Why Didn’t we?

            These three stories contain couples not having sex for very explicit reasons. Though they are capable and occasionally inclined to do so, still they do not.  In each of these stories, it is the woman of the couple who does not want to have sex, Magda in “the Sun, the Moon, the Stars”, Adrienne in “Terrific Mother”, and Julie in “We Didn’t”. Each of these women has a reason for not having sex and the reasons are all related to one another, though the stories are certainly about different subjects. “We Didn’t” concerns solely why they don’t have sex. “The Sun, the Moon, the Stars” tells the story of a relationship ending and the lack of sex that comes with it. “Terrific Mother” is about a woman who inadvertently kills a baby and her journey to finding and forgiving herself. Each of these three women suffers from hypoactive sexual desire, a disorder characterized by low sexual desire.  They all connect the sex to the bad events that occur and are left not wanting to have sex, so they don’t.
        In “the Sun, the Moon, the Stars”, the narrator tells the story of his relationship with Magda and why their relationship ultimately fails. This is relatively simple; their relationship fails because Yunior cheats on Magda with a girl named Cassandra. This alone does not severely affect the couple. When Cassandra gives Magda a letter detailing the affair with torrid details, then it begins to impact them. Yunior lists the characteristics of Magda: she is a devout Catholic, an interesting and lovable person. He follows this with, “You couldn’t think of a worse person to screw than Magda” (Diaz, 16). Perhaps it is her inherent goodness that he finds appealing and appalling at the same time. He both praises and criticizes her. He says she is “stubborn; back when we first started dating, she said she wouldn’t sleep with me until we had been together for a month” (17). He goes along to Mass with her and encourages their pre-marital sex despite the Catholic Church’s denouncement of it.  He seems to need more from Magda than she is willing to give. In any event, he cheats with Cassandra and regrets it, saying that the affair is “better off buried in the backyard of your life” (15).  He and Magda are only seeing each other once a week and Cassandra throws herself at him at work. They eat lunch together and during one of these frequent meals he tells her that “sex with Magda had never been topnotch” (25). This establishes that he is sexually unsatisfied with Magda, so he goes outside of their relationship.
        Magda’s reaction is easy to sympathize with, she feels hurt and betrayed by his infidelity. Yet they continue to have sex. Yunior emphasizes this when he says, “You can’t imagine how many times she asked (especially after we finished fucking)” about the affair. She is obviously connecting their sex with his infidelity. He tells the reader that sex with Cassandra was good, yet he tells Magda it was lousy. Despite his enjoyment of their consummation, he calls Magda from the bed even with “Cassandra pressing the hot cleft of her pussy against (his) leg” (26). He feels guilty for his actions and while this isn’t enough to prohibit him from continuing to do so, it is enough to make him realize that he wants more than just sex. Yet, he does still want sex. He wants it as much as before and he feels cheated that she doesn’t seem to want it.
            Magda is reminded of his affair when they have sex and this leads her to question Yunior and their relationship. This is what deters her from sleeping with him. She is reminded of his betrayal and it disrupts her enjoyment. They patch up their relationship and things seem to be working out. Then, Yunior notices that things are beginning to change. She spruces up her appearance and starts going out with her friends. He is no longer her priority. He is bothered by this, though it is questionable whether he has a right to be. Magda was obviously not his priority during the winter he spent with Cassandra. He says, “Me and Magda were pretty damn casual about sex but since the breakup shit has gotten weird” (21). Suddenly, he isn’t getting regular sex anymore and he has to work to get what sex they do have, reading her moods and paying more attention to what her body says.
            Yunior thinks that their trip to his homeland will make their relationship right again. However, their trip is what finally ends it for them. He thinks that he should get something physical out of her for the nice things he has done. She does let him, “but then halfway through she said, “Wait, we shouldn’t” ” (21). This relates to the emotional side of their relationship as well. She isn’t just holding out on sex, that is just the part of the relationship he notices the most. Magda stops talking to Yunior and finally he must to try to force her to tell him that she loves him, but she won’t. Their relationship is effectively already over. They have lost both the emotional and physical aspects and all that remains is for Magda to go home and for both of them to move on. It was not precisely the infidelity that ruins their liaison, but the lack of intimacy. Magda is reacting to the emotional instability that invades their relationship.
        In “We Didn’t”, it becomes clear from the very first paragraph what they didn’t do. The story begins with a litany of the places where they didn’t have sex. The narrator details the steamy embraces that lead up to the scene with the two of them on a mostly deserted beach where “only the bodies of lovers remained” (Dybek, 95). They begin to kiss and play on the beach. The narrator tells the reader about the sensations of young, passionate almost-sex, the feelings and smells and sights of adolescent fumblings. This recounting is interrupted by a litany of why other people are having sex, reasons both silly and profound. When the scene on the beach resumes, their playing quickly becomes more. Julie stops him, though and says, “I’m afraid of getting pregnant” (96). The narrator thoughtfully has brought protection. Yet when he tries to put the condom on, he blunders and drops it in the sand. Then he fumbles about trying to get everything going so they can finally be doing it. He even thinks for a moment that they “were already doing it and (he) had missed the moment when (he) entered (her)” (96). The condom falls off and the narrator continues as though he will have sex with Julie without protection despite her fears of pregnancy. Luckily, a drowned pregnant woman washes up on shore and saves them from 18 years of regret.
            This drowned woman is the reason why they don’t, why they don’t ever have sex.  Even after the event is over, the memory of the drowned woman constantly comes between them. He says, “It began to seem as if each time we went somewhere to make out… the drowned woman was with us” (100). Julie is unable to separate the feelings of arousal and want from the memory of the dead pregnant woman. These two things are correlated in her mind. She says, “I can’t stop thinking about how the whole time we were, we almost-you know- there was this poor dead woman and her unborn child washing in and out behind us” (100). Even though they were about to have sex, she can’t even name the act they were about to do. The narrator does not seem to have this restriction. For him the night on the beach was “another night when I waited, swollen and aching, for what I had secretly named the Blue Ball Express” (106). Julie is the one preoccupied with the dead woman, just as Magda is the one preoccupied with the affair. Both women relate sex to something unpleasant and are therefore unable to enjoy it.
            Soon, the dead woman begins to interfere with everything, not just their lack of a sex life, but also their daily interactions. Julie begins to dream about the woman and the child. The couple begins to argue about the woman and whether she committed suicide or was murdered, whether she was sad or triumphant. Then, they begin to argue about everything. Even when the arguments are not about the women, she is still the cause of them. They still don’t have sex because for Julie, the beach episode “seems like some kind of weird omen” (101). This is interesting, because in a way it was already an omen. The condom had slipped and had they gone on to have sex, Julie might have gotten pregnant and possibly found herself in the same position as the woman in the water. This is the fear that keeps them from intimacy. Julie relates sex to pregnancy and both sex and pregnancy to the dead woman.

            At the end of the story, the narrator wanders the streets, seeing all the men without women and still feeling superior to them. Yet he is the same as they are and this is his fear; this is what drives him towards sex so vehemently. As with Yunior, the narrator realizes too late how much he feels for his woman, yet is unable to fix everything to make it right again. Both the men in these stories desire sex and see it as separate from love, while the women relate it to emotional responses they have.

            The third story, “Terrific Mother”, concerns a woman leery of children, sex, and love. Adrienne accidentally kills a child and this changes her view of the world. The baby she killed haunts her dreams and thoughts. She dreams that, “a baby was in her arms but that it turned into a stack of plates, which she had to juggle” (Moore, 55). Martin and Adrienne go to a long academic symposium and as they arrive, she compares it to a honeymoon. This is appropriate since they have just married, yet they do not participate in honeymoon activities. When they eat, they are seated separately and talk to other people. They do not get side-by-side massages, but separate ones. Adrienne goes for a hike and takes off her clothes, but she is alone. These activities could involve both parties, yet they do not.

Perhaps most significantly, they do not have sex. Adrienne thinks, “It could be weeks...before they’d have sex here” (58). Adrienne even asks another spouse if she thinks people have sex there and clarifies with, “I’m talking about difficult, randomly profound, Sears and Roebuck sex. I’m talking marital” (6). This is very emphatic and tells a lot about how Adrienne views marital sex. She thinks it should be difficult and ordinary, profound and somehow different from non-marital sex. Later she thinks she should hire someone for Martin to sleep with, since she is unwilling to do so. Adrienne’s lack of interest in sex is related to the child she killed. Just as with Julie, Adrienne relates sex to pregnancy and pregnancy to death. She will not bring a child into the world because she thinks that she won’t make a terrific mother.  She cannot be forgiven because she cannot forgive herself.

They sleep next to one another and Adrienne enjoys this most of all the parts of their marriage.  It is at night that Adrienne feels that they are really married, when they are “sprawled against one another in a forgetful sort of love” (65). In a way, sleep is their sex. Even the verbs used by the author indicate this, especially when “he groped under the covers to find her hand and clasp it” (59). Taking just the first half of the sentence conveys a very different image for the reader, yet what follows it defies conventional connotations. Nighttime is when they are physically closest to one another and Adrienne defines their marital love by it. She is constantly trying to define and interpret marital love and determine how she ought to behave. What she feels for Martin is never quite clear. She does not think she is fit to be his spouse. She thinks of herself as “Opposite of mother. Opposite of spouse” (63). Adrienne analyzes how she behaves against a measuring stick she has created, one that she can never measure up to. This is intentional, because she fears love and how it might change her. She feels guilty about the child and fears that to have meaningful love would lessen her guilt.

Ilke, the American masseuse, acts as a substitute for the sex they aren’t having.  When Adrienne goes to see her, the scene is very sexual. She strips off her clothes and climbs between the sheets. Ilke helps her release the tension that she has been feeling. When she leaves she thinks that, “perhaps she had fallen in love” (73). Adrienne even removes her wedding ring for the massage and compares it to infidelity. She kisses Ilke as she exits so that the encounter is less business-like. She wants it to be personal and meaningful. She even says that she feels, “like she had just been to a hooker” (74). She reacts to Martin seeing the masseuse a though he was cheating on her, or seeing a hooker himself. When both of them are doing seeing Ilke, it is like Ilke is the conduit for their repressed sex. Adrienne wants Ilke for herself. She tries to schedule an appointment every day; she has a lover’s jealousy. When she discovers Martin has been seeing Ilke as well she asks, “How could you be so furtive and untruthful?” (91). Adrienne feels like Magda did upon reading Cassandra’s letter. She is hurt and betrayed because what she thought was only for her is being enjoyed by someone else.

In all the stories, there is a sense that the lack of sexual desire is not a permanent thing. Adrienne begins to find forgiveness, and with forgiveness will eventually come peace. She can only enjoy sex again when she no longer associates it with the child. This is much the same for Julie. Julie and the narrator end their relationship at the end of the story. For her, the narrator was the one with her when the body washed up. She will probably associate sex to death less without him there, because one of the factors of this association will be missing. Magda’s reluctance is similar to this. She is only reluctant to sleep with Yunior because of his infidelity. With another man, the associations would disappear and she would be capable of sexual interest again. These women all didn’t because they gave sex negative connotations. When the contributing factors are removed, the connotations will falter.  So while they don’t, it doesn’t mean they won’t.