The following contains mentions of oral sex, vaginal penetration, and also fascist governments and mental health.

---

Day 1

I have been so fucking exhausted lately.

Passed out drunk on Sunday after my country democratically elected a fascist whose dead dog gives him political advice. I wish that was hyperbole, and this was just another excursion into the vast territory of right wing governments, but things seem especially bleak. I’m sad, and scared. I keep thinking of the laws we passed years ago to try to give everyone a better quality of life: legalized gay marriage, legal changes of gender identity, access to abortion, non-binary IDs. It could all be lost so quickly, everything we spent generations fighting for.

I’m working at a queer arts event at night, so I wake up as late as possible. I hate admitting to people with morning routines that I don’t get out of bed until noon. Al que madruga dios lo ayuda, but god doesn’t seem too eager to help these days, and I need all the energy I can steal. My partner lives with me, but they get up earlier. They have a steady job, and seem less concerned than me about this whole mess. I mostly freelance, and have so many late nights it’s impossible to have a schedule. They bring me coffee in bed, and I think it’s been too long since the last time we had sex.

I could use the closeness of sex right now, the expression of love, to be immersed in the feeling that things might be all right, for a moment, at least. I also want to make them happy. Lately, all my conversations include dark jokes and hopeless sarcasm. I feel like a nuclear zone they are stuck in, slowly corroding our foundations with my grief and anger. I’m not feeling very sensual, and despite my best intentions I’m still dissociating a little from my body, stuck in my head, so I just say, “Would you like to have sex, now?”

They enthusiastically agree, and we have the kind of sex people who have been fucking each other for a decade have; it’s kind, it’s a little silly, it’s effective.

We kiss and I’m startled by the feeling, by my body responding to touch. They kiss my neck and I shiver. I get distracted looking out the window, wondering if some neighbor is staring at us. They fall off the bed while going down on me. We both laugh, I don’t come. I don’t mind it too much. They do, and they thank me, they tell me im beautiful, that they wish we fucked every day. I feel a twinge of guilt, and I hope we can do this more often.

I feel more grounded, more human. I shower, get my makeup done and go to work. It’s almost 4 am when I get back to the bedroom, and they are sound asleep.

Day 2

My partner and I have an open relationship. While we used to be really honest about things, when I met someone I actually liked, E, they decided they didnt want to know about it. I asked, should I lie to you?

“Yes.”

I find this awkward, and I hope we can talk about it sometime soon, but right now I’m overwhelmed by all the difficult conversations surrounding the political. To add the personal to our conversations feels like a sure way to disintegrate.

I have been seeing E intermittently for a few months. She’s a musician from my hometown, and we actually go back so long it’s strange to think about it. We moved in all the same circles, but I was always ahead. I left the friend groups before she got to them, then I moved to the capitol to get away from all it means to live in a small place where everyone has seen you fuck up for years. Some of my friends who stayed are okay. Some got twisted beyond recognition, drugs and boredom taking a toll.

E, whom I sometimes think of as my long-distance time-traveling girlfriend, is coming to the capitol to see a show. I agreed to see her before the show on Saturday, to spend Friday night together. When I leave the event I’m working on, I meet her at a bar. We have a couple of drinks, but I’m too tired to dance. We take a cab to her hotel.

The hotel is kind of hilarious. It’s an old love hotel, turned into a more regular rental, with breakfast included. We bump into some backpackers, grimy and tired, arriving to sleep, and some straight couples looking to rent for a couple of hours. The elevator has an ashtray, and the halls are lit so dimly I worry about tripping. The room service menu has a list of cheap dildos with pictures that look straight out of the 80’s. There is a hot tub in the middle of the purple room, but it’s so loud it blocks any kind of talk when we try to turn it on.

This room has so many mirrors. I love the big round one next to the bed. I stare at myself while E showers. I really like my face when I’m tired, the dark circles under my eyes, the last shadow of red lipstick after a long night talking, eating, and drinking. I look a little raw, a little like a stereotypical witch. I did not kiss anyone at the event, even if I had a few chances. I like the mental state of tiredness as well, bordering on anger.

I really, really like seeing her when I’m in this state. I feel powerful on nights like this. E. comes to bed from the shower, and tells me to take my clothes off. I do, staring at her face. I ask her what she wants, and she says she wants to fuck me, hard. I’m kneeling on the bed, and she gets behind me, facing the mirror. I can see my open chest, and my arms reaching around her, pulling her against me. I see her tattooed arms around me, and her hands, left one on my neck and right one reaching inside me. I look at her eyes in the mirror. At my own face. I can feel all of her body pushing against my back, her hips on my ass, her breasts on my shoulder blades, her mouth on the base of my neck. She covers my mouth as I come, moaning too loudly, and I bite her.

E pushes me on my back, and tells me she’s not done. She puts my leg on her shoulder and looks me in the eyes while she fucks me again, hard. I can feel her fingers deep inside me, and I hear myself begging her to go deeper, harder. I come again, and again, and she goes down on me for a while. She comes up and kisses me, and tells me she loves my taste. I tell her I love her, and then we get into the loudest hot tub ever, drowning the words in white noise.

Day 3

I wake up, first. I get really close and spoon E, and kiss her back while she yawns. She stretches like a cat, and I bite her side while I slide my arms to her breasts. I’m wide awake today, and I want her to know how much I want her.

I push her face down on the bed and climb on top of her. I pull her short hair up, and kiss and bite her neck until I know it will bruise. I want to leave a mark, I can be a brat like that. My leg is between hers, and I can feel her getting wet. I move my hips against her ass, and slide a finger inside her, then another. Her body always impresses me, the way it overrides her mind when it comes to pleasure. With her eyes closed, she moves her hips and spreads her legs, her cunt grinding against my hand, and I stop fucking her and tease her clit. She moans harder. I hold her tightly from behind, kissing her shoulders. I wish I had more arms, like a goddess. She’s actually a reserved top type, so the fact that she’d let herself get carried away like this just makes me happy. I feel trusted.

I beg her to sit on my face, and she obliges. As I lay on my back E straddles me, slowly teasing her way to my mouth. She’s the most amazing sight. I put my tongue as far inside her as I can, I taste her, and I lick slowly up to her clit. I grab her ass and pull her into my mouth, sucking and teasing her with my tongue until I feel her dripping on my chin. It turns me on so much I could come without her even touching me, but she does it anyway. She bends her back to touch me. Her fingers trace perfect circles on my clit. I listen to her breath getting deeper, faster, starting to moan. I can’t stop myself with her. I just come loudly, with her sitting on my face. I basically scream into her, my lips and tongue pressed as hard as possible to her cunt. We come at exactly the same time. She is the only person with whom this happens to me on a regular basis.

The hotel desk calls to ask us to leave the room. She has a show to go to, and I have a home to return to, disheveled but happy. We make plans for the next day.

Day 4

E and I meet.
I hold her hand at the cafe.
She wants to kiss me.
I kiss her, lightly.
She wants to make out.
She wants more.
I know she wants more.
I hate that I want more, too.
I wish so desperately to please her, to kiss her, to make out, to go back to that corny weird hotel and fuck her until she forgets she wants more.
Until I feel I am enough.
Until I can think it’s just going to work out.
I tell her no.
I try so hard to make a conversation that is not a mess. To keep something good afloat. To soothe her worries. I fail.

Day 5

I’m still up at 3am, staring at E’s picture on my phone. She broke up with me over text, on her bus ride back home. It’s not final, I guess, but maybe it should be. While I try to hold on she’s trying to move on. I should probably let her.
I don’t want to cry or get up because my partner has to work early in the morning. Love can mean just this. Thinking of the future and trying so hard to be okay about everything. Mañana será otro día.

***I slept about four hours and decided to bury myself in work. I have a tonne of things to catch up with, but I really don’t feel like I can do them well at all.

I feel physically incapable of pleasure today, but in my dreams I fucked a friend. We were in his bed, and looking up at the ceiling we saw some kind of mystic moths, beautiful creatures in stark black and white. Air and light were so bright it hurt to look at them. They flew like fish swim, so softly and effortlessly, spinning and dancing with each other. My friend was afraid of them, so in my dream I decided we should leave the house, leave the moths, and go fuck in a gas station restroom. What can I say? My brain likes to keep it classy. The restroom was dark, and kind of open and windy, and the sex started with me on my knees, but it soon turned into the type of dream sex when you forget your human form and just melt into each other.

When I woke up I texted him about the dream, but only the part about the moths.

Day 6

I get up early for my standards because I have therapy at 11. I get home and have lunch with my partner. We make some small talk, chat about money, and spend some time quietly chewing. Life unfolds.

By 6 pm I’m leaving to train and I get a few texts from E. I don’t open them, and focus on my body. I’m trying to get stronger, to jump higher, to be more flexible. I’m doing well. I’m reminded that pleasure and pain are forever linked, and that the body responds to both. My body responds.

To have a body, to be a body. Who knows. With an endorphin rush everything seems easier, so when I’m coming back home I write back. I tell her I love fucking her, and I dont want to stop doing it, ever. I know it’s cold, but I try to keep it realistic. She wants time to think, I can give her that.

Day 7

I’m alone all day.

I take a shower and feel pleasantly sore. While the water hits me I keep thinking about a moment, at the hotel, after fucking, and before fucking, when I was lying on my stomach, with my head hanging off the bed. E sat on the floor, kissing my neck ever so softly. She kissed all the way down my spine, and I felt like an instrument, a string she was pulsing, vibrating in her hands. It was such an amazing feeling. In such a quiet moment, I wasn’t sure if it was night or morning. It could have been a dream, but later I ask her about it, and she remembers it the same way.