Page 34 of Muscle Cub

“Understood.” I held my hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Sorry.”

“Psych.” His shit-eating grin reappeared. “Nah, I usually just pick whatever thing I’ve been worrying about this week, like, needing to get a real job in the fall or feeling butt-hurt about nobody showing up for my class.” Austin twisted his lips. “I try not to spend too much time thinking about what I don’t want, though. I try to focus on what I do want. That’s my only beef with this ritual. Otherwise I think it’s pretty cool.”

“I do too.” I did.

It wasn’t even that the stories no longer served me. They never had.

At the end of our relationship, Charles had thrown them at me like Molotov cocktails. You can’t write. And you can’t even fuck. Bombs of psychic poison. Intentionally weaponized insecurities. He’d known exactly what I’d been most afraid of.

The challenge for me in this moment was fitting all those words on a piece of paper the size of a fortune cookie message with a bowling alley pencil stub.

This was a naming spell. And the name of the thing that no longer served me was a story about…

Being blocked.

I couldn’t write. I couldn’t fuck.

I was… impotent. That was the word.

I wrote it twice, once on each side of the paper, once for each experience.

I couldn’t remember if I’d said those words to myself before Charles had, but I believed them because it was easy to.

But even if they’d been true, I didn’t want them to be anymore.

Austin was right. I wanted more than an absence of weakness, more than to simply endure the world. I wanted to be a great writer. I wanted to be a killer lover. I wanted to feel prolific and horny, able and empowered.

We joined the other men who ringed the bonfire and tossed our papers into the flames. We leaned back, following the sparks into the night sky. I hoped our silent wishes on the stars had greater power than the bullshit we told ourselves.

Together, Austin and I drifted away from the fire again. Without discussing it, we’d started walking toward the pool complex. It was close to the route we’d taken last night.

“Can I ask you something very blunt?” I said.

“Yeah. Sure.”

“I want you to tell me the truth.”

“Of course.”

“Did you think the sex last night was… bad?”

“Are you kidding me?” Austin glanced over with an incredulous look on his face. “Fuck no. It was hot as hell. You’re way too in your head about all that.” I appreciated he hadn’t given all that a name. “I bet that’s more than half your problem.”

I wanted to believe him. “My, uh… inability to perform has been a problem for others in the past.”

Austin rolled his eyes. “There’s so much more to chemistry than that.”

“Like what?”

Austin laughed and looked at the ground. “You need a lot of reassurance,” he muttered.

“It’s a valid question. Why would a guy like you be into someone like me?”

“A guy like me? You mean, a hot dancer with a killer voice?”

I stopped walking. “Seriously. Come on. Look at you.”

“Look at you,” he said, studying me with a soft smile. “With your ice-blue eyes and your thick beard with the reddish-gold in it. Your beefy chest and strong shoulders.” In a lower voice, he said, “You’re very handsome.”