dog.”
I wiped my clammy palms across her face in retaliation.
We were only about 40 minutes into our three-and-a-half-hour journey up to Massachusetts to take an official tour of the college Hannah, her oldest daughter, was 99.9% sure she would be attending this fall. I am always Sheri’s co-pilot on road trips as she has absolutely no sense of direction whatsoever. I am responsible for reading out directions and giving her a heads up of our next move. “We only have 4 more miles on this road, thank God.”
I kept the window open to let the cool air wash over my face as I focused on taking deep cleansing breaths. Hannah and her friend Vince were in the backseat watching a movie, equally amused by my churning stomach.
I couldn’t help but laugh myself. I was playing it up quite a bit because I will do anything to make Sheri laugh, even if it is at my own expense.
We had been looking forward to this weekend since we booked it. Sheri and I had our own room while she was allowing Hannah to room with Vince.
I addressed the moppy-haired boy in the back seat. “You know Vince, I’m actually surprised your parents let you come. My parents would have never let me go away with a boy when I was your age.”
“That’s because I had a long discussion with them,” Hannah answered for him. She spoke for him a lot that weekend. “I knew when I asked Mom that the only reason she said yes was because she thought his parents would say no. And the only reason Vince said yes was because he thought his parents would say no, so I went directly to the source and laid out every reason why he should have been able to come.”
“So you got exactly what you wanted,” I said. Sheri and I exchanged knowing smiles. “I have NO idea where she got that from.”
Sheri smiled broadly. “I don’t know, either. Certainly not from me.”
The rest of the trip was uneventful. The rest of the roads weren't too twisty so my stomach stayed exactly where it should have been. Sheri was checking us into our hotel while Hannah, Vince, and I attacked the fresh made cookies. The girl behind the desk handed her the two sets of room keys. Sheri asked “They’re both identical rooms, right?” The girl smiled and answered her yes.
“Wait. You mean to tell me that you booked two rooms with a king size bed? You are allowing them to share a bed??”
Hannah bluntly point out “Jennifer, he’s gay. And if I were going to sleep with him I would have done it the six months he was my boyfriend.”
Sheri piped in while walking towards the elevator half addressing me, half addressing the women behind the desk. “Yeah, and she’s on the pill. But if I become a grandmother in nine months she has a lot of explaining to do!”
My eyes grew wide as I exclaimed in disbelief “SHERI!” I wanted to die from embarrassment.
I want to do that a lot.
The elevator doors closed behind us and she said “What?”
“I can’t believe you said that!”
She laughed as she does when she knows her words flew past what little filter she has. “I’ll apologize to them when we leave for dinner.”
Before we entered our rooms I shook my finger at both of them “There is to be NO hanky panky. And you never know when we’ll come barging in. Mark my words!”
I don’t particularly trust that a teenage boy is 100% gay when he has a hotel room and a king sized bed with a teenage girl.
Our room closed and I smiled seductively at Sheri and threw my arms around her neck. I surveyed the room and appreciated having a king sized bed and a pull-out couch. I knew that if Sheri was snoring too badly I had some place to escape to, unlike the prior weekend.
The prior weekend was Sheri’s birthday and she surprised me by sleeping over after I was badgering her I’ve been in my apartment for two-and-a-half years and she only slept over once. The novelty quickly wore off when we couldn’t get comfortable in bed and her snoring had me up at 1:30 in the morning grabbing my pillows and fan to retreat to the couch in the living room.
This weekend was supposed to be a do-over, complete with kinky hotel sex!
We traveled a couple of miles down the road into the nearby town to find a restaurant. It was a bustling college down with shops and restaurants lining both sides of the streets. We couldn’t find parking in the lot by the restaurant we wanted to eat in so we proceeded to drive around the city block. Three times. We ended up right back where we were. Sheri pulled into the lot that had valet parking and started talking to the attendant. The three of us climbed out of the car waiting for Sheri to get her ticket. She started to walk away when the guy called after her puzzled “Hey….are you going to park your car?”
She scrambled back and said apologetically “Sorry, we’re from Jersey. When I see a sign for valet parking I assume that it means you’ll park the car for me.”
The young guy chuckled and said “Yeah, it means the same thing here. Except it doesn’t say “valet”, it says “validate.”
She burst out laughing and I just shook my head. When she parked the car and was running down the lot still laughing I took her hand and lovingly said “You’re so dumb.”
Dinner was delicious in the bustling quaint steakhouse. We had Hannah take our picture (the one I posted) to celebrate it being seven years since our first kiss. We had to take about six different pictures because in order to get Sheri to actually smile I have to pinch her otherwise she looks frightened.
We went back to the hotel were we said goodnight to Hannah and Vince. Sheri turned on the shower and we slipped in together. I do think we may be the only couple in the history of couples that when I say we shower together, I mean we only showered! Majority of the shower is one of us vying for a spray of hot water or getting soap on the other when it’s already been rinsed off. The most sound you’ll hear out of one of our joint showers is laughter or Sheri howling that the tile is cold against her backside as she shimmies past me.
It’s the events after the shower that you have to watch out for.
I slipped into my lacy pink negligee that I brought for the occasion and climbed on top of her. There was no foreplay. It had been nearly a month since the last time we had sex and I wanted to get right down to business. And we did.
And it was an epic fail.
My part was fine. It was great. But I’m not difficult. But when it came time to Sheri it was a little more precarious. Her stomach hurt and she kept telling me not to jostle her too much, and I felt that her mind wasn’t in the moment but rather on her youngest child who was back home and sick. I was in a groove and going along great but then my arm cramped up and started to burn. We got into another position but after a while she tore away from me and said “It’s not gonna happen.” Frustrated and tired with my arm muscles on fire I got up from bed and put on my pajamas.
That night Sheri’s snoring wasn’t horrible. It was on the lower side of the decibel chart but I still couldn’t sleep. I took two Advil PM to try to help me sleep but all it did was make me loopy because I could not fall asleep. The pillows were uncomfortable, I was either too hot or too cold, and every time I laid on my right side my arm would ache. I somehow got about 4 hours of total sleep and I knew Friday night I’d hopefully be so tired I’d just pass out.
Except on Friday after the tour of the college we were supposed to head two hours east to the Boston suburbs to see another college on Saturday. When we woke up Friday morning I flipped on the news and saw all that had happened in Boston and Watertown in the middle of the night. Knowing that where we were going was maybe only 30 minutes away I grew very nervous and anxious. All throughout the day I kept checking my phone for updates and even argued with Sheri that if this guy wasn’t caught by Friday afternoon we should reconsider going to Boston.
But of course I’m engaged to an Aries. My fears were waved away with her hand as an overreaction. “We’ll be fine. What, do you think the bomber is checking into the Hilton?”
“Nooo, but the Hilton is right off the highway that runs right into Watertown! What if they don’t get him? What if he escapes? What is to say he’s even still there? I just don’t think it’s smart to have us to right into harm’s way!” I have inherited my mother’s theatrics. She was so worried about me she told me to stay in Amherst and she’d drive up to get me. Now that worried I was not.
Both Sheri and Hannah rolled their eyes at my concerns. Sheri is the type of person that if the bomber were standing in front of her with a bomb strapped to his chest she’d yell at him to get out of her way.
Mid-afternoon, after the tour of the campus, and after this guy still hadn’t been found, we started to head east. I had my feet up on the dash and my gaze on the passing landscape. Sheri’s hand was resting on my left leg with her thumb making small strokes. Every time I glanced at her she tried to give me a small reassuring smile. Exhausted and feeling stubborn, I set my mouth in a hard line and looked back out the window.
We checked into the hotel and made our way to our rooms and to meet for dinner at 6. Sheri said she was going to lay down for a bit and that if I woke her up before 5:15 she’d smother me with a pillow. I said good, that maybe if she did that I’d get some sleep!
We both laid down and I sank into the bed. I closed my eyes for a few minutes and tried to let my tension out of my body. We made it safe to the hotel. Authorities were pretty sure the guy was still in Watertown so I focused that it wasn’t like he was going to just randomly walk into the lobby and blow us up. I didn’t fall asleep but I rested. I let Sheri sleep a bit longer and I went to take a scalding hot shower and let the water pound my shoulders.
I felt better, I felt a little more level headed. We set out to find a restaurant. I wanted to eat at the one we had eaten at twice in the past; I liked the ambiance and the food. It was a wine bar with cool hanging glass pendant lighting and high bar tables. Sheri, however, was not a fan of the restaurant and voted that we were not going to eat there. She wanted to travel down the road to find something else. “Sheri,” I said, “You did this last time. We’ve been down this road. . We know there’s nothing down here.”
“You don’t know,” she answered defiantly. “Maybe something has sprung up in the past six months.”
I just looked at her as she travelled down the road towards Wellesley. After about three or four miles I glanced around. The houses were getting smaller and closer together and I knew we were heading closer to the outskirts of Boston. “Umm, we need to turn around before we end up facing a road block!”
She made the next right into a main street in search for a place to turn around.
“Ok tur….”
“That’s a one way”
“How about here….”
“Missed it”
“Oh my God Sheri just turn around!” I laughed as she kept driving past roads.
She looked around wildly. “I have no idea where I am!”
“Just hang a right here. We’ll then at least be parallel with the road we were on.” A little ways down the road “Umm…you should just try to get back to where we were on the main road.”
“Oh for the love of Pete!” She exclaimed as she turned around in someone’s short driveway.
We finally made it back to the little down of Dedham and found a hibachi place to eat. We were seated where our waiter was so kind to keep us abreast of the developing situation. Every time he came to refill our drinks “There were shots fired!” “Oh they got the guy!” “They got him cornered!” “Yep, he’s dead.”
Only he wasn’t. He wasn’t even captured at that point. But I rested back a little knowing that we were out of danger.
We went back to the hotel where we were going to call it an early night. Sheri got into bed and started reading her book, I was absentmindedly watching TV. I glanced over to her and was determined to make up for the night before.
I positioned myself carefully on top of her and gave her little kisses on her cheeks, then the corner of her mouth. We worked up to deep, passionate kissing. I put on our toy and eased myself into her, moving slowly at first. I flexed and rotated my hips while our tongues intertwined. My hands gripped at her hair and focused on her breathing and matched my movements to her rhythm. Her hands grabbed a handful of my flesh and she pushed me deeper into her. I gripped the top of the mattress to give myself leverage as I quickened my pace. With my legs I beckoned hers to open wider to give me deeper access as she closed her eyes and arched her back.
She flipped me over to climb on top and slowly rocked back and forth. My nails scratched down her back and my mouth sought the curve where her neck meets her shoulders and I gave her little playful bites. She breathed into my ear “Spread em” and I opened my legs wider and arched my hips up, giving her more resistance when she slammed down onto me.
I felt her slow down, she was taking deep breaths and making circles with her hips. I whispered against her skin “you’re such a tease.”
And with that she growled “Arrrggghhhh! Nooo! Damnit!!” Her body shuttered as an orgasm surprised her. She wasn’t able to get the motion going that she needed to make it as intense as it could be. “I slowed down so I could readjust! And then you had to say something!”
She rolled off of me and threw her hands up in the air. “What a waste!”
I went into the bathroom to clean up and we crawled into bed. I turned on the fan, put the pillow over my head, and prayed to fall asleep before Sheri started to sound like a buzz saw. She, of course, was asleep in a matter of seconds. Her breath started to get heavier and louder and I pulled the pillow down over my head tighter and I tried to focus on the whirring sound of the fan and counted sheep.
By some Grace of God I was able to fall asleep rather quickly. But it didn’t last. A little over two hours later I woke up with a start coughing a deep, chest rattling cough. I had to pee so I stumbled blindly to the bathroom where Sheri’s snores assaulted my ears through the wall. I tried to keep my eyes closed so I didn’t start to wake up more and felt my way back into bed. Somehow, those few minutes was enough to wake me up enough that it was near impossible to fall back to sleep. Sheri sounded like she was being strangled she was snoring so loud and I flopped from position to position extra violently to try and jostle her to shift.
The problem was I was wide awake. I couldn’t get comfortable, my right arm was still sore, I was either too hot with the covers on or too cold with them off, and let’s not forget I had someone lying next to me that sounded like a piece of gurgling machinery. After about an hour and a half of struggling to go back to sleep and waking Sheri 3 times to get her to roll onto her side (which made not a lick of difference) I started to go crazy. I was exhausted and I wasn’t going to fall asleep in this bed.
In a sleepy haze I tore out of bed and threw our suitcases off of the couch. I knew I shouldn’t because God knows what was on those cushions, but I thought if I could make a bed for myself in the bathroom maybe I’d get some sleep. I surveyed the floor and there wasn’t a whole lot of room to work with. I wanted to close the door and the area that gave me the most room would be under the vanity which ran the entire length of the wall. I put the cushions on the floor and they were a lot smaller than I thought, my entire body would not fit on them but I thought I could curl up small enough to fit. I eased underneath the vanity and was very careful not to smack my head on the metal toilet paper holder that jutted from the bottom of the sinks. Knowing that would be a recipe for disaster seeing as once I turned the light out it would be pitch black in there I decided to rethink this plan. I didn’t want to put my head so close to the toilet but that would have been the best option so I didn’t jolt up and do any damage. I put the two cushions on the tile floor, surrounded them with pillows, and stood back to admire my handy work. I thought about taking a picture and posting it to facebook of my makeshift bed with the caption Desperate times calls for desperate measures. I gingerly laid down and not sooner than 5 seconds later the cushions spread apart from the slippery tile and my hip was on the floor. I stared into the dark in crazed frustration and shimmied down so one cushion was on the rug of the room and the other cushion was still on the tile floor. As I tried to adjust I thought of Sheri getting up in the morning and just seeing my legs jutting out into the room and wondering if I fell.
I stood up and turned on the light to survey my other options. I considered the bathtub but that was out since the faucet was dripping. And then I considered moving the cushions into the hallway and trying to sleep there.
A desperate growl ripped from my throat as I grabbed the cushions off the floor and threw them back onto the couch. In the light peeking through the curtains I saw Sheri’s silhouette on the bed. She was blissfully asleep, on her back, snoring through a quart of wood. My eyes flashed to the clock that read 4:00 and I shrieked “Sheri!”
“What??” She startled awake and looked at me confused. I was standing over her with crazy eyes and a pillow clenched in my fists. I considered smothering her with it.
I thrusted the pillow towards her. “Put this under your head. You are snoring so loudly I tried to go to sleep in the bathroom!”
She laughed sleepily and took the second pillow. “Come here,” she opened her arms to me. “Come lay by me.”
Defeated I flopped back into bed and she turned to face me and ran her hand up and down my side. “Was I snoring that loud?” In the darkness of the room she saw the look I flashed her and she smiled, pulling me into her. “I’m surprised you didn’t try to sleep in the hallway.”
“I seriously considered it,” I said dryly. I snuggled closer to her.
“You need to get some sleep babe,” she said with her eyes closed. She was already drifting off again.
“I know.” I shifted, trying to get comfortable. Her breathing was already heavy, but not snoring, and I thought if she keeps this up maybe I can fall asleep. It took me a while because I was listening to her, waiting for that sound to be emitted from her side, but it never came. She just breathed heavily and steady. I pulled the comforter closer to my chin and somehow fell back to sleep for another few hours.
On Saturday after we saw the other college campuses (And panhandled money from people on the street for parking) we headed back home. I was so exhausted that night that I didn’t even make it until 9:30 before crawling into my bed who I felt welcomed me with open arms. She texted me I hate that we sleep like crap together. I do too. I still say that with more practice it’ll get better. More practice, and enough tranquilizer to put down an elephant.
