Ping-pong is great foreplay, I tell you one night. You’re already in bed, while I stand over it, brushing my teeth. I say I read it in a magazine.
You arch your eyebrows at the water-ringed Field & Stream on my nightstand.
A different one, I say. I look up at the ceiling fan beating its same steady circle and tell you that I can’t remember the last time we had sex. According to the magazine, this could lead to problems. I don’t mention that the last time I played ping-pong, it was summer, I was a teenager, and my opponent was the neighbor boy, home from college.
I go to the bathroom to spit and rinse. When I return, you’ve flicked off your lamp. I get in bed, thinking so much for trying to level with you.
Then in the darkness, you say you know a bar with a table in the back.
We go the next evening. The bartender looks girlish in a leotard tucked into snug jeans. Her long dark hair fans around her nipples, which are just visible through the thin cotton/spandex jersey. Should we invite her to play ping-pong with us? I could say it was suggested in the magazine. But no, her hair is too soft. If I know you (and I do), you’ll just wind up brushing it.
I say let’s play ping-pong already.
Your first serve sails under a table, and I have to crouch to fetch it. My serve then barely misses your head. You serve again, and it lands in my hood. I catch you smiling like it’s a cool trick shot, but it’s slop. Rather than ask you to come fish the ball out from the exact spot between my shoulder blades where I can’t apply sunscreen, I bend over and shake it free.
We eventually get a rally going, then start playing first to ten. When it’s nine-seven me, I say let’s make it fifteen and try playing down to your level. Losing doesn’t seem likely to put you in the mood; maybe I can rig a tie. I bungle shots until you say you don’t like these games and tell a waiting couple that they can have the table, we’re only messing around.
Outside it’s November and cool. You light a cigarette while I wonder if the ping-pong worked, and we should hurry home to have sex like teenage neighbors who grew up in a town without ping-pong then built a secret table in the woods. I worry that something will kill the mood between here and home, like if we take a cab, the cabby will say something, or his cab will smell, or the little plastic sleeve containing his ID will just hang there.
I smell the smoke from your Marlboro. I didn’t know you started again, I say.
You look at me, your brow furrowed, then flick the butt, take my hand, and lead me to the alley beside the bar. When you lay your sweater down on a pallet, I see that we’re on the same level. I’ve only been keeping you from rising to it. Voices carry from down the alley, and a rat skitters under some cardboard, but I toss my hoodie onto a crate, and then we peel off clothes until there’s just our goose-pimpled skin. I lie down and reach for you, the flesh around my stomach folding like ribbon candy. You kiss the hidden place behind my ear then bury your face in my hair, and I feel right at home, while stray dogs fight ten feet away.
The pallet eventually breaks, and one of its ribs digs into my spine, but I don’t complain. This isn’t a game. Sacrifices must be made. They were made years ago when we exchanged vows, not knowing we were trading in wooded mysteries and the thrill of something new. It was a good trade, I realize now. I don’t feel new, but it’s like I’m seeing you for the first time.
EROTIC Contest Finalist, 2024
Amanda Nyren’s writing has been published in Phoebe and iO. She earned her BA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University and lives in Austin, Texas. You can read more of her work on Substack.