Equations: Dialectic Form (2021)

#33
Some situations cannot be cleansed. Dell comes to the Last Drop on a
headhunt for me. She has her black hair cut short like a 1920s flapper;
she’s tall, ungainly (not fat, but loose-limbed), and her blue eyes are
guileless. She has rules— we have to hang out once before we sleep
together; when she does make it to my apartment, her nerves dictate that
we fall quickly and efficiently into bed. We make love, and I wear a
condom. She’s not enthusiastic or unresponsive— she likes me, but not
too much. Her equation involves impulses— if she suddenly wants you
and if you want her, you’re in luck. Nothing can be planned too
methodically— sex just has to erupt with some kind of Virgoan perfection
(her sign), and then there it is. I choose, however foolishly, blunt honesty
as the best tactic in this situation. Dell, at twenty-three, has never had a
genuine relationship and is easily humiliated. I don’t particularly realize
this, but it sinks in that hit and runs have only a small chance of going up.
It has taken me into my thirties to ascertain the emptiness of two foreign
bodies— how sex can be a natural disaster.
40