The last time I had sex was Thanksgiving Eve into Thanksgiving morning, 2019. This was the last sex I had with this guy I’ll call Jack. Jack and I had been having sex for about six weeks, not long enough or often enough (thrice daily), but it was always fucking awesome.
Yeah, no. Jack and I didn’t have sex and we didn’t make love, we fucked.
Jack and I fucked with sparks, all the feels, and with only a teen-like glimmer of hope we would ever become a long-term legit pair. Okay, I packed the pipe dream, dangled it casually out the side of my mouth like a noblewoman with nothing to do all day but puff and ponder lust; but Jack always knew. The night I said what I’d never said to anyone in all my decades, “If you ever change your mind, I hope you’ll have the courage to knock on my door,” (and “I mean, I’m not waiting, but…,” but of course I was), Jack said, “Don’t wait.” Ouch! “I won’t change my mind.” Fuck me.
Had we been having this talk while hiking, I would have bashed my head against a tree, but Jack and I never did hit the trails together. So, I slunk into the dark wood booth we were sitting in, looking at his eyes turn sad for me across the table. I always looked into his eyes.
Jack did not want to hurt me and he was not pitying me, I knew this because I read him, I was him. And now, I was No-More-Us, weighted-down to a side of the table I was not accustomed to being on and saying true things that tested my pride and took me out of myself, unprotected and, a danger.
*
I nod once. “Okay,” I say, knowing—no, learning, as if a cattle brand is pressing me from bare shoulder to bare shoulder—how honesty really is the best policy, but the bold truth can suck it.
“I’m sorry,” Jack says.
“No,” I say. “Thank you,” anvil on the sternum, heart emptying its hottest-blood in a rush before being stamped and sealed with ash-black wax. All the clichés if all the clichés were born of northern tundra and doom metal.
My slunk gets slunkier. I love the motherfucker.
*
The night of the day we were introduced, we exploded our mutual friend’s phone with texts:
That Thanksgiving Eve we knew would be our last, Jack wrapped me in a wool blanket, turned on some music, then unwrapped me. This means that the soundtrack I last had hard and tender-life-affirming sex to is Windhand’s Grief’s Infernal Flower. What the flying fuck?! The whole soundtrack lasts seventy-one minutes and some seconds, so that’s how long the last sex I had lasted.
“… our love is running out of breath/When I wake, you cannot know me/When I sleep, I dream of death.”
Dismal, doom metal.
What doomed us, I mean, why didn’t Jack and I go on energized and healing a few months more, a year? I was never only in it, ever, ever in my life, for the sex, but why the hell not? Why not now? If not now, when? Totally-sexless two-plus years since Windhand wrapped its rain and tower, furnace and flower around me on Jack, rising and sweating, WTF?! It wasn’t the age difference (ah, the younger man); it wasn’t a sense-of-humor gap (sharp and nerdy); it wasn’t a smarts-issue (he could strip a house to its bones and fully redress it).
He just always knew; he saved us.
The Princess Bride is about as doom metal as I get.
*
Jack’s hobby is working on large, loud, rusted and pieced-together Ford F-250 Highboy 4 x 4s. I like peace and quiet. And the environment. But, now, anytime I hear a catchy dirty grumble, the downshift, that low, street-altering-earthquake in-the-solar-plexus end-of-the-bullwhip cracking sonic boom, ka-bloom, that thrumble of Jack being anywhere near my front door, my ears perk up. My legs feel longer. My ventricles backflip. This is Pavlovian. I ride it out, don’t turn it off. Trucks like his are rare enough, and I am not waiting.
*
Doughnuts—doughnuts were the first thing Jack and I ate together post-sex, post-doom-Thanksgiving, and the last thing we ate together post-sex. Jack had, not so long before we met, written an entire comic book series based on a mad King and his friend, an otter who chased and lassoed doughnuts. I collected doughnut erasers, doughnut stickers, doughnut art. For a few short weeks, I was one of Jack’s comic characters: I was (wow, that’s how he sees me?) the ponytailed bombshell in a Homey the Clown tee and skintight capris, looking to marry a doughnut.
My favorite doughnuts are Pips, Pips of Portland. These bitesize morsels are served fresh and delicious, like the last NSFW selfie I took to share, with Jack. For this photo, which I print on an 8”x8” canvas and wrap in Kraft paper and a red ribbon, I lie down on my kitchen floor with my back against the east wall, which is black. I prop my camera, body level, against a vintage Pyrex mixing bowl and zoom into the curve. I am wearing a worn, plain, charcoal-grey t-shirt of Jack’s and white-cotton-boy-short panties with modest honey-colored laces and bows. I set a single cinnamon-sugar Pips on my right hip and click.
Do I sign the back of this gift?
Yes.
“… a lifetime on the hips,
Chris.”
