The following Wednesday. Different party, different flat, different configuration. Two blokes this time, a third-year with a beard, and his older mate with hands the size of dinner plates. The logistics are negotiated over warm beer and sealed with a look that means follow us.
Their flat. Condoms for everyone, my rules, non-negotiable. The bed’s too small for three, so we start standing, shift to the mattress, and adapt. I’m good at this, the choreography, the reading of bodies, knowing who wants what before they say it. The bearded one wants to watch. The quiet one wants to be touched. I’m in the middle, which is where I work best, playing both sides, giving and taking in the same breath.
It’s technically excellent. The angles are right, the friction is right. My refractory’s nothing. I come once, stay hard, keep going. The second orgasm builds slower, deeper.
Close my eyes.
The beach photo, the lecture theatre. The vowels sayoffice hours.
The image won’t leave. Won’t be replaced by what’s happening. Two real bodies pressed against mine, two sets of hands, two cocks.
Trap it.My cock takes it as a cue I haven’t given it.
I taste the bearded one. Mouth on his cock, deep, I like the sound he makes. I try to pin myself to that sound. It slides off.
The quiet one’s hand is on my hip, and he’s fucking hard into me, and none of it is information my body wants to keep.
I come again, it means nothing.
After. Getting dressed in a room that smells of sweat and latex and someone else’s deodorant. The bearded one’s already dozing. The quiet one’s in the bathroom.
I sit on the bed, lace my shoes, and wait for the satisfaction to arrive.
It doesn’t.
The bearded one’s breathing has gone slow and heavy. The quiet one’s running a tap in the bathroom. A normal Wednesday-to-Thursday transition—I’ve done it a hundred times.
Clothes on, shoes tied, the small specific ache that means a good session. I know what this is supposed to feel like. I know the shape of the comedown like I know the shape of my own front door.
I don’t feel any of it.
Three bodies. Every possible combination of hands, mouths, and positions. Technically, it was perfect. The variables were optimized, and the execution was flawless. And the result is.
Nothing.
Like solving a proof and arriving at zero. All that work, all those steps. The answer is a hole where a number should be.
I’ve been shagging since I was sixteen. Two years of accumulating data. The data has always told me the same thing: sex feels good, orgasms feel better, leave before anyone asksyour number. Clean system, reliable output. I’ve never once questioned the model.
The model is broken.
The quiet one comes back from the bathroom. ‘Want to stay?’
‘Nah. Early lecture.’
There is no early lecture.
Thursday morning, half seven. I come in the back door of the halls, and Femi is already up.
Of course, Femi is up. Femi’s a morning person, the same way he’s a decent person, reflexively, no drama. In a moment, he’s got the kettle on, the radio on, two mugs out, and I notice he’s wearing the hoodie Allan gave him on Sunday, which is oversized and that he wears anyway because it smells like Allan.
He clocks the state of me. Just the eyes, up, down, up.
‘Morning.’
‘Morning.’
‘Breakfast?’
