Just as my husband climaxed, the baby began to wail. He had startled her with his cries, and now the moment was ruined. No spooning, no sexy pillow talk. Instead, my naked, sweaty husband—in a rapid-fire transformation from lover to father—bolted out of bed, changed the baby's diaper, and handed her over to me to feed. As I nursed, we laughed about the synchronized shrieking, but really it was rather depressing. We had been desperate to eke out some adult space in our otherwise cluttered, kid-centered existence, trying to ignore the tubs of Aquaphor and packages of baby wipes littering our bedroom, but the baby had jolted us back to reality. "Nice try!" was the message she seemed to be delivering. "Not with me at the end of your bed, and my brother right down the hall."
That wail and all it represented weighed on me for days, reminding me of the many freedoms I had surrendered to motherhood the first time around, and how now, with two kids, I was undeniably, irrevocably a mother, a person defined by responsibility. The specter of more loss—of time for myself and with my husband—made me feel panicked. I missed my younger, freer, (let's face it) sexier self. I hadn't seen her in ages. The way back, I decided, was through sex. Preferably torrid and illicit sex. Preferably sex we had to pay for.
And pay we did, when we logged on to Priceline.com the following week and plugged in our credit-card number and our preference for a four-star hotel in Manhattan where we could spend a couple of frivolous adult hours on a summer afternoon. The plan was to plunk down $200, have the babysitter stay until 8 p.m., then check in at 3 p.m. and roll around on sheets that didn't smell like spit-up.
Just sitting at the computer together playing hotel roulette was exciting. (Priceline allows you to set your price, but you have to agree to stay at whatever hotel it gives you.) In which of the city's more than 72,000 hotel rooms would we end up? We quickly learned that $200 would not buy us four stars, so we pondered our next move. Should we throw more cash at the computer, or could we handle a less-than-luxurious rendezvous? We decided that it didn't make sense to spend a lot of money for such a short time. Besides, if the room was too nice, we'd never want to leave.
"Maybe a little seediness will turn us on," my husband said.
"Yeah, or just gross me out," I replied.
Next Page: Rendezvous Point
