WANT by T

His lips are sweet with me and the sheets and his fingers are covered in my cum and trailing my skin gently. Nightstand light glows soft over my words.

‘I don’t know what I want right now.’

The tail end of the jumpy, rambling explanation that is my love life. I might want a boyfriend, but I really don’t want to feel tied to that reality. I might want a hot one-nighter, but I really am tired of blah bar boys. I might want a date, but I really would rather spend the time on me. High School Cutie is single like spring grass and not good at women. He is easy going and eager to please; drunk victory fist pumping when I took him home last time from our boys’ night out. He is my short-term solution.

I kick him out once we’ve used both condoms and send his short, soft frame through my door with a pat on the ass and a twinkle of my fingers. He also happens to be good at getting me off.

Four days later, my Old Friend is picking me up. We chatter all night long around champagne glasses in a box-filled apartment kitchen. I am reconnecting with our friend with seventeen-year-old Pirate-sized rum shots and these boys are my favourite kind of hooligans. When I lay down on the mattress in the spare room at 7 am, I am smiling with the satisfaction of deep night political debate and ski dreaming.

I find Old Friend in my bed a few minutes later. His heart beats like thunder under my palm and I curl into the crooks on his body like a happy cat. I am half asleep and glowing with love.

‘I can’t sleep,’ he whispers. ‘And I’m horny. Want to fool around?’

‘If you promise not to be weird about it later.’

A year later and I still adore the way he kisses; I melt so fast into his greasy beard and lanky hair. His hands burn over my hips and into my panties. But he doesn’t have a condom and when I hesitate his dick loses interest. I tumble off him, flopping long and throwing an arm over his chest. I kiss the spot where his cheek crumbles into laugh lines.

‘You really know how to treat a lady.’

He gets too hot for my sheets, but comes back two hours later. My nose is pressed into his neck again when I ask him if he’s still interested. No, no. He basically hasn’t been hard since I turned him down. Tough break.

Back between my own blankets deleting Tinder messages, I realize that I am glad It didn’t work. Realize that we are sex like cold pizza, and he doesn’t have an appetite. He is my Old Friend—mountain man and shotgun sharer and I like it that way. I realize that maybe it’s not that I don’t know what I want right now, but maybe that I know exactly what I want instead.

❤

You know you’ve got to listen to this one, right?

❤

T doesn’t always know who she is, but she usually knows what she wants. Right now, she wants to know what she wants, but she also knows that when you want to know what you want too intensely, you don’t get it, on principle.

❤

text © T 2017 c/o YYC Queer Writers

photography ©  Jennifer Weihmann

used with permission; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

ABOUT THE PROJECT:

SCREW CHOCOLATE: 14 Queer Valentines To Help You Survive February 14 is a collaborative project by YYC Queer Writers. We get together intermittently to… write. Also, laud our lovers. Commiserate about our exes. Read each other what we wrote. Explain what we want to write. Try to justify why we aren’t writing it. Go home and write it. Come back. Share it… repeat.

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