WHAT. (OR: the bait and switch, sort of)
Aging Fuckboys, Skaters, NOT SKATERS, Bataillean Expenditure, BEING WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING, Self-Sabotage, Where You Like to Cum and What That Says About You
I cannot bring myself to finish writing about Subdrop Fall, an excursus on the various shit (my annual UN General Assembly threesome, getting tied up, literally, in Berlin) I got up to late last year in the wake of my heartbreak. But it’s coming! In the meantime, here’s a short one about something that fucked me up recently.
I found a man on the Sex App who looked like my type: his photos showed him skating, gray-haired, loitering outside—the kind of Aging Fuckboy to whom I am attracted, in spite of myself. Aging Fuckboys are good for casual sex: they are good at—what else?—fucking, easy for me to talk to, tend to like me because I am Younger, and so avoidant that I tend to quit them before I Catch Feelings.1 I also just fucking love a skater.2 We matched in the afternoon, while he was skating in Dumbo, and he locked in a time to meet at a bar the same day in the early evening—his only free evening in the next few days as he would spend the weekend working. I assumed, given his Aging Fuckboy Energy and work schedule, that he was some kind of Creative: an artist, a musician, someone’s studio manager, some kind of designer—standard A.F. shit.
At the bar, in person, he did not disappoint: here he was with closely cropped gray hair, dressed in a suspiciously Nice chore coat—the sort of jacket that’s studiously casual, elevated workwear. I was a little worried that we would have to split the bill—always this risk with fuckboys and drinks are so expensive—but after splitting bar tabs for 3 years with my situationship, an artist, I was inured to paying up for the promise of sex . We discussed surfing, an activity we both Do, (or I did, when I was growing up in Hawaii). We discussed the bay area, where he grew up and in which I’d lived briefly in my early twenties. He is from the east bay and was the first person in his family to go to college. We discussed various shit jobs we’ve had throughout our lives: he was a stock boy at the mall, worked in the kitchen at a resort; I’d worked in retail, too, as a cashier, and had a job answering phones and being my boss’s lunch date at a recruiting company in San Francisco.3 I opined that I’m not cut out for office jobs, and yet I’ve always found myself employed in one.
“At least,” he said, “you have the option of working from home some days.”
Fair. I did not press him for details about his job: I was not keen on discussing work, and I was hoping to remain ignorant of any mutual acquaintances we might have in whatever creative industry he’s in.
His weekend work plans came up: “yeah, unfortunately I’m on-call for surgery this weekend so it’s going to be long hours for me both Saturday and Sunday.”
Hold the F up. What.
Here I’d thought I was going to fuck a skater man. But no: this man, it turns out, is a surgeon—a real Eligible Bachelor. I was stunned. Also, in general, I don’t like doctors: I’ve always had awful dates with doctors because they tend to have an irritating hero complex. If I see a doctor on the app (bless them—they usually let you know right away that they’re Doctors), I swipe left. Now I was disconcerted—my assumptions about a man have never been so OFF this early, before I’ve managed to formulate some hopeful delusion about him. This is not man you can just fuck; this is man you try to lock down. Because what do you mean he’s Aging Fuckboy hot and he’s East Asian Mom-approved (not just any doctor, but a surgeon)??
I began to sense that I was fumbling an opportunity to get a Real Boyfriend, even though I met him on the sex app and he was not looking for anything serious. If I had known his Eligible Bachelor status, I would have stayed the fuck away. But now I found myself approaching the treacherous territory of Having Expectations.
I absolutely fucking hate it when the internalized Asian Mom surfaces in my thoughts. I don’t want to be a person whose desires are oriented around pragmatism—material stability—and respectability. I want to do what I like, be impractical in the extreme. I want to be profligate in that Bataillean sense: non-procreative, not wealth-growing, entirely driven by pleasure that has no utility outside of itself. I have battled these competing impulses all my life. But when I err on the side of pragmatism, I feel like I’ve lost a sense of direction, a sense of self.
After one drink, he proposed we go to his apartment for a second drink—a real pro, this man, in re: closing for sex. I appreciated the efficiency. No wonder he wanted to meet so early, I thought. He had to wake up early to get into surgery tomorrow. I had thought he was just Old.
*****
His apartment was in an old building, very unassuming from the outside—your standard LES brick-facade apartment building. The elevator was broken so we took the stairs six flights up to his unit. There’s so much money downtown now, I thought, all of these professionals, these white collar types, all willing to pay a fortune to live in these former tenements.
But I was wrong about appearances again. His door opened up into a large space: three stories, linked by a spiral staircase. I felt like I’d entered some speculative fiction—how was it possible, physically, for this space, the kind of apartment I imagine a Bret Easton Ellis character would live in, to exist in this outwardly ordinary downtown apartment building? The top floor opened up to a terrace with patio furniture, a garden box, and a grill. The roof was greenhouse-like, with plate glass curving from the ceiling to the floor. Also on the top floor was the Bar, where he made me a negroni.
I drank my negroni slowly, partly because I like to drink sweet cocktails slowly, and partly to resist an urge to be more pleasing, to do what I thought was expected of me: to move the evening along in a timely fashion. Having people-pleasing tendencies is fucked up: it is difficult to distinguish between Being Yourself / Attending to Your Needs versus sabotaging a social situation. In this case, I sensed my Slow Drinking was, in part, an act of sabotage: I felt I was unnecessarily Being Myself here, trying to make him irritated, trying to give myself a reason to walk away without feeling that I’d suffered a loss. But he was quite patient: he chatted with me until I’d finished my drink, after which he’d immediately pulled me into his lap and started kissing me.
We walked downstairs three flights to his bedroom, which had a large, floor-to-ceiling window that stretched across the room and a frankly enormous walk-in closet. To the side of the bed was a large mirror that was flush with both the floor and the ceiling, as if it were part of the wall itself—very Bret Easton Ellis, very Liberty Inn. No mirror on the ceiling, though. As a person who lives more precarity than I would like, and as a person who likes Nice Things, I was perturbed by my desire for sex with this man and, now, a desire for a Nice Life. I reminded myself that I was here for sex. I tried to imagine that he was still the artist—a known entity—I’d assumed he was so I could just have sex and leave, and not want or expect anything more from him.
The sex was standard: he played it safe, didn’t attempt anything bold. He flipped me over and came on my back. Always interesting to see where men want to cum on you. The real freaks, the ones who watch too much porn, want to cum on your face get it in your mouth. The vanilla ones will cum in the condom. The mid-range freaks will cum elsewhere on your body, usually your breasts or on top of your ass. Cumming on the back is funny; it’s not a particularly sexy spot. It’s sort of perfunctory and purely functional: no one will get pregnant, you don’t have to deal with the intimacy of looking someone in the face as you’re cumming, but you still get to see your cum splattering the skin of some woman. But I enjoyed the sex (worrisome!)—mission accomplished.
Despite the surprises of the evening, my leave-taking, on the other hand, was quite predictable: we chitchat, I got dressed, everyone was very careful not to suggest another meeting, dodged the question of whether or not we will see each other again. I admit I was disappointed by this. I was hoping he’d propose, even if he didn’t mean it, to “do it again sometime.” But he, a committed bachelor, is as seasoned as I am with the rituals of casual sex.
It was still somewhat early in the evening—10:30pm—and I was feeling restless, frustrated by my evening. I hated that I found myself suppressing expectations, that the Asian Mom/pragmatist had made an intrusive appearance in my thoughts. I hated that I’d been so wrong about him—a bruise to my ego as I’d always flattered myself that I’d had a good read on people. And, pragmatism aside, I’d had to face again the fact that I want more from men, that I want something Real and long-term. And that my constant horniness and compulsion to address this need often comes at the cost of finding something more meaningful. So I took the train to the club and went dancing solo to exorcise my demons, as I am wont.4
***** STRAY OBSERVATIONS AND ETC ****
POST-SCRIPT: he later texted me to say he had a nice time, and that he hoped I was “staying warm.” I was not expecting a text message from this man, so I shot my shot: I said I had a nice time too and that we should do it again. He “hearted” the message. God DAMN IT.
Here’s a playlist about being horny and wanting to dance, mostly featuring songs that I shazamed last year.
I have a piece about sticky tropes in literature, music, and popular culture in the latest issue of Feeeels.
I’m part of this 100 Day Writing Club in which participants have to start and finish a short piece every day for a hundred days. If you are interested in reading some short, messy (in every sense) vignettes, I’ve been posting them to notes on Substack. The subjects are all over the place, but there will, in all likelihood, be some weird date recaps. You can count on me to ALWAYS POST MY Ls.
My friend Camille wrote a cover story for NYT Magazine a few weeks ago: it’s about people trying to teach their dogs to communicate with them using programmable buttons. I’m neither a dog owner, nor someone who is interested in communicating with animals (I prefer to respect the mystery, am still trying to figure out how to communicate with humans), but I recommend it to those of you who love dogs/animals and have a desire to reach across the divide.
“Paradise,” this jazz-funk influenced City Pop single is so good. It’s a rip from a hard-to-find Japanese city pop album—Kumiko Hara’s Unhappy Birthday. Not on Spotify.
And finally, I’ve been listening to this electro/disco song originally sung by Zahia in 1985, Notre Amour Sent L’ail, mixed and mastered in 2020 by Hysteric. Track is available on bandcamp only.
Actually, who am I kidding? The best type for casual sex are finance bros: I will 100% not get attached to a finance bro—there are usually very few points of connection other than a shared enthusiasm for fucking. They do not leave me wanting more. Lawyers are the next best; but I do risk connecting with a lawyer because they tend to be readers, former Humanities-oriented types. Artists, on the other hand: I have a track record of getting attached to artists, especially if I like their work or admire their taste. My most vexed relationships have been the ones with artists.
My friend T and I have an extremely horny movie concept: Beau Travail, but skaters. What should the ending song be??
My boss, a former New Yorker, took a shine to me: he often took me out to nice lunches in the city in lieu of paying me higher wages. This was before my Escort era—I did not have sex with him nor did he seem particularly interested in fucking me. I found the job on Craigslist.
At some point, I want to write about this new obsession of mine/Outlet for Excess Affect: going to the club alone.
Cool article I would like to debate the woman who wrote this article though great tunes! -Ariel