Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
For you - 7. Chapter 7
The waiter brought the receipt. He was around our age, and I’d lie if I said, I hadn’t noticed that he looked hot. But what does it mean when you look at someone, and you like what you see? What do other people think at that moment? Does “hot” mean, you would like to have sex with them? Is it weird that I would be fine with just looking at them? Why is sex even that important to many, even if a fair amount of them would deny it?
I handed the waiter my credit card, and while he disappeared with it, I glanced over to the restrooms where Rhys had headed a minute ago. Since he was not back yet, I grabbed my phone from my pocket and tried to find the meme I was thinking about the other night. It took me a while, but I was finally successful. The user who posted it was gay, like me, and also seemed to be very political. I scrolled down his feed. Then, I stopped as I saw a picture of a flag with a black, a gray, a white, and a purple horizontal stripe, and the text “Happy Asexual Awareness Week/Ace Week!”. I scrolled a little further and encountered a retweet of another “expectation vs reality” picture, this time showing a kiss from Heartstopper on the left and a grindr chat message, reading “Can we have a phone wank now please”. I mean, there was a certain truth to this, wasn’t it?
“I’m only gone for five minutes, and you are already looking for a replacement on Grindr,” Rhys teased me.
No way, he could have seen my phone’s screen from where he was standing.
“Was I that bad?” he added.
“I thought, a little competition would ensure upholding its high quality,” I replied, sticking out my tongue.
“Oh, quality of our sexual services and pleasure of our customers is our primary principle,” he responded, pretending to be a businessman of sorts.
The waiter returned with my credit card. When he was gone again, Rhys remarked: “He looks good, doesn’t he?”
“I noticed that as well.”
“I didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. You look alright, too.”
“Thanks,” I laughed, not sure if that was a compliment or an insult—knowing Rhys, it might just as well been both.
We got up and left.
“You know, I so gonna eat your ass tonight,” Rhys said, looking in my direction, almost piercing me.
“You better be,” I said, sending back an equally piercing stare, before I cracked a smile.
“You have been warned.”
Was that how relationships worked? Was everything about sex, even though, you don’t even have sex at that moment? How had such an activity among countless others become that important, that unique, that central? Would every evening be like this from now on? I did nearly anything as often as this, except for work, perhaps. But this was different. Or was it? Sure, there were people who got paid for this, paid to pretend to like it. Just like I pretended. There, I said it. Pretended. Never heard it as clear as that before. But only ugly men bought sex, right? But Rhys was everything but ugly. And he didn’t pay me—so that didn’t count. But was it really that different? Wasn’t pretending dishonest? Should I tell him? But I didn’t want to make him feel bad, make him think, he was the problem. I didn’t even have a term for that. Asexual—that’s what it was supposed to be called, right? But was I asexual? Could I picture myself this way? I mean, I wasn’t sorta dysfunctional? I mean, everyone did it. I also liked porn and jerking off. So could I really be asexual? And I liked men. That would be a contradiction, wouldn’t it?
- 8
- 3
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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