I faxed it in, and the next day, I called the editrix for her editorial imput. I thought she’d tell me she laughed her ass off, that the joke was a home run, that my intricate subtleties articulated a flavor never before tasted. It would be as sure as a baby pearl sings its beauty song to the mother clam, and the fruits of our first “professional” encounter would produce the first-ever two-paragraph sex product review to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Perhaps it was too close to deadline time. Maybe it was because I didn’t simply say how great this fine product was: “You’ll never enjoy fucking a plastic sponge as much as you will the Fleshlight.”

But instead I was honest. I let people know what it really felt like. Her response, lackluster, was something like, “What’s this? I just wanted a couple paragraphs.”

“Fine,” I said. “This is just the way I work. It’s my process.”

Silence.

I suggested I could change it for her, and then later rework it for Juggs, or Nerve.

“What?” she shouted. “You’re giving it to someone else? This was an experience I gave you! Our experience! Not Nerve’s!” She said I was ungrateful and totally unprofessional even to consider publishing it anywhere else.

She hung up. Bitch! I put the phone down and looked around as four coworkers stared back at me.

“What the fuck was that?” my boss asked.

“I think she dumped me.”

“Who, your girlfriend?”

“No, my editor.”

Later, I sent her the requisite two ’graphs, but I’m not certain she ever used them. It was overshadowed by our breakup.

I tried to remember the good times. Her initial call—“I think I have something for you to test-drive.” Her “Did the Fleshlight arrive yet?” the day it came. Her “How was it?” the morning after I fucked the sponge.

I roamed the streets despondent. Every porno shop seemed to be “our” porno shop. Every blow-up doll was our relationship: a lot of hot air that in one prickly moment explodes in your face!

Are We Having Sex
Now Or What?

Greta Christina