Your twenties are also the decade of every man you date demanding to know how many people you’ve slept with. I lied every time anyone asked me that—not because anything was “wrong” with my number, but because almost any number you give will be seen as bad. If I had a monogamous boyfriend every year since becoming an “adult” at age eighteen, if you asked me my number at twenty-seven, that’d be ten guys. All he would hear when I told him that would be, “Ten dicks that are bigger and better than yours that I think about ALL THE TIME! I LOVE DICKS! I’M ONLY WITH YOU TILL I CAN GET ALL THOSE DICKS BACK IN ME! Ten! Ten! Ten!”
Point is, in my twenties, my Girl Logic was still a little bitch a lot of the time, worrying what men thought of me and how to spin the truth so they wouldn’t feel insecure. I didn’t know enough about sexual empowerment to say, “The number is five—get over it, you’re just lucky to be with me.” (The number was seven, but it’s a universal rule that there are some guys you don’t count. You passed out after one thrust, Drew, so I count you as half a point.)
Now that I’ve navigated through a few adult-ish relationships, I can’t imagine a man asking me for my sex number. I can’t imagine caring what his number is, and I can’t imagine sitting here counting up my own tally. I travel a lot and my free time is precious, so when I’m free, if I’m not staring at my phone habitually refreshing Instagram, I just want to hang out with my close friends. None of whom give a fuck who I fuck, because we’re old now and we just wanna laugh and/or scream at how bad (or, hopefully, good!) the sex was. We aren’t interested in making each other feel bad about having it in the first place.
In any case, though, sex is a lot easier to come by nowadays thanks to the advent of online dating. But why has no one seemed to figure out that the people you “heart” on dating apps are usually nothing more than a reflection of your passing momentary mood? (And on that note, why do these apps always use a heart to indicate interest? They should use a clickable GIF of a girl making the eyeroll-y “fine, I guess I’ll go” face.) Sometimes I’ll have too much coffee and get all frisky and overcaffeinated and be like, “Neck tattoos?! HE COULD BE THE ONE!” Then, when I’m feeling irritated and picky after a bad date, I shuffle through the same catalogue of losers, only this time like, “Only Jews with blue eyes and large hands who live in Del Mar!”
After I’ve passed the initial heart-GIF-click-a-thon and made it to the far-off point of actually sleeping with someone, I admit: I’ll mentally check out if you don’t hold my attention during sex. I will check out so hard I could finish a New York Times crossword puzzle (Sunday edition, thanks) while we’re fucking. In fact, I only remember having amazing sex a handful of times in my life. To this day, the best sex of my adult life was with a total stranger I met while I was abroad for a few weeks doing shows. So, in the spirit of sharing, I will tell you this ONE fun sex story. Even though this particular relationship didn’t lead to true love or anything, it illustrates a time when my Girl Logic had my back.
I had never been a fan of one-night stands, and had never had sex with a stranger (OK, maybe just one other time) and I figured, “Hey, I’m in this foreign country for a few weeks, I have my days free and a flat, might be nice to have a companion for a bit.” So I went out a-hunting—that is, I went dancing with some friends I had made that night at a bar. It was the first time in my life that I’d left the house with the goal of finding a hot stranger and making him my temporary paramour. Simultaneously trepidatious and exhilarated about what I might find in a European market (bad teeth? fun accent? most likely anti-Semitic?), I set out. And there he was, in the middle of the dance floor, blond swooping hair and an Aryan smile so strong that it would make Hitler say, “See? This is what I was talking about!” He was in skinny jeans and a Polo shirt with a giant stripe across it. He was gorgeous and obviously not American.
He told me he was Swedish. The hookup gods were smiling upon me that night because he spoke English quite well and had great teeth. We walked back to my flat, intermittently making out. I was reticent to share with him what I did for a living, because it isn’t sexy. Having to explain that I’m the kind of famous where some people care and others don’t is a weird thing that does not remotely qualify as foreplay. He said he watched a lot of American TV. I assured him he had never seen me. Also, him being Swedish, who knows what season of Law and Order they were on over there. We got back to my place, and I soon uncovered something I wasn’t prepared for but should have been: he was uncircumcised. Being American and Jewish, I had never encountered this before. My ignorant side came right out with red, white, and blue sparklers and a Bud: “What do I do with that? It looks like a Russian grandma wrapped in a shawl.”
He replied, “Why would I be circumcised? I’m not Jewish. Most of the world’s men aren’t circumcised. I can’t believe you’ve gone this long without knowing that.”
What got me was his… maturity. I was thirty-two; he was twenty-seven and looking at me like the hideous American idiot I was acting like.
He had tapped into an insecurity of mine: the fear that I do not, in fact, know everything. He was right, of course. Still, meeting a new penis is one thing, meeting a new penis that doesn’t look like any other penis you’ve ever met is a mental hurdle you have to clear quickly if you want the night to end well.
I needed a minute. I went to the bathroom and, of course, got my period. I sheepishly came back to the room and said, “Sorry, I can’t do it; I just got my period.” He didn’t even blink. He ripped my underwear off and said, “What am I, in kindergarten? I don’t give a fuck.” (But he said it with an accent, so, like: I down’t geev a fahk.)
And we were off to the races. It was a combination of his beauty, confidence, and his unwillingness to let my own mind get in the way. And we just fucked. And I never once, that night or in the subsequent week we spent together, thought for a second that he wasn’t 100 percent into me. My GL was actually telling me to enjoy it: “You never allow yourself to just be casual and have fun. This one time, let yourself do something you genuinely want to do without judging yourself for it. If it doesn’t work out, no big deal, because you’re going into it wanting nothing more than to try. Also you don’t even live on the same continent! Also he carries a messenger bag and wears a lot of Polo!”
But the thing was, I legitimately went into it wanting nothing more than to have fun for the time I was there, no strings attached. Which wasn’t always the case for me—women often lie to themselves about this stuff, saying things like, “I just wanna see where this goes,” when we know the guy is all wrong. Some part of us even thinks, “What if he’s the one?!” And those expectations, buried as they may be, end up hurting us in the end. Lucky for me, on this one night in this one particular year of my life, my GL was encouraging me to let go of all that preoccupation with the future and just have a good time.
The next morning, I rolled over, exhausted. He was watching something on his phone. I stared at him, still the epitome of pristine Swedish attractiveness, an epitome I was basing only on him since he was the only Swede I’d ever met.
He looked over and said, “Your last name is Shlesinger, isn’t it?” I thought, “Oh God, something anti-Jew is about to come out of the mouth of this uncircumcised person from a country I don’t even know enough about to make fun of.” And he held up his phone to a YouTube clip of me hosting the dating show Excused and said, “This was my favorite show! I used to watch you all the time!” Then we FUUUUUUCCCKKKKED TO CLIPS FROM MY SHOW. Kidding.
I’d like to thank him right now for being so arrogant in his pursuit of sex that night.
I’d also like to suggest, based on my own personal experience, that one thing every girl should try, even if just for the laughs, is to have phone sex with someone whose first language isn’t English. That’s right, the Swede and I kept in touch, and we ended up having fantastic phone sex. Not only would he narrate the naughty events he was imagining, but he would also tell me what he fantasized my reaction would be. So it wa
sn’t merely, “I’m going to throw you on the bed and fuck you”—nope, it became, “You’re going to walk into the hotel and I’m going to throw you on the bed, and you’ll protest and say, ‘Oh, but I’ve only just arrived, I haven’t even had a chance to unpack my toiletries.’” HOT. (Update: We only saw each other during that one trip, but we say hi on WhatsApp every once in a while and talk politics, who we’re dating, whatever. We’re friends, and about as close as two people with nothing in common, nothing holding them together, and an ocean between them can be. I’d also like to thank his parents for not circumcising him because the man I’m in love with now is also not circumcised and it made getting to know his wiener less awkward. Still looks like a cold Russian grandma in a shawl, though.)
In my twenties, I was almost always in relationships. My Girl Logic kept telling me that’s what I was supposed to do, not sleep around, because if you are sleeping with someone, you should be dating them. Nowadays, having had a few one-night stands, and, recognizing the bizarreness they can bring, I see that my overly monogamous twenties might have been a mistake. Or… not.
OK, ONE MORE SEX STORY. I’d met Jack on this “celebrity dating” app. He wasn’t the celebrity, I was. Amazing, right? Having never done online dating before, I chose that outlet because it seemed to offer something of a filter. I didn’t need to date another actor or even a famous person, but you had to apply to this site and get, like, approved. Basically, I wanted to date someone similar enough to the point that I didn’t end up on a date with my Uber driver. So I met this Jack, and he was cool and handsome. He even called me. LADIES, DID YOU HEAR THAT?! My phone rang! I was like, “Wow, what the fuck is this old-fashioned move-maker doing!?”
I was playing in Denver, and I’d bought some pot; my plan was to do my show, come home, smoke alone, and draw with crayons later, so I deliberately put off the pot-smoking till after the call because no one likes weird weed talks. I also didn’t want to think or talk about dying, which happens every time I smoke pot.
Anyway, after we talked, we texted for about a week before things got spicy. I was bored and somehow we started—dear God, I hate this word—“sexting.” (I hate sounding like a fifteen-year-old or, worse, a mom trying to relate to her fifteen-year-old. “See, honey? I got a pink clip-in hair extension! We’re best friends, let’s take a SnapChat!”)
But our sexting thing was pretty hot, and my radar was picking up on the fact that he had a huge… hog. Go for the quiet ones, ladies—they’re always the ones who are packing the meat-heat. (But not too quiet—the super reclusive, socially rejected ones tend to shoot up public places. Then again, maybe if you do go for them, they’ll get a little female attention, and they won’t feel so goddamned TRIGGERED all the time. Maybe you, and you alone, can help prevent a mass murder!)
So one night he came over. I had been on set all day and still had on my camera makeup. That shit is designed to make you look flawless through a lens, but up close after ten hours, your face looks like the surface of an oatmeal cookie. It was midnight and I had to be up at 7 a.m., but… he came over. Supercharged sexual gratification guaranteed, right? My GL was telling me to go for it. (“Be bold! Fuck him! You hardly ever do this stuff, but you’ll feel so good afterward, just like how men feel after they fuck! Like they just conquered something!”)
We got AFTER IT… for five minutes. That’s five minutes total, including taking off our clothes, getting in bed, having sex, and then inhaling the palpable air of disappointment afterward. It was boring, and nothing like what was promised in the brochure! He’d promised me not just an orgasm but fun! Adventure! Rapper sex! (He was white, but so?) Now the typical male response here might be, “Maybe you, Iliza, just weren’t that good.” Girls, if someone ever says that to you, then they’ve either never had sex or they’ve been so stunted by society’s never-ending porn fixation that they think women are supposed to love all sex, no matter how bad. It’s on guys to make it great. The girl shows up and gives him a soft, warm place to put his penis—that’s hospitality! Anything beyond that is a bonus. You would have to lie there crying and motionless while staring at a picture of your ex-boyfriend for a man to be able to solely blame you for it being bad. You might not be the greatest at sex but I still think it’s on the guy to do most of the work.
The truth was, the moment sex was over, I was motivated by one thing and one thing alone: sleep. Now it was 2:30 a.m., and I had little skin snowflakes all around my mouth from kissing, which apparently had exfoliated my makeup off. I went to the bathroom for approximately eight minutes to wash my face, and when I came back, the dude said, “You aren’t talking to me.” While I was indeed disappointed by the sex, my silence actually stemmed from the fact that I had been in another room under a running faucet for eight minutes.
Then he said, “You’re treating me the way men treat women after sex,” and I confess: I kinda loved that. So I told him, “I need to sleep—you’re welcome to stay, but if you can’t, no worries.” (“No worries,” a.k.a., the motto of every Australian youth adapted by modern American daters to illustrate that they are carefree when, in actuality, Americans aren’t built like that. WE CARE. We just don’t want to be seen as clingy, and so we beat you to the punch and act like we care as little as possible.)
He sat there puzzled, then opted to leave.
Of course, my Girl Logic seized that moment to begin whispering quietly, “Maybe I should stop him, I don’t want to be rude, blah blah blah.” But sleep was all I could think about, and I knew that every second he sat there debating what he wanted was one less second I had to sleep and fix my face for the next day, which was what I wanted.
That experience reminded me that, when it comes to sex and dating, taking a second to check in with yourself and ask, “What do I really, really want right now?” can be incredibly useful.
After that night, I decided I would never let that happen again. If someone starts texting me sexual things late at night, I won’t just give in out of boredom and loneliness and ignore my exhaustion. I should have gone to bed and been fresh for the set the next day. This goes beyond feminism, it has to do with taking care of myself in the long and short term.
These days—as in the months before I met my current boyfriend—when a man I’m not in a relationship with says he wants to have sex with me, I first ask myself, “Will this benefit me? Will I get off? Is it going to be fun? Will it be more fun than sleeping?” Most likely not. If the only aftereffect is the other person feeling amazing, well, then I see no solid reason to do it. Then there are the guys you decide to sleep with despite your better judgment. No matter how much self-respect I dole out to myself, and no matter how long I hold out to have sex in a decent relationship, there are some men who are irresistible despite being just… Blazing. Hot. Garbage. Fires. You know the ones—they pursue you like crazy, then never call once you’ve expressed a whiff of interest. Or how about the ones who talk about commitment in this easy breezy bullshit way that women NEVER allow themselves to do, lest we be branded desperate psychos. I’m talking about the dudes who are on a third date, then all of a sudden they’re dropping shit like, “Hope the kids get your sense of humor” or “Gin drinker huh? Well, you’ll be a whiskey gal by the time we’re married, har har har!” He might sound lighthearted, but believe you me, these kinds of comments are manipulation; he’s playing with your emotions, and that’s not cool. Your Girl Logic will kick into overdrive, picking up on that sniff of a future promise, thereby prompting you to overanalyze your own degree of interest. “OMG, am I into him? Could I be into him? He is making commitment-y sounds with his mouth, so maybe he’s serious?! Could I fall in love with him? Is he in love with me? I knew I’d find a relationship man one of these days! Holy shit our kids ARE gonna be cute! I will be a whiskey gal!”
And yet, if you uttered any of those thoughts to a man, they’d be terrified. Didn’t you know? The rule is that men make the rules, and women navigate around them.
On a semirelated note, dat
ing can even get weird when you don’t sleep with the guy. When I was twenty-three, I dated this man for a few weeks and never had sex with him. (For what it’s worth, my general rule is that, when you first start seeing someone you’re into, always put sex off one date longer than you’d like to. If he actually likes you, he won’t mind. You will never regret waking up not having had sex, and it will always just make him more determined.)
In this case I moved slow, and he was thirty-six and so pumped to be dating someone my age that he was down to wait. I broke it off with him after I saw a professional e-mail he wrote that was so riddled with grammatical errors, it looked like it was penned by a gifted fourth grader. Another interesting thing? After I broke up with him, he got mad, and, to try to make me feel bad, he faked his own death. Yes, you read that right. He had friends instant-message me to tell me he’d died. As if I would be like, “Oh no, he died! Turns out I did love him—I see that now as I stare tragically at his poorly written obituary.”
But hey, whatever sex-related bullshit we’re dealing with at any given time, at least we have Girl Logic to help us navigate through the minefield that is modern romance. Because you know that expression “be your own best friend”? At the end of the day, your GL should—and can—be yours. You’ll fight sometimes, and she’ll drive you bananas with her incessant demands and critiques. But after emotionally terrorizing us when we’re young, GL ultimately helps us sort through our personal values, figure out who we are, and pin down who we want to be with, in the bedroom and beyond. As a grown-up, I still occasionally get tripped up in matters of the heart (or, uh, matters of the dick). But all the crap my GL put me through in my twenties helped me pin down what I deserve and what I want—in bed and in relationships. It helped me realize, for once and for all, that no man is worth as much as my own self-respect. And my sleepy time.
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