Conjugal Bliss

Lulu phoned up last night. It was quite late but Jimmy was still up, so her conversation was disjointed at first. She gave up on the first attempt, then phoned me back once he had finally gone to bed.

She had been drinking, enough to loosen her tongue but not enough to render her incoherent. She is always in control of herself, even when she is relaxed with us. I recognise the signs, I'm exactly the same.

She has just come back up north, I pronounce it 'oop noorth' to myself and giggle that she would need a translation. Jimmy had another hospital appointment at the end of last week. The appointment went well and she managed a long chat with the consultant, who put to rest a few of her fears. She deserves a bit of good luck.

Unfortunately, the good will didn't extend to her husband, Phillip. She had a long, cold journey back down south and had to make an unprecedented stop at a service station about forty minutes from their home. She rang home to tell him how close she was, I suppose she was idly hoping he would have the dinner on and turn the central heating control up a bit more. He didn't, in fact, he wasn't even in the house when she eventually arrived home. It never amazes me to wonder about the optimism of a woman married to a man with Asperger's. They are so different, so unfathomable, that we always think they will wake up one morning and behave normally. By the time that Lulu and Jimmy arrived home, the central heating remained off and the dinner remained on the supermarket shelves, Phillip had escaped to the pub, to treat his stress.

Every time I speak to Lulu, she slips another little detail of her life into the conversation. She's an old-fashioned woman, full of the notions of unity at home and supporting your husband. At first the tidbits were vague 'I think Phillip is very like Jimmy', 'we have money down south but I live on very little up here', 'Phillip spends all his evenings in the pub' but as she slowly relaxes in our company, we are beginning to get a clearer picture of life chez Phillip. This time her sex life came tantalizingly under the spotlight with a vague 'he thinks of me in terms of cooking and bedroom duties. He only touches me when he wants sex'. I roared with laughter; men with Asperger's can make sex a torture and 'bedroom duties' is too ephemeral a description of the perverted acts which we become so used to.

Let me explain, men with Asperger's don't like physical contact but they accept that some contact has to take place during sex. However, with a bit of ingenuity they can keep this down to the minimum necessary. I think they also tend to fantasize about prostitutes, who must be pretty near to their idea of the ideal woman since they don't make demands, they aren't there when you don't want sex, they do all that is required but don't expect any affection or enjoyment in return and they don't ask for extra money in between. What more could a man with Asperger's want? I suppose he would object to the fact that he has to pay, but at least he can negotiate on that.

I first realised Jay had a thing about prostitutes when he asked me to urinate on him, 'because that's what prostitutes do' implying that I was one. By that time, I had learned to do what he told me to do during sex, as his tantrums had become quite dramatic and significant. He's very logical, so I managed to get out of that rather unpleasant situation by telling him that I would wet the bed and hence the mattress. I had calculated my response brilliantly, he had clearly worked out the cost of a new mattress and I was allowed to just perform sex on him.

It wasn't the sleazy prostitution which was the real upset for me, it was the whole seedy act, from tea-time on Saturday until early Sunday morning, which was the real problem. Let me walk you through one of our typical Saturday evenings:

After a day in the company of the children, Jay would be getting anxious and bad tempered. He would usually manage two or more trips to the bookmakers and a pint or two, but the rest of the time he would sit in front of the television, watching the racing as it competed with the noise of three children, trying to tell him they were bored. Shopping with the children was always difficult and particularly expensive, so I would try to fit the weekly shopping trip into the afternoon, squeezing it between Jay's 'I'm just popping out, won't be long' trips to the bookmaker.

By about six o'clock, Jay would be like a caged animal, so I would take the children into the kitchen and sort out their meal. By seven o'clock he was nagging me to send them to bed 'because we want some mummy and daddy time together'. I always fell for that one, assuming that he meant what he said and actually wanted to be alone with me. I'd whizz through their bath, their story telling and their bedtime and come down to find the wine bottle was half empty and the Tesco Gobi Aloo Saag was already in the oven. Time to clear the dining table, get out the plates which weren't chipped and didn't have Peter Rabbit on them and to light the candles. Within minutes the dinner was on the table and I managed to snatch a half glass of wine from the bottle. I sat down opposite him and tried to remember how to flirt but I didn't need to. Jay always sat with his legs parallel to the edge of the table, crossed away from me, with his plate cradled in the arm nearest to the table, so it could protect his meal from any sudden attacks from me. Not that I would, I always served out his meal first and he would be stabbing the last few forkfuls into his mouth before I could pick up my knife.

As I asked him about his week at work, he would reach over to the wine bottle, snatch it and walk into the sitting room. I would be left to enjoy my romantic meal for two in silence and peace. Once or twice I would ask him to sit with me but the response was always the same 'I've finished my meal already'.

Tidying up and loading the dishwasher would always take time, so the bottle of wine would be finished by the time I collapsed on the couch next to him, curious to know which television show had been so important to him that he had to race out of the dining room. It was then that I came to realise that Saturday night television is always poor. I had problems keeping awake as I snuggled up to Jay as he sat unresponsive in the corner of the couch.

At ten o'clock, bored with the lack of conversation and disinterested in listening to a minor celebrity recount their memories of 1970s adverts, I would announce I was going to bed. It was already clear to me that Jay had not really been interested in a romantic 'mummy and daddy meal' and just wanted the children to shut up. I walked upstairs and sank into bed disappointed about the lack of interest in me but thankful that I wasn't going to be humiliated tonight. This time I would make a more determined effort to pretend to be asleep.

At eleven o'clock Jay would march upstairs, even he was bored with the TV fare. He would stumble about in the dark and I would mumble that I was tired and didn't want to be woken. That should put him off – but it didn't. Minutes later he would climb into bed and reach over to my right breast, kneading it thoroughly for ten seconds before announcing that it was amazing that I still turned him on. I would mumble back that I was tired, had a busy day ahead and wanted to go back to sleep, but sleep was the last thing on his mind and this was clearly the foreplay they described in the books.

Do you remember Wilfred Brambell, the dirty old man in Steptoe and Son? He had a horrible, vile, dirty old man voice which Jay used to reproduce when he talked dirty to me. Talking dirty is supposed to be quite a pleasant experience and I've since enjoyed it, but not from him. He would grunt 'fancy a bit of anal?' in that disgusting voice and wait for me to go weak at the knees. I would lie there rigid, unsure of how to react. I had already tried 'don't be objectionable, piss off!' but it got him angry and noisy. So did 'I'm tired, please let me go back to sleep', 'I'm not turned on by that and I'm not interested in sex until I am turned on', 'you ignored me downstairs and I didn't think you were interested', 'I'm sorry but you have to try harder with the foreplay' and 'I find the idea of anal sex disgusting and sickening'. I was running short of alternatives and I was too tired to think straight, so I would roll over onto my back, open my legs and look over to the clock, thinking 'I'll just give him straight sex, he will be happy and within ten minutes I will be fast asleep'. Sure enough, within less than ten minutes he was snoring, even accidentally leaning against me in his sleep but I was always wide awake, ashamed and upset, with tears quietly rolling down my cheeks.

But I wasn't the only one upset about all this. Nina, who's bedroom was across the landing, would be listening to it all. She developed an irrational fear of going to bed on Saturday night and would creep over to her doorway, shutting the door and lying across it, sobbing until exhaustion took over. I found out when Jay left, finding a note she had written to try and explain it all to me. To Nina, what was happening was little more than rape but I looked upon it as a selfless act which might just reduce Jay's anger and make him a nicer person to work around. It didn't but I always lived in hope.
As I sat there, curled up on the couch, recounting my innermost embarrassment to Lulu, I heard a sigh of understanding. She could so relate to my experience. Tomorrow we are meeting up at the art gallery for coffee, I know that with a bit of a prod, she will be able to tell me an equally miserable and hideous story. The problem is, are we both up to the emotional challenge of stirring up our own memories?