Day 1

Once, someone said: you would play with your heart like badminton, if you had one.

I’ve redownloaded the apps. By redownload, I mean shamefully start a brand new profile. I have never been a “take a break” or “hide account” type of girl. Woman. Whatever. My only option is to scorch the earth. It always has been.

I select mostly pictures of my face where my eyelids are slightly lowered and my mouth is slightly open. I was an ugly child, and am not quite a beautiful adult, but I know the effect it has. Especially on men, who my attraction to, as ever, is weak and undulating, for the most part. Especially in the beginning. In bed, it is always too easy to please. To let myself, at least physically, be pleased. I’ve always orgasmed easily, often in multiplicity, yet in this very last sex I had, my reason for redownloading the apps, I never came. Not once.

I gave it four times. Four attempts. In my younger years there was never even a second try, were the first bad. And I had not, until that point, had any bad sex. Even the worst time I came twice, the second time by my own hand, because I sent him out of the room. Howl for me like a dog, I said. And he did.

I’m worried this is overselling my sexual attachment, no, sexual experience, with men. Allow me to rectify that.

Day 2

A very few times in my life, for very few men, desire has flared in my gut like a dying star. Perhaps for only one man, but that is another story, and is so tangible to me even now that I shudder.

So this man, he is not the man, but he is blue-eyed, heavily bearded, and large. I can tell this just from his profile on the app I call “the threesome app,” but that is mostly populated by freaks, this southern state’s attempt at poly tenderqueers, and older single men (see: freaks). But this man, he seems fairly normal, and he has liked my profile, and so I think, as I often do, why not?

The night we match, I have just gotten back from a date with a slightly older married woman at the zoo. I have had two very weak drinks and a lackluster kiss and she texts me that I have forgotten my favorite water bottle in her car, and I briefly mourn the water bottle more than I mourn that she is, fundamentally, very nice, but incredibly boring.

He, too, seems incredibly boring, though he is ten years my senior, a point in his favor. Another point: his wife is dark haired, fat, and blue eyed, thirteen years older than me. I like the way her pink mouth draws my attention in all her photos. He asks if I would be willing to communicate through Snapchat, a group chat of sorts.

I am almost thirty, I think to say, but don’t.

Sure, I say. I’ll make one tomorrow.

I set my alarms for the morning and roll over onto my stomach. I’m already wet.

Just once, I think, one of my own teasing fingers circling my clit, to take the edge off.

Day 3

We decide to meet at a bar that I know because I have been on a date there. Last time, I had one drink with a peach ring inside. This time, they forget the peach ring, but I have several. This makes me loose and flushed. That afternoon I had placed a Target pickup order for condoms, wine, lube, and a new pack of pens — the ones I prefer at my boring day job, jotting numbers and figures on a company notepad. Never fuck on the first date, someone says in my mind, perhaps a character from Sex and the City. I put my hand on his knee while she’s in the bathroom. Not sneakily, for before she left she said, you should flirt while I’m gone. I say, you look very nice tonight. His cheeks are red. I know that what they desire most is a threesome. And I know I can give it to them.

He says nothing, nervous, but interested. I smile, tilt my head and say: now you give me a compliment.

His wife comes back before he can. I tell her everything. All we do is kiss that night, but they send me a picture later of him on his knees, her ass in the air, his thick arms wrapped around her, keeping her anchored to his mouth. They say, goodnight sweet little baby princess.

Goodnight.

Day 4

The night I lose my virginity goes like this: There is a field and a full moon and a quilt, laid out on soft grass. The man that eclipses all others gives me a sweet kiss. Then he touches me in ways that no one has ever touched me before. My nipples between his teeth, in his mouth. His finger inside of me, then several of his fingers inside of me. I have heard that this is supposed to hurt, this initial adventure, but nothing does. I can’t stop making wounded little sounds anyway. Oh baby, he says. Oh baby. That’s it honey, just come, just come. And I do, whining and wet, so easily it surprises me. Oh fuck, he says. That’s so hot. I want you to do that on my cock, can you do that, baby? Can you come on my cock so sweet, just like that?

He arranges me on my hands and knees, bare in the countryside, no one around for miles. Even if there were, I would perhaps let him still do this, fuck me huge and a little hurting, like he owns me. Snug inside me, carving his way through a place I thought might remain untouched until my wedding night, to a man I had to marry or be thought a spinster.

Oh god, I moan. Oh god. I can’t, I can’t. It’s too much. It feels too good. You’re right there.

You can, he says. You will.

And I do.

Day 5

After the man that eclipses all others, there is mostly women, who I find it easy to be attracted to, easy to fuck.

This is, perhaps, the reason I find myself here, the man from the threesome app’s wife’s tits pressed against my back while she kisses my neck, pinning me against the counter. I have simply leaned over to fetch my wine, frozen fruit floating inside. It is that shift, that movement of my body, that unlocks something within them. She grinds her cunt against my ass, and I know it must be doing nothing for her, but she moans like she’s fucking me raw and nasty, and I let myself be handled in this way. Her husband watches us, dick already hard in his stupid cargo shorts, grabbing himself like he just can’t help it. Like he, too, just needs to take the edge off.

His wife slips the hand not gripping my hip into my tennis skirt. She strokes her thumb over the wet spot present on my underwear. Then, before I know it, my skirt is down, and she slaps my pussy so hard I know I must be pink, if not red. I choke on a moan. I can feel her smile against my neck.

Then, she kicks my legs apart and he leans in, shouldering my stance even further, giving me one long lick, then nestling himself close to suck on my clit, gentle and sweet if not for fingers gripping my thigh, a warning to stay still.

I wiggle a bit, just to see what happens. He looks at me. It is the first time I can recall him looking me in the eye. Are you a good girl? he asks. Or a bad one?

I just laugh.

Day 6

Daddy, I scream into the pillow. Daddy.

She has my hips hoisted up for the angle. One would think that it was for her pleasure only. On every second thrust my cunt feels like it may release a flood. I am electrified, my clit pulsing, my body a vessel for pleasure. You were made to be fucked, she says. Yes, I say. Yes. Fuck me, please, fuck me.

Her husband watches us, hand on his huge cock. He watches the place where we are connected especially, my cunt stretched wide to accommodate his wife. If I needed prep for her dildo, I certainly will for what he’s packing, not just girthy but long, too, and angled just right. It is, for what he is, simply a man, almost beautiful.

Next time, she says, next time he’s going to fuck you. I won’t be able to take it, I whimper. Playing it up, yes, but also fearful, the kind of fear that goes straight to my cunt, that always has.

She leans over and bites my shoulder. You can, she says. You will.

Day 7

It starts with a massage. Once, someone said: You date people my age because we are old enough to spoil you a little but not old enough to be unfuckable.

Am I so transparent? I asked, mimosa in hand, one I didn’t pay for.

And they only smiled.

In the present, I lay on my front while he glides his hands up and down my back, over my ass, across my calves. I am face first in his wife’s cunt, my tongue in her hole, my nose nudging her clit. We are alike in that we can come from a variety of stimulation, including penetration alone, but eventually I relent and circle the spot she has been guiding me to with wide, messy licks. She has her hand tight in my hair. Oh baby, she says. Right there. Right there. When she comes, it is like warm honey.

Her husband has worked two fingers into my ass and is panting like he is the one being stretched out. You’re such a bitch, I say, and feel the head of his cock, which is nestled against my hip, drip more pre-come.

Pathetic, I say, and he whines.

And then I think: okay, okay, maybe this could be fun.