Page 70 of Use Me Up

He makes a guttural noise and spills all over his hand.

That makes something else clench in me, a strange bit of power and satisfaction, and I gasp.

He’s laughing. “Well, that came out of nowhere.”

I giggle, loose and happy. “Mine, too.”

He grabs tissues from the side table and wipes himself clean. He pulls me in against his chest, and we lay, loose-limbed and relaxed on the couch, snuggling close, and my head feels clear. I shut my eyes and rest my cheek against his t-shirt.

It’s quiet for a long time.

He says, “What do you usually think about when you masturbate? Or do you look at porn or something? I sometimes use things to look at, but I mostly like to fantasize. I don’t know if that’s like most guys. I think maybe it’s because I’m an omega or something. I hear women usually have more elaborate sexual fantasies than men, but mine are, uh, pretty elaborate.”

“Mine aren’t,” I say. “I don’t even think about sex.”

“No?” he says, and I can hear his voice rumble in his chest. He’s very interested. “So what do you think about?”

“Um.” I should feel embarrassed. I don’t. But I giggle again. “Vampires.”

“Vampires, really?” He sounds intrigued.

“There’s not a lot to it. I get somewhere, and a really hot vampire is there. It’s usually someone from a TV show, but it’s not the actor, it’s the character they play, you know what I mean?”

“Sure,” he says.

“And they order me to be their blood donor and tell me what to do, and then they put their fangs in me, and they like it, and I’m just, um, there, and then… it usually doesn’t take me all that long. If it does, it goes on for them to, like, keep me around in their weird lair and only find me when they want blood and otherwise, um, ignore me.” I giggle again. “It’s actually remarkably similar to that fantasy you made up for me. Yours was better than mine, though.” I sigh.

“We can be Dracula and his helpless victim for Halloween,” he says.

We’ll be together then? Halloween is months away. I find myself wondering about a future with Ellis, what that would really be like.

“Unless you don’t want,” he says. “I’ve never been able to do couple costumes with someone, and I think it might be nice, but if you don’t like the matching thing—”

“I like it,” I say.

“Callie hates shit like that. She wants to turn heads all on her own, no one stealing her limelight.”

Calliope again.

“Sorry,” he says. “Should I not…?”

“You have to be able to talk about her,” I say. “It’s all right.”

But then he changes the subject. “I think it’s because sex is embarrassing. Why the humiliation stuff turns me on? I think it’s because when you have sex, you have to take off your clothes and the other person has to see you naked, and you have all these reactions you have no control over and it’s really hard to seem cool and in charge when your body is doing things you can’t stop.”

“I can see that,” I say. “But wouldn’t you want someone to accept you and make you feel good about it, instead of make fun of you about it?”

“You’d think,” he says, chuckling. “But maybe it’s like, you take that part of yourself and you put it somewhere else. You make someone else make fun of you, and then you have space to feel good. It’s not that I really want a partner to be mean to me, but that aspect of myself goes into a different person in my fantasies.”

Hmm. That’s really interesting. “Why am I so turned on by people ignoring me, though? Do I ignore myself? Am I trying to put that part of me into someone else?”

“Some part of you thinks you’re not worthy of being allowed to have pleasure, maybe?” he says. “So, if you can disassociate from it, you get permission?”

“Maybe,” I say quietly. “That seems like something I should work through in therapy.”

“I fucking hate therapy,” he says.

I snort. “That is definitely something you would say.”