Page 444 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

“They’re smilin', they're taken care of? They’re good. Ain’t gotta feel guilty about shit. Next thing I know, I’m turnin’ twenty, and fuck and already went down on my boss ‘cause she broke down one night—got fired the next day. Got with some rich, sixty-year-old woman while her husband watched—made twenty grand⁠—”

“With your mouth?”

“And my dick.”

My throat swells.

My teeth snap down on my tongue.

“I was desperate for cash,” he says. “That’s how I lost my virginity. In some hotel room with someone’s grandma, with an audience.”

I’m trying really hard not to stop him, but I don’t know how much more I can take.

He keeps going, unloading on me, and it feels like blow after blow to the chest.

He lifts his shoulders. “Whole world out there actin’ like sex fixes shit. Lemme tell you somethin’—when you’ve eaten hundreds of pussies and still go home feelin’ empty? That’s not pleasure. That’s fuckin’ decay.

“When you got girls grindin’ on you ‘cause they know you’ll give it up, lyin’, actin’ single, meanwhile they got a guy waitin’ at home? Seen that shit too many times. They all know I won’t touch ‘em if they’re taken. They know. But they’re deprived, insecure, or just wanna know what it’d be like, so they lie. And it’s fuckin’ sad. Same old record—first I’m givin’ the girl pleasure, then I’m takin’ their man’s pain by gettin’ my ass beat. And I fuckin’ let ‘em. Never put up a fight.

“Makes you trust no one.

“Makes you feel so fuckin’ alone.

“Then it makes you hate yourself.

“‘Cause you caused it all to begin with.”

He bites into his lip.

“Used to think somethin’ was wrong with me.

“My dick? It didn’t get hard for no one.

“I told it when it was go-time,

“it went stiff when I needed it to.

“Like, I couldn’t feel shit, not really.

“Not when I was supposed to.”

He laughs under his breath,

pushing his fingers through his hair.

“Didn’t even fuckin’ masturbate.

“Thought that was just who I was.

“But then you came along,

“and now I know I was never numb.

“I was just never with you.”

He looks sideways at me,

exposed, wide open, unguarded,