The Story of Steven and Melissa
As Told by the Sex They Used to Have

by Max Greenhut

I should begin by explaining myself. Steven and Melissa used to date but don't anymore. They were together for just under eight months and were happy with one another, for the most part, throughout their relationship. However, they weren't head-over-heels in love, and, as a result, they decided to end their romance one month ago yesterday. One of the most memorable things about their relationship (if not the most memorable thing), one of the things that kept them together in the absence of a true and deep and abiding love for one another, the thing the two of them miss most right now, and the primary reason they want to call each other though they know they shouldn't, was the sex they used to have. I am that sex.

I anticipate that there might be objections to reading the story of a couple, albeit together only briefly and not bound by true and deep and abiding love, narrated by that couple's sex. Let me make my case. I am the best qualified to narrate the story of Steven and Melissa because I am at the same time intimately familiar with their relationship and a third party to it. If you asked Steven or Melissa to narrate this story, you might get a more intimate portrait, but it would be glaringly one-sided in spots. Knowing Steven and Melissa as well as I do, I know they would try to be fair, but they wouldn't be able to help sentimentalizing or demonizing those areas or times in the relationship that they found particularly wonderful or regrettable. I, on the other hand, was always between them, and though I might have been closer to Steven at certain times and closer to Melissa at others, I can look back on both, as I did when they were together, with equal insight and critical distance.

If, alternatively, you asked one of Steven's or Melissa's friends - say Jim from Steven's office or Rachel, Melissa's best friend and roommate - to narrate this story, it might have the critical distance of a third party, but it would lack the intimacy and interior details that I can provide. Also, Jim always wanted to have sex with Melissa, and Rachel could never understand how Melissa could actually have sex with Steven, whereas I am the sex that Melissa and Steven actually had with one another.

In conclusion, I am both Steven and Melissa and neither of them at the same time and I am therefore uniquely qualified to tell you the story of their relationship.

I was a force in Steven and Melissa's relationship even before they had a relationship. They were both attending a New Year's Eve party thrown by the aforementioned Jim, Steven's friend from the office. Jim invited Steven because, as I mentioned above, they worked together. Jim invited Melissa because, as I mentioned above, he wanted to have sex with her. Jim met Melissa through the aforementioned Rachel, Melissa's best friend and roommate, who also happened to be a friend of Jim's from a past job. If you're confused, read this paragraph over again slowly. Or don't. The connections that brought Steven and Melissa together aren't nearly as important as the connections they made together after they met.

I'll continue then.

Melissa was already at the party when Steven arrived. She was standing at the hors d'oeuvre table, surveying the assorted cheese cubes and immaculately sliced vegetables with remarkable intensity so as to avoid facing Jim's advances and powerful beer breath. Steven was making his way to Jim's bedroom to drop off his coat, surveying the assorted coworkers and unfamiliar faces with remarkable purpose so as to avoid those people he didn't like talking to and to decide which new characters he'd try to get to know. Melissa saw Steven out of the corner of her eye as he moved across the room. Steven saw Melissa out of the corner of his eye as he waved to Jim. All this I know from what Steven and Melissa told others about how they met. I wasn't actually there until the moment Steven and Melissa made eye contact. When they saw each other, however, I was immediately and electrically present.

Jim introduced Steven and Melissa when Steven returned from the bedroom. Shortly thereafter, Jim could see he was no longer needed and Steven and Melissa retired to a couch. They talked excitedly for hours and shared a short but quietly passionate kiss at midnight. Afterward, Jim confronted Steven in a moment of uncomfortably loud and drunken jealousy but Steven was able to calm him down. Melissa added a few kind words and a kiss on the cheek to diffuse the situation and to reassure Jim that he would always, but only, be a good friend to her. Jim spent the next two hours recovering with the aid of a tremendous amount of alcohol and the friends who could stand listening to him slur the story of his feelings for Melissa. Fortunately for all involved, Jim came to terms with the situation and enjoyed the rest of the party. Meanwhile, Steven and Melissa spent the rest of the night talking and sharing several more kisses.

I would not play a truly active role in Steven and Melissa's relationship until the New Year was a month old. Since Jim's party, Steven and Melissa had gone out three times. First, Melissa invited Steven to a gallery opening in SoHo that she and her friends had been invited to by a friend of the artist with whom Rachel worked. They had a nice time, went to a bar afterward, and Melissa's friends approved of Steven, though Rachel wasn't impressed. Melissa took Steven back to her apartment for coffee and they spent a little over an hour kissing and rolling around on her couch. When Rachel came home, Melissa asked Steven to leave, warmly but definitively. Steven felt the night had gone well but resented the fact that Melissa's friends had been as involved as they had.

One week later, Steven asked Melissa to dinner and a movie, just the two of them. They went for Indian food on Sixth Street, which Melissa found rather unromantic on account of the bright and blinking lights and the pushy waiters, and then to an excellent French movie, which Steven hoped would resurrect the evening's intimacy. Back at Steven's apartment, Melissa allowed him to take her into his bedroom but stopped him when they were both in their underwear. She told him she wanted to wait but with a smile that made it clear that the wait would not be long.

The following week, Steven bought tickets for the two of them to see a ballet at Lincoln Center. Melissa wore a beautiful black strapless dress, Steven smelled fantastic, and the two held hands from intermission until the end of the performance. After the show, they got coffee and desert at a café on the Upper West Side but Melissa declined Steven's invitation for her to spend the night. She told him she was very tired with true regret in her eyes and he believed her. She gave him a long kiss goodnight, put her hand in his back pocket, pulled him to her, and told him to make plans for Valentine's Day.

Believe it or not, Steven and Melissa both considered their relationship to be moving slowly at this point, though they never mentioned this to one another. Neither of them was fundamentally opposed to sleeping with someone on the first date and both had done so on a number of occasions, some marking the beginning of a romance, others its end. With one another, however, neither Steven nor Melissa was sure if sex would begin or end their relationship and they were equally unsure which outcome they would prefer. So, though they enjoyed each other's company and were powerfully attracted to one another, Melissa decided to wait and Steven decided not to be bothered by that. On Valentine's Day, however, there would be no more waiting. The occasion and the evening served as my red carpet and open door.

Steven took Melissa to a stylish and candle-lit French-Vietnamese restaurant downtown and gave her one dark red rose at the table. "I'm very glad I decided not to stay home and read on New Year's Eve. I'm having a great time with you. I think you're great."

Melissa pushed the candle between them aside, took Steven's hands, leaned over the table, and gave him a long kiss with her eyes open. She sat back and returned the candle to the center of the table. "Me too." She still had one of Steven's hands in hers.

Steven wasn't sure if it was on purpose or by accident, but Melissa had pressed his left hand into her right breast when she'd kissed him. Now his face felt flush and his pants felt tight and he had no idea what Melissa had just said. Fortunately, just then the waiter came to take their drink orders. Melissa ordered a glass of red wine and Steven told the waiter that ice water would be fine for him until they ordered the meal. The waiter smiled as if he knew what Steven was feeling and left for the bar. Steven looked back at Melissa who was also smiling. He wasn't sure if Melissa's smile was meant to seduce him or to acknowledge the fact that she'd done so already. "You look very handsome tonight," she said. "That's a great tie."

"Thanks. It's Gene Meyer. His are the only ties I wear." This didn't sound right to Steven, so he added, "That said, I only own five ties and seldom have an occasion as special as this to wear them." Melissa couldn't decide if Steven was more charming than awkward or more awkward than charming. Maybe awkward was charming. Maybe charming was awkward. He began a sentence "That said," but he also called the night "a special occasion." And he was cute.

Steven looked down for a moment and then looked up and said, half facetiously, "So, how was your day?"

"Aggravating," Melissa answered with a slight roll of her eyes.

"Work?"

"Of course."

"I wonder if there are jobs out there that aren't aggravating."

"I don't know. I get stressed out getting stressed out about work. I can't help it sometimes but I can't convince myself it's worth it either."

"I feel the same way. If I had a greater tolerance for debt and academic politics, I'd go back to school."

"I suppose that's always an option. Will we ever be too old to go back to school?"

"Probably not. But a part of me believes I can get the intellectual and artistic stimulation I need on my own without the other crap you have to deal with in school. I don't know, maybe that's just a pipe dream."

Melissa wasn't sure if it was Steven's use of the word "stimulation" or the wine, but she was feeling very attracted to him at that moment. She couldn't help smiling again.

"What?" Steven asked. "You think I'm full of shit?"

"No, no, it's not that. I feel the same way. Reading and making time to write for myself and trying to get to the theater more often. I agree." She gently squeezed his hands. "I'm just happy to be here with you."

Steven leaned over to kiss her.

"Watch your tie!"

"Oh. Right." Steven leaned back. He felt awkward. Then, as if on cue again, the waiter returned with their drinks.

Melissa made a point of keeping her hand in Steven's as they ordered.


After dinner, Steven let Melissa into his apartment, closed the door behind them, and pulled her to him. Melissa smiled as she kissed him and began taking off his jacket and sport coat. Steven tossed Melissa's coat onto the couch and began untying his tie, letting his hands and arms brush over her chest. Removing the clothes on the lower half of their bodies was a more slapstick enterprise and might have caused another couple more sensitive to the bumps in the road to sex to swerve off course, but I was already too much in control of the situation. Melissa grabbed Steven's hands and began walking him into the bedroom, his pants around his ankles.

At the risk of sounding immodest, I was fantastic that night. Steven and Melissa were both surprised at just how wonderful I was. In all fairness, though, I can't take all the credit. Steven was more sensitive to Melissa's needs than most of the men she'd been with, and Melissa was sexier and more aggressive than most of the women Steven had been with. But I was great. I was dynamic. I was fast and slow. I was soft when I needed to be and I was strong when strength was required. I was both passionate and accurate. Some might say gymnastic. The only criticism that could have been made of my performance that evening was that it was too short. But no one made that criticism.

"Wow."

"Mmm."

"That was great."

"Mmm."

"Was it good for you?"

"Mmm."

"Can you stay the night?"

"Mmm."


Now that I was a part of their relationship, Steven and Melissa went from seeing each other three times in a month to seeing each other as many as three times a week. Staying the night was no longer a question and I performed the evening's finale almost every time. The doorman of Steven's building, Joe, began greeting Melissa by name and chatting with her as she waited for the elevator or for a cab home or to work. Rachel no longer went out of her way to give the couple privacy in the common rooms of the apartment she shared with Melissa and she no longer had any reservations about asking Steven to hurry up in the bathroom or to change the channel on the television or to get out when Melissa left for work.

For the first few months, Steven and Melissa looked to me simply to expand on my opening night's performance. Nothing especially new or different, just more often and longer and better. In the early stages of a relationship, I'm sexy enough as I am, without the bells and whistles. Some might even argue that adding to, subtracting from, or otherwise changing my routine at this point takes away from the simple and uncomplicated bliss I am able to inspire in new lovers. I wouldn't necessarily make this argument myself but Steven and Melissa were happy to subscribe to it during those first few wonderful months.

Steven was so happy to be seeing me on a regular basis that he would do just about anything to ensure I would perform at the end of his evenings with Melissa. He took her to Tavern on the Green, which I thought was a little tacky at first, but, like Venice, turned out to be just as romantic as it's supposed to be, no matter how overrun by tourists it is. He bought her a pair of beautiful, if tiny, diamond earrings for her birthday. He rented a condo and took her skiing for a long weekend in Vermont.

Meanwhile, as much as Melissa appreciated the attention and effort Steven was showering on her for me, she would have been just as happy to have had me in the shower. She thought about me - and Steven - at work and even talked about me - us - to some of her friends there, which she seldom did regarding men she'd dated in the past. She also neglected some of her other relationships and would occasionally break plans to see Steven and me. This she also never did for other men. She even wondered if maybe she wasn't growing too attached - dependent, even - on us. This concern quickly vanished, however, when she realized that she was able to reach, how should I say, the peaks of pleasure more than once during my performance - yet another milestone for her. It was this discovery that inspired Melissa to encourage me to expand my performance in new and more adventurous directions.

Steven had wanted me to add new elements to my performance for some time but was afraid Melissa would be against it. However, as Melissa began to enjoy herself more and more - and more and more often - she also began to crave more variety. Steven was surprised when Melissa began to urge me to try new things but he was more than happy to participate.


This brings me to a rather difficult point in my narrative: what some people like to call kissing and telling. There are a number of reasons I hesitate to continue in this direction. In the same way some writers resist explaining their writing, in the same way some painters demand that their paintings speak for themselves, to describe the ways in which my performances began to evolve, to analyze the style and voice I developed, would take away from the beauty and purity and reality my art possessed in and of itself. Also, my performances were intensely personal collaborations between myself and the couple, born, to a large degree, of the moment. To say all of this another way, you really had to be there.

I will give you these details: Steven and Melissa weren't always lying down during my performance, nor were they always lying down in the same manner; I did not always perform in the same venue, nor was the venue in which I performed always the one traditionally associated with my genre of performance; yes, food was involved on more than one occasion; no, my performance never included anyone in addition to Steven and Melissa (although there was a conversation about this and I don't think I have to tell you how it went); the resources of the wardrobe department were called upon occasionally and Steven and Melissa would periodically play different parts; some of my performances were very slow and quiet and others were very fast and loud; and, as difficult as this is for me to admit, some of my performances were better than others.

Though I began this story by telling you that I was one of the elements of Steven and Melissa's relationship that bound them together, and that I remain one of the aspects of their relationship that they miss the most, I must confess that, at least as they see it, I was one of the reasons Steven and Melissa's relationship ended. Believe me when I tell you, however, that this was not my fault. Let me explain.

Such was the sway I held over Steven and Melissa that they began to forsake all other things for me - including one another. Again, I did not want this, and my performance began to suffer as a result. As with all great art, much of the power of what I do is in what the audience brings to the performance. As I became more and more the only thing that Steven and Melissa shared, things began to collapse in on themselves. Just as Steven and Melissa had grown more free and generous with one another and my performance, so were they now becoming more closed-minded and selfish. Just as Steven and Melissa had once encouraged me to experiment and there had been joy in what we created, so were they now almost business-like and my performances soulless as a result.

No great and lasting film can rely on pyrotechnics alone. A stylistically avant-garde piece of prose can be only so memorable without a compelling story to tell. So did the variety and experimentation in my performances - encouraged by Steven and Melissa at first - begin to grow empty. My efforts became less enjoyable and more work. Of course, someone would always manage to get something out of the show, but more and more often it would be only one of us. When that one of us was Steven or Melissa, he or she didn't seem to mind, but I was distraught whether I was satisfied with the performance or not. I am an artist. I need inspiration and an enthusiastic audience. Steven and Melissa might blame me for the demise of their relationship, but I blame their relationship for stifling my art.

One of the things that hurt me most about the end of Steven and Melissa's relationship was that I wasn't even there when it ended. I only found out afterward, when Steven and Melissa called on me for a farewell performance.

Melissa phoned Steven at work. "Can you talk?" Her impatience always overpowered her tact.

"Sure. What's up?" Steven's inability to read tones of voice was almost a disability.

"Are you happy?"

"Sure. Why do you ask?" And his willingness to let things coast along was almost criminal.

"I'm not happy. I don't think this is working."

"Really?"

"Really."

"So what does that mean?"

"That means I think we should stop seeing each other."

Steven paused. "Alright."

This Melissa did not expect. "What?"

"I think you're right."

"I thought you said you were happy?"

"I did. I am. I guess happy isn't enough."

Though Melissa probably would have said the same thing to Steven had he not said it to her first, because it came from him, it hurt as if it were surprising or untrue or unfair. She didn't know what to say.

"Listen," Steven continued, "Let's not end this with a fight. We've had a good time. Let's not end this with a fight."

"Let's spend one more night together."

"What?"

"You heard me. Let's spend one more night together."

"That's not what I was implying when I said we shouldn't end this with a fight."

"Yes, but that's what I'm implying when I say let's spend one more night together."


As you might imagine from the tension between Steven and Melissa, my final performance was a challenge. There was no opening act: no dinner, no movie, no walk in the park or stroll by the river. Melissa came to Steven's apartment at 11 p.m. Joe tried to strike up a conversation but she was in no mood - because she was feeling the end of things more than she thought she would, because she was sad she'd probably never see Joe or his lobby again, and because she was thinking about me like a dream you can't get out of your head when you wake up in the morning.

Steven answered the door and Melissa pushed past him into the apartment, dropping her bag and taking off her coat as she walked.

"Where's the fire?"

"There is none yet."

"Melissa, listen, this is kind of awkward, this farewell fuck or whatever it is."

"It's only as awkward as you make it. And though 'fuck' might be an accurate word to describe this, I still don't like it."

"Well, to be completely honest with you, Melissa, I don't like the fact that you're only over here tonight to have sex."

Melissa turned to look Steven in the eyes. "Do you want me to leave?"

Steven turned away. "No, but-"

"OK, then."

Despite all the tough talk, Melissa was slow to connect with my performance that night. Needless to say, Steven was as well. And then, because of their frustration or my anger or both, the performance suddenly became unusually heated. Costumes were torn, flesh was scratched, the whole thing became more muscular and sweaty and percussive than it had ever been before. But I strive for my performances to be nothing if not dynamic and so I changed the energy to be more of a contained intensity, something closer and more implosive. Steven and Melissa responded to this immediately and I continued in this direction for quite some time. Then, however, I began to resent Steven and Melissa's obvious enjoyment. Why should I prolong the joy for them if they are so intent on closing the doors on my show? And so, as Steven and Melissa grabbed at each other and held on for dear life, I brought the show to a sudden but ecstatic conclusion.

Steven and Melissa were left panting and exhausted and thrilled but still lost to one another. I was sad but not surprised to see this. By this point, we all knew it was over. Steven and Melissa were asleep - on opposite sides of the bed - when I quietly packed my things, whispered my goodbyes, and left.


After that last night, I would see Steven and Melissa separately on one or two occasions, but it wasn't the same when it wasn't the two of them together, when there were strangers involved. Sometimes Steven and Melissa would imagine each other when they were with other people, but this only made me nostalgic and sentimental. Now, what I think about above all else, and what would keep me from performing for Steven and Melissa again if they were to decide to call one another, is that I was not enough for them - and they were not enough for me.