“You’re a total simp,” I scoffed, beginning to get seriously concerned. How had that girl reduced him to this?
“You go fall in love, then we’ll talk.” He vanished into the bathroom, and I heard the water running. He was probably brushing his teeth.
“You can bet that I’m not going to be like you,” I said, plucking a pencil from the holder on his desk. I sat down and opened a random notebook of his, doodling senselessly. “I don’t get why men become such dipshits whenever they get into a relationship,” I muttered to myself.
I heard the toilet flush, and a few moments later, he reappeared with his hair straightened and the minty smell of toothpaste wafting off him.
He glared first at my face and then at the pencil I had between my fingers before marching over angrily to take it from me.
“Don’t scribble all over my notes!” He put the pencil back where it belonged and sat down on the bed, waiting for me to talk. I spun around in his office chair and folded my hands over my stomach, stretching my legs out in front of me with one ankle crossed over the other.
There, I had assumed a position typical of the kind of cocky guy that I was.
“So? What did you want to talk about?” he asked curiously.
I wasn’t sure where to start. My upbeat, overconfident attitude was just a way of hiding how agitated I was. I’d never suffered from this kind of problem before, and revealing it wasn’t easy. For a man like me, feeling like I couldn’t fully experience sex was embarrassing.
“I’ve got a problem…” I leaned forward and arranged my face into a serious expression. I rested my elbows on my knees and stared at him, searching for the right words that would help me confess everything.
Fuck, this was difficult.
“What sort of problem? Neil, you’re making me worry,” he chided me, unsettled.
I gazed into his darker hazel eyes, a place where I had always been able to find myself. Logan had always been the best part of me, the one who stayed pure and uncontaminated.
I glanced around awkwardly. I was experiencing something that was common for most other humans but rare for me: embarrassment.
“I don’t…” The shame was clear in my voice. I hated that awkward, speechless moment. Logan just watched me, perplexed, and I looked like an idiot who couldn’t talk.
That’s why I hated doing that kind of thing. Words were useless. Most of the time, I only used them to describe problems or express negative feelings. There had rarely been a time when I felt the need to speak out of joy or to tell someone something good.
“You don’t what?” he urged me, becoming increasingly concerned.
I had to spit it out. It was now or never.
I needed to confide in someone and I’d always held back with my friends. I didn’t like talking about myself or my life. I was introverted and slow to trust. I was never the kind of person to just say what I thought without hesitation. I always thought long and hard about what to say and—most important of all—who to say it to.
Very few people had my trust.
“I can’t orgasm anymore,” I said in a rush, staring at the toes of his black Air Jordans instead of at his face. I knew he’d never laugh at me for having that kind of problem, but I was still uncomfortable. It didn’t feel good, as a man, to admit that sort of thing. I felt incomplete, wrong, and defective.
A Ferrari with a malfunctioning engine.
“What does that mean?” he asked, sounding surprised. “For… For how long?” Now he was the one who looked embarrassed and was having trouble keeping up this absurd conversation.
I jumped up from the chair like there were hot stones under my ass and began pacing nervously in front of him.
“For a while now. I can still feel everything. It feels good; I can get hard. Hell, I can fuck for hours, but…there’s no ejaculation,” I managed haltingly.
Orgasm was an extreme feeling, a rush of energy followed by a profound state of relaxation and I no longer even remembered what it felt like to bereally satisfied. Reaching a sexual climax was supposed to put an end to one’s desire and the erotic tension of the act, but the opposite was happening in my body. My frustration was as palpable as my anxiety because my want and arousal were trapped in an endless refractory period.
“Jesus, that can’t be easy,” he said, rubbing a hand over his mouth in shock.
No, it wasn’t. It was terrible.
“Do you think there’s something wrong with me physically?” My voice shook. The mere suspicion that this situation could be the result of a physical problem or a serious illness terrified me.
Logan considered this for a moment. I didn’t want to dump all this on him, but I didn’t know who else I could turn to.
