Semen slides stubbornly down the shower drain, transforming into glue in the hot water. Maybe I should have used contraception. Nah, I doubt anything’s getting fertilized down there.

Doing this again is like devolving, going back to the stone ages. I have lost the ability to harness electricity, and this is what I have to settle for. Some lame fantasy about an ex living seventy feet away, mixed with disconcerting images of my current girlfriend getting eaten out by another woman.

An alarm goes off elsewhere in the apartment. I hear Amy shut it off. Ten minutes to get ready.

Off goes the water. Oops, forgot to flush the toilet. Wiping your ass and then taking a shower, that’s doing the same step twice, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

She better not ever find out about these filthy habits of mine.

Maintenance is almost complete. Just have to gel up the ol’ doo, cover my hands in toothpaste, and throw on some clothes. Not like we’re going to dinner.

Outside of the bathroom door is the closet filled with my clothes. Amy walks behind me as I search for a shirt. Thing is, everything seems inappropriate for this. “Which one? The Devourment shirt or the Baby Killer shirt?”

She doesn’t even turn to look, she’s so used to this behavior. “Either. I’ll bring my camera and I can get shots of you being ejected from the property.”

“They have private security there? Shit.” Impressive, and it’s a relief. It means those dodgy religious fuckers won’t be vandalizing my ride.

Amy’s tense, but at least she isn’t crying. I imagine she’s heard the same hype I have about this, but hell, it’s happening to her body and that has to be sobering if not absolutely terrifying. She had been pretty calm about it until the walls came down last night. She looks fine now. Tired.

I pull a plain black shirt down over my head. “What’s recovery time? Four hours?”

“The nausea should be over by then. I’ll be sleeping through most of it.”

“Should I get food?”

“Hell. Yes.”

“We’ll just go someplace together afterwards.”

“Good.”

We’re standing by the door throughout this exchange, each waiting for the other to open the door.

A small growl resounds from her stomach. My conditioned response kicks in before I can stop it. I pat her stomach and whisper, “Shhh.”

She knocks my hand away. “Don’t do that. It’s creepy.”

Get out of the apartment.

Get this the fuck over with.

**********

It’s easy for me to forget about procreation. I blame my tardiness, how long it took me to actually enter the game, judging women by their taste and not their personality type and letting disgust override the hope of ever getting laid. Old habits can fucking off you.

When you first fuck someone, I mean for the very first time, something changes. I don’t mean the guilt goes away. When you tell someone about it, it’s like you are accepted to a very exclusive club. Like they were all waiting for you to join, and when you do, man it’s such a relief. It’s so good we can finally talk about this! How pussy tastes and how it took me so long to finally orgasm. Hooray.

I still get that rush of excitement, and if strong enough, it impairs my judgment enough to justify foregoing precautions. Get that bare dick in her this instant. Fill her tank, fill her to the brim, fuck it, fuck it hard, who cares if she’s ovulating.

The first time round, she didn’t get pregnant. Common sense didn’t have a goddamn prayer.

Our car ride is aborted silence, not even the radio is on, until she says, “I feel like throwing up,” two blocks from the clinic and I crank it to somewhere temporarily devoid of commercials and say something extremely helpful like “It’ll be okay.”

We arrive forty-five minutes before her appointment, driving past a dark blue van parked on the outskirts of the property. Huge banners of fetuses at seven weeks, eight weeks, three months, torn from the wombs of their mothers hang in plain view. A woman sits in a foldout chair and a security guard keeps an eye on her from the parking lot.

Amy avoids eye contact exiting the car. She isn’t the type of person to give into a guilt trip, but shit, some well-read people can at least prod you long enough to produce some tears.

“God loves you! God has a plan for you!” Lucky for us, this woman isn’t one of them. “You have options! There are options! Don’t give into self-pity! The relationship will never be the same! These people aren’t even trained physicians! They’ll kill you in there!”

**********

Inside.

Girl receptionist behind the counter hands Amy a clipboard and a pen, then reaches through the hole and takes my ATM card out of my hand. “You’re paying?”

“The least I could do, right?”

Receptionist eyes me and drops me my card, and I sit down in a nearby chair.

It’s a miserable crowded fucking waiting room that can’t fight off the three-digit heat of the outside world, but Amy has loosened up. She’s has on her neutral expression, the same she wears when reading a trashy novel about a woman with a figurative rabbit heart.

Thirty-five minutes until her appointment. She’s filling out the information form, signing consent and absorbing information. I make a conscious decision to read every available pamphlet before digging into the novel I brought. Four hours in here will be two shades shy of torture.

“I really thought there’d be an entire line of them, standing right outside the door, screaming ‘Don’t do it.’”

“Me too.”

According to the friendly pink pamphlet, we did good by coming here within the first trimester. A licensed MD will gently remove the contents of her uterus via vacuum aspiration. According to stats, the safest medical procedure on the planet, and afterwards you’re even treated to a “light snack.” In and out in ten minutes, in and out of the building in four hours. Two come in, one come out, as the protestors would say.

“What would we have called it?”

“Got me. Tails Jr if he had a pair of coccyx.”

“I’m sure that’s not the plural for that…”

According to the friendly blue pamphlet, it would have been more difficult in the second trimester. A clinician would insert sterile cervical dilators into the cervix for overnight softening and dilation. We might have had to travel out of state for a licensed MD to gently remove the contents of her uterus via vacuum aspiration. There I would assume that it continues in the same fashion as friendly pink pamphlet; light snackies.

There might be spotting. You might experience cramps. There is the possibility of post-op depression. We recommend a second appointment of pregnancy persists. We might accidentally tear your cervix. Do not be alarmed if there isn’t spotting. Come back in a week for a follow-up.

“How I love my cock.”

“I bet you do. Fag.”

“See? That was a smile.”

“Was not, shut up.”

We’re actually laughing about this.

Any woman who would kill our kid has got to be worth sticking to.

**********

It’s late afternoon and I turn to the woman sitting next to me, probably supporting her daughter or best friend. “You come here often?” She promptly changes seats.

Amy comes out, cotton taped to the heroin injection spot on her arm, walking all googly and drunk. “Those people… had their fingers in my snatch.”

I drop my book and help her to the door. “You look wasted.”

“I feel fine.” Her head rolls back to kiss me on the cheek. “Two weeks, no strenuous activity, no sex. And I’m sticking to that rule.”

“Fair enough.” Perfectly okay by me. “Only handjobs and blowjobs.”

“Can’t do those either.”

“What?!”

“Strenuous activity.”

“Oh bull fucking shit, no it isn’t. Great. Fine. Fine. Whatever. I have a new file sharing system, I’ll just get some porn.”

“Kay.”

“You’re not supposed to say that! You say, ‘Oh, well, in that case…’”

“I can walk to the counter. I’ll make sure I don’t have to do anything else.”

Any excuse for another smoke.

Outside in 104 degree direct sunlight, I light up a smoke stick and suck filth into my lungs. From across the parking lot the protestor, now joined by two others, restarts her bitching and directs it at me.

“You need to be a real man! A real man would help her raise that child instead of bringing it here and butchering it! God loves you! God will provide for you!”

“Lady, you got a good line of propaganda going! I like it!”

Her tone softens. “Are you married?”

“That’s none of your fucking business. Are you married? Are you married? Huh? Are you married? What line of work are you in? Which planet is your favorite? Are you married?”

“I used to be.”

“Yah-huh. God didn’t provide there, did he?”

Amy comes out, shifting the focus of attention. “Nothing, let’s go.”

“He obviously doesn’t respect you, honey! He looks kinda controlling! I know, I know women can be blindsided by men sometimes, but you can’t give into him! God loves you!”

We reach our car and the voice shuts out. Amy leans back in her seat. “Bitch needs to mind her own fucking business and get a job.”

“Probably lives out of her van.” I reach over to hold her hand. She shows no signs of reacting until I start the car and she leans over for a kiss.

She pulls away from me, nose scrunched in disgust. “You didn’t brush.”

Shit. Didn’t consider it, but hell if it ain’t obvious. We’d be kissing a lot afterwards. “Sorry.” I had four hours to do it, too. Fuck me I’m useless.

**********

“I wonder if I’d get in trouble for publicly supporting the clinic the way it’s protested. I’d sit across the street and just smoke cigarettes all day. Behind me there’d be a huge banner with a blown-up photo of a shaved pussy, with giant black words saying ‘It’s your cunt. Do what you want.’”

“I’m not going to be your model for that.”

“Damn.” All in all, I actually had a pretty good time. Maybe we should go back tomorrow for drinks and dancing. “We should have gone to the park, watch you stumble around.”

“I’m still that cute, huh?” She flops down on our bed and moans.

“How does it feel?”

“Like I’m on my period. My back hurts and I’m cramping. And I’m hungry.”

“Shit. Completely forgot about that.” I fish my keys out of the change jar sitting by the door. “Burgers or chili dogs?”

“Chili dogs sound terrible.” She spreads out on the bed. “If I’m asleep, don’t wake me up.”

“Okay.” I gently close the door and lock it from the outside.

**********

Across the street at Sonic Burger, Katherine hands me my order and sneers.

Way back in the day, when I used to work here, Kat bought me a cake. Her coworkers convinced her to do it because I guess they found out that she had a bit of a crush on me. I didn’t know about this, and never really fathomed the full extent of it until it was too late and she was gone. Moved out of apartment complex. I shouldn’t feel guilty, but I can’t help but feel I could have done more.

I light up my last cigarette and not ten feet from home, I run into someone, this petite thing carrying a basket full of clothes. “Excuse me, do you know how much calling security costs?”

Nearby, less than twenty feet, are apartments belonging to Mo and Beth, two from high school. “Twenty-five bucks.” Both of them hate me because I broke up with them after two weeks, not for any reason other than I was scared of getting locked down with them. “You live in the studio apartments?”

Her smile takes up half of her face. “Yeah. I just moved in last week. I’m still getting settled in.”

Only one of them I ever got to grope. She was a wild number, moaning whenever I’d breathe on the back of her neck. “I hear you. Our fridge was busted the first week and we had to eat at restaurants until they sent some guy down.”

“It’s pretty good, though?” She brushes thin black hair out of her eyes with one thumb, hanging onto the basket.

“Once the problem is fixed, it’s awhile before one crops up again, you know?” Two doors down doesn’t even count as an ex. My first hand job. She was a right hand with folds and a pulse, I was a vibrator with a heartbeat. Two days and she goes seriously looking for a guy. We still hang out sometimes, all three of us. “It’s quiet. No crime.”

A place full of women I’ve dated and women I will date one day. Reminders of past and future failures. As long as there is someone new in the apartment complex, there is no chance of remaining with a woman. I know that sooner or later, I have to date her.

Or else they wouldn’t be here.

“Not worried about the crime so much. Gwen, by the way.” She is refraining from speaking about her life prior to moving here, like they all do. “Is that one yours?”

This is bad.

This is very bad.

“Yeah. I’m Tails.” I’ll miss Amy. “Yeah.” I was naïve to try and avoid it. Of course I would meet somebody else. Of course this would be the first signs that the end is on the horizon. Of course this is the next girl I’m going to either fuck or officially date. And then that will end too. “See you around.” Or else she wouldn’t be living here, right?

Was this flirting? I can’t admit to it yet. I did everything right, though. Used the word ‘we,’ brandished the obviously packed bag of fast food, stayed away from looking at her tits and ass, at least while she was facing me. Maybe I smiled too much.

If we remain friends after the breakup, I can hear Amy’s voice: “Great, another woman you’ve screwed that I have to look at.”

I can offer no excuses or explanations.

But if I try hard enough this time, forgo all of the instincts and urges to leave, do my best to convince her to stay with me no matter how depressed she gets or how many other men or women there are in the world, perhaps I can break formula.

That self-deception feels good. I can lie myself into believing it. Awesome.

“No onions on yours, right?”

The food drops out of my hands, smacking apart on the hard part of the foyer and spilling all over the carpet. Behind me, the door to our home almost closes. There is still a chance I could…

There he is. There he is, right there.

… escape.

And damned if he isn’t the spitting image of the posters.

He looks up from between Amy’s legs, recognizably alive, half of his jaw line torn away, vacuumed off, looking like the dried hamburger meat and ketchup soaking into the carpet, a pair of tails exiting their way out of her the walls kissing closed and there’s a twitching a twitching my eyes are twitching and I think I hear him saying he’s saying:

“I liked the other story better.”