Couples

I’ve watched enough couples to know the pattern. They play with each other’s hair and call each other honey and bicker about nothing. The sex is always this whole thing—maybe anal, maybe not, it hurts, be gentle, forget it. And then the contraception, which somehow becomes both their problem and only her problem. The pill she forgets. The timing that’s off. The morning-after pill that wrecks her for a day. They miss things they planned. The constant negotiation. The friction wearing them down.

Being single just feels cleaner. No negotiations, no one forgetting anything, no one waiting for anyone. I exist by myself without all that friction.

It doesn’t actually make anything better, of course. But it sure feels like it does.