Chunky is (NOT) a sexy word

Despite being a writer, I am not a smooth talker by nature. The spontaneity of speech sits between a spectrum. On one end, there is diplomacy. Speakers on this end have an understanding of subtlety. They understand the nuance of socializing and read the real-life subtext in conversations. I perceive this as a form of psychic power, able to manipulate or even create the subjective world that humans are naturally plugged into.

As an 18-year-old, I was more on the other end of this spectrum to the farthest extreme. In this space, subtlety is thrown aside in favor of drama. The sharp knife used by the diplomat to chisel his words is replaced with a baseball bat. This blunt instrument delivers the barbarian’s thoughts with skull-cracking emphasis.

This power is also psychic but differs in that it is more of a weapon than it is a tool. It offers internal scars that can never be seen but eternally felt by the victim.

This was useful to me as a school student. I was often the potential victim of bullying. I don’t know what makes me an easy target but by the 4th grade, I had quickly learned that my physical capabilities were never going to be a source of self-defense.

So, I used my words. By the 8th grade, I had received my own spot on the bus. Everyone quickly learned that my tongue was a serpent well traversed in the dark arts of emotional damage. My teeth were the Rods of God, crashing down from the heavens to implode the realities of those that crossed me.

However, weapons are designed for destruction, no matter the form. I have found that when they are used for anything other than combat, even if just for fun, people get hurt. In my experience, the wielder is often the victim of their own verbal backfire.

By high school, I had started to date. One night, my girlfriend at the time stopped by after work. We were talking for a while when she decided to go home. We got out of the car, hugged, and kissed each other.

She was the first girlfriend I had been physical with. Sexual adrenaline was still new to me and I hadn’t quite figured how to control, withhold, and throttle this nitrous at the right moments.

Like a hit of coke slapping my brain into action, I ran my hands down her jeans and started rubbing her. She smiled as we made out.

Say something cool, I said to myself. Cool.

“Stay frosty.”

She stopped.

“What did you say?”

“Uhh,” I said. It came out like the broken reception of a radio that had its signals crossed in several directions.

“Is that from Call of Duty?”

“...Yes.”

She broke up with me two months later.

A year after that, Sophie and I were making out in my bed. It was freshman year of college and everyone was into rock n roll. Maybe not so much the music but the pop cultural pillars that held it up: sex and drugs.

We were high on pot and our hands ignited the lightning in our bodies. This energy crackled up the nervous system and exploded in our brains. There were chemicals being created, released, and transmuted in our heads, released as pheromones. The room was humid. We were generating potential energy, waiting to fuse them together like an atom bomb.

We were grunting, breathing heavily. Sweat acclimated upon our skin, and we traded salt upon our bodies, like oceans carrying sands from one continent to another.

Say something sexy, I said to myself. Sexy.

“I love your chunky legs.”

Those words, like a wet blanket, snuffed all of the passionate fire. All of the sexual pheromones in the air were instantly gone, replaced with a cold, stiff atmosphere.

We were not kissing. She looked at me, eyes narrowed. She was not smiling.

There was no sex.

I’m 26, now. Sophie and I are still together. Over the years, she’s helped me sharpen my bat into something more of a sword. I like to imagine that it is like those long knives that sushi masters use to carve fish into artisanal slices of shiny, marbled salmon. It still has elements of a weapon but has since gained more utility.

Still, there will be times, either when making love or anything else, when she will suddenly look at me. She is not smiling. I’ll ask:

“What?” I’ll say.

“You called me chunky.”