Each time I have sex it gets a little less believable for the next guy that I am a virgin. I think a symbiotic lie is one that is morally passable; he wants to fuck a virgin and I want to fuck a man who wants to fuck a virgin. I am a performance artist and a research scientist at once. The data is fabulous and the art is compelling.
You’d think the risk of falling in love would mess up the integrity of my research, but it’s all a repeat of the same control test. The first time I lost my virginity, he confessed this fetish to me afterward, like a confessional where the priest is a virgin you just ruined. I know now it was far too specific and creative for him to have blossomed that thought from his own windy brain.
In it, I am blindfolded and my hands are tied up; I am trying to eat an orange with nothing but my mouth. After a decent time of struggle, he comes behind me, finishes peeling it, and he feeds it to me. It is messy and it is crude and I guess it is pornographic because of those first two adjectives. The logistics of what was so intriguing about this fantasy escaped me until I figured out the key part: He peels it while he’s behind me and I can’t see him helping. What is it about vulnerability that is only desirable if it has the word forced before it?
And I’ve already fallen in love with him, of course. It's eat or be eaten, love or be loved. Like the guts of a pig, that shit just spills out of me, leaving me belly-up. The short distance between the words love and loved is often what makes the loving so intense. Hysterics turn men on– but I just like to scream. I think he thinks I can absolve him of this pain, but he knows he can absolve me of mine.
Before the third time I lost my virginity, I recorded myself eating an orange with nothing but my mouth. I tried to eat desperately, voraciously– like it was the last available fruit on Earth and there are people coming to take it from me. It was only then that I understood it. He loves me back, that’s why he wants to put me in pain. He can only take vulnerability, never offer it. He loves the sin– even if he hates the sinner.
A few years into the experiment, I had to make my act more believable by being less overtly sexy. I wore a sports bra and boxers. I even showed him my poetry in the car like it was something personal.
I don’t think you understood my writing, but you said you liked it— and while that’ll never be enough for me, I feel the same way about the person you are. The difference between us is that I see us being better. I see myself, better. I picture our bodies in places so much more beautiful than we are in, I picture us fucking outside in California, amongst the redwoods. Trees are magic. I picture our bodies as trees, so much more beautiful than they have been. You just picture us as we are, because this is as far as you can see.
My final thesis is this: A man who gets you on your knees is always taller than you, even if you choose to kneel. But the art is just about getting to be closer to the ground.
