"Fake love to me."

My friend Thomas shares a birthday with me. His is the day before mine. So we shared the celebration together this year. Since we celebrated on his birthdate, he called the shots and we went where he decided. He invited the group, and we all moved together across the city.

Among the crowd of friends was a woman that he used to date. I made a few overtures at her that night. And we danced. I was blacked out for some of this, but I do remember with vivid clarity the end of the night. She drove me home from the bar.

Except we didn't go home.

We drove across the river into Fairmount City and ended up at the Cahokia Mounds historic site. The ride was quiet. No one said a word. I had this creeping suspicion that she wanted me to have sex with her there. I grew anxious, not in anticipation of the event but fearing the inevitable problem--my fear and my impotence and my fear of my impotence.

When we arrived she ducked into some weeds to take a leak. I wandered around in the dark for a minute at the base of Monk's mound--the largest earthen structure on the complex and the largest earthen mound structure in the world. We began the trek up to the top. Upon arriving at the top I found a place to take a leak and we found a bench. Immediately she pulled her pants and underwear down to her ankles and laid on the concrete bench set at the plateau of Monk's Mound. Following through, I pulled my pants down. Knowing what would come of the situation I made the best of it. I went down on her. After a few minutes she faked an orgasm and she encouraged me to cum on her tits. Frozen in fear but mechanically performing what I could do intimately I felt nothing. I did what I could.

We pulled our pants up and walked back down the mound to the car. I briefly explained that I never can get an erection the first time. It's a truth, but in it is a lie. Sometimes, I cannot get hard the second time, or the third time. Encountering an issue I didn't know existed until I first encountered it I was able to overcome it in subsequent encounters. But, since then, the problem has been compounded by my own thinking.

She said something briefly to me on the ride back to St. Louis. She coached me on getting over that fear. The conversation ended. I asked her for her phone number. Instead of saying "no," she told me that she had a boyfriend.

"I understand," I replied.

I did actually. This was a throw-away evening. I was just the lucky recipient of a coincidence of factors--a sexually frustrated woman attending a birthday celebration for her former lover in the midst of his new love interest. She was happy to find a measure of retaliation in me, so she let me flirt and dance with her. She took me to the mound not out of love or interest but out of a need to conclude the evening and to conclude the play of forces between her and her ex.

We arrived at Thomas' house where I parked my car. I noted that he wasn't home yet. I noticed that my phone was dead, and so were my chances at getting her number anyway. But that night is seared in memory and serves as a painful reminder of something that I've yet to enjoy--meaningless, momentary sex with acquaintances.

Liz said as much to me after enjoying this with a fellow Peace Corpse volunteer. I could read the frustration in her story. After all I did one morning to please her I couldn't do that one thing to please her--put my erect penis inside her and eventually cum.

My lack of an erection is wish fulfillment. I intend to be a disappointment, not only to me but to others. My current employment status has a bittersweet component to it that I sip like a fine scotch. Emotional pain is my vice, and so I bathe in it every chance I get. I overthink situations anyway, and so I end up feeling alienated from the scene as it plays out before me. At times, when I'm very close to a woman I become so distant. I want to hide, and so I retreat to the darkest and inner most recesses of myself. I become virtually unresponsive physically, emotionally, and mentally. I enter a state of catatonia.

So here's to Liz and to Eleanor: "Fake love to me." That's all you're ever going to get from me.