Before it began, something was wrong and we didn’t (couldn’t?) see it.
I wasn’t in the mood. He wasn’t feeling it. This possible malignancy… This possibly unexplored unreal territory, This possibly unexposed notional strife… was like a DANGER sign that was somehow misread as STILL SLIPPERY WHEN WET – an honest, if possibly fatal mistake.
It’s difficult to differentiate where I end and he begins, between what is wrong with us and what is wrong with me… but perhaps the two are not the same; perhaps we two are not as one.
Months ago… (I really should have kept track) in the moments before usual masturbatory apex, unreconciled paste spills upon perplexed fingers absent blissful climax rush; the poorly mixed paint lubricates and froths, gushing forward some 30 guesstimated seconds before still stroking right hand leads me to delayed yet not unpleasant orgasmic sensations.
What the fuck had just happened? I still don’t know for sure…. But when it didn’t happen again I imagined it a fluke… until it wasn’t.
I told him and he later experienced it fourth hand.
28 days x 6 months, minus whatever it is to make it 160 is my guess for how many times I’ve ejaculated since the beginning.
Five aberrant orgasms with no discernable pattern… but I speak to urology office shortly before the sixth occurrence.
That was a few hours ago.
In the shower, as I washed away all evidence of any malady, I imagined him leaving me after his retreat and choosing to keep my completely imagined cancer diagnosis from him so as not to blackmail him, so as not to keep him tethered to me against his will out of shame or pity, or some maligned commingling of the two.
I’ve not been diagnosed with anything, but it’s the dream image that is the first moment in which I feel actual fear in regard to my (or our possibly) undiagnosed condition.
It is in that first moment of fear that I imagine him leaving me, emotionally as well as physically, in which I am finally able to see us as two separate beings; the division of cells, the division of selves, until all are finally set free.
