When we first met in person I knew immediately that she wanted to slurp me up like the finest cup of cold-brewed, pour-over Ethiopian coffee nine dollars could buy. I’m not sure exactly when things changed. We sent a handful of cards back and forth (mine handmade and purchased from Etsy because I’m twee like that), our texts shifted from informational to conversational to something bordering on intimate, and then there she was, lithe and lean and carrying a baby cactus to meet me for a bumbling and awkward first lunch. A lunch during which she housed a giant plate of huevos rancheros and potatoes and sausages in a matter of seconds. I mean, she wolfed down her food with such ferocity that I felt my pants go damp. I LOVE PEOPLE WHO LOVE EATING. Mavis was tall and skinny and I could tell at a glance that she’s the do-gooder kind of white people: vegan earth shoes and woven Mayan handbag and the kind of hair you get from using natural products. She listens to Black Star and Public Enemy and eats yard tomatoes that grow behind her house and bakes from-scratch pies and buys multicultural reading material for her children. I am very familiar with this varietal of grape.
A few weeks later Mavis came back to town and got us a room at the Acme Hotel. I don’t know, man, I just didn’t want our first time to be in my little apartment, pushing the cat off the bed and trying to ignore the drunk college kids puking in the hallway outside my door. Better instead to get busy in a sterile hotel room downtown that looked like something out of a Real World house: trompe l’oeil paint on the walls, iPhone chargers in the outlets, a glowing red neon lip print on the bathroom mirror in lieu of a night-light. We drank French 75’s, the ingredients for which she’d thoughtfully packed in a cooler; I sipped mine nervously on the far side of the bed, flipping maniacally through the television channels and thinking about how I am never that prepared, for anything, ever. I knew her well enough to know that she is not a Television Person. A Multiple-Section Reader of the Sunday Times? A Listener to Public Radio in her Bumper-Stickered Volvo? A Learned Individual Courtesy of the BBC or Al-Jazeera or Some Other Unbiased Non-American and Therefore Inherently Superior News Source? DUH. ALL OF THOSE THINGS. But a Consumer of Daylong Pantsless Top Chef Marathons? I’m no expert, but I don’t think a bitch who makes her own kombucha is the same bitch sitting around in her house bra for hours on end watching old episodes of Roseanne. Because I am that bitch, and kombucha is disgusting.
Those people, the “No TV, Eat at the Dinner Table, Get Your News from a Reputable Source Other Than Facebook” people, are terrifying to me. I have a subscription to BUST and I read Matt Taibbi’s articles in Rolling Stone sometimes, but those people always want to talk about world events and I’m like, “Yo, my dude. I don’t know shit about Russia. Let’s go get some chicken.” I don’t know anything about the economy; I can barely keep track of who my elected officials are; I hate learning things; why can’t everyone just watch The Voice so we can all have something exciting to talk about?! God, I love those battle rounds. So I sat there and watched Middle Eastern explosions on CNN while Mavis busied herself making cocktails and chirping about smart shit.
It wasn’t until I felt her definitely female fingers fumbling awkwardly with the zipper of my hoodie in that hotel room downtown that it dawned on me: I don’t really know how to fuck a lady. My stomach dropped as I tried to recall every article I’d ever read about G-spots and nipple sensitivity, my arms stiffening at my sides as she bent down and pressed her lips into my neck. I assumed it was up to me to do the man stuff because I have a fantasy football team and can grow a full beard, so I just lay there while she did stuff to me, waiting for her to yell at me because I hadn’t taken the garbage out. THAT’S HOW THIS WORKS, RIGHT? I expertly slid my female hand under her bra and unhooked it with the flick of a wrist in one smooth, effortless motion. JK, FOLKS. I wrestled with that clasp like an alligator, finally resorting to the use of a chain saw and my teeth.
“Do some nipple stuff,” offered my dumb brain, and I did while peeking at her face to make sure I was getting it right. I don’t know, man. I mean, she didn’t recoil or punch me in the side of the head, so I figured I was doing pretty okay? But then I remembered she said her boobs were desensitized from years of having nursed two children and I promptly removed my mouth because BABIES. I tried to think of the worst thing boyfriends past had done in bed with me and actively tried to avoid doing any of that. I peeled off my socks (I hate when dudes wear socks in bed) and asked Mavis if there were any feelings she wanted to talk about before we really got started. “Has anyone in the patriarchy oppressed you lately?” I asked attentively. “Wanna read some stuff on Jezebel?” She launched herself at me, pinning my arms down as she scaled my body like the face of a mountain.
I reached for the waistband of her jeans and there it was, in the flickering blue light of the flat-screen hanging across from the bed: that old grimy, tattered Band-Aid loosely affixed to my wounded forefinger.
I don’t really know all the rules yet, but I am pretty sure you aren’t allowed to finger a woman while wearing a wilted, unraveling, dirty-ass Band-Aid. I tried to create enough friction between my sensible yoga pants and the scratchy duvet to slide it off without either tipping her off or starting a brush fire, but that stupid thing wouldn’t loosen up. The more furiously I worked at it, the more it wouldn’t budge. “Do we really need this on?” she asked, nodding at the television. Even though I wouldn’t have minded the dulcet tones of Anderson Cooper serving as the soundtrack to our first, officially official coitus—maybe I could learn something about midterm elections through osmosis?—I seized the opportunity. Plunged suddenly into darkness, I used my teeth to scrape that nasty Band-Aid from my finger and tucked it out of sight under my pillow. Then I slid my pale, wrinkled finger inside her vagina, rooting around in there for the rough and spongy G spot, just like all those magazines had taught me.
Vagina Dentata
MY MOTHERFUCKING TEETH. MY SIXTEEN-THOUSAND-DOLLAR SON-OF-A-BITCHING TEETH. That is what I was thinking about when my head moved between Mavis’s thighs, pretending to know what I was about to start doing. The carefully sculpted, realistic-looking crowns affixed to the dead stumps of hollowed-out bone jutting raggedly from the receding gum tissue inside my head; the hours and hours and hours spent horizontal beneath blinding lights as the dentist jammed a pickax between my pulsating molars and went after my eyeteeth with an old-timey saw; the ten-inch needles piercing through my skull, crammed into my sinus cavity, wedged into softened, bloody tissue already vibrant with excruciating pain. Ugh this is fucking Coldplay, I think as I try to figure out a sexy way to tell her to scoot her butt forward so that she’s positioned right under my chin without dislocating my goddamned elbow in the process. Now this hoe knows I have embarrassingly mainstream taste in sex music. “Inch your butt up, sister,” I say, patting her haunch like a horse. “Just like at the gyne.”