You

28

I have just fucked you for the first time in our lives and it was not good and it did not go on forever and you did not scream. Where was that Macy’s heat when I was inside you? And who’s to blame for our quick fuck? Was it because we weren’t in a dressing room or in front of an open window? Or was it me? Was I too hungry? Too eager? Did I hold you too hard? Maybe I’m better at eating you out than I am at fucking you, and that’s a horrible and unfair possibility. We’ve only done it once. Do I get to do it again? Do you want to do it again?

You don’t want to do it again. You aren’t revving up as we recover on the floor of the cage. You are on top of me stroking my hair and I can’t see your face but I can feel the disappointment in your hands, in your touch, which is full of pity. The pads of your fingers go pat-pat and I can’t let go of you or you might back off of me and I might have to face you and I can’t do that. I lasted maybe eight seconds. Nine. I’m running over it in my head and I don’t know how this happened. Maybe I jerked off too much and maybe you teased me too much and maybe I should have locked the door.

“No,” you said. “It’s so hot with the door open and the open sign up, right?”

I should have been honest with you and told you that the lack of security would only make me nervous. But I didn’t want to disappoint you and I wanted to put your needs first. You wanted to go at it by the register, but I said no.

“Let’s go downstairs.”

“Really?” you said and you were lit up. You were. I’m sure of it.

We got down here (my idea, I have the key, I am the boss), and I unlocked the cage and ordered you in there and I locked it and you smiled and I told you to take your skirt off and you obeyed (I am the boss) and you weren’t wearing any panties and I told you to touch yourself and you did and I willed the other Beck to shut the fuck up. You wanted the music on and so I left it alone (I am the boss and I am allowed to please you on occasion). You stood holding the cage door with one hand and working at yourself slowly with the other while I started getting undressed, and you watched me smiling one second, intent and ready the next. I told you to beg for it and you begged me to come in there and I took my pants off and you saw how badly I wanted to come in there and I told you to get down on your knees and you did and you reached for me (I am the boss, I am allowed to please you on occasion) and I unlocked the cage and entered. You took me in your hands and in your mouth and you kept looking up at me and I knew it was time to fuck you and let you know that it was time and you leapt at me, an animal, and straddled me and commanded me downward (I am the boss and I am allowed to please you on occasion), and then.

And then.

And then I was inside of you and I came. I blew it. I came so fast and so hard and you said nothing at first and you didn’t act like you wanted me to help you finish, you just went smack into gentle stroking my hair mode (the wrong kind of fucking touching), and you quietly told me:

“Don’t worry, Joe. I’m on the pill.”

And that was the moment I was most afraid of you and what you could do to me and not do to me because that was the moment that I realized that you are the boss, not me and you can please me on occasion if you want to. When we finally stood up we were both hungry and dizzy and there was an old man upstairs standing at the register and he looked at us, me all dressed, you in your bra and he smiled.

“You kids have a good night. I’ll come back another time.”

There was something deathly unsexual and anticlimactic and flattening in his words, his old man eyes and his pleasure at seeing us, young and hot and alive. He had more fun in that moment than you and I had in our first fuck and there was no getting around it and I wasn’t surprised when you said you should go check on Peach because she’s been really depressed. I wasn’t surprised that you didn’t suggest we go to your bed and fuck again. I was bad and you are the boss.

But this is what surprises me. A day later—you didn’t even wait a whole day—you texted me:

Hey Joe, I can’t make it in today. Sorry!

And that exclamation point was the beginning of the end of us and I made a mistake by writing back:

Okay!

And then you made plans to go out with Lynn and Chana instead of seeing me.

You: I miss you girls. I have an emergency session with Dr. Nicky, but want to get late lunch and/or happy hour?

Chana: Who is this? Haha. Yes. Fine.

Lynn: I’m already in pajamas and Housewives mode. Have one for me!

So this was it, right? The true end because instead of seeing me, you were opting to see a mental health professional and a girlfriend to talk about me. And when a girl likes talking about you more than talking to you, well, in my experience, that’s the end. So I was gonna fucking kill myself and everyone in the shop and take out the Eric Carmen CD and smash it into bits because I stopped believing in myself and our future. I wrote back to you, pathetic:

Okay!

It’s a good thing you knew that I was close to losing my shit because not five seconds after I shut off the CD—sometimes silence is the best sound—and sat down on the stool and thought about castrating myself like the perv in Little Children you wrote back again:

But what are you doing tonight?

And all was well in the universe because that smile was your gaping wet pussy that knew that I had more to give. And I was okay again. It was clear to me now that you were going to your shrink to talk about your problem, that you enjoy sex more when there’s an audience. And you were going to see Chana because you’ve been busy with me and she’s been away on vacation and you wanted to tell her all about the best head of your life in Macy’s. That emoticon was your way of saying that we don’t work together anymore. We fuck together. So I told you to be at my place at seven and you wrote back:

See you then!

It was 7:12 when I realized that the candles were cursed. Five little votive candles that I picked up at Pier 1 Imports because of some guy in the bookstore who stayed in my head for some reason. He seemed cool, like a guy I’d be friends with if I was on the market for friends, and he dumped a heavy bag on the counter so he could get out his credit card and he sighed. “Fucking candles. Women and candles, right?”

“Right,” I said, and I didn’t realize it but an imprint was made then and I would never have a woman over without candles lit because of some pussy-whipped husband buying Tom Clancy for himself and candles for his sex-withholding wife. What makes us become us? What fucks us up and why? I have no idea but I know that at 7:12 I started to resent those candles and the little pathetic scented fires in each of them. The pizza was cold and the wine I bought—I hate wine—was getting shittier by the second. You can’t let wine breathe for that long—and I knew you weren’t coming and that it was a matter of time before you flaked out on me and sure enough at 7:14 when I was sitting at the table—the table I dragged home and up the stairs for this very moment—when you texted:

Don’t hate me but I have to bail

And that smiley face is your body, closed, and your eyes averted and your resignation from all things me, from all things us, and I don’t need to read your e-mail to know that I can’t fully blame this on Peach because she’s not the spazzing dick, that’s me, and I put Twizzlers in a vase for you, Beck. I pick up the vase and throw it at the wall, at the tapestry I bought from an old lady down the street to cover the hole in the wall to make you feel more at ease in my place. The vase doesn’t crack. It just bounces onto the couch and I must be the limpest limp dick in the world. I can’t even break a vase and I lunge at the candles but I don’t want to set this place on fire. You were in this place and still you fucked me. I cannot hold this place responsible and I cannot blame the vase or the Twizzlers or the DO NOT CROSS police tape on the shower curtains and I lower my hand onto a candle and the fire is hot and my skin aches and I’d set my dick on fire if I could but we know that I’m a limp dick pussy. I don’t have the balls to do that. The smell of burnt flesh overwhelms the cold pizza and it’s a good thing I didn’t waste any money on flowers.