Learning to Love in the Anthropocene (1)

A Valentine Vignette

Only later, after I got home to my computer, did I learn what they were called: Woodlice. Pill Bugs. Roly-polies. Potato bugs. I could feel them on my butt as Rob and I were making love on the forest floor. It was a spring-like Valentine’s Day not so long ago, an hour or so north of New York City in the so-called “Gunks.” The Shawangunk Mountains, for those not in the know.

At first when I felt them, I thought they were small pebbles or twigs. But soon, the harder and faster Rob grinded me against the leaf litter — yes, it happened soon enough, maybe too quickly — I didn’t feel them at all.

More discreet than Rob and me, woodlice— I learned — usually mate at night. If Rob were a woodlouse, and I his receptive female, he would climb onto my back and drum me with his front legs whilst licking my head with his mouthparts. Sounds pretty erotic! I must confess.

Especially erotic is the biological fact that, as a woodlouse, I would be blessed with two cunts. But rather than sharing me in a “threesome,” Rob would simply bend his body beneath mine to transfer sperm to one of my genital openings…then move to my other side and transfer his remaining sperm to my other genital opening.

But what, I wonder, does love have to do with it? Would Rob the woodlouse or potato bug feel anything more than pleasurable, physical release? And what about me? Being desired? Having my emptiness filled? Would those sensations be rewarding enough?

Hurrah, Hurrah for the First of May, Outdoor Fucking Begins Today!

I was standing up brushing the woodlice off my butt when Rob sang that little ditty, then laughed: “Because of global warming, I guess, we’re three months early.”

Back home in the city, I discovered another woodlouse when it — rolled up in a tight and tiny protective ball — fell out of my panties onto the bathroom tile. I picked it up (yuck!) and dropped it in the toilet. What else was I supposed to do? That’s usually what I did with Rob’s discarded, sperm-filled condoms.

But what of the spent rubber that Rob had used in the woods? You had to ask. We left that behind on the forest floor, not well hidden, I suppose, under leaf litter and other dead organic matter.