“How was it?” he asks, nibbling on his last triangle of toast. I swallow at the memory. God, I was such a dork.
“Great.” He glances down at my plate, so I drape my napkin over the leftovers and order another coffee. I hit the bathroom, and then we head back to his apartment and watch TV. He checks his phone for some work things, and while I try not to look down at his screen, I wonder what his real life is like. How I’d fit into it. If there’s any room. I wonder if he’s dating anyone. Who the Tinder match was. Whether or not he’s dated any of the models he’s previously photographed.
He smiles, apologizes, and puts his phone down on the coffee table, and while I’m overjoyed that this man’s idea of a good time is to watch Bake Off on Netflix sprawled on the couch, and even though I’m nestled beside him, I can’t help but wonder if I’m getting too comfortable.
I let my eyes wander over to him. It’s Patrick from church, but it’s also profoundly not. Me and Patrick need a reset, I decide. I have to keep this from going off the rails.
“Do you mind if I shower?” I ask him suddenly, springing to my feet. He tilts his head up sleepily and smiles. “Go for it.”
I don’t wash my hair, but I scrub my face, removing all my makeup, and wipe the foggy mirror down to start over. I fluff out my hair. It’s wavy and full, and I give myself a little pep talk. Part of me is intrigued. Flattered even. No dude has ever set out to be my friend, but what does this mean philosophically? The thought of him not being attracted to me is unbearable. I can so easily imagine him keeping me apart from his work life, his personal life, the way Jeremy did. I need to convince him of my value.
“What do you have to drink?” I ask him when I emerge, still in his sweats but so much cleaner. So much more focused.
He looks up. The laptop on his coffee table drones on about the temperament of hot-water crust pastries in a hand-raised pie.
“Bourbon and…”
“I’ll have that.” I nod. “Don’t make me drink alone,” I admonish. He pads to the kitchen, then hands me a drink in a squat glass and clinks his to mine. He toasts me, watchful.
“Maybe I should shower too,” he says. “I need to wake up.”
“Do it,” I tell him. He drains his drink, Adam’s apple bobbing, ice cubes clinking as his head tilts back. He disappears into the bathroom. Sometime in the last half hour, I’ve made the decision that we should sleep together. I want the data. I need to know how I’ll feel after. If Patrick will be different.
I’m reminded of Malcolm Ito. Malcolm Ito was a forty-year-old Japanese furniture designer with a big beard and tinted glasses who had recently divorced a French socialite filmmaker fifteen years his senior. We’d met at a party at the New Museum. It was a springtime launch event for an art magazine that Ivy’s ex-girlfriend was involved in, and I was wasted on champagne. We kissed on the roof deck. It was terribly poetic. His beard rubbed up against my chin. I touched his face, and when we broke away, I heard him gasp. He was the first Asian man I’d ever kissed. I decided to fall instantly in love with him.
It was as though I could feel my heart fasten to his like the interlocking of precision machinery. It was everything I’d imagined it would be if I’d kissed someone tailor-made for me. Someone worthy and good who would accept me for me. Who I’d see with such a deep and profound recognition that they’d never be able to leave me. He excused himself for a phone call and never returned. I’d waited, shivering in my drunk haze, handkerchief-thin dress fluttering against me. I stared at a far-off water tower, convinced he’d come back. When I googled him a few months ago, he was engaged to a Norwegian model with a dynamic ceramics practice. That’s how they described it. Dynamic. Ceramics. Practice.
Suddenly Patrick feels like the answer to a question. He belongs with me. I belong with him. I’ll finally know how things went wrong all those times before.
I’m not great at drinking and I’m not great at sex. So far, I don’t particularly excel at adult things. I’ve tried it. Sex. And it’s never how I’d want it to be. For all the talk of first base, second base, third, it’s more like a light switch. You go from not having it—barely kissing really—to all of a sudden having it. Full-on sex. When it’s over, I feel like I’ve failed to make it better for myself. That it’s somehow my fault that I’m startled each time.
It’s the way they aggressively and incessantly initiate sex. The way I always feel cornered, by the text, in the bar, in the car, in their apartments. Sometimes I wonder if I’m confused by how purposeful they are. They’re so sure they want sex that I try to convince myself I must be wrong about my ambivalence.
I go to pour myself another drink. It’s noon, but it may as well be the weekend. The booze bottles are on a silver tray on top of his fridge. They shiver, clinking slightly when the refrigerator runs, but the bourbon’s been left out on the counter. I quietly ease out another inch, so he doesn’t think I’m a lush.
I look at myself in the circular wall mirror hanging just outside the kitchen. I watch myself take another sip. I marvel at how convincing I am as an adult. I rub my lips between my fingers, hard. Pulling them so they color and hopefully swell a little. They’ll stay bruised and puffy for at least thirty seconds after he comes out of the shower.
Men don’t enjoy the taste of lipstick though they like the look of it.
It’s as if the transmission was fed into an earpiece, it’s so fully formed and not mine.
I smile silkily. I look crazy. I suck in my cheeks and make fish lips. Clear my throat. Suck in my gut, let it out. Take another sip. Put the glass down on the counter and slap the apples of my cheeks with the pads of my flattened fingers. I drink even more, warming my insides. I want a third glass and listen for the running water, but I shouldn’t risk it.
I settle on the couch, wishing there was music on. Arrange my arms and legs so they don’t flatten against the leather and appear wide. Even with the boozy buzz, another layered distraction would be good. I can’t deal with bodies. The smells, the tastes, all that rubbing, the occasional mortifying flatulence if my chest suction cups his in a way that I wish we could laugh about but never do. It’s the worst. Usually he’ll grunt in a porny way, masking it, so I’ll do the same in a whinier, pleading tone, and we’ll both keep ignoring it because breaking character would reveal how fucking embarrassing it all is.
Consent?
Yes.
Yes?
It’s like a spell we’re taught the words to, but how do you cast it? Where am I supposed to stand? What do I do with my arms? There should be a laminated poster in all bedrooms. The way restaurants have Heimlich maneuver guides. Why is the invocation so awkward? All the sex I’ve ever had seemed inevitable. It wasn’t wrought but ordained. It was like watching someone fall from a height. We all know where it’s going.
I hold an ice cube in my mouth to quiet my brain. I know this will be different. It has to be. When Patrick returns to the couch, back in sweats, I climb onto his lap, on my knees, facing him, and touch my lips to his. He tastes like toothpaste. His mouth is cold, then warm. The alcohol begins to blur the lines, soothe the spikiness of my thoughts, the impatience. I feel and hear the tremble, a low rumble in his throat. His hands find their way to my waistband and pull me into him. I pull away a fraction. His face is blurry up close, and for a brief moment, as if a single foreign frame has been spliced into the reel, reality warps and my mouth is full of some random I hooked up with the first time Jeremy left. I never learned his name.