Being Bad at Intimacy with Strangers

We made out. He reached for my belt. I knocked his hands away. Again he tried to unbuckle my pants.

I looked out the car window at the trees. My body was there but my eyes were vacant. I felt myself giving off this blank, soulless stare. This always happens to me.

I kept numbly thinking of the past. Memories were flashing through my mind.

Maybe I wanted to scare him off. Or turn him off. I needed an excuse.

He was shocked at what I’d admitted to him. I asked him if he ever had that problem .

He said, “No. Of course not.” At first he seemed offended by it.

But he used this information to his advantage, “Feel it.”

So I stuck my hand in his sweatpants. Feeling up the tiny little thing on that tiny little man.

I was looking into his face. Small features. Little jowly cheeks. Such a small man.

I felt nothing. He tried to touch me. I wouldn’t let him.

He sat back down in the front seat of his car, dropped me off and drove away. We never spoke again.