When we said goodbye in the hotel lobby, I was aloof behind my sunglasses and under my fur hood (later he would text me a picture of himself in a jacket with a fur hood and sunglasses and say look). From behind my sunglasses and fur hood, I said, We did good. I said it like a pro, like a champ. I was very boys club, very not attached. I guess he liked that, because later he told me that he had to look at a Google map to figure out where he was going next, but he’d hid in a deli next door to the hotel to do it, because he didn’t want to mess up the good ending.
lust (noun)—intense eagerness or enthusiasm (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition)
The second time was at the empty house of a friend in Brooklyn, two months later. I texted him all afternoon from the bathtub, soaking in oils. I said that it felt like a holiday. We texted back and forth screenshots of our favorite sexts from the past seven months, celebrating ourselves. I liked that he was traveling for hours by bus to see me. It felt romantic. I didn’t think about the fact that I’d flown four thousand miles from Los Angeles to New York. I believed it was for work, and it sort of was—but if he wasn’t going to be there I probably wouldn’t have made the trip.
I remember when he arrived at the door in the night snow. I couldn’t believe he was real again. Or maybe he was not fully real—not as I envisioned him—but his face and body and hair were real. I said, Let me take off your fucking coat. I just want to take off your fucking coat.
I remember walking up the stairs to the bedroom and asking if he had brought music. He said that he would eat my pussy to infinity again, this time while listening to Teen Daze. He licked me for an entire album. After it ended I came. I remember then having some kind of sex, maybe doggy style.
I was fascinated by his uncircumcised dick. He was my first uncircumcised one. I felt like a virgin again. I wanted his dick to be dirty so I could taste what was under his foreskin and really know him. But it was clean.
I remember being very hungry and going down into the kitchen with him to look for food. I remember eating an apple and talking to him about being alive. I don’t remember what we decided being alive was or if we even attempted to make a consensus. Maybe we didn’t even talk. He looked very alive. I felt it.
Here is what he later said of that time:
I think about the ten or fifteen minutes we spent downstairs at your friend’s, nudish, foraging for snacks, when you explained your tattoo in the living room, and I faced your bare shoulders and midriff, and long apple-eating arms, and I doubt you’ve ever looked more beautiful, or had better posture. When we went upstairs you switched to rap to do rougher sex. And I’d kissed you first thing through the door. And you periodically asked if I was nervous, and I reported with a number out of ten. And we fell asleep listening to mixes in the morning all entangled. And before that when I first awoke I told you about a dream, and I was actually very funny, and felt 100% me.
I remember getting on the subway together and asking him what street he grew up on in Somerville, Massachusetts. I had gone to college in that town, and we’d both been there at the same time when I was between eighteen and twenty-one and he was between nine and twelve. He said he grew up on Morrison Avenue. I had a therapist who lived on Morrison Ave. He laughed and said, My mom is a therapist. I asked for her name and when he told me, I said, Oh god. Your mom was my therapist. He said, Oh god. We could have met. I remember being in her house that summer and seeing all the college girls going in and out and thinking they were hot.
I got off the subway then and went to go meet up with my parents. I asked my mother if she remembered paying a large, unpaid therapy bill, when his mom had to call her, because I had not paid. She remembered. I think this is when I started feeling like something magic was going on. I cried in the bathroom.
love (noun)—strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties (Merriam-Webster online dictionary)
infatuation (noun)—the first stage of a relationship before developing into a mature intimacy (Wikipedia)
I began sneaking hints to him about my real feelings. I wondered if he could actually see us being together. I would allude to this in roundabout ways, until finally, I texted him about it.
Me: sometimes i feel sad u r not mine. i feel sad that i am not younger, unmarried, living on the east coast, and i wonder if u ever feel that way. it is ok if u don’t. and the way things are, the fantasy we have rendered is probably much better than that fantasy made real, but sometimes i want it a lot. this is a scary thing for me to txt u bc i don’t want to txt u this and make u scared that i am “attachy” or “catching too many feels” and ruin what is a fun and beautiful thing, but i want to be true to myself and so i tell you the truth
Him: Thank you for this. Yes, I think of you this way. Meeting at a different place in time & space, being snuggling artbunnies together. I’m sad, in different ways. Like you said, there are advantages to what we have. This can potentially last indefinitely. We get to dodge the harder realities of daily compatibility and enjoy deep compatibility. If this is harder for you than me, I don’t like that. I can’t tell what extent u feel this but if u just wanted to say it I’m glad you did, and if there’s more we should talk more. Is this what you meant by wanting to be a man, feels would be easier? You make me feel there’s someone else in this empty high earth orbit. I feel very close to you when we have sex and share lifesadness and talk about the greater orbiting orbs. You’re really good for me. I feel: the grass is sad everywhere, but at least we can kiss? I’m worried it’s more double edged for you. I don’t know how to be polyamorous. It’s easy for my side. I feel a lot of pain at once, then feel kind of shocked and free. I don’t know what it’s like w other neurohormones. I want it to be okay for you. I want you to be my cosmos woman and I want to worship your mind & heartpussy always. I love you
To me this read like a love letter—some sort of affirmation, or that is how I wanted to see it. And of course, what I have not said up until now is that I was married. I was married to someone else—nonmonogamous at that time, but married—and so, perhaps, my own unavailability made it safe for me to imagine myself with this person and for him to play the game with me. The fantasy was inherently sustainable as a fantasy. It could stay a fantasy forever, if we wanted.
There was an odd, psychic quality to our relationship too. Every time we met I had my period. Somehow, he always knew that I would have my period. He said this was because he was in tune with what my pussy was doing. When he licked my pussy and got blood on his face, I thought he must really love me to lick my blood. But maybe that was more about him loving pussy—any pussy—than him loving me. Like, maybe there are just some men who love pussy so much that they will lick anyone’s blood. Maybe it didn’t matter that it was my blood. The sheets were always bloody.
One time, when we were apart, I wrote his name on a piece of paper in my menstrual blood and texted it to him. The paper is still in my journal and the blood is very faint brown-pink now. It looks prettier today than on the day I wrote it.
lust (noun)—a passionate or overmastering desire or craving (dictionary.com)
love (noun)—an intense emotional attachment (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition)
love (noun)—the emotion of sex and romance (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition)
Our final meeting lasted for an entire weekend. It was in a hotel all the way on the bottom tip of Manhattan. He texted me from the bus and I told him I would be taking a nap until he got there. Sleep, sleep in my heroin, he said, meaning sleep in the anticipation. I said that I was having a stomachache and could he bring me some Pepto. I think it was the only thing he ever bought for me. I still have the Pepto tablets. To me, they still seem romantic: pink, cherry flavor. To me they look like tiny valentines.
That night I had my first anal sex. It was tender, nothing like I had seen in porn. I felt like we were a pair of twins sharing a womb
, two DNA strands, two genderless humans. I felt that I was a virgin again. He ate my pussy as he always did, as it was our foundation of sorts. He licked my ass too. He put one finger in my ass, then two, then three. He really knew what to do. I really wanted it. We Frenched each other with his dick going in and out of my ass.
Afterward, I cried—not because it hurt but because of something else. I had the feeling that a darkness was lifting. I forgot about death.
The next day we went to go get lunch together and for the first time, we held each other’s hands outside in public. I felt so proud to be holding his hand, not only because he was physically beautiful, but because he was keeping death away. We talked about bonobos, how they are nonmonogamous and use sex to pacify all kinds of situations. Verbally I agreed that more humans should be like bonobos. But inside, I thought, I would be monogamous with you.
Or maybe I did not let myself think that. Maybe I wanted him to be mine, but also wanted to continue to be married and also to fuck other men. I brought him to an event that night where I read poetry. Other men I had fucked were there. And the first time he had ever seen me, a year before, before the Internet flirtation and sexting began, it was at a poetry event like that. Both times I wore black. Both times there were other men I had fucked in the room.
On the cab ride back to the hotel, the driver put on “Stairway to Heaven.” This would have been corny except that we were able to be corny together, as that is what children do together, and so it was not corny. We made out in the cab as the cab crossed over the Williamsburg Bridge. I cried in his mouth.
When we got back to the hotel we made love again. This time he came inside me. I said I’m in love with you or I love you. I don’t remember which. He said it back. I don’t remember which.
love (noun)—an assurance of affection (Merriam-Webster online dictionary)
love (noun)—unselfish, loyal, and benevolent concern for the good of another (Merriam-Webster online dictionary)
love (noun)—brotherly concern for others (Merriam-Webster online dictionary)
I felt that we were moving past only fucking, into something else. Over text, I told him that sometimes the harshness of our sexts didn’t fit how I felt anymore exactly. I asked if I could tell him the truth.
Me: when i say hardfucktalk, i’m talking about sexting i think. like, i really like it in the sheets sometimes (not like “skullfuck her till she is crying whore pig” totally degrading kind of stuff, but hot stuff). and i like it a lot in sexting too, as we do sometimes (i think we go hard sometimes and it’s great) but i guess i just mean that like once in a while i wld type something in to txt you and then be like, oh shit, that’s gonna sound too romantic, make it harder/make it funnier/don’t scare this kid.
Him: I don’t think I’d ever be scared by something you’d send me. Send me real feelings when you want to. I want to receive them unconditionally… You’re so beautiful I want to throw a land mine into a wall of cinder blocks and paint your lips with the dust cloud. Your face is like… So Hot… Bone structure… Eyes… Lips… And your body… Is… So, God… Shockingly good… I want to kiss and lick you spiraling into a drainhole to be spat into the first human epoch in which the majority of things are good…
That was as far as he would meet me. It was a beautiful place to meet me, but it wasn’t the impossible, which was what I needed. I wanted to see what was possible. I wanted to see if the impossible could somehow be possible. But when I asked for the impossible, the DNA dissolved. He became twenty-five again and I became—old. I became a woman again and he became a man again. I became the pursuer and he became the pursued, which for me was the worst of all.
Me: i feel… swept away by you… for a long time I have felt so hopeless… i don’t know. a dark cloud.
Me: when i am with you I feel an extraordinary sense of hope. that’s how i can best describe it. hope. like i have been in the dark for a long time and did not realize it until the light came on. but
Me: I guess what I am saying is that being with you has shown me there is something more beautiful than I could have imagined out there and I want the adventure of mad love and sexuality
Me: if i lived in new york wld u “date me”? :)
Him: Yeah I think so
Him: Yeah. Would I come see u and make love to you and talk about life and go to movies and museums and cool restaurants? Yeah
Him: But be careful in working me into your plans, bc I have no idea what lies for us outside the bounds of what we have now. Like, I don’t know. But if more of what we’ve been doing is enough for you, I can give that to you & it’s really good for me, too. I think that’s what you’re saying
I sat with this for a moment. I pretended that what he was saying was not what he was saying or that what he was saying was okay with me. I wanted it to be okay. I wanted to be cool.
Me: of course. i know from what you have said to me that you tend to chafe under the strain of a relationship… is what we have “real”? what is “real”? i don’t know. what makes what we have beautiful is that it is, in a lot of ways, not of this world. i can feel your flesh but much else about it is imaginary.
Him: OK good, I wanted to say that. But what we have is real. I want to be for you what you are for me: a deep influx of love and energy, from the beyond place, absorbed above us, untouched by the earth. And it will help us live our worldly lives
Him: I want to give you joy and love from this place so you can use it where you need it. It’s more powerful to use energy in a different realm from where you got it, like how pokemon level up way faster when they’re traded jk
I was able to sit with the Pokémon. And then, a few days later, I could no longer sit with the Pokémon.
Me: hiii. so, i have been doing some thinking and some talking here in LA and have decided to give… monogamy a try. with my husband. but this means an end for you and me in a sexual/sextual context. i am deeply sad as i write this. we did so good. good love. another lifetime? :)
Him: Okay. :) Obv bummed but way more important you do what’s good in the long sense. Would be cool to reconnect on a literary basis in a while, but good to give it space
Me: who knows what is good? i am doing my best. i fell hard for you. you’re that good. i wld have chosen you. and i wld have wanted you to be mine. but you belong to the world and the stars. i don’t really know how to do things half-measures. i am sorry to do this over text. know that i’m crying at starbucks.
Me: and yes. space then literary/friendship even, sounds good.
Him: I’m wrenched. I’m not sure I can do things full measure, and for that I don’t want sympathy, but I think you understand. I wish you all luck.
Me: Love to you. Goodbye for now
Him: Love to you. Goodbye.
We did try reconnecting a few months later, as friends. That lasted for about a month. I did a good job of pretending to be a wingman-type bro, all casual and chill. But inside I was suffering. I didn’t want to just be friends. We would text about books, therapy, SSRIs, taking a shit at Walmart, but inside I was only wondering, Does he still feel ____________? I guess he was too. Things devolved quickly into sexts about the Roman Empire and romantic emails. Then I said goodbye again. He got back in touch. Then I said goodbye for good.
What happens to the space that two people occupied together? How can it just disappear? Why can’t it just become something else?
What I maybe miss most is being able to lapse into spaceland and fantasize about the sex with him. But it is no longer safe for me to do that. The fantasy is no longer safe. It is a death valley. Reality killed it. I also miss the many months of uncertainty of not knowing whether we could be. The nebulousness. Now I know we could not.
I want to text him and say: hi
I want him to text back: Hi
I want to say: i am writing a personal essay about not knowing what love is. can i ask u some questions? were you in love with me or was it just the fucking? was i just an older woman who was so grateful
just to be getting fucked by a younger man? (or other things I have read about older women fucking younger men on websites from the perspective of younger men?)
I want to say: was i real to you? could i have been real to you? why wasn’t i? I want to say: when r u coming back to me in the way i want u?
But he cannot answer me. My longing is not for him but for the stars. No, my longing is for him. Why is my version of him not real?
We got to be magic together. But is magic even real?
I want what is unreal to rescue me from the world. I want to be a shadow of myself dancing in a hotel room with his shadow. I want to be free.
I see him now in a dream and he has fallen for someone else. He comes to me in the dream and tells me he is about to be married. I ask him what I didn’t have. Is it that I am old? Is my skin a crocodile? Was it that I am already married? Perhaps it is that I am of the stars and he is of the earth.
Who is the woman who has his whole being now? Does she have his whole being? Do I still live in there at all? I want to vomit up the whole thing and say, “But it was love.”
When we think of our old lovers, and the people they are with now, we wonder what we did not have. We wonder collectively, as people, what other people have. A collective unconscious is formed, a cloud, and we laze around it and lie to each other. We tell each other we are better than one another, better than whoever he is with now. We tell it to each other, because we are well-meaning people. We tell it to each other in friendship.
Our single friends say they are going to be alone for the rest of their lives and we tell them they are crazy. We tell them they are definitely going to find someone. But how do we know? We know nothing.
It is our single friends who keep us in our marriages. They remind us that being single is sad. Dating is sad. Online dating is sad. Attending holidays and weddings alone is sad. Marriage, too, is sad.
So Sad Today Page 4