what purpose did i serve in your life

by Marie Calloway

  And then thinking more, I was surprised he actually had a girlfriend. I thought the frustration he expressed about the difficulty of pursuing women was indicative of him being hopelessly single.

  And finally, from reading his articles, besides his intelligence, what I had really admired about his writing was essentially this feeling of how he seemed to uphold human dignity and the sacredness of human feeling and connection. And so it seemed unbelievable that he would cheat. That made me both disillusioned in him, and yet also sexually excited, because he was betraying those values.

  “I guess…I was being cowardly in not telling you before. I was afraid you wouldn’t meet me if I told you.”

  I couldn’t believe he had actually cared about meeting me. Before we met, I had this feeling like he didn’t really care about meeting me, and that I was just kind of an afterthought way in the back of his mind. I felt very flattered at the realization that he wanted to meet me so much that he put effort into hiding things about himself to make sure that I would.

  But the feeling of being flattered changed to a sort of abstract feeling of disgust at his lack of respect for his girlfriend, and also for me as he didn’t tell me any of this until the last minute, when it was difficult for me to back out.

  I wondered if this is just how men are, no matter how feminist and intelligent.

  “It’s okay. Um, I would be really hypocritical if I judged you for cheating…”

  “But it’s not about you being hypocritical. It’s how you feel about doing this.”

  “That’s true…”

  “My hope is just for you to stay in contact with me,” he said.

  I felt flattered and surprised that he had said that. I hadn’t realized he had enjoyed talking to me. And I realized that that was the first time a guy had ever said anything like that to me, that they enjoyed knowing me, even without sex.

  I have always been really adverse to the idea of being a “homewrecker,” but everything had gone unbelievably well. I couldn’t pass up the chance to sleep with my intellectual idol. I knew that I wasn’t strong enough to do so, and that I would regret it forever if I didn’t sleep with him.

  I lay my head back on his chest.

  “Are you like really attracted to young hipster girls?”

  “Not as like a category…”

  “Because I always kind of thought that’s why you wrote and followed XXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXXXX and all of those articles about hipsters.”

  “I wonder if that’s what a lot of people think…no, hipsters, like that whole category interests me as a way of living that has always existed in society…”

  “Like, when you were younger, were you interested in hipster culture or whatever, but always felt like you were on the outside looking in?”

  “Sort of. I always felt like I was on the fringes of it, looking outward, or feeling like I was looking in from the inside somehow.”

  I was a bit disappointed, because I was sure I had gotten that feeling from his writing. That we had the same fascination with that subculture because we were alienated from it.

  The cab reached his apartment, and we walked inside and up two flights of stairs to his door.

  When he opened the door, I first noticed his hardwood floors, and then the bookcases that spanned the walls of his apartment. And then I saw his guitar, couch, coffee table, and computer desk.

  “Is it everything you imagined?” he asked.

  “I never really imagined what your apartment looked like. But if I had had to imagine it, I think this is what I would have imagined.”

  I walked up to his bookcases and started to examine their contents.

  I focused on one near his computer which was full of Marxist books. I examined his volumes of Das Kapital.

  “Did you make it through Kapital??”

  “Yes. The first volume, at least…”

  “Sorry. I’m really nosy.”

  “It’s okay. That’s the first thing I’d do if I was inside someone’s apartment.”

  I looked more.

  “Do you notice all the uncracked spines on all of these books I claimed to have read?”

  “Can I look on your computer?”

  He said yes, so I went and sat on his computer chair and started to click through his pictures and documents. The first thing that caught my eye was a file called “hair.” I clicked on it and saw it was full of pictures of a pretty woman with long brown hair. There were several pictures of just her hair. At first I wondered if he had some weird hair fetish, but then I realized that that must be his girlfriend. I was surprised by how pretty she was.

  “Who’s that?”

  “My girlfriend…”

  “How old is she?”

  “Like mid 30s…”

  Seeing those pictures of her made me feel insecure.

  “Do you think I’m pretty?”

  “Yes. Very much so.”

  “Do you think I’m smart?”

  “What?”

  “Sorry, I’m really forward in asking for compliments from people.”

  “Yes, I think you’re very smart. I think it’s obvious.”

  He was standing at my side. I lifted my feet off of his desk and placed them on his shoulders.

  “I don’t know. Like, I didn’t even know who Spinoza was until I read your blog post mentioning him a few days ago.”

  “You are not alone in that. So many people at that conference barely knew who Spinoza was. Even I have barely read Spinoza.”

  I started to wonder, and felt relieved that there might be truth to the idea of intellectuals all being frauds. I knew that I certainly was.

  “I thought it was funny how you were talking about how people you know are narcissistic and pretentious, and then a few minutes later you were like bragging, ‘I’m smarter than these people.’”

  He played my remark off. He was busy rubbing my legs up and down.

  I looked at my legs. I wondered if he noticed the cellulite on my inner thighs.

  “Do you like my legs?”

  “I’m crazy about them. Can’t you tell?”

  “Can I read your email?”

  “That’s like a big invasion…”

  “Okay. I guess it’s like the other person didn’t consent to it.”

  “Can I smoke in your house?”

  “Let’s smoke out front.”

  “Okay. Do you have any beer?”

  I got up and followed him into his kitchen, and he poured me a glass of beer. Then we walked out of his apartment, and stood outside in front of it.

  I lit a cigarette, and then started to drink. I quickly downed most of the beer, and as I hadn’t eaten all day and am naturally a light weight, was starting to feel pretty drunk.

  “Did you cheat before?” I asked.

  “Yeah…”

  “With who?”

  “With this woman in Germany…”

  “Do you watch porn?” I asked.

  “Yeah…” he admitted guiltily. “I like to think there’s this separation between the personal and professional sides of my life. I tend to be into videos of women masturbating…”

  “I knew it. Guys like you always are.”

  “I guess it’s just easier to buy into the delusion that they aren’t being exploited, with those videos. I can show you some of the sites I look at, if you want…”

  His voice sounded weird and I couldn’t tell if it was because him showing me the porn he liked excited him, or if he felt awkward that he was talking about his porn habits.

  “Sasha Grey,” I said.

  “I’m not interested in that stuff…”

  “I always think it’s interesting to hear people’s opinions on Sasha Grey.”

  “I think that you can tell a lot about a person depending on what kind of porn they watch.”

  “I always thought that, too!” I was excited someone shared my strong held belief about personality and porn habits.

  “There’s a cop right there,” he said and poi
nted. I looked and saw a cop walking towards us. “What do we do?” I asked, trying to hide my beer and throwing my cigarette to the ground. “We just…” he spun around and pointed towards the door, and we quickly walked back inside of his apartment. I sat down on his computer chair again. I unbuttoned my shirt, revealing my bra. He was standing at my side again. I acted like I hadn’t done anything though, and went on Grooveshark and put on music I liked.

  “Oh, show me the porn you look at,” I said, moving away from the keyboard and mouse.

  He got on the computer and typed “sodrained.tumblr.com.”

  “It’s on Tumblr?”

  “Yeah. That’s where all the best porn is…”

  “Sodrained,” I said, laughing at the name.

  It was all pictures of modelesque brunette women posing. They didn’t look like typical pornstars, but they were all very thin and kind of generic looking. And there was the usual feeling of objectification in the photos. So I judged him.

  “I’ll show you, it’s meant to be porn, but I think it’s really pretty and expressive.”

  I went to YouTube and pulled up Aki Hoshino’s “Sneaker Lover” video, which for the past two years had been the height of beauty and expression to me, even though it was just meant to be softcore porn.

  “Well, there’s definitely a feeling of vulnerability…” he said.

  He didn’t seem to get why I was so moved by it.

  I wondered if maybe men are incapable of understanding something like this as anything other than something that’s meant to get them off.

  “I was really in love with this Irish guy I met in London, he was a photographer and he’s 37, but said he was 30 in order to trick young girls he met on the Internet to come meet him, so he could take nude photos of them and have sex with them… It sounds horrible, but he was so interesting and mysterious. I fell really hard for him. I’ll show you his blog.”

  I typed his blog into the address bar, and clicked through the pages, which mostly contained photos of young, naked Asian girls.

  “It used to make me so angry and jealous when I looked at his photos… Now I don’t really care. But it used to make me angry and sad to the point where I’d cry if I looked at this stuff.”

  I came upon a photo of him on his blog. He was so tall and thin and blonde.

  “Don’t you think he’s good looking?”

  “He just looks like a typical Irish guy to me,” he shrugged.

  I stood up.

  “Can we take a bath?”

  “Of course.”

  I got up and we walked into his bathroom.

  He filled the bathtub with water while I took off my clothes. I got in and watched him take off his clothes and then get in the bath. I felt moved by the sight of his legs, which were so long and pale and slender.

  I put my knees to my chin.

  “One day Tom is showing you XXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXXXX, and then one day you’re sitting in Adrien Brody’s bathtub.”

  We both laughed.

  “Who’s Tom?”

  I started to smile. “My old boyfriend. Now he’s my best friend. He was the first person to ever love me. Like, I didn’t even know it was possible for someone to care about another person that much.”

  “How many people have you slept with?” I asked.

  “I don’t keep a list.”

  “Yeah, but just like estimate.”

  “Around 15.”

  “Oh, I’ve slept with more people than you.”

  “I figured you were more sexually experienced than me.”

  “Are you attracted to me, like physically?” he asked.

  “Yeah, of course,” I said. I didn’t actually know if I was or not.

  “Are you attracted to me?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said.

  I gripped my legs tightly and kind of tilted my head to the side.

  “I just used to be really insecure about my looks…like for years I felt so ugly I wanted to die.”

  “I can definitely relate to that.”

  I was surprised. I didn’t know men could feel that way.

  I got out and wrapped myself in a towel. I walked into his bedroom and lay on his bed. A moment later he came and lay next to me. I looked across his room, at his desk, which had several bottles of red nail polish on it.

  “Why do you have nail polish in your room?”

  “It’s my girlfriend’s. She doesn’t live here, but she stays over often enough that she wanted to keep some things here, and that didn’t seem like a battle worth fighting…”

  “Don’t you like your girlfriend?” I asked.

  “Of course I like her. She loves me and I love her. But I’m bored…”

  I moved my body up to his until our stomachs were touching and my face was buried in his chest.

  “Usually I hate talking to people, but I like talking to you.” I said. “Like I see talking as a way to get to sex, but I’d rather talk to you than have sex.”

  “You see talking as a way to get to sex?”

  “Yeah.”

  This was the first time I had admitted that to myself, just talking to him. If I wasn’t so drunk I probably would have started to feel really sad.

  He held me and stroked my hair.

  “I know you think you’re weird, but you’re not weird…”

  I was touched, but I could tell he was talking to himself, or some projection of himself onto me, rather than me.

  Still, I was so moved I said, “Can I say something? Something very drunk, and you won’t hold it against me?”

  He said it was fine.

  “I love you.”

  He was taken aback, but said something nice in reply immediately that I can’t remember.

  I told him about how I couldn’t feel oral sex.

  He asked why.

  “I can’t explain it without telling you way too much about my life.”

  “But I want to hear it. This isn’t about us holding things back or getting uncomfortable.”

  I just smiled and shook my head.

  I wanted to tell him everything, but I didn’t. I had too many painful experiences with opening up too much to men, with how they get uncomfortable and run away. All men except for Tom, anyway.

  “If I lived in New York, would you date me?”

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to say. You don’t live in New York. And we’re in very different places in our lives…”

  “Men are always like really intrigued by me and want to sleep with me, but they never want to date me…”

  “Don’t have that be what you take that away from this, that I wouldn’t date you…”

  I kissed him, and I liked the feeling. It was a very warm and soft kiss.

  He moved so he was on top of me. He caressed and then sucked on my breasts. Then he moved to rub his cock between my breasts which was funny to me.

  Oh, serious intellectuals are the same as thirteen-year-old boys.

  Then he moved his head down until it was between my thighs.

  He went down on me for a few minutes, and I faked moaned, pretending to enjoy it.

  “Can you like, finger me while you do that?”

  So he did, and then I started to enjoy it.

  He came up and I kissed him, which I could tell he found exciting.

  “Did you like me doing that?” he asked.

  “Did you like doing that to me?”

  “Yeah, I loved it.”

  It’s hard for two anxious people to have sex. We couldn’t ever really relax and enjoy ourselves. We were always worried about what the other person thought of us.

  I began to finger myself for a minute, and then I stuck my fingers in my mouth, and then in his.

  Then I started to give him a blowjob.

  He moaned, almost in a surprised way at first.

  Then a minute into it he said, “Can I give you direction?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Slowly, and just the tip. That’s the most sensitive part.”


  “I know,” I said and started to slowly run my tongue back and forth around the head of his cock. I liked doing that, but I was surprised. Usually guys are only satisfied when you start gagging on it.

  Then he started to move his hips gently up and down so his cock went in and out of my mouth, which I liked a lot. I’ve never been able to figure out why I get off on being used as an object.

  I was surprised he was into mouth fucking.

  “Is that okay?” he asked.

  “Mm-hm.”

  “And I guess it’s like a porn thing, but when a girl looks up at you it’s really hot.”

  So I shifted my gaze so I was looking up at his face. He looked simultaneously incredibly happy, but also like he couldn’t believe what was happening. I was excited that he was watching me.

  He facefucked me for a while longer, and then my jaw got sore so I pulled my mouth away and looked at him.

  “Do you want to have sex?”

  He went to go get a condom, but by the time he was back in the bed and had unwrapped it, he had lost his erection.

  It then seemed really strange and unfair to me that the possibility of sex relies on just the one thing, the man’s ability to get an erection.

  We lay side by side.

  He asked me to help him get an erection.

  So I moaned, “I want you to fuck me.”

  He laughed.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  “I can’t do it if you’re going to laugh at me.”

  I thought then how it’s really unfair how men want and expect you to be really slutty and wild in bed, but they then laugh at you for it. You’re either frigid and boring or you’re unintentionally funny and crazy.

  “I’m laughing but it’s also making me hard.”

  I then just masturbated until he was erect enough to put the condom on.

  He penetrated me and I was happy. I felt a strong sexual connection with him.

  He started to talk about things.

  “I always feel weird talking during sex,” I said.

  “But that’s the best part,” he insisted, grinning.