It’s Tuesday morning, the day before I self surrender to prison, and I’m looking down into the eyes of the first girl I ever loved, her lips wrapped around my cock as she sucks it with enthusiasm. She’s completely in love with me. She flew in from Hawaii yesterday, all for the chance to see me just once before I go away for five years. We haven’t spoken for twelve years, not since I found out her father was a sex offender right after he told me I wasn’t good enough for his daughter. We were just kids back then, but there’s something about that first love. When she saw my post about going to prison, she got in contact and we talked through all the old drama, staring at each other’s faces on FaceTime nearly every night for months.

She goes to ride me, and my hangover from the holy trinity of alcohol, cocaine, and sex is threatening to burst my brain from inside my skull. The pounding in my head from my going-to-prison cocktail throbs in time to her skin slapping against mine. I know this is one of my last chances to have sex before my impending half a decade of celibacy. Hangover aside, I should be into this. We’re talking about a girl who I’d thought about obsessively for over a third of my life, so when did it happen? Yeah, you never forget your first love, but when had I finally let go and moved on? She’s still beautiful—arched and moaning, her skin slick with lust. Every curve of her body is better than I’d ever imagined, those long years with just mental images and fantasy to sate my appetite for what it would be like to truly be with her. And yet…

I’m fighting to stay hard. I don’t want to be disappointing. This fucking hangover is killing me. She keeps looking right in my eyes like she’s hoping to catch a glimpse of my soul. I’m not so sure she wants to see the empty back hole that’s gazing up into her. Her rhythm slows to a halt, wet heat where our bodies meet, and I’m hoping she says something dirty that gets me fully hard again.

“I don’t want you to fuck me,” she says, that same ceaselessly searching stare into my eyes. “I want you to make love to me.”

I go from mostly hard to completely soft in about two seconds. No chance of revival. I need to smoke some weed. The hangover is bad, but that statement? Game over. So what the fuck is going on? She’s my first love, the girl I always wanted. So when? When did it happen?

I’ve had so many incredible sexual experiences—I know how to create a connection and a comfort level with almost anyone. I can tell what kind of sex a girl is into before our clothes are even off. I can play my role and play my part. So I guess what happened to me was simple: I just wanted sex with my ex. No, not the one in this story, but the one who defined what great sex is, what it can be.

Who knows where I’d be if my life had played out as I planned it. I grew up expecting to have sex with only one woman—the one I married—for the rest of my life. That should’ve been the girl in this story, my first love. Back when I was eighteen, I would have thought those words from her mouth would make me happy forever, so why am I sitting there with a limp dick, wishing I was with someone else? Maybe everything was destined to happen. Maybe we have no free will.

“Sex” and “love” may be the two most complicated words in the English dictionary. We spend our whole lives sorting out what they really mean to us. We most definitely can have sex without love and love without sex, but when the two intertwine is when the stakes are raised. Sex without love reminds me of a sport; I want to be memorable in a positive way for my partner because I have the inner desire to please others no matter what. Lust, longing, and pleasure become the overriding emotions during the act. I can even handle slow passionate sex if I feel a real connection, something that can be confused with the act of “making love.” What I cannot do is fake the sex that being fully in love with someone entails. While at one point in life I honestly did love the girl in this story, the reason why I lost all sexual attraction to her was because I was still in love with the girl who controls me sexually, still in love with my ex.

I know some people don’t have that ex, the one who practically enslaves you with their memory. Maybe some people are just lucky to be wired that way, or maybe they’ve just never had sex that changed their lives. One might think it’s about ability or sheer sexual attraction, but it’s not. While the ex in question is both talented in bed and incredibly attractive, I could find others I’ve been with who can easily compare or surpass her in one category or another. What truly makes a person become “that ex” is the emotional connection and sexual chemistry combined with the love you shared.

I’d gone to see this ex just two weeks before my encounter with my first love. We’d been broken up for over a year. Things were pretty awkward outside of bed, but once the moment arrived for sex, everything would instantly revert back to our old connection. Her pussy owns my sexual desires completely. During the year we were broken up, it’s embarrassing to admit how many times I imagined I was with her just to get off with someone else. The night before, she’d sent me a picture in her panties, one hand covering up a breast, the other breast exposed in full glory for my viewing pleasure. She knew I was out with the girl I’d been in love with as a teenager. She not only sent it to me, but she also sent it to other guys she’d been fucking. She told me as much since she knew it would bring out that jealousy we all have for the person who essentially ruins sex for us with anyone else. She wanted to remind me that while I may be twelve hours away and fucking someone else, I was still going to be thinking about her. It worked.

The night before I left for prison, I wound up drunk, coked up, and hiding in the bathroom while masturbating to texts from my ex while the girl who would do anything for me waited in bed mere feet away. She spent three grand to see me for two days, and I ended up leaving her downtown somewhere, just waiting for me to come back. I texted her that I couldn’t emotionally handle seeing her again. After loving her for thirteen years, I left my first love in a town she’d never been in, without anyone to call, all because of sex with my ex. I realized that all I wanted was the girl who satisfied me sexually, satisfied me completely. Yes, sex really is that important to me.