8 People Having the Same Realization

by Tyler Dempsey

1.

“About how love and desire are different things. I expect a partner these days to provide stability, carefully validate and bear my darkest fears, secrets, insecurities, whilst providing space enough to nurture my freedom in a way that feels supported and, most importantly, unfettered. I must be entirely myself. Of course I won’t be. But I must feel as if I could. My imagination must feel great. Unburdened. And only so hungry at a given time. If I can’t be myself, I can’t have sex, man. I don’t know. My sex is a giant green monster that only gets down when no one’s watching. It must feel great, unburdened, only so hungry—listen. Lately I’ve been dating pure oxygen. It’s giving me space. It’s taking off.”

2.

“He’d notice you in those shorts.”

3.

“One night in Virginia, I said something completely goofy. Tom stops, like, acknowledges it’s weird, but doesn’t judge me. And I was really high but I remember literally feeling like some barrier between us lifted—as if we had become one person—and then we had extremely stellar sex. Have you ever felt anything like that?”

4.

A List of Sexual Fantasies:

1. To cum simultaneously, both tweaking the other’s nipple.

2. To learn more about what really turns you on.

3. Then do all that stuff.

4. More sex outdoors.

5. More of you cumming, in general.

5.

I learned money could be limiting to certain people and we were those people. “We can’t afford it,” was my name, until it legally changed—at 15—to, “When you’re 18 you can do whatever you want.” There was this tone. If my parents said my name. In a grocery store, while driving. Rattling. Scoured carpet off floorboards in one atmospheric instant. Sent patrons instinctively reaching for their child’s hand, hugging, telling them they love them and would never leave them not ever. I decided “wants” were something I would never have.

6.

It makes you wonder, how much of what we do, say, think—shaped by convictions all made while being quite young.

7.

I’d have been 13 met a guy “Smitty,” whom I still like very much. The first thing he said was, “Do you not shave those hairs on purpose?” Next time in a bathroom I found what he was referencing—5, or 6, inch-long hairs, sprouting from the mole on my cheek. How long had they been there? Why’d no one told me? What mortified me most—I hadn’t considered how I looked to other people. Until then. I had no idea what I looked like. Weeks later, I spent a day bowling with other teenagers. One my biggest crush. Before bed, I go to remove my thin, pin-striped cotton shorts and—I’m mortified. Again. I’d been having a lot of boners. Here, the cotton was practically outlining one. Leaving little to the imagination. I remembered my hairy mole. And thought about what the others had seen bowling. Indeed. Thought of all the times I wore the shorts in the past. My favorite pair.

8.

“So then it’s erupting, ’cept I don’t know at all. Don’t know a damned thing, com-pa-dre. This confetti and folks say an angel, like pure, sent-from-God spirit. Out my damned head. Up around the top, like the rafters, or something, is a little man. And he’s little. Crying, ’cept I don’t know. Up there bawling. This thing, is me. But, little. And everybody else. The whole street’s looking up. I don’t know a damned thing.”

Tyler Dempsey won the 2nd Annual The Tulsa Voice/Nimrod International Journal Flash Fiction Contest and received honorable mention in Glimmer Train and New Millennium Writings competitions. His work appears, or is forthcoming in, amongst others, Soft Cartel Magazine, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, and Gone Lawn. Find him on Twitter @tylercdempsey