Faking

Orgasms don't sound like that unless you are faking it. I have heard the kind of noises from the women performing on videos, people demonstrating the sound what a theoretical orgasm might sound like, orgasms as the backing track to rock songs, strippers, vocalising their faux excitement in the heat of a dance.

These are the noises that I have never made in the height of passion. My throat constricts.  At best it is a strangled grunting, like an animal, the hollow sound of wind on the open neck of a bottle, a pained gasping. My lovers have made other sounds. The men have been mostly silent or expelling a mono-syllabic rasp of air. The women have made trilling sounds at the backs of their throats like the sound a cat makes when it sees a flying creature, the universal feline word for 'bird'. Sometimes the women have sighed or gasped prettily, high and grinning celebrations of sound.

This sound is different. It is a pornographic climb and it continues to make it's warbling way up the scale in perfect tones and semitones until the hypnotic shrieks reach an impasse and the sound drops down an octave and begins it's run again.

We sit in the lounge room and drink our tea and turn the sound up on the television. We glance at each other now and then and occasionally he smiles and nods in the direction of her room.

He leans closer to me and he whispers, "she's faking it."

And I smile conspiratorialy and nod. "I think she might be." I tell him, under my breath so that she won't hear over the clamour of her climax.