by Nick Krieger
“Have you tried packing?” Jess asked.
Despite my initial excitement over my soft-pack experiment during the fall, I eventually found it annoying to have an artificial object in my briefs—don’t even get me started on riding my bike with it. But still, it had transformed my perception of that area of my body. What had once been my orgasm button, useful only to that end, was now something I could relate to if I thought of it as a teeny weeny, a mini-dick. Ramona was well aware of this, but neither of us reinforced it, and I had trouble holding on to my crucial self-understanding when I caught my dick looking like a pussy and rolling around made me feel like a tortilla. Even language failed to anatomically separate us since Ramona used the word beej on the receiving as well as the giving end; as she’d astutely pointed out, there’s no direct object equivalent to a blow job for women.
“I tried my softie once, at the very beginning,” I told Jess. Instead of my typical evasive crotch squirreling, I’d been able to comfortably press my bulge into her. “It was great until she grabbed me there and I panicked. I was all, ‘It doesn’t do anything.’ I think I scared her.”
“You need a strap-on,” Jess said.
I sighed deeply and leaned back against the stove. The gas knob nailed me in the tailbone. Awesome, I thought, I’m going to need a goddamn costume change to have sex. What would I say? Excuse me for a sec while I suit up and swap my dick out—my boner is in the other room?
“Don’t look so dejected,” Melissa said. “This isn’t a bad thing. It’s a good thing.”
I was pretty sure everyone—Jess, Melissa, and plenty of lesbians—had strap-on sex. Ramona had even had strap-on sex, with cisgender guys, bend-over boyfriends. I considered myself decent with my hands and mouth, but that was like being a hurdler and pole vaulter, good at two events when I wanted to be good at all of them, a decathlete. I was embarrassed to be so inexperienced, too old to be learning new tricks, nearly a thirty-year-old virgin.
I stormed off to my bedroom and returned to the living room, dropping my milk crate of useless toys on to the carpet with a thud. I pulled out each dildo—a marbled pink one, a double-sided blue swirly one, another long and ribbed one—for my roommates to reject with no argument from me. Had I been into sex toys, perhaps I would’ve used one years ago, but wearing a polka-dotted corkscrew would only ever have exacerbated the dickless awareness I tried to avoid. My stash, which was too dormant to bother me before, now taunted me with its ridiculousness. I held up a red and silver glittery harness. “I can’t wear this, right?”
“Not unless you have a cape to go with it,” Jess said.
There was no way I could do it in sparkles. I packed the stiff plastic harness back into the crate and carelessly tossed the dildos on top.
“The key is to find something that suits you, that you can connect with, so it’s yours. You,” Jess said.
Having gone down the soft-pack road, I understood the importance of connection, and once again, Jess agreed to escort me to Good Vibes.
In my room, I stacked my milk crates in opposite order—snowboarding gear on the bottom, biking gear in the middle, and sex gear on top. Across the pile I draped a patterned textile from my travels in Asia, nostalgic for the time when my only concerns for the day were what I would eat and where I would sleep, basic human needs that distracted me from another one—comfort in my body.
On Saturday morning, about to enter Good Vibes with Jess, I received my hourly hello text from Ramona. I texted back my hello and my location, along with, “Any requests?” and headed directly to the far wall with its display of realistic cocks. I passed over the Lone Star, Mustang, and Outlaw, renaming them stubby, boomerang, and hung like a horse, and picked up the relatively large Bandit. I ran my hand over the cut head, the textured arch of the shaft, the balls that made the base. At a hundred dollars, it was expensive, but what other choice did I have—unlike most of my clothing, I couldn’t buy one of these used.
My phone vibrated. “No veins, balls, or flesh colors,” the text read.
I replied right away, banging out the letters: “There’s no way I’m getting some iridescent purple dolphin or twitching rabbit foo foo.” I shoved my phone into my pocket, pushing down my fear that Ramona and I were approaching an impasse, the veiny deal breaker.
I moved along the wall and my eyes landed on a black harness with silver buckles. I unclipped the apparatus from the hanger and slipped it on over my jeans. I tightened the waist straps and galloped over to Jess, turning a few times as if on a catwalk.
“I find it remarkable that for as little sex as you have, you’re totally comfortable parading around with a harness,” Jess said.
I was the opposite of comfortable. “Is it even on right?”
Jess nodded yes and explained the features to me. Then, for a few minutes, I obsessed over the pros and cons of this harness before Jess reminded me that it wouldn’t be the only one I ever owned, just my first.
My phone buzzed. Ramona’s text read: “Of course you want a dick that looks real. And I want my fantasy dick. Get what you need and we’ll figure it out. Just make sure it’s big enough :).”
With that kind of encouragement, I grabbed a plastic tube with the Bandit, not caring that it only came in the root-beer color. I also purchased the black leather harness, even though it felt like a jerk move to bring a dead cow to bed with a vegan, especially one willing to meet my needs.
I laid the harness on my bed and, afraid that if I took it apart I’d never be able to put it together again, I decided to just loosen the four buckles. I stepped into it like I had in the store, except this time I was pantless and my new cock jutted through the O-ring. I tightened the buckles and bent over to touch my toes. I readjusted the buckles and did a lunge. I engaged in more harness calisthenics and made a variety of adjustments before giving up on a perfect fit and tucking the four excess strap ends into the waist. I wished sex seemed appealing; I felt like I was going spelunking with a lead pipe attached to my crotch. Then I tried on a pair of boxers, and without the buckles, doohickeys, and straps visible—with only the Bandit, bowed toward my right thigh and raising the plaid cotton—I saw it. Manifest hard-on. Oh, I was in the mood.
The next day in Ramona’s bedroom, even with my jeans on over my boxers, the outline of my erection remained obvious. I’d already showed Ramona my items, shared with her my best stopwatch times for getting the rig on, and released so much angst that she must’ve been relieved when I shut up and kissed her. I was relieved. My worry disappeared the moment our lips touched, and I felt my whole body, one intact entity, drawn to her.
Finally, something in the room took up more space than my breasts. There was just no escape from the boner pushing through my jeans, screaming, “Pay attention to me.” Ramona’s confidence appeared to skyrocket with a place to put her hands, and where I had once done everything and anything to avoid looking at myself, now I couldn’t even blink. I watched as she rubbed the base of her palm along the rise in my denim. As she wrapped her hand around the curve and squeezed, my mind fused the big guy to my mini-man underneath, jolting my groin awake.
Ramona undid the button on my jeans and slid the zipper down. The sound of the teeth unhooking rang in my ears. She reached inside my boxers and tugged the cock up, toward my belly button.
“Shit, you really know what you’re doing,” I said.
Ramona laughed. “I may have done this a few times.”
On her bed, I lifted myself onto my knees, letting my jeans fall to the crook. Her hand worked inside my boxers, moving up and down. Focused so intently on the action, it took me a few seconds to realize I couldn’t feel more than a gentle knocking against my pelvis. Reaching inside my fly, she pulled out the cock. Holding it in one hand, she ran her tongue over the tip. She wrapped her lips around the end and slid down the shaft.
I kept my eyes on her, trying not to think about wh
at was actually in her mouth and how it tasted—like silicone, plastic, fake, not human. I hoped she wasn’t thinking either. When I got too caught up thinking about what she was thinking, too focused on the root-beer color that wasn’t my own skin, the buzzing stirred inside me, the voice that said: get out, get out now. I pulled back from her and distracted myself by grabbing hold of the dick and stroking it, alternating grips like dudes did in porn.
“That’s hot,” Ramona said. She removed what was left of her clothing and I peeled off my T-shirt. I reached toward the nightstand. “Should I wear a condom?” I asked.
“Why would you do that?” she answered.
I wasn’t sure. “Bacteria?” I tried. “Or, I don’t know, fuzz from my boxers?”
For a moment, her face softened, then her bed-humper eyes took over. “Do not put on a condom!” she demanded.
“I like it when you tell me what to do,” I said with a smirk. I removed only the lube from the drawer and rubbed some on the cock before going down on her, something that usually quieted my mind completely. But now nervous thoughts invaded: I had absolutely no rhythm, couldn’t even clap along to songs, was the worst dancer. What if I was physically incapable of doing this? Ramona hit me on the shoulder. “Fuck me. Now.”
I rose to her face and kissed her before she guided the cock inside of her. I couldn’t feel much down there except the space between us fading away as she pulled me in deeper, opening her mouth in pleasure. Soon, I was sweating, concentrating so hard on thrusting that I couldn’t possibly pay attention to anything else. The base of the cock, the balls, hit against my pubic bone, helping with control but little in the way of feeling.
When her bed started to squeak, we both giggled. I wrapped my hands around the top side of the mattress for leverage. I wished I was bigger and stronger than her, that I had ab muscles and stamina. I was too focused on getting the job done to enjoy myself, and felt only relief that she came before I had a coronary. Afterward, she didn’t want me to move, so I collapsed, resting all of my weight on her. Both of us were coated in sweat, our bodies stuck together around my Frog Bra.
Once we caught our breath, she suggested we try a position where I could see the cock going in and out. She rose to her hands and knees and I set myself up behind her. From this angle, I could see everything. And my eyes nearly bugged out at what I saw.
A dick, my dick, was moving inside of her.
Ramona’s three favorite activities were sleeping, eating, and fucking. This was something she’d say with proud hedonism and her self-conscious belly laugh, as if she knew there were more important things in life, she just didn’t care. Forever a student, she treated the summer like she always had, as vacation. Even without classes, she maintained the same hours at the salon, and while she had independent study coursework, her only goal was to produce first draft material for her thesis, whereas I had to finish mine. For the few hours a day she was at work, I wrote at her house or her local coffee shop, which left us with an enormous amount of time to spend the rest of the summer perfecting her three favorite activities.
Once I embraced my dick, which I decided called for a dorky, Jewish name, like “Isaac,” sex monopolized our time. Ramona could get me to do anything, as long as she enticed me with the comment, “Boys love this.” I always enjoyed her suggestions, but I also appreciated that she included me in the collective of cis boys—a group she was physically attracted to—and wasn’t just calling me a “boy” to placate me. We threw role playing into the mix, occasionally cowriting detailed scripts with me assuming well-developed characters like a faggy frat boy and a middle school student who gets a special lesson from his math teacher. This was lighthearted fun, but for me it was also more, a safe space to explore boy phases, an opportunity to express the types of guys that lived inside of me.
When we weren’t fucking, we were eating. We shopped at the farmer’s market, and together we’d make stir-fries with tempeh, nut sauces, fruit salads, and baked goods from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. We also created a vegan-friendly restaurant circuit. The best was Sunday mornings when Ramona would roll over all sleepy eyed and request brunch at the Pork House for their killer tofu scramble.
To recover from all the eating and sex, we slept a lot, or at least rested, almost always at Ramona’s house because her room had more privacy than mine. We often opened the huge window beside her bed, watched the breeze rustle the leaves on the bougainvillea tree, and pretended we were outside. Sometimes we wrote like this as well, sitting next to each other in our matching writing uniforms—navy-blue hooded sweatshirts—typing away on our laptops with the occasional chuckle to ourselves.
Art parties at her salon, literary events, lazing around the park, vegging out in front of the TV—the activity didn’t matter, the adventure was Ramona. We had constant repartee, gave everything a sexual innuendo, and could discuss books, writing, and the merits of the Michaels—Ondaatje, Chabon, Cunningham, and Lewis—for hours on end.
At the end of the summer, I turned in my thesis, officially finishing graduate school. I rewarded myself by planning a trip to visit my best friend from college in Scotland, with a preliminary stop on the East Coast to visit my parents and my brother. Like gay pride weekend, a week with my parents always seemed like a good idea until it dragged on and on, ended in exhaustion, and left me swearing I’d never participate again, only to forget by the following year. Had I not been leaving Ramona for three weeks, I probably would’ve been more excited about the entire trip. But when you’re in that relationship phase where you sing along to Top 40 love songs on the radio, leaving your girlfriend isn’t the best idea.
Neither was bringing up the possibility of making out with other people while I was gone, which I did, about a week before I left in September. We were on her bed, pretending to be outdoors. She bit her lower lip and stared out the window. “I don’t want to make out with other people,” she said.
“It’s just an option,” I said, even though I had no interest in making out with anyone else either. I rarely, if ever, spoke honestly, or created any space between us, ignoring all my instincts to take time for myself, afraid both of being alone and of hurting her. But something about our approaching separation pushed me forward. As I watched her eyes fill with tears, my mouth moved without instruction. “I think of this as our first adult relationship,” I said. “The first of many.”
“Why do you have to be so negative, pessimistic?” she replied. “It’s like you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Why can’t you just enjoy this?”
“I am enjoying this,” I said. Ramona fixed my collar, told me I was dreamy, cut my hair, and picked out my cologne; I was enjoying my third adolescence, after the high school one, after the dyke one. I was twenty-nine going on eighteen, with all the hope and happiness of a teenager falling in love for the first time, and all the maturity of someone who knows that first loves don’t last forever. Or at least that this one wouldn’t. “I’m sorry I brought it up,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
Eight. Homesick
During the last few years, my former bedroom at my parents’ house in New Jersey had turned into a repository for my father’s junk—two televisions from the ’80s, den furniture from a “country house” we once had in a townhouse community for NYC Jews, stacks of Consumer Reports and Elmore Leonard and Tony Hillerman paperbacks that busted out from every cabinet and shelf. The closet contained some of my father’s clothes, the button-down shirts, khaki slacks, and corduroy pants I used to borrow. My dad sometimes slept there, the only downstairs bedroom, to avoid waking my mother up on early gym mornings, and the private bathroom held his razors, shaving cream, and Irish Spring soap.
I couldn’t complain about the loss of my room since I only slept there during one of our semiannual get-togethers, the other usually at a vacation destination. I wasn’t sure which was creepier, that I crashed in my dad’s storage room
/bachelor pad suite or that he slept surrounded by my high school artifacts, a version of me frozen in time as a teenager. One entire wall, a painted bulletin board, still held hundreds of pushpins with my varsity letters, team pictures, athletic plaques, newspaper articles, and photos of me and my high school friends. This wall was the only evidence I’d lived in that room for the three years after our family moved from New York.
On the first morning of my East Coast trip, after exchanging little more than a hello with my parents, they lent me their Lexus to visit my brother in New Hampshire. They were always thrilled to aid our sibling time, contributing money, cars, plane tickets, anything, and had intended for our close relationship before I’d been conceived, planning us a little over three years apart, hoping for a girl and a boy. When I was ten years old, my parents told me a story about one morning at our country house a few years earlier. They’d left my brother and me asleep in the room we shared while they played their regular tennis doubles game and returned home to find that I’d dressed him in mismatched clothes and had put him in his booster seat, where I was feeding him mashed bananas.
I couldn’t remember this early caretaking incident, but when I heard about it, I held on to it, built it into the foundation of great pride I took in being a big sister. I continued to watch over my brother at sleepaway camp, Club Med kids club, and ski school, and when he was still in high school I started taking him backpacking abroad with me. Even if he couldn’t find our destination on a map, as long as I promised to send detailed packing instructions, he’d go anywhere with me—my mom gave him the nickname, “Monkey see, Monkey do.” He turned out to be my best travel partner and the best gift my parents had ever given me. His friends called him “Kriegs,” I always called him my brother, bro, or dude, and in the rare instances I had to use his name, Eric, it sounded weird to me.