MARRIAGE IS AMAZING. It’s living with your best friend. Someone you laugh with, cry with, talk shit about other couples with, and occasionally fantasize about smothering to death in their sleep. But mostly you grow together. You evolve into deeper, more nuanced versions of your younger selves. And the longer you’re together, the more bonded you become.

The more bonded you become, the less sex you have.

For women, it’s work to stay sexually stimulated by a partner who is returning our phone calls and not mind-fucking us into believing that we’re somehow inadequate. In a healthy marriage there is stability, security, individual packs of Pirate’s Bootie, poodles who wear bow ties, and Game of Thrones, Season 2.

Sex is always an option but never the only one. Like anything, when it’s constantly available and an evil force isn’t standing in your way, you don’t have the same sense of urgency. Don’t get me wrong, my desire for my husband hasn’t weakened — just my own motivation to actually do anything about it. It’s kind of like the treadmill, awesome and rewarding once it’s almost over, but after a bowl of pasta and two Skinny Cow ice cream bars, just sort of hard to jump into.

Until I met Christian Grey.

Let me be clear. I don’t typically read books that appeal to women who saw The Notebook, or to women who still wear things from the Victoria’s Secret PINK collection, or that were recommended by my mother in-law. However, Fifty Shades of Grey, by EL James, sucked me in. Maybe it was the graphic sex. Or the graphic sex? Or the graphic sex. I really can’t be sure… But within two days, I was finished with the first book and I was more sexually charged than I’d been since college. My husband’s cock was a walking bull’s-eye.

The book.

“What has gotten into you?” he asked one Sunday morning as I trapped him in a car outside a child’s bris, begging for a quickie.

“I’ve turned over a new leaf. A sex leaf,” I said earnestly, unbuttoning my shirt.

“Awesome. Let’s do this when we aren’t in someone’s front yard with a rabbi staring at us, yeah? God, this book really did a number on you,” he marveled as he extricated his penis from my voracious grasp.

The funny thing is, I don’t even think the book is that good. There is practically zero storyline. The writing is atrocious. And I think the heroine, Anna, is a fucking loser, and I’d never be friends with her. The love interest, Christian, is the type of guy who’d pretend to be a gentleman, then casually ask to fist me at a dinner party. My response to that kind of request, would, of course be: “Dude, you’re 27 years old. Get the fuck away from me… Wait, you have your own helicopter? Come back!”

The story focuses on the dynamics of a Bondage & Discipline/Sadism & Masochism (BDSM) relationship, something I’d never want in real life. Discipline is on my top three list of most hated things, followed closely by portobello mushrooms and actors.

I’m too much of a control freak! Anyone who tied me up and demanded things of me would instantly trigger my childhood issues and force me to plunge them to death with their own butt plug. But the sheer carnal desire James writes about has universal appeal. The buildup, which as any woman knows is always hotter than the actual act itself, is truly inspired.

Long story short, E.L. James is a hero. She is a god damn humanitarian, people. She is like the Robin Hood for female libidos, and I love her.

After zipping through Fifty Shades: Darker, the second book in the trilogy, I was doing things I hadn’t done in years, like shaving all the blonde hairs off the back of my thighs, wearing things to bed that didn’t have period stains on them, and seducing my husband with more than just a simple, “Should we be having sex?”

The hero, author E.L. James.

One afternoon, while reveling in the new nympho me, I decided to swing by the sex store. What is a sexual predator without toys? I thought, pulling into the parking lot.

My heart started racing the moment I got out of my car. No matter what age you are, a sex shop has this uncanny ability to make you feel like you are about to get busted for every depraved thing you’ve ever thought or done. Holding my sunglasses tightly between my teeth, I walked through the front door.

Before this visit, I’d thought of sex shops as places to buy edible undies and packs of penis straws for bachelorette parties — Like Hot Topic, only with silicone pussies in the window. This visit however, was of a completely different nature. I ignored all the kitsch and marched directly back to where they kept the hardcore shit. I was browsing through the bondage aisle, filling my arms with weapons of mass seduction, when I came upon something called a ‘spreader bar‘. The price made me gasp. Three hundred bucks! I have a whole dungeon to decorate!

“Excuse me…” a voice chimed in behind me. Guiltily, I turned around. Oh my god, it’s so obvious from the pony crop and masking tape that I just read Fifty Shades, how mortifying! I thought.

“Would you like a basket?” the lady said, as if we were at fucking Whole Foods. “Sure,” I replied, avoiding direct eye contact and aching to tell her I’d also read Ulysses, Tropic of Cancer and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus.

By the end of my supermarket sweep, I’d chosen a pair of nipple clamps that looked forgiving, a few beginner butt plugs, some reasonably-priced cock rings and a blindfold. Just as I sprinting to the register, I noticed a pair of gold-colored metal balls sitting in a case near the glass dildos. In Fifty Shades, James writes about similar balls in a steamy scene where Christian forces Anna to insert them into her vagina and wear them to a black-tie event.

Fun! I thought, grabbing a pair and tossing them into my basket of vices.

The heavily pierced girl behind the register tested the batteries in my new Rabbit Pearl and gave me cleaning instructions for my latex gimp suit before ringing me up. Once I was in my car I was already plotting my husband’s seduction. I felt like Wile E. Coyote mapping out how I was going to capture the Roadrunner and then fuck him to death.

When I got home, I did what I always do when I’ve gone shopping. I ripped the tags off and put everything on! I danced around the room in pain trying to acclimate to the nipple clamps. Then I tore into the strange gold balls and shoved them inside my vag. I put a pair of boxers and a loose T-shirt over my bondaged bod so as not to alarm my housekeeper, and I went downstairs to grab a glass of water.

Just then, I heard the garage door opening. My husband was home! Yay! I thought diabolically.

I ran towards the front door to meet him when all of a sudden, my body decided it was time to purge the balls! Just as my pussy turned into a fucking gumball machine, the front door swung open and I was face to face with my husband and his good friend, Judd. Ping. Ping. The metal balls slammed against the hardwood floor and rolled into the kitchen to find my housekeeper.

“What the fuck?!” Judd screamed, terrified.

My husband’s jaw hung open in horror. I said nothing and charged after the balls.

“Feels like maybe this is a bad time…” I heard Judd whisper under his breath, as I scampered off.

When I got to the kitchen my housekeeper, Lita, was already holding one of the balls.

“Oh, you can just throw those in the sink,” I said, trying to play it cool.

I slipped shamefully back upstairs and waited for my husband to come up and ask me what the fuck was going on. Three hours later he walked in, holding the balls. “Lita was under the impression that these could go in the dishwasher…” he started, smiling at me the way people smile at dogs and old people.

“Are you mad?”

“Mm. No,” he said.

“Can I whip you?”

“No!”

Then he got in bed next to me and pulled me close. “You know what’s hotter than you dressed as a scary dominatrix doing vagina parlor tricks for my friends?”

“What?”

“Everything,” he sighed, and then kissed me.

So, I guess the point I’m trying to make here is: I’ve got a ‘gently used’ Sybian available for a great price, if anyone is interested.

Jenny Mollen Biggs is an actress and writer living in Los Angeles with two poodle angel muffins and an asshole miniature pinscher. She also has a husband. Keep up with her at IMDB or on Twitter @jennyandteets.

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