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Have you seen the HBO show Togetherness? I’ve been watching it over the past couple weeks, and it’s fantastic. The married couple — Brett and Michelle — have some hilariously awkward sex scenes, I basically cover my eyes when I’m watching. They’ve been together for ten years, and their sex life is so routinized that she is going crazy. Here’s what she tells her sister…
Michelle: “It’s that every part of my life is just, like, I know what it’s gonna look like. Every day I wake up, I know what the day is gonna be like. Brett and I have sex, I know what the sex is gonna be like.”
Tina: “Really?”
Michelle: “Yeah. It’s kissing, neck kissing, boob grab, genital touching, get the pillow and then…”
Tina: “‘Get the pillow’?”
Michelle: “Yeah, I said that like it’s a thing.”
Tina: “What the f*ck is ‘get the pillow’?”
Michelle: “I feel bad, I feel like I’m betraying a confidence.”
Tina: “I’m just your sister. What is ‘get the pillow’? I need to know what ‘get the pillow’ is.”
Michelle: “Okay, he… when he… when he is ready…”
Tina: “To come?”
Michelle: “No, to… to… put his… d*ck inside me.
Tina: “Uh-huh.”
Michelle: “He’s like, ‘Let me get the pillow.’ [laughs] ‘I’ll get you the pillow.’ like… and every time I’m like, ‘Oh, okay.’
Tina: “That is rough. ”
Michelle: “It’s to put under my head so that my head isn’t banging around. I want my f*cking head to bang around.”
It’s funny and sweet and cringeworthy — probably because there’s a grain of truth in it for anyone in a long-term relationship. You get into a groove when you have sex with someone regularly for many months or years, and partly that’s nice but partly it’s like, don’t get the pillow. It’s good to get out of your comfort zone and shake things up. Go for it, Michelle!
Here are some funny scenes, if you’d like to see:
Do you watch Togetherness? Do you love it? Do you have have the biggest girl crush on Melanie Lynskey, like I do?
P.S. Speaking of sex on TV, why the sex scenes on HBO’s Girls are my big pet peeve.
P.P.S. In an NPR interview with brothers Mark and Jay Duplass, who created the show, Mark talks about their love of relationship dramas from an early age: “I think if you cornered me and Jay somewhere around 1983 and said, ‘Would you like to go see The Empire Strikes Back with us?’ We would say something like, ‘Why do we need a light saber when we have this wealth of early 40s adult divorce malaise coming through the TV on HBO?’ “
