And? What happened? she asks.

We… I pause.

… had sex? No. Too commonplace, too small of a word, like cupped palms trying to catch the breadth and depth of a pounding ocean. Overused, wrung out — at one time sex might have been enough, the hissing start of that one syllable caught between the curled tongue and front teeth, the caressing breath of an e cut short, dropping into the low sigh of an x, two rows of teeth just barely touching to let a sliver of air through, and the tongue, a soft wet warm thing pressed against teeth, pushing out a pinch of heat from the back of a throat. At one time, sex spoke of limbs melding together and candles burning at both ends and things better done, not said. But sex with a -y, sexy — that long e syllable with its nasal pitch like dead weight behind the delicate sigh of its predecessor — sexy ruined sex. Sexy, the word spoke of cheap romance paperbacks that could be bought for a dollar a piece, those two syllables tacked on to rap lyrics, song titles, movie characters, porn productions. For sprinkled-on spice, for the hook, for the lure of the consumer’s gaze. For an attraction that wasn’t worth the second that it took me to pronounce those two syllables. Sexy. An empty word. Sex, now no longer fit for use, too small to hold any meaning — a curvaceous vase turned thimble. The former degraded the latter.

… made love? Love, love, love. Was there love? If there was none, then it could be made. Maybe. If there was love, there’s nothing to say it couldn’t be remade. Made better or made worse was a question for another day. Love. Too happy-go-lucky of a word, this mono-syllabic tone that forecast white lace weddings and black tuxedos and “I do’s” (I don’t) by the beach. This was no peaceful well-oiled sliding together of lock and key to open a door, a door to what? Love? I laughed. The melodrama was too sweet. No, this was a battle of wills, a breaking down of doors, a crashing through of barriers and boundaries, between me and him, him and her — because no one made love, we fell in love. Love was a hole, a ditch, a pitch black space we plummeted into by chance, by serendipity, by bad luck.

… had intercourse? The way textbooks sterilized it and filed down the rough edges of too hot too fast breaths, sliced out the unspoken fear and awkwardness and anxiety with stainless steel surgical scissors, made pdfs of it in black and white so none of the too vibrant color would shine through in hard copy. Like the way “procreation” and “sexual reproduction” were listed as vocabulary words in Unit 10 of middle school Biology. It was him in me, both of us with arms soldered to either side of us, two bare bodies layered together over pressed unwrinkled white linen, ram rod straight like matches in a box and not much else. Dry. Tasteless. Dust in my mouth. Hysterically funny.

We fucked, I tell her. It’s short, it’s sweet. It meant the lack of want and the overflowing of need (or is it vice versa?) in two curt syllables. Fuck. A vulgar vessel made worthy, because its unworthiness meant I could pack in all my fears and vulnerabilities into that one word, toss it out, and not ever worry about needing it back.

She blinks at me, slowly. Her eyebrows rise into the ceiling of her forehead. Fuck, no.

I smile, grin, laugh. Fuck yes.