So it’s eleven o’clock at night and I’m on my knees. Joni Mitchell is playing on the stereo, as appears to be customary now when we have sex. Each of my hands is placed on her hips, steadying my balance, and I’m beginning to work my own like a piston.

The seamstress is making agreeable noises. I can feel her muscles tighten around my shaft, and the familiar quiver that means her orgasm is coming soon. Keep going – maybe a little faster. I feel like I’m in porn.

There’s a mirror in the room.

It’s not very well lit, this room. Nowhere in the house is – it’s an older house, relatively small and without central heating, but a nice one. I think back on it, now, fondly. It’s not even the seamstress’ room, either; it’s usually her brother’s, and still would be were it not for the fact that he now lives elsewhere and it’s become the de facto room in which we sleep, and cuddle, and fuck. In any case, the only light is from a bulb without a shade hanging loosely from the ceiling. It casts a faint yellow glow around most of the room.

There’s not much to it, but as I rear back to deliver the last few blows, I catch sight of myself in the mirror.

I really don’t like the way my body looks. I never have and I never will; there are all these weird bits that I’m never going to sort out. But, at that moment, on my knees with my hands on her hips and my cock deep inside her… and the semi-shocked, semi-concentrating look on my face… I look better than I have in a very long time.

I’m doing well.

As the seamstress screams an oath and begins to have her third orgasm of the night, I give myself a wink and a double thumbs-up…

…and then return to the task at hand.