The Coitus Chronicles

by Olive Persimmon

  “Sorry, so tired. Really have to go right now,” I said.

  “Shock me one more time,” he asked, his eyes almost pleading.

  I held out the Pavlok. “Look up electroplay, there are forums and shit,” I said before pressing it against his arm, as his eyes rolled back for the umpteenth time.

  “Tell Katie and Brendan I said ‘bye!’” I yelled, walking out sideways toward the door.

  I had to take the subway home because I didn’t want to bleed all over the back of a cab. When I got home, I showered, changed into my pajamas and went to bed.

  When I woke up in the morning, I felt rough.

  After a month of staying out late, drinking too much, and eating crap food, my breakup lifestyle was starting to take a toll on me.

  I sat on my couch eating the bacon and eggs I had ordered on Seamless, computer in my lap, scrolling through Facebook.

  With a little investigative work, I found Kyle; maybe we could make out a different night.

  He was in a relationship.

  Of course.

  Lindsay walked into the room, took one look at me and said, “Girl, you look like shit. You doin’ okay?”

  I hadn’t seen her in a week. She was in bed by ten when I was getting ready to go out and I woke up after she had already left.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just busy,” I said.

  “How’s your heart?”

  “I’ve just accepted the fact that I’ll probably be alone forever. It’s cool.”

  “You’re so dramatic,” she said, flicking water at me.

  I wiped the water off my face, waited until she was cooking, and said, “Last night I went to a strip club and tried to seduce a man with my shock watch. Then I got my period and bled all over the lap dance bench and had to literally run out the door.”

  She looked up and caught my eye.

  We both burst out laughing, the kind of laughter that you can only have with your best friend without saying anything. I laughed until my stomach hurt and then started again until we were both crying from laughing so hard.

  When I was done I said, “Enough. Time to get my shit together.”

  “Amen, it’s time,” she said, flipping her eggs.

  WHAT IS SEX EVEN?

  It was a Saturday morning and I was sitting in a dark warehouse in Brooklyn watching porn with a group of strangers.

  It was the second annual Pornfest.

  I still wasn’t ready to start dating again so I decided to lean in to the “academic side” of my mission to learn about sex. I wasn’t sure if Pornfest was technically “academic” but Sheng had invited me to join him and it sounded interesting.

  The event was sponsored by YouPorn, one of the largest names in the industry. Because of this, I expected a razzle-dazzle convention with the latest, up-to-date toys and a lot of fanfare.

  Yet, the warehouse was dimly lit with only a handful of vendors. There was a stage and a few booths but other than that it was a mild disappointment.

  I watched porn. I liked porn. I had my favorite categories (cunnilingus, pegging, and cartoon at the moment) so I was excited to hear from people in the industry. Even though the location was disappointing, the lineup of speakers was pretty good. I had just watched a panel with three camgirls and took notes the whole time.

  Next up was Cindy Gallop, the founder of MakeLoveNotPorn, a social site with real people having real sex. “Let me be clear. We are pro-sex, pro-porn, pro-education,” Cindy said, brushing her electric blond hair out of her face. She was the reason most of the audience was there. She was a brilliant speaker and a charismatic woman in her fifties, not to mention. sexy as hell.

  Cindy looked at the audience, pointing her microphone upward, “The issue is that we, as a society, don’t talk about sex,” she said.

  Amen, sister.

  If I wasn’t proof of that then I didn’t know what or who was.

  “What we do at MakeLoveNotPorn is offer the opportunity to watch real couples having real sex. I could explain it, or I could show you,” Cindy said with a smile.

  Suddenly the screen lit up with a couple, naked and joking about what sex toys they liked.

  I had only ever watched porn in private, with headphones, so my roommates wouldn’t have any idea what I was up to. The idea of watching it together with a room full of people was both exciting and scary.

  I was sitting next to Sheng; his unruly brown hair was longer than normal. I was worried that I’d get turned on and he’d somehow sense it. The idea of being aroused in a room full of people still felt uncomfortable to me.

  The woman on screen put on a strap-on. She fumbled and dropped it at one point, which I guess is what Cindy meant by real sex.

  I was aroused, but somehow it was different than what I expected. It wasn’t making me so horny that I wanted to hump the closest thing I could find. Instead it was making me crave human connection. I wanted to reach over and touch Sheng’s hand but I knew that was inappropriate. Instead I tried to sit as still as a I possibly could, lest my movement give away any signs of arousal.

  After the screening, we took a break and I meandered over to a vibrator table. I was holding a large, purple dildo when I bumped into another writer I knew.

  “Good to see you, darling! What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Aw, you know, research and stuff,” I replied, leaning in to give her a hug.

  She introduced me to another writer, Jane, that she had worked with before.

  “Nice to meet you, what do you write about?” Jane asked. I used my classic line, explaining that I was exploring sex after a five-year dry spell, which, thank God, I had broken earlier that year.

  “You haven’t been with anyone in five years?” she asked.

  “Well, I mean, I’ve been with people but no actual sex.”

  “What do you mean by actual sex?”

  I explained that there had been oral, mutual masturbation, and tons of orgasms during the dry spell, but no penis in my vagina.

  “Then you’ve had sex,” she said.

  I started to protest when she said, “So when my girlfriend and I make love to each other, we aren’t having sex?”

  I had never thought of it like that. She had a point. Of course they were having sex.

  “Do you masturbate?” she prompted.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s sex. You’ve had sex.”

  My seventh-grade sex ed class had always defined sex as a penis entering a vagina, but it was clear that that definition was limiting and inaccurate for so many couples.

  Also, when I was in seventh grade, Pluto was still a planet. Times had changed.

  I excused myself, deeply embarrassed by my exclusionary language.

  I returned to my seat and typed “What is sex?” into the Google search engine on my phone.

  I was thirty years old and had just spent the last year examining my own sexuality, and yet my search history clearly revealed how much further I had to go.

  “Sex means different things to different people,” the first website said.

  Well, that wasn’t helpful.

  Was I the only one with this question? Was everyone else clear on how to define sex? What counted and what didn’t? By the time the next panel came on, I was deep down the rabbit hole, reading about the Mormon practice of “Floating” which involved inserting the penis but not moving it. According to Floating practitioners, moving counted as sex. There were also the high schoolers having anal sex who claimed it didn’t count and the “just-the-tippers” who also asserted it wasn’t “officially” sex.

  While I was Googling, I also discovered that I had been using the term vagina wrong this whole time. A vagina was actually the term for the inside, and what you could see on the outside was the vulva. I was still learning things I should have known by then.

  What was sex, even?

  For five years I’d claimed I was celibate, but was I?

  I wasn’t sure anymore because I couldn’t even figure out
what sex was and wasn’t able to properly name the parts of my own anatomy.

  I couldn’t come up with any sort of definitive answer and wasn’t sure I was ever going to. Instead, I returned to my seat to collectively watch porn and try too hard not to seem aroused.

  CLARK KENT

  Summer had turned into fall and fall into cuffing season when I started chatting with Amit on Facebook Messenger. Amit was blind date number ten, a date I never went on because I started seeing Simon. We had been chatting online, like it was 1994, for a few weeks now.

  Amit was six feet tall with dark skin, deep brown eyes, and an impeccable fashion sense. He was one of the only men I knew who wore hats remarkably well, at least according to his Facebook profile.

  “So, you’re single again?” he asked one day.

  “Yep,” I replied.

  “Let’s go on that date,” he said.

  I was looking forward to going out with him because I enjoyed our online rapport and was excited to see if it translated into real life.

  For our first date, we met up at a fancy sushi restaurant where he showed up looking hot as hell in a dark blue suit.

  Unfortunately, as soon as we sat down, we struggled to find things to talk about and had long, unbearable pauses. After we ordered, he showed me a hundred pictures of his cat and when he dropped his fork, he said “Cheese sticks!” instead of “shit.” On paper it sounds endearing, but I wasn’t into it at all.

  We had nothing in common, and I was disappointed that our online rapport did not translate into real life.

  When he offered to walk me to the train, I figured it was our first and last date. I assumed we were on the same page, so I was surprised when he kissed me at the end of it. I was even more surprised by how good it was. For all his awkwardness, Amit knew how to kiss.

  First dates aren’t always great, so I wanted to give him a second chance. On our second date we went for tacos and got a little too drunk on margaritas. The alcohol made him chattier and by the end of the night, I was having a good time. We went back to his place, made out like teenagers, got partially naked, and fooled around.

  One thing became pretty clear: Amit was savvy in the sack.

  He was a total Clark Kent in real life and a Superman when he was about to get naked.

  Amit made no effort to schedule a third date, a fact that both annoyed me and didn’t bother me at all. When he finally scheduled it, it was almost a month later and Christmas season in NYC. We went to see the tree at Rockefeller Center. Once again, we were struggling to find things to talk about. We ordered hot cocoa and held hands through our mittens but by his seventy-fifth pun, I was ready to leave.

  I planned on going home, alone, until he kissed me with one of his soul-melting, voodoo-magic, where-did-that-come-from kisses. I decided to go to his place instead.

  We hopped on the subway and rode the train together silently. I rubbed his leg because touch was the only common language that we shared.

  In that moment, I realized two things:

  1. I did not want to date him, but . . .

  2. I wanted to keep fooling around with him.

  We couldn’t date because we had nothing to talk about, he was obsessed with his cat, and his dad humor was seriously grating on my nerves. My friends thought Amit sounded great. They didn’t get a friend request from Prince Oscar of Kittenville, his cat’s private Instagram account.

  And yet, somehow, our bodies responded to each other.

  Usually if I wasn’t interested emotionally, I wasn’t interested physically.

  Not with Amit. Must have had something to do with pheromones and biology.

  And sexts.

  Amit was a top-notch sexter. I have no idea how it started, but we were sexting after our first date. It felt too-soon and also thrilling. His sexts were graphic yet respectful. Dirty without crossing any lines. He’d send pictures of his abs (no face, of course) with a list of all the things he wanted to do to me. I’d ask if he was aroused and if he said “yes” I’d say “Show me” and he’d send bathroom photos of his erection. It was all very exciting. Even though our in-person dates weren’t magical, when we kissed, I think we both mentally traveled to the digital version of the other person.

  It was weird, in real life, he was this handsome nerdy dude who had zero game. Over text, or if he was about to fool around, he was this nasty sex machine.

  When we arrived at his house after our Rockefeller Center date, he made me watch a dance he had choreographed with Prince Oscar and then turned on A Charlie Brown Christmas.

  Thirty minutes into Linus and Lucy and I was bored out of my fucking mind. I couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t making a move.

  “Look, they have another Christmas special, I haven’t seen this one!” he said with almost childlike excitement when the first one ended.

  I didn’t want to burst his bubble, but there was no way in hell I was about to sit through another Charlie Brown special. That’s the kind of shit you do by yourself, when you’ve already watched Game of Thrones and literally everything else. We were doing too much Netflixing and too little chilling.

  I had to take action.

  I pulled the remote out of his hand and straddled him.

  “I’d rather do this,” I said, leaning in to kiss him.

  “Better idea,” he agreed, wrapping my legs around him.

  Superman was back.

  He picked me up and carried me to the bed with a level of assertion that he reserved for sexy times.

  He pulled my shirt over my head in one swift motion before pulling his own off.

  “Kiss me now,” I demanded, wrapping my arms around his neck.

  He kissed me hard, moving his tongue in and out of my mouth with expertise before kissing my face and my cheek.

  “I’m gonna make you cum multiple times,” he said confidently as he unfastened my bra.

  This was the same guy who choregraphed dances with his cats?

  “Oh yeah? How?” Both of our bodies were starting to get hot.

  “Like this,” he said, rolling me over and kissing me firmly down my body.

  I wasn’t planning on having sex with Amit, but he was true to his word. After three orgasms, I was gasping for breath and clinging to his body.

  “Get a condom,” I said, digging my nails into his back.

  We had sex that was both gentle and, at times, aggressive, talking dirty the whole time, our texting conversations becoming real life.

  Amit changed positions with ease and the sex was seamless in a way I hadn’t ever experienced.

  My body was doing all the work and, thank God, my brain decided it needed a break.

  When we finished, we cuddled for an hour and then started round two.

  “Holy shit,” I said, breathless and sweaty when everything was done.

  He got up, went to the bathroom, picked up Prince Oscar, and started dancing with him.

  Just like that, Clark Kent made his return.

  “Want to watch the second Charlie Brown?” he asked, plopping down on the couch.

  I definitely did not want to do that.

  “Oh, I mean I should probably get going,” I said, pulling on my jeans.

  I kissed him passionately, pet Prince Oscar a few times, and then walked down the hall toward the elevator.

  As the elevator raced toward the ground floor, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the doors.

  My hair was messy. My face was glowing. I was carrying my shoes and wearing the backup flats I had stashed in my purse. I started to untangle my hair, smoothing down strays with a quick spit-lick.

  Another woman entered the elevator and smirked at me.

  Suddenly it dawned on me: I was doing a Walk of Shame.

  Holy shit, me, the leading damsel of chastity, was doing my first-ever Walk of Shame! I went through the events of the evening in my mind:

  I had slept with a man on the third date.

  We had tried four different positions in one night.

>   They had all felt amazing.

  I did not stay the night.

  Me. Someone who always stayed the night.

  Who was I?

  The best part was that I didn’t feel the constant nagging guilt that I thought I would feel. I felt totally fine about all of it. I’d had sex. Because I wanted to.

  For me, that was huge. Usually there was an entire melodrama of emotions and inner monologues with fear and insecurity as the leading directors.

  I stopped trying to smooth out my hair. To hell with it. I’d just come from a man’s apartment and I wasn’t ashamed.

  In fact, I was a little bit proud of myself.

  I had come a long way.

  THE FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS EXPERIMENT

  I got the idea for the Friends with Benefits Experiment from an article I had read on the Internet.

  It was called, “How Deepening Friends with Benefits Led Me to Love.” It told the story of a man, Andrew, who entered into a thoughtful and intentional “friends with benefits” situation with a woman, Dana. They set guidelines and rules (like no going on dates, texting, etc.) and promised to communicate honestly. Their experiment allowed them to openly and vulnerably explore sexuality. Andrew and Dana both married other people but credited their FWB experiment for teaching them how to embrace intimacy and love.

  Hmm, that sounded nice. If only I had someone to . . .

  Amit.

  He was the perfect person to experiment with. I was still feeling self-conscious about my sexual prowess and Amit made things easy. Our chemistry was strong enough that I wasn’t overanalyzing or judging myself. It was low-stakes sex with someone I trusted without the emotional roller coaster I’d had with Simon.

  With Simon, I was too uncertain about our relationship to ever be fully relaxed with him in the bedroom.

  I sent the article to Amit, and then outright asked him if he wanted to try being my FWB. I hadn’t heard from him in two weeks, so I was pretty sure he didn’t want to date me either.

  “I’m still newish to all this, so it might be fun,” I said.

  “I’m down like a rodeo clown!” he responded.

  I didn’t know what that meant but it was a very Amit thing to say.