It's not that he wishes he were dead, but Wendell sometimes feels that he doesn't quite see the point of being alive. It isn't a despairing emotion or even a depressive one; it's more just a function of garden-variety, existential boredom.

But having an erection always makes him feel glad to be among the living. It's similar to the way a spectacular sunset makes him feel, but much more personal. After all, you don't fuck with a sunset.

A hard-on puts him in touch with some elemental, animal passion for existence. When he feels he wants to fuck some alluring individual from among his community of human creatures, he knows he wants to be part of this world.

Sometimes he goes for days at a time with no sex drive, and then, suddenly, a momentary image makes him go firm in his pants, and the image won't leave him until he has gratified his urge.

Sometimes he postpones masturbation, knowing that as long as an orgasm is still on the horizon, life has a purpose. He knows that once he has burst the bubble of his libido, he must face the existential sea again.

In the shower, his mind has a tendency to wander. He forgets if he's already washed his cock and his balls. He seizes the excuse to wash them again. This time he will think, not of a grocery list or a weather forecast or a pile of books that he knows will ultimately bore him . . . but of a woman who has smiled at him.

He goes to parties, where women who are too busy to notice him during the week gush affectionately over him while they hold glasses of wine in their hands. He gladly accepts their tipsy affection; he knows it means something sincere, even if it is something that's irretrievable when they're sober. The women who lavish their lubricated attention on Wendell don't lavish such attention on just any man. It is, indeed, him they want, even if they only want him under these specific circumstances.

Wendell is the kind of quiet man that people seduce when they've been drinking.

The semi-drunk women who take him to bed during or after these parties are alert enough to know what they're doing. They wouldn't have done it on a wine-free night; but, though giddy with drink, they know it's the giddiness that is guiding their behavior, and this reality doesn't bother them. And if it doesn't bother them, it doesn't bother Wendell. Far be it from him to stand aloof from the wet kisses of wine-tinted women, or from the slippery feel of their pussies when they pull him in between their legs and breathe hotly against his neck.

Her name is Janice. She has been drinking moderately, but effectively. The door clicks closed and the party hubbub shrivels into a muffled carpet of context. Her tipsiness is contagious, and it more than compensates for the clumsiness of trying to manipulate their party-fatigued bodies into some kind of transcendent gracefulness.

Wendell relishes the moment of desire, of reaching out to stroke her bottom for the first time.

He kisses it. The sweaty flesh of her ass cheeks smells faintly and deliciously of coffee, in counterpoint to the intimate fragrance of alcohol on her breath. This is a well-balanced woman, Wendell thinks.

Wendell wishes he could watch her face while he licks her cunt. In his fantasies, the two are compatible. Bodies are so awkward in real life.

But he can hear her voice, articulating raunchy words as magic words, and he knows what her face must look like at each instant. He can tell when her eyes have closed, as she passes into that private world so supersaturated with sensation as to nearly negate sensation itself.

Later, with semi-drunken laughter, she grabs her own ankles and opens herself to him like a giant, cackling oyster.

It won't be perfect. Wendell can't do perfect.

His tongue might slip. His concentration might slip. His orgasm might slip.

There might be a moment when he accidentally pinches the flesh of her forearm, or breathes too hard in her face, or pokes her with a wayward fingernail.