Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 29-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
In the beginning, he was so nervous. It took him a couple of months for him to relax. I was required to smooth over his anxiety around intimacy, to be patient, to keep waiting. The focus was on him. Sex was all about him. I wasn’t enjoying it, and he wasn’t too concerned about that. We almost broke up over it—it just seemed selfish that he should be the only one enjoying sex. I asked him to try some things in bed, but he just kept focusing on his dick. Sex was about his erection, his orgasm. I started to wonder if I would ever feel turned-on again or if I had reached some sort of hideous stage of life of not having orgasms during intercourse. This had never been a problem before. I tried to accept the kind of sex we had as loving, and yet it was entirely unsatisfying. The intensity with which he watched me while he tried to stimulate me manually required that I close me eyes to concentrate on some fantasy or another. If I opened my eyes, he’d be staring at me like I was some sort of science project.
“On The Row Of Dials,” from Flood Plain (K, 1993) (download):
