Momentarily, the squishing stopped, and I heard the tapping of his finger on the volume key as he lowered the sound of the moaning video. There was silence, and I stirred again, just to say, “Yep. I am totally awake. Let’s just everybody put their penises away, and we can get on with pretending this never happened.”

The silence lasted, and I let out a sigh that we’d solved the problem swiftly and amicably, with no seed being needlessly spilt.

But the silence lasted only twenty seconds. There came again the “tap, tap, tap” of the volume returned to its previous level, the moans resumed breathlessly from his headphones, and the accompanying “squish, squish, squish” carried on with renewed vigor.

“OH MY GOD,” I screamed in my head. “NOW WHAT?”

Still determined to solve this without having to actually acknowledge that I’d been awake this whole time, I took drastic action. I started to roll over. Until then, I’d been steadfastly facing the wall, giving Troy all the privacy of my turned back. But surely if I turned to face him, even with my eyes still closed, he’d have to stop. No man in his right mind would take that kind of risk.

And so I rolled, more dramatically than I normally would, grumbling and fumbling like an old man looking for the glasses atop his head, coughing for extra measure to indicate full alertness. When I finally landed on my other side, facing Troy’s direction, I noticed he’d stopped yet again. Frozen, I imagined, like a deer in the glow of his laptop.

For five whole minutes, there was nothing but the sound of the whirring computer fan and the occasional click of his touchpad. Glorious silence. I started to focus on falling asleep, wondering how I’d recount this story at breakfast tomorrow.

But sure enough, the subtle moans rang out again, and the “squish, squish, squish” continued, now more strenuously than before, like he was rushing to get it over with, angry at having been interrupted.

Finally, I rolled onto my back and stretched out my arms above me, letting out an obnoxious yawn, like I was stirring myself from a particularly good dream but wasn’t quite awake. This had to end, but I still refused to acknowledge that I was fully awake, intent as I was on avoiding the awkwardness as much as possible. And so I leaned forward, pretending to be half-asleep, and reached into the mini-fridge for a bottle of water, which I opened and chugged unpleasantly. If convincing him I was awake wasn’t enough, I figured, maybe my slobbering would kill his libido entirely.