i'm coming out...again…again
megan fox. desiree akhavan. frank ocean. tessa thompson. me, now, i suppose. insert names of other hot cool bisexuals here.
venus is in taurus today. i just finished bleeding. my birthday’s tomorrow and i’m almost officially one year closer to my sexual prime. no wonder i can’t stop thinking about him.
him.
my last sexual encounter that brought me any form of pleasure is stuck on repeat in my mind like it’s 2006 and sexyback is the only song on the radio. i have this fantasy i mindlessly conjured up on the way to work this morning. one where he calls me tomorrow, and wishes me a happy birthday and asks what i’m doing to celebrate. i say i’m getting dinner with my semi-amicably divorced parents, but that i’m tentatively free saturday night. he takes me out. we drink expensive wine on his silicon valley tab. we stumble around lower manhattan, letting the libations brace us against the cold, swaddling our bodies like a blanket. we laugh and flirt down the avenues leading up to his apartment and schlep our way up to the sixth floor. there, we recreate the singular night we shared two months ago.
now about that night, the sole reason for the fantasy.
per his request the night we met, i promised i wouldn’t write about him. i lied. he’s since then decided he no longer wants to see me because he’s trying his own hand at celibacy. at least now i don’t have to feel bad about it.
he was the first, and so far only, man i’ve ever been intimate with that’s treated me like anything close to a human being. the bar is subterranean, the bar is in hell! if my lesbianism was hanging on by a thread, the thread being a single pleasant encounter with a man, wtf does that say about me, about my relationship to my sexuality? i don't know, and frankly after spending the last two decades in distress over it, i don't care.
almost everyone who’s asked where i met this guy, has gotten the "socially acceptable" response of tinder. truthfully, i met him on reddit. now i pride myself on being “open” and super sex positive, so why am i lying about an experience i had, fibbing on the details to make other people comfortable? one monday afternoon, horny and curious, i traversed the reddit pages centered around casual hookups, specifically in new york city. there, i found him. for the sake of his privacy, i will be swapping out his wildly popular cishet white man name for another wildly popular cishet white man name: steve. steve works in tech, as a ceo. ironic humor aside, i'm not kidding.
less than 24 hours prior to our meeting, steve posted to a reddit thread in search of someone to give him an absentminded blowjob while he does some coding. he mentioned something about having mild adhd and the stimulation assisting his focus. allow me to clarify here, i hate giving blowjobs. i really fucking do. i find it degrading and boring, and not worth the jaw pain. even more, i hate that it’s a service that’s expected. i’ll be making out with a guy and then he does it. entitled and forceful, he attempts to push my head down. ask for what you want! don’t be a dick and maybe i’ll suck yours with some enthusiasm.
that night he orders me an uber from brooklyn to the lower east side. that's a first. a man calling me a ride instead of me charging it to my credit card that's in a constant state of edging its limit?? fast forward 20 minutes and I'm wandering up and down houston st. because the driver drops me off at the wrong address. fast forward 30 seconds, and i'm hiding inside of a sushi restaurant because there's a creepy dude following me around trying to spit on me. fast forward 10 minutes and i'm finally meeting steve who's come down from his walkup to greet me. those aforementioned six flights, would soon prove to be the death of me.
after an embarrassingly long period of watching me struggle to catch my breath, he invites me and my already once refilled glass of water to sit with him on the couch. we talk about our jobs. i explain 7 seasons worth of outrageous plot of the cw’s the 100. he talks for what feels like forever about 3-d printers and dungeons and dragons. ready to bite the bullet and get to what i’m there for, i do that thing i do. that plot pushing thing where i complain about being too warm and ask if it’s okay to remove my intentionally long sleeve top, leaving me in my bra, only to reveal my garden of arm tattoos. he eyes them with keen interest, in the way guys usually do. i can’t quite put my finger on why though. maybe having half a sleeve going up my forearm alludes to a certain edginess they presume i possess, a dark side waiting to be explored? idk but either way it always works without fail.
let’s continue.
i turn my arms around so he can view them all. he asks what they mean and when i got them. playing his part he reaches out to hold my arm in his hand and trace his fingers along the delicate lines of my ink, breaking the touch barrier for the first time. feeling his fingertips brush along the sensitive skin of my inner wrist, my heart flutters and i look into his eyes. my body decides i’m actually attracted to him. i’m shocked. i haven’t felt even a crumb of spark for any of the guys i’ve masochistically hooked up with thus far. why is he different? what is it about him that’s doing it for me? is it his ponytail? is it his piercing eyes and kind smile? is it the fact that he let me ramble about something we both know only i care about without pause? hell no, maybe, and yes probably. i’m still trying to figure it out myself. later that night in bed, i tell him he’s addictive. he’ll say he tries not to be toxic and is habit forming at best. i guess having felt the electricity between us too, he quickly pivots the conversation.
"so you said you're a lesbian?"
"yes."
"and you're here because you're experimenting?"
"yes."
i give him the same spiel i’d given the last two guys: that i’m emotionally unavailable, heartbroken, and in search of an answer to a part of myself that’s always confused the fuck out of me. the answer being: am i bisexual, yes or no? most days it’s a no, but every 2 years i remember logan lerman exists and i panic.
"okay cool, i'm down."
we talk about our kinks, our likes, our dislikes. he shares a theory he has, that people who are dominant in their day to day lives are submissive in the bedroom. he then makes it clear that he, is the exception. now this is what intrigues me. a lot of men will claim dominance and fall very, very, short. i like a challenge, and decide i want to test that theory. i’m expecting mediocrity. i’m not expecting to be brought to tears of enjoyment an hour later.
“show me.”
cue the lights!
he politely asks siri to turn the red lights to 45%.
i feel like i'm in 2049 when his entire apartment switches from oppressive dentist office white to day 5 of my period crimson, all with a single command.
the first time i feel his palm make contact with my face makes me feel like i’m in heaven. the second, third, and fourth make me feel like i’m taking a meeting with god, and don’t worry, he asked me first.
over the summer i took a class with this incredible dominatrix who posed the question: what is consent? i raised my hand sitting in a circle of my classmates and replied, “consent is saying yes with every fiber of your being.”
in that moment with him, believe me or not, i was in charge. on my knees blowing him, taking blows, and in charge, saying yes with every fiber of my being.
i’m a virgo moon with autism and an ocean-deep desire to control the world around me. it exhausting always managing myself, always managing my time down to the millisecond. unsuccessfully, i try to manage those around me as well. dreamily looking up at someone and watching them play with control like clay in their hands is like a form of meditation for me. it’s my silence on the mountain top. an expert potter, he molded himself to my needs and wants, fluctuating between kissing me with reverence and folding me over his desk like a goddamn bendy straw.
saving the rest of the details for my daydreams, friends, and therapist, i’ll say this.
steve, call me! being in my 20’s in new york is stressing me out and i want relief.