“Give yourself over to absolute pleasure,” Tony sings in the shower. I can hear him clearly even though the door is closed to the bathroom and I’m hiding in the bedroom, under the bed. Tony is loud and Tony is horny. If he had his way, I would be in the shower pushed up against the wall while he pushed himself inside of me. He would still be singing. And when we got out he’d ask me if I felt like “Doing it again in the kitchen?” or someplace else in the apartment. This is one of the reasons I am hiding.

Not that I don’t enjoy the pleasures of sex, I do, but I don’t enjoy them every waking minute. Tony, as a displaced segment of my own personality, is capable of sexual activity at any time, time and time again. This isn’t really a negative to some people, but it causes me to feel some performance anxiety because I feel that as a young-ish man I should want to be sexually involved all the time. But sometimes sex feels too involved, and sometimes I am sincerely not in the mood.

And sex to me isn’t really sex. Sex is intimacy. Sex is focused attention. Sex is heightened awareness. And sex is an expression of love. This becomes complicated because of the biology attached and the actual, physical longing and need for sexual release that I sometimes feel. However, unlike Tony, I also have emotional needs. I really enjoy having sex because it makes me feel loved.

Similar to Tony’s need for sex, my need for love is infinite. But it is also exclusive. I only need love from one man. So because I equate sex with love it seems I develop an infinite need for sex from this one man, but I think that is only “seem” and not “be.” It is hard to explain this to the man, however, because my desire for love from sex can be confused with the times that my desire is for sex from sex. And both look a lot alike. But only on the outside.

All of this speaks to the reason that I have become quite obsessed with the topic of sex. And the idea of it, as it is expressed with all sorts of different purposes. There are parts that scare me, such as mens’ desire and their sometimes violent means of fulfilling it. There are also parts that thrill me, such as being the object of such desire. These two things are contradictory, yet both completely true. This is why the one and only man with whom I have sex has a lot on his plate.

The benefits to this man, however, are the fact that I am exclusively interested and intrigued by this one man and his sex, and therefore always appreciative and never bored. (Hopefully this also means I’m never boring, but I suppose only he can decide that.) But once the man has proved to me that he will use his sex to show me love then I will allow him access. And since I only have room for one, this man will not have to fear that I will look to another. And since I have a Tony-sized capacity for love, I will also never lose my interest in this man. And he will always have a place to go.

Tony is not this one man. However, Tony doesn’t understand that. This is the other reason I am hiding.