How many lovers have we gained?

How many lovers have we lost?

I’ve asked myself that question far too many times, leaning outside of the window just to see people both my age and younger throw parties in the graffiti painted house fronts. Sometimes, I just sit on the window sill and I let the feeling of exposure come over me as I spy on different straight tourists take photos, sometimes I imagine the two men to be in a relationship instead of sleeping each in a prostitute’s arms. I don’t even know properly where you can get hookers in this town, besides that one time when my teacher told me that my previous place was dodgy because supposedly hookers were there. I had never seen them there.

I would smoke far too often or sometimes even not, just sit and listen to the conversations in every possible language, wondering what the hell had even lead them to this small town. I hear a knock and soon enough, the key turns and my girlfriend walks in, already kicking her shoes off and I just hide half my face in my hands, watching her from the window sill.

Sometimes I would wonder if I would ever wake up with a knife to my throat, just to see my girlfriend laugh it off and I would never understand the joke. It would be surely one of the knives which hang in the kitchen and she uses to cut raw meat. I guess it would be one of those.

Maybe I would grab another one and we would have a knife fight. I had always joked that I would win in one, while she would win in a gun fight. My hand shakes enough, but not enough to miss a stab.

I wondered too much quietly, as she just headed inside. We barely exchanged any conversation, her own mind drifting somewhere until she got a call and started talking loudly. I just hugged myself and kept leaning outside, now sneaking a leg to hang out of the window.

“Hey, did you hear about the police officer who shot the gun out of the person who wanted to commit suicide?” And that’s where she lost me. I weighted all my options and I excused myself out of the apartment, nearly slipping into her own sneakers and just grabbing the pack of cigarettes, as if I wouldn’t be able to buy another one. It’s not like it would’ve gone to waste.

I lit a cigarette as soon as I was outside and I kept walking and walking. I wouldn’t call the city a ghost town, but it was less crowded unless you stayed at food places, because people will always need food. But everywhere else, it was like someone had a sudden funeral to attend. I walked past all the people which I could find, the back of my mind hoping that no familiar faces would show up, which I didn’t want to see at all. Eventually I settled at the river bank, sitting there as if it would be my window and I wondered what the hell was even keeping me. I closed my eyes and wondered how would it feel if the river wasn’t actually so shallow. I wondered if I could dig out my grave and how lonely it would feel until someone would take out my lifeless body.

How lonely is death? How lonely was birth? Would the pain match of falling out of love?

I met no one in the end, I had spent the whole time sitting outside, ignoring a call and replying to a text, saying that I was just chilling. I wasn’t one to lie. I had bought some ice cream and sat in the same place next to the river in sunglasses, wondering if any shadow would match any danger, but nothing came of it.

Instead I came back home, kicking off my own sneakers without bending to unlace the shoelaces. Now, I thought that she had gone somewhere, but instead I found her after further inspection under the bed covers, sleeping, curled up in a ball. I sat besides her and lit a cigarette, not even inhaling, before opening the window wider, something she didn’t enjoy, as too much noise would slip in from the people and the nearby student hangouts which meant they could get drunk anytime. We’d try to join, but soon enough we would get bored to death and end up drinking too much cheap beer from labels we could’ve easily lived without.

Maybe that’s where I started feeling too uncomfortable with people, just seeing that it was literally everything getting high from weed which wouldn’t get my throat raspy at all. I wasn’t sure what they were even smoking collectively. Was it softer? Was it fake? I had drifted once long ago just to sit on a bed and see a couple make out, before kicking me out.

I had gotten lost in the labyrinth of the same painted graffiti walls with obscenity which in this age wouldn’t be offensive, yet people wanted to be ignorant, so that worked for them. My girlfriend was just as lost as I was, just wandering and asking where the hell would the disgusting toilet be. We wandered for a really long while and she seemed to be high. She didn’t mind me smoking, once she walked out of the bathroom and we talked.

We talked.

I put my hand on her exposed leg, wondering when she would wake up from her slumber and that I shouldn’t really be the reason of her killing off her summer vacation. She moved her legs even closer to herself and that’s when I laid on my back, looking at the ceiling.

They say that you’re the one who has to change.

We slept until late night, which caused us both to simply have to go outside, neither of us wanting to cook. I felt nostalgia about all the places which were now empty, resembling a Groundhog Day sort of thing now, since there was no bustling or anything like that now. Everything seemed to be following the same monotone pattern to the bone, that if I wanted to I could break that bone but it would still do nothing.

We sat outside for a while, I drank some spirits, one after another, while she stayed with wine. I wondered how come I managed to just get by. But soon enough I was drunk to pee and I wondered how the hell would I manage with a urinal, but I took my time to get drunker. I just wanted to forget everything mundane, I wanted to do nothing. I couldn’t focus or concentrate these days, all I wanted was something beyond my fingertips. All I wanted was something different. I wanted nothing to deal with. I wanted something beyond, like all of the secrets of the universe poured into my ear to then see all the stars with my eyes closed.

I did stand up and excuse myself. I didn’t know if she would wait. There was a queue to the one unisex bathroom, which was rather odd since frankly only men stood and soon enough I learned that it was one stall only. My turn came and I didn’t bother much, wishing for it all to be over soon.

My name was called out.

Once,

Twice.

I turned around to see one of my professors calling out to me by the bar. Great, just what I needed which was really getting seen completely smashed from life by a mentor. I looked around, as if he could be referring to anyone else, but there he was, no longer in a suit or glasses. I’m assuming breaking glasses while drunk isn’t fun, but then can one sleep in contact lenses?

I walked up to him slowly, because I was drunk and lost, even on the way to the bar.

“You alright?” He asked, as if he would check my cheeks to make sure that I wasn’t drunk enough and that somehow it would be a fever, but instead I was left with him. I tried to stick my hands into my pockets, but failed from the first time. I looked back to see my girlfriend, motioning that she would be heading off. I nodded, realizing that I had nothing better to do anyway.

“Yeah, yeah.” I said, I nearly stutter. “Nice to see you, Professor.”

He smiled at me, motioning to take the empty seat besides him. I guess even my girlfriend recognized him, since we had met him once before, when she would hold my arm on the street and ask me things. We ended up discussing the final project for a long while, that she started browsing her phone there and then.

“So… how’s your summer going?” He pauses, but not enough for me to reply or maybe I’m too slow. “Surprised you’re still in the city.”

He takes a swing from his beer. I wouldn’t be surprised if he would’ve ordered me a coffee to sober up, but I happen to not be drunk enough for him then. He takes another full swing and asks me if I want one, as he orders a second for himself. I wonder how much has he drank and how well is he hiding it from me.

“It’s going… slow.” I don’t lie and smirk. He just nods at me.

“How come you’re still in the city?” I sit on the stool besides him and wonder if my question is rude in any way.

“Oh.” He looks at the empty bottle, as if it could somehow hold the answer to a simple question. Maybe, the question wasn’t as simple, because sometimes the truth is hard to spit out. I wish I could spin in my chair. He looks up at me. “Personal.”

“Okay.” I say, well, that was a conversation killer, but then he just decides to regret his abrupt answer. It feels like a eternity as he keeps staring at the end of the bottle.

“I just… want to be somewhere comfortable this summer. I’ve always liked the city. Might as well stay here.” He doesn’t add more, takes another swing. Only then I notice from his poor motions that he’s probably just as drunk as I am. I look around, as if someone who I know is here. But as far as I am aware of it’s just a bunch of people I don’t care about who are left.

“I see.” I nod. “You can always go to the sea.”

“I used to live near it.” He says and drinks even more.

Something stupid clicks in my mind. He’s never lived here. He’s mentioned that in the classes. He’d always take the train here or drive. I nearly tap my fingers against the bar in a rather rude thinkative matter. I don’t know how much he even wants to hear from a student. I can’t ask him how did he move here and why.

“Separated.” He swallows the beer hardly again. I blink. My mind goes blank and I look at the now filled table, which my girlfriend had left.

“At least you had the guts to leave.” I say in a monotone voice. He looks up at me, confused, intrigued, just to shift from one person’s misery to another. I don’t even understand sometimes how I have the guts to leave places, I feel as if I were left alone in a restaurant I would stay until the closing time and way after they have cleaned everything. I had only quit the previous relationship because it was either that to go or myself. I ended up spacing out so badly that I noticed my professor’s hand go towards my shoulder.

Sometimes I felt like I had no idea who I was and what I had wanted in life. Everything seemed in turmoil, if I were to lay down and stare at the clouds I would think of every single day which awaited me ahead. There was too much to say and too much which I didn’t want to speak of at all.

“What do you mean…” I don’t even catch the last part of the question. I know that he’s my professor and I have nothing else to say. I can’t leave, I’m stuck at a crossroads were I’ve done myself enough damage and not enough to leave, because I can’t be hopping from one girl to another. I’ve done that twice. With men it seemed easier, things were less complicated even if I was just as smitten. But at the end of the day I had no idea which was truly the worst one. What was worse to break up?

“I can’t leave my girlfriend.” I say and he just looks at the end of his beer glass. He taps the glass with his fingers, as if he is thinking what to say but I know him enough from classes to see that he’s been knowing what to say all along.

“Why?” He asks softly, but follows up by ordering me a beer. I don’t refuse because I don’t really get hangovers, just the urge to puke on the spot if I drink too much. My anxiety is so high with a pounding chest that I can barely function, let alone leave myself with my thoughts. I dunk a quarter of the pint in one go, which makes the professor smirk.

“I think we’ve both fallen out of love… But… there’s no one else. No one is cheating on the other, sure, we’re holding things even from ourselves, but it’s nothing critical. It’s a bad straight relationship like any other.” That causes the professor to look even more curiously at me.

“You-”

“I’m queer. Bisexual. I don’t even know anymore.” I keep drinking. He had stopped, probably to hear all this gossip as much as he can tipsy or whatever state he’s in. “I thought I was gay for a large part of my life and then… my ex-girlfriend came along.”

Her face flashes before me and I shudder lightly.

“Nothing’s been the same ever since. I just collapsed.” I just look behind the walls, as if I could. “Found her on Tinder one day. Had the hunch to reactivate… Click on girls to be seen and there she was. Rumours followed later as well as evidence. She gave me the silent treatment due to an argument and proceeded to cheat.”

I drink some more and the bartender, prepared gives me another pint.

“Can’t get over her… Maybe that’s why I can’t leave my current. They used to be friends and I wanted to hurt the ex, once she found out. But her eyes were just as empty as the first time she had seen me. No traces of the love we had built. As if she never loved and I just kept on trying to love my current. I think I did, but something broke within us. We can’t even fight anymore. It’s just like two stray cats in the same house. We don’t do anything together.”

That’s when he has the guts to put his hand on my shoulder and give it a short squeeze. I look at him, his graying hair and how casually he is dressed, frankly showing no difference from anyone else in the bar, since people of all ages are here. My professor drinks from his own pint.

“I… have a similar story, actually.” Now he feels more at ease to open up. “I knew I was bisexual though. But I knew I was just hooking up. In a few weeks, we were in the same course, she came to me saying she was pregnant.”

He looks at me in the eyes, before looking away at the photos and paintings on the wall.

“She wanted to keep the baby. I had some wealth to my name and of course, my parents wanted me to be with a girl rather than fool around with men to the end of my days, which was something I screamed at them during an argument.” He smirks, recalling, lighter now. “I liked her, already, she was lovely, she still is.”

He trails off.

“Just not for me.” He smiles sadly. “We married before the due date… But she lost the baby. We stayed. She never wanted to have children, though.”

My professor drinks right after saying it.

“Can’t say I feel like I missed out on much either.” He bites his lips and looks at me. Looks through at me, as if there is something to be seen and taken out from within me. But then he looks back to drink his beer. I feel like I’ve always been pushed in life, as if I were a toy train and I’ve only let kids pull me along. I feel awfully awkward from talking with my professor this way and my whole body is a heated mess from the alcohol and all thoughts fight with each other. Somehow I think of Murakami making his characters not have children, because he doesn’t have any in his latest short story collection, the name which escapes me.

“I don’t even think of children.” I confess.

“They say that you’ll want to have children with the right person. I mean… it’s quite a straight concept, but who knows.” He gives me a soft look. I somehow still feel his hand on my shoulder, but it’s clearly not there. I could’ve just reactivated Grindr but where’s the guarantee that I’ll feel like myself again? I had turned around and nothing would ever be the same again. I didn’t even know how sleeping with a man would feel now. I can’t help but stare at my professor. He doesn’t look down and taps his fingers on the table. “I’m not straight either. I had the thought that maybe it was just the women I was with. I hadn’t been with a man in a while… But it’s always people, rather than a gender you know.”

I just quietly and slowly nod, feeling myself heat up and I can’t help but drink even more. This is not going anywhere where I would’ve wanted it to go. I don’t even want to know my professor’s personal life. It’s not like I live in a house filled with love, but at the same time I could just be with the wrong women, just like my professor had said about himself. Who the fuck even knows anymore? Maybe I am my own unreliable narrator. Maybe I had brought all of this upon myself.

He can’t stop looking at me, we’ve pretty much locked drunk eyes enough and I-

I fucking excuse myself to the bathroom, to which he grabs my wrist.

“Hey, if I’m… passing anything just tell me.” We’re both miserable as is. It feels surreal to meet any professor and teacher at any given time outside of university or school, because it feels like they simply don’t exist outside of it. It’s just an hierarchy, like seeing a King and Queen wave at their peasants and have their own bubbled lives, where you simply can not be gay or anything among those lines. Sometimes I get so numb, that something shocking snaps me out of it and I seek a thrill, not understanding what am I doing. It feels like there is no point to it all, even when the colours get brighter, there’s a big gray mass inside me which just won’t go away and there’s nothing to show, if I were to open up my ribcage.

“There is nothing to pass.” I say suddenly, realizing that it might’ve sounded rude or somehow inviting. He taps his fingers once more against the table, thinking of the right excuse, I’m guessing, but booze sometimes makes people horny or on the opposite unleashes all the undisclosed desires which were there in the first place. I’m not entirely sure what happens to a person’s brain.

“Would you… Would-” He pauses and looks at me from head to toe, before dunking the remainder of his beverage.

“Sometimes you have to cross a boundary to feel alive.” I’m not sure which one of us says it anymore. Maybe I just think it. This isn’t the place to let alone kiss, even if everyone I know is long gone to their parents or some brief holiday which is affordable by a student or their parents, in some cases. But usually parents are vain, dragging the son to their house, it’s different when it’s something among my lines. I’ve let them down and I can’t be bothered to be interested in small talk anymore.

He doesn’t live too far away from the bar, I’m guessing that making money helps a lot and it’s a bigger apartment than I would expect in this part of town, but then he’s a teacher again. Maybe they have some secret housing privileges since we’re not that far from university either. My professor just offered to go with him to see where it leads and I did. We were both no fools, it was an invitation for both of us to cheat. Neither of us have been with a man for a while and I guess it became an old itch which we were dying to do something over.

He closed the door behind us and I just stared at him, a bit like a deer in the headlights. I was standing on a dangerous, unknown road, I wasn’t even sure how I got here in the first place. The professor hesitated but then just put his hands on my face, stroking my stubble. I don’t know why I even vowed to stay clean shaved this summer, when I would sport a stubble throughout the year. My skin was starting to get irritated. He stroked it. A bunch of emotions and thoughts went through his mind. He leaned against my ear.

“Would it help to know that I’ve thought of you before?” I wondered if he meant masturbation or just a thought, like a shooting star which he wasn’t aware would give him some old wish to sleep with a man.

I didn’t realize that I was shaking, I had gone here on full autopilot and I glanced down to see his erection in his jeans. I didn’t even notice he was dressed far more casual than I had even pictured him on his day off.

“Oh, really?” I say and I lick his neck, kissing it, feeling his cologne try to mask all the alcohol he’s been consuming. He pulls me back by my hair and that gives me a jump in my cock.

“Wondered what you’d look like bent over and your ass spread out. You mentioned you were gay on first year, so that got me wondering…” Leans even closer. “Where your limit really lies.”

He puts his finger on my mouth and I suck on it, looking at him in the eyes. I try to push away my girlfriend as far as possible from my mind.

“Apparently it’s clear that a professor’s cum dripping out of me wouldn’t be crossing a line.” He grabs me by the chin and then turns me around, undoing my jeans while his growing erection digs in painfully against my ass.

“Let’s cut the chase then.”

He undoes his fly and pulls my pants down.

I try to hold onto something, which ends up being the door handle nearby and he inserts a few fingers inside me. I moan out, as he reaches out to stroke my painfully hard cock. He rubs his thumb against all of the built up precum.

“You’re awfully tight… Let’s see how much long we will both last.” He removes the fingers after fucking me with them, stretching me out and then I glance backwards only for him to kiss me and I feel a painfully thick cock enter me. I give out a yelp and he slows down.

“Looks like I’m having the honours of fucking you after a long while, then.” He smirks and strokes me harder. After a while, I get too turned on and I want him to move faster and he takes the queue and speeds up, going deeper, faster and raw. I spread out my ass with my hands, allowing him to go even deeper as he keeps stroking me and I don’t hold and lean my head back on his shoulder, gasping for air.

“You want to cum?” He stops stroking me and I wince, my cock twitching painfully. “A bit more pleasure. So fucking good…”

He bites my neck.

“Have fun…” And he pulls my cock harshly and I feel like I’m erupting, screaming, cumming all over his hand as he keep thrusting painfully deeper and deeper, my whole body shaking.

“Slut.” He pulls me by the hair and buries his cock deep in one more time, before I feel a fluid fill me up. He bites my shoulder, pulling his arms around me, his own breathing matching my post-coital. My professor takes out his cock and his cum starts flowing out of me, staining my boxers which are nearly on the floor. “Fucking hot.”

He spreads out my asshole and sticks a finger in, pushing the cum back in.

We’re both slowly letting go of our erections. I turn around and he doesn’t hesitate, we make out, a huge contrast to the rough sex we just had. Our tongues wrapping against each other and lips planting kisses, used cocks softly lubricating the other with cum. We make out for a good while, sex is one thing, but kissing is always another and it doesn’t help that it gives me a blinking red light that we can’t stop doing it, even if exhausted.

It’s only now, when my heart starts racing and I can’t help but ask myself what the fuck have I done with my tongue inside his mouth. We finally break the kiss.

“I don’t think…” I look into his gray eyes, which somehow would match his usual suit tone and keep speaking. “This is good to follow up.”

I look away and run a hand through my hair.

“Of course.” He interrupts me, before I even get a chance to speak. “I pushed this. I didn’t really, I shouldn’t have in any way done this. But now that it’s already done, it’s best to step over it.”

“Yeah.” I say and I can feel a lump build in my throat, even if my cock still tingles and I can’t help but still feel the rush of the sudden sex we have had just now. Looking into his eyes, when we’re both collecting our thoughts I can’t help but wonder what the hell is happening to me and why can’t I open up to anyone these days. What the fuck is holding me back? His eyes remind me of an old ex, someone who I should’ve forgotten. The first guy I had a crush on and how badly it had all ended up. Maybe gray eyes are some sort of storm and turmoil for me. I tended to associate that with names, but maybe it’s even the smallest of things as well. Because the universe works in mysterious ways. I just nod and I can feel his hand all over my cheek again before we start kissing again.

It’s not long before our tongues intertwine briefly again. It’s less sudden and heavily sexual. It’s those last strokes before you let go of your cock after a wank. I look back into his eyes. I don’t even know his age and I think of all the older guys I’ve been on dates with who had said some things which just made me sure to never try a second time with them again, but I let him go further. I let my Professor enjoy me to the fullest.

He goes on his knees and licks me off from my cum. It brings my cock back to life. Now it’s my turn to pull his short hair and thrust deep in his mouth that he even gags from the lack of recent experience, but I keep going and he keeps sucking, his eyes closed now.

He starts stroking his own cock rather furiously as he keep sucking me off. I don’t last too long and he gags on every thick string of my cum. I let go of his hair and slowly slide down the wall, seeing his own hand covered in cum and stains on the floor. That should be a pain to clean off afterwards. I can taste myself in a brief kiss we share.

I look at him, wondering why would I even open up to a Professor. I used to be a teacher’s pet, growing up, because I was lonely and they seemed to be able to hold up a decent conversation, probably out of pity or maybe they were just as lonely. I honestly don’t know now considering that I just got fucked in the ass by one of them. Maybe we’re all just lonely in our own ways.

He sits besides me and I wonder if he even has any pets, but instead we sit with the light from the streets, we didn’t even bother turning on the light, I realize now and it’s all thanks to the thin curtains that we weren’t seen fucking. My professor stretches to his jeans pocket and swiftly takes out a cigarette box, taking one and we share two cigarettes, one after another silently, as if we were some long term lovers. I feel like I haven’t had sex in all of the twenty something years of my existence, but that is far from the truth. It wasn’t the best sex I have ever had ever, sure, it was one of the best, but-

I just shook my head to nothing in particular which causes me to press my forehead against my knees and let him kiss the top of my head, like a mentor. Maybe we were some old Greek lovers or whatever. I feel too exhausted and I should get going home. But I don’t have an explanation why am I reeking of rough sex and another man’s cum but it’s a better explanation than not showing up at all.

I kiss him again, softly and stand up.

“I should get going…” I couldn’t even open up to him. Nearly a fucking stranger. He doesn’t hesitate and lights a third cigarette, I know how to get home from here, we kiss again silently.

–

I finally get my sleep that night. I manage to sneak into the bathtub far too fast and I cleanse myself intensely. I make sure that I don’t smell of another man, even if I know that we have reached the point where it doesn’t matter anymore and it wouldn’t be an excuse anymore. Frankly it feels like a terrible metaphor for my life, the loveless relationship I am in. I could be lying in bed on the side, just as I am in the bathtub, but I don’t dare to drown, instead I just stare at the ceiling, making sure that nothing even hints of my previous activity.

My mind mellows itself for the next few days, at the same times it goes at a ridiculously high speed like a highway with every single thought being a car after a car crash and somehow they’re all driving somewhere. Maybe I am in one of them, maybe I am in all of them. I never learned how to drive, scared of the fact that I might actually act on some suicidal inclination which I’ve had ever since I was a young child. I guess a long history of mental health doesn’t help either. I end up staying at home reading short stories a lot and I jerk off, when the girlfriend is out, recalling how different a nearly stranger man’s touch is. I have the inkling thought of redownloading Grindr as if I was young and getting nailed hard by someone else. I would lie if I said that I didn’t think of my professor, because he had managed to somehow make me more hollow and fill me up to brim with desire and semen as I had found out walking home.

Maybe we were more alike, some sort of twisted and old way. Maybe a loveless relationship should’ve been let go of, but I couldn’t. It was a cover-up after the previous bad one, I held onto this one with nail and teeth, because I didn’t want to be lonely. It’s not that I preferred cooked meals by a woman than my own lousy attempts, but it was a matter of like having a cat, it was there and sometimes our worlds would collide, a stray would fit better.

I was scatter brained. I had always wanted to be loved, even if it were for a night and somehow a lukewarm thing didn’t settle it. I had the thoughts of finding out, soberly, where he lived now and just allow him to fuck me hard again. I couldn’t describe anything I was feeling, I had even recalled and sat with a notebook hiding my face, even on paper. I could barely write as a child, let alone now so I didn’t exactly know what the fuck was I attempting. All that was coming out of my hands was badly written erotica, recollections and desires of bottoming again.

I had sex with my girlfriend, I did everything she liked and she managed to orgasm with her usual expression way before me. She tried to suck me off, but it didn’t work so I was about to excuse myself until I thought of how hungry the professor had been for my cock. She managed to pull my dick out of her mouth just in time and I didn’t feel aroused from seeing her with my cum or satisfied. I was sinking this relationship.

I wondered if she ever cheated.

I felt like at this point of where we were, if we smoked indoors with wine and I were to ask if she had cheated she would reply honestly.

But I didn’t dare and neither did she. It was as if she was a puzzle and I was losing all the pieces as a child. I was shaking the box violently and not caring about how many pieces I’ve lost because frankly-

I had no interest in the puzzle anymore.

Days rolled by, I wondered if I should’ve slept with a woman again. Maybe some switch in me was dragging me to be normal again. I still felt intimidated by my sexuality change. It wasn’t something I had wanted to accept and seemed to be happening post factum. I didn’t want to speak of bisexuality, even if it was surely something I was. I just identified with anything else, I just didn’t like the community, the feel and everything around it. It seemed like politics these days, there were too many things I didn’t agree with starting with transphobia within the said community – I had dated a trans man a few years back, never doubting my gay badge – and the usual leftist seemed as if a clean slate for criminals was okay. The list seemed to be going and going, but neither was I right, I had moved, I was bisexual. There were too many things I despised about the rights, their ideology, capitalism which was seeping in through all of our bones when we understood nothing and neither did the rights understand communism or its ideas properly. It was just a cold war all over again. Everything would be turned into shouts, so I remained quiet.

I barely even spoke of politics with my girlfriend, I didn’t even speak much of either of our sexualities. She had offered a threesome once, just leaning diagonally on the bed, but we had both insisted on something monogamous, never backing away until now. She seemed to understand how her sexuality worked and she was fine with the switch going on and off, I envied terribly that confidence.

I kept taking baths.

Maybe it was a part of me and I had to accept it, just like I had accepted being gay.

But why was it easier for me to be around men? I had far too many answers than I had wished to have, so I just closed my eyes. Neither did I want them to be resolved. It seemed to be a part of me, it was hard to give up being sad even if someone had stretched their hand.

I saw him again, it was a bloody supermarket. He had no children, he was estranged from his wife so he was alone. Neither of us knew how to approach the other. I gave a small nod, which he took as an invitation and he went towards me, through all the bred and pastries section which I had grabbed a few of, something my girlfriend had asked for dinner even if we were both constantly insisting in monotonous voices that we should both lose some weight. I kept thinking of dieting and how we as society had either failed and gained too much weight or simply obsessed with losing too much of it.

“Hey.” He had said nearly softly and I just nodded again, before greeting him back. It was daylight, we weren’t drunk or anything. I wondered if he had managed to get a divorce or managed to hook up with someone probably even younger, since that’s what most older men wanted? Didn’t we all chase youth either our own or someone else’s as if we could suck it out? Why did we fail with so many requests towards ourselves?

“How have you been, with summer ending soon and all?”

“Dreading classes.” I crack a small smile and he gives out a short laugh, a bit too brief for me to notice that he’s really forcing himself. It’s as if we’re both thinking it and how could we be not? I feel stiff even if I have had the best sex in a while with him, I feel anxious and I knew that I had been to one to unglue myself from him, but I can’t help but wonder…

Would he do it again?

“What about you?” Is a supermarket a discreet place? Is it enough to talk about things for people not to notice? I look around and see no familiar faces, we’re approaching the end of it or rather when other students will start rolling in.

“I don’t think I mind my job as much as students do.” I see that the word student comes unnaturally, we were just two men being unfaithful, there was no power dynamic. If it had continued or started way earlier than we would have had it. “I enjoy it.”

He scratches his nose quietly, looking down. It was weird to see him in pure daylight. He still had the professor aura around him, even while wearing a plain t-shirt and jeans. I felt that teachers, growing up, were like vampires, never to get out of their suits if they had worn one to work, that is. Plenty of them did that. Maybe they even slept in them.

Would be pajamas with buttons and all the stuff be considered a night suit? I nearly asked that out loud, without thinking as a silence just sat between us.

Truth is… what was there to talk about?

What is there to talk about when you have no idea what you’re doing? It’s as if we both looked at each other, pleading for the other to mention sex in the supermarket. I quickly looked down, his jeans were too baggy and hell, I had no boner, what the fuck was I expecting? It was a democracy after all.

Neither was I drunk enough to properly open up about being alone, feeling as if I were constantly rowing on a boat as a child, renting one. I couldn’t understand why was I constantly lonely and why I clung onto things that didn’t matter anymore and why I was so close to make everything just crash and sink below the waves. I think the thing was that we were both lonely in our ways and women didn’t seem to cover up the scars we have had.

Was it some sort of gender fault? Of course not, sometimes we just fall in love with the wrong people and sometimes we fall out of love with the right ones.

I still flinch at girls with dark bangs, even though I think my ex had gotten rid of them ages ago and my current even sported some for a brief while before clipping them back and eventually cutting it into her current overgrown bob. I suddenly wanted a smoke and there wasn’t much more for me to buy. Instead I scratched my own head, wondering how to drag him outside, even if a supermarket felt pretty anonymous already.

“You’re done shopping?” He suddenly asks me and I just nod. He gives out a weak smile. “I just need a few more items, but if you’d like to… keep talking, you can even wait outside.”

“Yeah, I really need a smoke.” I confess. There’s no queue at this hour, maybe that’s why we both decided to buy the groceries at the dawn of the summer’s end. I instantly light the cigarette, looking up and feeling myself shake lightly as if I had seen a ghost, the cigarette smoke doesn’t really help me. I feel like it’s an awful placebo today, but then it always is. It’s just a bitter addiction. I can’t help but wonder what the fuck lies ahead and how many hands will be stretched out to harm me. I don’t want to think of the upcoming year with all it’s projects and people blinking out like stars in the day. There’s always the fear of everything trickling down my arm.

My professor takes a while inside, I’m guessing because people started coming in and grabbing the first frozen pizza, making a line of dozen pizzas in the end or maybe he’s himself lost in his own thinking. I still have my headphones in my pocket and if I knew that he would’ve taken two cigarettes in a row, I possibly would’ve listened to something to ease my nerves, but instead I am left alone doing nothing and getting more paranoid.

When you become attached to someone, you start making links with things you enjoy to them, just because they happened to be in the same mindset as the same thing in your mind. Then it takes more than a pair of scissors to cut and mine have become so rusty that all I happen to do is get rust over the cloth of memories, letting moths fly and make holes, because eventually all fabric will get used or lost. It’s not like such people are remembered on the deathbed I hope, at least I hope my last seconds will be filled with the happiness I’ve rarely felt.

I go back to summer vacations to the sea as a kid, relaxing, jumping on waves, laughing, eating by the beach and cringing at coconut water in excessive amounts. I had always thought that coconuts were brown and like in cartoons prior. I remember being surprised and amazed. I also remember checking out the other boys, being awfully young myself and considering myself a bisexual, putting the first ever label on myself, because of course I had to like girls right?

I stopped myself from the third cigarette, wondering and peeking in to see him paying.

I didn’t even know what the fuck would I ask.

How does one stop being lonely?

Was that the question upon my lips? That was. But I wasn’t sure it was a question to a professor, to a therapist, most likely, but not to a professor for sure. I couldn’t just admit that loneliness was eating me from the inside and that I had no idea how to fix the fact that I wasn’t in love and that a rebound was far from working for me. It’s been a good while, since we were living together and like a good couple we celebrated our anniversary, less enthusiastically with each passing milestone, feeling as if our friends were the ones counting because everyone seemed to break up anyway and tolerance seemed to be high on the list which we both had.

“You alright? Not feeling too lonely, I hope from me taking my time?” He asks me as soon as he heads out. I look into my professor’s eyes.

I’ve been feeling lonely for a while now. I don’t answer his question honestly.

“It’s fine.” I just shrug. I feel like he catches a brief glimpse of me, as if looking at me through a sheer window curtain, fluttering in the wind. I push too many thoughts away, leaving animalistic desires, but in reality I just don’t want to be alone anymore. I don’t want to be anxious. I don’t want to be alone.

He keeps looking at me, as if I were holding something out of his reach and I understand that I am.

“Holidays ending and all.” I don’t lie, but I don’t say much. But it’s not like we ever exchanged much conversation during lessons or after them either. I’ve also been to his office, noticed his now absent wedding ring and wondered a few things. I just enjoy looking at people’s tidy offices, even if they show no sign of living beyond education. I also pay attention to the brands if they are available to recognize which are worn and shoes. I don’t know why, maybe to see what was nice in the shopping malls for the weekend.

I think we all grew up expecting the future to be less lonely. I grew up thinking that the music wouldn’t really change much. I thought that the hits I had heard growing up would still be there, but instead it’s not even coated with vintage, it’s a bunch of other depressed twenty year olds smoking to Mr. Brightside. I remember talking to a friend, years ago, how sad I was that my children would possibly not even know the song.

The thought of children made me want to frown. It felt like it was something deeply unavoidable, now that I was in a fertile relationship as well. I wasn’t sure if I could handle it, I wasn’t sure how would my depression match up some kid’s whining. I always told myself that I would have my shit together before I’d get children, but now drunk relatives would ask on parties, which me and the girlfriend would attend… what was keeping us? In the beginning we would talk, but now it was a matter of hanging the coats and huffing that someone else asked it again.

I couldn’t see myself as a father.

I didn’t want to think of my childhood either, everything seemed to be swallowed up in darkness with no fond memories to look back upon. I had hopped around psychologists as a teenager, tried different pills here and there but it really felt like my sadness was something I wouldn’t be able to deal with.

I slept around with guys, accepting myself as gay made me feel like I belonged as an outsider, but then crawling back with a girlfriend made me feel like a fraud. I understood that there was something within me which wouldn’t snap, which wouldn’t let me love women the same way I loved men even if I had lusted after them. I didn’t know what the hell awaited me either. I could’ve just ended up in the arms of a man after all and I didn’t know what would happen then.

Maybe I should’ve focused that now I had desire for a man once again. Maybe I should’ve-

I didn’t even notice how long our silence stretched with me thinking about everything and us walking to the same direction of the university, since we both lived in those scattered apartments around it.

Nothing seemed to bring joy to me. Every visit, every complaint to someone new felt like an anchor which would weigh me down. I couldn’t confess the darkest things even to myself through fingers on the eyes, I couldn’t see the sky either.

I’m surprised somehow when he takes out a cigarette of his own and I watch him put his groceries down and look at me from head to toe. We’re both lost children at this point, but somehow we had managed to grow into full fleshed sexual beings.

Now it’s my professor’s turn to weigh everything and I wonder if he had jerked himself off to me, if he had thought of me in the darkest lights, if he had thought of me riding him, exposing my entire body and just letting him spread me to his sexual content. I didn’t even know why was I lusting so much for him to be inside him, but then maybe it was because I didn’t really go past the classic canons of a usual heterosexual relationship. I was always on top and in the end I was starting to lose pleasure, sometimes I wondered how the fuck did I even manage to keep it up. I just felt fear go down as if I were dumping a bucket of cold water upon me, I was bewildered sometimes and it was far from making love.

I hadn’t made love in a very long while.

And when you look at former lovers, you think you never loved them either. Because true love lasts, right?

It’s all passion, right?

Maybe I’ve always been bisexual. It’s even a word which I hate uttering, not feeling any connection, feeling that I’m just grabbing a lifeless fish by it’s tail and shaking it, wondering if it would ever wake up.

I’ve had girls in the past who I’ve thought I’ve loved. Before I started fooling around with guys, before I knew that my life would turn upside down. Before I knew what the fuck was going on. I owed an apology to some of them, too, but once there was this guy in high school who I had some tension with who asked me what was the worst thing I had ever done-

I didn’t know what to answer.

I just said that I had no idea, as he and this girl just spoke about cheating, about betraying others. I hadn’t thought of the said girl in years. I once spoke about her to my girlfriend, that I had wanted to apologize, even if I didn’t want her to know I was bisexual under any circumstance or in a romance of any sorts. I wanted nothing of my life to slide into a school reunion.

Maybe I had loved her. Maybe I had loved my ex who didn’t work out with. Those were pretty much the three main girls and the last ex was someone who I simply didn’t want to think of at all. I was scared that somehow even stalking online that first girl, who I wanted to apologize too, would somehow find me and I didn’t want that under any circumstance. I just had so much fear. I didn’t want anything. I wanted nothing of my former life and I would’ve been a happier man if I could just take the phone receiver and call three times a year, I didn’t want to hear that I had turned a new leaf. I didn’t want them to think that me liking men was a phase. I was embarrassed to say that I had a girlfriend now.

I felt like it was different for women, but maybe it wasn’t. I wasn’t very much into understanding women, they just felt different and I had accepted it, I didn’t want to dig into and I thought that I’d manage to do that for the rest of my life, until I had locked lips with one. It wasn’t that it was my first kiss with a girl, which was recent, but it was that a lot of them were stolen kisses, girls who simply wanted to kiss me before asking, without knowing my true feelings towards them.

Sometimes I felt like I had lost all the jigsaw puzzles and they were slipping through my fingers as I would carry them to the table, somehow the floor being transparent and all the pieces falling through, while I was still holding on tight.

“What is it that scares you about the holidays ending?” He asks me suddenly and I stare at him like a deer in the headlights and I’m about to get run over.

“I just get sadder, really. It’s not like… in our society we have a choice to not study. I’ve tried to work without a diploma, that’s why I’m older than my peers, and that didn’t work out. It’s like, no matter what I do, I get sadder. I was sad doing nothing, I was sad doing something. In the end it all amounts to nothing. It just feels like we’re all stuck in a hamster wheel, doing nothing. We think we’re going somewhere… but where are we all heading if it isn’t to death?” He listens to me carefully, smoking slowly and exhaling. “Sometimes it feels… like I’ve never had any choice to my fate.”

I think of my sexuality as well. But I don’t dare to mention it yet.

Neither do I mention that as time goes, the more familiar the faces seem. It’s as if you can run into an ex-lover every day. It felt like I couldn’t go outside and buy cigarettes or groceries in the beginning, moving helped, simply because I had moved on in such a way that I didn’t love her anymore or even want to be back. It’s the heaviness of the heart which remains, it’s what people can’t get over. Maybe it’s loneliness as well.

“We all have a choice when it comes to our fate. We just tend to think the opposite, because we’re bombarded with bad luck days through media, but it’s all… different. We have the power to change some things and we will feel the same happiness like the person next to us, only theirs will be because of something else. That’s all. But we’re all sad and happy due to different reasons. I know, I should be giving deeper advice, but it’s hard to think clear, I’ve told you my problems.” My professor confesses and I just nod. It’s strange to see how clear cut people are the same, only with different problems in their heads and that’s pretty much it.

We keep walking, past people and I don’t really recognize anyone, but I think of my exes laughter somehow. I can see her laughing and I wonder did the laughter ever reach her eyes?

Because when I’m depressed nothing really reaches my eyes. Sometimes I feel like I’ve lost all my possessions, like I’ve never existed and had to build everything from scratch and the more I talk, the more I see layers of things, as if others don’t. It feels like I’m the one with the highest house of cards, which had collapsed. I’m the one with the largest deck of cards for sure.

But then maybe people just don’t open to me, even if my girlfriend had spoken about her teenage suicidal tendencies and her one attempt, where she was dragged back by an ex-girlfriend, just caught on the right moment. She had dumped her, saying that a true lover would’ve let her go somehow. Now the other is nowhere to be found and I couldn’t help but wonder in the beginning if I could compete with some girl who dragged her lover back to life. I would be lying if I didn’t say that I was a jealous person, but it was a question of self-esteem.

We walked on silently.

I couldn’t believe in anyone actually being attracted to me.

I could see an older professor, because I would hold his secret deep within me, because we were both just as guilty, I believed. We would both be excused from the university for good. Maybe there was a point in just sleeping once more, letting him use me and feel alive for another brief seconds of an orgasm and pleasure from getting penetrated or whatever he would be up to?

I cursed at my sexuality. It was something I had to deal with. I couldn’t help but keep on smoking the cigarette until it was embarrassing to smoke it any longer. I threw it away in the nearest trash can. I glanced at my professor and we just held our gazes together. It was always odd to hear of my classmates lust after professors or teachers in general and it was rather rare of them to do so, yet here I was. But for the odd time being, my professor felt human.

It’s not like I’ve never been with anyone older, there is simply the fact that on Grindr you feel like only older guys will look your way. I wasn’t that young either, so it wasn’t like I snuck on the app when I was 15 or something to sleep with a 30 year old pedo. But I’ve had my brushes where I would go back home, wondering what the hell had I done. But at the same time it felt far more liberating than just being with women, I struggled with my sexuality for so much.

I started having crushes on girls when I was far older and getting intertwined with them. I didn’t understand many things, which I didn’t even properly speak to my girlfriend about, but she would listen. My ex was a rather heavy feminist, I felt more isolated from the cause as time went on and about a certain day where she shamed me into having sex with her.

My girlfriend, just like anyone else, said that such feminists weren’t feminists but I wasn’t offered a shoulder or anything. There was a period later on, when I felt like I couldn’t wash off my skin, when I realized that it was non-consensual but when it came to relationships between men and women, people hesitate to call it rape simply because I didn’t want it and I didn’t voice it properly.

After that I couldn’t stomach all their policies, all their desire to make everyone care about their ovarian problems, when there were literally trans women out of their field and they were just like add ons, yet they welcomed trans men with open arms somehow. I wasn’t trans myself, but I remember I slept with a trans guy once, not batting an eyelash on it. He seemed surprised, but he wanted nothing serious. Maybe he was also cheating on the side, I don’t know. But he was taken back that I was actually gay and willing to sleep with him. We talked for a long while, he told me about his experience from even wondering if he were a lesbian simply for his attire, appearance yet lack of lust for women. He spoke of similar experiences which I would only encounter later, but that’s the thing, even thinking of these things, demonizing women was something which women did to men and I didn’t want to fight fire with fire.

But how can we be blind to our own pain when someone screams sexism at the top of their voice, silencing actual rape?

I just didn’t raise the subject a lot to my girlfriend, because it was in the past, what could I have done? I had no evidence and of course she would go and force other men to sleep with her, guilt them and just use them. I looked at the professor and all of a sudden, I felt awfully tired. I wanted to get to the post-coital part, where we would just talk. I just left the other night, not even letting us exchange a few words.

I had wanted him, but my mind was bursting with things I could try and say.

“Have you tried medication?” He asks suddenly and I jerk my head towards him, realizing that we’ve pretty much walked to the city centre by now, filled with tourists and to be filmed walking together by some French couples who decided on a cheap yet pretty destination. I always wondered what it was like, to be in a weird angled photo on some stranger’s bookshelf of their holiday, but the thing is that when I lived in another place, it was all about getting in at least one stranger’s photo a day. I didn’t want to walk on the same streets me and my ex did, so I just avoided the centre, even though I started drinking coffee black with her and a specific pastry from a bad date which went nowhere. I wondered why I clung onto bad memories. Maybe there was something indeed really badly wired in my brain, much worse than I had ever imagined.

“I am on medication.” I shrug and the professor, thinks for a brief while.

“Sorry, I’m out of practice. I do have students who walk up to me, asking how and what, but it’s different… when…” He swallows and I somehow hear it. “When there is some involvement. It becomes unethical.”

“Just like you don’t treat lovers or family.” I complete what he’s trying to say. He just nods and takes out a pair of dark sunglasses, since the sun is doing it’s last rays of sun and trying to make them count. I had forgotten mine at home. Without much talking, I follow him into his house. Still surprised at the location, but then I should be surprised at my own and the fact that it’s an apartment. I can’t help but look out of the window, once I get the chance to see all the flags, all the posters on the nearby buildings. The professor finishes untying his shoes and joins me, as I just kicked mine off earlier. We look at each other and it’s not long before I kiss him. I moan as our tongues suddenly touch and we’re all filled with the taste of tobacco. He doesn’t break the kiss, but closes the curtains. One thing is a brief second another is letting the world see how we cheat on our wives and girlfriends. All of our flaws of character. But wouldn’t loneliness be our main flaw?

We are roughly the same height, I’m a bit smaller due to unlucky genetics but he’s not tall enough for me to be uncomfortable.

The professor moans back, pulling me closer, wrapping his arms around me. I break the kiss and progress onto his neck.

“I actually wanted to talk… but it’s intoxicating. I haven’t been with a man in a while.” I confess.

“Try a number of years, then. You’d be jerking off nearly to every guy you see.” He smirks and kisses me again and I feel bewildered by every time our lips touch. I pressed my erection roughly against his. We were both fully erect. He undoes our flies and takes out my dripping in precum cock, while his is hard, but also glistering. My legs get weak, when he presses them together and starts stroking them harshly, while we’re clothed.

“You don’t want to fuck me, this time?” I ask him, already feeling awfully close and my breathing is giving me out. I grab him by his shoulders, pressing my forehead against his neck.

“You’re too close, looks like you haven’t been touching yourself at all.” He grabs me by the chin. He’s playing a game with me. “Sucked out all the desire for women for you, then?”

I gasp.

I bite his neck and I ejaculate onto his cock.

“You fucking cheater…” I barely breathe. “You just want to screw behind your wife’s back, students, younger men. Like a fucking daddy.”

That pushes him over the edge, as he nearly tumbles, his own semen leaking through his fingers onto the carpet and mixing with my own. We kiss hungrily, as the orgasm slowly rides out and we stop rubbing tongues and just continue kissing.

We both feel too ashamed to look at the other, let alone the eyes. Instead we both focus on the slipping cum, as it’s not fast enough to dry up on his fingers. I don’t think I’ve had such good sex in a short while. Usually it’s some fuck who just uses me as a cum rag. We kiss with our eyes closed.

We didn’t lie.

I don’t know why we’re even doing this for a second time and all the noise manages to travel to my brain, I don’t feel like I’m drowning anymore, I feel painfully aware of my surroundings and I don’t know what I am doing.

I feel alive. That one gasp of air after an orgasm.

I can’t possibly let this go and the problem with life is that there’s too many wrong turns which we do ourselves. I am the blacksmith of my fate, I remember there’s an expression like that, the trans guy had told me that, as we laid in bed and smoked a brief cigarette before I had gone to the wild.

I don’t even know how am I even enjoying men again all of a sudden, because I’ve literally been drawn to women for such a long while. I didn’t know how it would work, it started with porn and escalated and it was as something inside my core had broken. I didn’t know what the fuck was going with me and how come I was getting the loose screw back to normal. But then I’ve always had problems with sexuality, orgasms and sex. I always thought it was the medication and maybe it always was or maybe it was just me drowning in depression.

I pull back and I look at him.

I don’t think either of us would’ve looked at the other twice if it wasn’t for that night. It’s odd how the puzzle pieces come together even if they are from different boxes. We’ve got a Mickey Mouse in WW2. But then that kind of makes sense, but I discard it. I give him a haste kiss, before realizing how much I’m shaking.

“I’m cheating.”

I don’t even know why am I even saying this aloud. It’s not like I can backtrack all of my actions, it’s not like it looks that I would be changing either. I guess it’s once a cheater, always a cheater. I don’t even know how come it feels like I am looking into an older mirror of myself, because I don’t know what would I even say to myself if I had asked this to a mirror.

“You are, but it’s your choice. You’re miserable.” And he puts his hand on my cheek and I just lean against it. “We always have to find something which will make us feel better, which will give at least a day a meaning, because if there is nothing to look forward to or look back, when you sleep, that’s when you lose it. Sometimes it’s even hour by hour, minute by minute… looking at the clock.”

“But why do we try so hard to stay alive?”

“If I knew the answer, I’d tell you.” My mirror says. The professor just smiles sadly, I’m guessing he’s had his own thoughts and it’s far from helping that he’s wasted years of his life with the wrong woman and now barebacking a fucking student for his own enjoyment. Maybe that’s what a mid-life crisis is, because we put so much emphasis on youth, that something needs to happen and we need to make lots of money. I’m not even sure what’s supposed to actually happen in our youth, but it’s surely something. I’m scared to even do the same mistakes he’s done, but I’ve always been cautious with condoms when it came to anyone who could’ve been fertile. I just got reckless now because I couldn’t care anymore, it was like cutting frankly, I’d suffer the consequences and guilt later, but now I needed to release my anger. We both leaned against the wall and eventually he offered to zip our pants and take the couch at least.

We hadn’t even been to his bedroom. It felt strange that I hadn’t explored it or had a grandiouse tour of a frankly expensive apartment in such a location, even if it was relatively small. I could hear a strong wind building up and I guessed I should’ve checked the weather app. It was uncommon for us to get rain at this time of the year, but I guess it was necessary to avoid further forest fires.

“I always thought that I kept on living… because I’m a coward to take my own life. It all started with me being curious, telling myself that I have nothing to lose by living, but now… There isn’t even curiosity holding me back.” I confess and he listens to me carefully, I wonder if he wears contact lenses all of a sudden.

“But there must be something holding you back.” He says and the wind builds up outside even more.

I can’t really get the words to form that the two times we’ve had sex that I’ve felt alive and I knew that just like the wind builds up, the sex will become boring and my depression will end up winning again, because life is bleak. Only I don’t believe in a calm after the storm, I just think that if it rains it fucking pours. Maybe someone will find out about us banging and that would be the end of the both of us, simply because two men got horny to no end and ending up screwing each other. The problem is that too many things are unethical. I’m not saying we should do a Purge once a year, but somehow I wish that more methods for depression were considered ethical.

I wish that we could just end lives, our own, of course.

“I don’t know.” I lie and look at him directly in the eyes. I don’t know what am I even getting out of this anymore. I should be leaving again, but instead I stay, maybe until the storm would be over and we’re sitting awfully close and I want to feel his rough lips again. “Maybe it’s the sex.”

“That’s enough of a reason.”

“But why?”

“I think that’s for every person to find out.” He shrugs and scratches the tip of his nose, folding his arms. “If it’s just sex… Hold onto it.”

“And keep screwing you?” I ask carefully. He instantly shakes his head.

“I don’t think that would be wise of either of us, really. The educational year is about to start and that would make it more dangerous, not to mention that my divorce should be full force and out of frustration I would really be pounding you daily just to release frustration. I should just find some other twink, which won’t get me into trouble.” I feel turned on, but then all of a sudden I feel a bit hurt. But then I shouldn’t be kidding to myself, I am just another twink for him to fuck. Or rather the first of many behind his divorcing wife’s back. “Just like if you have a craving for older men, there’s plenty out there… Just waiting to pound an ass without a condom. Which we really should’ve have been doing.”

“It made me feel alive.” And we lock eyes, as I realize that we have been looking down all this time.

“I never said that it didn’t make me feel alive. I was just as depressed as you are. I just… don’t like vocalizing things which go through my mind at all times. I’m still depressed. I just feel that some things are done in an animalistic way, in order to survive. I guess sex was the thing that we were both missing, even if you were having sex with your girlfriend.” I feel flustered. Our sex was nearly a routine and I don’t think I had been enjoying it for a while, I didn’t dare voice it out loud, just because she had said that sex would mean the end of everything according to what she had read in magazines and frankly, neither of us would be willing to work on falling in love again with each other.

It was rather odd, we knew each other like gloves only they were very ill-fitting. Maybe we knew nothing of each other by the end of the day. I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t understand her and I didn’t want to anymore. I was having a crisis which felt like it was my own cross to bear. I want nothing of my girlfriend in it. I couldn’t even dare tell her that I struggled with being bisexual.

Maybe I was coming back to my senses after an awful dream where I had dated my ex?

I felt like all the years, all the months leading up to this day were slipping through my fingers and I was staring at the past through a foggy window, which fogged up due to my own breathing. I hadn’t lived in a cold country for a while, it felt this way and I no longer missed the snow, even if I knew that I could see it anytime I would travel, but I preferred to say home for Christmas with the girlfriend and avoid my rejoiced parents who would see that I would give them an offspring somehow.

My girlfriend intimidated me by wanting children so much. I didn’t want any. I wasn’t planning on any for such a long while, even adopting. I just felt like myself was too much to deal with and I never liked kids anyway. Maybe it was due to being bullying while growing up, kids are cruel and can sense who is gay and who isn’t. That’s how social circles are built. She would talk animatedly with my parents on how they would get grandchildren and at the same time she would go silent when they would thank her for getting me out of a gay spell, they believed in.

I remember watching Matchpoint years ago and I would’ve killed Scarlett Johanson before all the drama unveiled for getting preganant as well, but then I would’ve used a condom and that was the easiest way to kill a life I had never wanted to begin with.

“I haven’t enjoyed sex with a woman for a long while.” I shrug, confess and feel defensive. I might’ve just took off my pants off and gone on top of him to prove a point, but instead we sit close to each other on the couch even if there is two armchairs and the mandatory TV on the wall. The place is old, but has been refurbished just to raise the price I’m assuming. “My girlfriend. I had no interest in trying other women… It’s as if something clicked back in me.”

I feel the need to explain.

“I had a late blossoming for women. My first proper girlfriend was not so long ago and then my current followed, as a rebound and we’re stuck. I had thought that I was gay all my life, but all of a sudden, I felt the rug being pulled underneath my feet. I felt all my cards getting torn to shreds at the poker table, so there was no way I could win, I had no cards. I felt as if even my mannerisms were changing, I felt as if I was straight all of a sudden. I could no longer speak of desiring a boyfriend, because I couldn’t get one, I’m mono, at least I think I am, I have no interest in dating two people. I’ve slept plenty but I don’t want to be no man who settles with a woman. I understand the deep root of my biphobia, but at the same time I don’t feel like it’s who I trully am. I just feel like I’m sort of sexuality drag. Many of the classmates have no idea that I slept with men, it’s all in the distant past.”

“My parents never knew that I had slept with men when I was young and I hadn’t slept with a man in many, many years. I was devoted to my wife. I had loved her. But I speculated that I just swung that way, that the pendulum had swung and stuck. But I think that bisexuality is more complex than that.” The professor listens to me carefully and adds, cautiously his own expertise. “Maybe it’s a sleeping dragon, but it’s something one should embrace, not run away from.”

I don’t speak of my ex.

I don’t understand myself and how I can go mute on so many topics.

“I don’t want it.” I shrug, which is absurd because I have a girlfriend at this point and have had for a while. “If you want me to be honest.”

“Then break up with her.”

“Just like I can’t just figure out how to tie the right knot for a scarf to hang myself and do it, neither can I break up with someone who helps me with housework on those days when I can’t do anything. I tell myself that it’s the depression speaking. That there is nothing that is holding me from loving her back, but I just… don’t.”

“You should really leave her.” He emphasises.

“I don’t think it’s that simple and none of your choice, either.” It ends up being too snappy for either of our liking and I have my hands between my thighs and he just looks around, as if he’s the one in the room for the first time. “I think I should be addressing problems by choosing one and going with it. Like depression. It’s not like my girlfriend is making me that depressed. She still helps me around the house even if we can barely hold a conversation.”

It sounds worse by the minute and I don’t even know where I’m going with this.

“I just want to…” I close my mouth. “Keep going, somehow. I don’t even know why. It’s just like aimlessly wasting your summer holiday without resting and then the end of November crawls upon you or maybe even February with no Christmas decorations, yet the misery is there. It’s dark for my liking, some places have snow up to their necks and there is nothing positive.”

I hold a pause.

I don’t think there is anyone who could help me with my depression.

“Can I smoke?” I ask and he just nods away, as if pat my pockets just to kill time and eventually I light a cigarette and one for him, because I’m not keen on sharing this time. “The time is ticking and nothing is happening, life goes away and I can’t find how to rest or find a pause button, because others have made up the meaning of life for the rest of us.”

I keep talking.

“Sometimes I feel like all my lovers are a fragment of my imagination.” I chew on the tip of my cigarette before exhaling. “I should go.”

Maybe I’m the one toying with him. I’m not sure.

–

I had left the building without much more talk, maybe he was right and there was something about not giving advice to those you’re involved with. My year started awful, I couldn’t seem to recognize the new faces even after they had learned my name. I just felt even drier than a fish out of the water and I just stared at my Professor during his class, not even letting the second year of the subject even sink in. I just wanted everything to be over with. On the last day of summer when my girlfriend was out I ended up taking a knife and lightly tracing it over my skin, not leaving any cuts, because I was always paranoid about people seeing my self-harm scars. It wasn’t that I had even been yelled at because of them, when I had some, but they were hidden due to body hair. Nothing seemed to bring joy and neither could I open up to anyone, I didn’t know who would even find my story vaguely interesting to even analyze. I was just depressed, I didn’t want to be myself under any circumstance.

But I couldn’t split myself open, no matter how deep I had pressed my blade in my youth, because I had faith but now I don’t and I still can’t do it.

I didn’t approach the Professor after class, but I couldn’t help but wonder what was going through his own mind and how was his separation going. I never paid attention if he even had a wedding ring before, so seeing nothing now could only help me conclude that it was still happening. I thought of him, I thought of sex a lot and I was having less and less sex with my girlfriend. I even started wondering if she had started seeing someone on the side and once I had fallen asleep on the couch and she didn’t bother to wake me up or throw covers on top of me.

I wanted to leave, but I didn’t bother. Autumn was approaching and that’s when my brain started stirring once more about my ex. I had the confidence that she wouldn’t recognize me or know who I was, somehow. I always felt forgetable. There was nothing remarkable about me. I could even stare at a wall for a long while, waiting for a panic attack to pass. My hobbies were slipping through my thoughts, I felt empty and nothing seemed to bring joy.

Maybe that’s why I had sex with her so often.

I smoked outside, waiting for my girlfriend to make dinner, taking one cigarette after another and watching the new students party until there was no tomorrow to speak of. I remember in the beginning of the year that we could approach him about anything and it felt that it could’ve been about me. I wasn’t entirely sure. I couldn’t even bother to attend to events. I didn’t want to mingle, I didn’t want to study. I just frankly wanted some freak accident to happen and die off somehow, but then I even felt lazy to die. What if something beyond was even worse? I didn’t know where on the religious scale I was either.

I kept smoking.

“You said you were very sexually active.” It was as if my ex was whispering that into my ear once more. It was autumn. We had dated in autumn, well, she didn’t really want to jump the gun, yet we had plenty of sex and she would drag me everywhere like a trophy. I was just another gay guy in her collection. It was odd to think that so many trans people came from thinking they were gay as their assigned gender, only to discover they were straight or bisexual.

I felt like I needed to clear a demon off my chest.

She had raped me.

I had said no, that I wasn’t feeling it. But she still did it, I didn’t protest, I didn’t want to be alone. She was the first ever girlfriend, she had stirred something in me and now she was the reason that I didn’t want to be attracted to women at any cost. I didn’t orgasm and it had been a while for me to recall how long it had taken and who would’ve listened.

That autumn I had walked into the professor’s office.

I barely said anything, only than take off my backpack, place it on the chair next to me and state something that I hadn’t told anyone.

“My ex girlfriend forced me to have sex with her. I was raped. That’s why I don’t want to be attracted to women. I should’ve told you from the get go.” He just stared at me, opening his mouth a few times, before collecting his thoughts.

“What happened?” I ignored his question and stared at a framed painting behind him on the otherwise empty white walls.

“What happened?” He repeated the question once more.

I dissociated, but I told him everything I remembered.

“If an individual at any point says no or any of the sorts… It’s rape.” He admits and puts his hands together, looking deeply worried at me.

“Have you spoken to your girlfriend about this?”

I shrug.

“I have in very vague terms, but she said it was a gray area. I never uttered rape towards myself in life until recent.”

“What about friends?”

“I don’t like people knowing me.” I cross my legs and don’t exactly know where to put my hands. “I feel like I have many layers and no one really knows all of them. I don’t want those who think I’m gay to know that I have had two girlfriends already, those who think I’m straight… Let them think whatever they want. I’m a loner.”

I confess.

He just stares past me, trying to understand what to even say. It’s been too long to report and what would the point be? To harm another trans woman? To generalize a group which already has a lot of problems? I wasn’t sure. I was just another guy. Who the fuck would even care? No one cared about any sort of violence against men these days. No one believed it and the blame would be put on other men anyways, as if another guy had raped me when it was a woman and if there was some systematic oppression against men by men.

–

The worst was actually running into her. I knew that she had been denied HRT, that something was going on beyond everything I had known. She clung onto my arm, as if to ask for help but instead I looked at her with fish eyes. I could barely blink.

“Never speak to me again.” I had said and she let go of my hand, slowly and disappointed that her lies were something that weren’t needed anymore.

She had spent my head spinning. I ended up scrolling all the social media I could find, trying to understand what was it that she had wanted so long ago and nothing had made sense. I didn’t love her. I was enamoured early and she never reciprocated those feelings, raped me and that was that.

A burning fire was just made worse by every post I would see, I was throwing logs into the fireplace and eventually I was burning myself.

I said nothing to my girlfriend. They knew each other briefly, but my girlfriend knew what she had done, she had her own reservations and we kept it at such. Now, when we were so estranged there was no point in actually saying anything at all. We were gone.

I kept scrolling and all I saw was a broken person. A person who kept posting photos of themselves when they deemed themselves a good male, showing it off the world, which made me shiver. Maybe that’s why she was denied HRT. I mean, looking back I knew all the reasons, but nothing seemed to make sense. How she had found me, how she had grabbed my hand and let go without any apology. She never said sorry, I could see a confused person. I didn’t want to deal with any of it. I didn’t want to hear, I didn’t want to see her shaved or unshaven. I didn’t want to see more photos of her as she deemed a man, I looked at it, closed door in the bathroom and looking through fingers, shaking but no tears coming out.

The attraction was there.

No one speaks of how easily we forgive rapists, because we’re lonely.

But I wanted nothing.

I just wanted the void within me to be filled,

it so happened that I walked with umbrella in hand for no use to my Professor after not seeing him for a long while.

“Fuck me.” I said through gritted teeth. “Fuck me like you’ve never fucked before.”

It ached and I said nothing.

It was similar, but it was awakening.

I was feeling.

I was feeling pleasure.

I came from pure pain. I held onto the couch, since I didn’t even want to move further and he obeyed, it was as if he had understood everything. It was winter and it should’ve been snowing if we were in a different country and suddenly made me homesick in the pit of my stomach, but he kept fucking me until he spilled inside me, no condom and I didn’t care. Neither of us did and I was very well aware that he did regular checks with all the fucking he had been doing.

I just wanted to feel.

That night I came back, I didn’t bother to shower and laid down next to my girlfriend. She woke up and turned to face me.

She had sleeping with others as well. I assumed. She assumed. I knew. She knew.

But neither of us said anything, even if I smelled like someone else’s spunk.

Maybe that’s how dreams die. We close them, we turn pages over, we erase names and we get hurt.

–

I started writing this back in summer about my experience with one of my exes, trying to rinse it and bring attention that trans women do rape men. Women on men rape exists as well as people who are very confused by their own gender. I understand that this is a highly controversial story, but it is my story. I was raped and I want to finally speak of it, as a man.

My sexuality no longer feels like a burden and even if I have days where I struggle, it’s not as grave as the main character’s struggles. But it eased me, it let me breathe.

I stopped it there, vague and unknown, an ode to many things and a farewell to being a victim, as I had told the person to leave me alone after an encounter.