is a mindfuck.
I never know that the last sex will be the last sex.
It’s a hollow shock once realization hits.
***
We break up.
Oh, right, we did buy those tickets for the show next week.
In another state, hotel room for the night.
We decide to go.
Ol’ times sake.
We sit at a famed meat-and-three joint on the road to the show. We’re quiet, but able to maintain conversation. Things feel comfortable for the first time in our post-break-up world. I look out the window, breathing in the cloudless Missouri sky; it’s a beautiful blue and suddenly—
Her: What? What is it? Why are you looking like that now?
Me: I’m just processing…you really want to know?
Her: Yeah, you got obviously sad and quiet all of a sudden.
Me: It just hit me that we’ve had our last sex.
Her: Silence. Whoa this is weird; she’s never at a loss for words.
Me: What’s up? Are you okay?
Her: I thought we’d have sex tonight, you know, because…it’d be the perfect ending.
Me: Seriously?! But we’re broken up…and I need to process that and…I just…can’t.
She’s affected, which surprises me.
Slow tears roll down her face, which floors me.
Neither of us eat anything else and as I pay for the check she gets on her phone.
She’s texting her crush, who happens to live not so far from where the show is.
I can count the number of days we’ve been broken up. She has a new crush. Why the hell would I think she’d want to have a last sex?
She drives.
I think.
A meaningful last sex sounds sweet but sweet sentimentality like this is not a language I speak. As she grieves over a last sex that won’t happen, I recall and play our last in my head. Only because it was fairly recent am I able to remember any of the details: she came, I came and a plastic bottle, one-third full of orange-colored Vitamin Water stands on the edge of the platform bed. Wow, that was our last time. That the damn bottle of Vitamin Water is the most detailed part of last sex memory indicates how unremarkable it was.
***
A decade of sex: many firsts, orgasms, toys, locations, positions, the list goes on.
I believe in the decade of messy, innocent, funny, awkward, loving, real moments…not in a perfectly designed last memory as my heart still breaks.
