Sex Stories: Life and Death Sex, by Fiona George
“Sex and sacrifice.
My sacrifice is for pleasure. My pleasure.”
"Sex Stories" is a regular NAILED column in which all kinds of people write about sex.
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When we lie side by side, your arm around me. All either of us can say is wow or god damn, and fuck, that was good. You, close and warm in your cuddle-sized twin bed. The wet warm of your come and my come, sometimes with lube, sometimes mixed with menstrual blood, blooms between my legs. Into a wet spot on the sheets under my ass. You run your fingers over the skin of my shoulder with your beautiful hands. Clean and hairy, veined man hands.
I don’t get up to clean myself off because of a shake in my thighs. A beautiful weakness, being exposed and vulnerable without fear.
The faint light of your fish tank paints shadows around your red lips, the stubble on your cheeks. Your face, so much more beautiful because it belongs to you. Your eyes are at the ceiling, not looking at it. Blueish light reflected in dark brown eyes. I’ll spend too much of tomorrow wondering what you see when you look at the ceiling.
Maybe when you look up you also see the last seven months of us fucking. And is seven months long enough. It will never be long enough. You will never fall for me. We are going to keep fucking around until you find someone to love as well as fuck.
I don’t only think of you. When the sex-wet patch spreads on the sheets beneath my pussy, I close my eyes but not to sleep. And you stare at the ceiling.
I also think of a baby who doesn’t exist. Birth control can fail. Everything can fail.
I imagine my belly growing into the swell of a piece of you, and a piece of me. I’d keep working in the café till I was ready to pop. We’d have hot pregnant sex. I’d stop going to bars and quit smoking, be a healthy human being. I’d grow in the way that you can only grow so close to life and death.
But I wouldn’t.
I’d figure out I was pregnant when I go to get my next shot of birth control in three months and they give me a test. By that time, I’d have filled my body with too much booze and weed, cigarettes and caffeine.
My body is not a healthy place.
I would get an abortion and this thing that we’re doing will never have made anything more than a puddle of fluids under my ass.
I know that.
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The shake in my thighs stops, I have to go pee and I have to clean myself off. I get out of bed slow, keep my skin on your skin until I pull my dress over my head. You are awake, but I get dressed quietly and tip toe out of the room.
I am not one who likes to break silence.
My ass to the cold white toilet seat, a whole world splashes from my pussy. The pee joins the other fluids, smooth and slick and rinsing me out. Wipe off my inner thighs, wet and sticky slippery halfway to my knees. Wipe off my labia majora and minora. Pat-dry my new vertical clitoral hood piercing and spray it with sterile saline. It stings.
I’m not supposed to have unprotected sex while it’s still healing. I shouldn’t have unprotected sex outside of a committed, monogamous relationship if I really want to be safe. Condoms just suck.
The stupid sound they make. You get to thrusting really hard, I’m feeling it all the way up to my core, the condom goes squeak gurgle and changes the moment. And the chafing. Once, we were trying to use condoms, you were on top of me and the rubber friction between us made fucking impossible. You pulled yourself out of me and I reached between us to pull the condom off.
You slid back in like it was meant to be skin on skin all along.
I know what I risk when you come inside me. I still pull the condom off. I can’t not pull the condom off.
Sex has always been life and death for women. How the fear of death during childbirth and botched abortions must have loomed over women before me, like the fear of STD’s, STI’s, and cervical cancer looms over me. And maybe they weren’t even enjoying their sex, only sacrificing to further the species, or their husband’s family name.
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When I come back into your room, your eyes are still open. I can see them follow me across the cluttered carpet. I don’t really know what’s under my feet but I try to step on clothes, nothing breakable. We are silent but we smile at each other, all your straight white teeth in the dark. I sink into your cuddle-sized bed, into your arms, my back to your front. The hair on your chest, hair leading down your belly to where I can feel warm between your legs. The fur of your thighs, your calves, as they intertwine with mine.
I can’t see your face, but I can feel your breath on the tiny hairs of my neck. I still want to know what you’re thinking. Goddamnit.
And I want to know why I’m not afraid of you.
Why I feel safe with your naked body pressed against my back. When I haven’t figured out how not to fear men. How my whole body can tense and cramp in the close company of the other gender, but the faint tickle of your heartbeat when your chest presses against me can let me breathe and lull me to sleep. How I can allow myself to be unguarded. Unprotected.
After we fuck, when I lie next to you and close my eyes but not to sleep. I try and remind myself that this will never be more than it is right now. After I go to the bathroom and you wrap your arms around me, until I eventually fall asleep beside you. I think about a baby who does not exist, about fear and you and what you might be thinking.
About life and death.
Sex and sacrifice.
My sacrifice is for pleasure. My pleasure.
So much pleasure it may be worth it.
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Header image courtesy of photographer, Igor Moukhin. To view a view a photo essay of Moukhin's work, go here.
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Fiona George is a Portland native who has been lucky enough to land in Tom Spanbauer’s Dangerous Writing workshop through little fault of her own. She is a proud high school dropout who hopes to get out of food service.