Sexpectations

I’ve been seeing someone. Just three dates, but it’s felt more real than any “relationship” I’ve had in quite awhile. On the first date, we met at a nice wine bar and had charcuterie, and he didn’t even try to kiss me. On the second date, dinner of oysters and a whole fish followed by dancing, all of it planned and paid for by him. We went back to his place and it was late so we both decided I would sleep over. I think neither of us wanted to necessarily have sex yet—we wanted to take our time—but seeing as I was in his bed, how was that not going to happen? We had sex and it was nice, and then the next morning (Valentine's Day!), we had sex again, and we both came. (You guys, I had an orgasm on fucking Valentine's Day!!) On the third date, he took me to a self-realization center and then we went to my favorite restaurant for dinner. Again, he paid. This time, he picked me up and brought me a tiny vase of handpicked flowers. All of this I found incredibly romantic and unexpected.

Something happened after we had sex. Something that frequently happens. I found myself thinking about him more than I had before. Missing him, wanting to see him again. My female brain had turned on. Whereas before I had felt casual about our dates, now I felt anxious about the next one and like I was counting down the days. What was happening to me? It was all the scarier because I felt I really connected with this guy and didn’t want to fuck it up by getting obsessed.

Let me back it up. A month ago, I went on an ayahuasca journey. I drank the tea and lay down for a six hour, closed-eye meditation, and let's just say I saw some stuff. I saw John the bartender and all the various guys I'd had sex with over the past three years and, in a sudden moment of clarity, realized that what I had been searching for outside of myself had actually been within me all along. I was filled with an intense feeling of being in love that had nothing whatsoever to do with any of these men—in fact, it was a feeling I had never quite achieved with any of them. I felt in love with myself. I know this sounds very new age-y and some of you might be getting ready to barf, but it was a big revelation for me and afterwards I felt truly invigorated. I realized I was happy being on my own, knowing that I didn’t need anyone else to make me feel good or fulfilled.

Then this guy came along. And he really took me by surprise. We had met at a place where he works and I was freelancing, and then ran into one another around the reservoir by my house—him jogging, me walking. He said we should get a drink sometime. I said yes, enjoying the possibility but also thinking it might never actually happen, and continued on my walk. Within the hour I had a text from him saying he had gotten my number from a coworker, he hoped that was okay, and how about tonight?

At the wine bar, I found myself telling him everything, even about my blog—a subject I’ve made it a rule never to discuss on a first date. I can’t explain it except to say that from the questions he asked, I couldn’t not talk about the real stuff that was going on with me. I told him about my ayahuasca journey, about my revelation that I am enough. There was no small talk. I told him about my three years of sluttery and how I felt them coming to an end, that I’d recently had an epiphany that I wanted more than just random sex with strangers. He enjoyed my candor and shared that he too had been slutting around since his fiancé basically left him at the altar, and that he was also coming to the end of this period in his life. I was surprised at how easy it was to talk to him. I had been nervous about the date, in part because I wasn’t sure if we’d have sexual chemistry, and also because I was pretty out of practice at the whole dating game. On our third date, I explained to him, “I don’t date much. I have sex and long relationships.” He told me I should go on more dates. 

What I liked most about this guy was the lack of games. After our first date, he texted that he was “still smiling” and wanted to see me again. Even when I went on my angry feminist rants, he seemed to gaze at me fondly. As we lay on the grass at the self-realization center, he watched me watching a couple young kids playing and said, “children laughing is the best sound in the world.” He seemed to be waiting for a response. What was I supposed to say to that? When a man says something like this, the woman swoons; but if a woman pays too much attention to babies on an early date, the man is likely to run for the hills. It reminded me of that Sex and the City episode when Carrie, trying to get back together with Aidan, goes to his apartment in the middle of the night and throws rocks at his bedroom window. In voice over she says, “When men attempt bold moves, generally it’s considered romantic. When women do it, it’s often considered desperate or psychotic.”

This guy told me that he had talked about me with his best girl friends, and that he'd just bought a sail boat and that “we should sail to Hawaii!” Maybe it’s just me, but when someone says something like this out loud, I take them seriously. I don’t assume this is just something they might say to anyone who happened to be sitting nearby. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe this guy does act like this with every girl he meets—stares fondly into her eyes, makes her feel like he’s falling for her—when really he’s just equally interested in all humans. He told me on our second date that he felt that sex was a contract and that he was more careful with it now because he knew that women could get hurt. He said he had tried to have casual sexual relationships with women and it never worked out for this reason.

When he dropped me off that third night, a Saturday, we made out furiously outside my front door. He was ending the night prematurely because he had to get up very early the next morning to help his friend build a deck before a baby shower and, as he explained, he liked me and wanted to get to know me better. Meaning, I guess, he didn’t just want this to be a sex thing. That honestly didn’t occur to me, as I found myself much more drawn to his personality and our emotional chemistry than the physical aspect of our connection. To me, the physical was just an extension of how we were connecting on so many other levels. He told me, "what I'm looking for is a best friend who also makes me really horny." Aren't we all, I thought.

He asked if I wanted to see a movie the following Wednesday and I said yes. I had already invited him to a concert on Friday, so now we had two dates for the coming week. My roommates were out of town and I had said he should come over and I’d make him dinner—he suggested we do this on Friday before the concert. I warned him that we shouldn’t make too many plans, but I found myself wanting to make more plans with him, even thinking about distant future plans that I really shouldn’t have been thinking about. Excited, I started to design the menu for Friday night.

On Tuesday night, he called to say he probably couldn’t do a movie on Wednesday after all because his work week had gotten insane. I put a smile in my voice and said, “Sure! No problem! What about Friday?”

He hesitated, “Well, the thing is we’ll probably be shooting all day Friday into the evening… but I might be able to make it.”

“I don’t want to stress you out!” I yelled happily into the phone.

“You’re not! It’s stressing me out that I can’t see you.”

“No problem!”

“Why are you so cool?” He asked, a delighted tone in his voice. My face reddened, thinking of the Amy Schumer sketch about the “Cool Girl.” I’m not, I thought. I just didn’t know I was allowed to not be cool in this instance. After all, we’re just casually dating.

“Well, if you can’t make it Friday, please just give me some notice so I can find someone else to go with me,” I said. He promised he’d let me know tomorrow. We hung up, and I was irrationally flooded with disappointment. I almost burst into tears. What was wrong with me? What did I expect? Why had I built this into some big thing? Here we had made two dates this week, and he had essentially cancelled both of them. But why did I care so much? How could he have known that I already had a full menu planned for Friday night? I felt emotionally raw and out of control. I didn’t like this feeling. I was having PTSD from the time when Mr. Intimidated told me at the last minute that he couldn’t come to the Sleater Kinney concert with me, and I couldn’t find anyone else to use the ticket, so I ended up going alone. I wasn’t going to let that happen again. I decided to preempt the situation. I invited another friend whom I hadn’t seen in awhile to come with me to the concert. He said yes. I felt better, gaining back some sense of control.

When I told the guy that he was off the hook for Friday, I expected him to say something like, “Bummer! I wanted to see you.” Instead, he said, “Haha! Okay!” I suddenly realized that, despite the intimate behavior and loving way he looked into my eyes, he actually did feel pretty casual about this. Maybe all men felt casual about everything all the time. I was apparently incapable of feeling casual about any guy I fucked. And here he was, apparently not really caring that he would now not see me for over a week. I suddenly realized I wanted even more than this. Even more than a man who would bring me flowers and plan interesting dates, I wanted someone who showed up when he said he'd show up and who understood that I’m a planner and when I plan something and someone throws a wrench in my plan, it stresses me out. Maybe he doesn’t know this about me yet, maybe he won’t like me anymore when he realizes I’m not as cool as he thought, but that’s a risk I’ll have to take. I can be the Cool Girl a lot of the time, but not all the time. And I need to be with someone who doesn’t require that of me.

I don’t know what the future of it is. We’ll probably see each other again—after all, we do have tickets to attend Dan Savage’s amateur porn festival Hump! when it comes to LA in March so, unless something comes up and he has to bail, we’ll probably still go to that.

I find myself very vulnerable lately, and also full of expectation. There is so much I want and I really can’t let the whims of a man control my emotional state—it happens too easily of late. I know I’ve said before that I should stop having casual sex but I think I need to take it a step further and instigate a three dates before sex rule of thumb. The culture tells us that sex is casual and no big deal, and even I have spouted this same logic on this very blog. But I think I was underestimating the power of sex, the power it has over me. I have taken it too lightly, and it's not fun anymore. It's been a learning curve for me to even realize that by saying this, I'm not slut shaming myself, but actually protecting my heart. No matter how casual and cool I try to act, I can’t deny the effect that sex has on my emotions and my general sense of well-being, not to mention my ability to focus. I think men don’t really understand just how hurt we can get. Because we’re literally letting them inside our bodies. They don’t know what it’s like to be that vulnerable.

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.

The Bartender's Brother Part Deux

*Readers forgive me. As it is now Christmas Eve, this post is late.*

It’s Thanksgiving week and I have a date with John’s brother. John, if you’ll remember, is the bartender whose dick I sucked on Halloween Night in the bathroom of the dive bar where he works. John who still lives with his girlfriend. Whose brother is an incredibly hot trainer I fucked over Labor Day weekend. The brother who lives in the Bay Area, where my parents also live.

I actually set up this date before I sucked John’s dick. I wanted a booty call prepped and ready to go for when I went home for the holiday, so I texted John’s brother in mid-October that I would be up that way the following month and we should “grab a drink.” He responded enthusiastically that he would “love that.” After my encounter with John, I wasn’t really sure what would happen. I was half expecting the whole thing to blow up in my face. My roommate reassured me that, “John is not going to tell anybody about that.” I figured she was probably right, John is probably trying to convince himself the incident never occurred, not telling his brother (whom he knows I fucked) about it.

The brother suggests we meet at this upscale new restaurant where one of his clients works. I check it out on Yelp and notice the three dollar signs indicating this place is pretty damn expensive. This makes me slightly uncomfortable, as I picture sitting across from a one night stand at a fine dining restaurant, when I would have been happy with a couple beers at a dive bar followed by some heavy PDA culminating in a lot of hot sex. But the other part of me—the less cynical, more romantic part—is excited to be going on a real date.

“We’re having dinner!” I exclaim to my mom, who rolls her eyes when I tell her this guy is a trainer at a gym. No wonder I’m such a snob.

I wear less clothes than I should because I want to look sexy, and it’s fucking freezing. I drive over the Golden Gate Bridge with my parents’ Fast Trak in my car, and arrive at the restaurant fifteen minutes early. I park like a block away and realize I’m shaking—I can’t tell if it’s from anxiety or the cold, but I do feel suddenly quite nervous. I’ve only interacted with this guy once, and we were both very hammered, and then we had sex. Will I be able to spend a whole dinner talking to this person?

I’m there before him and snag a seat at the bar so it feels a little less formal, and I can rub up next to him after we’ve had a drink or five. I stare at the cocktail menu and think it’s probably a good idea to get some alcohol in my system before he arrives. I’m still shaking. He arrives right on time and at first I don’t recognize him. He looks different from the Facebook photos I’ve been stalking since we had sex—really my only frame of reference since I haven’t seen him in two months. He doesn’t seem very happy to see me, but I now know this is guy code for nerves on a “first date.” I get up to hug him and it’s a little stiff. He sits down on the stool to my right rather than the one I’d been saving for him on my left. The bartender puts down my drink and I offer him a taste.

“You like grapefruit cocktails,” he teases, I guess remembering from last time. I’m pleased he remembers this detail about me. He orders the same and I say I thought he was making fun of my cocktail choice.

“Simmer down,” he jokes. At least I get a little smile out of him.

We look at the menu and he says, “I eat everything. I’m not picky.” Good, because I hate picky eaters. We order three small plates to share. He tells me he just came back from diving in Mexico, where he swam with whale sharks—“the biggest fish in the sea.” He shows me a photo of how big they can get; they look terrifying. He tells me about his work schedule—he works from 5am to 6pm most days. He says he has to get up the next morning at 5am, he doesn’t have a client until 6am.

“After we made this plan, I thought maybe Tuesday is not the best day after all,” he laughs. I tell him we could have changed it. He shrugs.

We talk about the bar where we met, where he used to work and John still does. I casually ask if John hates his job.

“Yeah, they all do. They’re all musicians and artists and they’re not doing their art—they’re just working at the bar.” I tell him that’s just LA.

He loosens up as he drinks and eventually asks me about what I’m working on. I tell him I’m in transition, looking to do more of one of my jobs and less of the other, that I’m doing a lot of different things right now, and I feel a change coming. He says he’s jealous of that, that he gets bored in his job because it’s the same all the time.

“Oh, I’m bored all the time!” I declare.

He tells me that he didn’t work out for a whole week in Mexico, so the other day he took two spinning classes. I tell him about my spinning-related vagina injury, prefacing the story with, “It’s a little early in the night for this story,” and then diving right in. I leave out the fact that this spinning class was on Halloween morning and that same night I ripped the bandages from my crotch as I was crouched on the floor of the dive bar sucking off his brother. I tell him instead about how I feel that spinning decreases the sensitivity in my crotch area, and that I don’t want that—I want “maximum sensitivity.” He smiles.

We order more cocktails and he starts smiling more and laughing and enjoying himself. The food is pretty good. A couple times I reach under his arm and run my fingers along his bicep, which is big and buff and satisfying to touch. I rub his back a couple times. He grabs my knee and tickles me. I touch his ribs and it makes him squirm. I remember that first night, when I boldly ran my hands over his chest and sucked on his finger, making him hard and begging me to stop. I wonder if he would respond to that behavior now, in this very well-lit and classy restaurant. I wonder if he’s disappointed that I’m not being quite so frisky tonight, but his body language doesn’t invite my touch and when I do touch him, he seems slightly uncomfortable.

He asks if I want another drink and I tell him if I order another one I’m not going to be able to drive home. As it is, I’m going to need to sober up a bit if I plan to make it back to my parents’ place alive. He says tentatively, “Well, my house is nearby. You could come hang out there for a bit or whatever.” I can’t tell if he wants me to do this or he’s just being polite. I wonder if he’s worried about pressuring me, as the first night we were together when he suggested we go back to my place I held him off, not sure at first. He had said at the time that he felt “creepy” to be pushing it. I wonder if this guy is just really sensitive and is taking everything I say really to heart—I wonder if he’s worried about pressuring me to come over and have sex, when all I want to do is come over and have sex. At the same time, I can’t really tell if he likes me that much. I remember him mentioning that he moved to San Francisco for his girlfriend at the time, and I wonder now if he got his heart broken and that’s why he seems so guarded.

We agree that we’ll go back to his place. We walk outside and it’s fucking freezing. I shiver. He says, “I’d give you my jacket but it’s not that warm.” I drive us the two blocks to his house and I really shouldn’t be driving but it’s not far and he tells me he’ll “point out the stop signs.” His place is nice—it’s a house he shares with two siblings, a boy and a girl, and another girl who is Airbnb’ing it. We go into his room that has his bike from when he did the AIDS Life Cycle ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles. He turns on the overhead light and it’s really bright—I wish he had better lighting. He takes off his shoes and I take off my shoes. I don’t know if he’s expecting that we’re just going to sleep next to each other and I’m not sure he would have made a move if I hadn’t swooped in on him. I put my arms around his neck and kiss him. He reciprocates, grabbing my body. I love kissing him. He pulls my pants halfway down and takes off his shirt.

“We need to do something about this lighting,” I declare. He hits the light and it’s suddenly pitch black. I think this is fortunate because I just got my period today and had been debating whether or not to tell him—now with the lights off, I don’t have to! I have light periods anyway, and if he’s the kind of guy who won’t screw a girl on her period, I don’t want to find out right now. I take off my shirt. I can feel he’s already hard and I move down, pulling his briefs down as I go. I take him between my lips and he grabs the back of my head, thrusting into my mouth. The aggressiveness of this act turns me on, as it belies a need he has been so careful not to show me all evening. He fucks my mouth and I take him all the way in. It’s a much more satisfying blow job than I gave to John’s at half-mast.

I come up to kiss him again and he moves me back onto the bed, pulling off my panties. He starts going down on me and it’s hard for me to fully enjoy myself because I’m thinking about getting blood in his mouth. At the same time, I don’t want to discourage him from doing this because not enough guys do and even he didn’t the first night we were together. He moans as he eats me out, which I find incredibly hot because it means he’s enjoying himself, and guys who love eating pussy are the hottest. I let him do it for awhile and then I tell him to “fuck me.” I pull him up and wet my hand. I reach down and am thrilled to discover he’s still hard. I put him inside me and he feels so good that after just a couple minutes of thrusting, I feel like I’m going to come. I wrap my legs around him and moan louder, but I guess this is too much for him and he has to back off, bringing my feet to his chest so he can thrust from more of a distance. The impending orgasm dissipates, never to return, and I think how unfortunate it is that, as a woman, if you want to keep the sex going, you have to sometimes forfeit your own orgasm in favor of making it last longer because, if you come, it might make him come and then it’s all over.

He moves my leg down across my body so he’s now thrusting into me from behind but with my body twisted so my chest is still facing him. Then he turns me over completely and fucks me with my stomach flattened against the mattress. He then lifts me up and fucks me doggy style and whips out this very cool move whereby he intermittently, between thrusts, darts his tongue into my pussy. I cringe a little bit as I imagine his tongue dipping into my bloody vagina like a pen into a red inkwell. Regardless, I love this move and don’t want to discourage it. After awhile, he says if he keeps going he’s going to come. I know by now I will not come, so I tell him I want him to.

“Fuck me,” I whisper, guiding him to orgasm. He pulls out and comes on my back. I collapse on my stomach and he gets a towel to gently mop up his splooge, like a true gentleman.

As we lie down, I laugh in a way that’s meant to sound apologetic and say, “I think I might have gotten my period while we were having sex.”

“Oh, I didn’t taste anything,” he says.

“You like ordered a steak medium and it came bloody as hell and you just decided to eat it anyway,” I weirdly say.

He laughs.

“So did you just forget or…?”

“Well, I knew it was coming but was hoping it wouldn’t come right now.” I guess he believes this lie, and doesn’t seem to care that much anyway.

“I guess we’ll find out in the morning.”

I go to the bathroom and indeed he has fucked some blood out of me. I hope I didn’t get it all over his white duvet cover. When he returns from the bathroom, I ask if he had blood on his dick.

“A little,” he says and lies down.

I don’t sleep well and neither does he. We both toss and turn. I wake up after a couple hours of fitful sleep to find he’s sitting on the edge of the bed, hunched over, trying to rally himself.

“Is it five?” I ask.

“It’s 5:15.” He grabs my foot affectionately as he walks naked out of his bedroom and heads for the bathroom. I watch his beautiful, spinning-class toned ass as he goes, then I lie back down to get a couple more minutes of shut-eye. He turns the light on in the living room outside his bedroom so as not to bother me, and gets dressed out there.

I drag myself up and collapse facedown on the foot of his bed, moaning. He laughs at me.

“How do you feel?”

“Like garbage,” I say.

I look down at his bedspread in the light shining from the living room, and am pleased to see there’s no blood.

“There’s no blood!” I report.

“That’s a good thing,” he says.

I drive him to work at the gym, and ask if I kept him up last night.

“I don’t know if it was you or me. I like to spread out in my bed. At one point, you moved over and I was like, yes!”

“Oh, you could’ve told me to move.”

“I didn’t want to like kick you out. Maybe next time,” he laughs.

“I was trying to get closer to you because you were warm,” I say.

As I write this exchange, I realize it sounds a little sad.

I stop outside the Coffee Bean where he’ll fuel up on caffeine for the long day ahead, and he hugs me goodbye. I go in to kiss him and he makes it short. I drive an hour and a half home, crawl into bed and go back to sleep. A couple hours later, my phone rings and it’s a San Francisco number I don’t recognize. I don’t answer it, but have a feeling I know who it is. There’s a message and it’s from him. He left his phone in my car.

I put on a sweater and some shoes and head into the kitchen, where my dad is emptying the dishwasher.

“Hi honey,” he kisses me.

“The guy left his phone in my car,” I explain as I put on some shoes and head outside into the freezing morning.

Sure enough, his phone is between my seats and I fish it out. There are five missed calls from the gym where he works and three from another number. The Find My Iphone app has been activated.

I get back in bed and call the number back and the receptionist at his gym says he’s with a client and is there a message. I say no message and give them my name. The receptionist says, “hold on” and I can hear him telling John’s brother that it’s “your friend with the phone.” He gets on the line and feels terrible and stupid for doing this. I ask how he found my number; he says the iCloud. He doesn’t have a car and isn’t sure how to get his phone back.

“You weren’t planning on coming back to San Francisco were you?”
“Uh, not today.”

I suggest he meet me halfway. He’s not sure how to do that. I know I’m being overly accommodating when I say, “Well, if you can that would be great, and if not I’ll do what I have to.” I guess I like this guy. There is a part of my female brain that is excited to have an excuse to see him again. After all, I’m on vacation and running out of things to do at my parents’ house. He says he’ll try to borrow a car and will call me back in a couple hours.

I spend the day not doing much but anticipating this call. I’m very tired and hung over so I sleep for awhile. I feel petulant and teenage-like with my parents and I think there’s something about the contrast of having sex with a guy and then having to come back to your parents’ house that feels rebellious and like high school. My parents keep asking what my plan is and my mom gets mad at me that I can’t make plans with her because I’m “waiting on a galloot.” I say I don’t mind so why should she. He calls me in the afternoon and we make a plan to meet at a Starbucks halfway between us at 6pm. I have to find the address for him because if he gets lost there will be no way to track him. What the fuck did we do before cell phones? I get on the road and he texts me from a random number, saying he borrowed his friend’s phone and car and he’s running fifteen minutes late. Still, he beats me there. I arrive and he’s sitting at a table with just one chair at it, the one he’s sitting in. I approach and stand over him, handing him his phone. He doesn’t stand to hug me or get me a chair. He just looks at his phone as I awkwardly wait there, and then awkwardly pull over a chair and sit down. He says he feels terrible and wants to treat me to dinner. I say, “yeah, I’d like to see you again.” I can’t tell if he wants to see me again or just feels obligated because of the phone thing. We hug goodbye, I kiss his cheek and he half-heartedly kisses mine back. I think to myself, we’ve had sex dude, a little affection wouldn’t kill you!

I drive home and kick myself for not saying, “don’t worry about it, there’s no obligation” when he offered to buy me dinner. But then I realize I only would have said that trying to get a response out of him, and “I’d like to see you again” was actually more honest. Which is good, I think. I vow to not be the one to text him first, to let him come to me.

The next day at 11am, I text him. “Hey! You busy tonight?” I’m in the car on the way to hike with my parents. I’m expecting he’ll text me right back. He doesn’t. We go on the hike and have a yelling argument overlooking a beautiful vista when I tell them about the time that I met this cool male celebrity whom I really felt I connected with and muse on why I don’t meet more guys like that, and they explode back at me with, “but he’s a Scientologist!” I then try to explain that just because Scientology is a creepy cult doesn’t mean everyone in it is an evil asshole. To which they think I’m defending Scientology, and it devolves from there. We return to the car, and I can’t wait to get away from them and into the bed of John’s brother. But there is no text from him. I then start to have a panic attack that he spoke to John on Thanksgiving and that John has told him about the blow job and warned his brother that I am this crazy slut who is trying to fuck both of them. I think about how I would react if they accused me in this way, and am disappointed to find that I think it would actually hurt. I thought I didn’t care what they, or anyone, thought, but I suddenly find myself feeling vulnerable when faced with the very real possibility that someone I had sex with and have a crush on would think I was being vindictive by trying to fuck both him and his brother. I think about how I would explain this to him. That I am a single woman and free to have sex with whomever I please. And that I am attracted to both brothers and don’t think it’s my problem that they’re related. I feel better once I reason this out with myself, knowing that I am still within the parameters of my own moral code.

At 5pm, he texts back, “Hey! So sorry to leave you hanging! I was sailing all day and just got back to shore. How was your day?” I tell him that sounds lovely, that my day was chill, we hiked, and that I’m planning to leave the following day.

“Well shit, I’m in Santa Cruz and we’re hanging out here for a little while. What time are you leaving tomorrow?”

I tell him I will probably leave early. Then I say, “I wanted to get you in bed once more before I left.” Hoping to entice him back to the Bay.

He responds, “Haha. Well if not I should be coming down to LA soon enough.”

I leave this alone and go to bed early, thoroughly disappointed to not be getting a follow up booty call, especially because my period is now gone.

The next morning, I decide to try one final time.

“Hitting Tartine on my way out of town if you’re interested.” He doesn’t write back. I do drive past Tartine but the line is long and out the door and I can’t face it. It’s cozier standing in a line like that when you have a warm body to rub up against.

Feeling like I want one final adventure before leaving the city, on a weird whim I text Childhood Crush. He texts back right away that he is out of the city for the day, but how long am I in town. I explain I am driving back to LA now and just killing time before getting on the road. He says he’ll be in LA soon and that “it would be fun to say hi.” “Word,” I respond noncommittally. The last time he was in LA and texted me, I basically ignored him and was proud of myself for not allowing more of the mediocre sex to occur. Now I’ll have to cross that bridge all over again. I hope I will lose interest in the whole John situation soon, as I have with Childhood Crush. It feels good to be over it.

I start to drive out of town and immediately feel better. Amy Winehouse blasting, I feel lonely and liberated. I get a text from John’s brother: “Oh man, I really slept in today. Feel kinda shitty. How are you?”

I tell him I got loads of sleep and feel great and am en route to LA. To which he responds, “Awesome! It was good to see you and have a smooth drive down.” Do I detect an air of glad to be rid of me?

Back in LA, I get drunk with my roommates and we head out to the local dive bar where John works. But he’s not there. I play dumb and tell the DJ it seems like the usual staff has changed. He says, “oh there’s just one guy that’s usually here and isn’t tonight. John.”

“Oh yeah, I know John. Where is he?”

“He just drove down from spending Thanksgiving in San Francisco and wanted the night off.”

What?! John was in San Francisco when I was?? Is it possible that John’s brother spent Thanksgiving with John and when I asked what his plans were, he said he was having a Friendsgiving and essentially lied by omission by not telling me John was with him? I can’t believe it. Why would he not tell me, unless he knows about me and John? In which case, why would he still want to see me? I haven’t seen John since Halloween night and am also very curious to know what information he does and doesn’t have. Does he know I went on a second date with his brother, that I fucked him again?

The DJ invites us to sit in his “VIP area” and we proceed to get wasted. I am wearing a skimpy tank top with no bra because I was hoping John would be here. Instead, I’m approached by a boring RN who keeps stopping me from dancing to ask, “what do you do?” over the incredibly loud music, and a grumpy looking guy who tells me I’m “rude” when I don’t take the hand he extends to me.

When I can’t stand it anymore, I text John, “Where you at fool?” Which I think is neutral enough that it wouldn’t be terrible if his girlfriend saw it. He texts back right away.

“Home.”

To which I send the emoticon with two lines for eyes and a line for a mouth. Unimpressed, nonplussed, bored. This emoticon perfectly suits my mood.