It was a sexual stalemate: Trevor wanted to do it every day, while I was bored out of my mind and said I’d need a long vacation from sex to make me miss doing it with him.

Trevor was a fan of D. H. Lawrence’s crackpot (to me) theory that sex was the juice that fueled a male’s creativity. He believed that his novel-writing was going badly because he wasn’t getting enough sex.

Vacation from sex? he squawked. Are you crazy? What about my novel?

He added that my refusal to give him enough sex was making him physically ill because his jism or jizz (or whatever) built up inside him, clogging and damaging his system like mercury in salmon.

I asked, Why don’t you jack off?

Because it’s not the same. The sexual energy dear D. H. meant was the penis-penetration-in-vagina type, not the masturbation type.

Then he told me I was undersexed and cold.

Get out, I said.

I don’t have anywhere to go.

What about a motel?

I’m broke.

What happened to your money?

I gave it to my ex—

Well, that explained why she’d stopped stalking us.

Out, I said.

Mish (Eileen) Murphy

is Contributing Editor and emerita Assistant Poetry Editor for CulturalDaily.com, where she worked with Alexis Rhone Fancher (Poetry Editor). Mish teaches English/literature at Polk State College in Lakeland, Florida. A Pushcart nominee, she has two poetry collections published: Fortune Written on Wet Grass (2019) and Sex & Ketchup (2021); and a poetry chapbook: Evil Me (Blood Pudding Press, 2020).

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Mish Murphy Digital Artworks

⚡ A Review of Mish Murphy’s Sex & Ketchup by Mark A. Murphy, editor of Poetica Review, in Cultural Daily (2 September 2021)

⚡ John Yamrus Reviews Evil Me by Mish (Eileen) Murphy in Cultural Daily (2 September 2020)

⚡ How to Write a Book Review in Ten Easy Steps (just kidding; it’s not always easy), a guest blog post by Eileen (Mish) Murphy in Trish Hopkinson’s A Selfish Poet (14 June 2020)

⚡ Fearless Poems about Sex and Power in Enter Here by Alexis Rhone Fancher, a book review by Eileen Murphy in Los Angeles Review of Books (30 November 2017)