Grandma's Got a Boyfriend... and I Don't

“How’s your love life?”

“Not as exciting as yours, Grandma.”

My grandmother is 86 years old and she has a long distance boyfriend. She’s just been telling me about how every night at 8 pm her time and 10 pm his time (she lives in New Mexico, he lives in New Jersey), he calls her and asks, “Ready to pour?”

They drink one gin and tonic and talk for an hour before bed. This happens every night. She tells me that he’s started calling in the mornings too, “Just to say Good Morning.” I ask how they constantly find things to talk about.

“I don’t know, honey, we just do. We talk about politics and the people we used to know. We tell each other about what we did that day.”

I remember that feeling of wanting to tell a partner everything—purposefully remembering things from your day just so you could tell them about it later, every mundane little detail. I had that with Mr. Intimidated, which is how I knew I actually really liked him. Grandma tells me that her boyfriend admitted to making notes throughout his day so he wouldn't forget to tell her things.

“He makes me feel like a girl,” she tells me earnestly. “I never thought I’d feel that way again.”

My grandmother and her boyfriend, Bob, grew up together in the same tiny New Jersey town where he still lives. They knew all the same people, most of whom are now dead. Bob remembers more than she does about their high school days together—he remembers things about my grandmother that she doesn’t remember herself. Like about that time they were playing tennis in gym class and she got a cramp in her leg and had to sit down and the gym teacher came over and asked Bob, “What did you do to her?” Or when she fainted outside the school and knocked down a professor.

Bob remembers these details because he’s been in love with my grandmother for 60 years. My grandfather died three years ago and this man—a widower himself—waited a respectable two years before swooping in on the long lost love of his life. She wasn’t sure at first and she resisted him for several months—I think she felt some moral obligation about being faithful to the memory of my grandfather. But Bob just kept on coming, undeterred by her reticence.

“I feel silly now about resisting him,” she admits.

When Bob came to visit her in Santa Fe several months ago, my grandmother laid down the ground rules: “Hopper seat down” (she calls the toilet a hopper), “you have to help with the cooking, and... NO SEX.” Her boyfriend joked: “If you wanted to have sex, I’d have to bring someone in.” At first I interpreted this to mean a prostitute and I was momentarily shocked. Then my grandmother laughed, apparently charmed by his little joke. I guess he meant a doctor or something. Someone to administer the Viagra? I don’t know.

One of her favorite things about Bob is the fact that he can keep the names of her three daughters straight. The fact that he remembers that her granddaughter lives in Los Angeles.

“He has a good memory and he obviously cares about you,” I say.

I consider telling her about the guy I had been chatting with on OKCupid for a couple weeks who then, a year later when I got back on the site, opened with the same pick up line he’d used on me the first time around. I remembered the line and I remembered him. We had gone so far as to exchange numbers and had texted on a daily basis—we were pretty close to actually meeting in person before it fizzled out. He’d apparently forgotten all these details and was starting from zero with me. I wondered if he still had my number in his phone. I consider telling her about the chef I was chatting with recently and was really excited to meet. We had made a date, he had to cancel at the last minute, he wanted to reschedule. I said okay and then never heard from him again.

When my grandmother asks about my love life, I’m tempted to mention the fact that I recently deleted all my dating apps after reading a particularly depressing article about Tinder in Vanity Fair. Midway through the article, I grabbed my phone and promptly deleted ALL the apps: Tinder, OKC, Hinge, Happn, even Bumble. I decided I didn’t want to feed into this culture that was turning men into sociopathic pussy-monsters and women into simpering attention whores. I decided I would meet someone the old fashioned way: IRL.

I can’t explain any of this to my grandmother because it simply wouldn’t make sense to her. On a fundamental level, her generation doesn’t understand having a game on your phone where you swipe through millions of human faces trying to find someone to have sex with. Her boyfriend has been in love with her for 60 goddamn years! They talk on the phone every night. She’s living in some nostalgic Nora Ephron romance flick from the 90s. Every time she tells me about Bob, I get off the phone and quickly jot down some notes.

“I have to write this story!” I tell myself. It’s too good to be true. This isn’t real life. It’s some relic from a sweet unattainable past.

I remember my grandmother watching this short film I made in which the three young women gather in the kitchen explicitly talking about sex and masturbation. I had been nervous to show it to her, but her reaction was amazing.

“Do you girls really talk like that?” She asked, intrigued.

“Yeah, we do,” I told her.

“That’s really great,” she said to my surprise, “In my day you simply didn’t talk about that stuff.”

I think about the fact that my grandmother has only had sex with one man her entire life. The fact that she got married right out of high school, didn’t go to college, and had three daughters. I think about how she was the star of all her school plays, a real beauty, but didn’t have enough belief in herself or encouragement from her parents to pursue a career in acting. The fact that she is also a poet and a painter, and considers these talents to be just hobbies. And that she never really liked to cook—my grandfather was the one who loved being in the kitchen. My grandmother grew up in a generation where women were expected to stay home and bare children. And that’s it. And I think if my grandmother had been born of my generation, she wouldn’t have chosen that path. She probably would have been an artist. Maybe an actress. She would have had a choice.

When I ask my grandmother if she has any plans to visit Bob in New Jersey, she says she doesn’t have any desire to, that she really doesn’t want to stay with him. She insinuates it’s because she doesn’t want to have sex.

“If I were your age maybe I’d want to visit him…. You can guess what I mean.” She laughs. I laugh too. Last time I saw my grandmother she declared that she’d never have sex again. I just stared at her, mouth dropped open, like ‘how could you ever say that?’ Especially after having had sex with the same man for my entire life, I feel like I’d be chomping at the bit to see what else was out there.

“I just don’t want to anymore,” she said at the time, resigned. I guess it makes sense. Biologically speaking it makes no sense at all for a woman to still want sex at age 86. Still, I can’t imagine myself ever saying the words, I’ll never have sex again. Maybe on my deathbed.

Considering the generation my grandmother grew up in, it’s not totally inconceivable that she never actually enjoyed sex in the first place. It’s even possible she’s never had an orgasm. When I sent her a DVD of the first season of Masters of Sex for her birthday, her response was that she found it “silly to even study these things.” I explained to her that before the studies of Masters and Johnson, female sexuality was cloaked in shame and misunderstanding and that, although imperfect, even just the fact of their study was a step in the right direction. Despite finding it silly, she still said, “I’ll probably watch the rest of the seasons.”

Although I don’t idealize my grandmother’s generation and I certainly wouldn’t want to go back to a time when women had no sexual freedom to speak of, I think something has been lost in this age of endless choice. I’m nostalgic for a time when, if you wanted to talk to the person you had a crush on, you had to call them on the phone or drive to their house. You couldn’t just send them a text or stalk them on Facebook. There was more risk involved, and therefore more investment. You couldn’t swipe through a hundred potential dates a night. You had to talk to one person at a time and risk actually liking that person. Is romance dead? No. But it’s definitely old and potentially dying. 

PUBES: A Love Letter to My Mom

I was home for the holiday this past week and whenever I’m home I can’t help but think about… pubes. Because my mom has a lot of them. She’s got a big ol’ bush I’ve seen a lot throughout my life. And while her bush seemed oh so natural and normal when I was little and didn’t know any better, now that I’m older and out in the world, I’m constantly shocked by the surface area and sheer depth of Mom’s bush compared with most of what I’ve seen since I left home. I’ve been a little obsessed with pubes lately, because it occurs to me that I don’t necessarily know what my girlfriends are rocking in their nether regions. And I want to know. Call me crazy but I want to know what everyone’s got going on down there.

I guess I’m the only person who was surprised to find that Jennifer Lawrence is totally shaved in her nethers. I finally caved and looked at the leaked photos (who has the self-control not to look, I mean really).

“Are we surprised that J.Law is totally bald down there?” I ask my friend Heidi.

“No. Everyone is.”

Heidi isn’t. I know that for a fact. I was at the birth of her son.

I share with her my recent experience with the little Jewish Man who criticized my landing strip.

“You have a landing strip and he complained?!” Heidi looks shocked and appalled. I think this is a reasonable reaction. I too was shocked and appalled, thinking at the time that I probably had a lot less pubes than a lot of chicks out there, and he should be lucky. I, for one, thought that Gaby Hoffmann was single-handedly bringing back pubic hair with the flashing of her admirable bush in both Girls and Transparent. Apparently, I was wrong.

This realization makes me want to interview every single one of my girlfriends and find out, once and for all, what kind of bush (or not) they’re growing.

I text a nude photo of myself to my best friend Sadie because I recently sent the same pic to Bartender and had not received any response (validation) in return.

“Wow. This photo makes me feel like I have a lot of pubic hair,” she laughs on the other end of the phone.

“Really? What kind of bush are you rocking?” I ask, eager as always to talk about pubes.

“Oh I don’t really do anything to it anymore. I just let it do its thing.”

She explains to me that she used to wax and groom and all that shit, and then she read Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman, and there was that whole section about how women should just leave their bushes alone. How women are meant to have bush and we should stop trying to look like little girls:

“In fact, in recent years I have become more and more didactic about pubic hair—to the point where I now believe that there are only four things a grown, modern woman should have: a pair of yellow shoes (they unexpectedly go with everything), a friend who will come and post bail at 4 a.m., a fail-safe pie recipe, and a proper muff. A big, hairy minge. A lovely furry moof that looks—when she sits, naked—as if she has a marmoset sitting in her lap.” (Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman)

“That was a turning point for me. I was like fuck it. And now I basically act sort of like a dude. Keep it clean but expend as little energy as possible,” Sadie tells me.

Wow. I’m impressed. Especially since my friend is a single, on the market woman in her 20s. Actively going on OKCupid dates and having sex with relative strangers. In a similar situation myself, I can’t imagine not grooming. It’s one thing if you’ve already got a boyfriend and you get lazy about the upkeep. She does live in Brooklyn, however, and I feel the New York aesthetic might be a little less porn-y than in LA.
I ask if a guy has ever said anything about it.
"I've never gotten any complaints," she says. We agree that good guys don't care.
"Do they go down on you?" I pry further.
"Well, I don't really like that."
I laugh. "Oh, so it's a defense mechanism to keep them from going down there."

Then she asks, “Dude. Is that laser hair removal reversible? You should fucking grow a bush and just see what it feels like.”

I deflect this suggestion by explaining that I feel sexier when I’m groomed.

“You should just try it,” she encourages me.

A couple days later, Sadie admits that, “After we talked last time I did lots of shame grooming.” This upsets me—I tell her I love that she has a loud and proud bush and don’t want her to change the way she feels about it because of me. It sometimes feels like our womanly pride is too precarious and easily toppled. Maybe I should grow a Bush.

Truth be told, with the laser hair removal I’ve gotten on my bikini line, I’m not sure how substantial of a bush I could actually grow at this point. I remember reading an article about merkins in Hollywood and how Kate Winslet had to wear one in The Reader because she couldn’t grow a full period-appropriate bush due to years of waxing in her youth. (The Reader is set in the 1930s, when getting a Brazilian simply wasn't an option.)

“Maybe the reason I feel sexier shaved is because I associate big bushes with my mom,” I wonder aloud.

Then we start musing about whether we think pubes are still political. And whether choosing not to shave is still a meaningful act, or if it’s just a personal choice thing at this point. I’m not sure. I mean, I’m a feminist and I have a pretty groomed situation. I don’t know if it would make me more of a feminist if I let that shit grow. Just like I don’t believe that hair color defines who you are. I choose to be a blond and don’t think that makes me any less smart.

In the town where I grew up, and where I spent Thanksgiving with my parents, the women not only no doubt rock formidable bushes under their homemade hemp skirts, many of them also enjoy some pretty serious armpit hair. And that is something I NEVER SEE in LA.

My friend Heidi tells me she kinda wants to let her pits grow but that she always lets it get to a certain point and then shaves.

“People treat you differently when you have hairy armpits,” she shares with me.

“Really? Are you sure that’s not just your own self-consciousness?”

“No! I swear to God, they treat me differently. They’re not as friendly. They look at you a certain way.”

This surprises me because Heidi runs in a pretty Earth Mother crowd. She slings meat at the farmers market amongst a flock of sustainable, organic, Los Angeles hippies. Even these people judge armpit hair?

I remember seeing an Us Weekly with Julia Roberts on the cover. She was wearing a sleeveless shirt and had her arm raised, ostensibly waving to fans. Under her arm, there was a little flurry of reddish armpit hair. Obviously this was the reason she was on the cover of this magazine, and the public was going ballistic. America's Sweetheart has body hair?! I remember feeling a little inner sigh of relief. Ahh Julia Roberts is a human woman who grows hair under her arms. Furthermore, in my young eyes, this immediately made my mom seem instantly cooler. For she too had hairy armpits all throughout my childhood. Now she shaves.

When I’m home for Thanksgiving, Mom tells me a story I’ve heard before but I always enjoy hearing again. When she lived in NYC in her youth, one Valentine’s Day, she shaved her pubes into a heart and bleached one half of it blond and dyed the other half black. She presented this “gift” to her boyfriend at the time, who was a designer and told her that her little romantic effort “lacked definition.” I tell her if you did that to a guy in his 20s now, he would run out of the room screaming.

I know at least a couple of my girlfriends have a fully shaved/lasered situation going on down there. No hair at all to speak of. One of my girlfriends who usually goes totally bare is doing a full nude scene in a low-budget sci-fi film and wants to know my opinion on what kind of pubic look she should rock. I suggest she leave a little triangle of hair because we’ve got a responsibility to not publicly propagate this notion that women should be totally hairless down there. I suggest it as a political statement.

Best Guy Friend chimes in.

“You should leave a little hair on top because it’s more aesthetically pleasing.”

This surprises me coming from him, who is usually so verbally opposed to hairy pussy because he doesn’t want to get hair in his mouth when he’s going down there. He explains that he doesn’t mind hair on top, he just doesn’t want it inside the pussy. And to be fair, he too is very groomed. He and I then get online and start looking for examples of good and bad pubic hair. I show him Bianca Stone, who is a porn star known for having an incredibly hairy pussy. Best Guy Friend can’t even stand to look at the photo of her spread-eagle. He can’t deal with the hair between her vagina and asshole. He just can’t.

When I go to the Korean Spa, I always enjoy looking at the different pubic variations. It is Los Angeles after all, so many women are pretty well groomed. But I don’t see many totally hairless pussies. Most women have something comparable to what I have going on. I love seeing the different sizes, shapes, and colors of women walking around totally unselfconscious. Strolling from one hot pool to the next. It’s also amazing to see all the different varieties of breasts. No breast is alike. I always feel an incredible sense of calm at the Korean Spa—like this is what the world would be like with no men. Not that I want a world without men (that would be boring), but there is something so peaceful about a room full of just women. Also because everyone is just letting their bushes and business hang out for the world to see, and no one gives a fuck. I once glanced across the room and saw a woman lying on her back on the heated floor. Her blanket had slipped and I found myself staring right up her vagina. I thought, how great is it that this is acceptable behavior at the Korean spa? Can you imagine if you were at a restaurant and you saw up a woman’s skirt and into her vagina, how appalled you would be? Not here in this Paradise without men, known as the Korean Spa.

I took my Mom to the spa when she was visiting me in LA. As we moved from the incredibly hot mugwort tea pool into the cold dip, I was suddenly overcome with love and emotion and I almost started to cry as I looked over at this woman who birthed me and who has been with me since the beginning. As I opened my mouth to express myself in some cheesy and heartfelt way, trying to keep the potential tears at bay, Mom eyed the parade of women walking past us, their crotches at eye level.

“Women in LA don’t have much pubic hair do they?” She said. I smiled and followed her gaze. No, Mom, no they don’t.

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.

The Pussy Knows

He shows up to Urth Cafe an hour late wearing a shirt that says THE PUSSY KNOWS. I can smell his breath from across the table—hot and musty—and his shirt is damp when we hug.

“I’ve got so much energy flowing through me right now.”

He has just come from a seminar on the female orgasm. On his OKCupid profile, he is a self-proclaimed “female orgasm expert.” Obviously, this is why I’m here.

We talk about Law of Attraction (which he doesn’t believe in), and about how people are much more intuitive than they realize (which we agree on). To demonstrate this principle, when the food runner comes to our table carrying a slice of coconut custard pie and a turkey burger, my date insists he guess which belongs to whom.

“Come on, man, you know the answer.”

The food runner looks flustered and continues to repeat the names of the items, as if we haven’t heard.

Eventually, Orgasm Man gives up and sighs, “the pie is for her.”

I eat my pie with gusto, and he smiles at me, "You have a healthy sense of your own appetite."
"I love food!" I exclaim.
"Not just with eating," he says with a suggestive wink.

Later, he puts his hand on the table between us and I know I’m supposed to put my hand on his. I do, feeling the sweat gather in my palm. He stares into my eyes and we don’t say anything for awhile. Then, he smiles.

“I felt that. That wave you just sent through my body. I can feel it at the base of my cock.”

My mouth twitches into a snicker, but I choose to stay in the game. Also, I’m intrigued. In his very first message to me on OKCupid, he had said, “I find myself standing amongst a ton of people stroking pussy and for some reason in this moment I want to say hi.” I wondered if this was a metaphor—turns out it wasn’t, he actually teaches workshops in which men and women couple off and the man spends fifteen minutes stroking the woman's pussy. So, I knew what I was getting into with this guy, and it doesn’t particularly surprise me when he starts talking about the sensations he's feeling in his cock. However, I do get a hell of a kick out of the fact that this is happening over coffee at Urth Café.

I have to say, I don’t feel much sexual chemistry with this guy. It’s not that he’s not attractive, it’s just that by talking a lot about sex and what’s going on with his cock, the whole sexy game is demystified in an unsexy way. However, I am convinced that this Female Orgasm Expert has to be dynamite in bed. I don’t think that’s an unfair assumption.

At some point, after another long bout of staring into each other’s eyes, he asks, “Do you want to make out?”

I say, “Sure. In the Coffee Shop?”

“No,” he smiles.

And so we leave.

He walks me to my car and then we stand facing each other and, in slow motion, move closer and closer until our noses are touching. Then we slowly bring our mouths and tongues together, and he starts moaning, apparently very into it. I have to say, I am still more amused than turned on.

“Do you want to have sex?” he asks, matter-of-fact.

“Sure,” I say. Despite my incredible lack of horniness, I feel like turning down sex with the orgasm expert is not a smart move.

Then we start to work out logistics. I live East Side, he lives West Side, we met in the middle. I also have an important meeting the next day, and do not want to stay up all night fucking.

“Couple things. I have my period--“

“Don’t care.”

“And I have a big meeting tomorrow so I need to go to sleep soon.”

“I come custom,” he says. “Whatever you want, we’ll do it. I can come over, fuck you for 20 minutes and leave. You can come over and spend the night, or not. Whatever you want. What do you want?”

To be honest, if I listen to my instinct, I want to go home. Alone. I want to crawl into bed and get lots of sleep. But I feel like I have already agreed to the sex and I should probably follow through on that.

“Let’s fuck in the car,” I say.

“I knew you were going to say that,” says the Psychic Orgasm Expert.

We walk to his car, actually his roommate’s SUV he has borrowed for the night. He’s parked on a residential street that’s very well-lit and there are several people milling about. He clears out the trunk, puts down the back seats, makes a pretty functional bed. At this point, logistics are overwhelming passion and I try to think of how I’m going to get myself more in the mood. I pull out my tampon and, with no trash in sight, deposit it in a Recycling bin.

“Sorry, Recycling,” I say.

We then decide to move the car so we get back inside and drive around, looking for a darker, less inhabited spot. We park and crawl into the back.

He pulls off all his clothes, saying, “No time for the sexy undressing of each other.”

I’m wearing a dress so I leave it on. He doesn’t have a condom, but fortunately I do. He puts it on, gets on top of me, and pulls a boob out of my dress.

“You’ve got great tits.”

He plays with them a little, but then immediately starts to push his erection into me. I shift slightly, trying to accommodate him.

“Relax,” he says. So I just lay there while he sticks it in dry, feeling a little sore from the lack of a warm up act.

Then he fucks me for like fifteen minutes. At some point, he says, “This is the point where I would usually ask if you want to get on top.”

We just keep on doing what we’re doing. Every time I try to adjust myself to get into a position where I might possibly come, he tells me to “just relax.”

After a little while, he says, “I’m going to come inside you.” And then he does.

He lies on top of me for a bit, then rolls over, and starts getting dressed.

“That was awesome,” he exclaims.

I just lie there in the dark, thinking ‘that was it?’

He massages my legs for a couple minutes, and then it’s time to go.

For all those pussy-stroking workshops, he doesn’t stroke my pussy at all. Not even for a second.

He drives me back to my car and invites me to a workshop he’s teaching on Monday near where I live.

“I think I have something on my calendar for that day.”

I drive home, feeling a little grossed out. I don’t usually fuck strangers in cars, but the goddamn Female Orgasm Expert? I feel like I’ve been scammed. I look him up online and he is who he says he is—he’s a partner in an organization that specializes in female orgasm. He has youtube videos talking about it, he’s legit. People pay him to teach them how to give a woman pleasure—what? Then I get a little sad for the state of affairs between men and women—if this guy has no fucking idea about female orgasms, it doesn’t leave much hope for the rest of them.

That was Thursday. This is Friday.

I feel I can’t write too much about my second OKCupid date because, in my drunkenness, I accidentally told him about my blog, and I make it a rule not to write about anybody that might potentially read this. 

HOWEVER, there are some details that simply cannot be left unwritten.

My second OKCupid date is with a short Jewish man. I’ve been messaging with this person on and off for like six months. Early on, in reaction to something he said, I jokingly responded, “I don’t think this is going to work.” He countered with, “Well, it was worth a shot. I guess we should part with as much dignity as possible. So, uh… Nice rack.” Not gonna lie, his bluntness/ rudeness had kind of turned me on, and I decided to objectify him back: “And you look like the porn star James Deen, so I’ll enjoy that later…” Which was actually true, he did remind me of James Deen, which was 90% of the appeal. Then he said, “Yeah, I get that… a lot. Though more in person. Take that how you will. Or take that how you’d prefer. But, you know, take it.” This had my triangle throbbing a little, and again I was intrigued. Then I asked, “So you look like James Deen, but do you fuck like James Deen?” To which, he essentially said yes. As with Orgasm Man, this seemed an opportunity too good to pass up.

Turns out, he looks less like James Deen in person. We meet at what he calls a “dive bar” and to me looks like a nicely-lit Chinese restaurant. He’s nicer in person than his snarky online personality. And he’s clearly nervous, laughing a lot and too loudly. As the drinks flow, the snarkiness reemerges and he starts giving me sideways glances and kind of talking down to me. His condescension is annoying but also annoyingly sexy. We move closer and closer as the night progresses, and eventually we start making out in the bar.

His place is walking distance, so we head out at 2am, stopping at a 7 Eleven on the way so he can buy a cheap bottle of red wine. I comment that this particular 7 Eleven is the “crackiest” one I’ve ever been too. Which is true, and I’ve been to lots of 7 Elevens in my day. He then comments that I’m the “whitest” person he’s ever met. I notice that he has a bit of a thing about whiteness, because he was born in the Ukraine and grew up in a very white suburban town on the East Coast, where he was the “most ethnic” kid in school. He still looks pretty white to me.

He tells me that there are two Korean guys living in his apartment—his landlord apparently rented to them without asking him, and they don’t speak English or talk to him at all.

“I’m going to make friends with them,” I exclaim, drunkenly.

“You’re like the biggest seven year old in the world,” he tells me, not for the first or last time that night. I find it hilarious every time he says it.

We don’t see any Koreans when we arrive at his place, but there’s a curtain in the corner of the apartment, and I guess they’re living behind it. We beeline for his bedroom, where we make out on the couch and he pulls off my clothes.

“You look good naked,” he says.

He moves us to the bed, and we have sex. It’s actually pretty hot—he’s aggressive and passionate. At one point, he sucks too hard on my tongue and I groan and push him away. “Aw,” he teases, condescendingly.

After we have sex, I’m sprawled out naked on his bed. He points at my crotch.

“This is unusual,” he says. I look down. Everything looks in order to me.

“This landing strip. I haven’t seen a girl with pubic hair in years.”

Truth be told, I have very little pubic hair, and I’m surprised he’s pointing it out.

“I guess it depends on the kind of girls you’re fucking,” I say.

“Not necessarily. A girl could be a saint and she still would have shaved pubes.”

What?

“It has nothing to do with sainthood, it’s cultural,” I respond. “Does it bother you?”

“No, I don’t mind. I’m just not big on hair.”

I wish I could show you a photo of this guy naked and how completely COVERED IN HAIR he is. I’m surprised that someone this hairy has the audacity to point out the like square inch of hair on my entire body.

“I don’t usually date white girls,” he says. Here we go again with the ethnic profiling. “At least not ones as All-American looking as you.”

“Really? I don’t think of myself as All-American looking.”

There’s that sideways glance again. “You look like a cheerleader. Were you a cheerleader in high school?”

If I had liquid in my mouth, I would do a spit take.

“I was a theatre nerd!” But thanks for not listening to a goddamn word I've said all night. 

He suddenly seems annoyed with me, as if now that he’s come, he realizes he’s fucked an “All-American white cheerleader girl” and feels bad about it, or something. I don’t know. I get up to leave.

“Where are you going?”

“You seem annoyed or something. I think I’m gonna go home.”

“Come here,” he extends his arms. I pull on my pants.

He grabs me and pulls me down on the bed. Takes off my pants. And fucks me again.

I don’t come, he doesn’t seem to care. I head for the bathroom, naked, and I can hear someone in there running the faucet. I guess the Koreans are home.

At 4am, I walk the five blocks or so back to my car, and I wonder if I should have stood up for myself more. If I owe it to the next woman who sleeps with this guy to tell him he has no right to judge anything on my body—I have a banging body and he’s a short hairy little man. I wonder, like I always do after an orgasm-free One Night Stand, if I’m supposed to point out to these dudes that I didn’t come, and that they might try harder next time. Or at all. Or if I should wait to be asked. Orgasm Man didn’t ask me if the sex was great, he thought it was "awesome". I like to think if he had asked, I would have told him. I want to think I’m a good communicator in the bedroom, but I think I’m learning that guys really have no fucking idea and they need to be hit over the head with the cold hard facts. Even the ones who claim to be Orgasm Experts or say they fuck like James Deen. Perhaps they set the bar too high for themselves, and then pussy out and decide not to even try, because they know they can’t live up to the expectations they’ve built. Why would they do this? And why do I continue to fall for it?

The little Jewish Man’s follow up later that night: “You know, all in all, that wasn’t a bad date. Or maybe it’s just been a while for me.” I’m not sure how to respond to this.
“I’ll choose to take that as a compliment,” I say.

Man Child

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He grabbed my arm.

“By the way, I’m 43.”

I Ubered home.

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

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

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

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

“What do you want me to do?” I ask.

“Touch me,” he says.

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

“Are you okay?”

He stops and lies down next to me,

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

I laugh, uncomfortable.

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

“Well…” he says.

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

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

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

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

I decide to get real.

“Maybe this thing has just run its course.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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