If you like pina coladas...

I was tired of my lady
We'd been together too long
Like a worn-out recording
Of a favorite song
So while she lay there sleeping
I read the paper in bed
And in the personal columns
There was this letter I read...

Bob was just out of college and living near the city when he finally had the courage to answer one of the personal ads that he'd seen in the local alternative paper. The keywords that caught his eye included "firm" and "discipline" and "corporal", and the ad looked a little less threatening than some of the others. It turned out to be from a woman about ten years his senior who had a predilection for spanking and paddling. Bob enjoyed a relationship with her for several years, eventually discovering that he preferred to be the spanker. He learned to appreciate the rhythms and the sensual feel of flesh under his palms. Bob kept up his relationship with her right up until his marriage.

"If you like Pina Coladas
And getting caught in the rain
If you're not into yoga
If you have half a brain
If you'd like making love at midnight
In the dunes on the Cape
Then I'm the love that you've looked for
Write to me and escape."

Bob's wife knew about his interests, and at first seemed to share those interests, herself. They settled into a middle-class community just a few minutes north of the fictional home of Rob and Laura Petrie, and Bob found a job with a well-known financial firm. Rotary Club, Junior League, and not long afterward, PTA meetings took up most of their social time. Life looked pretty well.

Over the next couple of years, though, he found her interest waning as often happens when newlyweds slowly become an "old married couple". Bob found fewer and fewer outlets for his interests and alternated between asking her - almost to the point of nagging, and long periods of sexual disinterest.

I didn't think about my lady
I know that sounds kind of mean
But me and my old lady
Have fallen into the same old dull routine
So I wrote to the paper
Took out a personal ad
And though I'm nobody's poet
I thought it wasn't half bad:

As Bob's wife became more involved with the kids and local clubs, she apparently lost any interest in their spanking play. Bob became more and more depressed over this, and at some point stopped talking to her about it because he was tired of feeling frustrated and hurt. Unfortunately, it also meant that they would stop talking to each other about the rest of their relationship as well. Their level of intimacy - emotional as well as sexual - declined.

"Yes I like Pina Coladas
And getting caught in the rain
I'm not much into health food
I am into champagne
I've got to meet you by tomorrow noon
And cut through all this red-tape
At a bar called O'Malley's
Where we'll plan our escape."

At some point Bob began picking up alternative papers and looking through the personals. He really hadn't any intention of carrying out anything nefarious - he just wanted to remember what it was like to feel young and sexy and desirable. He just wanted to recapture some of those fading memories of the fun times he'd had. He just didn't want to forget...

And at some point, he couldn't help himself. He placed an ad.

He got a response. A woman who wanted to meet in the next town. He replied, assuring discretion and explaining his own situation. No sex. Nothing long term. No strings. Just a desire to meet, talk, and if agreeable, to take her over his knee for a few minutes.

She agreed to meet him. They set a date and time to rendez-vous at an out-of-the-way bar. Bob left work early, drove to the restaurant, and walked in. He looked around the crowded room and spotted her instantly. She was looking at him, waiting in a booth near the back corner.

It was his wife.

So I waited with high hopes
And she walked in the place
I knew her smile in an instant
I knew the curve of her face
It was my own lovely lady
And she said, "Oh it's you."
Then we laughed for a moment
And I said, "I never knew."

And just like that it was over. One house, two cars, three children, and fourteen years of marriage.

She had set him up.

In a perverse twist of fate, an example of life not imitating art, but parodying it, Bob's wife did not suddenly rediscover her sexuality. She did not have a secret fantasy to spank or to be spanked. She was not trying to rekindle the spark in her marriage. No, she was tired of the charade of a marriage. She no longer wanted to be with a husband who had no interest in her, who would only accept a relationship with her on his own terms.

It would be years before either of them would understand that this is exactly what the both of them wanted; each would only settle for their own idea of a relationship, and instead of compromising or negotiating, they fought. Sometimes passive-aggressively, sometimes bitterly, but never with the idea of creating a situation in which both of them would feel loved, cherished, and respected.

This scenario is the nightmare that many of us on the vanilla-fetish edge fear; that our desires will end up destroying us, that our love-mates will become our enemy, that one small piece of our lives will upset the balance and ruin our hopes and plans, separate us from our home and children, perhaps ruin our reputation with our families, friends, work associates.

I met Bob long after this happened, after his wife moved halfway across the country, after the children had mostly grown up without him in the home, and after he had several more failed relationships because of his fear of opening up about his interests to them. He now compartmentalizes his relationships in order to avoid the pain; he sees some women romantically, and some for purely fetish interests - and never the twain shall meet.

Maybe I'm still too close to Bob's situation for perspective; our own marriage has only recently gotten a toehold in the escarpment of intimacy after some years of drifting apart and we're both moving carefully. I've found myself at times wondering where the hell my libido is vacationing because in the course of rebuilding our relationship I've had to - or at least I've felt that I've had to - put some of my sexual concerns into the background while we deal with other issues.

I don't have a happy ending for this. No pithy comment or words of lucid wisdom, except perhaps an acknowledgement that sometimes even when we think that we're communicating, we forget that we need our ears as much as our mouths.

That you like Pina Coladas
Getting caught in the rain
And the feel of the ocean
And the taste of champagne
If you'd like making love at midnight
In the dunes of the Cape
You're the lady I've looked for
Come with me and escape

Rupert Holmes
Escape (Pina Colada Song)