I have just driven away from M. Feeling less than.
This morning I wake and turn and M’s eyes are awake but dull. I am pre-verbal. He asks questions and I only nod or grunt. He asks if I am still asleep, liminal. I run around in my head wondering… searching for a dream memory that might still be lurking. I can’t find it, but I’m still enjoying that space without words. M says Tea or coffee? I laugh out loud. He’s awake and insistent. I do and do not want to be touched, he says and pushes my hand onto his genitals, morning warm.
He has been awake most of the night processing his partner’s request for permanent separation… from their monogamous couple, to an affair, to a poly, therapy-infused hobbling threesome, to this: his partner saying, I don’t want our family. That is how our date began, with divulging that this had happened over the phone in an airport. I arrive at his house 10 minutes after the taxi drops him off.
I can’t tell if I’m dropped off by some knowing stork or the pharmacist who’s dealing me out. Just this week, I hear it from G, from M and from a previous rendezvous, You are a very good lover. Incredible. I have worked for years to be here. Before it was my empathy and intelligence I had to offer lovers. It is strangely now my long frame and my love-making skills. I want emotional intelligence and intellect in exchange. I can turn your body inside out… you just have to be available.
M and I are on the porch. Wine, cigarette. Barefoot, I climb up onto his hill and pluck old oranges and lemons from the trees, scampering about in the dust. I turn back to him as he looks from the porch. What you are doing right now excites me. I have pre-cum. He is awestruck that I have shown up at this moment in his life—his only date from Tinder.
M wonders out loud how he will make it through this day of divorce proceedings. I leave abruptly hurt that his personal life is not prepared for another. He is ready for sex and I am ready for a compelling intellect. We debate this on the couch.
I need body.
I need mind.
Maybe we can meet in the middle.
And on a long mat in the living room, the light, a strap-on of my choosing, I enter him and he asks me to fuck him deeply enough to touch his heart break. He is in his 50s. It has been over a decade since he has been with anyone else. He’s my first. I want a double head.
He asks, Who are you? I’m a woman who likes her female men, with lilting hands and soft lips, that kick up their legs, put their feet on my clavicle, and receive my fingers and cock. As I guide myself into him I glare askance at the black cock, the premium model cast from real cocks, lying at my side—his wife’s dildo. Before I enter him, I vehemently slam lesbians for adherence to realism, for objectifying men and for setting up standards of morphology to fuck. I empathize with men through misogynistic rantings. Can I like my men without hating other women?
Later, in the middle of my long tale of a year of sexual minglings, he tells me, Femicide is real. Trauma at the hands of men is common. You live in an evil world. Apparently, I need to be reminded of this. He insinuates that I am engaging in dangerous behavior and am merely lucky. I Am Merely Nothing. I am observant, self-respectful and giving. Once again, a man pathologizes my minglings and discounts my ability to read others, projecting his own fears about returning to men after closeting his own bi-sexuality.
And with that, I turn on the Tinder app and find an ecological engineer with a wandering mind….
From a series of erotica by Arwyn Other