Photo reblogged from Burlesque Queens.

Erykah Badu songs remind me of sex and not the kind of sex I want to remember. Sex with exes. Instantly my mind trips back to candles, massage oils, too cold rooms, and the sinking feeling of having sex with someone I didn’t really love just because I didn’t want to be alone. Secret Thirty-One, Revealed. I was one of those girls.

For the most part I can avoid Erykah Badu and Portishead and cheap oils that smell like cinnamon, as if anyone ever wanted to smell synthetic cinnamon while having sex anyway. That is I can avoid it until my husband taps into the universal man vault of sexual tricks and pulls out some Erykah Badu. He’s fiddling with the iPod when I hear, And if you don’t want to be down with me, you don’t want to pick from my apple tree. Just typing those lyrics gives me that numb, prickly feeling like I might turn to the side and hurl. When I’m half naked in bed and hear it, I go into the mad panic of trying to stay fully attracted to my husband while not raising suspicions when I ask him to try a different album.

So I’ve told him that I don’t like Erykah Badu (which is a lie) or Portishead (which is the truth) just so I don’t have to face up to bringing him into that realm of sex with my exes.

Then again, he has his weirdness about my exes, too. The first time I wore lingerie that an ex-boyfriend had bought me, I was barely in the room before he asked, “Where’d you get that?” What a question?! Geez, and I lied. No man wants to hear that an ex bought it and that you’d used that piece of lingerie to have sex with another man. Are you supposed to just throw it away? We weren’t even married then; we were just in that serious time-to-raise-the-bar boyfriend/girlfriend relationship.

I lied and had sex with my future husband in lingerie that another man had bought me. Then, with a heavy heart and a whole lot of angst, I threw away some of the most beautiful lingerie I’d ever worn.

But single ladies, are you throwing out your lingerie with every serious boyfriend that comes along? I hope not, and I seriously doubt it. Do you just get more comfortable with lying? Is it just a question that men shouldn’t ask if they’re liking what they’re seeing? (YES!) It doesn’t matter for me anymore. I’ve let go of Erykah and the gorgeous Victoria Secret numbers long, long ago. I guess I’m just wondering, in a similar situation, what did you do?