As she fumbles to get the key into her front door, the realization occurs that this is the best part of the night. The bits that occur after the idle twenty minute chatter in the kitchen are certainly nice, but isn’t the knowledge or feeling that this person is eagerly and willingly walking you into their bedroom equal to or better than the physical sensation of the act? If that weren’t the case, it wouldn’t matter who was on the other end of that sensation; we’d fuck like blind rabbits. Isn’t the person in question usually carrying out some sort of role or aim we’ve concocted for them? Isn’t that the point?

I am more alone here than if I were by myself in my bedroom. The drone of my fan is missing. The person warming the back of my neck with her breath is a stranger. The most she can provide for me is a prop body for me to close my eyes and pretend it to be the one I would rather be with. I sold myself out there, recognizing her excessive giggling and brushing of limbs. I said things I didn’t mean and censored opinions and laughed at dumb jokes and ignored inane commentary and did nothing but prove to myself that being myself isn’t the reason I got here. And for what? What have I sold my character and time for? A mediocre drunken blowjob? Twenty minutes of thoughtless, distracting pleasure? This is far more shameful than paying for it monetarily.

I peel her arm away from my body and slip out into the quiet night, the slush of wet snow making a squishing, sucking sound as I walk. We often choose these partners on the merit of a thoughtless interaction – no phone numbers, no breakfast, no strife. But this is never the case. They are serving as an antidote to loneliness, an assurance. A replacement to disperse affection on and fuck when we can’t be with the ones we want. The situation cannot be casual and mutual, as neither party understands the other’s thought process. A disconnect exists that prevents comfort and flippancy.  I used her while I thought of someone else. She was no different than a walking, talking, flesh-and-blood masturbation tool – a blow-up doll with a pulse.

I stop into UDF to grab a pack of cigarettes and to get the sting of feeling back into my numb fingers. The skinny middle-aged man behind the counter is the same one who sold condoms to us a few hours earlier, rolling his eyes as we stumbled and howled and gazed into each other’s eyes dreamily near the coffee machine. Now he gives me a sly smirk and a wink as I hand him a five. 

 When you think of the people you’ve slept with, one tends to think in the collective rather than the individual. The individual may be remembered, but even the lust-driven moments between just the two of you still carry all of the baggage and weight of the others. Sometimes I think the fact that you’re having sex with the person you are in the circumstances you are is half the battle. And I think somewhere deep down it’s tied to the desire to love and want to be loved. We wrap that in attraction at times, we wrap it in physical pleasure sometimes; it’s like those little Russian dolls that encase smaller dolls that encase smaller dolls. And at the base of it is this passion and love.

Without that passion, that seeking of affection, that hazy sense of romanticism, you are merely fucking a stranger, and with every stranger I fuck I feel a little less able to ever believe in those things again. We de-emphasize love while we scrutinize sex, and why are we scrutinizing sex in the first place, outside of the lacking of what we expected it to provide? We attach some grandness to it, some buzz, that it can’t live up to because, well, it’s just sex. It’s mythos lies in the giggling and high fives of friends, the images of media, America’s green nature on the subject; without affection, it is simply a pleasureable sensation, something akin to a massage at the spa.

 By the time I arrive home my pant legs are soaked halfway up to my shins, rings of salt dust layering around their ends. Seth is asleep on the couch, an episode of “Taxi” glowing from the television. I peel off my jeans carefully, making sure not to touch the frozen ends to my skin.  The tips of my toes are still numb as I crawl into bed. Every now and again I hear the faint sound of Danny Devito’s animated ranting. I grab an extra pillow and pull it to my chest, drifting off to the low hum of my fan and the canned laughter of a 1970’s studio audience.