The Ghosts of Lovers Past
I have been having sex for ten years and have only slept with one person at a time, but, as my cumulative number of partners has risen, so too has the number of mental bystanders — the men whose faces, bodies, and movements appear in my head whenever I have sex with someone new.
They’re old boyfriend and a husband waiting to become an ex-husband, and they all present evidence, all five of them. In fact, there have been seven overall, but my first boyfriend doesn’t speak up (what can you say when you were both inexperienced virgins?) and neither does my one-night-stand (I was blackout drunk and had to run to the bathroom to vomit multiple times — it’s not an experience that could entice me into comparing him with anyone else). But the others, they present images and video footage that worry at me.
Whose dick is bigger? they ask. Who gave you the most orgasms? Remember your legs on my shoulders and how I kissed your knee? Remember how you would cum as soon as I slid inside you? Remember how thick I was? Remember how you trusted me to choke you? Remember? Remember, remember, remember.
All the while, my lover, my steady is on top of me, trying to please me. I want him to please me. He’s holding my hands and kissing me deeply and loving me, and I love him. I don’t want these others here. I only want my inamorato, everything about him that is so unlike the others.
I love the way the head of his penis is thicker than anyone else’s before him. I love the way he thinks about angles, and tells me to get close to his ear when I orgasm so he can hear it because he wants to be pleased by my pleasure. I love the way he holds my face and my hands and the small of my back, and kisses me until I can’t breathe because my nose is always stuffy and I have to pull away. And then one of my ghosts intrudes.
I don’t want to compare anymore. I don’t want to be haunted.
Sex matters so much to me — it’s been crucial to success in my relationships, has been the undoing of as many. I’ve been naked and ignored. I’ve been used for my body, my “perfect tits,” “that ass.” I’ve been left unsatisfied, but faked orgasms anyway because I thought I ought to.
I tell myself there is no “best lover,” no “greatest fuck.” I remind myself that I don’t want to sleep with anyone else, love anyone else, be with anyone else. I remember my Buddhism, my commitment to mindfulness. I picture my lovers as balloons tied to strings in my hand and let them go one by one, popping when they get too high, or floating away until I can’t see them anymore.
They come back.
I’ve been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and PTSD. I know that obsessive thoughts come with the mentally ill territory. I chip away at them with logic and the good moments.
My steady knows I’ve written this, and he doesn’t hold it, any of it, against me. He kisses me and tells me he’s got a gun made specifically to fight off the demons and we fuck and make love, and once it was so good we said we broke sex.
Day by day, the ghosts of my lovers get hazier, their voices softer. They’ll never be gone because the past doesn’t disappear, but as the first two have disappeared and the third has become see-through, I know eventually they’ll cease to matter. My bed will be watched over by no one.
