Sex Like a Man

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

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

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

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

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

“What does it taste like?”

“Sex.”

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

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

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

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

He frowns. “Are you ashamed of me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you want to stay here?”

“I could,” he says coyly.

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

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

“Are you going to Uber home?” I ask.

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

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

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

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

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

“I feel like a loser,” he says.

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

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

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

I text Music Manager.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.