Rejection

I’ve got rejection on the brain. Last weekend, I really wanted to have sex. I had recently reconnected with this hot bartender/circus performer whom I used to have casual sex with. Well, we did it twice. Back then, I dubbed him my “Sunday fuck,” but on the second Sunday we were already doing a “quickie” and the following week, when I tried to booty call him, he texted back, “Well, I don’t know. I started seeing someone so we’re going to have to chill on that for a bit.” This guy is like catnip for me. Not only does he have a beautiful face and incredibly tight ripped body, I love kissing him, I love his smell, I love his cock. Needless to say, when he shut it down, I was disappointed. Also, a little embarrassed. I sustained a bit of an ego bruise on that one, believing that his “seeing someone” was just a way of getting rid of me, that I was getting too clingy coming to the bar every week to stare at him. I never returned to his bar after that—it had been my local favorite. I also moved out of the area (unrelated), so that helped me forget about him.

Then, a couple weeks ago, I asked my Best Guy Friend if he wanted to go to dinner at this particular bar, for old times sake. He actually had been the one to originally point out Bartender to me, and at the time I declared him “not my type.” Now, basically every man I’m attracted to looks like him: short-ish, lean muscular body, dark hair, beautiful eyes. Best Guy Friend knows what I want before I do.

We arrive at the bar and, sure enough, he’s working. I catch his eye and smile. I thought it would be awkward for us to see one another again, and I had mentally prepared myself. But he looks genuinely pleased. He gives me a cute, playful little wave and asks how I’m doing. He catches my eye several times throughout the night as my friend and I eat dinner. I wonder if he thinks we’re dating. I can’t decide if this is the message I want to send or not. We leave at a reasonable time and Bartender looks, dare I say, a little disappointed to see me go.

The moment we leave, I want to text him. He looked so hot and I want to see if I can weasel my way back into his good graces. I’m starting to think maybe he was actually seeing someone back then, that he wasn’t lying to me after all. He looked thrilled to see me—a quality I don’t usually associate with this person who keeps his emotions pretty bottled. I text him, “It was good to see your face,” which I think is flirty and neutral all at the same time. He doesn’t write back that night, and I don’t care as much as I might have last time around.

The next day, I’m still hanging with Best Guy Friend (we have sexless adult sleepovers; our friends always want to know if we bang—we don't, he’s like my brother), when I hear back from Bartender. He says, “Good to see you too. You look like you’re doing well.” Polite and decidedly non-flirty. But he did add a second sentence when one would suffice. My friend tells me, if I want to fuck him, I should put sex on the table. He tells me to write the following, and so of course I do: “Yep. Not getting laid enough but besides that doing good.” I squeal as I press Send. I don’t expect to hear anything back. Within minutes, I do. “Lol. Maybe we can figure something out on that end.” I’m so excited I could do cartwheels. I scream and throw my arms around Best Guy Friend. He smiles at me, “You’re welcome.”

I don’t hear from Bartender the whole week. Which is fine. I’m busy too, and I have my period, and I figure I’m the one that needs to have sex so I’m going to have to be the one to orchestrate it—it’s always been this way with us anyway, I’ve always wanted it more. Friday night, it’s Halloween and I decide instead of getting dressed up as a slutty version of something, going out and getting trashed, that I’ll stay in with Best Guy Friend and watch scary movies, drink beer, and eat pizza & candy. We watch the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (terrible), the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake (better), and The Conjuring (fucking terrifying). We order two large pizzas from Papa John’s, eat peanut M&Ms, Fun Size Mounds and Snickers, and drink Hefeweizen. It’s a great night. The Conjuring gives me nightmares, but it’s worth it. We sleep in the same bed (we always do), and no we don’t have sex, or even spoon (as my roommate specifically wants to know when I return home).

The next day, I’m horny as fuck (unrelated to my adult sleepover), and decide I need to have sex tonight. I don’t think Bartender is working, so I figure tonight is the night to attempt this fuck buddy orchestration. Best Guy Friend encourages me to wait until three to set it up. We take the dog on a long walk around the neighborhood in the deliciously crisp Fall-ish weather. We have a long debate/argument involving Feminism and Law of Attraction and the viral video of the woman walking for ten hours through New York City and getting catcalled 100 times. We get in the hot tub and talk about 2014 and how it has planted a lot of seeds we’re looking forward to harvesting in 2015. By two, I can’t wait any longer. Based on my mood, which is more desperate/needy than flirty/fuck me, Best Guy Friend helps me formulate the following text: “You still down to help me out with that little problem I’m having?” I press Send and wait. Best Guy Friend and I end our extended date and I head home. I feel very unmotivated and decide to take the day off, not do any work and just chillax with myself. It’s easier said than done in the state I’m in. I keep checking my phone every five minutes, wanting desperately to hear back from him. I stalk him on Facebook and see that he’s “Active." Meaning he got my text and ignored it. I knew that anyway, but now it’s been confirmed. At five, as the sun is already beginning to set, I decide to take a walk around the reservoir by my house. I need some fresh air. I text Best Guy Friend, “Still haven’t heard from the little fucker,” with an angry emoticon.

The walk cheers me up and I stop at my favorite coffee shop for a cappuccino. I’m enjoying the Fall-ish weather and my new sweater from Grandma. Almost finished with my walk, I decide to go see Birdman tonight and, on a whim, I text the Hot Guy I fucked at my party, inviting him along. Regardless of the fact that I haven’t seen him since, he’s made zero effort to reach out, and even ignored my last text, I still think there’s a chance he’ll respond. He’s a movie buff after all and this might be exactly what he wants to do on a Saturday evening. Even if he’s not interested in me romantically, I feel we could be friends. I don't hear from him either. I decide to text someone I know will respond, because my ego needs a little stroking. I text the Music Manager from my party—the one I made out with and then ditched for Hot Guy. I ask if he wants to go see the movie with me. Nothing. I take a bath and listen to Dido and feel sorry for myself. I’m fully prepared to go see Birdman by myself. Fuck it. I’m a grown ass woman. But my roommate says she’ll come with me, so we have a lady date instead. Which is lovely and overdue, and fuck these men anyway.

Later that night, I hear back from Music Manager who says he’s been away from his phone, but with more notice he totally would have come with me. He says we should hang soon. Still haven’t heard from Bartender or Hot Guy. Typical. The two guys I want most are MIA. I had told Best Guy Friend that if I didn’t hear from Bartender, I would hit up the little Jewish Man I met on OKCupid. At this point, I’m too disheartened to pursue even the easy lay.

On Sunday, I wake up still feeling shitty about the whole situation. I take my phone off Airplane mode and really hope I’ve heard from either one of these boys. Nope. I understand with Hot Guy, he’s doing the Fade Away. He never gave me any indication he was interested at all, and the Fade Away is a move I’m familiar with. But that’s no excuse for Bartender. He was the one who fucking planted the hope of a booty call in my head in the first place. I don’t understand. Even if he's just busy, at least fucking text me back goddammit. I decide to leave my phone on Airplane mode for the whole day so I won’t be tempted to check it every five seconds, and whereas leaving it off should be a relief, it proves tortuous. I go to a yoga class, make myself a healthy lunch, eat some Fun Size candy leftover from Halloween, watch the first episode of the depressing new British TV show Happy Valley, and fall asleep for a couple hours in the middle of the day. At four PM, I can’t take it any longer, and the clock has fallen back so the sun will set in an hour. I decide to walk around the reservoir, again, and I call Best Guy Friend on my way.

I complain about the rejection, about my bruised ego. He tells me it’s probably not as simple as Bartender not liking me anymore. “Life is never simple,” he says. He tells me I have no idea what he’s going through, so I need to stop speculating about it. “He probably got your text and he was in the middle of something, and he didn’t know how to respond, and then he put it down and forgot about it.” This I don’t understand—guys’ ability to just forget about girls like this. As my roommate says, “They’re goldfish. They swim around their little bowl and they’re like ‘ooh a castle,’ and they just keep swimming and when they come around again: ‘ooh a castle.’” I wish I could be a fucking goldfish. It’s a lot of work to be a woman.

All of the young single women I know do this. And it’s not that we have nothing else going on in our lives—we have jobs and career ambitions, and hobbies, and friends, and a lot of shit to do. But we still find the time and energy to obsess over some fucking guy who probably isn’t even worth our time. In fact, I find that my smartest, most ambitious girlfriends are even more likely to do this. Maybe it’s that we know what we want and we go for it, whether it be sex or career. And we don’t give up until we get it. And it’s just frustrating when what you want is another person because you can’t control how they respond to your wanting, and the resistance they put up makes you work even harder to get it. And the energy of that probably pushes them away even more. 

Despite this incredible amount of distraction and energy spent, we still manage to get our shit done, and we’re a pretty accomplished bunch. It makes me crazy to think how successful we could be if we didn’t get so distracted by dudes. For sure we’d be running the world. Women are masters of multi-tasking after all. Imagine if men focused this much on women, they’d never get anything done.

Best Guy Friend encourages me to lift some weights or something, to get some testosterone in my system. I joke that I should just start taking hormone injections. But I actually think this would be a great product for women—a hormone to shut down this part of our brains that emotionally attaches to the penis we fuck. Something that would allow us to treat sex more like men. We have it, it’s fun, but it’s not so serious and if we don’t get it, there are a hundred other things we could do that would interest us as much if not more. “Sex is great and all, but if we don’t get it, we’ll just go and play video games and that’s just as fun,” says Best Guy Friend. Really? Fucking video games?

My best friend Sadie was going through a similar torment a couple weeks ago where she was obsessing over this guy and this sequence of Lost in Translation texts sent between them. I encouraged her to "just say what you want" and "stop playing games." Not sure why I'm unequivocally incapable of taking my own medicine on this point. I guess I'll just blame biology.

On Monday, I decide I can't not say anything. So I text Bartender, "You failed at being my booty call this weekend." With a winky face emoticon so he knows this is to be read with a light tone and not interpreted as "I spent all weekend obsessing about you." Because that would be disturbing. He writes back right away: "Haha. I was just thinking about that while I was walking up my stairs. This weekend was crazy. What's your schedule like this week?" If only he had just said that on Saturday, I wouldn't have spent Sunday being a crazy person. If only he knew how crazy of a person I actually am. If only I would learn a lesson from this. If only.

Standing with Lena

I'm very disturbed by this recent media/Twitter storm against Lena Dunham regarding the depiction of her childhood sexual curiosity in her new book Not That Kind of Girl. The jump to call her a “sexual predator” for masturbating next to her little sister lying in the same bed, or for looking into her baby sister’s vagina (when she was seven!), is in my opinion grotesque. Somehow I feel like if Lena were a boy, this would not be considered such a shameful offense. The fact that she was a little girl curious about a vagina seems too much for our society to handle, and this I find really sad and upsetting. Even the fact that her curiosity about her sister’s vagina could be misconstrued as sexual in any way is frankly ridiculous.

It makes me reflect on my own childhood and how I was taught from a very young age to have no shame about my sexuality. Whatever I did or asked about, my parents indulged, never shaming me or telling me I was wrong or gross for thinking or feeling a certain way. And I feel like Lena’s upbringing was maybe similar in this way. And so she grew up feeling shameless about her sexuality, which has molded her into who she is today and given us, her audience, the body of work we love in Girls, Tiny Furniture, and now her memoirs.

I’d been working on writing a piece about how my mom bought me a vibrator when I was twelve. This is one of the examples from my childhood that I feel shaped me into the confident, sex-positive woman I am today. Now I find myself questioning if the public would have a different view. I wonder if my honest account of this event could potentially bring down a shitstorm of judgment on me and my mom—judgment that I know actually has nothing to do with me or how I feel about how I was brought up, and has everything to do with other people’s disturbing cultural denial of female sexuality. Because Lena’s sister Grace has clearly not been deeply scarred by these events. They have a wonderful healthy relationship, they’re clearly very close, and she is the first to defend Lena on Twitter, citing heteronormativity as the reason people are up in arms against her.

I just can’t believe the extent to which this has been blown out of proportion. Again, I reflect on my own upbringing. My parents coming to tuck me into bed at night, butt naked. My mom’s diaphragm sitting on the edge of the bathtub. The fact that she bought me a vibrator when I was twelve. To me, these aspects of my growing up naturalized sex and nudity in a way that’s made me more comfortable with my body and my sexuality than most of the women I know, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. The fact that other people might then take my experience and put their own prejudice on it and tell me it’s wrong or sick or that someone should be punished for it—well, I can’t imagine what that must feel like and my heart goes out to Lena.

I was a very sexually curious and precocious child, and the stories I could tell that might be misconstrued are endless. I remember one time my godfather was babysitting me and I took off all my clothes to show him my naked body, and he looked uncomfortable and told me to go get dressed. When I was seven, I flashed my vagina at my best friend’s older brother and he told his mom on me, and I was sent home. In kindergarten, I gave my little male classmate a box of crayons to show me his penis—I had forgotten about this episode until I saw him again in high school and he wouldn’t talk to me for this reason. My best friend and I used to take off our pants and take turns sniffing each other’s butts. One time I kissed my mom on the lips and stuck my tongue in her mouth.

Yes, there’s no older person taking advantage of younger person in any of these stories, but they all involve a child’s curiosity about sex and bodies. And I think what’s really bothering people is not the harmless childish things Lena did to her little sister, but the fact that a little girl might have sexual feelings or curiosity at all. Somehow, as a society, we’ve tricked ourselves into forgetting these moments in our childhoods when we first started having sexy feelings, or we suddenly started paying attention to the junk between our legs—somehow, this is still taboo.

To me, this incident suggests a much larger conversation we need to have, as a culture. Sex education is still not taught in many schools throughout the country, girls continue to be ignorant about their vaginas, sex and nudity are still considered shameful topics of conversation. We can stop beating up Lena Dunham now. We’ve got more important work to do. 

The Pussy Knows

He shows up to Urth Cafe an hour late wearing a shirt that says THE PUSSY KNOWS. I can smell his breath from across the table—hot and musty—and his shirt is damp when we hug.

“I’ve got so much energy flowing through me right now.”

He has just come from a seminar on the female orgasm. On his OKCupid profile, he is a self-proclaimed “female orgasm expert.” Obviously, this is why I’m here.

We talk about Law of Attraction (which he doesn’t believe in), and about how people are much more intuitive than they realize (which we agree on). To demonstrate this principle, when the food runner comes to our table carrying a slice of coconut custard pie and a turkey burger, my date insists he guess which belongs to whom.

“Come on, man, you know the answer.”

The food runner looks flustered and continues to repeat the names of the items, as if we haven’t heard.

Eventually, Orgasm Man gives up and sighs, “the pie is for her.”

I eat my pie with gusto, and he smiles at me, "You have a healthy sense of your own appetite."
"I love food!" I exclaim.
"Not just with eating," he says with a suggestive wink.

Later, he puts his hand on the table between us and I know I’m supposed to put my hand on his. I do, feeling the sweat gather in my palm. He stares into my eyes and we don’t say anything for awhile. Then, he smiles.

“I felt that. That wave you just sent through my body. I can feel it at the base of my cock.”

My mouth twitches into a snicker, but I choose to stay in the game. Also, I’m intrigued. In his very first message to me on OKCupid, he had said, “I find myself standing amongst a ton of people stroking pussy and for some reason in this moment I want to say hi.” I wondered if this was a metaphor—turns out it wasn’t, he actually teaches workshops in which men and women couple off and the man spends fifteen minutes stroking the woman's pussy. So, I knew what I was getting into with this guy, and it doesn’t particularly surprise me when he starts talking about the sensations he's feeling in his cock. However, I do get a hell of a kick out of the fact that this is happening over coffee at Urth Café.

I have to say, I don’t feel much sexual chemistry with this guy. It’s not that he’s not attractive, it’s just that by talking a lot about sex and what’s going on with his cock, the whole sexy game is demystified in an unsexy way. However, I am convinced that this Female Orgasm Expert has to be dynamite in bed. I don’t think that’s an unfair assumption.

At some point, after another long bout of staring into each other’s eyes, he asks, “Do you want to make out?”

I say, “Sure. In the Coffee Shop?”

“No,” he smiles.

And so we leave.

He walks me to my car and then we stand facing each other and, in slow motion, move closer and closer until our noses are touching. Then we slowly bring our mouths and tongues together, and he starts moaning, apparently very into it. I have to say, I am still more amused than turned on.

“Do you want to have sex?” he asks, matter-of-fact.

“Sure,” I say. Despite my incredible lack of horniness, I feel like turning down sex with the orgasm expert is not a smart move.

Then we start to work out logistics. I live East Side, he lives West Side, we met in the middle. I also have an important meeting the next day, and do not want to stay up all night fucking.

“Couple things. I have my period--“

“Don’t care.”

“And I have a big meeting tomorrow so I need to go to sleep soon.”

“I come custom,” he says. “Whatever you want, we’ll do it. I can come over, fuck you for 20 minutes and leave. You can come over and spend the night, or not. Whatever you want. What do you want?”

To be honest, if I listen to my instinct, I want to go home. Alone. I want to crawl into bed and get lots of sleep. But I feel like I have already agreed to the sex and I should probably follow through on that.

“Let’s fuck in the car,” I say.

“I knew you were going to say that,” says the Psychic Orgasm Expert.

We walk to his car, actually his roommate’s SUV he has borrowed for the night. He’s parked on a residential street that’s very well-lit and there are several people milling about. He clears out the trunk, puts down the back seats, makes a pretty functional bed. At this point, logistics are overwhelming passion and I try to think of how I’m going to get myself more in the mood. I pull out my tampon and, with no trash in sight, deposit it in a Recycling bin.

“Sorry, Recycling,” I say.

We then decide to move the car so we get back inside and drive around, looking for a darker, less inhabited spot. We park and crawl into the back.

He pulls off all his clothes, saying, “No time for the sexy undressing of each other.”

I’m wearing a dress so I leave it on. He doesn’t have a condom, but fortunately I do. He puts it on, gets on top of me, and pulls a boob out of my dress.

“You’ve got great tits.”

He plays with them a little, but then immediately starts to push his erection into me. I shift slightly, trying to accommodate him.

“Relax,” he says. So I just lay there while he sticks it in dry, feeling a little sore from the lack of a warm up act.

Then he fucks me for like fifteen minutes. At some point, he says, “This is the point where I would usually ask if you want to get on top.”

We just keep on doing what we’re doing. Every time I try to adjust myself to get into a position where I might possibly come, he tells me to “just relax.”

After a little while, he says, “I’m going to come inside you.” And then he does.

He lies on top of me for a bit, then rolls over, and starts getting dressed.

“That was awesome,” he exclaims.

I just lie there in the dark, thinking ‘that was it?’

He massages my legs for a couple minutes, and then it’s time to go.

For all those pussy-stroking workshops, he doesn’t stroke my pussy at all. Not even for a second.

He drives me back to my car and invites me to a workshop he’s teaching on Monday near where I live.

“I think I have something on my calendar for that day.”

I drive home, feeling a little grossed out. I don’t usually fuck strangers in cars, but the goddamn Female Orgasm Expert? I feel like I’ve been scammed. I look him up online and he is who he says he is—he’s a partner in an organization that specializes in female orgasm. He has youtube videos talking about it, he’s legit. People pay him to teach them how to give a woman pleasure—what? Then I get a little sad for the state of affairs between men and women—if this guy has no fucking idea about female orgasms, it doesn’t leave much hope for the rest of them.

That was Thursday. This is Friday.

I feel I can’t write too much about my second OKCupid date because, in my drunkenness, I accidentally told him about my blog, and I make it a rule not to write about anybody that might potentially read this. 

HOWEVER, there are some details that simply cannot be left unwritten.

My second OKCupid date is with a short Jewish man. I’ve been messaging with this person on and off for like six months. Early on, in reaction to something he said, I jokingly responded, “I don’t think this is going to work.” He countered with, “Well, it was worth a shot. I guess we should part with as much dignity as possible. So, uh… Nice rack.” Not gonna lie, his bluntness/ rudeness had kind of turned me on, and I decided to objectify him back: “And you look like the porn star James Deen, so I’ll enjoy that later…” Which was actually true, he did remind me of James Deen, which was 90% of the appeal. Then he said, “Yeah, I get that… a lot. Though more in person. Take that how you will. Or take that how you’d prefer. But, you know, take it.” This had my triangle throbbing a little, and again I was intrigued. Then I asked, “So you look like James Deen, but do you fuck like James Deen?” To which, he essentially said yes. As with Orgasm Man, this seemed an opportunity too good to pass up.

Turns out, he looks less like James Deen in person. We meet at what he calls a “dive bar” and to me looks like a nicely-lit Chinese restaurant. He’s nicer in person than his snarky online personality. And he’s clearly nervous, laughing a lot and too loudly. As the drinks flow, the snarkiness reemerges and he starts giving me sideways glances and kind of talking down to me. His condescension is annoying but also annoyingly sexy. We move closer and closer as the night progresses, and eventually we start making out in the bar.

His place is walking distance, so we head out at 2am, stopping at a 7 Eleven on the way so he can buy a cheap bottle of red wine. I comment that this particular 7 Eleven is the “crackiest” one I’ve ever been too. Which is true, and I’ve been to lots of 7 Elevens in my day. He then comments that I’m the “whitest” person he’s ever met. I notice that he has a bit of a thing about whiteness, because he was born in the Ukraine and grew up in a very white suburban town on the East Coast, where he was the “most ethnic” kid in school. He still looks pretty white to me.

He tells me that there are two Korean guys living in his apartment—his landlord apparently rented to them without asking him, and they don’t speak English or talk to him at all.

“I’m going to make friends with them,” I exclaim, drunkenly.

“You’re like the biggest seven year old in the world,” he tells me, not for the first or last time that night. I find it hilarious every time he says it.

We don’t see any Koreans when we arrive at his place, but there’s a curtain in the corner of the apartment, and I guess they’re living behind it. We beeline for his bedroom, where we make out on the couch and he pulls off my clothes.

“You look good naked,” he says.

He moves us to the bed, and we have sex. It’s actually pretty hot—he’s aggressive and passionate. At one point, he sucks too hard on my tongue and I groan and push him away. “Aw,” he teases, condescendingly.

After we have sex, I’m sprawled out naked on his bed. He points at my crotch.

“This is unusual,” he says. I look down. Everything looks in order to me.

“This landing strip. I haven’t seen a girl with pubic hair in years.”

Truth be told, I have very little pubic hair, and I’m surprised he’s pointing it out.

“I guess it depends on the kind of girls you’re fucking,” I say.

“Not necessarily. A girl could be a saint and she still would have shaved pubes.”

What?

“It has nothing to do with sainthood, it’s cultural,” I respond. “Does it bother you?”

“No, I don’t mind. I’m just not big on hair.”

I wish I could show you a photo of this guy naked and how completely COVERED IN HAIR he is. I’m surprised that someone this hairy has the audacity to point out the like square inch of hair on my entire body.

“I don’t usually date white girls,” he says. Here we go again with the ethnic profiling. “At least not ones as All-American looking as you.”

“Really? I don’t think of myself as All-American looking.”

There’s that sideways glance again. “You look like a cheerleader. Were you a cheerleader in high school?”

If I had liquid in my mouth, I would do a spit take.

“I was a theatre nerd!” But thanks for not listening to a goddamn word I've said all night. 

He suddenly seems annoyed with me, as if now that he’s come, he realizes he’s fucked an “All-American white cheerleader girl” and feels bad about it, or something. I don’t know. I get up to leave.

“Where are you going?”

“You seem annoyed or something. I think I’m gonna go home.”

“Come here,” he extends his arms. I pull on my pants.

He grabs me and pulls me down on the bed. Takes off my pants. And fucks me again.

I don’t come, he doesn’t seem to care. I head for the bathroom, naked, and I can hear someone in there running the faucet. I guess the Koreans are home.

At 4am, I walk the five blocks or so back to my car, and I wonder if I should have stood up for myself more. If I owe it to the next woman who sleeps with this guy to tell him he has no right to judge anything on my body—I have a banging body and he’s a short hairy little man. I wonder, like I always do after an orgasm-free One Night Stand, if I’m supposed to point out to these dudes that I didn’t come, and that they might try harder next time. Or at all. Or if I should wait to be asked. Orgasm Man didn’t ask me if the sex was great, he thought it was "awesome". I like to think if he had asked, I would have told him. I want to think I’m a good communicator in the bedroom, but I think I’m learning that guys really have no fucking idea and they need to be hit over the head with the cold hard facts. Even the ones who claim to be Orgasm Experts or say they fuck like James Deen. Perhaps they set the bar too high for themselves, and then pussy out and decide not to even try, because they know they can’t live up to the expectations they’ve built. Why would they do this? And why do I continue to fall for it?

The little Jewish Man’s follow up later that night: “You know, all in all, that wasn’t a bad date. Or maybe it’s just been a while for me.” I’m not sure how to respond to this.
“I’ll choose to take that as a compliment,” I say.

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.

Movies in My Head

On Sunday, I’m enjoying a solo walk around the reservoir near my new house, followed by some casual yoga in one of the only shaded areas of the park.  I’m listening to Dan Savage’s Lovecast and enjoying just hanging with myself.  Sweaty, no makeup, I’m not trying to pick anyone up.  Naturally, a dude approaches.  Sits down right next to me, with a book.  But he’s not reading.  He’s watching me do yoga.  I glance over and smile.  He’s smiling a lot.  I’m kind of like ‘who is this creep and why is he watching me do yoga?’  But at the same time I find myself moving into more challenging poses, twisting myself into a pretzel as if to say ‘yeah that’s right, I’m flexible – you know what that means.’  I decide to move into plow, and not just because it gets my butt in the air – it also stretches the neck, and my neck is fucked from camping the week before.  For this pose, I take my earbuds out. He swoops in.

“What are you listening to?”

“The Savage Lovecast.”

“Oh, I’ve heard that guy on This American Life a couple times.”

I’m impressed he’s heard of Dan Savage.  I’m also impressed that he’s currently reading Wolf Hall.  And that he went to Sqirl for breakfast, a trendy Silverlake restaurant I’ve been dying to try.  He’s training for a marathon, which to me means he’s good in bed.  He also just got back from Burning Man, which explains all the intense eye contact.

“Ever since I got back, I’ve been totally into talking to strangers.”

He casually mentions going to movie premieres in the part of town where I work, so I ask what he does.

“Studio Exec.”

This impresses me more.  I associate Studio Execs with attachment to cell phones and not reading books.  He also looks young to have such a big job.

“I’m probably older than you think I am.”

“Probably. Everyone’s older than I think they are,” I laugh, remembering Comedian Guy.

“I’m 37.”

We talk for a while more and it’s nice and natural and we have lots to talk about.  He’s very smart and, although I find his job a little intimidating, I’m happy to be interacting with a man who’s not an actor.  At some point, I say, “I should probably go do something.”

He wants my number but he doesn’t have his phone on him, which I find amazing, considering his job. 

“If I give you my number, will you call?” he looks expectant, and perhaps a touch worried.

I smile and promise to text him.

I do, and many hours later, at around 5pm, I receive a text back.

“Perhaps a drink this week?”

A couple days later he texts me a time and location.  This is definitely a step up from Comedian Guy’s “let’s just meet at the mall.”  He chooses a cool little wine bar I haven’t been to.  I start to fantasize that maybe this is it, maybe this is the man I’ve been looking for — a grown up with a good job and a nice income, someone smart who challenges me and reads books.  Someone who likes me sweaty with no makeup, and has the balls to approach a stranger in the park, and leaves his phone off on the weekends.  It feels too good to be true – a Studio Exec who goes to Burning Man?!

Thursday rolls around and I find myself nervous.  I leave work early because we’re meeting at 7:30 and I want time to get ready and look amazing.  I ask my ex-boyfriend if he thinks I should wear something “boob-y” or if I should not be so obvious.  He encourages me to rock the cleavage.  I choose a little black dress that I think is sexy but not trying too hard.  I spend more time on my hair and makeup than usual.  I find myself very flushed and unable to get the red out of my face.  Why am I so damn nervous?  This is not normal.  I’m about to leave the house when I decide to change into another little black dress — one that’s slightly less boob-y.  I’m not trying to look like a hooker — somehow I think this guy wouldn’t be down with that look.

I arrive at the bar and find a parking spot on the street.  I could have valeted but I find the goodnight kiss to be awkward when waiting for the valet.  I’m planning ahead.

He is already there, and looks nice — more professional without the bandana and basketball shorts he was wearing in the park.  I drink Sauvignon Blanc and he drinks a beer.  He mentions going to a tailor and I say, “That’s very adult.”  He looks at me funny, as if to say ‘I am an adult.’  In these moments, our age difference is apparent.  I tell him one of my best friends just had a baby, my first close friend to do this.  He says a lot of his friends have kids.  He also tells me his mom recently suggested he freeze his sperm, and that she’s encouraging him to find an egg donor and have a child on his own.  He looks at me funny and, for a moment, my imagination spins out of control and I think wouldn’t it make a great story if this guy offered me $100,000 to be his surrogate?

I ask him if he’s ever been married.  For some reason, he thinks this is a great question, says no one’s ever asked him that before.  I tell him when people ask if I have kids, it blows my mind that that’s even a possibility in their minds, that they think I would even be able to have kids.

“You mean physically,” he says with a wink and a smile.

At some point in the evening, I can see him starting to stifle his yawns.  I appreciate that he’s stifling them, but it’s still blatantly obvious he’s getting tired/bored.  He woke up at 5am to run 10 miles and he’s usually in bed at 9.  He’s also started looking around the bar as if to see who else is here.  And there’s a woman sitting behind me whom he glances at several times.  I’m tempted to offer to go to the bathroom so he can chat with her.  I can feel the relaxed energy of Burning Man wearing off even as we sit there. 

“I feel like you’re ramping up for something,” I say.

“This is the most relaxed I’ve ever been,” he responds.

This worries me slightly.  He says he rarely reads novels anymore, mostly longform pieces.  He says it’s because of his “bandwidth,” he literally doesn’t have the time/energy — I’m starting to think it’s actually because he can’t focus on one thing for long enough to get through a whole novel.  I mention one of my favorite books of recent years — Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story.  He says he “read a couple chapters” and got bored.  He’s also a self-proclaimed “know it all” who has two friends who have actually won Jeopardy.  

When his yawning becomes un-ignorable, I tell him we can leave.  He walks me to my car and we proceed to have an incredibly steamy public makeout session.  He grabs my ass and even goes for some vagina squeezes.  He feels on my breasts and sticks his thumb inside my bra to rub on my nipple.  I lean my knee into his groin, and I can feel he’s very hard in his pants. 

“It’s too bad you’re so tired,” I groan.

“Next time,” he says.

I think I have an instant thought that I don’t know if there will be a next time.

He bites my neck and I tell him he’s a tease.

“I’m a tease? How about you with that knee?”

“It was nice to meet you,” I laugh with his tongue still in my mouth.

We finally part, a bit unceremoniously, with him sort of pushing off of me and saying, “Okay, you’re leaving.”

“Yeah, I’m leaving,” I add lamely and redundantly.  I’m not tired and I want to have sex, so I feel a little abandoned.

I drive home. 

I text him “That was fun.”

“It was.”

I don’t hear from him the next day.  At 9am on Saturday, I text him some follow up to a trivia question we were debating.  He texts me back at 8pm that night.  I am preparing for a house warming party I’m throwing with my new roommates.  Who texts back 11 hours later?  I decide not to respond.

That's the last I hear from him.  And it’s not like I’m particularly disappointed – I also didn’t feel some big amazing connection.  But I’m noticing a theme with myself, which is difficulty securing the second date.  Getting a man initially interested is easy, nailing down that first date/sex is rarely a challenge.  But that elusive second date?  I can count on one hand the number of those I’ve had.

I feel like I’m a really cool chick.  I’m smart and funny, I’ve got shit going on, I’m good in bed.  So, why?

Is it because I have sex on the first date — is that still a thing where guys don’t really respect you or take you seriously if you’re just as easy and horny as they are?  Is that seriously still a thing?  God I hope not, because if it is, I’m fucked.

Looking for answers, I decide to listen to a podcast my best friend Sadie has been telling me about for weeks.  Why oh Why? with Andrea Silenzi – Movies in Your Head with Audio Smut.  A radio play, it’s all about the stories we make up in our heads whenever we meet a new person.  One guy expressed that whenever a new prospective partner would mention where her parents lived, he would picture Christmas there.  It’s all about the fantasies we play out, trying to fit this new person into the future we see for ourselves.

Obviously, there’s a movie I constantly play out in my head with whatever man of the moment I’m currently fixated on, but I’m suddenly curious about the movies these guys might have in their heads about me.  Studio Exec Guy, for example.  He’s 37, Jewish, from New York, his mom is encouraging him to freeze his sperm, he’s going home for Yom Kippur, he speaks with his parents on the phone often — they’re still together.  Clearly very family-oriented, wants children and maybe not too far in the future, has money, a good career.  So, what’s next?  A wholesome family like the one he grew up in.  And maybe when he saw me in the park — no makeup, exercising, perhaps a fellow runner, listening to a podcast, enjoying being alone — maybe he saw this person fitting into that story of his life.  Maybe he could picture getting this woman pregnant and introducing her to mom.  Maybe he pictured running together in the park, or me staying home and raising his child while he works his insanely demanding job.  So when I said having kids felt very distant, that I’m focused on my career, when he realized my age, maybe he realized I didn’t fit so well as he’d originally thought.  Maybe when I wore a dress with too much cleavage, or said “fuck” too many times, or let him grab my vagina on the street, he could no longer picture introducing me to his mother.

I understand all of this, and I also understand not wanting to waste time with someone you know is not “the one.”  But I feel like maybe one of the things we’ve lost in this world of reductive dating where you can sum up a stranger in two sentences from an online profile and write them off before you even meet, is that old thing of taking time to get to know a person.  I think we’re all expecting that we’ll be able to find that Perfect Match who fulfills all the boxes we have checked off on our list of requirements for a partner.  So maybe Studio Exec Guy’s need to look around the bar after an hour spent with me was because he’s a busy entertainment professional, or maybe the problem runs deeper than that.  Maybe we’re so ADD in this culture where everything we want is constantly available to us that we simply can’t sit with one single person for over an hour without checking our phone or checking to see who’s next.  I know, for example, that Studio Exec Guy does not fit into the story I see for my life and future relationship.  I know we’re not going to get married and have babies.  But I know that about most people I meet, and that doesn’t mean I don’t want to experience being with that person for a little while, even if it is just for one night.  When I’m on a date with a new person, it would be nice to just be in the present for once rather than constantly jumping ahead into the future. 

When I met Studio Exec Guy on Sunday, he was fresh from Burning Man.  I could see it in his eyes – he was open and interested, he wanted to connect.  A week away from LA, from cell phones and meetings and the bar scene, he was truly present.  And it was unnerving almost, when he sat down right next to me and smiled into my eyes, because usually when strange men do this, it’s because they’re crazy and I tend to walk away.
When he told me that, since Burning Man, he had been enjoying talking to strangers, I responded,

“Don’t lose that. We need more of that in this town.”

He nodded, agreeing.  But by the time Thursday rolled around, I could see it was already gone.  All of his intense interest in me, the reason I had come on this date in the first place, had all but dissipated.  He hardly asked about me, he didn’t seem that interested.  And maybe it’s because he had already decided I wasn’t the one for him and he didn’t want to waste his time and energy getting invested in my life.  But whatever happened to talking to strangers?

A week after our date, I’m bored at work and decide to do a little experiment.  I decide to be very blunt and see what happens.

“Sex?” I text.

I stare at the phone, stare at this single little word that carries so much weight.  I fool myself that there is deniability in sending a one word text.  I could always say, “Whoopsies autocorrect,” and even though we would both know it was a lie, he would probably accept it and we could move on with our lives.  While I’m waiting for a response, I consult with several friends, admitting what I’ve done.  The responses range from “Oh boy” to “That’s funny” to “Awesome!”  I’m not sure what I want from them, probably validation that what I’ve done doesn’t read desperation.

Two hours later, Studio Exec writes back: “I’d like to. I really would. But I can’t.”

Ominous.

Me: “I’m intrigued. Why?”

Him: “It fits a pattern of behavior I’d like to stop.”

Of course I have to be the one to pick them right when they’re getting ready to reform.

Me: “That’s a damn shame.”

I go to visit my Best Guy Friend.  I show him the texts.

“Can you believe this?!” I pout.

“Yeah. I get it. He just doesn’t want to keep having sex with women even though he knows it’s not going anywhere.”

I guess this makes sense but I still don’t like it.

Then he says, “You should text back ‘if you’re ever having a weak moment, call me.’”

I do, and I can feel Studio Exec Guy struggling with himself as he responds, “That’s a tough one.”

I ask my Best Guy Friend if it’s okay to write back “Sorry to make it hard for you.”

He says that’s too much, I should leave it at that.  I know it’s too much, it’s always too much, I’m too much.  I guess what I’m looking for is a guy who can handle it.