I wrote this May 29, 2006:

*

I just had carnal relations.

Technically, it was borne of spontaneity: we exchange a few words on a street corner while waiting for the light to change, and then he asks me out. Normally I get skittish, but this time I just say yes. I give him my email address and fail to catch his name.

He writes, and its clear that neither one of us wants love – we want a hook up. Sex for sex’s sake. In the spirit of the zipless fuck, I decide to go for it. So I tell him to come to my place.

I cancel my original plans and buy a bottle of wine. The whole afternoon I feel strange, like it’s some kind of novelty. I shave my legs. I moisturize. I even use perfume, and all for a stranger I met in the street, about whom I know nothing. The boyfriend’s out of town for the holiday, and my patron saints are all weekday types – I just keep thinking, this’ll be nice…

I tweak my playlists to include more downtempo, and I go through my roster of underwear. I figure he has to be under 30 and decide to go for the cotton boy shorts, no bra. Apart from the clean-shaven legs and lip gloss, I keep it casual: jeans, tank top, no jewelry. And then I pour myself a glass of wine and wait. Flip through a magazine.

He’s late, so I text my fuckbuddy to see if he’s around. I’m big on finding that ‘plan b’ to avoid dwelling on failed evenings, but then I hear my buzzer. I buzz him in and finish my glass.

This was our plan: fornicate. That’s it. Nothing complicated, no expectations. Just sex between strangers.

I’m prepared to skip the small talk and head straight to the bed. In fact, when I escort him in, I gently point him toward the bedroom, but he settles in on the sofa. So I feel like one of my clients, shifting in my seat, offering wine, wondering whether I should just start stripping.

Next thing I know, we’re all over eachother. I feel primal, cheek to the mattress, hips in the air, and it’s good — it’s hot. But as it goes on, his touching begins to feel more intimate than this. We shift positions and I’m on my back, looking up at him — and I’m actually looking at him (with unfocused vision). This is something I never do with strangers, just as I never let them into my apartment. I’m not sure I’ve even done this with the boyfriend. I just let my eyes roll closed and lift my lusty hips to receive.

I watch him come, and he comes beautifully and strong – I can feel every twitch and I want to pull him in. Then everything comes back into focus. My ankles are up on his shoulders and we both realize that my legs are shaking. He laughs. I smile. We disentangle, collapse, and drift.

And drift.

“This is just so… random,” he whispers.

I know.

“I mean, the chemistry here is really good. I didn’t expect it to be so good.”

Neither did I. And this is true: I didn’t. I also didn’t expect the sex to be so… multidimensional.

His fingertips trail up my inner thigh and my body responds before he feels how wet I am. Then it’s happening again, and I’m on top, and he’s holding my hips in a way that feels new to me.

During this second post-coital drift, I contemplate a third unprecedented act with a stranger: I consider letting him stay the night. I’m so relaxed and I can tell he wants to stay. We whisper, drift, whisper, but I can’t do it – I give gentle cues that he needs to go. I just can’t go all the way like that. Not on the first date.

“When can I see you again?” he asks.

The sooner, the better.

I know very little about him and he knows very little about me. But this is what I can sense from the sex: he’s confident. He’s adult, capable of grasping the difference between the realities of a woman’s body and the simulacral rutting of porn, but still not afraid of being filthy and not easily intimidated. He reads people and takes in what they say. He’s smart. There’s some restraint in him, but it isn’t coming from inhibition. He kisses in a way that’s completely disarming, but I don’t believe for a minute that he’s being artificial. And he’s a gentleman – either raised among women, or taught to respect them. These are things you can sense in someone by how they touch your body.

*

Now it’s 12.26.07 and we’re still in touch. My sense was right: he’s very bright, very present, and very complex.

He has tremendous patience with my bouts of silence and doesn’t mind if I retreat or disappear into my work. He doesn’t mind if I go off and travel. He doesn’t care if I’m in love with someone else. In a way, he’s loyal, if there’s loyalty in any of this, and he’s persistent. He’s also a twentysomething and I’m supposed to see him tonight.

I always feel a little unethical sleeping with twentysomethings because I don’t take them seriously. I’m not far out of my twenties myself, so I’m not sure why I treat them so differently. I suppose I’m just used to dating men in their thirties and sleeping with men in their twenties. There’s just something about that age that feels like these men, at least the men I attract, should be exploring or experimenting, so I treat them like sexual objects and work from the assumption, perhaps the erroneous assumption, that they don’t mind being used.

Maybe I’ll ask him this tonight.