I conduct myself like a grown ass woman should, in most areas of my life. I haven’t asked my parents for money in over a year, I live in a nice house, I’ve got my own health insurance. Pretty adult-like I’d say. Except in my “love life” apparently I’m still in high school. Literally. I’m sleeping with a guy I had a crush on in high school. Although I consider myself a grown ass woman, apparently I’m still attracted to the same boys I was attracted to as a teenage girl.
The last time I saw High School Guy was seven years ago when
I was visiting my best friend Sadie at her college in Rhode Island and we spent
one night in Boston where, on a rebound from a recent breakup with my first
boyfriend, I ditched her and went home with him. That night, he became the
second guy I’d ever slept with, after my four year relationship that
took me from high school to college finally ended. Now, seven years later,
Sadie and I are home for the holidays and I run into him again, this time at
the local bar that serves as an unofficial reunion spot for our high school.
The circumstances are oddly reminiscent of that first night
in Boston. Again, I’m with Sadie and we’re both single and aggressively on the
prowl. High School Guy shows up and we’re immediately drawn to one another and
basically don’t leave each other’s side for the rest of the night. We get drunk
and go outside to make out in the cold. He tells me to come back to his place.
I feel like I shouldn’t ditch Sadie. I tell her we’ll be back in “five
minutes,” which is an unintentional lie. Neither of us has condoms, so he has
to pick some up at 7 Eleven. In Boston seven years ago we took a cab to his apartment. In
Northern California seven years later, it’s an Uber back to his parents’ house.
I seem to remember that seven years ago we were better about using the condoms.
This time, he says he wants to come inside me and I let him (I know). Both
times, he wants to have sex three times in a row, I come once, and very early
the next morning he takes me to meet Sadie and we’re both exhausted and she’s vaguely
angry about my ditching her.
High School Guy and I establish that we’ve both lived on the
east side of Los Angeles for the past seven years. We make a plan to meet up
when we’re back in the city. And we do. I hit him up the weekend after New
Year’s and suggest we see a movie. He suggests watching something at his
place—I’m fine with this, I’m still exhausted from New Year’s. He texts me that
if I haven’t had dinner we could “make something together.” I think this sounds very
sweet and date-like. But I've already eaten. I show up and parking is a
nightmare in his neighborhood. It’s raining and he doesn’t have a parking pass
so I have to circle the block, bypassing the restricted parking signs that are
everywhere. When I finally get to his place, he opens the door wearing sweats and
his eyes are incredibly bloodshot. He tells me he just smoked and is “very
stoned.” I don’t have a big problem with this, I know he’s a stoner and we’ve
smoked together before. But I find myself surprised as always by these guys who invite a
girl over and then make no effort at all to even like put on some real pants. As
a girl preparing for a sex date, of course I showered, shaved, put on sexy
underwear, artfully chose an outfit the right amount relaxed and suggestive.
He’s apparently so stoned he’s not able to function at all,
so I go get glasses out of the cupboard for the wine I brought.
“So, how were you planning on making dinner,” I joke. He’s
sunken into the couch.
I start to peruse the options on Netflix. We settle on Kingpin, which I’ve never seen and he
loves. We both love Woody Harrelson, and when I tell him that Woody is like my
number one celebrity crush, he seems surprised and encouraged. I get the sense
that he likes Woody because he relates to him: stoner, “bad boy” with a good
heart, unconventionally attractive but with that charismatic sex appeal. In
general, I start to get the sense that High School Guy doesn’t have very high
self-esteem. Like he knows he’s stuck in the past but unable to escape it. It
seems most of his friends are still guys from high school and I don’t know how
that works seeing as most of them don’t live in LA. One of them is his
roommate. His room is also a bit of a time capsule, filled with Superman and
Spiderman posters, a lava lamp, a Playboy Bunny throw pillow on his bed. Walking
in there with the intention of having sex, I suddenly feel like we’re back in
high school again, except without all that giddy nervousness.
He is a very intimate, sensitive lover. He doesn’t want to
take me from behind or come on my ass. He constantly wants to be face to face,
he buries his head in my neck, he thrusts slowly and gently, he wants to come
inside me again. As I prod him about the last time he got tested, he reveals
that he’s only been with four people in the past seven years. He says he
doesn’t like having sex with people he doesn’t know. He doesn’t ask me for my number. Gone is the callous, indignant “bad boy” I thought I knew in high
school. As his face hovers inches from mine, I experience the familiar
realization that sometimes it’s in the most intimate moments with someone that
you suddenly recognize you don’t really know them at all. Again, he wants to
have sex three times and I come once. The orgasm is very satisfying, as it
tends to be with him, probably because he likes to thrust slowly and sensually
rather than the ever-familiar jackrabbit pounding.
The next morning, he shares with me that he didn’t get to
walk at our high school graduation because he failed math his senior year. This
obviously had a big impact on his psyche, and I feel badly for him. We talk a
lot about the guys we knew in high school—most of whom are still his best
friends. We talk shit about them and I wonder if he even still likes
these guys, or if he’s just settled into the fact that these are his “friends
for life.” He tells me about several instances in high school where he and
another kid both did something bad (like drag-racing in the middle of the day
on one of the residential 30 mile per hour streets of our home town) and only
he got in trouble for it. It seems this is a theme for him—getting himself into
shit and then feeling like the consequences of his actions are unfair. I
listen and nod, understanding but also not really. I wonder, as I often do
after sex with the guys I tend to have sex with, what I’m doing here. What
brought me back to the bed of this person I slept with seven years ago? Has my
taste in men really not evolved at all in the past seven years?
The next week I go get tested, and I spend another week
paranoid that I have HIV and/or a baby growing inside me. My period is a
day late which sends me into a tailspin of fear and paranoia. I’m on the pill,
but I remember after having sex with High School Guy over the holidays, I had
been a little late with my first pill of the new cycle, which is a bad one to
miss. I finally get my period and breathe a sigh of relief. I think maybe it’s
time to be more of a grown up in my sex life. To stop “playing Russian roulette
with my vagina,” to paraphrase Jenny Slate’s knocked up character in Obvious Child. I’m tired of going to get
tested every time I don’t enforce condom use with a partner. I’m tired of the
fear of getting those results. When I was younger, I was so nonchalant about
unprotected sex, but now every time I do it my imagination runs wild and that
fleeting enjoyment of sex without a condom is simply not worth the stress that
follows.
I might see High School Guy again. I don’t know. But I think
I’m ready to attract something different. I’m ready to attract a grown ass man.
Someone who enforces his own condom usage because he doesn’t want to get a girl
pregnant when she has the sole responsibility of choosing to keep it or not,
and therefore the power to change the course of his life forever. Someone who is
not so flippant with his life decisions. So I don’t have to be the only one making the
responsible choice and then feeling bad about myself when I alone fail to do
that. I think a grown ass man would be good for me. I
think I’m finally ready to graduate.
