I’m 30, and I’ve received oral sex maybe two or three times in my entire life. I have to say “maybe” because there are so few occasions that counting them feels both easy and strangely sad.
That’s the part I keep coming back to. This isn’t something I used to enjoy regularly and now miss. It’s something I’ve barely had the chance to know.
My relationship has a dead bedroom, which is a tidy little phrase for something that doesn’t feel tidy from inside it. There’s the lack of sex, and then there’s all the space around that lack. Enough space to start counting months. Enough space to notice that another one has passed without much changing.
Sometimes I feel like I’m shriveling up. I know how dramatic that sounds. I’m 30, not at the end of my life. But knowing that doesn’t stop the feeling that this part of it is slipping past while I’m still waiting to participate.
Then I start picking at my appearance. I don’t look like someone in porn, and somehow that becomes part of the explanation I offer myself. As if my body needs to meet some production standard before I’m allowed to feel disappointed.
Even writing that down feels unfair to me. It’s still where my mind goes.
I wish I had more memories to reach for. More than two or three occasions to put beside all these months. I don’t need to make the sadness larger than it is, but I’m tired of making it smaller just because I feel embarrassed saying what I miss.
I want that kind of attention. I’m sad that I’ve had so little of it. Another month goes by, and I still want it.
