The Coitus Chronicles

by Olive Persimmon

  “You’re tapping your lip like ‘kiss me’ and I’m not going to,” he said, shaking his head.

  How presumptuous of him. How utterly annoying. How even more annoying because I was, in fact, hoping he wanted to kiss me.

  “Well, I’m not going to kiss you either. Not in a million years. Not even if—”

  He cut me off mid-sentence by grabbing my face and kissing me.

  “I couldn’t let you keep going. A million years is a long time and I’ve been thinking about kissing you for a good hour.”

  His kisses were pleasant but not overly impassioned. He preferred short, quick kisses with less tongue. We kissed for a few minutes before he said, “Are we going home now or later?”

  I was both impressed and annoyed by his confidence. Unfortunately, he had misjudged the situation. I wasn’t the type of girl who went home with someone from the bar.

  Then again, maybe I could be. I was tired of following meaningless rules that I had imposed on myself. Maybe I was too old-fashioned when it came to dating.

  “No one buys the cow if they can get the milk for free,” my long-standing guilt machine said to deter me. I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember where I had heard that or why I had chosen to believe it.

  Besides, that expression wasn’t relevant here. Ben was leaving in a few days. There was no longevity in this. It wasn’t going to turn into a relationship.

  I kicked the can down the road and pretended not to hear his question. “How’s that whiskey?” I asked.

  “Good. But I’d be perfectly content leaving it here if I knew I was going home with you.”

  Now he was being too pushy.

  “I’m not having sex with you,” I said, finally making a decision.

  “Who said anything about sex? I thought it would be nice to make out and cuddle.”

  I laughed. Like I hadn’t heard that one before.

  He must have seen the skepticism on my face because he added, “Seriously, make out and cuddle. That’s it. Would be nice.”

  He was right, it would be nice to cuddle. Plus, his body was sturdy, and that British accent was sexy. There was something likable about him that made him seem sincere and safe.

  “I’m serious though. I want to set the expectation. We’re not having sex. I don’t know you and I don’t have sex with people I don’t know.”

  He agreed, kissing me sweetly before grabbing my hand to leave.

  For the first time in my life, I left with a boy I met at a bar, for no reason other than I wanted to.

  Twelve subway stops later, we walked through my apartment door. I led him back toward my room.

  We crawled into bed and spooned for a bit, neither one of us making any sort of move.

  It took about ten minutes before his hand moved cautiously toward my rib cage, right below my left breast.

  Even though I had mentally and verbally set the expectation, my body reacted to the closeness of an attractive male in my bed. I wanted him to move his hand upward. I shifted slightly until his hand rested an inch away from the curve of my breast, unmoving, his fingers twitching slightly. He was waiting for permission from me.

  I felt conflicted because I wanted to “just make out” but also wanted him to touch me in a way that I knew was more than that. My fears about one-night stands were waging a war against my primal instincts.

  Primal instincts won.

  I grabbed his hand and placed it on my breast.

  I rolled over and kissed him longer than he liked, trailing pecks down his neck before peeling off his shirt to reveal a toned and tan torso.

  He pulled off my shirt and timidly tracked kisses down my stomach, arriving at the top of my jeans.

  “I want to taste you,” he said.

  I should have been thrilled to hear that but instead it triggered an alarm in my brain. The caution I had thrown to the wind a few minutes earlier came back with a vengeance.

  “What if he has oral herpes?” my inner voice said. Unlike Anastasia Steele’s, my inner voice wasn’t a goddess or even sexy. I wasn’t even sure my inner voice was on my side most of the time. In my mind, my inner voice was a man. A snaggle-toothed, ex-pro wrestler who only wore cut-off shirts, to be exact. He was intense and always screaming at me.

  “You’re being paranoid,” I told him, enjoying the kisses on my stomach.

  “No! You’re being reckless,” he shot back. “It’s all fun and games until this boy is long gone and your vagina is itchy.”

  Goddamnit. He had a point.

  “You can’t go down on me,” I said to Ben. “Believe me, I want it to happen. It’s not a good idea.”

  “Why not?” he asked, running a finger over my panties.

  Because a crazy man in my head said so, I thought.

  “Because I don’t know you and your history,” I said.

  We continued making out and groping each other, the body heat intensifying with each movement. The sexual tension was culminating but I had no idea where it was going to end.

  “If you want to have sex, we can use a condom, so you don’t have to worry,” he whispered against my collarbone.

  I’d still worry. Because the snaggle-toothed ex-pro wrestler had once done a Google search that resulted in the knowledge that condoms don’t always protect against STDs.

  Google searches are bad for getting your mojo back.

  My primal instinct for sex was duking it out with my overall general anxiety.

  I kissed his stomach and pulled off his boxers.

  Just like London’s most iconic landmark, Ben was big.

  Big was an understatement.

  He was enormous.

  Alarmingly large. If Michelangelo and Zeus joined forces to create a penis, it would have been Ben’s.

  It was also the most aesthetically beautiful penis I had ever seen.

  There was no way in hell it was going inside of my vagina.

  I hadn’t had penetrative sex in five years. That thing was a beast meant for pornos and bachelorette parties.

  Most women’s eyes would have lit up with excitement at the sight of Ben’s penis. I was scared. It was never gonna fit. Not comfortably. Not in a million years. Bigger wasn’t always better.

  I stared at it for a second, debating my next move.

  I wanted to lick it, out of curiosity, to see what the world’s most beautiful penis tasted like. I leaned my head forward and flattened my tongue against the base, taking a few inquisitive strokes from the base up to the head.

  I licked a few more times before wrapping my lips around him.

  Like clockwork, the ex-wrestler showed up, agitated. His muscles bulging. He looked furious. “What if he has genital herpes and now you’re putting your mouth all over him? What are you thinking?!”

  I wasn’t thinking.

  And it felt good.

  Thinking was typically my problem.

  I kept my lips wrapped around Ben’s perfectly perfect penis, flicking my tongue across the head.

  The wrestler tried again, “Hope it was worth it when your mouth is covered in sores.”

  He was the worst, always dropkicking me in the face.

  He was right, though. I had just met this man a few hours earlier and although he seemed honest and sincere, I had no idea about his sexual history. I had no idea if he cared about my sexual health or not, if he’d had unprotected sex recently.

  I removed my mouth and placed his fingers near my vagina.

  We were both riled up and wanted to get off.

  Fingers seemed safe.

  “What if he didn’t wash his hands?” the wrestler quipped.

  Now he was being ridiculous.

  I was too distracted to enjoy it until I remembered what I had learned in OM’ing. “Focus on the sensation and drown out the noise.”

  I told the ex-pro wrestler to shove it and focused on the feeling of his finger on my clit. It was the first time I was able to use something from my studies in a real-life scenario.

  I�
�d be damned. It worked like a charm and before long I was orgasming from his touch.

  We lay in bed for a few minutes before I got up to go to the bathroom.

  Standing under the fluorescent light alone, I tried to enjoy the post-orgasm bliss, but my mind kept wandering to the wrestler and his premonition about my oral health.

  I reached under my sink and grabbed a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. I poured it in a cup with water and gargled the mixture around my mouth for thirty seconds before spitting in the sink and then repeating the process all over again.

  When it came to my sexual health and STDs, I was grossly undereducated. Like most people, I had turned to the Internet for information, which only caused increased paranoia.

  I had absolutely no idea, evidence, or research that hydrogen peroxide would kill any germs Ben may have had but it calmed my brain a little.*

  I stared at myself in the mirror.

  Gargling hydrogen peroxide was insane. That wasn’t a thing that normal people did.

  I placed my forehead in my hands and shook my head. No wonder I was in a goddamned dry spell, I was out of my fucking mind.

  I thought about my favorite book, Catch-22. One of the main themes is that if you’re sane enough to realize you’re crazy, then you’re not crazy. According to that logic, I wasn’t crazy. I fully acknowledged that I was behaving irrationally.

  I brushed my teeth and headed back to my room.

  While I was questioning my sanity in the bathroom, Ben fell asleep.

  I crawled into bed. He stirred a little, rousing enough to kiss me before falling back asleep.

  I woke up the next morning, groggy and glad we were at my place. I didn’t have to worry about sneaking out or anything like that.

  Ben woke up a few minutes after me. I assumed he’d make up some sort of excuse as to why he had to leave immediately. I thought all one-night stands ended with shitty mornings.

  He surprised me by saying, “I’m hungry, wanna go get waffles?”

  As we headed to breakfast, he held my hand and kissed me in the elevator.

  “What are you doing tonight?” he asked at the diner, dousing his waffles in maple syrup. “I have one more day in NYC.”

  We met up again that night at a bar. We ordered drinks for each other and pretended to be a couple. He came over again that night. Ironically, this time we just cuddled. We were both too tired from the lack of sleep the night before to even attempt fooling around.

  We grabbed breakfast again before Ben headed to the bus station to leave for good.

  It was my first-ever one-night stand.

  Almost.

  Did it count as a one-night stand if we didn’t have sex? I wasn’t sure.

  I walked into my apartment to find my roommates slow-clapping on the couch.

  “Saw a pair of men’s shoes by the door this morning, what’s that all about?” Lindsay asked, smirking.

  We had lived together for five years and I’d never brought a random guy home from the bar.

  Ever.

  I told them the whole story, including the part about gargling the hydrogen peroxide. I thought it was hilarious.

  I could tell by the worried look on their faces that they didn’t think so.

  “You should go see a therapist,” Lindsay said gently.

  “Are you kidding me? C’mon. It’s funny. I don’t need to see a therapist to talk about sex. It’s totally normal. I’m totally normal.”

  This had quickly turned into a goddamned intervention and I wasn’t having it. Lindsay had recently started seeing a therapist and was convinced that it was a cure-all for everything.

  Mary chimed in. “How do I say this kindly? You haven’t had sex in almost five years and it seems like maybe you have an irrational fear of STDs.”

  “No, I don’t. I think it’s perfectly rational and even smart to be concerned about sexual health. Anyone would agree with me,” I said.

  Lindsay paused, carefully choosing her words. “We’ve been friends for fifteen years. And I’ve noticed that in the last five, you’re a little more concerned than most people about STDs. You’re not cautious, you’re fearful, and it’s affecting your relationships. You’re amazing. You deserve to be loved, but there’s something inside of you preventing that from happening. Listen, sometimes it’s useful to talk to someone about the stuff that’s going on in your brain,” she said.

  I sat silently for a second and thought about what they were saying.

  Two days later, I called Dr. Rachel D’Souza, a sex therapist based in NYC.

  * I don’t want to get on my soapbox here but can we please get some actual sex education in schools?! I’m the poster child for why we need it.

  ALL THE DEEP SHIT THAT IS REALLY WRONG WITH ME

  For years people had tried to psychoanalyze me, trying to figure out why I was in a dry spell. Lindsay and Mary had tried to lovingly armchair evaluate me as long as we’d been roommates. I’d get annoyed because, in my mind, I was totally fine.

  I wasn’t totally fine, though. Lindsay was right, there was some stuff that needed to be addressed, not by well-intentioned friends but by an actual therapist.

  I began therapy after the Ben incident because I knew that I hadn’t totally behaved like a rational human being.

  If I wanted to fall in love or have sex ever again, I had to deal with my emotional baggage instead of pretending it didn’t exist.

  During our first Skype video session, Dr. D’Souza asked me about my childhood, past partners, and the dry spell.

  We covered a lot of ground before I brought up my fear of STDs and what happened with Ben. I told her the entire story including the gargling of hydrogen peroxide.

  She listened intently, her mouth curling into a soft smile.

  “That’s a quick leap to make. ‘You are naked, I am naked, therefore I will get an STD.’ It sounds like you’re having irrational thoughts.”

  I laughed. No shit. That’s why I was talking to a therapist. I wouldn’t have called her if my thoughts were peachy keen and totally normal.

  “Where do you think this fear came from?” she asked.

  I knew exactly where it had come from.

  I had been diagnosed with HPV when I was twenty and still a virgin. My gynecologist left a message on my voice mail saying that I had HPV and it was super common.

  Also, the message said I had genital warts.

  I had listened to the message in the front seat of my car in the Target parking lot as my whole body went numb.

  I had genital warts.

  My whole life, all I had ever heard was that people with STDs were “dirty” and that meant that you were “promiscuous.” There I was, a twenty-year-old virgin with genital warts.

  “What happened after you found out?” Dr. D’Souza asked.

  What happened was that I lost my fucking mind.

  Because I was young, and the health-care industry didn’t know enough about HPV at the time, I took on horrible beliefs about what that meant for my future.

  I convinced myself that no one would ever love me because my body was now a vessel for a transferable infection that no one wanted.

  I had a few friends with herpes and most of them were in happy relationships. They knew that it wasn’t a big deal, not really, and had made peace with themselves.

  I couldn’t.

  I did awful things that I read about on the Internet to my body in an attempt to find a “treatment,” like soaking tampons in apple cider vinegar and placing them inside my vagina. The more it burned, the more I convinced myself it was working.

  I confessed this all to Dr. D’Souza with immense shame—that I had caused myself to suffer so much—and also anger. I was angry at my doctor for leaving a fucking message on my voice mail. I was angry at the health-care industry for spreading unnecessary fear about HPV, a virus that usually becomes undetectable. My voice was cracking the entire time, tears dripping down my face.

  It was something I had never confessed to anyone
, not even during the BDSM shame exercise. By confessing it all to Dr. D’Souza, it felt like I was showing her the parts that were ugly and twisted. I was terrified if anyone knew the truth or how crazy I went, they’d never see me the same way.

  Dr. D’Souza nodded, encouraging me to go on. We both knew that, despite it being a difficult story to tell, I had to do it if I was ever going to heal.

  I told her that two years after my original diagnosis, I made an appointment with a new gynecologist to have my genital warts frozen off.

  During those two years I avoided dating. I’d go on first dates and call things off before I had to tell the truth.

  As I drove to the gynecologist, I prayed on the way that somehow, by some miracle, this had all been a bad dream.

  When I arrived, the waiting room was full of glowing pregnant women. The receptionist asked why I was there and when I said, “genital warts” my face turned red. Afterward, I avoided looking at any of the pregnant women.

  My shame was eating me alive.

  By the time my gyno called me back, I was just grateful to escape the waiting room.

  While I lay there, dressed in a thin paper gown, my legs spread open, the gynecologist examined me for several minutes before speaking.

  I assumed her silence meant it was bad.

  After a few minutes she said, “What genital warts?”

  I looked at her, confused, certain that I had heard her wrong.

  “Honey, you don’t have genital warts.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She said it again, “You don’t have genital warts.”

  “Wha . . . are . . . are . . . you sure?” I asked.

  “I am 100 percent sure. Maybe you had genital warts at some point in time, but you don’t now. Genital warts are caused by the Human Papillomavirus or HPV, and luckily, it’s a virus that usually works its way out of your body in a few years. We’re still learning about it but in most cases, both the HPV and the genital warts clear up on their own. I’ll do a test for HPV but I’m willing to bet it’s going to come back negative.”

  What?

  HPV goes away?

  Genital warts go away?

  I had been carrying this around for two fucking years. I let it dictate my self-worth. I let it dictate who I believed would love me and who I thought I deserved, which was no one.