Failure to Launch

You know that movie where Matthew McConaugheylives with his parents and Sarah Jessica Parker

is a prostitute pretendingto be a therapist? Well, tonight my dick

is like that film—pure romanticcomedy. We haven’t tried everything, but

we’ve tried a lot: four differentpositions, three different rooms, two

brands of ultra-thin condoms. We’ve triedlips and fingers, lotions and lubes, even handcuffs

improvised from old concert T-shirts. Stillit lies there, half-deflated, a soft frown curving

across my pelvis. If I were MatthewMcConaughey, every part of me would be

like marble: so bright and valuable, so sweetand hard. I would break wrists with my body’s warm

obstinacy, its carefully contoured flesh. Buttonight we’ve learned how very much I am

myself, so we sit next to each other, wetand quiet, your face pressed against

my shoulder, and you tell methat it’s all right, that you’re tired

anyway. Then you smile at me the way nurses smileat the terminally ill. (This sort of thing

would never happen in a Matthew McConaugheyfilm—it would ruin the ending

where he lifts the pretty blond in the airand tells her how much he’s changed, how much

he loves her. No one wants to see a herofold in on himself like a sunflower

in winter.) You slip your hand into mine and we watchthe moon rise through the bedroom

window. When we wake tomorrowmorning, there will be no Zooey Deschanel

to make sure we work it out, noupbeat closing credits. There will just be

the sun, the morning, our bodies lying parallelin bed, two crumpled condom wrappers

torn and scattered across the floor.