Them or Us

as much an ordeal for this woman as it is for me.
    “Get on with it,” she says, looking up at the ceiling, not at me. I nervously start to undress, kicking off my boots, taking off my coat, and pulling down my trousers. Without thinking, I start to remove some of the layers of clothing I’m wearing on top, but she stops me. “No need for that. Just get it done.”
    Feeling increasingly awkward and embarrassed and now half naked, I climb onto the bed and kneel next to her on the mattress, heart racing, barely able to think straight, too nervous even to reach across and touch her. My pathetic, flaccid cock hangs down between my legs, shriveled up to virtually nothing by the bitter cold. Can’t get hard. Starting to panic. Maybe erectile dysfunction will save me tonight? I try to remember all the things I used to think about to get myself aroused, but they’re hard to remember and they all have the opposite effect. Each image I dredge up from the past, each buried memory that slowly returns, they all hurt too much. It’s obviously not the first time this woman has been faced with someone like me. She reaches up and cups my balls with her hand. She doesn’t speak, she barely even moves, but just the touch of her skin against mine is enough, and my cock finally starts to stiffen. She gently runs her fingertips down the length of my shaft, touching me more tenderly than anyone’s touched me in almost a year.
    My head’s clear now, empty of all thoughts but one. I look straight at the woman but I don’t even see her face. There’s a sudden burning, insatiable need low in my gut and I sit astride her and force myself into her. Hard and dry, then warm. It hurts for a second as my foreskin snags, but then it gets easier as I start to move. I don’t think about what I’m doing, I just do it. Again and again, harder and harder, faster now, not giving a damn about what she thinks or feels … harder still, balls banging against the inside of her thighs, hands gripping the headboard.
    Then it happens.
    A split-second pause filled with something that used to matter, then I feel myself empty into her.
    I groan with effort and drop down, our bodies finally close, head next to hers, panting hard. She shoves her hands up under my chest and pushes me away. I roll over onto my back as she slides out from under me. We lie there in silence, side by side for several seconds until, without warning, the most brutal and unforgiving wave of postejaculation regret I’ve ever experienced comes crashing over me. I turn my head to one side and finally look into the woman’s face, and I’m filled with shame and remorse. She just stares up at the ceiling, waiting for me to leave.
    “Go,” she says, and I do it without a word. I can’t wait to get away from her. I virtually fall off the bed and scoop up my clothes and my boots from the floor in haste. I have to get out of this room. My cock is still dribbling thick, sticky strings of warm fluid down the inside of my leg as I struggle to hold on to everything and get the door open. I crash out onto the landing and slump back against the wall, freezing cold and still only half dressed but not giving a damn, content to let the darkness of the musty hotel swallow me up, happy to disappear. I look around, half expecting Hinchcliffe to be there, nodding his approval and giving me points out of ten.
    I sit down on the ice-cold, threadbare carpet and dress myself. I feel humiliated; empty and defiled. If I could stay in these shadows forever, I think I would.
    The shame and regret mutate into anger, then the anger turns to guilt. I can’t understand how I’m feeling but every new thought just adds to the confusion. I think about Lizzie and the pain increases massively. Do I feel so bad because I’ve been unfaithful to her? Am I really feeling remorse because I’ve just fucked someone other than my dead, Unchanged ex-partner? Fucked . Wrong word. That wasn’t even fucking. It wasn’t anything like that. As Hinchcliffe made clear, it was a business transaction: a way to keep him happy and for that woman in there—Christ, I don’t even know her name—to earn herself some extra rations. Have things really come to this? Is this the pinnacle of Hinchcliffe’s vision for the future? Is this what we’ve been reduced to?
    I start trying to justify and rationalize what I’ve just done, making excuses and looking for reasons why it doesn’t matter. My irradiated sperm’s probably