Toothpicks

Hello Wonderful Readers, What I’m about to share with you is completely real. I wrote a love letter to another writer. We met through friends in Mexico City. Over dinner, he told us he had written a short story about sex, and about him. I told him I wanted to read it. I gave him my email address. At the club later that night, after he had emailed me the story, he stood over me and talked loudly over the music into my ear, “Will you send me something back?” he asked me. “What do you want to read?” I said, “I publish my work all the time.” I was trying to make myself sound very prolific and very accomplished. He paused for a moment. Then he said, “Send me something you haven’t sent to anyone else before.” His words gave me chills, and you’ll understand why below. The next day, I went home, read his story, and whipped up this piece, “Toothpicks,” in about an hour. I had no intention of sharing it, but then my friend insisted on it. Well, here it is. I hope you like it! Love, Tash 💌 ✍️ Toothpicks It starts last night when we are sitting at the bar; I don’t know exactly why or when. I think it is when I am playing with the toothpick, smiling and prodding it between my front teeth, circling my tongue around its tiny, spiked edge. I look up. Then I notice you. You are playing with a toothpick, also. And maybe you are looking at me. Or maybe I am looking at you. You glance at me. Your eyes catch mine. Maybe once. Maybe twice. I try to imagine what you are seeing. A slightly straggled mess of unwashed, imperfect brownish hair that used to be blonde (I swear). Fresh out of the sauna of Koti, no makeup, no shampoo, yoga pants, Hoka running shoes, not even a lick of foundation on my face. But rejuvenated, I guess. Maybe at 30, I still have some collagen in my skin. Maybe at 30, my cheeks can still look a bit red and a bit plump, glowing. Or at least I can try to smile from my deep brown eyes, piercing every man in my wake. Moahaha. We tell stories back and forth with our friends, and you are talking. When you talk, you are looking at me. Or maybe it is the angle of the table. But I like to think you are angling yourself in my direction in the blaring orange-red-neon light of the swanky bar. I like it. Maybe it’s pathetic of me to say, but it feels kind of electric. I am cautiously optimistic. I chuckle to myself at my own secrets. I tend to be a little hornier when I ovulate. As the conversation flows like the beers our friends are drinking and the spicy soy sauce concoctions in our bowls, I check my period tracker on my phone. It’s Day 19 of my cycle. Nope. Ovulation this month is long gone. My arms are shaking a little. Hormones are flooding my brain. I sense them coursing through my body. I remember that it’s been about three months since I last had sex. Since no one else has come along, when I masturbate, I think of him. Tall, muscular, and almost stereotypically masculine, his Calvin Klein underwear echoing his commercial-worthy existence. But my memories of his face, him kissing me, are fading. The coldness and darkness and wetness in London are deep in my bones, lying in his bed on that Sunday morning, knowing that my love of life was calling me back to Mexico. And I am all too glad to leave him in the grayness. The grayness of it all, to fend for himself. But then you are here, right now. In flesh and blood. A real human a meter away from me. It’s a little too much for me to handle. I smile to myself, and I consider that, whatever happens tonight, I am going to need to masturbate when I get home. I’ll use my favorite setting, the lowest green one, on my vibrator. And I remember, yet again, that, especially at this age, the most powerful force in my world is biology. And each person around me is the culmination of thousands of similar, irresistible acts and circumstances. We are all looped through the trajectory of time, the result of chance encounters, and the caresses of thighs. Each of our ancestors carried their bodies through. They found a way to make it happen. So why not me and you? 💌 ✍️ Related Reading From Misseducated Get full access to Misseducated by Tash Doherty at misseducated.tashdoherty.com/subscribe