Man Child

The second I arrive at his house, I know I don’t want to be there. He looks flustered as he opens the door – wearing a ratty old T-shirt and a disturbed expression, he explains that there is a giant green beetle in his bathroom.

“I showered but I couldn’t put on hair gel for you because the bug was in there making a terrible noise.”

I calmly kiss him and go to investigate. As I look around the bathroom, he plays it off like he thought I would be scared and that’s why he freaked out over this thing, which turns out isn’t that big. 

I have been fucking this guy on the semi-regular for two weeks. I met him at a comedy club where he was MCing and my brilliant comedian friend Lucy was performing. I found him funny and cute, and had asked Lucy about him after the show. She warned me to stay away – she didn’t really have a specific reason, but Lucy is very intuitive and she seemed to be getting a vibe that he was not someone I should mess around with. I believe she used the expression “He likes to fuck 19 year olds from the Inland Empire.”  However, when he asked her for my number, she said she didn’t wish to stand in the way of “young love.”

He texted and said he wanted to take me out to dinner, which I thought was classy – a lot of guys these days seem to feel buying a girl dinner is a little too much effort to get in her pants. He asked what I like to eat. I said anything. He asked what I was in the mood for. I said anything, pick a place, I’ll meet you there. He then suggested we meet at the Sherman Oaks Galleria mall so we’d have options and he wouldn’t have to “drag [me] somewhere [I] won’t like.” Now, this put me off. I’m not in high school and I don’t want to eat dinner at the mall. I was feeling a scratch in my throat anyway, so I cancelled the date. Thinking that was it, I’d probably never see him again.

The next night, after spending all day in bed, I decided I could use some soup… and some company. I texted to see if he wanted to meet me for a very “mellow date.” He agreed, and I appreciated that he was willing to come out for a date that would inevitably lead nowhere. I liked him more than I thought I would. We talked and laughed and made plans to see each other again.

Our next date was at a hole in the wall sushi restaurant. While he ate his rolls without soy sauce, I drank sake and did oyster shooters. I asked how old he was. He made me guess. I guessed 32. “Close,” he said, but wouldn’t tell me more. We decided to go buy two pints of Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked, get stoned, and watch the Amy Schumer Special.

I found his life pretty together for the 32 year old I believed him to be. He made enough money that he wouldn’t bat an eye at taking me out to dinner to a nice Japanese restaurant. And he lived alone in a one bedroom house that, although he seemed embarrassed about how messy it was, really wasn’t that bad. He didn’t have roommates, but lived with an insanely cute Siamese cat with a face that appeared upside down. And his couch reclined at the push of a button.

That night, we had sex, and it was pretty great. He ate me up with gusto, enjoying every inch of my body, which I loved. I found him a little paunchy, but in the dark it was no big deal. I enjoyed kissing him. The sex was awesome. And, especially, he was amazing at eating pussy. The only issue was one I come across often with dudes – he was resistant to using condoms. Eventually, I stopped enforcing them so we stopped using them. After we had sex, he asked if I was on birth control. I joked that it was proven less effective when asked after the fact. When he asked if I had herpes, I said “not yet,” which apparently didn’t amuse him.

Then he got a little pissy and complained that I was trying to have sex again too soon after the first go round, that he wasn’t really ready, and wouldn’t have been able to stay hard had we tried to use a condom.

I felt like he was blaming me for the lack of condom use even though I had tried to enforce them, albeit lamely. I told him so, while getting dressed in a hurry.

“Why didn’t you tell me if you didn’t want to have sex again,” I asked.

“I didn’t want to appear unmanly,” he said.

He grabbed my arm.

“By the way, I’m 43.”

I Ubered home.

Later, in my own bed, I felt remorseful. I liked fucking this guy and hated the idea that I was incapable of having successful casual sex. I decided to parlay the situation into a purely sex thing. Skip dinner, get right to fucking. The less talk, the better.

Our next couple encounters were great. We’d get stoned, eat ice cream, and fuck. He was amazing at eating pussy and he made me come hard. I didn’t love his personality – I found him slightly whiny and could foresee the age difference becoming an issue – but I was able to look past these details in order to have some really great sex.

Until this one particular night. The night of the bug in his bathroom. I had been on the fence about coming over, but he kept sending me sexy texts and my best guy friend encouraged me to “go get laid.”

When I arrive, it’s already 11:30 on a work night so I figure we’ll get right to the fucking. I immediately find myself not that interested in kissing him, which is never a good sign, but as he grabs my ass and nibbles my neck, I give in to the sensations.  He starts eating me out from behind which turns me on a lot so I tell him to “fuck me.” Instead, he scoots me around so I can suck on him. I manage to get him fairly hard and he crawls on top of me – we start having sex. I can feel him gradually losing his erection with each thrust. Eventually, he stops and tries to pull me up.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask.

“Touch me,” he says.

So I do, but he’s so soft I begin to lose faith.

“Are you okay?”

He stops and lies down next to me,

“I just feel like we’re not connecting like we usually do. I feel like you’re not even looking at me.”

I laugh, uncomfortable.

“I feel like you’re blaming me for the fact that you’re not hard,” I say.

“Well…” he says.

He’s right of course. I wasn’t looking at him, wasn’t really kissing him, was actually discovering in that moment that I wasn’t that into him. But I thought guys could look past these details when it came to sex.

I explained that sex doesn’t always have to be super intimate, looking into each other’s eyes and all that. That sometimes it’s just about physicality and enjoying the sensations. He said he felt like I was “the dude” and he was “the girl” in the situation.

He complained that this time there hadn’t been much foreplay. That he had eaten me out from behind and immediately I had told him to “fuck me.”  This was confusing because I was simply taking his lead – in one of my favorite sexy texts from earlier, he had said he wanted to “eat [my] pussy from behind, then fuck [me].”

“Every time you leave I feel like I’m never gonna see you again,” he says.

I decide to get real.

“Maybe this thing has just run its course.”

He looks surprised by this. I explain that I loved the sex with him, that it was some of the best I’d ever had, but that if the sexual connection was lost between us, I didn’t see what remained. He says he feels like I turned this into a “sex thing” when he actually really liked me, felt we had a good connection. Really? I want to ask.

Then he starts telling me about this crazy girl he used to date who had to go to love addiction therapy, whom he hasn’t seen in eight months, and whom he feels he’s still in love with. Huh? Then he tells me about this 24 year old he’s talking to on OK Cupid, but assures me he would never date a 24 year old unless she was “really mature.”

At which point, I ask the question that’s been bugging me ever since he told me he was 43 years old.

“Why is your age range preference on OKCupid 25-39? Why aren’t you interested in dating women your own age?”

He tells me, with a straight face, that if he married a 40 year old woman, she would be 50 in 10 years and he wants a wife that’s “hot for at least a decade.” I inform him that he too will be 50 in 10 years – in fact, he’ll be over 50.

To this he replies, “I’m just being honest. Men care more about appearance.” I don’t know what disturbs me more, the fact that he wants the woman he’s with to be 10 years younger than him, or that he thinks women over 50 aren’t hot. 

I’m actually pretty sure I know why Comedian Guy dates younger women, and it’s not just because he’s a shallow asshole. It’s also because there’s no way a woman in her 40s is going to date a 43 year old Man Child who works part time in a real estate office, does stand up on the weekends, and lives in the valley with his cat.  I mean, I’m barely putting up with this situation and I’m not even 30.

So, what kept me coming back? Honestly, the pussy-eating.  And I have a theory about this. If a man is over 40 and he hasn’t been married yet, he’s getting fucking desperate. He’s not going to get a woman with his moobs or his lack of a substantial career. He’s going to win her over with his ability to eat pussy. Because guys in their 20s, you might as well not even let them go down there. And guys in their 30s are still way too selfish to put in the work that’s required. It takes the patience and desperation of a man in his 40s to really nail it, so to speak.

As a form of goodbye, I tell him I feel we’re at different stages in our lives.  When I thought he was in his 30s, his shit seemed pretty together. At 43, there are some expectations for where one will be in their life. I’ve noticed that a lot of my friends in their late 20s are finding themselves at a crossroads where they’re having to choose to commit to one aspect of their life over another. It’s like up to this point, we’ve all planted a bunch of seeds that have been gestating and have finally started to grow. And maybe one plant is doing better than another, and we literally don’t have enough energy to keep more than one plant alive. So the time comes to commit to one and really grow the shit out of it.  I see this a lot with my female friends. I had a friend recently give up her dream of becoming an artist and now she’s engaged to her boyfriend– with her dream career out of the picture, she has chosen to really commit to her relationship. Certain friends are getting married and even starting to have babies, and then there are the single friends who are choosing to commit to themselves and their careers, and finding they’re finally having some success.

So, I guess I feel like, if you’re 43, at least one aspect of your life should be pretty awesome. If you’ve been tending a relationship, or a career, or anything, for a decade, shouldn’t you have something to show for it? Pussy-eating abilities aside, I guess I expect more from a guy who’s 43 – I expect he’ll have his shit together more than the 27 year old he’s fucking.