My Favorite Things: 2015

It's time to look back on some of my favorite things of the past year. Not all brand new, these are the things that enhanced my year and brought me joy. It was a good year for sex and feminism.

Fave Films:

Magic Mike XXL

I thought that Trainwreck was going to be my feminist anthem of the summer. I liked a lot about Trainwreck—obviously I love Amy and found many of the jokes hilarious, but I ultimately left the theatre underwhelmed by the clean-up-your-act moralism of the story. I left the theatre after Magic Mike XXL (both times) feeling exhilarated. Sitting in that audience, I felt something I’ve never really experienced before in a movie theatre: enthusiastic camaraderie amongst women (and gay men) and a shared sense of sexual excitement. The sex-positivity and feminism of this film are astounding. The fact that it was written, directed, and produced by all men and yet embodies the female gaze is a revelation and should not be underestimated. Furthermore, the fact that there is a market for women wanting to see sexy comedies with sexy men doing sexy things seems obvious but has been so far untapped and can no longer go ignored. Hallelujah!

The Diary of a Teenage Girl

This film reminded me so much of being a horny, obsessive young teenager who wants nothing more than to bang any number of hot older men-children. I loved the unapologetic, exposed way the story unfolds, with little judgment or moralism. Minnie is not a victim or an innocent, she is a self-possessed and wily young girl who knows what she wants (or thinks she does) and goes for it. Needless to say, I can relate.

Sisters

I almost didn’t go to see Sisters because of the bad reviews. And then I read this great article about the male gaze and male film critics, and I thought: Fuck You, I’m going! So glad I did. What a joyful two hours spent with two of my favorite women of comedy. Sisters takes the usual trope of male bodily function humor and boys behaving badly and recasts it with all women. The results are revelatory. Watching it, I thought of course these male critics don’t like it—we're talking about vaginas and periods and a guy gets a ballerina music box stuck up his ass. I loved every minute. 

Anomalisa
I won't give anything away about the latest masterpiece from the imagination of Charlie Kaufman, except to say that it has one of the best, most realistic sex scenes I've seen in cinema.

Fave TV Shows:

Getting On

How sad am I that this show got cancelled? I ask friends of mine if they watch it, and pretty unanimously, people find it depressing. Not me! I could watch Laurie Metcalf strut around talking about atrophied vaginas and stool samples for a hundred hours. I love this show. I love the bold, unapologetic way it approaches aging and dying, and goddamn the characters are good. Real, flawed, self-absorbed, hilarious. This show might have the best roles for women of any show currently running. And now they’re gone. I will miss them all.

Transparent

Season Two is even better than Season One. The original cast members are in full flower, and there are some new additions that are amazing, namely Cherry Jones and Anjelica Huston. This show has more sexless nudity in it than any other show on television, and I love it for that. During a scene between the two sisters set in the Korean spa, I yelled at the screen: “Jill Soloway, get out of my head!” The Yom Kippur episode and the one set at the Idyllwild Wimmin’s music festival are standouts. I love all the stuff between Ali (Gaby Hoffmann) and her girlfriend played by Carrie Brownstein, especially Ali questioning the obligatory monogamous rules of straight relationships, and the scene in which they're having a conversation and Ali's nipple is casually exposed the whole time. Also, Amy Landecker is sexy as fuck.

The Affair

I love the questions posed by this show about being identified as the other woman and getting slut-shamed for it. Not to mention the structure of the story unfolding from different characters’ perspectives. I especially love seeing the world through Helen (Maura Tierney)’s eyes. And there’s a lot of hot sex. And Josh Stamberg's penis. Or it's his double's penis. Either way, it's nice.

Fave Docs:

Amy

I didn’t realize that Amy Winehouse was a genius. I didn’t realize the scope of her talent and vision. I also didn't realize how incredibly young she was. This doc is amazing because of the footage they were able to find. This I suppose is a benefit of the record-everything generation. Amy’s fall from a spirited, cheeky teenager to an emaciated shadow is fast and brutal. Even harder to watch is the lack of support around her, particularly from her awful, fame whore of a father. Hearing the music stripped down and not so over-produced, her voice shines and you see the incredible talent that we lost.

The Hunting Ground

This is a tough one. The film follows two college graduates who were both raped while in school and have become activists to expose the astounding frequency of rape on college campuses and to create a community of survivors. It’s unbelievable to see these formidable institutions denying and actively covering up the ubiquity of rape on their campuses, particularly when the scandal threatens to expose top athletes and frat houses. It’s hard to watch, but essential, and should be required viewing for everyone, particularly men and women entering college.

Fave Books (Non-Fiction):

The Wild Oats Project: One Woman’s Midlife Quest for Passion at Any Cost by Robin Rinaldi

This is a memoir about a woman who opened her marriage for a year and went on an adventure of sexual exploration and awakening. I love this book. In it, Robin Rinaldi shamelessly and honestly explores the topics of monogamy, sexuality, female pleasure, and the link between sexual desire and maternal longing. It is a woman’s journey of self-discovery through sex—a story I not only relate to, but find profoundly important.

The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine by Nancy Qualls-Corbett

This book explores an ancient time when women’s sexual power was revered and honored, rather than squelched and controlled. It’s both empowering and heartbreaking to read of where we’ve come from and how far we’ve gotten away from our essential connection to the divine feminine. This book is not always easy to find—probably because the patriarchy doesn’t want us to read it!

Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What it Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan & Cacilda Jetha

Similar to The Sacred Prostitute, Sex at Dawn looks at the ancient civilizations and contemporary tribes that live and have lived in nonmonogamous cultures, and debunks the notion that humans are fundamentally, biologically monogamous. This book delves into the societal reasons why and how monogamy became important to us and begs the question, in our world today, are these reasons still good enough?

Fave Podcast:

Savage Lovecast

Not a new podcast, but still great after all these years! Dan Savage introduced me to the term monogamish as well as the true definition of Santorum. I don't always agree with his advice, but I always love listening to him talk. He remains the sex-positive uncle I wish I had.

Fave Male Feminist:

Matt McGorry
The star of Orange is the New Black is hot and talented and, since learning the definition of feminism this year, has been on a social media campaign for gender equality. Nothing hotter than a male feminist!

Halloween

**Mom, don’t read this one**

I grab my phone out of the toilet and desperately suck the toilet water from its lower holes. I don’t even really think about the fact that I’m doing this in the moment, I don’t second guess my impulse to save my phone at any cost. The fact that I’ve pulled it out of a public toilet in a dive bar at 2am on Halloween night doesn’t really register.

Then I remember why I’m in the restroom in the first place and I try to mentally prepare for what’s to come. I put my phone on top of the toilet next to my purse which is still unzipped, it’s opening aimed at the water—the cause of the accident. I see that the lid to my lipstick is still floating in the bowl. I try not to think about the fact that my phone is probably dead. John the bartender enters and locks the door. He turns to me.

“I dropped my phone in the toilet,” I say, pointing to it, still wet beside my purse. As I point, I notice that my house key has landed in the no man’s land between the seat and the back of the toilet. I vow to remember to grab it later.

John doesn’t understand, or he doesn’t want to deal with this right now. He grabs my waist and pushes me up against the wall. We’re making out and his hand is up my dress and digging around inside my tights. That’s when I remember the bandages.

Earlier this morning I preemptively went to spinning class to “detox before retox,” as my instructor so eloquently put it. Not used to the incredible friction in my crotch area, I chafed something terrible and discovered later that the skin just inches from my outer labia was rubbed raw and actually peeling off in stinging sheets. I smeared on globs of Neosporin and bandaged the area. I vowed to not let any man anywhere near the region because all the bandages made it look like I had recently undergone labiaplasty. Not to mention additional rubbing would definitely hurt like hell. I decided my wounds would help me make better decisions, as I would have to weigh the man against the guaranteed pain involved in hooking up with him—would he be worth it? I didn’t consider as a real possibility that I would find myself in this dilemma with John. I just never imagined we would actually get to this point in our epic 11 month flirtation.

Earlier in the night, when I first arrive at the bar with my roommates in our matching understated yet elegant costumes of all black ensembles and masquerade masks, John greets me with a warm hug over the bar. I kiss his cheek and, when he says “Oh!” in a pleasantly surprised manner, I ask if I can have a real kiss later.

“I’m pretty sure you don’t get any more kisses,” he eyes me suggestively. I obviously know what he’s referring to—the last time I was here I went home with his brother. Why this trumps the fact that he still lives with his girlfriend, I'm not sure.

“Why?” I smile coyly.

“You know why,” says John. But he doesn’t look upset; he looks amused. I like this about him—he doesn’t seem to take it all too seriously. Underneath it all, he seems to understand that it’s just sex. Who cares that I fucked his brother and I still want to fuck him? He doesn’t slut shame me for it. He still wants me too. I find this incredibly hot.

I haven’t really been drinking lately so after a couple vodka sodas with a lemon and a lime (and a cherry that John adds without asking), I am completely hammered. I’m on the floor dirty dancing with a Jewish guy dressed as a Rasta. His dreadlocked hair keeps getting caught in my mask, so I take off my mask. I freak with the Rasta like I’m at a middle school dance, twerking my ass into his hips. He grabs my waist and tries to reach his hand into the top of my dress, grabbing at my boobs. I enjoy dancing with him—he’s fun and he can move (or at least I’m drunk enough, I think he can)—but I don’t want to fuck this guy and when he tries to kiss me, I hold my face away. When he tells me to come home with him to Pasadena, I laugh in his face and say, “Yeah, that’s not happening.”

I carry my friend’s vaporizer loaded up with weed to John at the bar and offer it to him. He takes it and puffs. I order a couple more drinks for my friends and “a shot of your choice” for John. I do this several times throughout the night but apparently he puts none of it on my tab because my bill comes out to $18 at the end of the night. When John hands me my drinks, I rub my fingers on his and we linger there for a moment. Later I make him lean in so I can tell him something and I lick his ear. Later still I suck on his fingers, which taste like lime. At some point, he declares, “You had sex with my brother.”

I say, “So? I like both you guys.”

He asks, “Was he good to you?” I think this is a classy question. Also kinky. I wonder not for the first time if these are the kind of Irish twins that would fuck the same girl in the same room at the same time. If this is a possibility, I need to do everything in my power to make it happen.

Suddenly, it’s 2am and the lights are coming on, the heavy metal designed to thin the crowd blasting out of the speakers. John comes around to sit in his usual spot at the bar to do the tip out on his computer. Naturally, I plop down next to him, and this is when things take a turn. I try to kiss him and he pushes his face into my neck and says, “I want to bury myself in you.” I try to get his number, asking if we can be friends. He says, “How am I supposed to be your friend when all I want is to fuck you?” I guess that’s a fair question. I can see that he’s struggling. He punches his number into my phone anyway.

He tells me I’m causing problems in his relationship. I tell him it’s not me. He doesn’t understand what I mean. I want to point out that if it weren’t me, it would be some other girl. He’s just not monogamous, at least not at this stage in his life. I decide not to get into it. Instead, I run my fingers down his back and along the top of his pants to the front. He grabs my hand and puts it on his fly. He’s hard. He reaches under my dress and grips my crotch.

“Now that just kills me.” He seems to be referring to the heat coming off me. He lifts his hand away from my crotch and runs it under his nose, along his lips. It's about this time that the DJ says, "This one's for you, John," and proceeds to play Britney Spears' Toxic.

John won’t kiss me but seems to want me to keep grabbing his dick. I guess because it’s under the bar and he thinks his coworkers aren’t seeing what’s going on between us. I ask, “Why can I do this but you won’t kiss me? Because it’s under the bar?” He nods. “So, do you want me to get under the bar and suck your dick?” I ask. He nods, slower this time. Wow, he actually thinks that we are being stealth enough to get away with this. I’m so drunk I actually consider it.

My friends are ready to hit the taco truck, so I bid John farewell. He looks disappointed, like he always does when I leave, and I want to say, “Make up your damn mind!”

“Do you need to go to the bathroom before you go?” He asks.

At first I don’t register what he’s really asking and I almost say no. Then I realize the meaning of this.

“Yes,” I answer and grab my purse. I march towards the restroom.

Inside, the first thing I do is put my purse down on top of the toilet, and then a couple seconds later register that I’ve dumped the entire contents into the toilet. I fish out my phone, lipstick, Altoids. Thinking at the time that all of these items are salvageable, even the mints. This is when I suck the toilet water out of my phone and immediately turn it off, remembering the advice I received the last time I dropped my phone in the toilet. That phone didn’t make it.

With John’s hand up my dress, I remember my bandages and I really don’t want to have to explain them to him. Instead, I move down and unbutton his jeans, squatting on the ground. I take his penis in my mouth. As I’m sucking on him, I reach into my tights and rip off the medical tape and gauze strips covering my outer vagina wounds. I drop these on the floor beside discarded bits of toilet paper.

Naturally, as I suck John’s dick, I can’t resist comparisons to his brother. I notice immediately that his brother was in much better physical shape and therefore (as is my experience) his dick got bigger and harder. John’s is hard but could probably be harder if he hadn’t been drinking so much. He’s been working long sweaty hours and there’s a faint smell of BO emanating from his nether regions. It’s not that bad and I don’t mind it. He’s smiling down at me in a very appreciative manner—that’s nice.

I’m not getting anywhere with his dick in my mouth, so I stand up and pull down my tights and underwear and turn away from him, putting my hands on the wall and pushing my ass into his crotch. I fumble for his penis, willing it to stay hard for just a little while longer.

“I can’t have sex with you without a condom,” he says in a moment of sudden clarity. I respect this decision, for his girlfriend’s sake. And because sex without condoms is a bad habit I need to stop. For some reason I haven’t brought one with me, probably because I really had no intention of bringing my vagina out tonight.

I lean with my back against the wall, underwear down, tit sticking out the top of my dress. John stands at the sink, staring at me and jerking off. He ravages me with his eyes. I can’t remember who decides we’re done here. Probably he says, “I should get back.” I pull up my underwear and tights but leave my tit out.

“Put that away,” he instructs before taking it in his mouth.

Then he’s gone. My roommate appears in the doorway.

“I just sucked John’s dick,” I declare. “And I dropped my phone in the toilet.”

It’s time to hit the taco truck.

After I order my nachos, I text John, “Hey John, it’s me. Let’s be friends.” With a winky face.

Him: “What”

Me: “What what”

Him: “Ok. Yes.”

Me: “Yes what?”

Him: “I don’t know”

“Our interactions are like a Pinter play,” I declare to my friends.

“What’s that?” They ask.

I tell my best friend Sadie about this experience and she asks why I want to fuck John. She thinks my story doesn’t sound very passion-driven and feels more like a challenge I’ve set for myself. She wonders if by fucking his brother, I simply upped the ante in this game of trying to fuck John—actually making it harder for myself, adding a new level to the game. I tell her I find the combination of John’s inability to have sex with me and his desire to do so incredibly hot. I wonder aloud if people who don’t know me would think my mission in life is to home wreck happy relationships. She doesn’t think so—she thinks it’s clear from my perspective on infidelity and monogamy that I don’t consider myself the cause of these men’s relationship problems. I’m a symptom.

Sadie says it sounds to her like I’m bored, that if there were anyone more exciting to come along, I wouldn’t be interested in John anymore.

“Well, of course. But isn’t that always the way it is? You mess around with people that aren’t the real thing until something more interesting comes along?”

She concedes this is probably true.

“If John said he was leaving his girlfriend and wanted to fuck you all the time, would you want that?” She asks. Probably not, but there are a thousand what ifs I could go through that have nothing to do with the actual situation.

“What will probably happen is it will turn out that John’s girlfriend is like your blog’s biggest fan.”

I laugh, “That’s what happens in the movie version of my life.”

“The brother will fall in love with you,” she goes on, “and you’ll fuck both of them and get pregnant and won’t know which one of theirs it is and you’ll all end up raising the baby together.”

I tell her about how I’ve made plans to see John’s brother over Thanksgiving when I’m up in the Bay Area visiting my parents.

“I wonder if he won’t want to see me anymore if John tells him I sucked his dick,” I muse.

She bursts out laughing.

“You are building yourself a fucking garbage fire.” Maybe she’s right. Maybe I am bored.

Childhood Crush: Part One

I'm sitting at the bar of Night + Market, a popular Thai restaurant on Sunset Blvd, next to a guy I had a crush on in Middle School. He was 25 then. He’s 40 now. My 12-year-old self is doing cartwheels.

Childhood Crush and I grew up in the same tiny hippie beach town in Northern California. Recently when I was home watching the 4^th of July parade with my parents, he cruised past with his crew of local kids on motorbikes. I spotted him instantly, as I always do, and felt that old familiar pang of a 15-year crush. He nodded in recognition, my name on his lips, and continued on in a cloud of exhaust.

In seventh grade I played Demetrius in our school’s production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (there weren’t enough boys and I was tall). Childhood Crush was friends with our director and filmed us doing the play. I think that’s when we first met and the crush was instant. He was at NYU film school and to me represented the glamorous world of filmmaking I so longed to be a part of. He was also short and wiry and blond and had that kind of white-rapper-ish aesthetic that is still totally my jam. He was a fast talker, a hustler, confident and energetic, and even as a kid I felt he would be successful. And he was. He went on to make several well-received documentaries, one about the modeling industry that I watched when I was considering making my own documentary about actresses in Hollywood and body image. On that project he collaborated with his girlfriend at the time, a gorgeous runway fashion model. I was very impressed with their work and reached out to him for advice about my own doc. That was 2011 and the last time we interacted before I saw him on the 4^th of July.

On the night of the 4^th, as I laid in my childhood bed, I did some lite stalking on Facebook and decided to message him.

“Hey! It was good to see you today. I was hoping we’d get a chance to catch up—I wanted to hear what you’re up to! Hope all is well…” Pretty benign, but I felt a flutter as I hit Send. Not long after, he wrote back. Apparently he was going to be in LA the following weekend helping a friend write a script. We made plans to meet.

“I’ll take you to Soho House,” he said.

“Fancy,” I replied.

So here we are, pre-Soho House, sitting at the bar of Night + Market. When we finally get the waitress’s attention, I order a lychee and vodka cocktail and he gets a Thai iced tea (he’s not drinking because he challenged himself to stop and now he’s seeing how long he can keep it up.) Apparently he likes to challenge himself—he tells me how he enjoys running up the incredibly steep hills of San Francisco, where he currently lives. He orders Pad Thai and I joke that he’s having “the white man’s special.”

“People have said I’m the whitest person they know,” he smiles. “Also the straightest.”

I order fried pigtails and he asks, “Wait, are you seriously ordering that?”

As an icebreaker, I ask him what his perception of me was when I was twelve.

“That in fifteen years you’d be hot,” he jokes. “No, you were bold. You called me and asked if you could be in this silly little student film I was making.”

“I had a crush on you, you know.”

“Really?” He seems completely shocked by this admission and it suddenly occurs to me that I wasn’t on his radar at all. This might sound obvious, considering the significant age gap between us, but when you have such an intense crush on someone as a child, it’s hard to imagine they don’t feel the same way. At least for me it was hard to imagine. I always assumed my crushes were reciprocated. Maybe because one of my mom’s big lessons to me growing up was that all the boys were in love with me and all the mean girls were just jealous.

As we talk, I’m struck by the fact that I don’t know this person at all—I don’t think we’ve ever actually had a real conversation. I had thought he’d be sophisticated and academic, and had even been nervous about coming off as not smart enough. This fear is quickly assuaged.

Childhood Crush lived in New York for eight years and now lives in San Francisco, and yet he is still someone who uses the word “fag” in all seriousness. (He only does this once, which is enough.) He also calls women “chicks”—I bring this to his attention and he seems to not realize he’s doing it. He calls me “dude” a lot and I’m reminded of Gaffer Guy, who used to call me “man.” This is not the only aspect of Childhood Crush that reminds me of Gaffer Guy. He talks a lot about his last girlfriend who dumped him out of nowhere, or at least that’s how he puts it. He qualifies this by saying, “I neglected her, I didn’t pay enough attention.” I can tell by the way his eyes dart around the room that this is probably true.

Mostly what I enjoy about his company is that we come from the same small town so he gets references that no one in my contemporary circle of friends would ever understand, and he knows all the same people from my childhood. He tells me about how he lost his virginity to this beautiful girl I idolized when I was a kid. He explains how she summoned him one day so he stole a rowboat and rowed across the channel from our town to the neighboring beach town, and then pretended he wasn’t a virgin when they had sex for the first time. He was thirteen. She was sixteen. We talk about the other kids we grew up with, about the ones who are married with babies now, the ones who went to prison, the friends of his I also had crushes on.

“Did you ever consummate any of them?” He asks.
"Unfortunately, no."
We talk about what a unique childhood we had because of where we’re from. Boys and girls played outside together, we biked everywhere, we climbed trees, we smoked weed. He expresses that he could see raising kids there. I’m not sure if I could go back.

Inevitably, we start talking about sex and it’s soon revealed that we’re both pretty big sluts. He tells me about how he had a threesome with his last girlfriend and a friend of hers.

“A woman?” I ask.

He scoffs, “That’s the only kind of threesome as far as I’m concerned. Two guys and a girl, I don’t know what that is.” I ask if he’s homophobic and he tells me that he’s not, he doesn’t care what other people do, but the thought of having his penis next to another guy’s absolutely disgusts him.

“Is that coming from you or the culture, though?” He seriously thinks about this.

“No, it’s coming from me,” he says finally.

He tells me that when his girlfriend went out of town, she told him he could fuck her friend. And he did. On Skype, so his girlfriend could watch and give him instructions. He beams.

“Yeah, I don’t know how I feel about monogamy,” I say, “I felt really different about all that stuff the last time I was in a relationship so it’s hard to know how I would be this time. I don’t know if it's for me anymore.”
“Well, I’ll tell you right now, I don’t want any chick I’m with to be fucking other dudes. No guy wants that.”

“So, you’re allowed to fuck around, but she’s not?” I ask.

He shrugs. He asks how long I’ve been single.

“Four years.”

“Why, no one will have you?” He laughs out loud.

Wanting to match his threesome story, I tell him about the Sex Club in Portland. He seems very interested and asks a lot of questions, but I also get the sense it’s making him uncomfortable hearing me talk so frankly about sex. I somehow feel like he doesn’t think it’s cool for women to be as big of sluts as he is. Regardless, I find myself unable to stop telling him things. I don’t know how to justify this except to say that the fact that he’s known me since I was twelve and that he’s from my hometown makes me feel oddly comfortable around him. I tell him about how I cheated on my first boyfriend with a 43 year old man who had a kid. He seems to deduce from this disclosure that I am incapable of being faithful and asks if I “cheated on [my] last boyfriend a bunch.” When I say that no, I never did, he doesn’t appear to believe me. He mentions cheating on a past girlfriend (the top model no less!) but concludes that she was probably cheating on him too.

He makes several joking remarks alluding to the fact that I’m a slut, but when I reveal my insecurity that he’s gotten the wrong idea about me, he says, “Girls are always so worried about that.”

“Yeah because guys are allowed to be as big of sluts as they want but if you’re a woman and you talk openly about sex, you get shamed for it.” He agrees that this double standard is “fucked up.”

He catches on pretty quickly that I’m a big sex-positive feminist, and seems wary of this. He says he grew up surrounded by feminists and it’s not that he doesn’t believe in it, but he doesn’t seem to understand quite what it means.

“You know all it means is equality between men and women, right?” I try to clarify.

“Yeah yeah, I know,” he says, sounding tired.

We leave Night + Market and walk to Soho House, where he is a longtime member. We squeeze through the incredibly loud, schmoozy crowd in the main bar and head into the quieter, plant-filled dining room to sit on one of the couches with views overlooking the whole city. He has a nonalcoholic beer and I’m sipping a Campari and soda slower than I would be if I weren’t drinking alone. At this point in the night, now on my second cocktail, I’m in the mood for some heavy canoodling. Unfortunately, any sense of flirtation we might have established in the restaurant seems to dissolve the moment we step into Soho House. He seems to have pivoted into “workin it” mode and, as his eyes scan the short skirts that surround us, I find it hard to keep his attention. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to come here after all.

Even as we sink side-by-side into the couch, I can’t tell if this is a date or a business meeting. Ostensibly, one of the reasons we got together was to talk about work, and Soho House feels perpetually like the place you go to “make a deal.” But if we were going to talk business, I feel like it should have happened earlier in the night. I mean, we’ve already established that we’re both sluts and I had a crush on him when I was twelve. What more information does one need to get this thing going?

Instead of leaning over to kiss me, he decides it’s time to start telling me about The Biz. He proceeds to monologue at me for a good twenty minutes about film festivals, sponsorships, how to get your movie funded, commercial viability, blah blah blah. I stare into space as he talks, leaning back on the couch, and consider closing my eyes. I play a game of how long I can go without saying a word to see if he’ll notice. He doesn’t. I’m not exactly sure why he’s telling me all this, but he seems to think it’s stuff I need to know—it might very well be useful information but I’m too bored and confused to really listen. While he’s talking, I decide to give up on the idea that my 12-year-old self is going to have any satisfaction tonight, and resolve myself that it’s time to go home. I finish my drink and say, “Shall we get out of here?”

He wants to show me the members-only screening room so we walk along a couple of abandoned corridors and enter a small-ish David Lynch-esque room filled with red velvet arm chairs and chests full of cashmere blankets. We lean back in the chairs facing the screen and talk some more, and I wonder why we haven’t called it a night yet. We both seem to be waiting for something to happen, and for whatever reason neither one of us apparently wants to leave the other’s company. I consider reaching out and taking his hand, just to do something different. But his energy is strangely uninviting. We just sit there, enjoying the quiet of the room, until another couple comes in and we leave.

As we walk back to my car, we pass a Jaguar dealership, and like a little kid, he jumps up on the cement block and bounces excitedly. “Jaguars!”

I laugh,  watching his tight, compact little ass move in his jeans. We get in my car and he asks, “what now?” I just assumed I was taking him back to his friend’s place, considering how he’s been saying he’s tired and he seems quite bored. Again, I’m reminded of Gaffer Guy.

“Wanna go up to Mulholland and look at the view?” He asks.

“Aren’t you tired?”

“I’m tired but life is short,” he says.

I laugh. “You should make a T-shirt.”

“I’m gonna put that on Facebook,” he announces and takes out his phone.

 I find myself irrationally happy that the night will not end here.

We get up to Mulholland and I park at a lookout with a view that’s blocked by bushes. He leans way back in his seat so it’s almost horizontal, and stares at the ceiling of my car. I do the same.

“What are we doing?” I ask, laughing.

He closes his eyes. Eventually I decide to make a move, so I reach over and start stroking his hand. He smiles, keeping his eyes closed. After awhile, I ask if he’s asleep. He wakes up. I wonder why he hasn’t tried to hit on me all night, I wonder what we’re doing up here. I take his hand and put it on my breast. This enlivens him somewhat and he starts stroking me. He gets his fingers under my shirt and pinches my nipple. He tries to undo my bra but can’t from this angle so, in one quick move, he swoops over me, unclips my bra, and lies back down. He fondles my breasts, but when I glance over he still looks like he’s sleeping. Eventually, as though resigning himself to the task, he leans over me and starts sucking on my nipple. He doesn’t try to kiss me and I wonder if he’s got a Pretty Woman thing about kissing. Too intimate for this seedy car encounter with someone he remembers as a child. Finally he does kiss me. And then his hand is down my pants and he’s fingering me. Then his cock comes out and I’m sucking on it.

“Do you want me to come in your mouth or fuck you?” He asks.

“I want you to fuck me.” Duh.

We move into the back seat and try to find a position that works.

“It has to be from behind,” I say and pull down my pants. A condom materializes and I appreciate that he’s taking care of that so I don’t have to worry about it for once. He fucks me for a bit, awkwardly trying to position himself. The windows steam up and it gets very hot and sweaty. He stops suddenly, throwing the car door open.

“I need to take a break,” he busts out of the car with his jeans around his ankles.

“It’s so hot and cramped in there,” he says, pulling up his pants. “I mean, not like I have a cramp, it’s just small.”

“So you didn’t throw your back out then?” I tease him.

We return to the car and I unearth my purse from the wreckage of the back seat to retrieve one of my Skyn condoms. We get into position again, but this time it’s even more challenging and he’s losing steam.

“I’ll just finger bang you for awhile,” he says.

“Let me get on top of you,” I move around, but he’s already out of the car. Too uncomfortable and needing air. This time we don’t continue. We laugh about what a high school moment this was—fucking in the car at make out point. I lament wasting one of my good condoms.

I drive him home and pull up in front of his friend’s house. He still doesn’t get out of the car. We keep talking and then he shows me some YouTube videos of Chris Rock doing standup. He thinks I won’t like some of them because I’m a “wretched feminist” (his words). I give him a head massage as we sit there—he still seems tense. He closes his eyes and enjoys it. I tell him that I’m trying to stop attracting men-children, but I guess I have this maternal instinct that continues to attract them despite myself. I tease him about dating younger women. We both know we have a problem. He says he’s never dated anyone his own age, that that would make him uncomfortable. I tell him it’s probably because he’d have to stop calling them “chicks.” It’s after four a.m. and we’re still sitting there. I wonder why. At some point, he says, “why am I looking at YouTube?” And he leans over to kiss me. It escalates. I suck him off and he comes. He smiles at me as I wipe my mouth, “Well, you’re not twelve anymore.” I tell him I need to go to sleep—he still doesn’t seem to want to leave my car, even after the blowjob. I wonder what more he wants from me tonight. He doesn’t seem to want anything, except to not be alone. I suddenly realize he is painfully lonely, and it makes me feel for him despite his abrasive personality. Underneath it all, he’s so vulnerable, and I’m still drawn to him despite myself. Eventually I say, “you have to get out of my car now.” And he does. We kiss goodnight and I drive home, finally getting to sleep at five in the morning.