My Harvey

When I first started reading about the numerous allegations piling up against Harvey Weinstein, I didn’t understand at first how this could be going on for over twenty years and no one had come forward before now. That so many women could have such similar experiences with one of the most powerful men in Hollywood and yet it continued to happen. If there were to be no legal repercussions, why at the very least did older women not warn younger women to not go into those hotel rooms, not to be alone with this sexual predator? Why was he allowed to get away with it for so long?

Initially, I resisted the #metoo hashtag circulating on Facebook. Why was it that women had to stand in solidarity in our victimhood? Why are we so obsessed with the woman as victim narrative? I don’t see myself as a victim, and I don’t want to be made to wear that badge because we live in a sexist, patriarchal world. Of course I empathized with the women who had been victimized, but I resisted what felt to me like a celebration of our presumed weakness. I couldn’t imagine being in a room with a powerful man who could make or break my career crossing all the boundaries that lay between us until I felt I had to make a choice between my ambition and my soul.

And then I remembered that actually I had been in a room like this one. A year ago. And I didn’t know how to process it until I started reading these women’s stories. I actually didn’t really understand how to think about what had happened to me until I read in The Atlantic Brit Marling on Harvey Weinstein and the Economics of Consent. I didn’t realize my situation at the time because I had simply accepted it as the status quo. And that’s my really horrifying realization in all of this. Not that Harvey Weinstein is a sexual predator, because frankly and unfortunately, I’m not surprised. But that I have been in a room similar to the one these women describe, and I didn’t even realize it.

A year ago, I was hired to adapt a novel into a screenplay by an older female producer. She let me know before offering me the job that she had sent the book to several more well-known and established screenwriters, one of whom was a female writer/director I greatly admired. Lucky for me, those other writers passed. This producer fancied herself a sort of mentor and liked the idea of giving a young woman writer with potential a shot, and I was grateful for the opportunity. I had only ever had one of my feature scripts—a co-write—optioned, and never anything produced except for short films I made myself. This was a very important project for her and she had a reputable director interested. To make myself more appealing while trying to get the job, I lowballed a figure because I knew part of my appeal was being a writer without a quote.

I was paid half up front and was to get the other half upon delivery, but when I ran out of money and needed to pay my rent, I asked the producer if I could get the rest of it now. It wasn’t a lot of money and I knew the guy funding the film was loaded. She said yes, but that her financier wanted to meet me, so I could go pick up the check in person at his office.

As I headed into the financier’s office building, a man passed me in the hall and looked me up and down, smiling as he checked me out. I continued into the building and was led into a conference room by the pleasant young woman working the front desk. A few minutes later, the financier entered the room. It was the guy who had checked me out in the hall. We shook hands and I sat down. He was talkative and energetic. He asked me questions and then talked over my answers. He seemed to want to tell me about himself, to show off his philanthropic work, and I responded attentively like a good student, nodding and smiling and making all the right noises. He asked if I liked the book—he hadn’t read it. I said I thought it would make a good movie. I wasn’t really sure what this meeting was about but apparently he just wanted to put a face to the person to whom he was writing the checks.

He asked about my other work. I told him about my blog, this blog. I told him the title. His face lit up. He suddenly seemed very interested in what I had to say. He asked what made me so comfortable writing about sex. I told him about the shameless way I was raised by a feminist mother. I told him the foundational story of my childhood, that my mom bought me a vibrator when I was twelve. This isn’t privileged information—literally everyone who knows me knows this. And it’s not a story designed to titillate. I sometimes tell it to relative strangers in business meetings because I feel it cuts through a lot of small talk and gets to the heart of something that helps people understand who I am as a person and an artist.

He leaned in, a glint in his eye. He asked if I knew how he and my producer had met. I said no. He dialed her number on the conference room telephone in the middle of the table and said, “Hey, tell her how we met.” She giggled and said, “Oh god.” She hung up and he told me they had met at a sex party. Neither of them knew it was a sex party, of course, and they ended up chatting in the kitchen while everyone else got it on in the living room. He watched me intently as he told this story. I laughed politely and smiled a lot, and still wondered what this meeting was about. Was I going through some kind of test before I was going to get my check? He seemed electrified by the fact that we were now talking about sex, and I suddenly felt like maybe we were headed in the wrong direction. I could feel myself getting hot under my cashmere sweater, an ill-advised choice on what I had assumed would be a chilly fall day and had turned instead into a stifling LA one. But I didn’t want to take it off, embarrassed about the possibility of sweat stains.

I wasn't sure why I felt uncomfortable. Maybe because the stakes felt higher than usual. I had been hired by this woman I respected to write a script after it had been passed on by much more established writers. She had made it clear she was taking a chance on me, and here I was talking about sex with her financier. Somehow I knew there was something about this that wasn't totally above board. But hadn’t he pushed the conversation in this direction? He had probed into my other work and gotten fixated on the subject of sex. It suddenly seemed I had unwittingly tapped into an area where I maybe shouldn’t have gone with this particular guy, and now I didn’t know how to get us back to higher ground.

I guess inspired by my mention of being raised in a shameless household, he started telling me about how he had coached his “gorgeous” seventeen year old daughter that she should play with a guy’s balls when they had sex. I didn’t know what to say to that so I stupidly said, “Oh really, I don’t think I’ve ever done that.”

“I’ll show you if I’m ever lucky enough to have sex with you,” he said.

I just stared at him. I felt my face turning red. I started to think back in the conversation to see if I had provoked this comment. Had I said something that might make him feel like us having sex was a possibility? And even if he thought it was, why would he say this out loud in a supposed business meeting with someone he didn’t know? Had I incited this by talking about my sex-positive childhood? Had I said too much? Probably, I usually did. Or was it just the way this guy talked? He stared at me inquisitively, gauging my response. Perhaps testing how far he could go. This was my opportunity to shut the door, to say, “Please don’t say that.” I didn’t. I was just so surprised; I didn’t know what to say.

Later, when I recounted the story of this meeting to my mom and a couple friends, I left out this part. I told them that I’d found the meeting refreshing. I was charmed by the attention of this rich and powerful older man. I was excited by what I saw as a potential business opportunity. He seemed interested in the Slutty Feminist—maybe he wanted to invest in her?

The meeting ended with him asking me what would make me happy. I waved the check in the air and said, “This helps!” He then said he wanted to take me out for a sushi lunch so we could get to know each other better. I said great. Free sushi lunch with a rich financier who likes slutty feminists and might want to invest in my brand sounded good to me!

We went to lunch and it felt like a date. We ate expensive sushi and he told me about how he loved his wife, she was a great mother, but she had a low sex drive and he had a high sex drive and he said they had kind of a don’t ask-don’t tell policy. He also said that the one time he’d taken advantage of this policy and fucked someone else, the girl ended up blackmailing him, and his wife was furious at him for putting their family at risk. I wonder now if there was a part of this story he wasn't telling me, and if perhaps it wasn’t that she had blackmailed him, but that he’d gotten sued and settled. Now I’m curious about the girl’s side of the story.

He told me about the time he and his buddies went to Vietnam where he met the most beautiful young girl he’d ever seen and his friend was making out with her when his other friend broke the news that this beautiful young girl was actually a beautiful young boy.

“I would’ve had sex with her. She was stunning,” he said, grinning.

He told me he wouldn’t make the first move on me, that I would have to initiate if I wanted “anything to happen”. I stared at him. The words I should have said stuck in my throat. I tried to think of how I might switch gears into talking about business, but my brand was my business, right? And my brand was the Slutty Feminist, wasn’t it? And the Slutty Feminist was just talking about the subject of her work at lunch with a rich businessman so it was all above board, yes?

“That will never happen,” is something I never said. Instead, I told him about the stand up gig I had coming up and he asked what he had to do to get a private show. I laughed and said, “That’ll cost ya!”

He said he wanted to make our lunches a monthly engagement. I said okay. I called my mom after lunch, excited that I might be forming some kind of ambiguous relationship with someone who liked investing in the arts, someone who might want to invest in me. I left out the part about tickling balls and beautiful Vietnamese boys. I left out the part about how, deep in my gut, I felt unsettled.

When I think about the women who went up into Harvey Weinstein’s hotel rooms and drank champagne and allowed themselves to be massaged, I get it. I get why some women stood there while Harvey jerked off in front of them. When I’m honest with myself, I can see exactly how that could've happened. Because they wanted something—a role, a paycheck, a career—and here was the most thanked person at the Oscars after God, and on some level you might assume that someone so rich and powerful was right, no matter what he did to you. 

As Brit Marling says in her wonderful piece on Harvey: “The things that happen in hotel rooms and board rooms all over the world (and in every industry) between women seeking employment or trying to keep employment and men holding the power to grant it or take it away exist in a gray zone where words like “consent” cannot fully capture the complexity of the encounter. Because consent is a function of power. You have to have a modicum of power to give it.”

Looking back on this lunch and the meeting that preceded it, I’m embarrassed about how I acted. I feel ashamed that I didn’t set a boundary for myself, that I allowed this guy to believe there was a chance of sex with me if it meant I might get some career or financial boost out of it. I feel like an idiot because on some deep level I knew exactly what was happening. I knew this guy wasn't interested in my work, he just wanted to fuck me. I knew that and yet it felt good to feel some illusion of power in the situation, when in actual fact, he had all the power. Because as a young, broke, attractive woman in this world, sometimes it seems the only real power we have access to is the ability to make powerful men want to fuck us.

Which is why it adds insult to injury to tell the end of this story. I finished the script and felt really good about it. I think it was the best script I’d written up to that point. I’d poured my heart and soul into it. It was personal yet true to the original story. I knew it was good. I handed it in and waited. And waited. For two weeks, I heard nothing. Finally, the producer called.

“Something has come to my attention that I feel very uncomfortable about and it’s the reason I haven’t called you sooner,” she said ominously. She then accused me of “pursuing a relationship” with the financier, and said she felt betrayed. I was confused.

“He asked me to lunch,” I said. We had one lunch. These lunches happen all over LA every second of every day. LA is built on these getting to know you lunches.

She said she could have picked nine other writers, but she chose me, and I should have been impeccable. She told me she felt like throwing the whole project in the trash. She said this was a huge fuck up, she didn’t know if she could trust me. She made it sound like I had seduced and fucked her husband. I didn’t understand what was going on. I started to cry. She kept going. She said what I had done downgraded my efforts from an “A to a C.”

“You’re not a teenager, you’re a grown woman,” she yelled. I sobbed. I felt so ashamed. I didn’t even know why, but on some level I felt she was right. I had failed at my responsibility: to draw a clear boundary with a horny man who couldn’t help himself. I deserved this. I pleaded, told her I had made a mistake.

“A huge mistake,” she corrected.

As I cried, she yelled. She said I had used the relationship for my own gains, hoping to get something out of it when I should have been on best behavior and grateful to her for giving a chance to an untested writer. I tried to convince her I was trustworthy and honest, that I hadn’t meant any harm. I’d never had to argue for my trustworthiness before; it’s not something that had ever been questioned. I felt like an imposter even saying the words. I felt blindsided by the attack and completely unprepared to defend myself.

In retrospect, I might have asked, “What exactly did I do wrong? What could I have done differently?” Drawn a clearer boundary, okay. But the man writing my checks (aka paying my bills) asked me to lunch. Was I supposed to tell him to fuck off? How do you draw a boundary with someone who within fifteen minutes of meeting you says, “If I’m ever lucky enough to have sex with you…”? I had actually practiced what I would say at our next lunch, the boundary I planned to draw—albeit belatedly. My plan to get us back on track, back to what I wanted out of this. That second lunch would never happen. I never heard from the financier again after the producer’s call. I wondered if she’d berated him as forcefully as she’d berated me. Somehow, I doubt it.

When the producer was done yelling, she pivoted to what a good job I’d done on the script. She said the director had some notes, but they both thought it was a very strong first take. I sniffled, trying to pull myself together and shift gears. I grabbed a pen and paper so I could take down a couple of her initial thoughts.

“We both think you’re a strong candidate to continue working on the script.” I thanked her and we hung up. Then I went and stood in the shower and shook like a leaf. I felt like I’d been assaulted.

I didn't continue working on the script. The project was shelved. I never received any feedback on my months of work, never got a chance to talk to the director. I was relieved to put the episode behind me, but I also felt used. I felt this was my punishment for being a little slut.

I think about the women who stood by silently—the older women, the potential mentors—who knew what Harvey was up to but were too afraid to speak up, afraid of losing their jobs, of jeopardizing their own tenuous position in the pecking order. I do feel for those women. Who knows what kind of awful shit they had to put up with to get to where they are. That’s just being a woman in this business, sweetie. Grow a thicker skin, don’t be so sensitive. What they’re really saying is, turn off your empathy. Turn off your compassion. Turn off your nurturing instinct. Turn off your innately feminine qualities in order to survive in this male-dominated space. No. That’s not what we need. We don’t need more hardened, macho people in this industry. What we desperately need is more empathy, more compassion, more nurturing, more feminine energy. That is what will make this industry stronger. Those women who looked the other way, I feel for them, they too are victims of a patriarchal system, but they are also complicit.

As women, we are really good at twisting ourselves into pretzels, constantly adjusting to fit into a world that wasn’t built for us. These circumstances have made us extremely adaptable, which is a wonderful quality. We know how to do that. Now it’s time to change the culture of Hollywood, politics, the tech industry, the world. It's time to design a world that fits us. So that our daughters and granddaughters don’t have to post #metoo on Facebook.

Growing Pains

“I used to consider myself like this agent of change for men in unhappy relationships. But I don’t know why I assigned myself that role. I don’t know why I made that my responsibility.”

“Well, that’s a very mature question you’re asking,” says the therapist. When she says this, I feel like a child.

“I haven’t been acting very mature lately,” I respond.

“You’re 29 years old!” She exclaims. I just turned 29. It’s a week after my birthday and I’m in a therapist’s office. It’s been a rough week.

The night after my birthday, I go to my local bar at last call and John the bartender is working. This time, from the moment I enter the bar, the game we have been playing no longer feels like a game. In fact, when I park myself in my usual spot in front of John’s register, he goes outside and I can see him talking to security. Moments later, a bouncer awkwardly comes to tell us it’s time to leave, which is unusual because we are always allowed to stick around after hours. I march outside to confront John and he explains, “You make me a bad person, I can’t be around you.”

He says that because of me he now has to, “lie to someone I love for the rest of my life.” He is referring of course to the fact that the last time I saw him, on Halloween, I sucked his dick in the women’s restroom. Since then, over Thanksgiving when I was up in the Bay Area visiting my parents, I met up with John’s Brother for dinner and sex. I had been excited to see the look on John’s face since my encounter with his brother—to see if he knew. I still thought the whole situation was hilarious. Apparently John didn’t know or care that I had seen his brother again—now he seemed only concerned about saving his own relationship by getting me the hell away from him. I tell him I want to be friends and we hug, pressing our pelvises together. He’s smirking under his resolve, and between telling me to leave him alone, he rubs his finger on my nipple, hard underneath my dress. Due to the mixed signals and because I can’t take no for an answer, I continue to push myself on him until he warily relents and lets me and my friends back inside the bar.

Later, I follow him into the storage room and suck his dick again while he’s distributing his coworkers paychecks in their cubbies. He says, “you really are crazy,” and drops a check on my head. Then he tells me he wants to “see something” so I pull up my dress, pull down my stockings and underwear and take my boobs out of my bra. I rub my butt on his crotch, and then he watches me as he jerks off to completion on the plastic mat covering the floor. These are the cliff notes. A long night of back and forth precedes this, a lot of John saying “please stop” and then, “I want to fuck you so bad.” It all culminates in this moment in the storage room, and then it’s all downhill from there. After he comes, John is visibly flooded with remorse. I feel bad for making him feel bad, and attempt to drunkenly convince him it isn’t a big deal and now that he’s come we can all move on with our lives. He looks at me like, yeah right. I follow him to the bathroom where he desperately tries to wipe the cum off his jeans. I tell him I don’t want to leave him alone, he seems so upset. He tells me that it’s not my responsibility. That’s true, so I walk away. John emerges from the bathroom and basically tells us the party is over and to get out. As we stalk outside, I see him yell at his fellow bartenders: “I’m so tired of no one listening to me. When I say everyone out, I mean everyone out!” He looks distressed and angry and sad and I’ve never seen him like this before.

It’s not until this moment that it dawns on me that this isn’t fun for John anymore. Maybe it never was. It’s a struggle for both of us, to be sure, but I thought that’s what was exciting about it—I thought it was a game. To him, I suddenly realize, the stakes are too high and my sexual whims are really fucking with his life. The moment I realize this is when I start to feel really awful about the whole thing.

I wrote a version of this story that was all chase scene and sex details. I gave it to my best friend to read and she wanted to know, not for the first time, what kept me going, what was I getting out of this? Why did I persist when John told me over and over in no uncertain terms that he did not want to cheat on his girlfriend? I justified my actions by telling her of all the mixed messages I had been receiving from him all along. The fact that when I touched him he told me to “keep it under the bar.” That between telling me to stop and enlisting my roommate’s help in keeping me away from him, he would lean into my neck and whisper that he wished we had a time machine bubble and could just have sex one time without any consequences. I told her about how I’d asked him how his sex life is with his girlfriend and he convincingly said it was good. To which I wondered, “so you just want variety then?” And he said, “I’m a very sexual person and I love women.” I told him it sounded like he wasn’t naturally monogamous. He asked if I was into girls, and said he wanted to see his girlfriend eat me out. I told him I am very sexually open and would try most things. He asked if I’d hooked up with my roommate, said he’d like to watch. I tried to express to my best friend that it was hard for me to listen to all of this stuff and then to walk away, that it’s my nature to pursue something to the bitter end even if I see the end looks dicey.

The next day I feel more depressed than I have in a long time. I spend the day sleeping and crying and feeling like garbage. I can’t stop playing last night’s events through my head and the look on John’s face at the end of the night is imprinted on my memory. I hate that my actions have turned this happy, good-natured guy into someone who looks like he hates himself. It was never my intention to make him feel bad, and that’s what I ultimately did. In a weird attempt to find some closure for myself, I go to John’s brother’s Facebook page (John is not on Facebook) and look through the photos of every single one of his female friends, searching for John’s girlfriend. He doesn’t have that many friends, so it doesn’t take that long, but it’s still insane that I do this.

What I discover only makes me feel worse: his girlfriend is really cool. Smart, funny, pretty, someone I might be friends with—a performer with plenty of online content I can absorb endlessly to feed the masochistic chasm that has suddenly opened up inside of me. I watch video after video and cry and feel even more sorry for myself, and also stupid, because for some reason I had assumed that his girlfriend was this mousy, boring person and now in the depths of self-loathing, I feel that I have discovered evidence that she is actually better than me.

I suddenly feel the unquenchable need to talk about this with anyone who will listen, but I also know that I am close to exhausting my friends on this topic, and I feel like I need to talk to someone who doesn’t know me. It is fascinating to hear the difference in perspective from the women in my life versus the men. My male friends, in particular Best Guy Friend and ex-boyfriend, are like, “boo hoo John, you got a blow job.” They laugh when I imply that I feel like a sex offender—both say he is a big boy and could have shut it down if he wanted to. The women in my life, by contrast, tell me that John sent very clear signals that he didn’t want to cheat on his girlfriend, and they all wonder why I persisted anyway. My social worker roommate rounds out the two perspectives by musing that because men have their sex organs on the outside of their bodies, it’s harder for them to control their urges, and that while his head was probably telling him to stop, his body was full steam ahead. This explains the mixed messages, and temporarily makes me feel better.

I decide I need to talk to a therapist. My best friend agrees.

“I’m very pro-therapy,” she says. She suggests I Google search “sex positive therapists in Los Angeles.” I don’t really know what to look for in a therapist, but this gives me a place to start, and finding someone who advertises themselves as sex-positive makes a lot of sense to me. My friend Paula recommends this woman who is into Jung and dream work and archetypes. She sounds cool and is nice on the phone so a week later I go in for a consultation. I am late getting to her office because I go to the wrong address and park and then walk around in the gusting wind desperately trying to find her and feeling sorry for myself and already like I might cry. I eventually find her and, within minutes of sitting down on her couch, I burst into tears.

“I know this is supposed to just be a consultation,” I gasp through the waterworks, “but I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

I tell her about Saturday night, and how bad I feel about what happened, that I don’t understand why I always have to push it so far. I don’t tell her about internet stalking John’s perfect girlfriend, or about the fact that I wrote him a remorseful letter and left it in the mailbox of the bar—a move that I now regret and actually went back to retrieve the letter only to find it was already gone.

“It sounds like you’re outgrowing this older version of yourself. This old idea you’ve had about who you are.”

I think about this, about the possibility of saying goodbye to this person who throws herself at men in relationships whom she’s decided are not happy. I wonder who will take her place. I haven’t seen the therapist again. I plan to, I just haven’t had time and the acute pain has subsided. Now I just feel lonely and tired. I wonder if I’ll ever meet someone and find a connection with a man that isn’t just about sex—the longer I go without it, the more distant it feels. I’ve stopped drinking for a month because I’m going to do ayahuasca at the end of January and you’re supposed to not drink, do drugs, have sex in preparation.

“You want to pack light for the journey,” the woman tells me on the phone. “You don’t want to be carrying any extra baggage.”

I’m hoping this journey will give me some clarity about where I’m going and what I’m doing. This final episode with John definitely felt like a wake up call. Even as I was sobbing on the bathroom floor on Sunday night, I had the sudden clarity that this must be progress, that something good must come out of all this pain, that I must be growing or it wouldn’t hurt so much.

Rejection

I’ve got rejection on the brain. Last weekend, I really wanted to have sex. I had recently reconnected with this hot bartender/circus performer whom I used to have casual sex with. Well, we did it twice. Back then, I dubbed him my “Sunday fuck,” but on the second Sunday we were already doing a “quickie” and the following week, when I tried to booty call him, he texted back, “Well, I don’t know. I started seeing someone so we’re going to have to chill on that for a bit.” This guy is like catnip for me. Not only does he have a beautiful face and incredibly tight ripped body, I love kissing him, I love his smell, I love his cock. Needless to say, when he shut it down, I was disappointed. Also, a little embarrassed. I sustained a bit of an ego bruise on that one, believing that his “seeing someone” was just a way of getting rid of me, that I was getting too clingy coming to the bar every week to stare at him. I never returned to his bar after that—it had been my local favorite. I also moved out of the area (unrelated), so that helped me forget about him.

Then, a couple weeks ago, I asked my Best Guy Friend if he wanted to go to dinner at this particular bar, for old times sake. He actually had been the one to originally point out Bartender to me, and at the time I declared him “not my type.” Now, basically every man I’m attracted to looks like him: short-ish, lean muscular body, dark hair, beautiful eyes. Best Guy Friend knows what I want before I do.

We arrive at the bar and, sure enough, he’s working. I catch his eye and smile. I thought it would be awkward for us to see one another again, and I had mentally prepared myself. But he looks genuinely pleased. He gives me a cute, playful little wave and asks how I’m doing. He catches my eye several times throughout the night as my friend and I eat dinner. I wonder if he thinks we’re dating. I can’t decide if this is the message I want to send or not. We leave at a reasonable time and Bartender looks, dare I say, a little disappointed to see me go.

The moment we leave, I want to text him. He looked so hot and I want to see if I can weasel my way back into his good graces. I’m starting to think maybe he was actually seeing someone back then, that he wasn’t lying to me after all. He looked thrilled to see me—a quality I don’t usually associate with this person who keeps his emotions pretty bottled. I text him, “It was good to see your face,” which I think is flirty and neutral all at the same time. He doesn’t write back that night, and I don’t care as much as I might have last time around.

The next day, I’m still hanging with Best Guy Friend (we have sexless adult sleepovers; our friends always want to know if we bang—we don't, he’s like my brother), when I hear back from Bartender. He says, “Good to see you too. You look like you’re doing well.” Polite and decidedly non-flirty. But he did add a second sentence when one would suffice. My friend tells me, if I want to fuck him, I should put sex on the table. He tells me to write the following, and so of course I do: “Yep. Not getting laid enough but besides that doing good.” I squeal as I press Send. I don’t expect to hear anything back. Within minutes, I do. “Lol. Maybe we can figure something out on that end.” I’m so excited I could do cartwheels. I scream and throw my arms around Best Guy Friend. He smiles at me, “You’re welcome.”

I don’t hear from Bartender the whole week. Which is fine. I’m busy too, and I have my period, and I figure I’m the one that needs to have sex so I’m going to have to be the one to orchestrate it—it’s always been this way with us anyway, I’ve always wanted it more. Friday night, it’s Halloween and I decide instead of getting dressed up as a slutty version of something, going out and getting trashed, that I’ll stay in with Best Guy Friend and watch scary movies, drink beer, and eat pizza & candy. We watch the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (terrible), the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake (better), and The Conjuring (fucking terrifying). We order two large pizzas from Papa John’s, eat peanut M&Ms, Fun Size Mounds and Snickers, and drink Hefeweizen. It’s a great night. The Conjuring gives me nightmares, but it’s worth it. We sleep in the same bed (we always do), and no we don’t have sex, or even spoon (as my roommate specifically wants to know when I return home).

The next day, I’m horny as fuck (unrelated to my adult sleepover), and decide I need to have sex tonight. I don’t think Bartender is working, so I figure tonight is the night to attempt this fuck buddy orchestration. Best Guy Friend encourages me to wait until three to set it up. We take the dog on a long walk around the neighborhood in the deliciously crisp Fall-ish weather. We have a long debate/argument involving Feminism and Law of Attraction and the viral video of the woman walking for ten hours through New York City and getting catcalled 100 times. We get in the hot tub and talk about 2014 and how it has planted a lot of seeds we’re looking forward to harvesting in 2015. By two, I can’t wait any longer. Based on my mood, which is more desperate/needy than flirty/fuck me, Best Guy Friend helps me formulate the following text: “You still down to help me out with that little problem I’m having?” I press Send and wait. Best Guy Friend and I end our extended date and I head home. I feel very unmotivated and decide to take the day off, not do any work and just chillax with myself. It’s easier said than done in the state I’m in. I keep checking my phone every five minutes, wanting desperately to hear back from him. I stalk him on Facebook and see that he’s “Active." Meaning he got my text and ignored it. I knew that anyway, but now it’s been confirmed. At five, as the sun is already beginning to set, I decide to take a walk around the reservoir by my house. I need some fresh air. I text Best Guy Friend, “Still haven’t heard from the little fucker,” with an angry emoticon.

The walk cheers me up and I stop at my favorite coffee shop for a cappuccino. I’m enjoying the Fall-ish weather and my new sweater from Grandma. Almost finished with my walk, I decide to go see Birdman tonight and, on a whim, I text the Hot Guy I fucked at my party, inviting him along. Regardless of the fact that I haven’t seen him since, he’s made zero effort to reach out, and even ignored my last text, I still think there’s a chance he’ll respond. He’s a movie buff after all and this might be exactly what he wants to do on a Saturday evening. Even if he’s not interested in me romantically, I feel we could be friends. I don't hear from him either. I decide to text someone I know will respond, because my ego needs a little stroking. I text the Music Manager from my party—the one I made out with and then ditched for Hot Guy. I ask if he wants to go see the movie with me. Nothing. I take a bath and listen to Dido and feel sorry for myself. I’m fully prepared to go see Birdman by myself. Fuck it. I’m a grown ass woman. But my roommate says she’ll come with me, so we have a lady date instead. Which is lovely and overdue, and fuck these men anyway.

Later that night, I hear back from Music Manager who says he’s been away from his phone, but with more notice he totally would have come with me. He says we should hang soon. Still haven’t heard from Bartender or Hot Guy. Typical. The two guys I want most are MIA. I had told Best Guy Friend that if I didn’t hear from Bartender, I would hit up the little Jewish Man I met on OKCupid. At this point, I’m too disheartened to pursue even the easy lay.

On Sunday, I wake up still feeling shitty about the whole situation. I take my phone off Airplane mode and really hope I’ve heard from either one of these boys. Nope. I understand with Hot Guy, he’s doing the Fade Away. He never gave me any indication he was interested at all, and the Fade Away is a move I’m familiar with. But that’s no excuse for Bartender. He was the one who fucking planted the hope of a booty call in my head in the first place. I don’t understand. Even if he's just busy, at least fucking text me back goddammit. I decide to leave my phone on Airplane mode for the whole day so I won’t be tempted to check it every five seconds, and whereas leaving it off should be a relief, it proves tortuous. I go to a yoga class, make myself a healthy lunch, eat some Fun Size candy leftover from Halloween, watch the first episode of the depressing new British TV show Happy Valley, and fall asleep for a couple hours in the middle of the day. At four PM, I can’t take it any longer, and the clock has fallen back so the sun will set in an hour. I decide to walk around the reservoir, again, and I call Best Guy Friend on my way.

I complain about the rejection, about my bruised ego. He tells me it’s probably not as simple as Bartender not liking me anymore. “Life is never simple,” he says. He tells me I have no idea what he’s going through, so I need to stop speculating about it. “He probably got your text and he was in the middle of something, and he didn’t know how to respond, and then he put it down and forgot about it.” This I don’t understand—guys’ ability to just forget about girls like this. As my roommate says, “They’re goldfish. They swim around their little bowl and they’re like ‘ooh a castle,’ and they just keep swimming and when they come around again: ‘ooh a castle.’” I wish I could be a fucking goldfish. It’s a lot of work to be a woman.

All of the young single women I know do this. And it’s not that we have nothing else going on in our lives—we have jobs and career ambitions, and hobbies, and friends, and a lot of shit to do. But we still find the time and energy to obsess over some fucking guy who probably isn’t even worth our time. In fact, I find that my smartest, most ambitious girlfriends are even more likely to do this. Maybe it’s that we know what we want and we go for it, whether it be sex or career. And we don’t give up until we get it. And it’s just frustrating when what you want is another person because you can’t control how they respond to your wanting, and the resistance they put up makes you work even harder to get it. And the energy of that probably pushes them away even more. 

Despite this incredible amount of distraction and energy spent, we still manage to get our shit done, and we’re a pretty accomplished bunch. It makes me crazy to think how successful we could be if we didn’t get so distracted by dudes. For sure we’d be running the world. Women are masters of multi-tasking after all. Imagine if men focused this much on women, they’d never get anything done.

Best Guy Friend encourages me to lift some weights or something, to get some testosterone in my system. I joke that I should just start taking hormone injections. But I actually think this would be a great product for women—a hormone to shut down this part of our brains that emotionally attaches to the penis we fuck. Something that would allow us to treat sex more like men. We have it, it’s fun, but it’s not so serious and if we don’t get it, there are a hundred other things we could do that would interest us as much if not more. “Sex is great and all, but if we don’t get it, we’ll just go and play video games and that’s just as fun,” says Best Guy Friend. Really? Fucking video games?

My best friend Sadie was going through a similar torment a couple weeks ago where she was obsessing over this guy and this sequence of Lost in Translation texts sent between them. I encouraged her to "just say what you want" and "stop playing games." Not sure why I'm unequivocally incapable of taking my own medicine on this point. I guess I'll just blame biology.

On Monday, I decide I can't not say anything. So I text Bartender, "You failed at being my booty call this weekend." With a winky face emoticon so he knows this is to be read with a light tone and not interpreted as "I spent all weekend obsessing about you." Because that would be disturbing. He writes back right away: "Haha. I was just thinking about that while I was walking up my stairs. This weekend was crazy. What's your schedule like this week?" If only he had just said that on Saturday, I wouldn't have spent Sunday being a crazy person. If only he knew how crazy of a person I actually am. If only I would learn a lesson from this. If only.

Sex Like a Man

Last weekend, my new housemates and I threw a wicked party. And I got wicked drunk. And in my drunken state, I explored what I think it means to have sex like a man–- and found it’s much more complicated than it seems.

The previous weekend, at my guy friend Keith’s birthday party, I had developed a crush on this cute party boy Music Manager. I told my friend Keith to invite this cutie to my party the following weekend, but hadn’t heard any response so assumed it sort of fell through the cracks. I was also not entirely sure from our interaction if this dude was interested or not, and had heard he might be sort of gay, so my hopes were not high. 

Naturally, when he shows up at my party Saturday night, I’m surprised and excited. I look fabulous in incredibly high platform wedges and an incredibly short bright white tennis dress. His vibes are a little flirtier than our last exchange, so I decide to invite him to see the “view from my bedroom” (which is actually amazing). He comes up and I close the door, because I’m feeling bold and saucy, and turn off the lights. We look out at the reservoir, and then we’re kissing. And he’s aggressively feeling on my body. He tells me he’s kind of uncomfortable with this because my ex-boyfriend is at the party (and they’re friends)— I tell him my ex knows I have a crush on him and that we have his blessing. This makes him more uncomfortable. Despite his discomfort, I guess he’s into me. But apparently he’s also not quite hard (he’s very drunk), so he says “let’s go socialize with the other people and come back later.”

We return to the others, and continue to party. Whenever we find ourselves alone, he lifts up my skirt and we makeout a little. 

“I like the taste of your saliva,” he breaths into my mouth.

“What does it taste like?”

“Sex.”

At 2am, it suddenly feels like a lot of people have left and the party is winding to a close. I think it’s probably time to seal the deal with Music Manager. Just as I have this thought, a group of like 30 people walk through the door, about 10 of which are very tall, hot men. One in particular is very very very hot and I think, there’s no way I could bag this guy. But I’m feeling drunk and bold so I zero in on him, touching him, making fun of him, leaning in on him. I guess he too is interested because when we’re not canoodling, he keeps eye-fucking me from across the room. And when I return to Music Manager on the porch, I can feel Hot Guy watching me through the window. I try to tone down my body language with Music Manager, because to be honest, he didn’t seal the deal in a timely fashion, and I’ve gone back on the market. 

The rest of the night plays out like a hilarious/stressful love triangle. I disappear with Hot Guy into the garage, where we play a terrible game called Drinko in which the goal is to drop a chip into a shot glass that the other person then has to drink-– we’re classy so we’re playing with Bud Light. Music Manager comes searching for me, looking wounded and 100% wasted, and still drinking. It’s nearing the wee hours. Music Manager gets me alone in the kitchen and puts his hands under my dress, leaning into me.

“I don’t like that other guy. You’re gonna fuck him aren’t you?” He slurs at me.
"No," I giggle, not even convincing myself.

I hear someone coming so I try to pry his hands off my crotch.

He frowns. “Are you ashamed of me?”

I try to laugh it off, but I know this is a dick move on my part. My justification is that Music Manager is far too drunk to have sex at this point, and I refuse to deal with erectile dysfunction tonight. This is my party dammit!

I’m aware of myself unintentionally acting like a man, taking what I want and not giving a fuck. And it actually feels great. I’m drunk enough that I’m not too worried about the hurt feelings potentially involved in making out with one guy at midnight and fucking another several hours later. I feel like dudes do this kind of thing and don’t think much of it–- it must be cool to be a dude. Also, because of my drunkenness, I find myself not really caring too much about the outcome of the night. For once, I’m going with the flow. I’m not trying to orchestrate the booty call–- and this must be an attractive quality because both of the potentials are still hanging around at 5am, waiting to see who will get the final look at my view this fine evening.

At 5am, there are six of us left. Three of us are Hot Guy, Music Manager, and me. I leave my two boys in the garage and go for a cigarette with my gay friend. 

“How do I get rid of Music Manager so I can fuck Hot Guy?” I ask, desperate.

“You might just have to give them both up for tonight.”
What? That’s terrible advice.

I devise a brilliant plan while Music Manager is in the bathroom. I pull Hot Guy out of the garage.

“Do you want to stay here?”

“I could,” he says coyly.

“Okay, you have to go upstairs and wait for me.”

I pull him towards the stairs. But just as we get there, Music Manager comes out of the bathroom. He sees us. Hot Guy heads into the kitchen. I pull Music Manager towards the door.

“Are you going to Uber home?” I ask.

“You’re gonna fuck that guy!” He gives me sad puppy eyes. I put my finger on his lips, trying to keep him quiet.

“No, I’m just trying to get everyone out so I can go to bed,” I lie.

I pry the Bud Light out of his hand as I open the front door for him.

He’s so drunk I don’t think he’ll remember this rejection in the morning. Or at least I hope not. I know I’m being a bad host as I say, “You’re gonna Uber right? Please don’t drive.”

I give him a light push out the door. He grabs the Bud Light from my hand.

“I feel like a loser,” he says.

“Oh no.” I bring him in for a hug and kiss. We kiss with tongues, which is confusing for everyone.

“Rain check,” I say, “We should hang out.” And I mean it. I like him when he’s not this drunk. I just need to fuck Hot Guy tonight.

And I do fuck Hot Guy. And it’s okay. I actually think it would have been better with Music Manager. At 6am, we lie down to go to sleep and I try to close the blinds so we won’t be blasted with sun in an hour. He sleeps soundly, even snores. I of course can’t sleep at all and keep getting out of bed to pee, to get two glasses of ice water, to pee again. At 8am, I start to feel remorseful about Music Manager. I remember that his phone died at some point last night, and I wonder how he Ubered home without a phone. I think if he drove drunk and died, it’s my fault. I text my ex for his number. My ex responds, “How did it go last night?” I text back a pic of my sleeping conquest, and even as I’m doing it, I’m aware that this is a creepy thing to do. 

I text Music Manager.

“Sorry I had to kick you out last night. You were too drunk and I didn’t want to take advantage of you ;-). Did you make it home okay I hope??” I feel this text has a nice spin on it, and might make him think that’s what actually happened. I think there’s a chance he won’t even remember the existence of Hot Guy.

At 10am, I rub my body on my bedmate and wake him up with my boobs. We have sex again, and it’s better this time. More spontaneous, less love triangle. I don’t come but I’ve come to expect this from one night stands. We talk for a bit and he has to leave— he has a conference call at noon. He tells me a bit about his career, he’s obviously very smart and doing well for himself— he has his own production company, producing commercials, music videos, documentaries, etc. 

Because I have a big mouth, I can’t help but tell him I’m worried about Music Manager. I even say, “He was cock blocking me! I had to get rid of him. I wasn’t gonna fuck both of you guys last night, and you obviously won.”

Why do I insist on saying things like this out loud? I guess I find them funny, but it takes a special kind of guy to enjoy this brand of humor. My ex would have laughed. Maybe it’s me trying (and failing) to act like a dude. Dudes know how to act casual about sex while keeping these transparent statements to themselves.

“Thanks for the fucking,” I say this too, and again immediately regret it. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism to pretend I care less than I do. Maybe it’s my way of saying “I know I’m never going to see you again so I can be as gross as possible and it doesn’t matter.” Or maybe I’m hoping one of these guys will end up being as crude as I am. Regardless, even as the verbal diarrhea is streaming out my mouth, I’m aware of shooting myself in the foot, dashing any chance at a second date. Hot Guy laughs politely at my antics, but I get the sense he doesn’t really understand where I’m coming from.

We kiss goodbye and I say, “it was nice to meet you.” We both laugh. I also wish I would stop saying this after one night stands. He doesn’t get my number, which doesn’t necessarily surprise, or even bother me… until later.

Later, after I’ve cleaned my house and slept for three hours, I start to think about him. A lot. I do some lite stalking on Facebook and Instagram. I find a picture with his wholesome looking family. I Friend him on Facebook, then several hours later undo the Friend request. I guiltily ask my male roommate for his number (they’re friends, that’s why he was at my party). I text Hot Guy at 8pm: “Hey, it’s me (from last night)… I had fun with you, if you’re interested I would love to hang sometime.” I wait for a response for awhile. Leave the room for five minutes, and check my phone when I return–- thinking I might have missed his text while I was gone. I make myself dinner and watch Sex and the City and try to forget about him. My new obsession, gradually taking the place of the last one.

The next morning, I still haven’t received any response and I’ve given up. Unless my roommate gave me a bogus number, there’s no way he didn’t get my message. 

I guess this is what happens when a woman tries to have sex like a man. My friends often laugh and say I treat sex like a dude treats sex. I guess this is true in some ways-– I have casual sex without feeling remorseful about it, I pursue sex more than most of the men I know. But the difference comes in the follow up. I have sex like a man, but my post-sex practices are decidedly female. I want that follow up text. I want the “Hey, I had fun last night. I would love to grab dinner sometime.” And this really goes against the rules of casual sex, particularly one night stands. It’s in the name: One Night Stand–- it’s supposed to be for ONE NIGHT. I don’t know why I can’t get this into my head. There’s not supposed to be any expectation beyond that. The problem for me, and I think for a lot of women, is that something gets turned on by sex. What felt casual before changes because there’s some hormonal, primal, biological response that wants to latch on to the man that fucks me. It makes sense in nature, but it really doesn’t work out well in this culture of casual dating and sex, Tinder and OKCupid, and all that shit.

I ask my ex what he does when someone he likes ignores his texts. 

“I move on,” he says. And I think that’s generally what men do, they move on. Whereas I will stare at my phone for 12 hours and agonize about why he didn’t write me back, about what I said to turn him off, a dude in my position would move on to the next. I don’t know how to do this, and it makes me think that maybe I shouldn’t be allowed to have casual sex until I figure it out. Because it takes a lot of energy. And I think, because I act all nonchalant and flippant with my conquests, they think I don’t require any follow up. I act like a dude and they treat me like one. They don’t see my feelings, because I hide them under statements like “thanks for the fucking.”

On Wednesday morning, as I’m writing this blog, I receive a text message. My heart starts pounding fast. It’s from Hot Guy’s number, the number I deleted on Monday when I hadn’t heard from him.

“Good morning… So I owe you an apology… I just looked at my text thread and realized that I never actually hit send on my previous response…”

I can’t believe my eyes. After all that agonizing, all those hours of staring at my phone, my bruised ego over being ignored. He never hit send on his response.

And I realize, this is why I fail at having sex like a man. It’s not that I can’t stop myself from endlessly commenting on the fact that that’s what I’m doing, it’s not my insistence on sticking my foot in my mouth at every possible opportunity. It’s the fact that when I fuck a guy and I don’t hear from him the next day, I am utterly incapable of letting it go and moving on with my life. That’s where the dudes really have me beat.