I got up to go to the bathroom, and when I came back, the first thing that went through my mind was Why is he still here? I was thrilled! I was proud of myself. I was still in control! Just because we’d hooked up didn’t mean he had the upper hand. I was still powerful, and hard-hearted, and I could walk away from this whenever I felt like it.
The next morning, we drove to breakfast and I told him as much, just so he knew the score. “Okay, creepy,” he said, and turned up the radio.
I assessed the situation. We’d had a nice dinner, some playful banter, and fooling around that was in no way objectionable. All right, world, let’s do this, let’s have me a damn boyfriend.
I looked at dating him as a kind of personal experiment. Something about him being a jock or liking nice restaurants or having the stench of family money despite his studio apartment made me feel like this would be a safe bet for me. In theory, I should have been intimidated. Instead, I felt superior. He’d also never met a girl as bossy as me, and knowing that emboldened me even more. I am a boss bitch, and this dude is too basic to hurt me. Neither of those slang terms were around yet, but that’s the vibe I had.
I am a jerk for feeling superior to anyone ever, and that was equally true of Landon (despite being the kind of guy who saved up to buy the exact suit Ashton Kutcher wore on the cover of GQ). I made fun of him a lot—luckily that’s the kind of thing that comes across as playful at nineteen—but Landon turned out to be fun, caring, and seriously right-brain smart.
After a satisfactory couple of months, I felt more committed to this “dating experiment” and started subconsciously, and sometimes consciously, making a bizarre coming-of-age checklist. (Had I learned nothing from my beads-and-lipstick pen pal episode?) It was mostly stuff I’d seen in movies, and I knew it was stupid, but every milestone gave me a sense that I was approaching normalcy. Nothing in my life was going especially well at that point, but if the guy I was seeing burned a CD for me (Check!) it felt like I was becoming a standard American adult.
He asked me to take a road trip to meet his parents.
“Okay. If I meet your parents, would that make us boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“I thought we already were boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“No, we’re not. But would you agree that me ‘meeting your parents’ would make us officially boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“Yeah, creepy, I guess it would.”
“Okay, great. I’m looking forward to it.”
The road trip hit a lot of items on my imaginary relationship checklist. We shared painful childhood memories during the long stretches of the drive—Check! We took pictures kissing in front of national landmarks—Check! He showed me his childhood bedroom—Check! It was like a real relationship! All of it was genuinely meaningful to me, but the checklist was always there, giving me little bonus rushes of validation.
After I met his parents and we got back to LA, I addressed a big unchecked box. “Okay, we’re boyfriend and girlfriend now. So we should have sex, right?”
Landon had had sex before and always assured me that he was fine with what we were doing. Gently, he said, “I’d love to, but only if you want to, and if you think you’re ready.” He put his hand on my arm.
“Blechhhh. Don’t make this weird, let’s just go have sex.”
Sex was GREAT!! Why hadn’t anyone told me?! I mean, it hurt. It actually hurt a lot, and not just for a “moment” the first time (I’m lookin’ at you, “erotic novels”). But, okay, it was crazy! Sex wasn’t like the other stuff at all!
Each time we’d finish (actually the first few times no one “finished” per se, but, you know, we’d stop) I’d talk a mile a minute:
“God, I wish I could explain what it feels like, but I can’t put it into words ’cause, like, a person is IN my body. You are IN my body. And I’d never really thought about it, but nothing’s ever been IN my body before, you know? Like, I can’t just open a hatch in my leg and put something in there, you know? What does it feel like to you?”
“It feels really good.”
“Ugh, that’s not what I mean. You are the worst. Tomorrow can we try a different position?!”