AirBnBooty

“You’re breathing too much,” he says.

            “Excuse me?” I snort.

            “You’re creating too much wind.” My breathing is apparently having a dispersive impact on the smoke rings he’s working so hard to create from the massive vape parked between his lips.

            I laugh, joking that he’s already starting to get annoyed with me after less than 48 hours in my presence.

            “Today it’s my breathing, what’ll it be tomorrow?”

            “There is no tomorrow,” he says.

            That’s true. I’m leaving the following morning to fly to London, then back home to Los Angeles.

The previous night, my first in his Berlin apartment, my cute 27-year-old German-Argentinian host tells me he’s single because he gets bored of people easily. He’s making me dinner—spaghetti—something he says he’s never done for an Airbnb guest before. I speculate that this extra bit of hospitality is probably due to the fact that earlier that day, when I showed up at his apartment, I broke the ice by telling him I was going to the Berlin porn film festival, and from that small sliver of information, he gleaned that here was an American girl on vacation interested in porn and whom he could most likely have sex with if he put in a modicum of effort. He’s right. I would have sex with him even without the spaghetti.

            He holds out a chunk of pasta from the package and asks if I think that’s enough for the two of us. I advise him to put back about half of it because it will expand in the water and in my experience I always overestimate and make too much pasta. He follows my advice and after seven minutes, strains it into the sink. He holds up the strainer, exasperated.

            “This isn’t enough at all!” He exclaims. I laugh and apologize and tell him I'm used to cooking for one. “I’ll have to make more.” He seems more amused than annoyed. How annoyed can he be after all, he hasn’t even had sex with me yet.

            “Okay, I’m not obsessed with porn,” I qualify what I’m about to say as we eat our spaghetti. I tell him how I’ve been looking at the landing page of PornHub while in Berlin, curious about what kind of porn Germans are into and if it’s different from the porn that’s popular in America.

“There’s more fetish stuff here, particularly dominatrix stuff,” I tell him. Something called face sitting seems quite popular—an act of dominance in which a fully-clothed woman with a big ass sits on the face of a naked restrained man until he almost passes out, then she lets him breath for a couple seconds before sitting her fat ass back down on his face; in the one I watched all the way through to the end, the guy eventually didn’t wake up and the woman leaned over him and asked, “Are you dead?” Then she walked off camera and it faded to black. Is this a snuff film, I wondered? I tell my host about another one in which a dominatrix with a white-blond ponytail wearing a pink leather body suit ala Britney Spears in the “Oops... I Did it Again” video—except with a zipper on the crotch—barks in German at a fat groveling man who keeps repeating the same word over and over again.

            “What does ‘entschuldigung’ mean?” I ask my host.

            “I’m sorry,” he says.

            That makes sense.

            I ask him what kind of porn he's into and he tells me he likes that dominatrix stuff. I tell him that I often think if someone observed what porn videos I click on, they would be really surprised about the ones I choose to watch. It doesn’t even make sense to me, I say.

            “Like what?” he asks.

            I confess that the other night I watched a video in which a guy had sex with a sleeping girl, and got very turned on. I understand the inherent controversy of admitting this in the time of Cosby, Weinstein, Kavanaugh, et all, but I believe that fantasy and reality are and should remain separate. In the words of Cindy Gallop of Make Love Not Porn, "I'm pro-sex, pro-porn, and pro knowing the difference." I think that problems arise in a world where sex education has been replaced by porn, and too many people don't know the difference.

           “I wonder why we like that stuff,” he says, smiling.

            “It’s taboo.”

I had spent the day at the sauna, which in Germany means all nude and co-ed. I tell my host about how even here where people are much more relaxed about nudity and it’s not sexualized like in America, I was watching the men and could tell a lot of them were trying really hard not to stare at the breasts and vaginas of the women sitting around them. I found it funny and perversely titillating to realize that even these seemingly more evolved men struggled not to look.

            “Men are animals,” he says. He asks if I think women are as horny as men.

            “Yes, but I think it’s more circumstantial. And the stakes are higher for women. Biologically, men are designed to spread their seed far and wide, whereas women have to consider—even on an unconscious level—the possibility of getting pregnant and having this guy’s baby, so it’s less frivolous for us. We have to be more responsible.”

            He tells me that for him love and sex are separate. He explains it like this: “If I love you and I think you’re cute, I can’t be dirty with you.” Being dirty sounds like it’s important to him. I say I used to feel more like that but it has started to change for me lately.

I think about the last guy I fell in love with, the literal clown whom I met at a fringe festival. He was in an open relationship with his wife and eventually broke my heart. The clown had stared into my eyes when we made love and whispered “my Ava” and “beautiful Ava” and I came so hard I cried. I used to think “making love” was a stupid and embarrassing expression, but now it seemed I required it and could no longer come from the usual pounding.

            “What about when you have a strong connection with somebody, the sex can be intense,” I say. My host shrugs. Clearly "being dirty” and somewhat detached is more his speed, as I will come to find out later.

           

I can't have asked for a more perfect candidate to fuck the loving clown out of me. We get stoned and, as I make an O with my lips trying to blow smoke rings like he’s taught me, he leans over and kisses me. He is undeterred when I have to go remove the diva cup I preemptively inserted earlier that day thinking I was getting my period—I appreciate his lack of squeamishness over the potential for a little blood. And whereas some guys in the past—particularly casual fucks—have used my impending period to justify not going down on me, he seems quite content to bury his face down there—a quality I respect.

When we first start having sex, I try to maintain eye contact and pull him close, but his eyes glaze over or refuse to meet mine as he stares down at my flapping tits or watches himself thrusting in and out of me. Despite my asking him to slow down, he pounds harder and faster and, as he does, I slip further and further away from any chance of orgasm. Eventually I give up trying to connect with him and instead shut my eyes tight and default to the fantasy I’ve come to depend on in times like these—the secretary bent over her boss’s desk organizing his papers when he comes upon her with a hard on. But even this old standard proves fruitless. Apparently the clown has ruined me not only for porny sex but also for my tried and true, orgasm-guaranteed fantasy. Will I forevermore require deep eye contact and tender proclamations during sex in order to come?

            Just as a few nights ago I experienced the rude awakening that I am now suddenly too old to sleep in an eight-bed, dorm-style hostel room amongst a bunch of drunken 20-somethings singing Backstreet Boys karaoke, I now feel too old for this particular brand of fucking. It seems like just yesterday I was sucking dick in a dive bar bathroom and feeling really good about my life choices. Now here I am wanting my two-night stand Airbnb host to make sweet love to me and tell me I’m beautiful. What the fuck happened to me? When did I get so old?!

After moving me around into several different pretzel-like positions—legs on shoulders, hip twisted to the side, knees out like a frog as he fucks my feet (new one for me!), he asks where I want him to come. Ah, my favorite question.

            “My tits?” I try. He looks nonplussed.

            “My ass?” I try again.

            “Your face!” He beams, eyes shining. He looks so fucking excited I burst out laughing.

            “No one wants you to come on their face,” I assure him. This comes as a surprise to the porny fucker.

When he eventually does come on my tits, he tells me he’s never done that before. Really? This amazes me. I wonder if I have somehow inspired the porniness of this guy’s fucking. Is he normally a tender lover but because this eager American introduced him to the porn festival and admitted to watching a sleeping girl get screwed, he thinks this must be the one to try out the moves he’s been practicing only in his imagination--the porny moves no self-respecting woman before me has allowed him to try? Not for the first time in my life, I wonder if my being a sexual woman who is honest about her proclivities inspires men to disrespect me. Not that I necessarily find being ejaculated on disrespectful, but the ease with which some men assume this is something I want always surprises me. And I find it often comes coupled with a seeming disregard for my pleasure, at least when it comes to orgasm.

Both times we have sex that first night, when I pull him close and ask him to slow down, he resists, instead opting to spread my legs wider or put them over his shoulders or actually speed up his pounding to a frequency of motion that will never in a million years make me come. The second time we have sex, when he declares, “I’m going to come,” I say, “not yet.” And still, he comes. So, despite all the finger banging and his face buried in my ass for five minutes and him poking around my vagina as though giving me a gyno exam—something that actually makes me laugh out loud and inquire, “what are you doing back there?!”—I do not come. Which leads me to the inevitable conclusion that all this seeming attention he pays to my pussy is really more for his own pleasure than it is for mine.

The second night, we have sex one more time, and I do come. I tell him to put a condom on and I go to the bathroom to remove my diva cup, which is now full of blood. I return and tell him to get on top of me. I slow him down for long enough that I am able to eek out a modest orgasm. Afterwards, I get in my PJs and almost fall asleep next to him.

            “This is dangerous,” I say. I have a flight to catch at 7:30AM and have to be up in four hours.

            “You could set an alarm in here,” he says, but I opt to go back to my own room where I am guaranteed at least a few hours sleep. I guess in some small way I’m learning to take care of my own needs—a benefit of turning thirty, I suppose. I kiss him goodbye.

Predictably, the following day on my flight back to London, I replay our time together. His amused annoyance with my breathing, me pretending to hold my breath, joking that “I want to make this work,” spoken in a ditsy American accent. Our stoned laughter. My excitement when I finally successfully blow a single smoke ring and he isn’t even paying attention. His tight body and the tattoos on his shoulder and thigh and the one of a tadpole on his ring finger. The view of his tight ass as he stands naked with his legs crossed, hovering over his computer. His James Dean-like pompadour of sandy blond hair. His nose ring. The cute way he pronounces “cheese” in his Argentinian accent. “Chiz.” The fact that he is a Sagittarius, like me, and how the only other Sag I’ve been with is Gaffer Guy—clearly not a good match for me.

            I should be used to this post-coital nostalgia fest by now, but somehow it always catches me off guard. Why is it that no matter how mediocre the sex is or how clearly incompatible I am with someone, if I fuck them, I will inevitably spiral into this wistful replaying of our time together? Is this what I meant when I said women are just as horny as men but we have to be more responsible, have more self-control? It's not only because we might end up pregnant with his child, but maybe more so because our feelings betray us. At least mine do. It's become blatantly apparent that if I have sex with someone—even if I don't like them all that much—I will inevitably fall a little bit in love. It feels inexorable, outside of my control. In fact it feels like a biological holdover from a time before birth control, before the possibility of abortion. Because even if I know in my head that in the unlikely event that I did get pregnant, I would certainly get an abortion—at least while I still can!—my body tells me a different story, an ancient story, one that is unfortunately quite compelling.

Childhood Crush: Part Two or How I Got My Gold Back

I see Childhood Crush once more before he heads back to San Francisco. He comes over on Sunday afternoon for a couple hours before he’s due somewhere for dinner. Again, I feel unclear about what he’s doing here. He doesn’t want any coffee; he doesn’t want to sit outside even though it’s a beautiful day; apparently he wants to hang out in my room. He seems anxious, like he’s waiting for something.

He sits on my bed and tells me about his fucked up family. He calls his mother, “the neediest woman in the world.” She is always broke and asking him for money, and she never pays him back.

“Once I had to borrow $10,000 from my dad to give to her,” he tells me. “She is not his favorite person.”

His dad is a pretty famous writer who remarried a much younger Chinese woman and now has two kids with her. I wonder how his father could hate the mother of his first born child, and also see how that could really fuck up said child.

“Me and my dad don’t get along,” says Childhood Crush, but it’s also clear that he really looks up to his father. I know from my mom (still living in the small town where we grew up) that there is also a history of neglect there.

I can’t help but draw the parallels between Childhood Crush and Gaffer Guy. Another wayward Man Child, Gaffer Guy also didn’t respect his mother and had a kind of hero worship/loathing for his rich and powerful father. This I see is a recipe for disaster with young men.

“No wonder you’re so angry,” I say, playing the therapist. I actually enjoy hearing the more personal details of his life. It’s far more interesting to me than the laundry list of his professional achievements. I realize we are both in a transitional phase of our lives, we are both bored and wanting change, and we are meeting one another at this specific moment for that very reason. Perhaps to show us both what we don’t want anymore—letting go of old habits.

He gets up and starts pacing around my room. He eventually sits down in my desk chair. He asks me to close the blinds because the sun is shining in his eyes. It’s very warm and I can feel myself getting sweaty. My face feels hot and I think it must be bright red—it gets redder as I think this. He tells me about the friend he’s staying with, who is at this very moment getting dumped by his girlfriend. He won’t tell me how his friend knew he was going over there to get dumped.

“Man, I told him he should just break up with her first.”

“Maybe you’re not the best judge right now,” I laugh. Considering he’s still reeling from getting dumped himself eight months prior.

“He’s my friend but he’s kind of a pussy.” He tells me about how his friend can’t fix anything around the house.

“Men should be able to fix shit,” he says. I have to agree.

“Just like women should be able to cook something,” he goes on. I laugh.

He says his friend is “stuck on the models.”

“You should know about that,” I say.

“Nah, I’m done with models.”

I have to say his history of dating models makes me feel weird despite myself. He seems generally obsessed with hotness and youth. He talks a lot about “hot girls.”

He opens my bedroom door.

“Where’s the bathroom?”

While he’s in the bathroom, I lie down on my bed. When he comes back, he lies down next to me. It’s almost time for him to leave for his dinner. He stares at my breasts.

“How big are your boobs? D cups?”

I laugh.

“No, C. I actually wore a 36-B most of my life and then I got fitted a couple years ago and the lady told me I was actually a 34-C. It was awesome. I gained a whole cup size that day!”

He continues to stare, unamused by my story.

“Was that uncomfortable?” I think he means being told I was a cup size larger than I had thought my entire life leading up to that point, and I start to respond when he interrupts me.

“No, I mean wearing the wrong bra size.”

“Oh, no. I don’t think so. They’re pretty similar.” I realize we often have moments like this, lost in translation—on a fundamental level, we don’t understand what the fuck the other is talking about.

“If you want, after your dinner you can come back here and we can have sex in this bed.” I smile at him.

“Fuck later. How about right now?” He chuckles.

He remains next to me and puts his arm under my shoulders. We start to kiss and he takes my breast out of the top of my dress, sucking on my nipple. The exchange feels oddly sexless, as though performed from a sense of duty rather than any real impulse. He awkwardly crawls on top with his arm still under me. It feels like a lazy choice—exerting as little energy as possible.

He gets between my legs.

“It’s pretty sweaty down there,” I warn him, half-jokingly, but actually I’m serious. I can feel the heat and moisture between my legs.

“Oh.” This seems to interest him.

I go to pull my dress over my head and he says, “No leave it on, I like the dress.” He fingers me a little bit and then takes a condom out of his pocket and starts fucking me without taking my underwear off. He buries his face in my neck and pounds into me. I try to slow him down—he keeps pounding. He kisses me, his whole weight pinning me to the bed. He doesn’t look at me. Eventually, without a sound, he comes. And it’s over. He rests his face in my breasts for a moment, and I pat his back. He gets up and takes off the condom, tying it off and dropping it in the trash. He pulls on his jeans and heads for the bathroom. I fish the condom out of the trash and wrap it in a tissue. That familiar feeling of post-coital disappointment washing over me.

“Sorry to bang and dash,” he says when he returns. I walk him downstairs and kiss him goodbye.

“I’ll give you a shout later,” he says and bounds up my steep driveway.

I don’t see him again before he leaves. When he’s back in San Francisco, he texts to ask if I used the rest of my fancy condoms yet. I realize he thinks, probably from things I’ve said, that I’m constantly fucking random guys when the truth of the matter is he probably has a lot more sex than I do. I wonder if this is the reason the sex felt like he was masturbating inside of me and also why he didn’t go down on me at all—because he thinks I’m a slut, and not necessarily in a good way. My response to his text is to send him a picture of my boobs. I can’t explain this except to say it turns me on to do so.

I’m on a hike with my forty-something friend Paula and I tell her about Childhood Crush.

“Did you get your gold back?” She asks.

I just stare at her, a quizzical expression on my face.

She explains: “When you’re young, you admire people and look up to them because you think they’re special. But it’s actually not them. It’s you. You’re projecting all your good stuff onto them because you’re not ready to hold it yet. So, I wonder if you got your gold back from him and realized what you thought was special about him was actually you.”

This idea had never occurred to me before. She explains it's from a book called Inner Gold by Robert Johnson, and offers to lend it to me.

“I wish I had known that for the last 28 years of my life.” She nods.

“And the answer is no—I didn’t get my gold back from him.”

When I was younger I remember my mom warning me about sleeping with guys too fast, not for any punitive reason but because she said, “one tends to fall in love with men when you have sex with them.” At the time I took this to be a very old-fashioned idea, and until recently I’d considered myself immune to this cliché notion of sex-induced female attachment. But I suddenly understand what she means. I think there’s something chemical that happens to a woman when she has sex with a man. Maybe because they literally put their things inside us, inevitably some remnant is left behind. A glue that binds us to them, despite ourselves. It must be biological, because it feels completely out of my control. It makes sense—in nature if a male has sex with a female, it is to impregnate her and her impulse then would be to keep him around to help provide for the baby. Right? This is the only explanation I can find for the fact that after I have sex with a guy, I can’t stop thinking about him. No matter if the sex is good or bad or whether I like him or not. I find that it takes a couple weeks for this to cool off—and often the more I don’t see him, the more obsessed I become. When I see the guy, usually it’s disappointing. By that point I’ve made up so many stories in my head, his real life presence can’t possibly live up to my expectations.

Now that I know there’s perhaps a biological reason for this cycle, I can stop being so hard on myself about it. Or perhaps, practice not having sex right away. This could be the solution to my problem—if I don’t have sex with douche bags, I won’t think about them so much. It’s too late for Childhood Crush, but a good lesson for the future. I’ve had my fair share of bad sex, and as I age, it too gets old. It’s no longer worth the emotional roller coaster it causes. I feel like at this point my expectations are so low that if I met a man who was interesting, attractive, funny, and remotely good at sex, I’d fall in love instantly. Now that’s a scary thought.

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.