‘Me too.’ His voice matched mine in tone and volume.
I walked over to the bed and sat down on it. ‘Virgins,’ I muttered.
‘Not any more.’
I patted the bed with my hands. They felt like they needed to do something productive. Not that they hadn’t been engaged in something very,veryproductive a while ago, but I was not looking for that kind of productivity right now. On the contrary.
‘It’s late,’ I said randomly. Commenting on the time or the weather was one of those things you did when you had no idea what to say, when you needed to drop some kind of conversation into a very silent space, and the space between us had just become very, very silent.
‘Are you tired?’ Andrew asked.
‘Are you?’
He cleared his throat. ‘Well, usually after,that, I’m a little tired.’
‘Tha—’ I cut myself off mid-word when I registered what he meant. ‘Yes. That.’ I patted my hands on the bed again.
‘Should I go and sleep in another bedroom?’ he asked.
‘No. Why?’
‘It’s clear you’re feeling awkward,’ he offered.
‘No, it’s okay. I’ll stop feeling awkward. In fact, why am I even feeling awkward, now that I think about it?’ I sighed and flopped down on the bed. ‘Actually, we really shouldn’t feel awkward about what just happened. Masturbation is a very normal and natural expression of sexuality. Many animals masturbate too: primates, walruses, even rodents and lizards.’
‘Oh my God. I really don’t want to imagine walruses masturbating right now, thanks. How does that even happen?’
‘They have flippers.’
‘Stop! Please. You’re killing me!’
‘I am?’ I sat up and looked at him.
‘Figure of speech. But if this conversation carries on down this particular path, I might die of embarrassment.’
‘Okay, no more walruses then.’Did they do it with their flippers, though?I needed to google that. ‘You know what, we are adults. Fully developed sexual beings. We should not be embarrassed to talk about masturbation!’ I declared loudly. ‘In fact, we should embrace it as part of who we are! We should even celebrate it! We don’t celebrate masturbating enough, actually. No wonder there’s so much shame and stigma attached to it. We should talk about it more openly.’ I turned my head and looked at him. ‘Like this! Don’t you think?’
‘Think that we should celebrate masturbating? What, with a National Masturbating Day?’
I thought about it for a second, but then cut my thoughts off. ‘A joke. Sarcasm,’ I said.
‘Sarcasm,’ he echoed. We seemed to have found ourselves right back where it had all begun. Lying next to each other, on our backs, looking up at the fan.
‘I think I’m going to try and sleep now,’ I said, rolling onto my side.
‘That’s a good idea,’ Andrew replied, and did the same thing. ‘Should I turn the light off, or do you like to sleep with it on?’ he asked.
‘Oh. I forgot about that. Off, please.’
I heard him get up, heard his footsteps on the floor as he walked over to the switch. The room was then plunged into total darkness, which I was happy about. The light was far too exposing. And then a loud bump, followed by a piercing scream.
‘What! What!’ I jumped out of bed at the sound of agonizing moans emanating from Andrew’s mouth.
‘I stubbed my toe,’ he wailed.
‘You sound like you amputated it,’ I walked across the room, feeling my way towards the light switch.
‘I think I did,’ he moaned.
