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

“How’s your love life?”

“Not as exciting as yours, Grandma.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah, we do,” I told her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Girl Whisperer

I was just going to write about how I'm masturbating a lot. I sent a rough draft to my friend Sadie.
“What's up with Gaffer Guy?” She asked. “You're not having sex anymore?”
I realized I had skipped over this little detail. That I wasn't much interested in talking about it. It's more of the same, except that now we're not even having sex. At all. And even I'm getting bored of the charade.

Our last 3 exchanges, initiated by him:

8 days ago, GG invited me to a party at his house that I had zero intention of attending. At 11:30pm, my phone buzzed.
GG: “Where you at fucker?”
Me: “Hi fucker!”
GG: “So I guess you ain't coming. Word up.”
Me: “You having fun?”
GG: “Yeah. All 40 of us are.”
Me: “40 of you?! Whatcha doin texting me??”
Felt really good about this response. He promptly followed with this:
GG: “Because I've got 3 horny single guys you can hook up with.”

4 days ago:
GG: “I want a goddamn beer.”
Me: “So order one.”
GG: “Yeah. I am.”
Me: emoticon thumbs up!
GG: “I'm gonna order 2 and hope someone I know shows up and pays!”
Me: “Good luck with that!”
VERY proud of myself for not getting dressed, putting on makeup, going to meet him, and spending the night trying to get him to fuck me.

3 days ago, I saw him hanging out with a new girl at an unrelated event. I was with another guy (my most recent potential sex friend whom I have only made out with thus far), and not that interested in playing across-the-room eye games with GG. I left before him, drove home, put on my Pjs, and just as I was removing my makeup, I received a call.
GG: “Where you at?”
Me: “Home.”
GG: “I'm going to get a couple beers. You can come or not, I don't care either way.”
Me: “Okay...?”
He mumbled some other nonsense and hung up. I put my phone down and wiped the makeup off my eyes.

So, that's what's been happening. Sometimes he comes by my work and we have tea time in the afternoon, and we don't talk about anything of substance or what's going on between us. We act as though we haven't spoken or texted since the last time we had tea time. It's better this way – we don't fight as much. Sometimes I enjoy his company in these platonic meetings because he drinks tea instead of beer and he's less of a dick. Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing there – what do I want out of this? The other day, we laughed as we watched a tiny little snail make its way across the concrete between us. I took a photo with his finger for scale.

So, I guess GG and I are “just friends” now. And I've decided to stop sleeping with my ex, and also still just flirting with my new potential sex friend (he's got a very busy schedule and – ahem – a teenage son). So, I'm not getting much action. And I masturbate a lot.

I've heard of this phenomenon whereby some people – albeit usually teenage boys and middle aged men - masturbate too often and end up losing interest in the real thing. I mean, if I can get myself off quickly and efficiently in under 5 minutes, why go through the whole rigamarole of actually having sex with another person – which often requires work to organize in the first place, potentially takes over 30 minutes of my time, and might very likely end in no orgasms for me and a very sticky bottom...  Why not skip all the beating around the bush?

And, to be quite honest, my pearl rabbit is better at sex than a lot of the guys I've slept with in the last couple years. A LOT better. An evening spent with my rabbit and a nice James Deen flick is an evening well spent in my book.

The other night, I was in the midst of a steamy little carseat make-out session with my new potential sex friend (the one with the kid – I will call him DILF), when he had to leave to go pick up his son at baby mama's house. So, there I was – all hot and bothered with nowhere to go. I resisted the relentless temptation to hunt down GG, or the nagging thought that my ex is readily available and very effective at getting me off – but rather than crawl down either of those equally complicated rabbit holes, I decided instead to crawl into bed with my rabbit.

When I'm with my rabbit, I have to try not to come. This is something that I don't recall ever having from sex. I don't know about most women, but for me having an orgasm from sex usually takes a lot of concentration and is not something that simply overcomes me uncontrollably. I wish it would. With my rabbit, the vibrating ears can make me come in like 2 seconds, so I've gotta be careful to drag out the climax for as long as I possibly can. If this level of intensity exists in sex, will the real Christian Grey please stand up??

I know the reason GG often doesn't want to have sex is because he's worried he can't please me. And I think he's haunted by the fact that he's never given me an orgasm. He doesn't quite believe me when I say I don't care. He's even apologized after sex for being a “dud.” I'm sure he'd rather just masturbate... guilt-free.

I thought about taking you through the ins and outs (haha) of my masturbation sessions but my friend Sadie reminded me that masturbating is not that interesting. There's no conflict. As any writer knows, if there's no conflict, there's no story, and there's no conflict when I'm fucking myself. I know I'm going to get off – there's no tension there. And there's no mystery about what my partner might do – because my partner is an inanimate object whose actions I control. No expectations or disappointments, no reciprocation or guilt trips. Just pure pleasure. And pleasure without tension does not provide nearly the same relief.

I felt so great about myself a week ago because I really thought I would never text him again.
“I'm over it,” I declared to anyone who would listen. They all looked skeptical but encouraging. I really thought I was done. Then, I threw my girlfriend's bachelorette party. I drank a lot of Greyhounds and watched a lot of sexy burlesque dancers writhing on poles... and my fuzzy head got the better of me. I reached for my phone.
Me: “Watching burlesque... Putting me in the mood...”
Silence. I waited a half hour. Still no response. I took a photo of one of the dancers in full splits, gripping the pole between her legs, and sent it to him. A totally irresistible and boner-inducing shot. Or so I thought.
My phone buzzed.
GG: “This guy probably cares. Text him.”
Followed by a shared contact, his friend JC whom I'd talked to the other night at the event.
JC had asked about what was happening between me and GG. I told him it was over, that I didn't like the way he treated women. Even as I heard the words “we don't deserve it” come out of my mouth, I knew I was full of shit. JC listened intently, then responded remorselessly:
“You love it. He's the girl whisperer. You don't want a nice guy.”

I knew he was referring to himself. I could tell he was interested in me, and also a much nicer guy than GG. But he was right, I wasn't interested. Because I like the conflict – as frustrating as GG is, he always gives me something to push up against. The tension keeps building and building and I'm still waiting for that sweet relief. In my brain, I know it will never come. Maybe if it did I would lose interest. That's what's fucked up about this whole thing, and my dirty little secret – if I got what I want I probably wouldn't want it anymore. Oh well, at least he makes for a good story.

Faking It

“You’re just not a very sexual person.”  My first boyfriend said this to me once.  After three years of us being together.  By this point, I had already cheated on him with a 46 year old bartender who worked with me at this beachside bed and breakfast over the summer.  I was 19; he had a 6 year old son.  I never told my boyfriend and I didn’t feel guilty.  My mom told me it didn’t count as cheating if we didn’t have sex.  We only made out a bunch and I put my tongue on the tip of his penis… then chickened out.

My boyfriend and I were in college and living together, and he had boners 24 hours a day.  There was a time when I enjoyed his sex drive, but after three years with him, it became a chore.  Every day he’d ask if I’d “kiss him” (meaning his cock) and when I couldn’t muster the energy to politely oblige, when I was “too tired” or whatever, he would beat off in the “jerk off rag” he kept under the bed. Sex became more and more unappealing.  Sometimes I felt like a 50s housewife, gritting my teeth and staring at the ceiling until he finished.  When he went down on me, naïve college girl that I was, I would ask if it “tasted bad.”  He would say not if he kept to the outside part and didn’t put his tongue “too deep inside.” 

It hadn’t always been this way.  When we were first together, I couldn’t get enough of him and we would have sex constantly, whenever and wherever we possibly could: in his sportscar parked outside the restaurant where we were headed for dinner, in the women’s locker room at the public pool, in his little sister’s bedroom while the rest of his family watched The Simpsons Movie.  That was before I started faking it.  Not orgasms, mind you.  I didn’t fake those, I simply stopped having them and he stopped caring.  I was faking the fact that I was still in love with him.

I recently found myself in a heated conversation with a couple girlfriends, spurned on by my latest blog posting.  After a lively discussion of orgasms, masturbation, and fantasies, we found ourselves talking about “faking it” (orgasms, that is), and we all lowered our voices.  One friend admitted to faking it fairly frequently.  I asked why.  She smiled sheepishly.

“I don’t know,” she said.

I was surprised by this admission, because I myself never feel the need to fake orgasms.  If I’m not gonna come, I say the words “I’m not going to come,” and that’s that.  I usually know when it’s not happening and I don’t want the guy to bang away all night if I already know he’s wasting his time.  In my experience, most guys are pretty understanding about this.  With one notable exception.  My second boyfriend, the lovely one I’ve mentioned in previous posts.  Yes, he’s my ex and yes we still have sex.  And he absolutely refuses to come if I don’t.  I must have sensed this from the first moment I met him, because the one and only time I can ever remember faking an orgasm was the first night we were together. 

We had literally just met.  We were watching a play and talking through the entire thing, much to the chagrin of the entire cast and audience, I’m sure.  But we just couldn’t help ourselves.  We were enthralled, there was all this amazing chemistry going on, and I’m sure we both couldn’t wait to get the F out of the theatre to somewhere private where we could consummate our lust.  He asked me for a ride home (smooth move), and I gave it to him.  Before I knew it, we were smoking a joint and making out in my car.  And then we were parked in his mother’s garage, making out and getting under each other’s clothing.  When he started lowering the seat down and was headed face-first into my crotch, I was like whoa whoa whoa, why don’t we go inside?  We made it this far.  Reluctantly, he took me into his mother’s apartment and back into what appeared to be a guest bedroom with a sofa-bed that he pulled out.  Did he live there?  At this moment, I wasn’t sure.  Nor did I care.  Things were getting hot and heavy and I was ready to go. 

“Do you have a condom?”

“No.”

Fuck.

“We can do other stuff,” he said, pushing me down on the bed.

He started kissing down my body.  I’m thinking, oh fuck, I definitely have not shaved in at least three months.  This is not good.  I’m also thinking about my first boyfriend’s obvious not-thrilled-ness with going down there.  So I’m nervous.  I don’t have a lot of experience at this moment in time.  I’ve had a couple rebound fucks, but like 3 ½ guys have gone down on me ever, and never to completion, so I’m not holding out much hope. 

“Mmm.  You taste so good.”  He’s slurping away, groaning enthusiastically, apparently just enjoying the heck out of himself.  I actually believe him too.  I start to relax, start to enjoy myself too.  I lay back and allow a couple soft groans to escape.  He comes up for air to hand me a pillow, giving me a cocky wink.

“In case you need to be loud.”

I already know I’m not going to need to be loud.  Because I know there’s no fucking way he’s going to make me come this way.  No matter how good he is (and he’s gooooooood), no matter how much I’m into him and how much I want to, I’m just not comfortable with this, or myself, in this way yet.  So, I fake it.  Don’t get me wrong, we both give it a valiant effort, I’m sure his tongue gets sore, we’re there for awhile, and then I take the pillow, shove it over my face, and build my moans to a satisfying (and convincing) crescendo.   

Why did I do it?  Because I wanted to reward him for working so hard and for being such a good guy, because I was young and naïve and didn’t know how to express myself sexually, and because I knew he would never stop unless I did.

When I was done faking it, he emerged, wiping his mouth and smiling at me. 

“Have you ever come from that before?”

I smiled coyly, shaking my head.  I could see the pride and pleasure in his eyes.  He kissed me.  I pushed him back on the bed.

“Now I wanna do that for you.”

And I went to work.  But it didn’t feel like work, like it always did with my first boyfriend.  I felt really happy giving pleasure to this sweet boy who made me feel delicious.  My first boyfriend was a fan of saying that giving someone an orgasm was a kind of control, like it was a bad thing.  I think this was his big excuse for not doling out his fair share.  God knows I doled out plenty for him, and I didn’t feel that in control.

I had never told my second boyfriend that I faked it that first time we were together.  Because I never have since and I knew it would hurt him, and he took so much pride in giving me my first oral sex-induced orgasm that night.  It doesn’t matter to me but I knew it would matter to him.  I had to tell him recently because I knew I wanted to write this blog and I knew he would read it.  The disappointment in his voice was palpable.  Even now, 5 years later, he feels terrible about that lost orgasm.  Why does he care so much?  I don’t know, because he did give me my first orgasm-via-oral-sex, and he was the guy that taught me I didn’t need to have sex three times in order to come once.  He got me down to a 1-to-1 ratio.  And he made me feel like my vagina was beautiful and delicious.  So, not to be a sappy asshole, but he really is the last person who should feel bad about how he treats the ladies.

And it seems like a lot of girls are faking it a lot more than I am.  I actually am starting tounderstand why guys are so afraid of/intimidated by the female orgasm.  Because it’s fucking tricky!  And it’s different for everyone.  And, in my experience, most guys don’t have the balls to be like “So, can you come from sex alone or do you need oral or what’s the deal?”  And most girls are too timid to be like “I can’t come from sex so you’re gonna have to eat me out for awhile.”  So we all need to man-up here people (side note: why isn’t “woman-up” an expression??).  Actually, let’s make it one.  It’s time to woman-up here people.  And learn to communicate.  Otherwise, we’re destined to constantly be in a battle of the sexes that goes something like this: “He can’t make me come!” versus “Why won't she come?”