Being actually good in bed requires an openness, a comfort in your own body I simply did not have. The girl who once shaved off her pubic hair before sleepovers was not going to surrender to a man’s touch so easily. I was wrapped up in “Do Not Cross” tape. I had moles on my back I never wanted Miles to see. I had bumpy skin on my upper arms (the name for this condition is folliculitis, an erotic term if ever there was one), and I would brush away Miles’s hands while we were making out.
The problem—one of the many problems—is that I had very little knowledge of my own body and what might be pleasing to me, which made it impossible to give instructions to anyone else. It’s like my vagina was someone else’s playground. I’d never masturbated, and I don’t know if that’s because I was afraid, or ashamed, or simply uninterested. I guess I thought masturbation was for sad old divorcees who couldn’t find anyone to finger-bang them. I was 25 when I finally bought a vibrator. The first time I came, the sensation was unmistakable. Like a long, ecstatic sneeze. And afterward, I felt so stupid. Wait a minute, this is an orgasm? Jesus Christ, no wonder everyone makes such a fuss about it.
But in college, what I knew best about my body was which parts other people liked. My boobs were like tractor beams on my chest, and I enjoyed being the source of awe and admiration, so I liked to flash my brights once in a while. Plus, I liked that my rack moved attention away from my thighs and my ass. My genetic curse: short, Irish, potato-picking peasant thighs. Not the long, elegant gams of those girls in jean cutoffs, one pencil leg over the other. My skirts came to the knee.
And I kept my giant flannel shirt tied around my small waist, so that it covered my lower half. A casual kind of camouflage. It’s a little hot in here, I think I’ll just completely block your view of my ass.
Alcohol helped. Oh my God, it helped. Behind my fortress of empty beer cans, I was safe from fear and judgment. Alcohol loosened my hips, and pried open my fists, and after years of anxious hem-tugging, the freedom was incredible. It felt good to pee in alleyways, letting my bare feet sit there in the splash. It felt good to face-plant in a patch of grass or on the plush gray carpet of our apartment. It felt good to jump up on the couch and whip the flannel shirt from around my waist and lasso it over my head.
Booze gave me permission to do and be whatever I wanted. So much of my life had been an endless loop of: “Where do you want to go to dinner?” / “I don’t know, where do you want to go to dinner?” But if I poured some of that gasoline in my tank, I was all mouth. I want Taco Bell now. I want cigarettes now. I want Mateo now. And the crazy thing about finally asking for what you wanted is that sometimes—oftentimes—you got it.
Did I think Mateo and I were going to get serious? Oh, please. I knew better than that. Which is to say: Yes, I wanted that, but I kept my teenage longing in check. I knew we weren’t “dating,” whatever that meant (a word from an earlier era, like “going steady” or “getting pinned”). We didn’t even have the phrase “hooking up” then. It was just, you know, something. Mateo and I had something. Until it was nothing again.
The night after we had sex, Mateo showed up at my door. I was wearing striped flannel pajamas that swallowed me. Hangover clothes, a wearable blanket. I sat cross-legged on the couch as Mateo paced in front of the fish tank. He kept tugging on his poof of curly hair. He needed to say something, and he wasn’t sure how to say it, but it needed to be said. OK, here it is: There was this other girl. A girl we both knew. A Winona Ryder type, with Bambi eyes and Converse sneakers. He and the other girl might be kinda-sorta seeing each other at the moment. And he wanted me to know that I was so great, and last night was so great, but the thing is. The problem is.
“I get it,” I told him. “I totally understand.”
“You do?” And he looked so grateful, and I was so happy to see him so happy. The easy extension of my hand at this moment punctured ten kinds of awkwardness between us, and I could feel the old rapport of the dressing room again. Everything was cool.
After he left, I called Anna, and I burst into tears.
I STARTED HANGING out with a guy named Dave. He was one of the many male friends I never slept with, and I couldn’t tell if this was a tribute to our closeness or evidence of my supreme unfuckability. I loved being close to men and counseling them through their ill-advised one-night stands and teetering romances, but part of me wondered: Why not me? Am I just not hot enough for you to imperil our amazing friendship?
Dave and I liked to get drunk together and make each other laugh. Our nights were a game of comedic one-upmanship. How far can we push this moment? What never-before-seen trick can I invent? I was using a lot of moves from Showgirls, a terrible film about a dancer who becomes a stripper (or something). The movie was my favorite, because the dialogue was criminally heinous. Oh, the cheap high of youthful superiority: so much more fun to kick over sand castles than to build your own.