All This Life

The boy tries to focus on this porn clip. It’s the first time he has watched it. He likes this site because it deals only with amateurs, no actual porn stars with their fake tits and too-big cocks. Jake likes watching real people, what real people do.

The site also curates its content, helping users find the good stuff without having to scroll through pages and pages of boring material. The clip he’s watching right now is featured at the top of the homepage because it’s the winner of their “Skank of the Week” video contest. That’s why it has so many hits.

Jake has more hits with the jumpers, but 212,212 views is respectable.

He isn’t in the habit of rating videos, but if he did, this one would get a solid score. He likes the girl because she’s young and small, like him. He enjoys the sounds she makes. A lot of them try too hard, overselling the sex, making it seem cheap and staged, but this girl remains simple and honest, which is a huge turn-on.

The rating categories on this site are as follows: Gold Medal, Hot-ToTrot! Boring, Weirdest Boner Right Now, WTF, Flaccid Central.

This clip’s called Naughty in Nevada and Jake copies the URL on his master sheet of personal favorites. He keeps this litany handy, ready to peruse his merchandise whenever he gets to steal a few minutes for himself. He doesn’t only shepherd disasters; he has a separate stable for orgasms as well.

In the waiting room, the middle-aged lady yawns and brushes back her bangs but never takes her eyes off her tablet.

The clip ends and it’s 9:49 and Jake starts it back at the beginning.

The simple fact that he knows enough about sex to classify all these clips, ranking them on a spectrum from good to bad, convinces the boy he will be a good lover — or that he already is a good lover but hasn’t yet started using his skills. He thinks all his observances have taught him stamina, technique, positions, postponement, thrilling ways to pleasure someone.

His father had told him, on a rare day he felt like talking to his son on their commute into the city, about a theory that claims it takes 10,000 hours of practice to get good at anything, which was how the boy arrived at his own conversion.

Ten thousand hours of watching porn = 1 genuine sexual encounter.

Therefore, he’s no virgin.

“You can get good at anything from practice?” the boy had asked.

“Literally anything.”

And it isn’t only the constant lip-pursing that makes the therapist terrible, it’s his whole deal, his whole office, his whole face, his whole set of questions and phony way of instilling camaraderie that the boy had seen through immediately. He knew he couldn’t tell the doc the truth, not with his incessant badgering about the clip.

“Why did you post it?”

Lip purse.

“What made you want to share it?”

Lip purse.

“How do you feel about putting it online?”

I can live-tweet this betrayal, thought Jake. I can share our confidentiality with all my 281 followers.

It will need its own hashtag.

#ShrinkStink.

#MeetMyMentalIllness.

He tried to pull his phone out during the session to tweet, but the doctor wouldn’t allow that, threatened to take it away, and that’s the one thing that can’t happen.

But there’s no one in the waiting room to tell him what to do. He’s in charge. If he feels like live-tweeting, that’s what he’ll do.

The real travesty is that hanging meringue from the hand sanitizer dispenser. Looks like a tiny stalactite. Someone should wipe it off. Not the boy. Somebody has this job. They’re supposed to dab and clean the contraption but they might have called in sick, might have seen TheGreatJake’s clip, might have seen the brass band jump, too, and feel too confused to swab.

Virgins are clumsy lovers. Quick cummers. Make ridiculous faces. Keep their socks on. Only know two positions.

None of these describe Jake.

It is 9:51.

The therapist obviously doesn’t care about this woman, who he makes wait while he’s in the other room talking shit about Jake. Which makes him mad, and feelings are like Spotify, how each user gets to decide on a certain song that he needs to hear right this second! and he searches for it and finds it and clicks play and it’s right there — this thing that you needed — it’s immediately available, faster than sneezing.

That’s what Jake’s doing right now — he’s streaming anger.

Good thing there isn’t a baseball bat here, thinks Jake.

Then he immediately wants to share that thought, wants all his Twitter followers to grip his fury.

First live-tweet: I’d smash this whole place.

On the porn clip, they switch positions again, go reverse cowgirl. He is sure that this is the angle that feels the best, and it’s how Jake would like to start his sexual career.