I felt alive. I didn’t just feel different, I felt like I had superpowers. And I definitely felt like I was in the club. I saw a cool-looking girl in line at Starbucks and thought, I’ll bet that girl has sex. And I have sex, too. We get it. Like, I could go up to her and be like, Oh, hey, do you have sex? and she’d be like, Yeah, and I’d be like, Yeah, me too. I totally know what it feels like.
The sex checklist was the most egregious of all. Most people I knew had been at it for years now, and I needed to catch up. I wanted to check off all the greatest hits. I barreled through every cliché, and it turned out a lot of it wasn’t that sexy, but we both pretended that it was. We did the blindfold thing, we did the whipped-cream-and-chocolate-sauce thing, I bought a tacky red bustier for Valentine’s Day and fuzzy green handcuffs for St. Patrick’s. Oh, and the Guide! I put that baby into well-organized action. When Landon would question something, I’d pull out the Guide and point out that according to a book I bought in a West Hollywood thrift store called Out of the Closet, plenty of couples do it.
Shower sex—Check! Sex with ice—Check! Sex in the back of a parked car like teenagers in a movie about the 1950s—Check!
I wanted to ask if he was circumcised, because I couldn’t tell, but my roommate Peter told me, “Dude, you can’t ask him that. Don’t ask that.” I don’t know why I wasn’t allowed to ask, I guess because it would make me look stupid, or make him uncomfortable, but I didn’t know how else I was supposed to find out. (After we broke up I didn’t see another penis for a year and by that time I couldn’t retroactively compare the two, so I still don’t know.) Aside from that, I was in the trenches, having fun and learning a lot. Landon and I were both more interested in the other person’s pleasure, not because we were selfless people, but because we got validation from it. It led to some energetic but fruitless evenings.
Anyway, the sex was a blast and the relationship was going great! Well, it was going okay. Well, it was tolerable. At the end of the day, we were just incompatible (which we wouldn’t figure out for a few more months) and better off as friends (which we wouldn’t figure out for a year after breaking up). But c’mon, we were living the dream: going on coffee runs in the morning, finding ways to kill time in the afternoon, and having sex before bed. Being normal!
About four months into dating, we were casually having the kind of philosophical conversation that no nineteen-year-olds should be allowed to have without supervision, and Landon said, “Well, sex before marriage is a sin.”
At this point, in my opinion, religion played a convenient role in Landon’s life. The hypocrisy bothered me and I liked to debate him on it. This was so flagrant it was delicious.
“Excuse me? Then what the hell have we been doing?” Guys, I wasn’t even that mad, it was just too silly for words.
“Well, no, I mean I used to believe sex before marriage was a sin. Now I think it’s okay as long as the people are in love.”
“I’m not in love with you. We’ve never said ‘I love you.’ Are you in love with me?” Admittedly, I wasn’t exactly setting him up to say it, even if he had been.
“Um, okay, no, but we care about each other.” I rolled my eyes. He was digging himself to China. Then he said, “And you always initiate it.”
I stared at him.
“What does that mean? What is that? Some Adam and Eve temptation complex?” (A term I made up on the spot.) “Are you saying you want to be having less sex? Or just that when we have sex, it’s my fault? Need I remind you that you’d slept with seven girls before we met?”
“I’m just saying that it’s one thing if we can’t help ourselves. You don’t have to be so, like, ready and willing. I’m not saying we wouldn’t be having sex at all, it’s just you don’t always have to initiate it.”
“So, what, you’d prefer it if I had to be . . . convinced?”
He chose his words carefully. “Okay, it’s just that the chase is kind of gone. It’s kind of a turnoff.”
Huh, I thought, I wonder how much therapy I’ll need to undo the damage from this moment.
The origin of his logic had taken a turn, but I couldn’t even be bothered to point it out. The behavior that I’d thought was adventurous, and awesome, and earning me girlfriend-of-the-damn-century points was making him lose interest in fucking me because I seemed too . . . available? Three months ago I was terrified of being outed as the virgin freak. Now I’d had sex with all of one person and somehow I was getting slut-shamed.
I’m not interested in pretending to be a reluctant participant because you think girls who like sex are a turnoff. If you think girls are supposed to object to sex until they find themselves incapable of resisting your magic penis, fuck you. (Unless this is a role-play fantasy between consenting adults, in which case I’ll go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and grab some props right now.)