“I’ll bust next time,” he says acceptingly after what feels like, in the sex world, a tantra amount of time has gone by. Only earlier, he was remarking on his desire to be a sex slave to the matriarchy that would never come. Or, if it was, it was certainly not going to occur early enough in his lifetime to where he would be considered a virile enough man to be a part of it. But he could dream. Or could he? In between time spent as one of the last service industry workers of the twenty-first century, he was prone to getting drunk and smoking weed just like roughly ninety percent of the New York City population, albeit in a far less physically involved manner than it required in the mid 2010s. The difference between him and others, though, was that he wasn’t feigning to be in pursuit of something—some “higher” artistic goal. And mind you, art meant having a highly visited web page. People seemed to forget that remaining in a drug-addled haze is an art unto itself.

Like many of the generation of now, he had trouble, shall we say, “releasing” himself. It used to feel like a man could barely enter a woman and it would be game over—orgasm achieved. Practically premature ejaculation. But this was 2030, and men couldn’t cum like that. Not anymore. Their phone touching, their weed smoking, there porn watching. It had all turned “letting loose” into a very neurotic endeavor. Vivian knew this. Had known it for the past five years as this shift in male sexuality, or lack thereof, began to take its current modern shape. There were no Clint Eastwoods, Burt Reynolds, Gary Coopers. Nothing in the male climate of the present to indicate that those masculine archetypes of yore ever existed at all.

And it wasn’t that there was anything wrong with Drew’s tenderness or inability to, as he said, “bust.” One thing that hadn’t changed over several decades was white people’s innate need to graft vernacular from black culture. Hence, the many posters of Danny Brown in his room, now retired to a condo in Detroit, which was one of the numerous cities-turned-islands currently floating on water. Vivian didn’t notice much else of his decor, other than it was more than she could offer him at her apartment, a pod she rented from a man who licked his lips at everything, especially her monthly payment of $2,000 to him. She generally procured this money through “odd” jobs like cleansing people of certain things that came up in a Google search for them or creating believable fake profiles for those who wanted to stalk exes. It was nothing so analog as what Drew did: running a restaurant. In fact, this was how she had first met him, for it was the only twenty-four hour place in her neighborhood that catered to those who still got drunk the old-fashioned way instead of putting on an alcohol patch to instantly infuse their bloodstream.

After ordering pancakes with pasta at 3 a.m. enough times, Drew felt comfortable talking to her, even joining her every now and again by sitting across from her. They had many conversations about metaphysics and sex, two very similar concepts when you think about it. The latter topic led him to confess that he hadn’t felt the “urge” in years—not since President Pitt passed the bill mandating at least ten hours a day of media consumption. “I simply haven’t had the time in between navigating what to watch that I haven’t seen before and working here. Has it been a struggle for you?”

“Not really. I’ve always had a healthy appetite for media. And that hasn’t curbed my appetite for sex. Though I will say I hate fucking while watching something or it’s on in the background.”

Drew shrugged. His face suddenly looked worn and emaciated, showing all of its twenty-nine years. “Sex is over. You might as well get used to it.”

“Why is that?” Vivian inquired while popping a sugar pellet into her hexagonal mug of coffee.

Drew sighed. “It would be one thing if we were truly heading to a matriarchal society, and women could use men for their pleasure, but we’re only sustaining a baseline patriarchy that can’t be thwarted until women stop focusing on sex.”

“But there’s only 4.2% of straight women left in the current census. We don’t have any influence on this shift you speak of.”

Drew smiled. “I’m sure the 4.2% of you left are strong-willed enough to figure something out. And there’s inevitably a hidden population of straight women who have only ‘turned’ out of desperation, in succumbing to the injustice of the ratio.”

Vivian had clammed up at that word, “will.” Such an esoteric concept anymore. No one had any, and if they did, it was only used toward acquiring money—the most antiquated practice still remaining in present New York society. Vivian pushed aside her silver hair, a fleck of glitter that her dandruff shampoo had transformed into such spilling onto the table. “Would you mind if I came back with you tonight? I don’t think I can make it home,” she said as she slumped slightly to the side.

She jolted up in an instant to see if he would agree, spare her the agony of that confined pod and her lip-licking roommate. Drew eyed her with a hint of reluctance before consenting, “Sure.”

As they walked upstairs to the apartment he lived in above the restaurant, she put her arm around his shoulder to help buffer herself. When she did, he caught a whiff of the perfume she had chosen to implant herself with at sixteen: a mix of violets and roses. There was something in that scent that told of why women shouldn’t be allowed to choose their scent at such a young age. She was clearly trying to select a fragrance from the perspective of what a sixteen-year-old would think was sophisticated. But this blend wasn’t. Yet somehow it softened Drew more toward her, as though he could catch a glimpse of who she was in her youth. In a moment of complete spontaneity, he kissed her.

Like a hungry animal, she returned it. It had been so long since a male showed even a modicum of desire in this way. And so began their hour-long attempt at getting him to release, an act he hadn’t committed with another human being since 2025. Orgasming three times herself throughout this process, Vivian was beginning to grow weary, not to mention starting to feel guilty for not being able to fulfill her end of the unspoken bargain. However, maybe this is what the initiation of matriarchy signified: not caring if the male had an orgasm or not. Just as they had never really cared in the past if the woman did, concerned only with taking what they needed and rolling over. Drew wasn’t even upset about it when he finally gave up, his erection deflating in the dark. Hence, his nonchalant insistence, “I’ll bust next time.”

Next time, Vivian knew, would not come (pardon the pun). That’s why she felt compelled to jokingly leave a note on his nightstand using the receipt from her bar tab from earlier and the antique pen she always carried with her. It said simply: “IOU 1 Orgasm.” So it was that Drew aided in her gradual transition toward becoming the single-handed matriarchy maker of New York, callously fucking men until she had at least two orgasms and then leaving them with the same cruel note every time. She would never repay her debts. And men in the epoch of the Aloof Toward Sex couldn’t care either way if she did. That was rather the irony of her attempt at being a maker of matriarchy via the withholding of orgasms. Men couldn’t have them anyway anymore.