I look around my room, now loud with kissing sounds, and see my dad in the corner, him in the grave, or at least how I think he looks down there, mostly bone by now but still some skin and tissue left. I don’t flinch at this or scream. I see him every time I have sex, since the funeral. I just see him. Right when I start to wonder what he’d think if he could see me, there he is. His corpse doesn’t deter me from fucking, which makes me feel like a pervert. Instead of taking up abstinence, I’ve kept on bringing people back from the bar or inviting people over from one of the dating apps.
In between my legs, I see knots in her hair and fight the urge to detangle them with my fingers. She finds my clit, and I moan her name. My roommate is gone for the night, so I moan it rather loud.
My roommate was in the kitchen when I got the call that my dad was shot at a bar in the part of our town referred to as the boonies, where one of his friends had lived since his wife left him for a twenty-three-year-old pastor. Dad went out to meet the friend for a drink and a game of pool when someone’s son from the neighborhood came in with a shotgun and Matthew 24:15 written up and down his arms. I looked up the verse after the fact and found nothing to kill for.
I crawl down her body, leaving kisses and spit on her torso. Her pussy tastes a bit like nickels in the rain, but I don’t mind. And it makes sense when she says, a little embarrassed, that she’s about to get her period. I tell her not to worry. I don’t see my dad but know if I looked in the corner, he’d still be there. She came twice during ten minutes of small flicks.
It’s just the two of us after sex. Dad doesn’t stay for pillow talk. She lies on my chest and asks what I do for work. I don’t realize until then how little we talked before I invited her back here. When I tell her I’m a writer, she asks what I’m working on. I lie and say a book, my go-to answer even when I’m not working on one. It’s better than the truth, which is I haven’t written anything except for lazy accounts of one night stands in months. I don’t even bother changing the names anymore.
She’s a paralegal for a firm in Pasadena. The job is mostly paperwork, she says. We lie there in silence for about thirty seconds before she asks if writing is my only source of income. I lie and say no. The truth, that the two dollars per word is the only money coming in, is less attractive. She doesn’t ask what the other source of income is, which makes me think she can tell I’m lying.
She doesn’t stay the night, and I don’t sleep well, too busy wondering when I’ll be able to fuck without my dad watching.