You never thought you were bad at sex. It’s not your fault you were a virgin for most of your adult life, rejected upon every try. You never wanted to get used to not getting laid, but it’s hard out here for guys like you. Your friends’ sex lives aren’t any better. Anyone with a brain could look at you and call it: you’re a bunch of lames, a lot of incels. Too undesired to go on any dates, too arrogant and simple-minded to hire an escort. Too forgotten by the world to not spend it holed up in your bedroom full of used Kleenex and empty Jergen’s bottles.

Then one day, the impossible happened: you finally got laid, and it was fucking amazing.

You credit everything to your incredible girlfriend, who seemed to have fallen from the sky into your lap onto your admittedly forgettable dick. It’s not big. It’s honestly kind of skinny. But it gets the job done and you’re pretty sure the sounds she makes means something good. You don’t know. It’s not like you have a ton of experience besides the thousands of years’ worth of porn you’ve rotted your brain and chaffed your dick with.

This, being with her, was nothing like the videos you fast forwarded through just to get to the good parts. The whole thing was the best part: the way she looks when you pick her up for dinner, the shoes, the dress, the indelible jasmine rose blend you smelled when you hold her close and press your face into her hair. It’s the way she talks to the waiters like she knew them in a previous life, the way they always brought out dessert, on the house, because they couldn’t resist the chance to please her. Nobody could. It’s the way a glass of wine had her putting her hand on your thigh, whispering to follow her in a voice you could never forget. The way she led you down the hallway to to suck your dick just for you to writhe in the shadows, finishing in her mouth before you could make it behind a locked door.

See, you’re not bad at sex.

So why is it that the moment you’re done fucking her she wants nothing to do with you? She wipes you off her mouth and any compassion she had for you goes with it. No contact, no touching, and cuddling? She’d laugh at you like it was the greatest joke of the century. She runs to the shower, eager to scrub away every trace of you, hocking up spit to rid herself of the taste of you. When she comes out, she doesn’t even look at you, often spending hours absorbed by her phone, or leaving your place altogether. You suppose you could leave too, if you really wanted to, but something in you keeps you there, unable to think about anything but the image of her on top of you, as if this wasn’t your reality just moments before.

It fucks with you. The second you stuck your dick in her you’d be instantly depressed, knowing the moment it was over she’d want nothing to do with you. You’d go floppy and useless, giving her even more motivation not to want you anymore. Sometimes she wouldn’t even say anything, just roll away out from under you and grasp at her phone. Always the phone. What the hell was she smiling at?

One day, after spending a night trying not to hear her disgustingly beautiful laugh uneclipsed by the fact that you now sleep on the living room couch, you look through her phone. She had set it up for you to see, you’re convinced, as she steps in the shower, speaker on blast, washing her hair so that she would have her eyes closed as you walked into her obvious trap. What choice did you have? None, you tell yourself as you realize you don’t even need to touch it to be able to see everything you never wanted to—she left it unlocked, opened to her messages, just for you.

Your girlfriend wasn’t the type to talk about her exes. You had no dating experience before her so there was nothing for you to tell, and it was unsaid that she was a woman who lived life, many lives, before she met you. One of these lives stared right back at you, a sea of blue messages, essays in reply, nothing short of a love story that made your own relationship look like a sick joke, a game of torture. The things she said to him, the things he said to her, echelons beyond the short, one word replies she had for you when she was forced to talk to you. You realize, with each word you can’t help but burn into your brain, you had nothing with her. Everything you had with her was worth less than a single message from him.

You: a mere placeholder for somebody she couldn’t have immediately, a warm body she no longer wants to touch.

You’re not bad at sex, she just never truly wanted it with you. You were her little science experiment, a test to see if she could fuck you while she pretended you were him. She tried to teach you the right moves, all the right things to say, but you just didn’t cut it. You reeked of everything that wasn’t him. You lacked in every way she needed you to be. Eventually she learned all the best parts about him were things she couldn’t put her finger on, things she’d never be able to edit your personality to fit. You were trying so hard to please her, so hard to be good for her, while the only thing she wanted was for you to not be you. For you to just be him.

You leave her phone where you found it. Look at yourself in the mirror. You could try, for her. You could be him for her if she really wanted. You could throw yourself away just to be reprogrammed to her liking. You don’t care for self-preservation; you just can’t go back to the pathetic sexless void your life was before she saved you. You’re not bad at sex, but without her, you’re never having it again.