Chapter 79
Mr. Korgy presses his morning wood against me.
“Your ass feels so nice,” he says, and I twist to avoid his morning breath. “My guy wants you.”
He recently started referring to his penis with this pet name that sends a chill down the nape of my neck every time.
“Baby,” he says, pressing himself into my ass crack.
His hand cups my right buttock then slaps it as I try to remind myself that I am attached to this buttock, that it belongs to me, despite my feeling completely divorced from it.
His hand slides under my shirt and he draws it up my belly and traces circles around my nipples.
I negotiate with my body, asking it leading questions like a parent to their toddler.
This feels nice, doesn’t it? Doesn’t this feel nice?
And my body responds like a toddler. Completely unable to see outside of itself. No. This doesn’t feel nice. I don’t like this. Get him off of me.
Still, I reach behind me and stroke his dick.
“Mmm, that’s my girl,” Korgy moans.
It’s not about indulging him. It’s about proving something to myself.
That I’m not some haggard eighteen-year-old who already lost her libido.
That I still desire him. That we’re not slowly shriveling into one of “those couples,” like roommates, who burp and bicker and can only agree on which flavor of Doritos is best (Cool Ranch).
Who plug sex into the calendar and still can’t muster the drive to have it half the time, making up excuses neither of us believe but both of us pretend to—“I’ve got a headache” or “I think that shrimp was bad” or “I have to be up early.” Both willing participants in the performance of a healthy relationship, too scared to accept that it’s actually just a dead one.
Korgy thinks my worries are unfounded. Or at least that’s what he told me a few nights ago when I brought them up.
“Hey,” I said, pausing my brushing as if I was just realizing it at that moment and hadn’t been fixating on it half the day, “we haven’t had sex in a week.”
“Huh,” he said, rubbing in his foaming face wash. “I hadn’t thought about it but I guess you’re right. Do you care?” he asked.
I threw back a cap of mouthwash and gargled, buying time to level my nervous system, then spit in the sink and tried to sound easygoing.
“No, it’s fine,” I said. I reached for a towel and wiped my mouth with it.
“Hey, hey,” he said, touching my shoulder.
“It’s totally normal. This is what an adult relationship is.
Tons of sex in the beginning, adrenaline, that intoxicating rush, fueled by the uncertainty of whether or not it will work out, and then the commitment solidifies and the dust settles.
Less exciting, sure, less of a rush. And, yes, unfortunately, less sex.
But more sustainable. Healthier. Better. ”
I pretended to be comforted, but I could hardly sleep that night, trapped by my double bind: hating that we’re not having sex, but not wanting to have it.
“Put him in your mouth,” Korgy says, so I lower myself to him and pull down his boxers. A cheese-like smell wafts up and I force myself not to gag as I bring my lips to his cock and start trying to recreate the blow jobs I gave him early on.
That’s what sex is for me now. Recreating—or attempting to recreate—how things were in the beginning, when sex represented the affections, the desires, the wishes, hopes, and dreams. The longing.
The promise of what could be. The chemistry.
The potential. When sex represented all the things we couldn’t say.
Now, sex represents the apologies, the differences, the disconnection. The mourning. The acceptance. The melancholy for what used to be. Still the things we can’t say. Just different things.
“That feels incredible,” he moans, and I try to read his tone, to decode every micro-inflection. Is he attempting to recreate his pleasure just the same as I am? Trying to sell it to me? Or is he just easier to please, actually present and enjoying it?
“Come here, let me touch you,” he says, half asleep.
Before his hand gets to me, I quietly hawk up spit from the back of my throat, the phlegmiest I can get to recreate the texture of my discharge, and use my fingertips to spread it onto myself, then I crawl toward him on my knees and let him touch me.
“Aww, baby,” he says, “is all this for me? Is this how much you want me?”
Same as he fucking always does. A broken record. A pull-string toy that spews the same catchphrase over and over until you want to chuck it out the window.
“Yeah, this is how much I want you, baby,” I whine-say. I’m no better. I reuse my same catchphrases and inflections too, slowly morphing into a caricature of my sexual self.
Mr. Korgy pulls my legs toward him and licks me. It tickles, which irritates me. I pull away and climb on to him instead, swerving my hips with the same rhythmic swirling motion as always. Swoosh. Swoosh. Swoosh.
“Wow, baby,” Korgy says.
What’s wow? I want to scream. Nothing’s wow about this.
You’re not wow and I’m not wow and both of us together are not wow.
This is boring, sad, vanilla, tired sex.
Because we’re boring, sad, vanilla, tired people.
All it took to get here doesn’t matter. The forbidden love.
The age gap. The broken marriage. The casualties.
None of it matters. We’re not special. We’re just two people who were brought together because of how fucking lost we both were.
I shut my eyes and remind myself. It’s only sex. It’s only sex. It’s only sex.
Then again, the sex has never just been about sex. It’s been about what the sex has communicated to me. And as I ride him to completion and he explodes on my tits and goes to get a rag to clean me up, I don’t like what it’s communicating to me now.