I've seen this episode before.  This is the one where our hero, rather our point of view character, throws himself into something he doesn't really want, helpless against the waves of desire that drag him away from shore; spin, twist, and mangle him; punch him in the solar plexus; and then slap him back on the beach, spitting up blood and water.

Perhaps one day, he will see the waves before he casts himself in, before he pulls the thick red cords around himself and tips backward over the gunwale.  But not this time. This time, it is too late.  He is already in the water, and the jaws of the riptide have already clamped around him and begun to twist.  But he has flickered out of the trance quicker than before.  He can see hear the song of desire, and he can feel the slick, grey hands pulling at his limbs, but the cloud of numb surrender has blinked open obliquely, like a frog's eye, and he can see.  He can't stop it, but maybe he can write it down before he forgets.  Maybe words can break it and he can stop himself next time.

Here's what happened.

He broke the seal on the lid of the jar marked "But what if you don't have to be alone?", because surely such a suggestion is not too absurd.  In fact the opposite theory, the idea that he is better off in solitude, is too dreary to be entertained at length.  What kind of a world would that be?  Where there actually isn't much hope of finding a partner, and he had better find another way to spend his time? That's absurd, isn't it?

So he twisted it open, and the divot in the center of the lid popped up so that it couldn't be believably resealed, and he sniffed the contents.  They were pretty nondescript, a typical Korean guy of seemingly similar age, who advertised himself as versatile, though that had so far always proven an unreliable monniker.  He returned the serve, and the usual volley began, largely the sort of soft lobs one gives an opponent who needs bolstering.

Normally after a bit of this, once he is confident that the other party can hold his own, he would step up the energy in his responses, turn on the charm and the eagerness, draw him into a real volley to see what he could do.  But this time he didn't. The other fellow was just barely on this side of irresistible, and there was something in his answers that smelled like hope and potential and lemon rind.  So our character hesistated, and in the moment where the blanket of desire normally washed over him, he instead let it think that it had.

He managed to keep this ruse up for two weeks, fooling the sirens into thinking he was ensorcelled, but keeping his ears and his spirit plugged.  When the time came for them to meet, he was still firmly in control of his faculties.  Even while they were hiking up that narrow alley back to his place, he was clear and sharp.  The fellow wasn't barely on this side of irresistible like his pictures, he was well on this side.  And he had the sort of lisp that isn't an effeminate affectation, not the alveolar type, but the sort of sideways,Carol Channing lisp that is a real speech impediment.  So there was no way he was going to tip over this time.  Those harpies had no grasp on him.  He had won.

But the sex was amazing.

And so began the twisting and the rolling and the sudden punch to the gut that had been the end of the cycle every time before.  He thought he had the waves at his command, that when he stretched his rod over them they would part, but it was no different.  Desire, expectation, longing, one after the other, the broken washing machine of dating and sex.  Exactly two weeks from agitate to rinse.  And that's where he is now, writing this down before he gets spilled back out onto the sharply pebbled beach.  It's not over yet, but our character's version of things has already proven itself to be way out of gear.  Perhaps he will continue to roll around in the waves for a while, because, as was mentioned, very good sex.  But dare we hope that this time he does it with his eyes open?