Op-Ed: I Stared at My Lover’s Family Portrait While We Did It in His Childhood Bedroom over Break
Noting that Books™ preach a correlation between a change in interior design with adulthood success once former children leave for university, moms everywhere are tickled pink at the sight of a fresh coat of beige paint, white bedding and lukewarm family memories strewn lovingly across the walls. However, the feeling is far from mutual for traumatized childhood bedroom sex-havers. Studies have found nothing to be more scarring than accidentally staring at a well-hung family portrait, featuring your lover at age two in overalls, that his parents so tenderly placed next to the bed.
“I just don’t really understand why it was such a big deal. It’s not like I hadn’t met his parents before. Having sex in places that involve a lot of awkward, shunted childhood memories should just be a given when you’re home on break. The gaping vulnerability of being face-to-face with a simpler time can definitely be kind of hot,” lamented Kelly Pisces as she melodramatically grabbed the onion she keeps in her purse in case of necessary situational metaphor; all while yelling something about the importance of openness and communication. “I guess my biggest issue is I know for a fact that he’s jerked off in front of that portrait, and it didn’t seem to bother him at all. It’s like he’s trying to tell me that there’s a limit to how many layers we can peel back together,” she contemplated alongside an artistic dark lip and sick cig drag. “Like, we already had dinner with them. Watching his dad eat basmati rice was basically a spiritual experience.”
James Jackson, feeling wildly uncomfortable about the newfound publicity surrounding his father’s basmati consumption, saw a perfectly understandable issue with any attempt to casually sexualize the portrait. “No one is going to tell me that having a family photo stared, or even in the room, during sex is normal or fun. It’s weird and I fucking hate it,” he said with matches in one hand and the portrait in the other. “Sure, maybe it was a little strange of me to notice she was looking at it, to get up mid-stroke and take it, face down, off the wall. But I feel like most people agree that knowingly letting it continue would have been worse? That her joke, her comedic dismissal and offer to call me ‘Mr. Jackson’ was kind of unsettling? I don’t want to talk about it again, and I really don’t see the point in ‘unpacking’ anything about when and where I lost my virginity,” he said firmly to Sigmund Freud’s apparition: its face wet with tears and crumpled in soft utterances of ‘why’ and ‘please.’”
Regardless of how you feel about having UUUuuuHHHhhUUuHHh relations while your immediate family is pseudo-present, at least we can all rest easy knowing that your parent surely touched the semen-encrusted towel y’all used for clean up while doing laundry. I think we all wonder why they still bother to buy tissues.