I Love Mil Millington

Margret faking orgasms. I'm rather... um... not 'angry' - I'm hurt, yes, that's it - I'm rather hurt that Margret has never faked an orgasm. As it happens, I knew she was committed to this kind of behaviour even before I found myself going out with her.

Dispelling the mists of time by waving a big memory fan, I can recall her recently arrived in England and sitting with a couple of, female, friends of mine. I was across the room masking - as so often - the rapid, all-encompassing alertness of my mind by having fixed a faraway, stupidly vacant look upon my face but, slyly, I was listening. My friends, being English women, were naturally talking about sex. As part of the conversation, one of them asked Margret how often she'd faked an orgasm. Margret looked stunned and uncomprehending.

'Never,' she said, 'What's the point? Why on Earth would I fake one?'

'Well, to make your boyfriend feel better.'

The look of incomprehension on Margret's face increased ten-fold.

In the fourteen or so years since then, she's never felt the need to reassess her position and that's really quite wounding. It's a disquieting thing to get into bed every night with a woman who never fakes an orgasm with you - it plays on your mind. You're tenderly aware that any sexual engagement that might occur will be 'to the death'. There's no chance that, several hours in - my muscles cramping, my lungs rasping, every single extremity exhausted and numb - she'll take pity and just let out a token 'Ah', so I can crash down rubber-faced into the pillow and begin giving my body a chance to heal. How cruel, I ask you, how careless of my welfare is it never to have the charity to murmur 'Oh. Gosh. Thanks.' and allow me to gain peace with dignity?

No. It doesn't happen. The sun is beginning to rise, the birds are whistling in the new day, I am six pounds lighter than when I went to bed due to dehydration. The oxygen deficit and wishful thinking is affecting my brain:

'Phew...' I sigh.

'What? Why've you...?'

'Oh, I thought...?'

'No - I just coughed.'

'Right. Right, sorry, I'll... give me a second, OK?'

Not knowing, never knowing, if it'll be twenty minutes or next Thursday is hugely traumatic, psychologically. I mean, really, I find myself simply wanting to say 'Sometimes I'd be happy just to cuddle, you know?'