Still Got It

The club was loud and stupid, but something worked anyway. By the time we got back to my place the whole thing was still going. Then she was naked and suddenly gone—worried about how she looked. Like that was the thing I was thinking about. Like my brain was anywhere but right there.

I think about that moment sometimes. How anxiety just follows you, even into bed. Even when you’re with someone who decided they wanted to see you. The self-consciousness is real, and somewhere, someone’s selling the answer: a highlighter for down there. Just dab it on your vulva and everything’s perfect. It’s absurd, but it exists because the worry exists. Someone designed it. Someone’s using it.

It’s one of those things that makes me sad in a way I can’t quite pin down. The distance between what bodies actually are and what we think they should be. The fact that intimacy somehow became another place to perform.