You stopped masturbating at home: you didn’t feel like it. Even though you’d sometimes come home from the clinic and sit, channel surfing and not really seeing the TV, too wired to sleep, imagining sex. Fucking Sophie up the ass. Fucking the girl from the street corner between her mango-shaped tits. Caitlin begging to suck you off and you coming down her throat. Sex saturated your head, burned your body from your ears to the soles of your feet, but it was all distant, muddy, like under a layer of thick gauze. The images would swarm like fevered dreams, and then they’d be gone and you’d be alone in your crap house, feeling lonely and confused and desperate, and somehow guilty. Sometimes you’d run your head under the cold water from the kitchen sink, to make it go away.

The seminars were mostly bullshit: Mars-Venus stuff, how to listen, how you should wash the dishes and talk about your fear. All the guys avoided one another in the hallways. A few of the exercises were kind of interesting.

One time you were talking about your dad, the time he’d built this boat with you and then smashed it when he was mad, and you actually started to cry. Bullshit like that. The other guys all looked away, embarrassed. You got it together after a moment.

One time Sophie walked out of the observation room into the hallway, just as you were coming out of the room with the chair. She was with three other women, all good-looking, though none of them in her league. Probably all assessment counselors. They’d clearly been watching you jack off, and you flushed beet red.

“Looking forward to our exit session,” Sophie called, and the other women laughed.

You couldn’t think of anything to say and you got out of there. On the subway, your dick was throbbing. It felt sore. It occurred to you that you’d been masturbating in that session for about three hours, and you never did come.

The phone rang one night. “Hey, this is Jill. You remember me?”

It was the hottie from the street corner. “Holy shit. Yeah, I mean, definitely. How, how are you doing?”

“Hey,” she purred, “you’re really doing it! I just looked you up on the list. I thought you were just full of shit.”

“No, I’m really doing it.”

“For me?”

You didn’t know what to say. She cackled. “Don’t answer that. Woo! It’s a little hot in here right now.” She laughed again. “So listen, what do you do?”

You talked about work. She was a graduate student in political science at NYU. A real egghead. She wasn’t stuck up, though. Then you talked about music. You both liked The Clash.

“So, um, listen,” Jill said. “Can I pop your cherry?”

“What?” you asked.