Sex Is Awkward For All Parties Not Involved, by Anonymous

Sex is awkward for anyone not having it.  If you’re lucky enough to be a participant in fornication, you put aside any personal pet peeves about excessive noise, heavy breathing, sweating, etc.  However, when you’re dragged into said act unwillingly and subjected to someone else’s gay old time – generally a visual or audio assault – it is something akin to finding someone else’s hair in your food.  When it’s your hair, no biggie.  When it’s someone else’s long, stringy, black thread camping out in your Cobb Salad, you imagine that this person has never taken a bath in their life and you are subsequently doomed to some strange disease because of this experience.  In reality, it’s just fucking hair.  Yours is just as disgusting as theirs.  But I digress.

I was lucky enough to go unscathed in my childhood, having never seen or heard my parents “doing it.”  By the time I was ten my dad was alternating between sleeping on the couch and sleeping in the silver RV outside.  This was allegedly because of his snoring, which, admittedly, was terrible, and I certainly understood why my mom wouldn’t want him in bed.  Only two years ago did I actually start thinking of the hilarity and severity of that lie.  My poor parents.

The closest I have come to uncomfortable and accidental Peeping Tom-ism was once when I was thirteen and I happened to pass by the door of my mom and step-dad’s vacation home bedroom just as my now ex-step-dad (not because of this incident, of course) walked past wearing nothing but a white towel.  Unfortunately for me, the white towel was around his shoulders.  Ironically, his name was Tom.

Otherwise, my life has been fairly devoid of close-proximity smacking, slapping, moaning, screaming, headboard banging, mattress squeaking, other-people-fucking fucking.

That is until tonight, when I turn the two deadbolts to get into my apartment.  I know that my roommate is home because of the direction in which the locks are turned.  In the future I will use this as indication for sexy-time smoke signals.  Like when I used to watch weird movies where guys would leave a tie on the door to indicate that no one was to come inside lest they see more of their friend than they care to.

But by the time I’m inside it’s too late for cautionary devices.  I bend down to untie my boots when I begin to slowly process the moans coming from three feet to my right.  I rip at my shoelaces, trying to get them off as soon as possible so my roommate and someone I’m going to assume is her boyfriend don’t hear me fidgeting around right outside their door like some freak from Lovely Bones 2.  Fuck.  Fuck.  Fuck.  Literally and figuratively.

I strip off my jackets and scarves and throw them quickly into my room at the front of the apartment – furthest away from her bedroom – but then head into the kitchen, back towards where the magic is currently happening.  I want to stay in my bedroom from now until tomorrow but I came home because I am absolutely famished and a trip to the fridge is unavoidable.  I am forced to make my soy latte while listening to the moans of a girl I share electric bills with and negotiate the terms of who takes showers when.  I turn the stereo by the sink on in an attempt to camouflage the fuck but I keep hearing “Oooohhhhhhh OHHH ooohhhhhhh oh oh oh oh” over some Under the Influence of Giants song.  Under the Influence of Dick, rather.

The problem here is this: one can’t help where the mind wanders.  My brain takes me into territories I’d just rather not go.  Kind of like a kid who is afraid of the monster in the closet: they’d like to stop having those scary little bump-in-the-night dreams, but whenever they look into the dark corner of the room after mommy and daddy shut off that light they can’t help but see a big, lumbering, man-eating monster there.  I can’t help but think, “What’s he doing to her in there?” or simply pondering whether they’re dabbling in oral or full-blown intercourse.  Even the most innocent mental inquiry is too much.  It’s like listening to your brother talk about his sexual escapades and you’re covering your ears and screaming “LALALALALALALA” over the cacophony of TMI, except your brother is you and there is no way to distract yourself from well, yourself.

I shake my stevia bottle and pour too much.  Motherfucker.  I can’t scoop out the extra powder still floating on the surface because that will take an exorbitant amount of additional time in the kitchen which is fifteen feet closer to the moans and I’d rather not get caught casually adjusting my coffee to perfection and have them know I have been listening to them for more than thirty seconds.

I sneak a few bites of crackers and hummus and I’m still standing in the kitchen trying to hum along to another song (Ace of Base now, thanks iPod shuffle) while crunching down on my Caraway Seed Gluten Free $5 a Box crackers from Whole Foods.  Ohhhhh.  OH!  Ohhhhhh!!!!!.  It’s hard to enjoy a good tasty snack when you feel guilty about stumbling in on two people knocking boots.  After satisfying my grumbling tummy with all I can eat in a matter of 49 seconds, I head back to my bedroom but at this point I am low on my latte and require a further fill up.  Double Motherfuck! I walk back and pour the remnants of my French Press into my cup, add more Silk Soy Milk from the fridge, and get out of Dodge.  OHHHHHH!!!!!!

Once in my bedroom, I open my laptop and turn on an additional layer of music for my own sake.  I am typing away when the moans sneak in through my doors.  God damn it.  At this point I am thankful that my parents were a pair of hate-filled, sexless people who barely wanted to eat dinner together, let alone make noises like that.  The monster in my closet was enough; the monster in my parents’ bedroom would have left me rocking back and forth in a corner.