I can tell Lucas wants me to suck him off by the way he spreads his legs. So I’m not surprised when he says, “Suck me off.” The problem: We’re on a bus. It’s one of the emptier I’ve ridden, but there’s an old woman sitting directly in front of me and I can hear children’s voices from the front. We’re already the token gay couple. I don’t also want to be the gay couple that got arrested for public indecency at a rest stop in Connecticut.

This, I believe, will be a conversation worth having. I was going to wait until we got back to Boston, but obviously that’s not possible. The man I’ve been dating for seven months, who I just introduced to my parents, thinks it’s acceptable to get blown on the 1:30 pm Fung Wah bus from New York. And though we couldn’t fool around at my parents’ brownstone, it is not.

I say, “That is not an acceptable request.”

He says, “What?”

“There are people here.”

“You did it at the park.” He is always comparing dissimilar events in our lives. Just yesterday he said spending the weekend with my parents was like the time we went to the club’s masquerade ball. It is an annoying habit I have learned to tolerate.

“That was different,” I say. “That was a Sunday afternoon, under the bleachers, when there wasn’t anyone around.”

He says, “I thought you liked people.”

He’s almost right; when we’re kissing and my eyes are closed, I sometimes imagine a cameraman filming us. He says things like, Yeah, stick that tongue in his mouth, and, You two are the hottest. But then I realize how awkward that is and I stop imagining that a cameraman is filming us. And he doesn’t ever record us actually having sex.

I have never told Lucas that. He’s bluffing.

Before I can figure out how to call him on it, he says, “That’s fine. I don’t need you to.”

And that should be it, the end of this story, but he’s wearing the look on his face that says, You think this is over, but it isn’t. I’m horny and it’s your job to fix it. In the past seven months I have seen this look sixteen times.

I say, “Why are you making that face?”

He says, “What face?”

“That face you make when you want me to release your sexual tension even though I don’t particularly want to.”

“I’m not.” And he’s right: Now his face distinctly says, I am angry because you know what I want, even when I don’t want you to, and because I should know better.

I don’t think Lucas knows any of my faces; on some level that bothers me, because I’ve slept with him longer than with any other man, and I feel badly when he isn’t happy. Someone once told me the person with more power in a relationship is the person who cares less. That person isn’t me.

I stand and pull my jacket from the overhead bin. I place it over Lucas’s lap, stick my hand under it, and unzip his fly. There is only so much I can do.

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Read more about Doug here.

Yann is a French born photographer who lives in London. Find Yann here.

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