3.50am

Fucking hell.

In my head, I composed my next reply. It read, “I’m sorry, I can’t do this. It feels so good, but I can’t. I’m sorry. You’re wonderful, but goodbye, stranger.”

I assembled those words, a hundred variations of them, as I sat on the boy’s bed, rocking him, rocking him, waiting for the moans to soften and go silent, for his shivers and shaking to still.

His terrors pulled me from your orbit as I was reveling in each new chime of my phone, jerked me out of the excitement and fantasy of you and into the next room and the sad and frantic reality I now call my daily life.

I thought, what the fuck am I doing? How can this possibly be okay? Where in my reality is there room for this hot, sweet madness?

And then, after I’d sung Past and Pending, and Soldier’s Things, Sugar Mountain and half a dozen other songs, once I was so exhausted I wanted to sob, he fell back asleep.

I carried my restless body and my head full of apologies back to the living room and picked up my phone, and tried to make the words right. Typed them this way, that way, felt lost and deleted them. Had a drink. Scrolled back to the very beginning and read where we first started. Read on and on, and by the time I came to your latest texts, I knew I was wrong. That THIS isn’t wrong, whatever this is.

That this is the only solace and escape and joy I have right now. The only good thing, just like I’d said. So good I doubt I deserve it, but how’s a wretch lost in a desert going to pass up a drink of water, really?

I read your words, and I forgot the despair and the helplessness that eats me alive for hours a day here.

The things you wrote lit me up like a fucking bonfire. All over again, I felt things I haven’t in so long. Desire and hunger and a strange, dark strain of confidence, even.

Confident because, yes, I can be all those things for you.

If I do have a fetish, it’s to be exactly what a woman wants. That’s always excited me more than anything else: to spoil someone, to ruin her for every other man who comes after, to be a slave and a whore and a zealot to her pleasure.

And yes, I want to hear you. More than you could ever know. Whatever your voice, whatever your accent, whatever words might fall from that mouth when I was finally done kissing it.

I want cautious and curious requests—like that, a little more, keep going.

I want demands and orders. Deeper, faster, slower, harder, rougher. Fuck me, eat me, hold me down, say my name, use your fingers, give me that cock, Malcolm.

I want gasping pleas. Don’t stop don’t you fucking stop, I’m so close, make me come.

Have you come? I think you have. What do you think about when you do? How do you touch yourself? Would you teach me every secret or just set me loose, make me learn to play you from scratch?

What do you want to hear from me?

I’m noisy in bed. I earn furtive shushings from shy lovers and angry thumps from neighbors who’ve shared walls with me.

You can have every whisper and mounting moan and grunt and panting breath, every curse, every uncensored thought, be it needy or bossy or pleading or plain old lust-drunk.

I’d tell you kiss me, stroke me, taste me, use me, ride me, suck me, spread your legs, make me come.

I’d be any man for you. Every man. Any man you’ve ever wanted, just tell me and I can be that. You can submit to me, exploit me, worship me, degrade me. I don’t care as long as it leaves you trembling and weak.

Then I’ll kiss your temple, taste the sweat gleaming on that skin. Kiss your lips, taste myself there.

Do you forgive me, stranger, for being so ungrateful, so foolish and naive to have almost tried to end all of this? Tell me how to make it up to you. Tell me who you want me to be, and I’ll tell you exactly what that could look like.

4.44am

If you want to stop, stop.

Because I promise, it’s only going to get worse from here.

This, right now, is me holding back. This is me deleting dirtier things, and putting sweeter things in their place. It’s me censoring myself, in case it’s too far or too much. Oh, I so don’t want to be too much. But the problem is—I’m first seeing fresh water after a million miles of sea voyage.

I can’t stop myself if we continue.

So please say now.

Don’t tell me to make you my whore.

I will.

Don’t ask me to degrade you.

It would be my pleasure.

I’m already worshipping your body in my head—each part of it a roulette that nightly lands on a different shape or size or softness. Sometimes you’re hard all over, like a long-distance runner after a thousand-mile race. Sometimes you’re as plump as a pillow and twice as juicy, or fine-boned like a bird or better than all of those things.

And I’m always glad to get any of them.

My teeth ache at the thought of biting.

My lips buzz with the idea of kissing.

I’ve come at least once every day since the first sensual word you said—about your hands, I think it was your hands, oh I think about your hands all the time—and I’ll keep on doing it.

Unless you say: go back, let’s be how we were, I’m weary in my bones and I need you to be more than this. Because I can be. I can forget we ever said a single sexual word and return to those conversations about songs and shows and food. You tell me about your day, and I’ll tell you about mine.

But you have to make that decision.

I’m way too far gone to ever do it.

5.03am

Here’s the deal, stranger. From 7am to 10pm, we talk about our days. TV, the weather, what we’re eating. But between those stretches, anything goes.

Anything.

Don’t hold back. I want to hear. I want to know everything you need from me so I can imagine being that man. I’m so fucking hard right now from reading your words. I ache all over at the thought of pleasing you.

Do you want to picture me better? If you’d prefer to keep me generic and changeable, skip my next text.

Let’s see… I’m almost tall, not quite six feet. Brown eyes, dark brown hair. I wear reading glasses now and then. I’d like to think I’m fit. I can’t jog anymore, but I do what I can. I’ve lost some weight since I moved here, and my skin’s gone pale under all these clouds. I look tired, if I’m honest. At any given moment, I’m probably wearing jeans, and just now I’ve got a sweater on, dark greenish blue. A gray thermal beneath that. Boxer briefs, also gray, sometimes black. Bare feet. Some chest hair, not a ton.

I’ve got more I could tell you. Darker shadows to illuminate, but I’ll let context lead us there in time.

So easily I could send you a picture. Of my face. Of my cock. A video. I could call you, hear your voice and let you hear mine.

But we’re not going to do that, are we? We haven’t yet, and we won’t, I can feel it. I can tell from the way we text. How we take turns, and take our time with these pseudo letters. Something about this is so exactly right as it is. Like we’re two ghosts whispering in the darkness.

So tell me where I am. In your bed, on your floor? Kneeling before you, looming above, lounging across your covers or lashed to your bedposts? Still dressed or stripped bare? Don’t leave anything out. Don’t hold back. Tell me everything.

5.47am

That deal is okay with me.

As long as it’s okay with you.

I don’t want to hurt you. Make things worse for you. Pull apart your comfort zone when you need it most. These messages should be your comfort zone, and if they ever stray away from that I want you to tell me. Even now, after you’ve said that I should go ahead.

Though god, I want to go ahead. I was beside myself at you saying “so fucking hard”, and then you went and described what you look like. All those words that I sort of didn’t want to read, and yet somehow I started and couldn’t stop. I devoured your dark brown hair and your reading glasses and your not a ton of chest hair.

Even the clothes made me push a hand between my legs.

And the don’t hold back just sealed the deal.

Now I’m typing this with one thumb, body thrumming, fingers teasing in all the good good places as I think about where I would like you to be. Though most of the time, I find I can hardly decide. I think about you lounging on my bed, mostly bare, expression full of all the experiences I’ve never had, and my clit jumps against my fingers.

But there’s something tempting about you dropping to your knees, too.

Burying your face between my legs, hungrily.

Hands spread over my ass.

Mouth already seeking me out.

Can you see yourself doing that, Malcolm?

If not, let me help you. Imagine finding me in the middle of my sparsely decorated living room, in nothing but an oversized jumper. It always slides off one shoulder, and grazes the tops of my knees. My legs are bare, soft, short, like the stalks of some succulent plant that’s been starved of the sun. My thighs kiss in the middle.

I have no underwear on.

And when you press your face there, you’ll find I have no hair between my legs, either. I keep myself smooth as silk there—made smoother by my own constant wetness. Because I am now, you know. Constantly wet, I mean. I wake up from sultry dreams filled with seething bodies, soaked all the way down to the tops of my thighs. When I walk around my apartment, I can feel it; when I slide a finger inside myself, it’s easy.

Do you like the thought of it being easy?

Of putting your hand there and finding me slippery?

I like to think you would—that you would jolt all over and look up at me, shocked to discover that such an innocent little thing could be so aroused. But then I wonder if it would just spoil any illusions about me and the kind of person I am. Maybe you thought that closing myself off from everything meant that I had never fully learned how to crave.

And yet when I think of you looking at me like I should be ashamed…

Somehow that only makes me want to be worse. It sends a shudder through my body. Suddenly my cheeks are flushed to the point of unbearable. And most importantly: my finger is moving fast now on my clit. So fast, in fact, that I’m going to have to leave you there, to see to it.

I’ve only got enough good sense left to ask:

Which of those men would you be, Malcolm?

Forget what I want. Tell me who you are.

6.21am

You can’t hurt me, stranger. There’s ugliness in my everyday life and there’s ugliness in sex, but one starves me while the other fills me up. So never fear. There’s so much light in the dark places you want to go with me.

I don’t even know where to start with the things you said. I want to do ten thousand things to you, but I have to pick, now don’t I?

Fuck, you and your jumper. The fact that I had to Google “jumper British def” to even be sure what it meant. I thought it was a dress, but no.

I picture a man’s sweater, overlong, falling off your shoulder like you said. I imagine it’s mine. I imagine coming home and finding you in my living room. I don’t know who you are, only that you’re there in my apartment, dressed in my sweater with your bare, plump, porcelain legs, birdlike hands, wide eyes. They grow wider as I come near. Even I don’t know what I’ll do until I’m doing it.

I ask who you are. You don’t answer, lips pursed tight. (What do those lips look like? Tell me. I’d give anything to know.)

My question becomes a demand, and you say you’re nobody.

In truth, I don’t care who you are. All I care about is that you’re here, and you’re mine to do with as I please.

I take a step closer. Too close. You take a step back. Step for step, until your calves hit the couch and you fall, land with a soft bounce on the center cushion.

I like the sight of you staring up at me with that mix of fear and anticipation in your stone-blue eyes.

A hundred ideas flash through my mind for what to do with you.

To you.

I want to undo my belt, open my pants. Take my cock out and make you watch as I stroke myself, get myself hard, until that pale flesh flushes dark. Until you can see the excitement beading, cresting, slipping from my crown, then gleaming along my shaft as that hand keeps on pumping.

I want to beckon you forward to the edge of your seat, guide my cock to your chin, watch it disappear between your lips. Watch your face as I feed you every inch, as you taste a man’s desire for the first time.

I want to feel your inexperience in those awkward, eager, nervous seconds.

Your shy hands hide in your lap. I grasp your wrist, make you wrap your fingers around me and show you how tight I want it, show you how hard you make me. Show you how to stroke me so your rising fist meets your swallowing lips. Let you hear the way my breath sucks in with each pull. Make you feel the weight of my hand on your head and the soft tug of my fingers in your hair. I won’t force you, just follow the bobbing of your head.

But that’s only one idea, stranger, and not what really happens.

Not this night, anyway.

What really happens is that I take you by the hand. Coax you to stand with all the airs of a gentleman inviting you to waltz. As you rise, I turn you around, hold you by the waist, then draw you down onto my lap, your back meeting my chest.

You feel my mouth on your neck—the cool, smooth tip of my nose, the harsh rasp of my jaw. As I kiss your throat, my hands sweep over your body from your shoulders down over your breasts, your belly, your thighs.

You can feel that I’m hard, feel me pressing there against your ass, but there’s no details to catch hold of, and you want the details so, so badly.

My fingers close around the hem of that stolen sweater and tug it up to your hips. Though I can’t see what greets me, I feel it. I don’t let you see the shock as my fingers traverse your skin—smooth, smooth, always smooth. Not what I expect from someone so sheltered. Maybe you hear the way my breath halts, or maybe your own gasp keeps my surprise a secret.

The edge of my finger meets your slick, soft folds. So wet I have to wonder what it is you thought about as you waited for a stranger to come home and find you here. Catch you.

I trace you with my knuckles, let you feel my rough skin against your soft lips. I stroke you like that for ages, waiting. Waiting for you to beg. To admit you want more.

Maybe you don’t tell me in words. Maybe it’s your panting breaths that tell me. Or the fingers that curl around my wrist to ride the motions, to feel the flex of my tendon and bone. Maybe it’s the moan that finally escapes your throat. Whatever the case, I finally end your suffering.

I give you my fingers. Two of them, only deep enough to tease. You make it so easy, like you said. You make me feel needed like I haven’t in years. Maybe not ever. You make me feel powerful, strong, big beyond reason. I want to give you my cock, so badly you can never, ever understand what torture that need is like to live with. I want to hold your hips and make you sink down on it, glacier-slow.

I don’t, though. Not tonight.

Tonight you get those fingers. Three of them now, and deeper. Deeper and thicker, enough to help you imagine what you’re missing. My other fingers frame your pussy, and my thumb sweeps low, steals some of that wetness, brings it to your clit.

Does it take an hour to make you come? Does it take a single breath?

Whatever it takes, I’ll give you that. The raw drag of my kisses, the slick friction of my thumb and the steady fucking of my fingers until you come apart in my lap. Shaking, shuddering. Groaning. I keep going until the pleasure crests past relief and into pain and that hand on my wrist is tugging, pleading for me to stop.

And I do. I stop, and there’s just us. Two strangers in my lonely living room, and the smell of you everywhere.

And here I’ll leave you. The boy will be awake soon, though there’s nothing I want more than to lie here and wait for the buzz of my phone in this dark room. But this is bordering on addiction now, so I’ll power it off, like a drunk pouring the last of his gin down the sink.

But there’s always the next night, stranger. There’s always another bottle, another taste. Another temptation I’m too helpless to pass up. So go on, then. Intoxicate me.

7.12am

I think I held my breath through your entire reply. Mostly because it was so hot my skin is now on fire, but also because I never thought I’d ever have anyone say things like that to me. Things that make me wild for them. Things that make me moan.

Things that fill me with joy.

Oh so much joy, just to see the way I seem through your eyes. You’ve never even looked at me, never heard anything but my own nervous descriptions, and yet you take them and turn them into something amazing. I sound so different, coming from you.

Like someone capable of being sexy.

Now the saggy jumper is yours, worn so I could smell you throughout the day. My little legs are porcelain; my eyes are wide. I get to be smooth beneath your fingers, and something like torture to you. Is it all right if I enjoyed being a sort of torture? Because I did, I have, I do. I read that one word and said your name, breathless and desperate.

And I only got more lascivious from there.

I made myself come twice—first from the thought of you showing me how you like it, how much you’d want me to suck you, how good you could make it for me with just your fingers, and then from the idea of what I’d do in return.

You have to know that I would do something in return.

That I could never leave you like that, with your cock all hard against my ass and my wetness still on your fingers. The need to make you feel as good would be too great; it was too great after reading, when I stroked myself to my second orgasm. It filled my head with all kinds of imaginings: like sliding down off your lap and onto my knees.

Lips swollen from that long, slow suck of your cock.

Tongue greedy to taste you.

Already begging for you to show me how you like it again, just so I can feel your fingers wrapped around mine as I work you. So I get a hand on my head, urging me to go faster or slower or ohhhh god I want to come again just thinking about it.

Just thinking about you letting me know exactly what you need.

Tell me exactly what you need, Malcolm. Don’t hold back. Fill in all the blanks in my inexperienced imagination.

9.31am

Oh, stranger. The things I want to say to you.

But you see there are rules now, and as it’s between the hours of 7am and 10pm, I will keep it clean. I will tell you about my plans for the day and act as though your texts didn’t pitch me into a fever dream.

After ten, I will tell exactly what I thought of them, and some ideas of my own. But not a minute before then.

Tell me about your day. Your plans. What will you read and watch and eat?

Me, I have set myself a mission. I was scrolling back through our texts and noticed I’d complained that I can’t go running anymore. Toddlers aren’t famous for their pace-setting or endurance, you see.

But I was wrong, I realized. People run all the time with kids. I just need a jogging stroller.

So that’s what I’m doing with my day. I’ll be bundling the boy up and driving us to Birmingham, where the internet has it on good authority that I might find a sporting goods store.

I’m a little nervous. For starters, I’ve only driven here maybe five times, never frequently enough to get used to the left-hand thing. The boy’s made a quasi-hermit of me.

More to the point, I feel awkward out in public with him. The way he is … I always worry some well-meaning old woman will ask if he’s okay, and I’ll have no idea what to say, since he’s not. I’d probably mumble something about him needing a nap, then get very interested in the check-out aisle magazines. I worry he looks so glazed that someone will assume I’ve drugged and abducted him.

But those fears won’t deter me. We will find our stroller and a new pair of running shoes for me and afterward stop for ice cream, if I can find a place.

I wish I could buy us a Frisbee or a ball to toss around, but I tried the whole catch thing once, and I still cringe whenever I think of it.

I found a cricket ball when we were at the park and threw it to the boy. Not hard at all, just underhand, from a few feet away. I tossed it toward his chest, and instead of trying to catch it he turned away—swiveled from the knees and let it bounce off his arm—then just stood there frozen, face screwed up tight like a fist. Like he’d been hit by something before and was waiting for the next one.

I think it’s for the best that I don’t know exactly what he went through before I got here. That ignorance spares me knowing who I might need to track down and kick the living shit out of, and that’s probably good. My energies are needed elsewhere.

Anyhow, that’s my day. It sounds quite wholesome, don’t you think?

Maybe later I’ll tell you if we’re successful.

And maybe later, sometime after 10pm, I’ll tell you a few other things.

9.55am

I drifted off while waiting for your next message, thinking I was bound to wake up to something amazing. That it would make my impatience easier to bear.

Damn you, damn you, damn you.

Not a day in, and I already want to toss the rules to the wind.

But I won’t, I promise I won’t. Mostly because I respect your boundaries, and partly because I love to hear you talk about your day almost as much as whatever seediness we’ve descended into. Just knowing that you’re choosing these things, wanting these things, beginning fresh with so many lovely activities…

It fills me with warmth. It makes me want to be brave too.

Because those things are brave, in my opinion. Every step you take with him must seem like a leap in the dark, and yet you’re trying all the same. And though it might seem like your efforts are in vain, I know he hears you. I know he will feel the care you’re taking.

It just takes time to show someone that there is more to life than whatever pain and misery they’ve suffered. To shift that paradigm inside them and undo all the terrible patterns that have been sewn through their soul.

But I have faith you’ll get there.

You get me there.

Today, I stood out on my balcony. Just for a minute, but a minute is forever for me. By the time I crawled back inside, I was a wet rag, and not just from the thought of someone seeing me. It was the noise that really struck me, the incredible and all-consuming noise—even though I’m twenty floors up and only dared to do it at seven in the morning.

There were hardly any cars and no people walking past, and yet it felt like the world was roaring at me.

But you want to know the strangest part?

I liked that it did.

2.12pm

Your texts came through as I was getting the boy ready for our mission.

My phone was in my back pocket, and I felt every one of them, counted them. Thirteen. Like the chiming of the clock, buzz buzz buzz as I got him into a jacket, down the stairs, out to the car and into the Houdini-proof puzzle known as a car seat, then buzz buzz buzz from the cup holder as I drove us through the village toward the highway.

Sorry, motorway.

I wanted to check my phone. So, so badly. It must be how teenagers feel, this compulsion to snatch up a device and stare at a screen. Or how some of my friends back home could be. I was never like that. I always thought I was too cool for all that mindless scrolling, for obsessive app-checking.

Now, though. I bet I would have sneaked a peek while I was driving if not for the boy. And if not for how hard I have to concentrate, what with the alien signage and clockwise roundabouts.

But I was strong. I didn’t check when I parked. I didn’t check as we waited in line at the store with our prize. (You’ll never guess how expensive jogging strollers are.) I didn’t check as I sat across from the boy while he stared at his ice cream melting in its plastic bowl.

I didn’t check until just now, with him down for a nap and the dishes washed and the stroller manual read. I’m quite impressed with myself.

Though that doesn’t change the fact that you’re clearly my Candy Crush or whatever digital crack people are forsaking their loved ones and livelihoods over these days.

I read your texts, and I won’t lie—I cried.

Only a little, but yeah, I cried like a little bitch. Over the words I’d asked you before not to say to me, about hanging in there and how I’m doing the right thing or whatever.

About him hearing me, because I really, really hope he does.

Before, I couldn’t have heard those encouraging words. Not without dismissing them, thinking them as sweet and empty as aspartame. We really were strangers then, stranger. But coming from you now, they mean a lot.

And the part where you told me what you did, about going out on your balcony…

Oh, Christ, that was the end of me. The most pathetic and homely sound fell out of my mouth, like an ehhgghn from the top of my throat, and I cried way more. It was so sudden and so alarming, and I tried to rub the tears away like they were wasps. I don’t know who I was afraid would see.

Why cry at all, though? Why not jump up and pump a fist toward the ceiling in triumph, because HOLY SHIT THAT IS A BIG FUCKING DEAL YOU’RE AMAZING.

Don’t get me wrong, I was seriously proud of you. But I think it was humility I was feeling, or some kind of personal pride that made me cry. Because I think you’re saying that I had something to do with you deciding to do that, to step out on that balcony and let the world roar its silence at you, and I’m not sure I’ve ever been that for someone. Whatever the word is.

“Inspiring” sounds so fucking narcissistic.

“Motivating” is just douchey.

But whatever it is, it made me cry to think I could be that for somebody. I don’t know if I was crying because that felt so good, to be that for you, or because I was ashamed to have never been that for anyone before now.

Anyhow, there’s my dark and tortured masculine mystique shot to shit. Never fear, I’ll get it together by the time 10pm rolls around.

Right. Two bites of ice cream does not a well-balanced lunch make, so I better figure something out before the boy wakes up.

Later, I’ll be rereading your texts from early this morning.

And figuring out precisely what it is I want to do with you next.

In the meantime, tell me about your childhood.

I’m not asking for a banquet here, just a few forkfuls. What was your first pet, or what was the view out of your bedroom window? Did you like to jump in puddles, and if so, what color were your boots?

Anything. Anything at all.

3.33pm

Now I don’t know whether to be happy or annoyed at myself. I forgot that you had asked me not to give you any hang-in-theres. The urge to tell you how amazing I think you’re doing just took over my fingers, and I couldn’t seem to do anything about it.

Call it excitement over the balcony.

Adrenaline or something.

Though I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t love knowing that it was encouraging in some way. That they made you feel so much, and part of the feeling was pride. Because you should be proud.

Of what you’re doing for him. Of what you’re doing for me.

You are doing something for me, Malcolm. I don’t know what it is either, but I can tell it’s there. I wake up more hopeful about what the day might bring. More excited about my life, because now I know my life can have something in it. I can talk to someone without smashing to pieces and feel pleasure without following it up with guilt or shame.

Even the thought of you going away doesn’t terrify me like I thought it would.

Though I hope you take that the right way.

I don’t ever want you to feel like I couldn’t be without you.

But oh, I would love you to stay.

3.44pm

Damn, I keep skipping your questions. I got as far as thirty seconds into MasterChef before I realised. But in my defense, there always seems to be so much to say. It’s easy to miss things out, even if I don’t mean to.

Or maybe I mean to a little, when it comes to childhood.

Even though your questions brought up so many sweet memories. I had red wellingtons, as bright and glossy as glace cherries. And I loved them so much that I actually hated puddles. I avoided them so my lovely boots could stay looking so pretty. No marks on them, no streaks of mud. Just two perfect little jewels, always waiting for me by the front door.

Instead of the usual series of hand-me-downs and things worn to a thread.

And I never had a pet.

Pretty glad about that now.

What about you? Tell me your favourite thing from childhood.

6.22pm

I should have known better than to ask.

With every question, I keep expecting to learn something about you, to get a solid, tangible answer I can hold in my hands, a new shard of a vessel I’m trying to piece together to contain you.

But every answer only hatches a hundred more questions and leaves you somehow more nebulous than ever. Like maybe this pot is as big as a pyramid, and even a bathtub full of shards can’t help me.

That’s not a criticism, though. I’m not annoyed, and I’m not going to pry. Not just yet. For now, I’ll take what I can get and turn your eerie, beautiful, melancholy little details this way and that in the light, and enjoy them for the puzzle pieces they are.

As for me, my favorite thing from childhood…

I have a lot. I have tons.

I could say my grandma’s pool.

I could say Super Mario Kart.

I could say driving out near Sandia in the middle of the night to watch meteor showers.

I could say a hundred things, but looking back it’s hard not to say my mom. Maybe that’s because I lost her a couple years ago, or maybe it’s simply because she’s there, in just about every good memory I have. Even Mario Kart. (She was always Donkey Kong, which I thought was pretty badass for a girl.)

I had a happy enough childhood. My parents were married, and they did a decent job. It was just me, no siblings, but they didn’t spoil me.

My dad and I were never super close. He’s not a bad guy, just one of those men who struggle to relate to kids. Even his own. He’s … odd. Even as a child I knew it. I worried when I was younger that I might be weird like him, like I could inherit it the way I had his eyes. Probably has everything to do with my old need to pass for cool.

But we did have good times. He’s an astronomy nerd, so he’s the one who wanted to drive out to the mountains at one in the morning on a school night to see the meteors or a lunar eclipse or whatever planet was orbiting extra close to the Earth. I was mostly in it for the hot chocolate and some bank shot facsimile of his attention, but I liked it okay, too.

It always felt like his telescopes were way more interesting to him than me, but he didn’t land me in therapy or anything. And I can still identify a fuckload of constellations, which has got to be a dying art.

Since my mom died, he and I almost never talk, if only because we got lazy, relying on her to pass the phone and spur our few yearly conversations. I call on his birthday and Father’s Day, but to be honest, I’m always a little relieved if it goes to voicemail and I can just leave a message.

It’s embarrassing how little we have to say to each other. Sometimes I wonder if he maybe has Asperger’s. It would make me feel better to find out he’s awkward with me because of that and not because there’s something inherently broken about us as a unit.

But my mom was amazing. I’d say my best childhood memory was the day I woke up and she told me I was sick.

She just announced I was “sick” and that I didn’t have to go to school, and that we could do anything I wanted for the entire day.

I was really young, so it probably bleeds over into other memories, but I know for sure I asked for water balloons. There’s nothing as good as pelting your mom with a water balloon. And I know we went to McDonald’s and she let me order off the grown-up menu, and I got the meal with two cheeseburgers.

That was the day I saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in the theater, even though she had to know it was way too scary for a seven-year-old. My friends were all so jealous. It was righteous, as we said in those days.

Looking back, I wonder if that happened just after she got sick for the first time. It would have been the same year, I think. She always got a little impulsive and sort of … aggressively fun when there was a recurrence. Maybe my sick day was actually her sick day.

I wish she was here, so so badly. Alive, of course, but also here, with me. I wish the boy could meet her. I wish she’d be here five years from now, when he’s seven, to inform him he’s sick and take him out to some righteously age-inappropriate matinee in the middle of a school day.

That’s probably my biggest wish. What’s yours, stranger?

Talk again once the boy’s asleep. I’ve got a penne bake to assemble and a toddler to bathe and bedtime songs to sing to the world’s least enthusiastic audience.

6.55pm

I feel terrible for not wanting to talk about it a lot—of not knowing how to talk about myself a lot—because I love hearing your details so much. I just want to go over all of them and ask you what this one felt like and what happened after that. But it doesn’t seem fair when I only offer shards in return.

So I’m going to try. Maybe start with Mario Kart.

Because oh I love love loved it too. I was only friends with a girl in my year so I could play it. And I was good at it. I could nail anyone with a green shell or a banana—and I was never ever sorry. In fact, it was the one thing that I didn’t care about hurting feelings over.

Feel my blue shell of death you turd licker was a common refrain of mine, for those afternoons at Lindy Potter’s house.

Man, I lived for those afternoons.

I would have probably lived for afternoons at your house, too. Playing games and eating burgers and water balloon fights. Even the stargazing sounds amazing—all of it like all of my daydreaming about being a kid in some warm American suburb. Back then I devoured films and books about ballparks and bubblegum and picket fences. I was Ramona Quimby and Stacey from the Baby-Sitters Club.

Hell, I was the murdered girl in a Point Horror novel over being myself. Being dead there seemed infinitely better than being alive where I ended up.

Though of course I know none of that’s really true. I totally get that it was just a fantasy, and the reality isn’t any different. Or at least the pain isn’t any different when something terrible happens. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have had those things with your Mom and then lose her. Or to be so close to something like a great relationship with your Dad, and then so far.

I don’t know if I would want it, knowing that it could be so easily taken away.

I’m so sorry you had to go through it.

Can that be my wish, to wish you hadn’t?

9.54pm

That’s just how it is, I guess. Good things come, and eventually they leave us. Or sometimes we leave them first. Sometimes we even get a chance to say goodbye.

A part of me wants to promise you that I’ll never leave, that I’ll always pick up this phone, but only a liar can make that promise. I could be hit by a bus tomorrow. I could waste away from cancer when I’m sixty-two. I can only be here now.

That’s something I have to say to myself a lot these days—that I’m here now.

I lug a lot of shame around, knowing I didn’t come over the second I found out I had a son. I knew about him for seven months before I came. Knowing what I do now, it’s like a knife between my ribs.

If I’d come, and if I’d seen what state he’s in. I could have spared him seven months of only god knows what. Seven months it might take him seven extra years of therapy to get over, for all anyone knows.

But there’s no such thing as time machines, and, in the end, no such thing as wishes, so all I’ve got is that mantra. I’m here now.

I do have my dad to credit for one thing—he’s making me a better father, myself. If only because I’m determined to give the boy what my dad couldn’t seem to give me. I’m always on the floor, on the grass. Always itchy to show him I’m here, let’s play. Let’s do kid stuff. Let’s do you stuff. Whatever that might be.

I’m living for the day he comes over while I’m messing with his blocks or his toy bulldozer and finally decides to join in. I have to believe it’ll happen. If I didn’t, I don’t think I could get out of bed.

Okay, stranger, this is heavy shit. But you know what? It’s after ten. I’m going to leave you momentarily to pour myself a drink and reread your message from earlier, reset my head. And after that, I promise I’ll make it worth the wait.

10.15pm

You said it thrilled you, the idea of torturing me. Can I confess something, stranger?

You already are.

I’m suffering. I haven’t come since before we first discovered each other. Not even with your fantasies setting me on fire, getting me hotter than anything I’ve ever read or seen or heard or felt before.

I couldn’t.

I nearly did any number of times, but then…

I didn’t want to come, then find your words still glowing on my screen in the aftermath, seeming utilitarian as porn. I couldn’t bear to cheapen them like that. They mean too much.

And perhaps even more than that, I haven’t wanted the ache to end.

How does that make you feel, to know I’m so hard and so frustrated it physically hurts? That you’ve done that to me. That you’re the only one who can fix it.

I know how it makes me feel. Helpless. Alive. Desperate. Electric.

All thanks to you.

So what I want is this—come back to the fantasy with me. Where we left off, after I made you come.

I want you on my lap, eager and frantic, only face to face this time. I want to feel you claim me, easing down slowly, savoring. Discovering what it feels like, taking a man inside you.

I want to think you’re about to end my torment, to feel the slick, flushed heat of you working me, to revel in the fact that I made you this lush and tight, and now I’m about to claim my reward.

I assume it’s my turn. That it’s only a matter of time. That you’re an angel, sent to save me from this hurt.

Then you put your lips to my ear, and you say, “You don’t come until I tell you to.”

Something moves through me at those words, a shiver made of fire. A fever as cold as ice. I don’t understand. You’re riding me hard, and I’m so close. It’s been days and days and days and I’m so. Fucking. Close. I say, “What?”

“Don’t you dare come until I say you can.”

I always knew we were playing a game, stranger, but the rules have changed. You’ve changed. There’s mischief and cruelty in your voice, and it has me as hot as the waiting or the strokes of your pussy or the smell of your own satisfaction in this room.

I want nothing more than to lose control, end this maddening ache. Grab your hips and force the motions, quench my cock and shoot you full of me, make a mess of the both of us.

But even more than that … I want to be obedient.

I know you’ve got more in store for me. Your hands or your mouth, your words and your plans for my suffering.

You’re going to test me, and I can’t guess what the punishment could be for disappointing you.

I nearly want to find out.

But not as much as I want to please and abide by you.

I don’t know, I don’t know. My mind is on fire, and all I know for sure is how badly this hurts.

So now you go next.

Tell me how you’d test me.

10.48pm

You asked me who the fuck I am. The truth is—I don’t know when you start talking about all this sex stuff. It’s like a switch flicks inside me, and suddenly I’m filthier than I ever thought I could be. It’s like my arousal has been walled up, and now you’re poking holes in it. Cracks are starting to appear. Things are pouring through.

Like how much I want to do what you just told me to.

How did you know that I would want to do what you just told me to?

I read the words couldn’t and hurt and don’t you dare and test, and my body went wild. I had to stop before I returned your text, just so I could properly control the things I said.

But I can feel them spilling out anyway. I want to make fists in your hair—hold you there while I take what I need. Then just as you get desperate, just as you’re ready to beg, I would stop. Maybe pull those handfuls until you’re not sure if it hurts or thrills you.

I think it would thrill you.

Tell me that it would thrill you.

Tell me that you would beg me to continue, and when I did that you would just want me to stop. I can almost hear the words it’s way too much, hissed between your gritted teeth. See you panting and shivering with long held back pleasure. Hear you gasping as you fight for some control.

But I don’t want you to control yourself, my Malcolm.

I want you to break down. Be a mess for me.

Is it wrong to want you to be a mess for me?

I don’t know. I don’t know. I think it’s better if I don’t say.

You say now, instead.

10.57pm

Yes, it thrills me. All of it. Every last word. Every single fucking goddamn pixel.

It thrills me to know I have that power to tear holes in your armor. Thrills me to surrender that power in the same breath and kneel cowering before you, happy to beg.

Thrills me to think about those fists in my hair. To think of you using my body.

Thrills me beyond reason to see you call me yours. Your Malcolm.

Thrills me to imagine being the mess you so want to see, the one you must ache to reduce me to as badly as I ache for the relief. Handy how those two desires dovetail, don’t you think?

But before I tell you exactly how it is you break me down and rip me apart, finally end all of this torture, I have one final question for you.

You have to answer it.

You can lie, but you have to answer.

The thing is,

I’m hurting.

I’m desperate.

I’m begging.

Yet I don’t even know whose feet I’m cowering at.

And so my question is,

what’s your name?

11.18pm

Is that the price I have to pay before you tell me? The toll before I get to go down that road of ripping and tearing and whatever else you want me to do? I’d say that seems unfair, but I know it isn’t. I don’t even know why I haven’t told you. What makes me hold back things.

Tell me your name.

Oh god. I don’t think I can talk to you like this. I don’t think I can do this.

Yes, you can. Tell me your name.

Things were so good as they were!

And they can be good like this, too. Tell me your name.

I want to. I feel like maybe this is what I need, this fast. No time to think. No time to lie.

So tell me your name, and we can start.

Maya. It’s Maya.

Maya. Maya. I’m saying it aloud. Hearing it in this still room. Feeling it on my tongue.

How does it taste, then?

Like the rain. Is it raining there, like it is here?

Yes. Pouring it down. When I press my cheek against the glass, it’s practically vibrating.

Where is this window? Above your couch? Your bed?

Above my couch. But I had the urge to lie then and say bed.

I think you know what I’m going to ask of you next.

I do, but I need to see you say it.

I won’t ask yet. First, I’ll tell you I’m in my chair. The one I dragged over to sit before the radiator. I’m there, with my bare feet and my clinking glass, and the cool breeze coming in, and the sound of the rain. Sounds just like your name.

I can see it. Do you want to see me, too?

Always.

I’m sprawled on my couch. I have to sprawl; I can’t sit up. I’ve gone weak all over just because we’re talking like this. Just because I picture you so clearly. And I want you to picture me clearly, in return. I’m only wearing a T-shirt, and knickers.

That made me smile. Knickers. That makes me sound about eight instead of thirty-four, but there you go.

This is strange, isn’t it? Or rather, talking like this isn’t strange at all. What’s strange is how it’s taken us so long to get here. To text like normal people.

I almost said panties. But that wouldn’t be me. And yes, it is strange. Strange that I don’t feel as scared as I thought I would, talking to you so directly. It’s easier than it should be.

I wonder what it says about us that we took a medium designed for haste and abbreviation and smiley faces and back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth and used it the same way we might carrier pigeons or letters sealed with wax. That we’re scared? Or perhaps that there’s some pleasure to be found in the composing? The crafting and curating of thoughts until they’re just so, worthy of offering?

Or perhaps it’s the waiting. Anticipating.

I thought it was fear. But now I don’t know. The need for editing seems so silly in light of how easy this is. It makes me wonder more about that one sweet word: anticipation. I can’t deny that I’ve gone to sleep full of excitement at the thought of what might be waiting for me when I wake.

Now I feel like Santa.

The world’s grown very instantaneous, hasn’t it? We want everything now, right now.

Maybe we were meant for a different era. Parchment and quills and seven oceans standing between us. Carriages caught in the rain and boiling-over words said too soon for fear that they will be the last ones. Like Beethoven: my thoughts turn to you, my immortal beloved.

Very romantic, stranger. Very poetic. Very you. Makes me wish my fingers were stained with ink.

I wish for other things, too. Now that we’re not editing… If you were here, I wouldn’t want to feel you, edited. No going back, exing out a fumbling touch or a messy first meeting of our mouths.

You wouldn’t. I don’t think I could edit myself if I were there or you were here. The second you said fingers stained with ink I thought about them on me, making patterns over my skin.

My brain wants to come up with some clever, poetic simile involving Rorschach tests, but my body’s too overheated and impatient to give many shits about cleverness.

I wasn’t lying when I said I’ve waited. That it’s been days. Over a week.

It’s been since before we first met.

Then be impatient with me. Show me what a week of torture has done.

I’m bringing you into my room. Hang on.

Shall I tell you about it? My room?

You can, but if I were there I wouldn’t pay any attention. Every inch of my focus would be on you.

Then I’ll give you just one detail: the window’s open. Just above the head of my bed. If you want to feel that, you know what to do.

I was already laid beneath it before you said a word. I can practically feel the rain on my bare skin as I lie there waiting for you.

Good. I’m on my bed now. I’m going to undo my belt. I think you’d like to know about it, my belt. That’s a detail you’d want, like how you might want to know what the wrapper of a candy looks like before you open it, what color, and is it metallic or striped, does it crinkle? So I’ll tell you. It’s just old, worn, dark brown leather. Thick and cracked. Silver buckle. Nothing fancy.

Nothing fancy just made me flush hot all over. I can see you with that buckle in your hands. Hear it clink. Hear the slow slide of leather.

You’re exactly right. Such a small sound, the rain just about swallows it, but you wouldn’t miss it, would you? You drink up that tiny nothing-sound, leather sighing through metal.

I’d tell you about my jeans, next. How I’d undo the button, and about another tiny sound, the one the zipper would make. But if you were here, I have to imagine it’d be your fingers there. Fumbling and eager.

I’m so primed, I think I can hear your heart beating from here. I doubt there’s any sound that could escape me, but that zipper … oh if I heard that zipper. I don’t think I could stop myself from pushing your hands away. From finishing it off myself.

Jesus, you’re sexy.

You’ve never touched a man before, have you? Not in any way?

Is the sexy part that I haven’t, or that I’m so greedy anyway?

Both. Neither. It’s just you. How you are. You’re ten thousand things, and I can’t predict a one of them.

Part of me thinks I should pretend I’m demure. But I’m doing my best to give you the truth. To tell you that I wouldn’t stop with the zipper—in my head I’ve already divested you of most of your clothes.

Pity for you, here in reality we’re still poised to deal with the zipper. Let me tell you a couple of things.

I’m hard. It’s dim in this room, there’s just the streetlight slipping through the window, but you might be able to tell. Or see enough to think you can tell, but you’re not sure. Not until your fingers are on that zipper, sliding it down slow. Then there’d be no mistaking it.

Your knuckles would brush me, and the whole of my body would twitch and buck, and my breath would come up short. Would yours do the same?

So you want to torture me in return? Good. Good. Yes, my breath would come up short. If I felt you and knew that you were in that state, if I brushed you and you bucked into my eager hands … I don’t think I would breathe for a week. I’m not breathing now.

What’s anticipation if not torture with a prize at the end?

Talking with you like this is making me notice a thousand things I otherwise wouldn’t. Like the way it feels, laying my palm over myself there. My open fly is soft—these jeans are ancient. There’s the raspy edge of the zipper, the cool metal of the button quickly going warm from my hand. More softness, the cotton of my shorts. So much softness, but you know there’s more. Heat and hardness. You can feel my pulse there, ticking in time with those heartbeats you were listening to.

If I took your hand and put it on me, what would I feel? Soft skin, I know that much. Any rings? Short nails, long ones? Tell me.

I wish they were long. I wish they were so you could feel a hint of them as I explore. But I want the reality of this, too, so I’ll tell you. My hands are bare of rings; my nails are bitten down to nothing. My fingers are feverish on you, though. Quick and feverish, mapping out everything you’ve just exposed.

I don’t wish for anything other than your hands, exactly as they are. You must feel so much in the tips. No nails there, protecting them like tiny umbrellas. No calluses like the ones that’ve stripped my fingertips of all sensation. If I ever caught myself wishing for your nails, to feel them raking my skin, I’ll ask for your teeth instead. On my neck, my ear. Dragging down the length of my thumb.

Do you really think your thumb is where I want my mouth to be?

Now you’ll have to picture me smiling, here in this dark room.

Very well, I can sense you’re impatient. I’m tempted to tell you you have no idea what impatience feels like, but if I did it’d only be to make you wait a few seconds longer.

And wouldn’t that just be so cruel?

Enough teasing, though. Your hand is on me. Your soft hand on my hard cock. I’d hold it there until neither was cooler or warmer than the other, just until it began to blur, the edge where one ends and the other starts. Then I’d guide you by the wrist, ease your palm low, then back up. Slow. Not light, but not rough either. Not yet. I’d make you take the measure of me, with that maddening sliver of my shorts still keeping me half-secret.

Would you try to rush? Try to slip your thumb beneath my fly, wrap those fingers around me? Or would you go still and curious and obedient and take only what I offered, nothing more?

I think you know the answer, but I’ll tell you anyway. I’ll tell you that I’d be breathless, flushed, desperate. That those things would make me try to push past the tiny little steps you want us to take.

But then, oh then I’d revel in you stopping me. Hold me back. Tell me I’m wicked for wanting to map out every inch of your cock with my hands and lips and tongue.

Because that’s what I’d do, Malcolm. I’d want to taste you now. My hot breath would ghost over the soft material between you and me before you could stop me.

Oh, now that’ll never do.

How can we both have come this far after all this time, only to rush? You, you’ve never done these things. Me, I feel as though I haven’t, the way we talk about them. I’ve begun to doubt I’ve ever kissed a woman, or felt her hands, or tasted her skin. How can I have, when the things you say fade all my memories to nothing more than ashes?

Okay, enough poetry. Here’s what happens, Maya.

I don’t tell you you’re wicked. I don’t tell you a thing, in fact. I turn you onto your back, brace my body above yours, pin your hands to the bed above your head. Get one knee between yours, then the other. Edge them wider, driving your legs open. Then I lower down, center my cock there against you, with the tangle of my belt and my jeans, the hem of your overlong shirt, all of that maddening mess there between us, reducing me to one word. Hard.

No other details. You tried to rush, so you don’t get those details yet. All you get for now is my weight and the feel of my excitement, muffled and dulled. The shackles of my hands. And my face above yours, smiling. Smiling to hide the fact that I’m aching so badly I could scream.

Do you want me to move now? Against you? Tell me, and I will.

Do you think muffled and dulled is a punishment? That the shackles of your hands make me sorry? They don’t. My legs spread automatically the moment you said you were between them. I can practically feel you there, pressed hard against the swell of my sex. Every time I imagine you moving against me, I shiver. I rock, as if you’re really here.

So yes. Yes. Please, yes.

Fuck. Fuck these pants.

Okay, picture them gone. Picture me kicking them away in a fit of annoyance, the whole effort a clumsy, frantic affair, then hear the clatter of the buckle hitting the floor. Because that’s exactly what just happened, here in reality.

Better. Slightly better.

I’m back on top of you now. We can feel so much more. Just two flimsy layers between us. I press the length of my cock along your folds, tight, moving just enough. Enough to tease. Enough for you to feel every inch of me. Just that, only that, until something changes. Until the smooth hush of cotton on cotton changes, beginning to drag and pull. Because I want you wet. I want your clit as stiff as my cock, want you throbbing, just as I am. When we get you there, then we’ll find out what comes next. But not a second before.

You don’t have to want. I am wet. I was wet the moment you said you were between my legs, and I’m wetter still just hearing you talk about my clit and how stiff you’d like it to be.

It is, you know. I can almost feel my pulse beating there, and every time you give me one more tiny thing, one more delicious detail, it swells. I get a little slicker. The urge to touch myself gets a little harder to resist—but I will. My hands are still above my head, held there by you. My body is still spread out beneath yours, only touched by whatever you allow.

Waiting, waiting for whatever you want to come next.

What I want is you on your back. Is there a pillow? I want the edge of it between your legs. Or a blanket, twisted into a rope. I want to know there’s some blunt facsimile of me there against your pussy, growing wet as your hips start to move, seeking the friction. Seeking me. Do that, and I’ll give you more. Promise.

There’s no need to promise. I was scrabbling for the nearest thick, firm thing before I finished reading your words. It’s there now between my legs, solid enough that I can feel it without moving a muscle but oh god when I do…

I’ve made a mess of it already.

Christ, I swear I can smell you here. It must be seven hundred degrees in this clammy, drafty old room. I’m stripping my sweater and shirt away. That only leaves my underwear.

It’d be wrong to just shed those as well, though. So I bid you to get up. To leave the bed, kneel on the floor beside the heap of my abandoned clothes.

I join you on those cold floorboards, standing. Invite you to be free of the last stitch that stands between you and this thing you’ve been theorizing and fantasizing about for unnumbered years. Peel them down slowly or tear them to tatters, I don’t care. Do it in a rush or touch me first—trace the length of me through that soft cotton. Whatever you want. Whatever you’ve been waiting for.

My hands would be on you quickly, pulling and tugging until you were bare. But once I was there, I’m not sure how I would be. Hesitant, breath catching, unsure if whatever I was doing is right? Or too aroused to hold back, mouth already following my hands, kissing whatever I revealed? I think it would be the latter. I think I’d damn the consequences, brave your laughter over any possible blunders. Let you feel how sloppy my eagerness makes me as I lick over the length of your cock. As I take you in my mouth before I’m ready, forgetting to breathe, almost choking, hands all over you all at once.

Fuck, Maya.

You make me feel so fucking … everything. Big. Hard. Desired, most of all. Alive and dirty and helpless and huge.

Forgive me, but fuck the fantasy. There’s nothing left in my head but steam and colors. All I can give you is exactly what’s happening. Tell you I’m naked, on my back on these rumpled covers, burning up in this cold, dark room. Tell you I’ve fisted myself, that I’m stroking myself, if barely. Just barely. I need this so badly. Just tell me how. Help me end this. Tell me to go fast, slow, tight, rough, light. Whatever you’d want to see. Tell me so I can get there. So you can get me there. Because I’m not going to last another minute.

Go fast. Go hard. Go like you can’t stand it any longer.

Because I can’t. I’m rutting against this pillow between my legs now, barely able to type. My whole body is shuddering, sweating, as flushed as I’ve ever been in my life. The ache between my legs is so strong I can hardly stand it. My teeth are gritted against it. I’ve never been able to come with so little direct contact, but I think it’s going to happen now.

So make it happen for you, too. Make a fist so tight around your cock I could see the white of your knuckles if I was there. Stroke yourself quickly, like you need to come too bad to stop.