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By Root 336 0

that I was a sensitive and decent man as opposed to a tragically repressed and inexperienced boy. The problem with this tactic was that a girl, once flattened by my tsunami of sensitive decency, would fall for me even harder, making it that much more difficult to dump her when my well of excuses for putting off sex finally ran dry. Their faces haunt me to this day: the suburban punker who worked the counter at the record store, the doe-eyed lifeguard certified in massage, the perky art chick who scraped up roadkill and used it in an installation piece . . . They were nerdy goddesses all, young and horny, but I could never make a relationship with them last more than a couple weeks and I was starting to hate myself for it. Such was my state of mind when Molly called me out of nowhere and requested I fly to Boston for the express purpose of having sex.

The specific circumstances surrounding Molly’s offer of virginity loss are admittedly fuzzy, and largely rooted in emotion. But what I do remember with the clarity of tropical fish footage on a Best Buy showroom HDTV is that we were definitely, definitely not in love anymore. Knowing this, I was overcome with the absolute certainty that this “orgasm-or-bust” odyssey could not possibly end in anything but disaster and embarrassment for both of us. I bought the first plane ticket I could find.

Once I arrived at Havrard, Molly and I went straight to work constructing the infrastructure she deemed necessary for “safe sex.” This consisted of four forms of birth control, which, per Molly’s instructions, would need to be utilized simultaneously.

One: The Rhythm Method

There was a window of three or four days in Molly’s cycle that she had calculated to be “safe.” That window didn’t open until a couple days into my visit, so we killed time, probably walking the Freedom Trail or some shit.

Two: Condoms

We went to purchase these together, studying the boxes until we were confident we’d found the thickest, least comfortable, most spermicide-drenched contraceptives science could produce.

Three: The Sponge

I’m thirty-seven and I still don’t know quite how these are supposed to work. More on this later.

Four: The Number-One Rule

“DO NOT ejaculate while inside me! Pull out the second you think it’s getting dangerous.”

In retrospect, she may not have wanted to get pregnant.

Beginning with her phone call, and throughout our quest to purchase birth control, Molly’s constant mantra was, “We’ve got to get this over with.” Is there any sentence in the English language that conveys less passion or romance? Thanks to the last moments leading up to our attempt at sex, Molly provided me with at least one: “Just so you know, this is going to be really painful for me, and I’m probably going to be bleeding all over the place.” This final sweet nothing imparted, and the fortress of contraception having been built (including Molly’s mood-killing last-minute dash behind a closed bathroom door so she could have privacy as she put the sponge in), it was finally time for me to get a boner and fuck my way into adulthood. Three, two, one . . . go! Go! The light is green! The ref fired his starter pistol! Cut the yellow wire RIGHT NOW or the bomb goes off!

It didn’t take Molly long to notice something was up, or more accurately, wasn’t. After all, whenever we had gone at it with the unstated understanding that no sex was forthcoming, I’d grow a cop’s flashlight in my pants. (My point is not to imply that I have a particularly large penis, but simply to state via colorful metaphor that my boners came more easily when I wasn’t picturing Molly bleeding to death.) Molly’s reaction to my lack of stiffness was, at first, sympathetic, if confused (“It’s okay. Take your time.”), but quickly snowballed into impatient, nastier territory (“I’M doing everything right. What’s wrong with YOU?”). After a couple futile hours of frustration, hair pulling, and being flat-out belittled by My Wild Irish Rose, I put on my clothes and exited Molly’s dorm room into the drizzly Havrard night, alone.

On that