About an hour later, he stood at the foot of the bed and asked if we could have a "muertito." This was our private slang for the dull, workmanlike sex we had been having for the past year or so. "Certainly," I said, hoping to make up in politeness what I lacked in libido. But you know what? It came back. That old horny snaggletoothed friend, desire, came sliding back between the sheets, sprinkling Chucho with the ineffable attractiveness and magnetism that makes a person want to rip another person's clothes off.

What is up with that? I thought afterwards, my leg intertwined with his in the pleasantly rumpled bed. Where did it come from? And why now? I puzzled over all of this in the bright light of the next morning. I felt foolish, like Dorothy when she finds out that all she needed to do was click her heels together. But at the same time I felt magical, having conjured lust out of empty air.

I was still sexy! And spontaneous! Yet I knew none of this would have happened if I hadn't decided to order the video. Sneaking around naughtily on Xandria and enjoying sex five hours later were not unrelated events. Two weeks later, when the video finally arrived, Chucho and I sat down to watch it, a little nervously, like a couple on their first date. It turned out to be a silly little romp with hardly any bite to it—just a lot of enormous breasts and preposterous underwear.

"Do people really like this stuff?" I asked Chucho. "Do you?" he asked, putting his hand on the inside of my thigh. Afterwards, lying in the crook of his arm, I thought of Lucia—the tiny triangles of her shoulder blades, the dimples in her elbows. I slid my hand into Chucho's. Maybe I had enough love for both of them.

Elizabeth Uppman lives in Overland Park, Kan., with her husband and children. Her essays and poems have appeared in various anthologies.