The men I have been sleeping with show up at my apartment. Steady Man walks up my outdoor stairs with an armful of hangers. “I know you,” he says. “I know you need these pink plastic hangers. Your clothes are everywhere, and I’m here to help.” Manic Man follows shortly thereafter, his shirt unbuttoned to a fault, letting his arms wave around freely. “But wait,” he says. “But wait.” He doesn’t believe in verbal communication. Just touch. Gripping, beastly touch.
“We want to love you,” they say.
I don’t know how I am going to break the news to them, that I am now capable of asexual reproduction – parthenogenesis, fragmentation, collecting my eggs in homemade sample cups and seeing them bubble to life and breathe on their own – and no longer need their services.
The day I slept with Steady Man and Manic Man separately, in one afternoon, my vagina closed. A layer of taut skin grew over it and was numb to the touch. At first I was upset, then baffled, then miffed, then perfect. It only opens to release the eggs, and I’m fine with that.
Without the burden of a sensory hot spot, I am able to think clearly. I am able to forgive and accept. It doesn’t matter that Manic Man stole my bed sheets because he didn’t want me to wash our sex from them, or that he slept with my fifty-year-old crotchety neighbor to remind himself that I was young and good. It was perfectly all right that Steady Man organized my books in reverse alphabetical order and made me a list of life goals that he knew I would find important, like making sure to air out my running shoes, and waking before dawn to not miss any moment of any day.
“Look,” I tell them, “I just don’t need either of you at all. Not at all.”