diary entry: may 2012 — one night stand, Brooks
The roof to the frat is unlocked and you climb up on the ledge to watch the crowd below. Everyone on campus is out for Tour de Franzia: multi-color teams of students lurch and yell across the sidewalks, followed at a careful distance by Public Safety officers. Kirk groans that he wishes he could be among them, how mad he is that he fell for the scare tactics of the administration, and it’s true, you wish you could be down there too. You had a Galinda the Good Witch costume, complete with a sexy pencil skirt and a magic wand.
Your group follows the wine-sodden masses to Senior Village, where hundreds of costumed fools flirt and fall over. It’s funny, priceless really, as a couple hooks up on top of a van and Public Safety swarms a particularly aggressive girl in neon pink leggings. You stand on the curb and watch your friends, Carly's knee blooming with a fresh bruise, Becca in a butterfly mask to disguise her face, Zach wearing a tiger suit and hitting on a girl in fairy wings.
A cute blond wearing a red cape hesitates near you, searching the crowd for a familiar face, and you exchange smiles. He introduces himself and you wind up chatting, Brooks, a sophomore. He shares his warm Natty Ice and asks why you aren’t in costume, not accepting your excuse.
'I guess I’m just boring, I’m from Connecticut,' you shrug, laughing, and his face lights up, asks where in Connecticut. You tell him your hometown and he exaggerates a wince, and you rush to add no no I’m not one of those! He grins, he’s from Fairfield, and you banter about being stereotypes, rival high schools. He’s a science major, a lacrosse recruit, lives in Hewitt dorm. You wobble off the curb and let out a tipsy woah! when the height difference announces itself, and for a moment you both hop on and off the curb, laughing about the foot between you both. You kiss, soft and sweet, and then Public Safety starts blowing whistles and there are sirens and he asks, 'should we… go?'
You tease him on the walk back to his dorm and he pretends it hurts. It doesn’t occur to you until later that you took this exact walk with Nathan a few weeks ago. You laugh about the squeaking bed frame and he mentions WD40 and likes your temporary starfish tattoo on your breast. He slides into you, right to the hilt, and you let out a shaky breath and feel full. His hair drips sweat onto your back. You comment on it, the sticky sweetness of his skin, and he seems embarrassed, I’m working hard for you. You realize what he must think, your name on the masthead of the campus sexuality magazine, your starfish tattoo, and you feel the need later to explain that that’s not—you’re not what they think. He does work hard, and it is always difficult for you to come with a partner but you make noises you have never heard from your own throat.
When you both are wrung out and tired, he pulls the covers up over you both and you start talking about food, about Fairfield County, about mutual friends. You explain the peroxide at the end of your hair, your upcoming Aaron Carter-themed birthday party, and he brays with laughter, says he knows all of the words to that song and you mention that he should come and sing it with you like you are bound to do on the desk, completely smashed. It is just so easy and comfortable and he pretends to be hurt by yet another snarky comment, says something about needing his ego stroked, and you put on your rom-com voice and lie that you have watched him from afar, in line at the pasta station, ordering extra marinara sauce. He says this is scarily accurate.
There is no discussion of sleeping over, it is assumed, and he curls his arm around your waist, his body flush against yours, finger tips skimming your bare stomach. You are horrible at sleeping with other people but there is no way you are leaving. He breathes soft against your neck, makes jerky little movements in his sleep, smells warm like rum and sweat and boy, and you think about how poor your judgment has been in the past but how much you would like to see this boy again. You imagine getting to know him over the long summer break only two weeks away. You want that, but you also want to get better at not caring, to stop expecting more from strangers. You decide that you want to care, you want to care about someone and have them care back and sneak a flask into the local theme park for the fireworks and tease and bicker and spend the night.
Around 6 am you and Brooks wake up and you stretch out on your stomach and you whimper as he kisses across your shoulders, runs his fingertips down the small of your back. He finally comes, his teeth scraping your neck, and he goes down on you, your fingers tight in his soft hair. It never occurred to you that sleeping over could lead to round two, but it is a welcome surprise. His throat hurts, his body wracked with painful coughs, and you hunt down your clothes, urging him to get some real sleep. You tell him you will kill him if he gives you mono and he gets adorably scared, asking what the symptoms are. 'Are you exhausted all the time?' you ask, and he mulls it over before joking, 'no, I’m just really lazy.' It is difficult to find your shirt.
You didn’t bring anything with you other than your keys and he leans against the bed and watches you tie your laces. You don’t ask for his number, a decision you made somewhere around five in the morning. You are neurotic about texting and you don’t want to ruin this by getting your hopes up and so you don’t even offer yours. You stand casually with your messy hair and blue sneakers and tell him to feel better and unprompted he asks, 'can I at least get your number?'
'Of course.'
He writes it down the old fashion way and you tell him to text you if he ever needs someone to watch Mad Men with. He crawls back into bed and seems genuinely disappointed to see you go, thanks you honestly and awkwardly for such a great night, and you grin and step lightly out the door.
Around 4am it strikes you what a good decision it was not to hide tonight. If you had stayed in and watched a rom-com instead of going to Seth’s pre-game, if you hadn’t played flip cup, if you hadn’t followed the party to Senior Village, you would not be here now. Instead of sulking in your dorm room because everyone on the hall is talking shit about you, you went to Senior Village and looked for faces you recognized in the crowd and wandered around and kept seeing him, the cute freshman whom you have been aware of from afar at radio station meetings and sunny afternoons on the quad. Just this afternoon you pointed him out to Matt and said “that hipster knows how to dress.”
Seth has gallivanted off somewhere in his bunny ears and you are alone and you see that cute freshman right next to you again and again and you think, what’s stopping you? It’s true that being pushy has not always ended in your favor, but all of the beer helps and you introduce yourself and he smiles wide. Nathan, a freshman, single.
You walk back to the dorms and invite yourself into his room and he is not what you expected, inexperienced but enthusiastic. He says he hasn’t done this before. You don’t know what he means, if he is a virgin or if this is his first random hookup. But it’s none of your business either way.
You have both had a lot to drink and the condom won’t stay on, but when his asshole roommate demands that you guys get out (I’m pretty sure he’s an alcoholic, Nathan laughs), you invite him back to your single across the hill. You both giggle, shoeless and half-dressed as you sneak through the building, your bra and panties bunched up in your fist. It is comfortable and sexy and you feel like you kiss him for hours and ramble to fill the silences. He’s shy. You whisper against his lips if you can see him again and he says yes. You almost fall asleep against his soft chest, trading sleepy kisses between quiet snores and tiny yawns that make him chuckle. His fingers trace patterns along your arm.
Around five thirty you tumble into kisses and he is hard under denim and you ask if he wants to try again. He fingers you hard, making you whimper and keen. He looks up at you with big doe eyes, his bruised lips parted in undisguised awe, and you both let out matching groans of relief as you sink down onto him, ass against your heels. As he curves his fingers behind your neck to pull you down for a kiss, you feel important. He fucks fierce and soft, slow and fast, new and vulnerable and exploring, still shy, but he bites at your neck and you think this one might be a keeper.
The bedspread is wet. He asks if he can help you clean it up. It is your brilliant idea to go watch the sunrise on the quad even though he has no shoes, his button down shirt hanging open over his chest. When the sky turns orange and pink over the Chapel you realize you don’t know what to say to this perfect stranger. But you would like to know him. You tell him to text you if he wants to and kiss him goodbye.
You have to remind yourself to breathe as he kisses your neck, his hands pouring over your thighs. You have to steal little gasps because you forget sometimes, and he chuckles and that would bother you if he weren’t making plenty of noises too.
Your dorm room window is shut and the heat gets trapped between you, making you both sweat across each other’s skin. His hair is damp and soft and you run your fingers through it, perpetually perfect. You must look like a mess right now, rat's nest hair and flushed bad skin, and it would be easy to feel self-conscious (why? why did he choose you?) but you can’t think. It’s just the heat, so much heat, and you haven’t felt like this for so long, oh my god, kiss, kiss, press. Every once in a while you have to stop, take a breath, rest your face against the pillow and just smile, what are you laughing at, nothing, don’t mock me, smug bastard, kiss.
Oh god, this is what they’ve all been talking about. You always knew it could be like this, it had to be like this because it’s this amazing thing that everyone talks about and you knew it had to be better than what it was with the others where there was always that edge of distraction and worry and self-consciousness but now there’s no thought and no work and no nothing, nothing that can pull you back from the crush of his hips and the vulnerable, noiseless shudder of his breath against your ear. You brace your palms against the mattress and push back, push against, bite down on his shoulder and grimace against his skin you could nearly cry you could nearly scream and groan and gasp because it burns some place deep inside you and I want you so badly, you don’t even know who said it but you agree, you would agree if you could breathe if you could summon breath to reply but you can’t-
He will get you off and you will clench your eyes shut and writhe in aftershock and arch your back and he will hold you close and warm and rest but it’s only a momentary respite from the inescapable heat and need that has been born inside of you for more. You will get him off and he will keen and whisper he is close and quiver and you kiss his neck, tasting the sweat and desire and you begin to get addicted to him and to the way he tastes like cigarettes and isn’t afraid to tuck you under the sheets and follow you there because he isn’t a boy and this isn’t high school and you don’t want to avoid it anymore, or wait for it, or worship it as some far off possibility. Sex is real and always in the room and you want to just say fuck little miss girl next door so responsible so cautious not going to get hurt well fuck that because it’s time and you’re ready. This is real and it feels good and you know it would be good, so good, so intoxicating and dangerous and tangible that you dig your nails into his back and curl your ankles around his ass and pull him desperately closer because it’s undeniable.
It’s the wrong decision and you just can’t bring yourself to care.
It’s midnight in Philadelphia and you don’t want to go home. It’s midnight in Philadelphia and it’s a bottleneck episode, Ella catches a train to spend the weekend with a fan favorite. Remember him from college? The woke finance guy with a heart of gold who always danced like no one was watching. He still looks amazing in a suit and tie. He putters around his apartment in black boxer briefs and he’s yours for the weekend, isn’t that a delicious throwback, isn’t that a fun surprise. Ella goes to Philly and gets something nice for herself.
He kisses a line from your inner thighs to your ass to your spine to your shoulder. He wants you on top.
The sad fact of being a single woman in New York City for too long is that you forget what it’s like when a man tries. You forget what it’s like to wander through a dog park on a Sunday afternoon and be asked if you want an ice cream while sweat slides down your ribs. You forget what it’s like to sit in a community garden with a cup of chocolate malt chip and tell someone in between spoonfuls about the novel you desperately want to write. You forget.
You fortify yourself with details of care: his earnest compliments, how he apologizes when he touches your elbow with his by accident, how he asks you if you want a glass of water, a fresh towel, any ice in your Diet Coke. Later he asks if you’d be interested in another round, his hands gentle at your hips, like he’s talking about a refill and not fucking you out of his borrowed button-down shirt. He is a miracle of kindness and you want nothing to do with the rest of the world, no text messages, no President Donald Trump, no new strategy pivot to video. None of it matters while you’re playing house in this high-ceilinged 1800s apartment that looks like something out of the tumblr architecture tag. He has none of the cynicism of New York City around his eyes and you envy that. You have always envied the openness and optimism with which he experiences the world.
He’s worried about his neighbors seeing him through the wide front windows. Unfortunate, because you’d love to fuck him slow and teasing on the sofa, brace your weight against the wall, a slick palm on dry plaster. He points out all the studs from decorations mounted by the previous roommate, a graveyard of someone else’s decorative taste. You can picture your finger smudges, new scrapes in the hardwood floor from sofa legs. His tongue circles your nipple and you grab his hair, really twine your fingers into it until it must hurt. It all comes down to the same thing at the end of the day: you are in control and you will decide what he gets and when he gets it. At twenty years old you considered yourself so lucky to have this man’s attention for an evening, not insecure but naïve in that pre-broken way girls are before some asshole turns her into a woman. Now you are a quarter of a century jaded and gorgeous, entitled, bitter, your recklessness coiled carefully around your knuckles when you break it out from the vault. You love the way he says please, says it over and over and over again until you wonder if you’ll ever say that word yourself without feeling wet and guilty.
He fucks you, kisses you, gasps at all of the tight red lace. He is worth the Victoria’s Secret investment because he worships you. He begs for permission and won’t shut up even when you tell him to shut the fuck up. You take his wrists and push them back into the pillow. When you let him loose to push your hair out of your face, he moves his left hand to your hip and you take it again, force it back down into place. That’s what he wants. That’s what he wants, which is what you want, and he demands that you use him for exactly what you want, which is what he wants, which is what you want. Two people pleasers getting off on the cycle of reciprocity. He’s the first man you’ve fucked in years who grins during sex.
You can all just kiss off into the air Behind my back I can see them stare They'll hurt me bad but I won't mind They'll hurt me bad they do it all the time
Let’s get one thing out of the way. I am a sex writer.
Call my work whatever you want: porn, erotica, romance, sex scenes, adult literature. Supposedly there’s a difference between gratuitous pornography and art. Dick around with definitions all you want. I don’t care. I write about sex.
Sometimes my work turns people on. Sometimes it makes people think. Sometimes it does both.
Sometimes it does neither. I never called myself a genius.
At some point during the last five years I began to use the title “sex and culture critic” instead of “sex writer.” I made this shift for a number of reasons, some genuine and some shallow.
I am less interested in the physicality of sex—in sex toy reviews or tips about positions—and more compelled by the emotional residue left in its wake by our sex-negative culture. My nonfiction work has evolved to focus on sexual violence and abuse, which clashes with the saucy expectations that people have of sex writing. It feels more accurate to call myself a “bad sex writer,” which creates more questions than answers.
In search of a new descriptor, I borrowed from writers I respected. “Sex and culture critic” replaced “sex writer” in my Twitter bio. But this snazzy turn of phrase did nothing to solve the real problem: my embarrassment.
My boyfriend at the time was a regular at several of Manhattan and Brooklyn’s private social clubs. I found myself at a lot of cocktail parties with people who worked in finance, or technology, or did not have to work at all. Whenever I introduced myself as a “sex and culture critic,” I was met with uncomfortable silence. There was also the occasional assumption that my date had purchased my company for the evening. The slut-shaming I faced in my teens and early twenties morphed into a strange new form of whorephobia. While I did not do sex work, my writing placed me in a sex-work adjacent category.
The more time I spent clutching $4 glasses of watered-down Diet Coke, watching as faces twitched when I mentioned my chosen field, the more my conviction bled away. I began to feel shame about my craft for the first time as an adult. It didn’t matter how many pearls I wore, or how high I raised my neckline. I could never desexualize myself enough to be taken seriously. The respectability dance was unending.
Exhausted, I began introducing myself as a “digital strategist.”
And then, because COVID-19 respects no one at all, there were no more cocktail parties for several years.
The problem was never my writing. The problem was the cocktail party. I’d been in the wrong rooms.
Call it whatever you want: a quarter-life crisis, or a mismatched relationship, or a valuable life lesson. It doesn’t matter what brought me to those private clubs and literary salons, or what kept me going back. For whatever reason, I made myself button up and socialize with people who didn’t share my values. I could describe myself a “critic” all I wanted, but I broke the rules by talking about sex, =, mental health, and disease. My whiteness and class privilege got me through the door, yet no amount of Connecticut prestige could overcome my Google search results.
I am not respectable.
Thank goodness. Respectable people throw terrible parties.
A few months after my breakup, I took a picture of myself in a black lace bra. In it, I am not smiling. I am not even at home—I sit on the floor of my friend’s apartment surrounded by her plants. My hair falls loose around my face. My crisp summer tan line cuts across my cleavage. I look surprised. I look like myself. I look hot.
In college I modeled topless for the student pornography magazine. When I became its editor, I appointed myself Miss May in the soft core calendar. I sold copies in the cafeteria, grinning as I counted change and accepted compliments. Students hung me up on their dorm room walls. I printed out my favorite still from the shoot and taped it above my bed. As a student I felt no shame or fear sharing my body with my small liberal arts campus.
Now twenty-nine years old, I looked at this black lace selfie. What was stopping me from posting it online? Was I afraid of being sexually harassed by strangers? Would a conservative blogger include it in some rant about feminism? What if my ex-boyfriend saw it and thought less of me?
Did I care if people took my writing less seriously because I posted a lingerie selfie? It could close doors for me.
I’d rather those doors stay closed.
Once or twice a month I do my makeup. I set up my ring light and declutter the corner of my bedroom. I diffuse my hair, teasing the curls and pinning them away from my face. I lay out some tops—velvet, sheer polyester, lace. And then I produce, photograph, and star in a thirst trap photo shoot.
I take hundreds of photographs. I smile, pout, glare, gasp. I bite my lower lip, knowing my lover likes those selects the most.
Then I change into pajamas and swipe through the results.
It doesn’t matter that these images are taken in my childhood bedroom, where I now live. It doesn’t matter that I weigh more than I ever have. It doesn’t matter that my ex-boyfriend gave me the tripod as a Christmas present, or that he is now dating someone else. It doesn’t matter that I bought most of these outfits at Forever21. It doesn’t matter that I am healing from abuse. It does, and it doesn’t.
I love my thirst traps. I love how I look in them. I love who I am.
I am a sex writer. I am a romance novelist. I am an artist.
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