Four Little Drops

So I thought that we were having a good time. I thought it was really working out. He’d been available when he said he would, and he showed up to my place right on time. (Ten minutes early, even.) We’d checked each other out and liked what we’d saw. We’d rolled around on the bed and made out like fiends. We’d stripped in a hurry and explored each other’s bodies. He’d brought his laptop loaded with some porn he thought I’d like—not that I need porn, but the gesture was nice—and it was playing on one side of the bed while we’d grappled with each other on the other.

He’d gone down on my dick—all the way down—while I buckled and groaned. I’d rimmed his hole and stretched it wide with my dick. I’d watched his eyes roll into the back of his head as he huffed and hummed with pleasure during the fuck, and then at his request I’d stayed inside while he played with himself furiously after. His ass muscles clamped down on my tool like a vise, as he shot on his belly. It was a small load. Maybe four or five dime-sized drops.

Then, as I watched, his entire personality changed. From soft and pliable, he hardened. It happened over his face first. His eyes focused, the lids droops. His smile faded into something drawn and tight. The handsome planes of his cheeks and mouth became angular, angry, twisted. “Fuck,” he muttered to himself. His eyes went to the porn playing on his laptop, where some big-dicked guy was battering away at a helpless hole. “Fuck,” he repeated, shaking his head.

“Something wrong?” I asked him. I was still in that post-coital haze, glowing from that open and confident feeling I get when I’ve done everything right, and the sex has been good, and it’s been with a good guy. When I’m in that mood, I’ll talk about anything, answer any question. I’m game for any adventure, when I feel like that. But the endorphin buzz was so high that I was confused by his herky-jerky response, the way he cooled from sex demon out of hell to roughly the same temperature as that iceberg the Titanic didn’t see.

Before he slammed his laptop shut, he’d dabbed away the seed he’d shot from his hairy belly. As his other hand slammed shut the laptop, mid-movie, he thrust the Kleenex at me. “This,” he said. “I think about all the shit I do for this,” and he waved the wadded-up tissue like it was toxic, “and it makes me sick to my stomach. I mean, shit. Is this really worth it?”

I admit, I was a little stunned. I’m used to guys having those thoughts of regret, after they shoot. I used to have them myself, when I was young. I’d get that release and then think to myself, I’ll never fantasize about dick again, I swear, next time it’ll be about girls. Or, I won’t whack off any more! I promise! I recognize that regret, that let-down, what the French call tristesse. But when I had it, I was ten or eleven. This guy was four times that age.

The man who was nothing but heat and fervor when he’d walked in the door jerked on his clothing, grunted his goodbye, and then stomped out.

The thing of it is that I know how long those little post-orgasm depressions last, and I’m judging he was horny again even before he got home through rush-hour traffic. I know how men’s dicks work.

But you know, his question has rung in my ears all through the weekend. Is this really worth it?

I think about it from his perspective. The hours spent online, downloading porn he likes when he’s hard and horny. Hours spent on chat sites and hookup joints trying to find someone who’s not only available, but who’s into him, who’s into the same things he is, whom he finds equally attractive, who’s willing to meet. All the time spent juggling schedules, of driving, of finding his way through strange neighborhoods, of parking. Yeah, of course he’s going to be all worked up and horny to go when he’s waded through all that mess—and if the feeling he has after of guilt and shame is so overwhelming, so negative, that it lasts for more than a moment’s tristesse, then yeah. I’d also be looking at those four little drops and ask, Is this really worth it?.

Then there’s me. I get the old blues too, where every once in a while I ask if all the effort I put into sex is really commensurate with the outcome. And except for a few times when I’m really blue, I think it is. I remember all the amazing people I’ve met, during sex—of the men I met and fucked who became real, actual friends. I think about the fuckbuddies I’ll see from time to time who bring a grin to my face every time I think about them, and about the crazy personalities that I’d never have encountered if I hadn’t taken the chance to take off my clothes and connect.

I remember men whose names I never learned, with whom I never exchanged a spoken word, who let me in to their private worlds when we both unzipped and allowed the other to see our animal drives. I think about the wild intimacies, the whispered passion unleashed in dark barrooms and bedrooms and baths.

I think about the men who allowed their vulnerable sides to show, who asked me to give them what they couldn’t get from anyone else. I think about the men who told me their stories, both funny and sad, who shared with me their triumphs and failures and the tales they didn’t feel they could tell even their nearest and dearest.

I think about the sweetness I’ve received, and how many lifetimes of love I’ve experienced, by opening myself up to person after person during sex. I think too, about the heartbreak I’ve had, and the disappointments, and how even now, knowing how things turn out, I wouldn’t trade a single one.

Being ready to have sex on an afternoon when you’re horny and bored is one thing. Being open to sex as one of life’s many great adventures is another. It’s saying yes! to the universe and putting oneself, trustingly, into its hands. It’s being open to chance, and coincidence, and to humanity’s most mysterious, undiscovered frontiers. It’s casting oneself into the waves, and letting their warm and foamy caress wash one to places unknown.

I’m talking about it as if it’s religion. Maybe it is.

All I know is that a tiny little squirt (or not to brag, a few larger jets) are the least of what I get out of sex. And every day I am grateful for all the people, all the experiences, and all the memories it brings me.

Is all this really worth it?

Yes.

Yes.

A million times yes.