And that’s probably why we didn’t mind Vince. He may have been too friendly, but he provided that missing, fabled sense of community. While we worked, he opened doors and once carried a load himself. Inside, he felt comfortable enough to inspect and comment on everything we owned. He especially liked a 90-pound piece of art we planned on using as a headboard, but said it would be impossible to hang. We were missing the ledger board and would need a matching piece of plywood—he was a carpenter, so he should know.

Vince was one of a group of guys who were a fixture at the coffee shop. They were always on the terrace when I came home from work, and sometimes there when I left the next morning. A favorite topic was how blacks are the most disadvantaged minority—from my window, I would hear them agree that while a gay man can firm up his handshake and learn to enunciate, a black man can never hide. When I could hear Vince outside, I’d know that if I left then, I’d need to take into account five extra minutes for small talk so Vince could ask how I’m adapting, recommend a place and perform introductions. He seemed to know everyone and felt that I should, too, once running across the street so I could meet the owner of the laundromat. A small Asian man and I shook hands, then stood there, not knowing what to do next. And then Vince told me that he had found it.

"Found what?" I asked. "A piece of plywood. I found a slab just big enough and exactly beveled. It’ll sit under your piece and boom!" he clapped his hands. "Locked. That’s how you hang anything heavy. Let me do it. I’ll bring over my drill tomorrow."

I couldn’t say no; he was too excited.

I agreed to buy the supplies and pay him something small. The next day we met in a hardware store, and if I had expected the monotonous chains and bolts to quell his enthusiasm, I was wrong. They only heightened it. So many ways to hang it! We could use the ledger board and reinforce it or just use a chain. Suspend it directly from the plywood. Vince was after the cheapest, safest way, and he wanted me to know this.

"Hey, Vince," said an employee wearily. "Kareem, tell my man here the many ways to do this. Tell him. So many ways."

Poor Kareem soon escaped and must have alerted his coworkers because though every other aisle in the store had someone in an orange smock, ours remained empty for over an hour. That’s how long it took Vince to deliberate between the many ways, the many, many ways we could hang it. Eventually, he said that it was time to move.

"So what am I buying?" "Nothing. It’s in my pocket. Just move." The hardware store only sold chain and screws in bulk and, as Vince explained, this was wasteful. We only needed a little. This left the moral consumer with one option: stealing.

Deliberations continued in my bedroom. We had supplies, but there were still so many ways. So, so many ways. I asked Vince to find studs while he decided. In the hardware store I had offered to buy a stud finder, but Vince said he had his own method. I was now learning what it was: trial and error. He stared into dark holes holding nothing but bottomless space and coughed at thin white dust. The ledger board went in upside down, and the chain blocked the headboard. Vince was no carpenter. He was a man with a drill.

When he finished, it looked like a particularly slow machine gun had shot up the bedroom, and the art was balancing on a beam’s edge. This is where it would be while we slept. Right above us. Ninety pounds.

"Vince, this really doesn’t feel too safe." "Agreed. I’ll do this a different way. I’ll make new holes and move up the plywood. There are really so many ways to do this— so, so many ways."

Suddenly I had a vision of me and Vince at this all night, more and more holes, my wall crumbling, the two of us now in my neighbor’s living room, Vince still talking, so many ways, so, so many.

"What if you drilled directly into the fucker?" This hadn’t occurred to Vince. It hadn’t occurred to me either because it would ruin a piece we’d bought to resell, but from the first screw I could tell it looked good. The piece was wooden and benefited from something industrial. Those chains especially seemed trendy, and when Vince finished I wondered if the piece might now be worth more. Vince could tell I was pleased.

"All right!" he said, and spun his drill.

"Where else do you need the carpenter?" 

My girlfriend Laura and I were separated by a bad connection—and the Atlantic. We had met abroad studying Portuguese in Coimbra the semester before and our casual fling soon reached an intensity only possible when culture and language conspire against you.

Our program had no other Americans and the few we had met were exhausting: dipsomaniacal Greeks or pedantic hipsters. For two months, we lived in an orbit of two, and in this hermitage a romance—the first for us both—had thrived. We decided to stay together after leaving the Iberian Peninsula. Since she was working in Portugal past graduation, this meant a period apart and without something which two horny kids in love need very much: sex.

We relied on Skype dates. Because of time zone differences, what was for her a late-night tryst was for me an afternoon delight. Or rather, afternoon terror. From my centrally located bedroom at my parents’ house, I jerked off with eyes on the screen and attention on my mother’s footfalls. Close calls required jamming a swollen erection into my pants, and a breathless “Don’t come in!” The summer heat caused me to sweat through my clothes. Just like it did yesterday and the day before.

Laura’s experience was no less stressful.

She had moved into an older family’s home; their one webcam was located in the den. At night, she snuck downstairs to turn it on. While she made sure everyone was asleep, I analyzed the room’s décor. Crucifixes and portraits of Jesus, statues of Mary and a gilt reliquary; a photo of religious graffiti: 1 cross 3 nails = 4 given. She would position herself, conscientiously, with the chair against the door, where she fingered herself stoically—never fully nude, often just with underwear slightly lowered. For all that I typically saw, I might as well have been masturbating to a young nun with a particularly bad itch.

When Laura’s job ended, she went backpacking around Europe and Skype sex ended. Chats all came from crowded Internet cafés in hostels or near kebab stands. The most I would get was a stealthy flash, her face always blushing red. We exchanged emails detailing our forlorn lives along with the lewd things we’d do at our impending reunion. And we Gchatted constantly using our phones. That’s how I ended up masturbating in a movie theater.

While sitting through previews for a film (that I’d mostly miss), I received a series of Gchats, which sent me to the bathroom. It was nearly empty, only a pair of sneakers visible beneath a stall.

I started to type, when we I realized there was a problem: timing. How would we make our sexting simultaneous? I was getting close, and had no clue when she would finish. So, a few agonizing minutes later, she texted “OK”—and I finished.

“So this is ridiculous but I’ve just programmed ‘I’m coming’ into my phone to send to you when I’m almost there.” Honesty seemed cruel at this point, and I kept with the bizarre chats until she reached what she assured me was a good finish—

Sent at 10:28 pm on Tuesday made great by knowing we did it together. Only when I heard the man next to me flush as I cleaned up did I realize the absurdity of what I’d done: that I had prematurely ejaculated while fucking my girlfriend through text in a public bathroom.

I guess I have one cogent, if obvious, contribution to the post-Weiner discussion on what should be done to those who sext: Nothing. Trying to complete the act with any dignity is punishment enough.

Eventually neither of us could take Gchat sex seriously, and we started giving it some realism. “I want you girl.” “Want to go down on me?” “Nope, going straight in.” “Ow.” “No foreplay.” “Starting to get into it.” “Just came.” “Still grinding on your shrinking dick.” “In massive pain.” “Almost there.” “Three inches now.” “About to come.” “Slipped out.”

My other relief was a series of videos she let me film during our melancholy final week together. I had saved 10 or so of our sessions (with varying degrees of success), and she encouraged me to edit them into one short film.

It was a strange sensation, combining pillow talk and foreplay, excising unflattering shots—and unflattering performances. When I finally finished, I had created a digital video of two lovers with limitless stamina and polished sexual skills at odds with their recent virginities.

And where is that video today?

No idea. After we broke up, I got a new computer. It didn’t feel right to transfer the film to the new laptop, nor did I have the heart to delete it. Eventually I forgot about it, and the hardware went to charity.

Have we become participants in a needy boy’s fantasies? Possibly. Will it ever matter?

Christopher Hitchens recently wrote that part of the pleasure of sleeping with an Oxford student is the knowledge that you might be fucking a future member of the Prime Minister’s cabinet. When I read that, I thought about Laura. She graduated from the American equivalent with honors and always had a passion for politics. She’s now studying contract law in Chicago and seems destined for success, unless a newly discovered video makes the country take issue with a multi-orgasmic Secretary of Labor.