Hannah Tennant-Moore - Wreck and Order

“No sex,” I said as he unlocked the door to his apartment.

“Right. We’re just friends.”

As soon as he shut the door to his bedroom, he gathered my hair into his fist and ran his tongue from the nape of my neck to the base of my skull. I noticed the unforgiving hardness of the tips of my shiny black shoes, the overripe banana musk in his room, the crumpled newspaper by his bed. Or whatever the particular external details happened to be. What I remember clearly is that the quality of my awareness changed — Jared pushed me onto the mattress, held my arms over my head, lifted up my dress — the way water changes according to one’s thirst. This could be the last time we would ever be together. The more external details I could notice, the more okay I would be. “Yes,” I said again and again, until sensation wore away the meaning of the word.

BROOKLYN

The night I got home from California, Brian and I went to a German café near our apartment. We dipped hunks of rye bread into creamy tomato soup and sipped strong Manhattans. We didn’t know it was movie night until fifteen minutes into our meal, when The Princess Bride began, projected onto the wall in front of us. I tried to continue answering Brian’s questions about how my father was handling the loss of his brother, but the movie was loud. The boy asked his grandpa, who was reading him a fairy tale, “Wait, is this a kissing book? What about sports and stuff?” Brian chortled. “Sorry,” he said. “I can’t concentrate with this movie on.”

I didn’t mind. It was nice to sip my strong cocktail and watch Wesley and Buttercup brave the Fire Swamp for the sake of true love.

There was fresh snow on the sidewalk when we left the bar. I didn’t notice the white branches gleaming overhead until we were at the door of our apartment, and then I did not want to go in. I wanted to stay outside, a creature walking through the world, not of it. Fortunately, Brian started kissing me as soon as we shut the door behind us. He pulled my chin down with his index finger and ogled the O my lips formed before falling on my open mouth. He led me into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed in front of me. In one motion, he pulled off my T-shirt, sweater, and bra. He cupped my breasts in his hands and bounced them. “I missed your boobs.” He grinned. I kissed his forehead, relaxing into his delight in something that just happened to belong to me.

He yanked off his boxers and rolled my underwear down my hips. What I had done with Jared was a mistake with a clear name and a clear implication. I hadn’t let myself name it while I was making the mistake; it just felt like something that was happening to me, the way Brian had happened to me. Only away from Jared could I recall what I’d done in terms of my own agency. So I listened to my boyfriend’s pleasure without striving for any of my own. All I deserved was his satisfaction. When it was over, I kept my face burrowed in the pillow next to his head for as long as I could. “You’re so still,” he said finally.

“I’m not crying for a bad reason.”

He patted my hair until I quieted.

Although Jared and I had barely slept during the two days we spent together, I was restless that first night back and lay awake for hours, telling myself I should get my book out of my suitcase. “Your breathing is too shallow,” Brian whispered to me once. “Take deeper breaths.” The S came out in a harsh lisp, and I rolled away from him, folding my hands across my pounding chest. I awoke in the morning as he shut the door to the bedroom, having quietly dressed for work. I shot upright.

“Brian!” I wondered for one second if I could bear it if he were already gone. I ran out to the hallway, where he was zipping up his coat. “You didn’t say goodbye.” His leather jacket was cold against my breasts.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” he said. “You seem worn out.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, one hand on the doorknob. So he had sensed my distance. Which meant he would be cold to me for a few days and then fuck me roughly, his eyes clenched, jaw set, nostrils flared. How he would have hated that image of himself. I knew that we should not use sex to release unspoken anger, like one of those stereotypical couples that terrified me so much, who would never know true closeness but would just seesaw between neediness and resentment until they died. But how could I stop him when he was bearing down on me hatefully, all muscle, no confusion? That kind of sex left me uncomfortably horny for days afterward — awful word, horny, with its harsh, adolescent hurriedness, but the misplaced need that arose from makeup sex (another juvenilely crass phrase) was awful indeed. I always wanted just one more orgasm, the one that would make all these unspoken negotiations worthwhile.

Brian wished me a good day, staring at the floor.

I called Jared a few minutes after Brian left. He yawned loudly. “I miss you, beautiful girl,” he said. Just like that, this became an acceptable pattern of feelings.

—

Brian often had several big projects due around the same time, and in the week or two before the concurrence of deadlines he was empty of himself. He would hug and kiss me, tell me he loved me, bring me flowers. But his affection was a performance he enacted while his mind was elsewhere, so industrious that he forgot to eat or shower or have sex. I took NyQuil before bed during these periods, so as not to be kept awake by desire for a body that stress had traumatized into an unfeeling mass of blood and water and flesh, dumb as a fetus. Sometimes in the early mornings, his cock would remember to need me, and Brian attacked me with a sudden, brief passion that enflamed and then abandoned me like the boys I used to meet at bars. I knew that Brian and I would have close, long-lasting, satisfying sex again as soon as he completed this latest round of websites and that I must therefore remain calm the few times he fucked me hard and fast with no thought to my own enjoyment. But precisely because I found this to be the most erotic of all sex acts — in concept — and because I could never, not once, experience this fast, violent release that I imagined to be the most perfect pleasure, I was never calm. A miniature girl in combat boots and fishnet tights stomped on my chest and shouted to me about the selfishness of all male bodies and the treachery of all female bodies, which give themselves wrongly again and again.

At breakfast — Brian both stiff and jumpy, wide-eyed with anticipation of the workday; me glaring and tense, my chest hardened against the quaking of tiny, helpless feet — I would mutter that I could pour my own cereal when he asked if I wanted Raisin Bran or Puffins, would chew with my mouth open, refuse to wipe the milk out of the corners of my mouth, turn my face away when he tried to kiss me goodbye, tell him that he was not meeting my needs and I was so unhappy and felt abandoned and was going to have a terrible day. I could behave as horribly as I wanted; it would not be long before he would want to take me again and I would want to submit. Brian would say the word “sorry” several times, pat my shoulder, back out the door, pause in the doorway to stare fearfully at my hard jaw and small eyes, tell me he would see me tonight and it would be okay. He was a good animal, plodding along the path in front of him with heavy steps, thoughtlessly following every rule of every preexisting game. And I was a ghost with an enormous belly and a tiny speck of a mouth, unable to consume enough food at one time to fill me up. The more the ghost eats, the more it is reminded of its hunger.

I would touch myself after Brian left for work, trying not to think of the sound he made just before I gave him the release for which I could not forgive him — a quickly escalating growl. Often the sound refused to leave my head and I came with little pleasure thinking of it and afterward resented Brian even more for the straightforward sound of his straightforward climax, which forced me to be always in relation to him, even when I felt most alone. We do not get what we want, biologically speaking.