Excerpt: The Problem with Men

Hello loyal grey readers,

      Thanks for coming back :-) Here's another excerpt for you. Hope you're enjoying them!

      For the longest time I couldn’t put my finger on it. He’d get in the shower with me, and I’d just stare, wondering what it was about him that bothered me so. At first I thought it might have been the way he moved—quick and seizure-like, sometimes with contorted hands—but later I realized what it was.

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“So, what exactly is it that you don’t like about his body?”

“Well, his butt, for one.”

“What about it?” 
"It’s flat, and kind of...narrow.”

“Well he can’t help that, he’s a white boy. It’s a white boy butt.”

“Yeah...”

“Ok, what else?”

“Well, I don’t really like his torso.”

“His torso? That’s random. What’s wrong with his torso?”

“I don’t know, it’s just kind of...square.  You know that place where your stomach descends toward your hipbones? His is so...straight.”

“You mean he doesn’t have a curve there? He’s not a girl, you know!”

“Yeah, I know.”

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“I tried my best, I really did.”

“It gets better.”

 “I don’t like it.”

“Maybe he’s not the right one. What do you feel when you’re with him?”

“There’s nothing.”

“Was there ever?”

“I wanted there to be something.”

“But was there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, describe it. What does it feel like, from start to finish?”

“Well first I get nervous.”

“That’s normal.”

“And then, I am concentrating.”

“Concentrating on what, exactly?”

“Doing a good job...?”

“At what?”

“Making him happy?”

“Hmm...okay. And then what?”

“Relief.”

“What? Relief at what?”

“That it’s over. That I won. That he’s happy.”

“And what about in between? Does he make you happy?”

“I don’t know how to answer that question.”

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“Does he pleasure you?”

“I mean, it gives me pleasure that he feels pleasure.”

“But, I mean, does he try?”

“He does, he tries.”

“And?”

“The first few times it worked, but after that...I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, ‘it worked?’”

“I mean I came.”

“You did?!”

“ I did...”

“Then what happened after that? When did things change?”

“Oh, around the third time we slept together.”

“And how long had you been together at that point?”

“Three months.”

“So, what did you do after that?”

“Well, we started watching porn together. I thought it would help.”

“Nice! Very bold of you.”

“Um, it was Lesbian porn.”

“Oh. I’ll bet he liked that!”

“I liked that.”

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            I don’t know how many times we actually "slept together"—things got to a point where I was squarely somewhere else for the entire affair, away in a place where the woman on the screen was with me, caressing me gently, smelling of musk and tickling the fine hairs on the small of my back—but it was surely enough times to recognize that this truly was “it.”

            But the rest of it was fine for a while. We hung out, watched movies, hiked. I cooked, he enjoyed my cooking, appreciated it even. But the more I had to see him naked, the stranger things became. At first I just didn’t enjoy seeing him. Up until that point I guess I never looked. If he was changing I’d turn away and pretend to do something, or I’d leave the room. And if I was already doing something, I certainly wouldn’t look up from it. But nudity didn’t embarrass me, or make me uncomfortable in general; my face would just curl in a strange way, involuntarily, whenever I looked at him. He never noticed.

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“I don’t know how to make you feel...” he said. He misspoke, and yet, he did not. Nobody can make anybody feel anything else, but there were certain things I would never feel for him, what for who he was, what he was. I didn’t say anything.

                                                         

Peace and Love and Bugs Named Doug,

GreyGirl