As an experiment in vulnerability, I wrote a series of lyric essays that all opened with sex scenes. One was published in The Sun and began with us fucking in front of an open window. Although the piece touched on topics ranging from my childhood struggle with social anxiety to loneliness in the works of Edward Hopper, what everyone remembers is the window sex. What everyone always asks me is "Did you and Hannah actually do that?" What I want to say is "Find better questions." What I do say is "More or less."

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But to write about fucking and then fault people for being curious is, in the end, disingenuous. It's like the person who leaves a wallet at a gas pump and then gets indignant that someone stole it. It's like a teacher getting bent because no one did the reading. It's like knowing your audience then forgetting you do.

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All the sex in this essay actually happened. More or less.

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What if forgetting your audience is the work? What if willed amnesia can be a kind of shortcut to vulnerability? I remember the first time we fucked in total darkness. There was the realization that, given the lack of light, you could be anyone, and also that I could be anyone, and (possibly) that being anyone was the same as being no one. There was touch and nothing else. I remember it because of what I felt.

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I used to want better sentences. Now I want better questions.

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A week out from the birth of our first child, a work friend asked me if I intended to be in the room during the delivery. When I told him I did, he said, "That's great. Support your wife and everything. But trust me on this–when the baby is crowning, don't look. Nothing kills the mystery like a little bloody head forcing itself out of your wife’s vagina."

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The only other time I encountered the phrase "kill the mystery" was also in connection with genitalia. "Never shit, piss, or fart in front of your spouse," warned my father. "Mystery dies over time, but you'll kill it quicker by leaving the bathroom door open."

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What a frail condition, this mystery. Always on the verge of dying. Always in need of our protection.

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We protect children from dangerous material by covering their eyes. The question becomes “Can a young mind make sense of this mystery?” This is fitting in the project of prolonging innocence, but isn’t the better question "If we don’t teach them how to see mystery, who will?"

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You leave the door to the bathroom open when you take a piss. You leave the door to your office open when you draw a portrait. If there is a difference between these two scenarios, then it's aesthetic (not essential).

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The difference between closing your eyes in a lighted room and opening your eyes in a dark room is not merely philosophical. It’s felt too. In the first, the body constricts and says, “No, no, no. I refuse to look at that.” In the second, the body outstretches and says, “I can almost make you out! Yes, there you are!”

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When our daughter was crowning, the doctor said, “Here she comes,” and I joined him at the foot of the bed, and I watched our baby’s head tear your body so badly that, after the delivery, you required surgery. There was blood and much screaming, but three months later I knelt in our kitchen as you stood at the counter crushing pistachios for our salad, and I lifted your dress, and I kissed every perfect inch of your thighs and your pussy and your ass. The mystery of your body was not killed on account of blood. It was made new.

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The great lie about bodies is that brokenness works against beauty. The great lie about memory is that it recovers (not remakes) the past.

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Several months after our daughter’s birth, you stood in front of a mirror and dug your palms into the edges of your hips, pressing inwards as if attempting to pressure the bones into a smaller shape. “I hope these go back to normal,” you said, after which you slid your hands up your stomach and rested them atop your newly swollen breasts. "These," you said. "Can stay."

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Me: Do you believe me that I love your current body more than any other body you have ever had?

You: I believe that you believe that.

Me: Do you believe that, when I see you, what I see is always beautiful. 

You: More or less.

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In the mornings, your nipples glisten with milk, and the smell in our bed is that of sugar tinged with soap. Yesterday, you brought your tit to my mouth and offered to let me try some. I passed. “But ask me again in a couple of days,” I said. “You know how quickly things can change.”

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Memories (not bodies) let you play author. Bones are indifferent to your suggested revisions.

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For months following the delivery, your stomach, once a long and taut miracle of flesh, hangs loose and distended. I promised you I wouldn’t write about your stretch marks, so I am not writing about your stretch marks. I am only writing about how you stand in front of the mirror and punch yourself in the gut. How you call it “the popped balloon” and agree to fucking only in total darkness. I am only writing about how much grief looks like hatred when a body has been lost.

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You wake me up by spraying milk in my face and singing the chorus to “Changes” by David Bowie, and as I dry my face on the top sheet, I am grossed out but also more in love with you than ever before.

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One night, during foreplay, I run my fingers over the wrinkled center of the popped balloon. You tell me to stop. I stop. But after we are finished, and we are lying side by side in the darkness of our bedroom, I think about saying, “The day is coming when your entire body will be a popped balloon, and on that day I will still just want to be close to you.” What I do say is “Want me to turn on the fan?”

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Because of how badly you tore during labor, the doctor recommended we not have sex for at least two months. To mitigate my pain in waiting, you started giving me spectacular blowjobs in the shower, and you took your phone sex game to unthinkable new levels of depravity. To mitigate your pain in waiting, I gave you hour-long foot massages and picked up an extra class so we could afford groceries from Trader Joe’s. People say compromise is the key to a happy marriage. Maybe. Or maybe it's creativity.

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An older woman from church told you to try kegel exercises. When you didn’t ask why, she said, “You know why, right?” When you said nothing, she said, “It can get a little loose down there after baby number one.” And when you excused yourself on the pretense of needing to take a call, she grabbed your arm and said, “No need to get touchy. I'm just telling you what I wish someone had told me–they like it tight.”

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You: Fuck wisdom.

Me: I don't mind wisdom so long as it's earned.

You: Fuck it if it’s earned. Fuck it if it’s unearned. For my money, it’s curiosity or silence.

Me: Nothing in between?

You: We die too quick for the in between.

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You were curious about edging. We tried it, and now we do it all the time. I was curious about road head. We tried that too, but I thought more about crashing than I did about coming. “It’s not about finding something new,” you said, after our first attempt at role play. “It’s about believing that something new is possible.”

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What comes after wisdom? The sense of knowing. What comes after curiosity? More curiosity.

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We were both curious about S&M and even priced out a few restraint systems. In the end, though, we realized the curiosity itself was sexier than any possible outcome. Like the best of our desires, this one lives strapped down in the subjunctive. 

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The best futures are the ones that never come.

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We have a pact about masturbation that operates on the right of first refusal. If I am horny and thinking about touching myself, I must first notify you and give you a chance to get me off. If you are horny and thinking about touching yourself, you must first notify me and give me the chance to get you off. I tried to count the number of times that one of us said, “Go ahead and take care of yourself.” In fifteen years of marriage, it can’t be more than five. 

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The popped balloon flattened out and tightened up just in time for you to get pregnant again. We weren’t trying to have a child. But we weren’t trying the first time, either. “That makes two mistakes,” I said, the night that you told me. “Surprises,” you corrected.

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Me: Shit. What now?

You: I’m curious about that too.