Tell by Beth Sherman

Sex.

You lie back, close your eyes and think about how to make green chili pie. You could teach the girls, right after you pick them up from tennis. Easy-peasy. A useful thing to know.

Sex is overrated. Like pickleball and Chick-fil-A. On TV, the actors’ perfect bodies writhe, their jaws go slack, their eyes have the vacant, glassy look of squirrels who’ve been stuffed by a taxidermist.

You understand the appeal of food. Warm, salty French fires. Tangy barbecue sauce. Gooey brownies. Custard dissolving on your lips as you anticipate that first bite of crust.

Your husband suggests porn. Alluring at first. Growing tedious as each act is repeated with no commercials. Perhaps what’s required is an editor to sort out the good bits.  

The first time was with Danny Klein in the fall of freshman year. First boyfriend, first love, first inkling that fucking is not all it’s cracked up to be. Fumbling and hushed, so as not to wake your roommate. Over in less time than it takes to cook an egg, sunny side up, with crispy bacon.

In high school, you remember the array of condoms in a basket in the Guidance Office, next to the Peanut M&Ms. The wrappers so invitingly colorful—peach, pink, raspberry. Sorbet flavors. When your friend, Sue Struth, sleeps with the goalie on the soccer team, you pepper her with questions. What’s it like? you ask her. Tell me tell me tell . . .  But she only looks at you, her eyes half smiling, half pitying, and says, you’ll have to find out for yourself.

The tennis pro is good looking in a careless way. After the girls head to the candy machine (get Kind bars, you remind them, not Twizzlers), you inquire about their backhands, noticing the blond hairs on his arms, the downy softness of his chin. You’d meet him in the no-tell motel on Jericho Turnpike, wearing a push-up bra and sheer stockings that clip to a garter belt. But even as you picture it, you find yourself imagining how you would write the scene: fake potted plant on the bedside table, insistent drip of the bathroom faucet, lumpy bed with its stained comforter, his warm, beery breath—and the fantasy is ruined.    

At night, listening to your husband snore, you ponder the intangibles. Maybe everyone feels as you do. A collective, global secret. It’s why people would rather reveal their credit card debt than discuss their sex life. Oh, there are quizzes and studies. But none of them mention how much work is required—shaving, deodorizing, lubricating, timing it so the girls have gone to sleep and there’s not enough light to see varicose veins, those saggy flaps of skin. Waiting and waiting. Not for the bread to rise, but for someone else to finish.  

Maybe the animals have got it right. Sex as procreation, as survival. Not something to be completed on a mental list of chores, right below buy more avocados. In the checkout line of Costco, you look around at the overweight, exhausted customers and wonder how often they do it or if the secret to a happy marriage is putting sex on a shelf, next to the cookbooks and the Hummel figurines, letting dust feather the edges.

Date night. Your husband is taking you to Chez Louis. Coq au vin and crepes. You’ve hired a babysitter, the one with ear piercings and a tattoo of a snake on her ankle. Colt legs, hair smelling of honey. As you go back into the house because you forgot your sweater, you hear her talking to someone on the phone. Please, baby. I didn’t mean it. This girl is having sex even though she’s too young to drive and you wonder if she likes it, or if she just wants to be loved and spreads her legs like a can opener, hoping for the best.

In the car, on the way to the restaurant, you think about whether you’ll order the onion soup or tapenade smeared on a baguette. The radio is playing a Taylor Swift song, something about midnight becoming afternoon. At a red light, your husband reaches over to touch your knee. A friendly tap to say we’re here together with the sunroof open, in the night, just the two of us without kids, no longer young but still happy, and you lean against his familiar shoulder, liking the feel of the wind.

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BETH SHERMAN — Beth has an MFA in creative writing from Queens College, where she teaches in the English department. Her writing has been published in more than 100 literary magazines, including Portland Review, Tiny Molecules, 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, and Bending Genres. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2024. She’s also a Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and multiple Best of the Net nominee. She can be reached at @bsherm36 or Home.

Art by AMY MARQUES — Amy has been known to call books friends and is on a first name basis with many fictional characters. She’s been nominated for multiple awards, longlisted twice in Wigleaf 50,  and has visual art, poetry, and prose published in journals such as Streetcake Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, Fictive Dream, Unlost, Ghost Parachute, BOOTH, Bright Flash Literary Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Gone Lawn. She is the editor and visual artist for the Duetsanthology and author and artist of the found poetry book PARTS. More at https://amybookwhisperer.wordpress.com.