When It Happens | Travis Cravey

The trick is the timing. If you are smart, lucky, and brave, you tell her as soon as you know. There may still be time for you to pleasure her, to enjoy her enjoying you. You have to be smart enough to know the signs, lucky enough to notice them, and brave enough to admit it. But when you admit it is the real key. Are you brave enough to say it as soon as you know? Or will pride make you a coward and a fool, believing, somehow, you can still manage?

If you tell her quickly enough, you might avoid sounding pathetic, even as you feel utterly pathetic. You can smile and say “no matter” and maybe sound believable. You can look her in the eyes, smile, and have her still want you. But if you wait, wait until her words, her touch, her mouth cannot move you, then you look foolish. It will appear as if you have no control, incapable, that you have no power and cannot command your body to obey a most basic task.

You swing your legs off the bed, resting your elbows on your knees. You find some excuse. She was too aggressive. She didn’t seem into it. She didn’t make enough noise. She made too much. She called you a pet name in the heat of the moment that you found undesirable. Finally, of course, you let her off the hook. It wasn’t her, of course.

You are tired. Work has been brutal this week. It’s never happened before. I mean, seriously, never. Liar.

Are your excuses even for her? Maybe. Sort of. No. She doesn’t care. If she is kind and good and tender she pulls the sheets up, rolls towards you, puts her warm hand on the small of your back and comforts you. If not, she pulls the sheets up, reaches over to the night stand, and begins scrolling through her phone.

Sitting there, on the edge of the bed, elbows on your legs, trying to suss out meaning. Wondering what she will tell her friends, how they will laugh about it over drinks. “Oh my god it was sooo painful to watch!” Now, maybe, now you notice that your chest hair is turning grey. Had you noticed before? You knew the grey at your temples. The weird grey shapes that now appear in your beard. But had you noticed your chest? You remember now, sitting there, naked, on the edge of the bed, knowing she is laying naked, on the bed, near you, now you remember the first woman to call you ‘sir’.

You sigh, still weirdly, uselessly hopeful that some magic will happen, that your body will release some hidden, untapped reservoir of vitamins, of energy, of your vitality, and you will turn back around, roll over, and show her who you are. Who you have always imagined yourself to be. You will prove yourself still worthy, still strong, still a man.

But no. Eventually you will, mouse-like, scurry around the floor, looking for various pieces of clothing. You will say you need water, or a piss, or anything to get you out of the room, out of her sight. Away from this.

Travis Cravey is a maintenance man in Southeastern Pennsylvania. He is an editor @malarkeybooks and also editor at large @versezine. You can find him on Twitter a lot @TravisCravey. He seems pretty approachable.