“It’s good,” I said. “I like hearing your mind tick.”
He intrigued me. We talked about bike lanes and Elvis Costello. For months, I’d been going on dates, wondering if something was wrong with me. Why was it so rare to be attracted to a person who was also attracted to you? But maybe it works this way so when it happens, it feels special. What I felt for the guy that night was unmistakable.
We sat in front of my house in his car, both of us staring forward.
“I don’t know what to do next,” he said. “I don’t know if you want me to kiss you, or…” His words trailed off, and I leaned over and pecked him on his cheek before anything more could happen. I was so unnerved by this newfound chemistry, I dashed out of his car, but I regretted my timidity. Later, in the safety of my own pink bedsheets, I could not stop thinking about him. My body alighted imagining what might have happened if I’d been bolder, if I’d opened up again. What good was caution if you couldn’t chunk it into the breeze?
I texted him. “I should have let you kiss me.”
The double beep of his response was fast.
A WEEK LATER, I drove out to his place, and we had dinner, and as we sat on the mattress of his messy bedroom, he turned to me and said, “Do you want to fuck?”
This was my first clue I was not exactly in a Lifetime movie. There would be no soft stroking of my hair. No spray of rose petals across the bed. But in fact, I did want to fuck. I’d gone nearly two years without sex. Two years without drinking, or smoking, or fucking, which was a long spell without the company of your favorite vices. And so I said, “Yes.”
If you were hoping my first time in sobriety would be meaningful and tender, or at least hot and exciting, then we were wishing for the same thing. But it was fast, and efficient, and that was OK. Sometimes it’s best not to wait for the perfect movie moment; those can leave you checking your watch for a long time.
Afterward, we stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom as though it contained a moon. “I always think of the worst things to say after sex,” he said.
I know there is a woman who would have left that invitation alone, but I was not her. “What are you thinking?” I asked.
“I’m thinking: Well, that was free.”
It was a joke. (I guess?) Maybe he thought the sex was lousy, and he was joking that at least he didn’t pay for it. Or the sex wasn’t lousy, but he was joking about what a horrible, self-sabotaging thing that would be to say. Honestly, I didn’t understand the joke, so I won’t parse it on his behalf, because what I discovered over the next week was that the psychology major had some major psychology issues. He was twisted up like a tornado inside. (Also, he was a dick.) A few days after this incident, we had a conversation in which he displayed such casual cruelty I walked away knowing—possibly for the first time in my life—that it was nothing I did. Some people are so brimful with misery they can’t help splashing everyone else.
So there it was, my big chance to get sex right again, and I went and screwed an asshole. Maybe I should have felt crestfallen, but I didn’t. I chalked it up to a learning curve. It was fine. I never saw him again, and no one was worse for the experience. Actually, I was glad for the experience, because it taught me that good sex wasn’t a function of sobriety, any more than good sex was a function of being drunk. Good sex was about the person you were with and, maybe more important, the person you could be while you were with them.
I STARTED SEEING a musician. He was gone too much of the time, and it was never going to work, but I wanted to try. When we sat together, he made me feel light-headed. When he looked at me, I had the giddy feeling of a three-beer buzz.
“You have these drunken, dreamy eyes right now,” he told me, and I could feel it, too. Bliss. Until I got sober, I never understood the phrase “weak in the knees.” I thought it was an old-timey cliché that women like my mother used. Then my knees spaghettied underneath me as he walked toward me once, and I realized: Oh my God, this actually happens.
The first time he and I had sex, I barely remembered it. The whole afternoon was white light and the dance of tree shadows through the windows. He kissed me on the couch, and then he kissed me on the stairs, and then I took him to my bed. And then time stopped.