Content: Arthur/TMWTPF, Child sexual abuse, Sexual dysfunction, Disturbing sexual fantasies

Arthur is six and his head hurts. Someone close to him is breathing hard. His back rubs painfully against the carpet and later on he will feel so guilty about the rugburn that he will wear three shirts to hide it. He closes his eyes and imagines himself at a carnival.

Arthur is fifteen and in a hot room with the blinds halfway closed. A boy his age is curled over him, panting. The way Arthur's vision swims and the shadows striped across their bodies make the boy seem faceless. He will cum on Arthur's chest, then he will get angry and call Arthur a faggot before leaving. But it's okay, because he always comes back.

Arthur is nineteen and the depth of his loneliness makes him want to die. His mother tells him that he's a good boy, unlike all those other men who only want one thing.

Arthur is twenty-three and knows something is wrong. He thinks about his own corpse when he masturbates and afterward the shame he feels turns to nausea. He vomits into the bathroom sink and before he's cleaned the bile from the faucet he is hard again.

Arthur is still twenty-three and is sitting alone in a blinding white room. He has one hand down his pants - someone else's pants - and the cloth is crisp and itchy. He notices a woman watching him through a window in the door and he pulls his cock out.

Arthur is twenty-nine and knows there is a name for what he is: Sexually Dysfunctional. Having a name for it doesn't make it better, but the medication does. He can't get hard and his orgasms are weak and dry and barely worth the effort. All of his desire has been condensed into a small, dark sphere. Small, but still painful, like a bullet lodged in his gut. Now when he imagines sex it's in a state of pressured unarousal, and always with faceless people who touch him while he's still. If he wakes from that stillness, something brutal happens, something base and animal that makes him more ashamed than excited. When it's over, the bullet inside him throbs like it's about to explode and fill him with shrapnel.

Arthur is thirty-five and the bullet is still there. Sometimes when he imagines sex it's pleasant and warm. He thinks of kissing the soft rise of a woman's stomach and of her fingers brushing through his hair. But more often he imagines a man who comes to him at night, when his body is heavy from lack of sleep. The man covers him, takes his limp thighs in his hands and spreads his legs apart. Arthur nestles his face in the crook of his neck, seeking closeness. When they're gentle together it is so, so unhappy. But when they're rough Arthur can lose himself; he can flinch and twist and fight and refuse to play dead. And he knows that it's okay, because the man will always come back to him.