The Sex You Have in Hotel Rooms

One

…is sometimes loud. Because you can be loud here. Unrestrained here. When you don’t have to bite your lip to keep from waking your housemates. When you can throw your head back against the pillow and scream. Your hair across your face. When you can hear the sound of yourself being fucked: his hips smacking into your arse and the long, urgent moans that seem to come from some deep internal part of you, and the way your voice climbs higher and higher with each thrust…

Two

…is sometimes abrupt. When you have not seen one another in months, and when you are able only to snatch a brief moment together in a room with a view of the airport. When you have wanted her so many times in the months apart that it feels now like something as essential to you as breathing when you tear off her clothes. When you push her down into the perfectly-made bed. When you put your mouth between her legs and kiss her cunt and find it wet and dripping.

Three

…is sometimes on the clock. Paid for in advance with a fan of notes on the bedside table (you count them with your eyes as you take off your bra). When it’s at least in part an act – just earnest enough, just believable enough. When you bite your lip as he takes off his clothes like you’ve bitten your lip a thousand times before. When you lie beneath him and open yourself just as you’ve opened yourself a thousand times before. When you look past him to the ceiling, moan like you’re on the verge of coming, and think about home, about your own more comfortable bed.

Four

…is secret sometimes. When you wonder each and every time if the absolute terror of anyone finding out is what makes it so good. When you don’t know what could possibly make it feel this good. When, afterwards, you lie in the middle of a bed that isn’t your marriage bed and stare at an unfamiliar ceiling and listen to an unfamiliar woman humming to herself as she showers in the tiny tiled bathroom and feel, for once, every bit as blank as this room was before you entered it.

Five

…is constant sometimes. When, for the whole long weekend, you never once leave the room. Long sessions fucking in tangled covers, fingers raking skin. Sweat lubricating bodies. The whole space taking on the smell of condoms and lube. Pausing only to smoke out of the window and replenish yourself with long gulps of tablet-softened water from thin plastic cups. When the world narrows down to the width and breath of the room, to the dimensions of your bodies, to one another, no further.

Six

… is repetitive sometimes. When you lie there afterwards glowing with the warmth of his body, with the warmth he left inside your cunt, and wonder how many orgasms have been had in this bed. How many bodies locked together fucking? How many babies accidentally conceived? How many couples lying beside one another, panting slowing to breathing just as it is for you now. Too many, you think, very softly, just before sleep comes, too many to even fit in this room.

Seven

… is cleaned away afterwards. So that when you’re done there will be no trace. Your sweat laundered from the sheets and your forgotten pair of panties bagged and binned. Every trace removed. Your lipstick on the edge of a mug autoclaved away by a roar of hot water. Nothing left to tell that you ever were here. No clues. No markers. The only evidence, as you step back out into the real world, is inside of you. His come in your cunt. The feel of his hands still lingering on your skin.