🫖 Hello, darlings. This is an essay about sex and other things. If you are a mother, brother, priest or lover and you’d rather skip it, be my guest. Shout out to Jenny for mocking me for only ever issuing a warning when I write about sex. I do it for a reason! People get mad lol. I’d also like to highlight that I’ve begun recording audio versions of my posts, which you can listen to on the Substack app or website. 🫖
At a recent housewarming, I caught up with a friend. I told him about my dating life. It sounds like you’ve gotten pretty apathetic, he said. I was taken aback, but he was right. All of my romances have petered out after four or five dates. I haven’t had a real, crushing, down-bad crush in years. After a recent fuck, I noticed that the guy had been chewing gum the entire time. I meanly made fun of his gold ASICS as he walked out the door. So, yes, I’ve gotten a little apathetic.
I want to care. But the truth is, I’m pretty particular. I don’t fall easily. And, if I don’t feel a flutter, I see little reason to continue seeing someone. We’re opposites, my friend at the housewarming remarked, I pretty much fall in love with everyone I meet. I smiled, wondering if I am, indeed, a little heartless and broken.
Is my tendency to keep things casual and brief self-knowledge or self-preservation? Do I run because I actually know what I want, or because I’m scared of being vulnerable again/trapped again/hurt again/seen again/misunderstood again/disappointed again/loved again/dumped again?
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Maybe I haven’t moved on from my breakup the way that I thought. I hate it when people say it takes half of a relationship span to get over someone. It’s true and it’s not. You can be fine the day after a breakup and shattered years later. There’s no linear path to over you. And, to be over someone is to cheapen the eternal. Have we no room to carry the pieces of our love with us?
In Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin writes:
The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.
My last love lasted for five years. It’s been twenty months since it ended. In this time, we have navigated a rare and relatively un-role-modeled friendship. We’ve come together and needed space, Jack and Jills tumbling in and out of each other’s lives. I never stopped loving him, and he has told me the same. Our relationship is always transforming into a series of beautiful something else’s.
A year from now, we will arrive at 2.5 years—half of our time together. I’ll put my tail between my legs if reaching this benchmark gets us to a newfound, profound place of over-it-ness.
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On a summer day, a group of us sat in traffic, sandburned and thirsty. We talked about toil, checking one’s IUD strings, and dating. Women’s things. In the car was a girlfriend and boyfriend. The girlfriend told me that she would never kiss someone on the first date. I bluntly replied that I always kiss on the first date. On principle. How else would you know if you wanted to continue seeing a person? To that point, I often fuck on the first date.
I suppose this makes me “easy.”
When I was first single in New York, I felt like a virgin. I was a late bloomer. 16 for my first kiss. 18 for everything else. Monogamy worked for me, but I never felt strongly about it. It’s just the mode that worked for the relationship that spanned my late teens and early twenties. Suddenly, I was 24 years old and only had sex with one person. I approached my body count with a tenacity, which I hope would be shocking and impressive to many.
I slept with software engineers and therapists. 23 year olds and 37 year olds. Men from 5’8” to 6’4”. Men who I met at parties or coffee shops or improv classes or Instagram. Two Alexes. Two Jacks. Two Matts. Men who smoked weed. Men on SSRIs. A friend or two. Men who were in love with other women. Men who kissed well and men who kissed like, insanely badly. Men who couldn’t stay hard. Men who didn’t give a passing thought to my pleasure. Men whose insistence on making me come was nearly oppressive. Men who treated my body with casual violence. Once or twice, men who fucked perfectly.
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There is a vagueness inside me that frightens me. The truth is, I like to go easy on the people I date. I am genuinely curious about people who are nothing like me. I lack much jealousy or judgment and love digging into past loves and losses. I make men my confidants. My first dates often last ridiculously long for the simple fact that I will keep saying yes until the other person says no. This feels electric but exhausting.
A big pet peeve is when men who barely know me tell me that they miss me. I raise an eyebrow thinking, how can that be possible? We’ve only been on a few dates. It makes me feel cruel to be so dubious of a sentiment that’s meant to be kind. It’s a figure of speech, but when spoken sincerely, it’s incredibly intense. There are only a few people in this world that I truly miss. I asked a friend why this seems to happen to me so often. She suggested that it’s because I make men feel interesting. That I could avoid this by making men feel less special.
This made me immensely sad. I like to make people feel interesting because people are interesting. I want to get to know people deeply, even when I don’t want to continue to date them.
In Sula, Toni Morrison captures something resonant:
Hannah rubbed no edges, made no demands, made the man feel as though he were complete and wonderful just as he was—he didn’t need fixing—and so he relaxed and swooned in the Hannah-light that shone on him simply because he was.
In a dark way, I wonder if the only reason I like dating is because I like how I am on dates. It’s thrilling to dazzle people with my radical easy-goingness. Being frictionless is lovely until it’s not. At its worst, it permits bad behavior. At its best, it gives people nothing to hold onto.
By the end of last year, I took a break from sex and dating. I had been feeling down from the sum of my unpleasant or unsatisfying sexual experiences and after being dumped by someone I got a little excited about. I was starting to feel like there is no such thing as getting out of sex unscathed. I never asked for anything, and as such, I wasn’t getting anything I wanted.
I started to wonder if to be easy in sex and love is to deny the pleasure of anticipation. In this light, marathon first dates seem less like a bacchanal, and more like a symptom of scarcity. Forever worried if I don’t eat now, the plate will be taken away.
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A newfound, profound approach to dating is cool until you get bored on a Tuesday. I entered the new year excited to date again. In the past, I haven’t had much luck on dating apps. I’ve never approached them very seriously, and tend to fall into a familiar cycle. I’ll download them, update the photos to my latest haircut, swipe furiously, respond to every message, go on a bunch of dates, get overwhelmed and disinterested, and delete them again. I tend to have more success IRL. I like to know how a person smells.
At the same time, I recognize that dating apps are one of the places where people are. Especially when it’s cold outside. In the new year, I kept tabs on my Hinge likes and swiped Tinder on the toilet or when I got sick. On Hinge, I messaged no man and no man messaged me. On Tinder, the cold seemed to make everyone more flaky than usual. Nary a date occurred.
Eager to shake up this dry spell, I downloaded Feeld. I cobbled together a profile of generally tit-forward pictures with a bio that advertised me as submissive and adorable. For the uninitiated, Feeld calls itself a “dating app for the open-minded.” It’s a place for those who are interested in kink, non-monogamy, and all the acronyms ad nauseam. As a friend recently texted: FEELD IS LIKE GETTING FINGERED BEHIND THE BLEACHERS TYPE OF DEVIOUS BEHAVIORS.
When I downloaded it a year ago, it seemed sparsely populated and ambiently horrid. Feeld in 2024 is a whole new world.
I wanted attention and I got it. 1000 likes in 24 hours. People were freaky and forward and funny and sweet.
Jesus, C. Too hot ✩ Hey gorgeous how’s your day going ✩ Babygirllll ✩ hi! you have a very pretty smile, hows your night going? ✩ Hey sweet baby. Wanna be a good girl today? ✩ Sweet C, would you like to grab a drink some time? ✩ Hi baby ✩ Looks like you got good music taste, put me on something ✩ Good morning beautiful. Was hoping we matched ✩ Ima make u my good lil pretty bunny period. Wanna do my hair for me? Ha ✩ Oh hello!!! I was hoping we’d match ✩ You look like such good energy, love your smile. how’s it going? ✩ You’re the baddest ✩ Hi princess. I love your style ✩ How are you ✩ Are you blondie or princess peach ✩ Hey! I love your hair :) ✩ You seem like you “pop a tit” frequently. Has yet to happen to me. ✩ Brooklyn? ✩ Hey C ✩ You’re so cute! I’m looking forward to connecting ✩ Hi! How’s it going? Getting into anything fun this week? ✩ how’s your experience been on here? ✩ Hey C! You’re super cute! ✩ You look so familiar! ✩ So we’re definitely going to a concert for first date ✩ wanna bite you ✩ Hey! What if instead of one person saying you were good, you had two people telling you how good you are? ✩ You are super cute, that smile!
I scheduled a bunch of dates. I sexted a little. I fucked two people in one weekend. My likes approached 3000 at the week mark. And, just like always, I got overwhelmed. I couldn’t keep up with the messages and planning and dates. I probably blew off people I might have liked or found attractive.
For me, twenty months of dating in the city has meant realizing that a battalion of people are ambiently down to fuck me TONIGHT. I’m still waiting for my next real, crushing, down-bad crush. Until then, I’ll do what I do best. Delete everything. Return to the streets, where I’ll stay for a time. I’ll keep on kissing on the first date, and will probably go for a first-date fuck whenever I feel like it. I’m not in the business of random dating rules. But, I’d also like to test out a little more intentionality. Go easy on people, and ask for what I want. Trust that the plate won’t be taken away before I’m finished.
2.5.24 Mixtape
The music for this essay could have gone a few ways. Rather than going the horny route, I decided to opt for songs that convey how easiness can be devastating. ✩ Where better to start than with easy by Tomberlin? I’ve been working on this essay for quite a while, and it’s taken many iterations. Without a doubt, this song has guided my thinking a lot, because I resonate so much with it. 🎶 You tell me that I'm easy. You say I seem so free. But I'm frightened to make you feel like others have made me. 🎶 ✩ Good Guy by Julia Jacklin has been haunting me for years. 🎶 I don't care for the truth when I'm lonely. I don't care if you lie. I don't care if in the morning you get up, not say goodbye. 🎶 Is she singing with sincerity, or just telling her lover what he wants to hear, just as she asks in return? ✩ Thirdly, let’s take to Nice and Quiet by Bedouine. It’s my second essay in a row recommending this artist, which is undoubtedly because she’s so good. This song opens her titular album and describes a complicated love. 🎶 I will try my best to keep my head nice and quiet for you. 🎶 I love how she alternates between promising to keep her “head” and “feet” quiet in the chorus. ✩ Never Be Mine by Angel Olsen was a song that I listened to on repeat during one of my earliest crushing crushes. Olsen, like me, describes yearning for a lover who loves someone else. 🎶 But I would watch you, I would watch you, turn and walk away. Yes, I would watch you, learn to love you and her, too, if you'd only stay. 🎶 ✩ I Don’t Smoke by Mitski is maybe the best break-up song of all time. 🎶 So, if you need to be mean, be mean to me. I can take it and put it inside of me. If your hands need to break more than trinkets in your room, you can lean on my arm if you break my heart. 🎶 The part of this song that always makes me cry is when Mitski wails: I am stronger than you give me credit for. It strikes me that there is strength in steadiness. ✩
🫖 Cheers! Chat soon? As always, you can support my work with a like, comment or share! Thanks for reading. 🫖
dating is not for the faint of heart, and you've got one strong heart.
✩ Hey C you ATE this and left no crumbs behind ✩