"THE END OF THE WORLD" Dec. '22

This is a story I wrote that I performed at my first ever reading in LA right after my first semester of college ended. It's about trying to lose my virginity. Here it is, right as I left it.

DECEMBER 2022

Logan put the idea in my head about you at the dining hall, only nine days before the end of the world. He choked down two slices of pizza and a mug of black coffee, Georgia sitting next to him picking at fries and hitting a Lychee Ice vape through the sleeve of her sweater. “You should fuck him”, he said. I laughed, dismissively. “Seriously. It would be so cute. You guys are perfect for each other. He’s like, autistic.” “And he’s a virgin, too,” Georgia chimed in. “It’s, like, gross, but it’s perfect. There’s nothing wrong with banging inside the friend group.” I stared at Logan and Georgia from across our booth. The two of them were fucking and nobody but me knew it. One would Snapchat the other “SEX?”, she’d hit her crotch with a baby wipe while he’d do nothing to his, and she’d head down the elevator to his room for two to ten minutes of completely wordless missionary. She was head over heels for him, he felt nothing, and they kept the secret wound tightly between themselves. It was a nightmarish arrangement but I found myself feeling pangs of jealousy. The way she could so effortlessly keep up the appearance of not caring… I saw myself as a bleeding open wound. Her ostensible callousness and covertness in his presence was awe-spiring and enviable. I have never had a single secret in my whole life; there is nothing about me that at least three people don’t know. I also desperately wanted to check sex off of my milestone list, one that had cocaine down before it did a blowjob. The dossier of my sexual and romantic failures was ever-expanding, but I knew yours was too. You were always complaining about some chick being mad at you or sucking up too much of your time or wanting attention that you couldn’t give. You’d been showing up to group hangs decked out in hickeys, with a different sized mouth imprinting upon you every three weeks. When pressed about it you’d roll your eyes and scoff, only ever bringing it back up to ask Georgia for a frozen spoon or a pump of her foundation. I could tell how much you secretly loved showing off, because the only real reason any guy in the group actually hooked up with anyone was for bragging rights and the friendly war you waged against one another. It was all so performative and jejune, but your begrudged exhibitionism and seamless ability to oscillate between shame and pride made you somehow more human than Logan, who would bang Georgia in secret and boast about his other conquests in front of her face, or Jay, who did a drunken session of rape role-play in the common room with a lisp-afflicted theatre major. I took a breath. Your face crossed my mind, and crossed it and crossed it and crossed it. I acquiesced. “Will you ask him about me?” 

That night I fell asleep to an intrusive and unceasing vision of you behind me, on top of me, in me… The people in my dreams usually start to evaporate when things get hot, their hands and breasts and dicks fading into dust until everything is black and I’m awake again. This time, though, I saw everything all the way through. 

On December 9th at 10:43 AM I tweeted, “busy committing violent and heinous acts of friendcest”.

I lured you downstairs under the guise of a late night smoke. I feigned casualness as you greeted me in the lobby, even though I was powerwashing my asshole in the dorm shower with enough rigor to rip me a new one only twenty minutes prior. You said the heavyset girl from the ninth floor you’d been kissing was starting to bore you, and that she was too good and “together” of a person to deserve your mess. Like always, this devolved into your usual bitching and moaning about how none of the girls you see are interesting or funny enough to be worthy of having sex with, and how you wished you could fuck somebody like a girlfriend but talk to her like one of the homies. I sat whorishly close to you in the park, shivering theatrically in between drags of a Marlboro Red. I fed you puffs of it and let my fingers hover by your lips longer and more closely than I would have under normal circumstances, but tonight I was a woman on a mission… seeds were to be planted so a bomb could thusly be dropped. I don’t quite remember how, but I managed to slip it into our conversation during a moment where it was apt and even elegant, which I thanked God for. I would’ve just kept on smoking and smoking to prevent myself from exclaiming “WHAT IF YOU AND I BUMPED UGLIES JUST TO TRY IT OUT” across the Boston Common, but our natural chemistry and wit carried the dialogue where it needed to go. “Ivy…” you said slowly, trepidatiously. My face glowed red. I turned my head toward the train station. “If you can’t proposition a friend, what is there to do?” There was a pregnant pause. “I think it’s a good idea. Yeah. I think we should.” You made it clear that nothing was to be done until ninth floor girl was out of the way, and that I was the better choice for a first time than any of the retards and whores that you could’ve fucked by now but couldn’t bring yourself to. Nothing gets me off like the thought of being the exception, especially when the rule is an inability to get it up for anybody but me. “Wait…”, you said. “Are we like… having sex… tonight? Because I’m not ready. I need a bong rip.” We went upstairs and sat on your bed discussing all the things we would and wouldn’t do. No butthole stuff for either of us, no slapping, no choking, and I made it clear that I don’t suck dick because that’s gross and I’m not in love. You’d go down on me “if you were so obliged” but most likely not since I won’t do you first. You also took a firm stance against fingering because that much direct contact with a vagina was scary. “So… we’re just gonna bang, then?”, I asked. “Well, we’ll kiss too. Making out and stuff,” you retorted. “Right. Right. I um… I can’t promise you that I’ll cum or anything. If you expected that.” “I might not either,” you said. “Sometimes I prefer not to. It’s everything leading up to it that actually feels good. That gray, in-between space is the most interesting to me.” Interesting was a strange operative word here, one that somehow did enough legwork to convince me that you were enough of a thinker or an intellectual to be worth getting into bed with. So it was decided: neither of us would be cumming and there wouldn’t be much touching but sometime this week we had to pork like our lives depended on it.  

On December 9th at 11:20 PM I tweeted, “Entering one’s first ever tentatively sexual entanglement is actually just as strenuous and harrying as fighting in the Vietnam War”. 

The anticipation of what we were embarking upon plagued my guts all week. I wasn’t eating at all but found myself having constant diarrhea, probably due to anxiety, compulsive smoking, and withdrawals from the anti-depressants that I abruptly pulled myself off of to bring some semblance of lubrication back to my vaginal canal. I left you two of my latex-free condoms to try on because you insisted that they may not fit and we would need to be prepared, but every day we saw each other they were still sitting on your desk unopened. You showed up at my door one night around three AM, threw your jacket and keys down, and laid on top of my comforter fully clothed. We watched Louie on my laptop in silence, until you tried to slowly walk two fingers down my arm to hold my hand and I called you a gaylord. I shut the laptop and we fell into each other on the bed, suddenly making the most physical contact we ever had since becoming friends. I don’t even think I’d hugged you before this, because we were homeboys and I was just some guy except now I was a woman and you were a man and we were going to be inside of each other and stuff. I was pressed against the wall, with your left leg coiled around my right like a python. One of my arms was pinned under me, the other stretching above my head towards the suicide-proof window. Yours were crossed over your chest, with my head fitting in the space between your neck and shoulder like it was carved just for me to fill it. A twin XL mattress is not conducive to comfort between two differently sized people trying to get acquainted with each other’s bodies, but like the undergrads who came before us we made do. We held each other like this for hours, talking about our absent fathers, your domineering mother, and how next semester we were going to do more open mics around the city. I laughed into your mouth as we kissed, trying desperately to keep up the speed and voracity with which you moved your tongue. It felt like I was scarfing down an earthworm, and to make matters worse our teeth kept clinking and scraping against each other creating an utterly unerotic sensorial nightmare. “Stop, stop,” I said. “Our teeth keep touching.” “No, those are your own teeth that you’re feeling. You’re just feeling your own teeth in your mouth.” “That doesn’t make any fucking sense at all.” I rolled over onto my back. “We’ll get better at it.” Silence crept in again. “Sometimes I wish it all stopped at kissing,” you muttered, and then drifted off to sleep. 

On December 10th at 9:44 AM I tweeted “this dude tried to hold my hand and said boyyy stop being gay oh my god I have issues.”

I didn’t see or hear from you until halfway through the next day. The readier I felt the more you pulled away and avoided me, and there was no trace of you in the seventh floor halls you’d normally stalk. You had only texted to tell me that Logan told the entire group about our budding tryst, which made me feel like I was going to hurl. You didn’t understand that I could see my own naked body in every one of our shithead friends’ imaginations. I knew that Jay or Marco or Qiang were imagining me with your dick in my mouth, me thrusting against you, me bent over and moaning. Yours was just the body through which they’d experience the fantasy, the shared eyes through which they’d watch me writhe and the shared hands through which they’d grab at my breasts. Our friends, while big dumb angels, were also a porn-addled and carnally motivated bunch who looked at things from angles you were admittedly too scared to. That night we all stood in a row at the back of the black box for two and a half grueling hours because Jesse was the male lead in a student directed production of Heathers: The Musical and needed applause from someone other than our school’s doting cabal of demonic theatre twinks. I felt like everybody could see right through my clothes, but you didn’t even give me so much as a glance. I waited for you to rattle off a snide comment about the choreography and look to me desperately for approval, but all I got was nothing. The musical numbers droned on, saccharine and sweaty. Every clap reverberated through my body like I was in a bell tower. I wanted you to see me. You wouldn’t. 

On December 11th at 12:50 AM I tweeted, “sneaky link neglect literally feels like being a dog left in a hot car”

I awoke to a knock at the door. You came in wordlessly, took your shoes off, tossed your jacket and keys across the floor, and crawled into the bed next to me. You shut your eyes like nothing… like you were coming home after a long day.  I asked where you’d been. “We got too high again.” 

On December 11th at 3:30 AM I followed up my last tweet with “nevermind he just smoked too much kief and passed out in the common room”

You never would have known it but I touched myself in the bed next to you while you slept. I was overwhelmed and wanted you to do it for me but I didn't know how to ask and you had passed out so quickly that I figured I'd leave you be. I don't think you would have said yes anyway. You would’ve still been scared or apprehensive and nothing kills the mood quite like feeling rapey. I even stopped going at it before I came because that would’ve made me feel even worse and weirder than doing it in the first place did. it was kind of funny, you conked out next to me with my hand down my boxers… I felt gross and crazy but found myself smiling slyly into the pillow anyway (I was on my stomach, like I always am when I do this; you were on your back). I just wasn’t sure where else to put all of the energy and heat I was feeling, so I went to the only place I’d ever been allowed to try. I imagined it was your hand under mine, me guiding you with my eyes closed, our disparate and disjointed breaths being the evening’s only score. There were no words in this particular fantasy even though dialogue always seems to do it for me. I think it’s because the two of us talk like brothers and I couldn't fathom breaking that pattern when so many others had already been smashed to pieces and chucked out the window. trying to get myself off in that bed was something of a premonition maybe, like I subconsciously knew that you’d never be able to bring yourself to do the work for (or even with) me. That streak of defiance you gripped onto for dear life made you such a tease. I roll my eyes thinking about what you would’ve said if you’d awoken to me without my shirt on. I sweat quite a lot that night but keeping clothed was the better choice in the end to circumvent a spike in your already palpable anxiety. The next morning I slinked over the foot of my bed and stepped right into the hamper to avoid waking you up. I brushed my teeth down the hall, took photos of you from across the room to send to Georgia, and changed quickly out of my damp clothes behind the closet door. It was nearing 10 am and you had to record your radio show with the 33 year old Caribbean immigrant freshman in our comedy history class, so I shook you awake and sent you packing. I tuned in to your broadcast later and you misquoted a point I had made a few nights ago about some bullshit as if it was your own idea. “Yeah, well, Los Angeles is more nouveau riche while New York is where the old money lives… you know, the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Epsteins…” 

The next night I took you and Georgia to a party in East Boston after the snow melted. Four shots of Bacardi chased with a bottle of Gatorade and a sleeve of starburst had me like a heat seeking missile. There was enough red 40 dye in my system for an autopsy tech to think I died of internal bleeding. I kissed you quick in the hallway while Georgia thumped back to her room for another cup of day-glo pink vodka, and my eagerness seemed to scare you. You stood far away from me in the packed subway car, solemn and quiet. You were revealed in pieces as elbows and arms and heads turned and twisted away and back in again. We got off at the airport where Georgia and I collapsed into a fit of giggles, with you stomping intently ahead. “I’m in love with Logan. Like I’m fucking in love with him and it’s so bad. Don’t tell him though,” she pleaded with you. “Yeah, babe,” I called after you. “Don’t tell him!” She and I erupted into laughter again, our breath materializing in icy white clouds. I hung off of you as much as you’d let me that night. My arms around your neck, holding your hand, a head against your chest. You’d disappear into the crowd with the blink of an eye, but the lone man in a sea of metrosexual nonbinary theatre students cannot hide for long from the woman who wants him. I fed you cigarettes on the patio and squeezed your thigh like I owned it. My breath reeked of liquor, menthol, and starvation, but I was ready to have you anywhere, anytime, any way. 

On December 12th at 1:26 AM I tweeted, “I effing love Bacardi yaaaaasssss”

I stumbled into your room later while Georgia was down the hall trying to coax Logan away from Call of Duty. I sat on your roommate’s bed and watched you frantically fold laundry and adjust your posters to avoid catching my eyes. “You kiss too fast”, I said, breaking the silence. “Everybody I’ve ever kissed says I’m a good kisser. I was trying to keep up with you.” I hopped off the bed and pulled your head towards mine, copying every move you’d make as you made it. We sucked on each other so hard that all of our skin could’ve peeled off into the other person’s mouth, like a satin cover being ripped off a new sportscar. That was the first time I’d ever kissed the same person on two separate occasions. There were suddenly three loud knocks at the door. I wiped your spit off of my chin and waddled over to let Georgia inside. “Let’s go to 7/11”, she said.

We drunkenly padded down the block, you leading the trio yet again. Georgia gripped my arm to steady herself. “Two minutes. He lasted two fucking minutes. He puts me up against the sink in the gender neutral bathroom, my bare ass is getting soaking fucking wet, and he cums in two minutes. I asked him to go again and he said he wanted to finish the fucking game. I’m going to kill myself.” I watched you stalk the aisles, picking up a candy bar here and a bag of chips there. It was an impressive haul, topped off with a pint of ice cream that was to be eaten in its entirety on our walk home despite the forty degree wind chill sweeping Boston off its feet. I zeroed in on your hands and fingers as you slapped a $20 on the counter, and suddenly the din of Georgia’s whining and the hum of the freezers fell away. I needed you something awful… I could feel my blood coagulating and my bones buzzing under my skin. South Park was on the common room TV, like always. I watched you inhale three of Qiang’s mozzarella sticks, an entire sleeve of pringles, and a bag of Sweet Tarts in the span of fifteen minutes, getting up only to rip the Bart Simpson bong in your room down the hall. You were like a racoon, or one of those 700 pound people on the TLC shows I’m always watching. 

On December 12th at 3:14 AM I tweeted, “I wish he had manorexia. Watching him eat mozzarella sticks and I’m thinking about cutting myself”

I tried to spark up a conversation. Against my better judgment I still wanted you terribly. Georgia and I had been whispering all night about our voracious and unquellable sex drives, but I felt sick with envy that she even got two minutes of Logan’s time. I shot you a shocking text that read, “how you finna eat my pussy when you got a mouth full of mozarella stick bruh”. You looked up at me and scowled like I just called in a bomb threat. I walked away from the sofa, praying you would follow me, but five minutes went by and I was alone in the kitchen with a gaggle of Chinese international students cooking a fish in the communal microwave. When I came back to the common room, everyone was gone and you had passed out in another fucking kief-induced munchie coma, covered in crumbs and leaking sweat like a water-logged corpse. This had been happening with the entire group at a grating frequency since you all started buying from the guy who lived above the Dunkin Donuts on Stuart Street. He called himself Lucky and Georgia was famously dead-set on fucking him one day. He had an Irish Catholic’s face and body, a Mexican guy’s haircut, and a Black guy’s clothes and voice. None of you weak fucks could handle his weed, and it had the entire squad bed-bound by 10 pm every night that week. Now it was impeding upon my end of semester goal, as it had rendered the only man in my entire life who’d ever agreed to have sex with me completely disabled. I took 15 photos of your body from different angles around the room, and texted them to you with the message, “come over when you wake up”. Your phone vibrated on your chest but it wasn’t enough to stir you. I got in bed and jerked off angrily to a Twitter video of a woman in leather calling a man fat until I fell asleep. You never showed up. 

Another two days went by where I didn’t see or hear from you. Logan said you’d retreat to your room if you found out I was coming, and you staggered your nightly cigarette break so it wouldn’t coincide with mine. You didn’t show up to my sketch show where I was topless in a fishnet bodysuit bumping and grinding against my gay castmate, which you had previously told me would give you a boner for sure. I called and texted to no avail, but you finally picked up on Georgia’s phone and sounded pissed when it was my voice that rang out from the other end. You were incoherently high, saying a million things and yet not a single cogent point was made. The only understandable point made in the end was that you needed exactly 48 more hours to decide whether or not you wanted to have sex with me. “Are you not attracted to me or something?” I asked, jaggedly. “No, no. I am. But that’s not part of it.” You hung up abruptly. “He’s such a pussy!” Georgia said, through a boisterous exhale of vape smoke. “Yeah,” I said. “But who else do I have?”

On December 14th at 8:09 PM I tweeted, “sneaky link doing some olympic level obfuscation over the phone right now and I feel like I’m growing a fucking brain tumor”

Two nights later you showed up at my door, disheveled and hollow. You were too high to open your eyes but tears were streaming down your face. You couldn’t even look at me. “I can’t do it. I literally can’t do it.”, you said. “I just need to like, climb a mountain and do a shit ton of shrooms and experience ego death or something. I don’t know. But I can’t have sex.” You said that the only reason you dated girls in the first place was because you’d inevitably disappoint them and you’d use their anger to validate all the bad things you thought about yourself. You liked getting girls to want you, even though you had no interest in them or their lives or their bodies. You didn’t know why you were like this, why you were so scared, and you said you didn’t want to ever find out. The tears stopped after about a half hour. We sat on my bed in silence. “I forgot to tell you that that fucking slut Lana in my sketch class totally sabotaged the final project. I didn’t get any good jokes in because she thought she was fucking funny or smart enough to carry it on her own. Just because she’s fuckin’ hot, you know?” “Yeah. That sucks. I’ll uh… I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow, okay?” “Okay.” I opened the door and watched you disappear down the hall, your shaved head glistening under the fluorescent lights. 

On December 16th at 11 pm I tweeted “Virginity stays intact another day.”

The blood in my brain still floods downward when I think of you. The space left up there is replaced with feelings of exasperation and resentment, though against my better judgment I am physically on fire. I thrust my hips into my own hand like always, but my mattress will never again sink under your weight.  You told me last week that after break you’ll be ready. I can’t even bring myself to care.