I have no desire for anything—not food, not entertainment, not sex. But we still sleep together. For him, sex is a clear measure of how happy relationships are. The beginning of the end is usually when people stop having sex. We sleep together a lot, multiple times a day.

Sex has become a chore, like doing the dishes; you have to stay on top of it so that the mess doesn’t get out of control. I haven’t told him about the horror of feeling nothing. I don’t want him to believe he’s bad in bed. He’s not bad. The sex has gotten rough. I just want him to take control, to shake me out of this deadness. He slaps my ass, digs his nails into my skin, pulls my hair when he fucks me from behind. If he looks into my eyes while we’re fucking, I tell him to grab my neck, to choke me, and sometimes I hope he’ll lose control in the heat of the moment and kill me. But accidentally, so that he feels bad and has to call my parents crying and beg their forgiveness for riding their daughter to death. That would be good of him.

Cold Slab

Cold Slab

Night after night, I have the same nightmare: I’m having cocktails, and I’m surrounded by attractive, well-to-do people. The scene glitters with light refracting off crystal champagne flutes and necklaces clasped around women’s necks. Frivolous laughter. The clinking of glasses. In the middle of the room, under an enormous crystal chandelier, there’s an elegant buffet set with exotic fruits, berries, and colorful canapés. In the middle of the table lies a thin girl, stripped of her clothes. She’s awake, staring straight ahead, sublimely detached. Before her, a row of carefully laid knives, sharpened to a sure point, not unlike the sterile scalpels of surgical carts. A grand middle-aged woman in an emerald dress that drags on the floor taps a spoon on her glass, announcing that it’s time to dig in. They line up one after another, slicing into the wafer-thin skin, binging on the pale morsels of her body. I go up to the girl, prod her with a knife, but she doesn’t react. I slice striploin from her skinny frame, relishing the cold, salty meat.

As the room empties out, the woman in the green gown is beside herself because there’s so much food left over. She asks me to take the remains of the meal home.