Romance

I had sex in an elevator. With a friend, a colleague, a guy who lives with his girlfriend. It was the second to last night of our collaboration on an all-consuming project that had us working long hours and forced us to get close very fast. We had been strangers a week ago and now we suddenly felt like old friends. That’s how it is on these kinds of intense projects. On this particular day, the flirty banter of the day before when we likened moving furniture to trying different sex positions, had escalated to some pretty touchy behavior. While we waited for the rest of our crew, I sat on his lap in the backseat of a friend’s car as he massaged my back and put his arms around my waist. The more he touched me, the more I felt like a cat in heat. My pelvis throbbed and I responded by digging my butt into his lap. He was big and burly and I hadn’t had sex for like a whole month. You do the math.

My friend Adrienne and her boyfriend were also working on the project and our plan was for the four of us to all go out for drinks after work. I heard Burly Man talking to Adrienne's boyfriend about inviting his girlfriend, whom none of us had met yet. I had to run a couple errands before I could meet them at the bar. I called him from the road to ask a work-related question.

“When will you make it to the bar do you think?” He asked.

“Actually I don’t think I’m going to come.”

“Why?”

“I just don’t really want to be the fifth wheel with the two couples. You guys are gonna start talking about real estate and I’m going to be like, why am I here?” Having had my fair share of experience as the only single person surrounded by couples, I now try to avoid this scenario at all costs.

“Well, I don’t think my girlfriend is coming to the bar.” I suddenly found myself in the awkward position of deciding not to go because his girlfriend was invited and then changing my mind now that she was being removed from the equation. Even to me, it sounded like I was trying to fuck this guy. And I honestly didn’t have any intention of actually fucking him, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the attention, the groping, the flirtation, and I wasn’t in any hurry to replace this situation with one in which I would be forced to keep a polite distance while he canoodled with his girlfriend. Who would want that?

I arrived at the bar and he gave me a big bear hug. It was delicious. Everyone else was a few beers ahead of me, so the conversation quickly veered towards sex. As Burly Man massaged my calves with my feet resting in his lap, I wondered aloud why he was allowed to massage my calves but not my breasts.

“Because breasts are sacred,” he said, half-jokingly.

“What if I do this?”

I sat up, took his burly man hand in mine, and put it on my boob. He squeezed. A ripple of energy went through my whole body.

“You better be careful. It’s been a long time for me,” I said.

“How long?”

I looked to Adrienne, who knows my sex life as intimately as I do.

“Like a month,” I raised my eyebrows.

“That’s a long time to you?!” He seemed almost offended.

Adrienne whispered in his ear, asking if he needed a safe word, if he needed to set some boundary he wasn’t allowed to cross. He hesitated, clearly reluctant to make any promises he wouldn't be able to keep.

“There will be no penetration,” I declared.

Between trying to help him set boundaries and safe words, Adrienne egged us both on, encouraging him to spank me while I was bent over the bar. I glanced around the room, which had filled out substantially since we’d arrived in the late afternoon on a Tuesday. Everyone was obliviously chatting away—was no one noticing the raunchy goings-on in the corner of the bar?

I sat on Burly Man’s lap and he grabbed my crotch. This surprised me. It occurred to me this was a new level of crossing whatever boundary he had or had not set for himself. He dug his fingers into me from outside my pants. I wondered if our friends saw this happening and were politely ignoring it, or if they really had no idea. I tried not to moan out loud.

“What’s going on down there? You feel ready to go,” he said.

“I am,” I whispered into his face.

Then our friends started making plans for us all to go back to their place. The guys wanted to invite Burly Man’s girlfriend to join us, clearly intending to put a stop to whatever the hell was escalating between us. I said if she was coming I would probably go home.

“I don’t think you want the two of us in the same room right now,” I scoffed. Clearly he hadn’t thought this through.

“If I’m alone in a room with her, I’m going to have sex with her,” he pleaded with Adrienne, pointing at me, looking genuinely worried. I have to say his lack of self-control was thrilling.

Adrienne made the call: “Why don’t you two come over for an hour, and then your girlfriend can come over. Or you can just go home.”

I laughed. We all agreed to this plan, knowing it was a lie.

Back at their place, we drank more beer and ate some pizza. I was tucked in with Burly Man and when I sat up to grab a slice, he unhooked my bra, bringing his hands around to cup my breasts. I took off my bra and put it on the couch. Adrienne picked it up and studied it, musing that she wouldn’t ever wear a bra that wasn’t padded.

We settled in to watch the latest episode of Silicon Valley and he grabbed my crotch again, again digging his fingers into me through layers of clothing. I wondered if he’d dig a hole in my pants. I glanced over at Adrienne and her boyfriend on the other end of the couch—was it possible they didn’t see what was going on next to them?

Adrienne got up to get some blankets. She put one on herself and tossed one next to me, as if to say: ‘Now you can have some privacy.’ The second the blanket was on us, his hand was down my pants and his fingers were buried inside me. I could hear fabric ripping, so I quickly and quietly unbuttoned and unzipped to make it easier for him. I tried not to moan as he dug into me. My breathing involuntarily quickened. I held the blanket aloft in an attempt to mask the aggressive movement going on underneath. I reached over and felt his crotch. His cock was hard in his pants. We continued to laugh at the appropriate moments in the show, but I honestly don’t remember a single thing that happened in that episode.

When the show ended, I reluctantly re-zipped and buttoned my pants.

“Okay, I’m gonna go,” he announced to the room. I went to the bathroom and prepared to leave myself. I got a text from a coworker with some annoying news and I was back in work mode. Well, that was fun while it lasted, I thought. We hugged our friends goodbye and the two of us walked towards the elevator, me staring at my phone, wondering aloud how I should deal with this issue. The second the elevator doors closed, he was on me. He kissed me, and I remember thinking that kissing was the biggest boundary crossed so far—one I thought we wouldn’t cross. He reached down my pants again and pulled up my shirt. I had left my bra off. He started sucking on my nipples as he fingered me. We hadn’t pressed any buttons in the elevator, so it just sat there. I waited for someone to walk in on us. He took his penis out. It was pink and beautiful and I wanted it the moment I saw it.

“We can’t do that,” I said.

“We’re not going to,” he replied.

And then he tried to stick it in me. Facing one another with my pants around my thighs wasn’t working, so he bent down to take off my boots, and I thought: fuck no, there’s no way I’m going to be the one who's completely naked if and when we get caught fucking in this elevator. Instead, I turned around to give him easier access from behind. He pushed on my low back, holding me down as he fully entered me. My face flushed hot and I felt filled with that old familiar feeling. After probably about five minutes, he pulled out and came on my back. I still had my purse hooked around my arm, and for some reason decided this was the moment to let it drop. I reached down into the convenient bag of clothing I had left at my feet and took out an old sweater. He mopped his cum off my back and then, seeing that some had spilled onto the floor of the elevator, I wiped that up too. 

I buttoned my pants, he pressed the Ground Floor button on the elevator, and we walked out of the building, stunned and grinning.

“So, that happened,” I said.

“No, it didn’t,” he said.

“What happens in elevators, stays in elevators.”

“I’ve never done that before… Cum that fast.”

I laughed. “Oh, I thought you meant had sex in an elevator.”

“Yeah, that too.”

He walked me to my car. We kissed goodbye.

“Okay, see you tomorrow. Bye!”

The next day at work, he asked me if I planned to tell our friends. He told me not to write about him (Adrienne had told him about my blog—I’m hoping he forgot the name of it). He told me we should do it again sometime. I asked if he wanted to go find an elevator. He told me I would meet his girlfriend that night. He laughed when I told him I thought she was probably really cool.

“That was like a dream. It’s like it never happened,” he said. Whatever helps you sleep at night, I thought.

We finished our all-consuming project and we all went back to our normal lives. I went back to my nights of watching TV in bed by myself, and was suddenly struck with a strong sense of loneliness I don’t usually feel. I watched a sad, romantic indie flick on Netflix called Beginners starring Ewan McGregor and just bawled my fucking eyes out.

On Saturday night, I went to Best Guy Friend’s apartment for our weekly ritual of getting high, eating dinner, and having deep stoned talks in the hot tub followed by watching a movie. In a stoned stupor, I told him about how I realized watching this film that I feel really starved for romance in my life, and that I’m suddenly craving it. I struggled to articulate what it was about Ewan’s portrayal of the character in Beginners that had so affected me. How the way he is with the French girl he falls in love with in the film is how I want a man to be with me.

“When he looks at her, he really sees her. He listens. He sees her whole self and appreciates everything about her. He wants her fully and completely. He’s sensitive and sad and sexy.”

We mused on whether this character was in the writing, or was it just the quality that Ewan brings to every role he plays. Then we tried to find a female equivalent for Best Guy Friend—a famous actress who brings something to all her roles that he could actually see himself in a relationship with. We continued down this stoned rabbit hole for awhile.

“Well, you can have that,” said Best Guy Friend. I didn’t hear him, and he pointed that out too. “You could fall in love next week.” I thought about whether I believed him. “I don’t know if that’s actually what you want though. You’re so busy. Do you have time for it?”

I don’t know if I have time for it, if love would derail me from my life mission right now. But I want to feel that again. That feeling of being in love. That all-consuming, I want you every minute of every day feeling. I don’t know if it’s healthy, and my logical mind says it sounds codependent, but there’s no doubt I’m craving it. It's been awhile for me. Sometimes I worry that my biological clock has started ticking, and that these feelings are connected to a deeper yearning. I am suddenly at an age where several of my close friends and colleagues have babies, and when I'm around said babies, I do feel a persistent throbbing in my ovary-area that’s slightly alarming. Every time it happens I have to remind myself, there’s time for that and now is not the time.

Sticky, Sweaty, Salty, Sour: Sex and Marriage on Caye Caulker

I count the turns as I ride into town – 2^nd left, 3^rd right – watching for the telltale signs that guide my way.  Lazy Iguana B&B, Cocoplum… there are no street signs and the locals won’t give me a map.  They say I couldn’t possibly get lost on an island as small as Caye Caulker.  Try me. 

“Hey baby, where you going?” The friendly and leering Belizean boys reach out their arms to catch me as I pass.  I avoid them and the potholes in the white sand road as I try to keep my skirt from flying up.  I just showered and I’m already sticky from sweat, my skin burning after 6 hours spent in the relentless sun.  I feel good, clean and alive, and ready for anything.

My ex-boyfriend Henry told me before I left on my solo adventure to Central America that I was going to “fall in love with some Belizean guy.”  This is part of our relationship now – we tell each other the stories of our sexcapades and laugh at each other’s sluttiness.  I would classify him as a fellow Slutty Feminist.  We broke up when things were still good between us, just because we wanted to explore ourselves and other people.  We still have sex and spend whole days together.  No one understands that we’re no longer “in a relationship”; we seem more in love than a lot of couples I know.

“I’m gonna get you drunk tonight,” James beams, placing another grapefruit rum cocktail down in front of me.  He’s a local.  This is his place, his nickname’s on the wall.

Anita, his Norwegian wife, smiles coolly and looks away.  James’s expression hardens as he turns to her.

“You want something?”

Anita points to my drink. “Yeah, I’ll take one of those.”  Instantly, the energy shifts.

“What the fuck?”  James is pissed.

I turn my attention to the local woman working the grill.  The smell of fresh charred lobster pours over me in a smoky wave.

“Well, you didn’t ask me before so…” Anita laughs it off, biting her lip.  I shouldn’t be here, I think.  The third wheel to their marital spat.

I had a relationship like this once.  The hateful little jabs, the undercurrent of sarcasm and frustration, the inability to keep a lid on it even in public.  I ended up cheating on that boyfriend.  And then I broke up with him, albeit months and possibly years after I should have.  And I had thought about marrying him.  I thought we were soul mates and would have a baby and be together forever, even though a lot of the time I wasn’t happy. 

                                                   

It seems like all the local guys on Caye Caulker cheat on their wives.  At least that’s what one of them told me.  By day, they are tour guides taking American and European tourists out on fishing/snorkeling/diving trips; by night, they fuck white women.  And their local wives stay South of the island in the ramshackle huts where tourists don’t go, and take care of their children.  It seems like a pretty shitty arrangement to me and it makes me ask myself once again the question I’m constantly asking myself: why are these people married?  Because I understand very well the human impulse to fuck different people, but I don’t understand at all the impulse to commit to fucking the same person for the rest of your life.  I don’t actually believe this is a human impulse; I think it’s an antiquated tradition that has no place in the ever-changing world of today.

Take Anita for example.  Anita is this cool, independent woman who used to work some serious, business-y job in Norway before one day finding herself in Caye Caulker where she fell in love with local man James and decided to completely change her life.  Now she spends her days cleaning the rooms they rent to tourists, hanging out with their two dogs, and turning the other cheek when her husband hits on 20-something white women.  But Anita is clearly not meant for this lifestyle.  She’s tall and serious and strong and smart.  She’s intellectual, and now that the honeymoon’s over, I can see that she’s fucking bored.  I don’t blame her.  In fact, I feel a certain kindred connection with Anita – a mutual strong woman/ tall-blondeness that makes us inherently understand one another, and we talk freely.  Except about the one thing I’m really curious about: her marriage.  This is the subject we don’t broach.  Because she and James are not happy together and James obviously wants to fuck me.

Anita and James close down the restaurant and we head to the karaoke bar, the only joint still serving booze after midnight.  At the bar I stand uncomfortably sandwiched between the unhappy couple.  James keeps buying me drinks and I wonder what his plan is – take me back to their place and tell Anita to wait outside while we have sex?  I’m acutely aware of the awkward symmetry in the situation.  I’m the 20 years younger version of his 40-something wife, and James, in the primal tradition of men everywhere, wants to feel young again by fucking me.  I also don’t know how to diffuse the energy because I’m really bad at not flirting.

This is why I’m down on marriage.  Because I constantly find myself in the position of the Other Woman.  And it’s true, I don’t always diffuse the tension and, to be honest, I have no qualms about sleeping with a married/unavailable man because I don’t think it’s my responsibility to save his relationship and, if he wants to cheat, he’s going to cheat whether he does it with me or not.  Also, it shouldn’t be discounted that sexually I have very little self control – when I want it, I want it, and no one can stand in my way. 

But it just so happens that I don’t want James, and I really like Anita, so I choose to walk away.  Literally.  We are standing there in the bar and, without saying a word, I walk over to this cute local guy wearing a cap that says LA.  He’s been eyeing me all night.  This is the same guy that later tells me about how all the local men like to fuck white women.  I can feel James watching me as we talk, his disappointment is palpable.  Man, your wife is standing right there – why don’t you try to fuck her for a change?  It’s so totally depressing I can hardly stand it.

LA Cap Guy speaks Creole, Garifuna, and broken English.  I ask him to say something in Creole, a language that sounds a lot like English but is virtually impossible for me to understand.  He says he will if we can walk out to the end of the pier.  I know this is a ploy but at this point I’m into it, and I’d like to escape James’ penetrating gaze.  The pier is overpopulated with couples looking for privacy so we head back and walk along the dark shore.  I suggest a night swim.  He says it’s going to be cold but, thinking he might get laid, starts to take off his shoes.  I pull my dress over my head and wade in.  He’s right, it is cold, and shallow and mucky.  We sit in the muck and he pulls me into his lap – I can feel his huge erection poking into my back.  He kisses my neck and paws at my breasts and asks if I’m “enjoying” myself.  I know this is his hospitality training and I wonder if he asks the same during sex.  I decide I don’t want to find out.  I pull away and head for shore. 

“I’m cold.”  I actually am.  My teeth are chattering, I’m ready to go home.

After he’s done meticulously getting dressed, he pulls me in close and asks if he’s the only local boy I’ve ever “dated.”  I explain that we’re not dating, that I’m single.

“Why are you single?”

“Uh, because I want to be.”

He can’t believe this.  Actually, no one here can believe that I’m single by choice. 

His dream is to marry a white woman and move to LA.  I hope this isn’t a hint-hint.  He admits he’s got a bet on me with one of the other locals.  $30 Belize ($15 US) he’ll fuck me.  I tell him he shouldn’t have told me that, but I also find it hilarious that he did.

“I bet your lips are sweet.”

“They’re not,” I tell him.

He laughs and asks for a kiss.  I let him because his boxers are wet underneath his jeans and that can’t be comfortable.  His tongue tastes like sand paper and cigarettes.  His lips are squishy and sucking on mine.

I retrieve my bike and ride beside him as he walks back to the hotel room he keeps next to the dive shop where he works.  He talks about how he’s a dive master and a “boss” because they gave him his own hotel room.  He’s proud, he loves his life, he’s not married and he gets to fuck white women.  Don’t move to LA, I pray for him.  He wants another kiss.

“I really love you,” he says.

I hope this is a language barrier thing.

“Goodnight!” I shout, and scoot off.

The next morning, I run into James in the street.  For some reason, I find myself expecting to be scolded by him.  For running off with another guy.  Why I feel I owe him anything is totally beyond me.  But he seems cool and gives me a high-five.

He had said he’d come by the cabana to take me out on his boat this morning, but he never showed.  I ask him why. 

“Oh, I didn’t know if you’d still want to.”  I feel like we’re in high school.

I was actually totally relieved when he didn’t show up this morning.  I realize now if I find myself alone on a boat with him, it’s anyone’s guess what he’ll do, and I don’t want to make the situation any more awkward and depressing by rejecting him.

But as I watch him now coolly surveying the spill of tourists walking along the road, I realize that I’m just another blonde woman from the States to him, and there will be another boatload of us coming in by noon.  I feel better, because I didn’t really hurt his feelings.  He won’t miss me when I’m gone.  I’ll just be another white woman he didn’t get to fuck.