“You need to leave,” I said.
He tried to calm me down, but I wasn’t budging. Then he had the audacity to say, “I want you to know how grateful I am to you for having these conversations with me. I want to be a better feminist. I want to advocate for women, so it’s only through these conversations that I learn.”
I wanted to slap him.
He left, and I was glad.
The next day Steve texted me again to apologize and tell me how “amazing, incredible, wonderful, and sexy” I was. It was the Steve lather, rinse, repeat cycle.
But I was done. If you can’t defend my rights in public, you don’t get to see my vagina in private.
I told him how upset I was about the night before and instead of empathizing, he doubled down on his point, trying to prove he was right. He said that I was being irrational and emotional, so of course, the whole argument was my fault. He followed that by thanking me for having hard conversations with him and helping him learn.
I was unimpressed by his emotionally manipulative bullshit, which I pointed out.
“I’ve never met someone who distrusted me as much you. I’m a good person. I don’t need you to validate that,” he said.
He was right. I distrusted him and did not think he was a good person.
I’d spent too much time and energy trying to make “this” work and even more energy trying to figure out what “this” was. I was still confused about all of it, everything from him cumming in his pants to the fact that he wouldn’t stay over. Every time I thought about it, all I could think was, “What the fuck was that?”
He texted me a few more times, alternating between singing my praises and telling me how crazy I was before I blocked his number. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
I was feeling too good about myself these days to put up with emotionally draining garbage.
Goodbye and good riddance.
I PAID A MAN TO CUDDLE WITH ME
Affection was like Chinese food.
I could go long stretches without missing it at all, but once I had it again, I wanted to gorge myself. I had just eaten some Lo Mein of Love and now I wanted some Ecstasy Egg Rolls. Between Simon, Amit, and Steve, I’d seen more action the past year than the previous five years combined.
Of course, the cuddling experiment with Steve had turned into a cuddling calamity. Despite this, I wasn’t quite done with cuddling yet.
Even though Steve was the worst, the few times we had platonically cuddled had done wonders. I couldn’t forget those serene moments of oxytocin release.
In an attempt to fill my Chinese takeout carton of affection, I texted Amit. I hadn’t seen him in almost two months. I’d been too involved with the Steve drama to follow up on his absenteeism.
He responded the next day with a text that was uncharacteristically short and evasive.
I turned into a Sherlock Holmes–CSI–Inspector Gadget and stalked his Instagram to see if I could get any hints about his disappearance. Had he been traveling for work? Kidnapped by Mafiosi? Working on a new EP for his cat?
The first picture was a fireplace with two pairs of slippers in front of it, one women’s and one men’s.
Ah, that’s why I hadn’t heard from him in a while. He had met someone.
“Hiii, are you still single?” I texted him, wanting confirmation.
“Oh fudge, I’m not,” he wrote back immediately.
I was disappointed, but I couldn’t be angry that he hadn’t told me. I hadn’t exactly told him about Steve.
“Oh wow, congrats!!” I texted back, sincerely.
“I loved exploring with you,” he wrote a few minutes later.
“Likewise, wishing you nothing but the best,” I typed back with a smiley face emoji.
It was an unceremonious ending, but what could I expect, a certificate of completion?
I guess all good Friends with Benefits must come to an end.
I was glad he had given me an opportunity to vulnerably discover sex. Our short-lived tryst had made me a more confident lover. While I was bummed about the loss of my FWB, I was ultimately happy for him. He was a good guy. He deserved someone who appreciated his cheesy puns.
Unfortunately, that meant I had no one to fool around or flirt with.
In a moment of desperation, I logged back into the Cuddling Cave.
My inbox was flooded again with men who wanted to pay me to cuddle.
Everyone offering to “buy my services” was over fifty or married, but it sparked the thought that maybe I could be the one to pay someone. I didn’t want a repeat of Steve, where cuddling was a farce for hooking up, so if I really wanted uncomplicated, unemotional human touch—hiring someone seemed like a decent option.
I searched the site for professional male cuddlers and emailed the most popular one, Mike.
We scheduled an appointment, and two weeks later, I was in the middle of Queens on my way to meet him.
It was drizzling, and a depressing gray mist was covering the city. All the trees had lost their leaves and all the plants were dead. The garbage in the street was wet and stuck to the sidewalk. Spring was supposed to be here, but winter was hanging on fiercely to her reign.
As I walked the five blocks to his apartment, the reality of the situation set in: I was paying a man to cuddle with me.
In truth, I was hiring Mike 40 percent out of need for human touch and 60 percent out of Gemini curiosity. I wanted to meet a professional cuddler.
I double-checked the address on my phone and stopped in front of a well-kept building.
I buzzed his apartment. A feminine voice answered, “Hello?”
“Hi! I’m here for Mike.”
“It’s me! Come on up.”
I climbed to the third floor, where I found Mike waiting for me at the top. He was tall and skinny with red streaks in his shoulder-length brown hair. He looked like the lead singer in a nineties alt-rock band. His place was boho chic with a brightly colored blue couch and macramé planters hanging in the kitchen.
His roommates were sitting in the living room playing video games. They ignored me, but I said hello anyway. No reason to make this awkward.
Despite the oddness of the situation, I wasn’t embarrassed about hiring Mike. On the contrary, I thought it might save me from becoming actually desperate and winding up with another version of Steve.
The boho décor continued in his bedroom with purple and gold sheets. He had a salt lamp in the corner and the strong smell of sage hit my nose as we entered the room. There was a framed picture of him kissing a man in front of the Statue of Liberty.
He walked over to his computer and turned on some New Age music with rain sounds, turning up the volume just enough to cover the actual rain sounds.
“Today is all about you, honey,” he said, reaching for a hug. “Do you have a side preference? Big spoon? Little spoon? Front, back?” he continued.
“I’d prefer to be on my stomach, please.”
“Wonderful,” he said, lying down on his back, fully clothed, on top of the covers. “You can join me whenever you’re ready, honey.”
I crawled in next to him and wrapped my arm over his chest.
He was sweaty and warm, but it still felt nice.
I was expecting it to be silent like it had been with Steve. Instead he asked me questions about my life, where I was from, my job. I answered and politely returned his inquiries.
I wanted to stop talking, but I couldn’t figure out how to courteously say that. I spent ten minutes trying to figure out how to ask for silence before giving up and accepting the fact that we were going to chat the entire time. How classically Midwestern of me.
“How did you get into this?” I tried, figuring if we were going to talk, I might as well learn about professional cuddling.
“I wanted to help people. I believe that people are starved for affection and that causes a lot of problems for them. I get to be, like, a therapist and a healer, but with cuddling,” he said rubbing my back.
Despite the physical closeness of our bodies, there was nothing sexual about the experience. We were holding each other. Nothing more, nothing less. I wondered if the talking was strategic, a way of ensuring that the experience remained professional and neutral.
He told me that he wasn’t obligated to cuddle with anyone and he always screened his clients.
“What are most of your clients like?” I asked.
“Most are straight men,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows, surprised by that answer. I expected his clients to be women in their thirties, like me, looking for extra affection.
“Straight men are the ones who are the most starved for human touch. Wanna move to spooning, honey?”
I rolled over, and as he arranged his body protectively around mine in “big spoon” formation, he told me that many of the men he cuddled with cried because they had never been held before.
“Wow, that’s . . . heartbreaking,” I said, letting out a sigh. I made a mental note to be the big spoon the next time I had someone to hold.
Ironically, while my little spoon position felt fine, I was missing the sexual tension. It was as platonic as it could possibly be, which was what I’d thought I wanted.
I turned and looked at his clock. We were ten minutes over our time. I knew he thought he was being generous, but my stomach was grumbling and there was a taco truck down the road calling my name.
“Oh, I think our sixty minutes are up. I don’t want to monopolize your time,” I said. It was one of the benefits of hiring someone; I didn’t have to make up an excuse to leave.
“Thanks for pointing it out! Let’s do the closing ritual.”
Mike leapt off his bed and grabbed a large pink crystal. For the closing ritual we sat facing each other and held hands. We both had to say three things we were grateful for.
“I’m grateful for your ethereal being, the energetic magnitude of this moment, and the massive amount of love I feel pulsating through my body, today and always,” Mike said, still clasping my hand.
“I’m grateful for you too, my family, and coffee. Amen,” I said, with much less flair.
When I was done he held the pink crystal three inches away from my face and told me it would protect me from bad juju.
I thanked him with a hug, and we both got out of his bed and headed back down the hallway toward the front door.
His roommates were in the kitchen cooking a garlic stir-fry. They tried to ignore me as I walked by but I refused to be embarrassed, so I intentionally said, “Bye!” as I closed the door behind me.
As I was walking toward the taco truck, I received a text from Mike: “Had a great time!! Ten percent off for all repeat customers on their second visit!”
He was great but I didn’t think there would be a second time, so I paid him on Venmo and thanked him for his services.
On the way home, I posted about my cuddling experience on Facebook. My friend Priya sent me a DM saying, “I’m interested in this platonic cuddling thing.”
I recommended Mike, but when his fee was too high, she asked me if I knew anyone who might want to try it with her for free.
I had been chatting about it with one of my male friends a few days earlier, and he had also expressed fascination with the idea of platonic cuddling.
I connected them.
At my advice, they developed strict boundaries with timed sessions, open communication, and no staying over or kissing. They met twice a month and she contacted me a while later to say it had healed her from some deep trauma she had experienced earlier in her life.
I was happy to hear about her success; it was a reminder that it’s possible to have two totally different experiences and not blame the experience itself. When it came to platonic cuddling, I’d had a terrible time with Steve; but Priya had amazing, life-altering encounters with her partner.
I thought about finding someone else to cuddle with but the more I thought about all of it, it occurred to me that I was trying to fool myself. What I truly wanted was a boyfriend. I wanted affection, love, and sex from one person who cared about me. I was trying, unsuccessfully, to fill in the gaps, and pretend that some half-starved form of tenderness was good enough.
It was time to start being honest with myself about what I really wanted.
TANTRA
I’d be honest with myself next week.
This week I had already scheduled my Tantra homework.
I grabbed my green research notebook, turned to a page in the middle, and wrote “Tantra Curriculum” in bold letters at the top.
When I was in high school, my best friend and I found a Kama Sutra book in her parents’ bedroom. We studied the pages, not really understanding it, but believing that Tantra was the “next level” of sex.
Since I was trying to level up my lovemaking, Tantra had to be on the list.
The word Tantra itself means “expansion,” “liberation,” and “weaving.” From what I could gauge, Tantra was the art of slow sex, created by “expanding one’s own energy and weaving it with someone else’s energy.” Similar to OM’ing, it was about exploring pleasure without trying to arrive at a destination.
To get my feet wet, I went to an intro workshop where we partnered with a stranger and practiced gazing in each other’s eyes. We spent a long time stroking each other’s arms, and by the end, I did feel connected to my partner.
Afterward, I reached out to our instructor, Karen, for more information.
Karen agreed to meet me for coffee on a nondescript Tuesday at a nondescript Starbucks to continue discussing the benefits of slow sex.
Including her sexless marriage and subsequent divorce, Karen experienced a ten-year celibacy herself. She credited Tantra for helping her rediscover intimacy. She now believed that sexuality was a gateway to God.
At the end of our coffee date, I asked Karen for more resources, maybe a book, a YouTube video, or something.
“Tantra is more about mindset than anything else. There are many ways to explore but I’d recommend my favorite exercise: Find someone to stroke your naked body with a rose. For one full hour. No escalation, no reciprocity,” Karen said nonchalantly, as if she’d just asked me to order her another coffee.
“Uh, I mean I would love to do that, believe me, I would love to do that. Alas, I’m currently very single so, um . . . is there like a book or something I could read?”
“I was single too the first time I did the rose ceremony. In fact, I did the ceremony with a total stranger I met that night. He was grateful for the opportunity,” she said. “The point is for you to connect with your body and take without any obligation of having to give in return. That’s what I’d recommend if you want to explore the tantra practice,” she finished.
I tried to imagine the men I knew being grateful to participate in this corny Nicholas Sparks romance novel activity with me.
Yeah right.
Seeing the skepticism on my face, she said, “Put it out there; you might be surprised.”
I doubted that was going to happen but nevertheless, I posted my homework on Facebook and asked if anyone was interested.
Within five minutes I received ten messages from friends and acquaintances offering to do the exercise with me.
“You know that I’m not going to return the favor in any sort of way, right? No kissing or anything,” I sent to everyone who responded.
All the men still wanted to do the assignment.
I deliberated on the right person and finally settled on my friend Corwin. He was laid-back and easygoing. He was ten years older than me, though he could have passed for my age. He was young in spirit, loved loud concerts and staying out late. He was fit, handsome, and had a great sense of humor.
“I’ve always wanted to learn more about Tantra, I’d love to try this with you,” he wrote.
Although we sometimes flirted, I didn’t think Corwin was interested in dating or sleeping with me, which made it easier.
“We’ll do the rose thing and th
en maybe get breakfast. But you understand that it isn’t going to escalate past that?” I couldn’t believe that anyone would want to do this thing with me, so I kept overexplaining it.
“You had me at breakfast,” he wrote back. “My place or yours?”
I wanted to make it as convenient as possible for him, which meant his apartment.
On the night we were scheduled to meet, I took my time getting ready. I shaved my legs and carefully applied my makeup. It was the exact opposite of how I had treated the OM’ing exercise. This time, I wanted to feel attractive. In some ways, this exercise felt similar to OM’ing, at least the whole being present in your body thing. It was different because the purpose was to feel sexy and desirable, which wasn’t a key component to OM’ing.
I looked at the list I had made in my notebook. It included some of the exercises we had discussed at the workshop and some things I had found online:
• Five minutes of joint breathing, fully clothed.
• Ten minutes of arm touching.
• Followed by him stroking me with the rose.
Karen hadn’t recommended an agenda. She probably would have thought it was too clinical, but I couldn’t help myself. I felt better with parameters; I guess old habits die hard.
I tore the paper out of my notebook and shoved it in my backpack before heading off to Corwin’s. On the way, I stopped at my local bodega to buy a dozen pink roses.
I hopped on the train, flowers in hand, curriculum in bag, and headed toward Brooklyn.
“Beautiful flowers. Are they from your boyfriend?” an elderly woman sitting next to me asked.
I thought about telling her the truth but didn’t want to scandalize her, so I just said, “Oh yes, he’s wonderful.”
“You’re very lucky,” she said.
She had no idea.
Corwin lived in a penthouse in a trendy area of Williamsburg. I arrived at a revolving set of doors that led to an expensive-looking lobby filled with plants. I went to text him that I was there but couldn’t find my phone. I rifled through my bag and checked all my pockets three times. I dumped the entire contents of my backpack on the floor of his luxury apartment building, frantically flinging tampons, pens, and lip glosses across the entrance.
The Coitus Chronicles Page 16