A Holly Jolly Ever After

by Julie Murphy

Fuck. If Winnie Baker were mine, I’d have a goddamn PhD in making her come. Paging Dr. Lieberman.

I thought watching a sex tape was hard-core? I’d had no idea how deep the well of human sexuality ran! And I wasn’t a well at all, I was just a puddle . . . a half dried–up puddle with a slick of gasoline shimmering over the top, that’s how not a well I was.

“If you were even a little bit bi, I’d have taken you off the market a long time ago.” “Don’t tell Bee,” I said with a grunting laugh. “Oh, she’d be so into it,” he said. “In fact, let’s just count that as an open invitation.

We shared the kind of kisses that made me want to make playlists and overthink about birthday presents.

And what if this was virtue? What if this was purity? The raw generosity of sharing space and pressure and pleasure, the honesty that came with each moan and every breath? What if good sex only made me more like Winnie Baker in the end . . . happier, more hopeful, closer to my own soul and the soul of the person I was with?

And despite the significant amounts of fornication, the sky didn’t fall in on me. I wasn’t riddled with diseases, I wasn’t scandalously pregnant. I was just happy. Deliriously so.

I had let the anger burn away the idea that I needed to be perfect in order not to be hurt, because even imperfect people didn’t deserve to be treated like trash cans.

“Yeah, girl. Drop that baby news like Taylor drops an album. People will go ba-na-nas!”

“Speaking of holiday content, I’m still bitter we never made a Hanukkah album. It’s not right that Adam Sandler is the highest-ranking artist on the Spotify Hanukkah playlist.”