My wife and I make love each night on my grandparents’ floral loveseat, which stayed with the house after they died. We wash the chinaware after tea, draw the thin linen curtains, diffuse the late summer light and the neighbor’s view. A vase is filled with fresh sunflowers, their huge heads turned toward us, and the piano is played just before and immediately following climax.

From the loveseat, we look out at a large, century-old oak tree framed in the window. It stood over my parents and my father’s parents as they conceived the next generations in this house, and stands erect before us as we endeavor to do the same.

Across the living room, two velvet Victorian chairs swivel in place. Pale, pastel shades of ochre, they’re occupied by a psychoanalyst and his wife. They sit upright, legs crossed, each holding a notepad and stopwatch. The court-appointed specialists are here to get to the root of our procreation problems. They observe our behavior and integrate our fears, dreams, and desires into the intercourse. The sessions begin with a discussion on the imperatives of conceiving before we remove our clothes, pull up nude-colored compression socks, forcing vital blood up to the center of our bodies.

We’re instructed to use props, so we build forts using the loveseat’s armrests as a foundation, stacking throw pillows up for exterior walls, mortaring them together with blankets. We run two support beams down the center using the seat cushions from the Victorian chairs, leaving the psychoanalyst and his wife on springs. We plank the loveseat’s floral back cushions across the top, making a roof of flowers. We slide through the entrance and on top of each other, finding that the tight quarters make it impossible to conceive without bringing the structure down. The psychoanalyst scribbles feverishly in his notepad.

We come back to it, day after day, refortifying the shelter in new ways, using heavy quilts, footrests, and, eventually, cement blocks from the basement. We bring in 2x4s to reinforce the walls and wire the place for electricity. We hang a door knocker. The psychoanalyst and his wife look for holes in the structure to observe what’s happening inside: the two of us naked mind nude socks, holding each other within the mass of our making.


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