‘Did you know nuns were this horny?’ Edan asks as we are both on our phones, sitting on either side of the couch, our feet touching. He turns his screen to show me a picture of a medieval drawing of a nun dressed in black, picking small penises from a tree as if they were apples. I move my body to the carpet in front of the couch and sit on the floor next to him. ‘Let me see it.’ I look at the picture up close, zoom in. ‘I don’t know if they were horny or just bored,’ I say. ‘I mean, they had to copy so many Biblical texts, I would get bored too.’
‘This one is actually drawn next to this chivalric tale called Romance of the Rose,’ Edan says. It is a beautiful drawing: the nun with her calm expression, carrying a basket full of dicks, picking them so confidently.
Edan and I too have a basket full of penises. They are mostly made of silicone, with the exception of one made of rose quartz. Last week we tried one out again, one that promises pleasure through air pressure, which means that, if wet, it sounds like using a punching iron in a pool of mud. The sound takes me out of it, in the way that many things will. Edan notices when this happens, which is when he recites an Elaine Kahn poem as if it were a safeword:
my wild mind
will not let me cum!
Whenever he does, we laugh; counter-acting getting into my head with getting into our heads, that old method.
But I do worry. Will I ever cum when Edan is around? When will he get bored of all this and leave? I have had an orgasm before, so I know I can do it. Like on that night I met some guy at a bar: we had to go up four sets of stairs to enter his attic apartment; books and papers were messily stacked upon each other, there was a piano, a white candle in a wine bottle. He pulled off the intellectual-bohemian-spiel quite well, which turned me on and off at the same time. We started making out, and when I pulled my tights down, he said: ‘Just so you know: I won’t fuck you until you cum. I just won’t do it.’ His statement held both a promise and a threat; and this was exactly what I needed to stop resisting my own indulgence.
In another situation that caused me to orgasm, I was out of town and had to sleep on someone’s couch for a week or so. My host and I got acquainted through a work thing, but while staying there it turned out I was quite attracted to him, yet too unsure to act upon it. It was so unclear to me whether it was a mutual attraction that I didn’t dare to pursue anything. Instead, I went to bed early each night, scrolling my phone, creating as much of a boring atmosphere as possible. On the very last evening together, he said: ‘The time I masturbate most often is the time when I am bored out of my mind.’ That night we both went to our separate beds, grabbed our phones, pretended to repeat our brief routines, knowing we were both masturbating. I had to cum as silently as possible. I heard him sigh in vibrato. I think of him too when I see this nun; bored by endlessly copying texts, bored by endlessly scrolling.
My memories do not often serve such a clear purpose, but it seems like the only way for me to maintain my arousal is to repeat these two stories in my head, over and over and over again. I can’t be distracted by touch, by someone else’s arousal, by fucking, even though, in the hierarchy of intimacy, returning back to my own mind and fantasy is considered less than getting there together.
After a careful consideration of the drawing, I pull Edan’s hand down. He puts away his phone. Moving out of my seated position, I slowly drop down on my back. ‘I’m bored too, you know …’ Edan turns to face me, and before he can get up I ask him to remain seated. I pull down my pants, move my right hand into my underwear. ‘Just stay there and tell me you won’t fuck me before I cum.’
Edan’s eyes widen. ‘I won’t fuck you until you reach that point,’ he promises.
I close my eyes. This time around I won’t get distracted. Edan’s role is clear, he is just watching, he can’t fuck me, but his anticipation of doing so gives me the confidence that he won’t be bored either. He won’t fuck me till I cum, he won’t fuck me till I cum, he looks at me over the edge of his phone, he sighs, he sighs, I am bored out of my mind, it’s just a work thing, he won’t fuck me though, it’s a routine, we’re in bed on our phones, it’s boring and therefore it works, it’s so boring that I can’t get distracted, I already am, he pulls down my tights, I have no control over it, he looks at me as if he’s full of good intentions, I won’t fuck you till you cum, I’m a good guy like that, he splits my lips open with his gaze, he wants to see me cum, how selfless, he wants to, he really wants me to cum, he wants to make me cum first thing tomorrow morning too, he gets nothing out of this, he is so hard because of this, I can see it tightening the fabric of his pants, he needs me to cum, he simply does, can’t resist, I pull my tights down, I move my underwear to the side, I’m scrolling, can’t resist, I’m copying …