blackberryblueberry

[blackberryblueberry]

M, another meeting

M texted to see if I wanted to see a movie but I wasn't super responsive. Another guy I was seeing told me about the Perseids meteor showers but wasn't able to go the night I wanted to go. I texted M and he responded immediately, and he picked me up and we drove out to Fire Island, snuck out onto the beach. I wasn't as sparkly as I was the last time I was with him, when I was fresh off the influence of my friend / crush and spouting a lot of ideas that were brewing from time spent with him. I was spiritually haggard, feeling peak directionless. I don't really know what I said to M that day but I know it wasn't that interesting.

But watching meteors was delightful. We cuddled. As dawn was approaching M rubbed my back and I turned my face towards him. He was smiling. My face displayed that I was thinking.

"What is it?"

"Have you ever had sex on the beach?"

"One time."

"How was it."

"Sandy."

"I've never had sex on a beach." M and I had discussed that I couldn't keep hooking up with him, because sleeping with people who didn't like me romantically messed me up emotionally. But I was extending an invitation.

We looked around us. "Well," he said, "you've got this nice blanket, the beach is all to ourselves, the stars are in the sky..."

It was fun. We made out. We took off our clothes. The air was cool. I asked M if he had a condom and he said yes, guiltily. M darkly framed against the lightening sky full of stars, his wavy chin-length hair loose, was a sight to behold. At some point I covered my face. "This view," I said. "It's so good."

We switched positions. "I want to see," he said. He came fucking me from below. I hadn't come. I sat up and traced a check mark in the air. He laughed and slapped my butt.

We packed up our things. M mentioned being hungry on the way to the car, then said, "Nevermind." He dropped me off at home and gave me a hug. I didn't hear from him. I texted him a few days later asking if I could tag along on his trip to Montreal. It was an impulsive ask; I expected him to say no. He said no, and I was crestfallen. I saw on Instagram that his partner was posting images of their relationship and they were liking and re-posting each other's posts. M didn't even follow me on Instagram.

It wasn't enough to have sex on the beach with a cute boy against a starry backdrop. I wanted to have sex on the beach against a starry backdrop with someone I was in love with and who was in love with me. The difference between those two things was too fucking stark.

[blackberryblueberry]

M, more meetings

After the date with M where we watched airplanes flying in and out of Laguardia, I felt emotionally devastated again, recognizing that I was deeply attached to someone who wasn't attached to me. My friend listened to me describe how shitty I felt and she said he sounded cool but selfish. "Would you continue to sleep with someone who you knew wanted a relationship from you?" she asked. I thought, right, a not-selfish person might not. But I might. It sounded validating.

Before I'd summoned the resolve to end things with him, I'd already texted him about a movie, and he followed up with a few days delay. I decided we'd go through with it and then I'd tell him that we needed to stop. And that's what happened; on a long walk down the Manhattan side of the Hudson River, I told him it was hard for me to keep seeing him.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I want to be partnered, and you don't want that."

"I feel that," he said, and patted my back. I felt devastation fall again; I had hoped he wouldn't confirm that.

Later that evening we missed the movie because he was talking to me about his exes. There was something about the way he described his exes that made me feel like I was reading a resume. One ex was a stripper-turned-artist. Another ex was a computational neuroscientist and third culture kid. I think a part of me knew it was going to be an uphill battle; there was no way to label me in a way that carried currency in the art world, and I could sense that M was both tortured by but also seduced by the art world. I never solidified a professional artistic identity, and felt that those especially edgy identities that appealed to M were often propped up by a lot of wealth and image manipulation / self-branding and locker room networking. I couldn't do those things. Actually I could, but the self-loathing would come down on me.

Intellectually I could see that M and I weren't compatible, that M wanted things that I didn't fit, and that I was beginning to contort myself towards what I thought he wanted, like I did with A. I was looking up their girl and comparing myself to her. I was listening carefully to what he said his interests were and calling that interest forth in myself. I was contorting myself towards their gaze, whatever I thought their gaze was, which was either infused with, or corrupting, my own gaze. The real emergency on the horizon was the loss of self.

After that, I resolved for it to be over. But he'd said, "How about this: I'm going to __ for a few days, when I get back, let's take our bikes out to Montauk." He was always leaving the door open. A few weeks later, after my work projects had been canceled, and while I was looking for distraction, I decided to hit him up. It was a struggle to make plans with him again, but as I started to show signs of giving up on him, he started getting more responsive. We met up for food and it was again a really lovely date; he brought me to a skewer stand and we ate the best skewers and stinky tofu in Elmhurst sitting on park benches, and then we went to my apartment and hung out and I asked him why he didn't like me and he said he liked me, he just didn't want a relationship. We stayed up till 4am talking and cuddling, and we didn't have sex, and then he left.

[blackberryblueberry]

J, 2nd & 3rd meeting

The day after the first tryst J didn't text. We didn't have one another's numbers. I was the one to message him on Tinder to ask if he wanted to exchange numbers, and then he texted me asking if sexy texting was something I was into. Sure, I said. So he started telling me how much he liked my pussy, how wet it got, how it felt in his hand, and asked if I wanted to meet up for a quick thing. I didn't know where and how, and I said no. He kept texting the days after asking if I wanted to meet up for quick things, and eventually I told him I didn't like that he was doing that, and he apologized. "Hit me up whenever," he said. For sex, I guess.

I wanted him to ask me out properly but it didn't happen. Eventually one night after dancing at zouk I felt bummed and horny and I decided, fine, I'll just hit him up. It was early July. He was away for the fourth and we said we'd get together after he got back. One day after meeting my friends for karaoke I asked him if he wanted to watch a movie with me, and he cabbed over. When I saw him I thought, meh. He was good looking enough but when he opened his mouth to talk in that nasally self-effacing way it just didn't matter what he looked like, and when we kissed I'd taste something bad. Sometimes he'd say something interesting. He wasn't stupid and he wasn't lame and he had some interesting views on art.

He watched the movie with me. It was a sappy Taiwanese gay love drama. Not the type of movie I usually watch, but sometimes you just do something different. (For a week after I played the theme song to help me sleep.) Afterwards we had sex. He went down on me again, but it wasn't so good this time, he didn't finger me and didn't get me off and actually seemed a lot more concerned about his own orgasm. He had trouble getting it up again, and he fucked me a little bit, forgettably. He pulled out and shuffled up and inserted his dick in my mouth and I sucked his dick until he came. I had the thought, why didn't he ask permission? Nothing felt natural--afterwards, I asked if we could cuddle, and we did, but it felt very mechanical. During our conversation I could feel myself disliking everything he said. I talked a little bit about how lost and directionless I felt and he said something about how he thought it was important to enjoy life and try to have fun. It wasn't wrong in principle but he just couldn't say it in a way I liked.

No word from either of us for a couple of days. I found myself assembling a kind of hoe-tation, trying to keep plates up in the air, and at one point I texted him again to see if things were still viable between us, and he was receptive again. He said I was the only person he was dating in the sense that I was the only person he had seen more than once this summer, and I thought, he must really not care too much about dating, because if I was the most viable option he had and he was putting in zero effort, then he was truly helpless and hopeless. He'd text, "We good?" Or "Summer is ending and I'd like to see you" but never ask me out, never suggest a time to meet up. Always expected me to take initiative. So one day when I knew I was going to walk past the store he worked in, I told him he should come out and meet me, and he did. We walked around SoHo for a while, chatting, and I said, "I don't know what it is you want. Are you dating for distraction? I can't tell if you like me." And his response was effectively, "I'm sorry about that" and "Maybe my words and actions aren't matching" and "I can't control whether you don't like me."

And that was the end of that.

[blackberryblueberry]

J, 1st meeting

J was handsome and self-conscious. He talked with a great deal of abstraction, never getting to the point. Like me, he was an Aquarius rising, and I wondered if I sounded like him when I talked. A year ago he’d gotten out of a five-year relationship. He said it’d stagnated and that something had failed to emerge. “Sometimes two plus two equals four but it’d be better if two plus two equaled five.” I wondered if he could hear the absurdity in framing it this way. I asked him to order for us--he ordered lumpia, pork skewers, and halo-halo--and after dinner I said I needed to pick up an air conditioner. He volunteered to come along. We took the subway to Carroll St and picked up a Frigidaire window unit from an acquaintance, and took a cab back to my neighborhood, where he hauled the A/C into my bedroom and installed it in my window. After that we went to a nearby Nepali bar and got drinks—mine was a frothy makkoli cocktail rimmed with tajin. The bar was enormous and purply and the speaker system played a mixture of US top 40 and south Asian / Latin hits. I sat close to him and we didn’t quite flirt, but I did get him to add me as a friend on co-star, and our charts were pretty compatible. He didn't ask me a whole lot about me, but he'd talk a lot about himself, and reveal quite a lot. He said that in the past he’d primarily dated white women, and was trying not to now. (The second Asian person I dated who said this to me.) He interpreted the attraction to white women as a symptom of self-loathing, as expressing a need for validation. He constantly brought up his attributes as a way of measuring his value or what he brought to the table, relative to others. He mentioned that he lacked charisma, the ability to enliven a conversation. It was true, he was a great bore. He acknowledged at another point that he was a good-looking guy, and that was true too. He was in the grip of constant self-assessment, and it made me worry that I was like that too. Too long in the dating marketplace? Or too long spent in the New York art world and other such white supremacist bourgeois social-capitalist sectors? He used to work as a gallerist, chasing down art openings.

I invited him back to my apartment, and we started hooking up. He made out with me with aggressive tongue. And he started sucking on my neck and chest, with a force that I worried was going to leave marks. "It won't," he said. (He was wrong). Then he pulled off my underwear, bundled it, and pushed it into my mouth, and started to eat me out while holding my jaw shut with one hand.

I was about to go down on him, but he stopped me. He needed to tell me something. I instantly thought, "STD."

"I have ED. I didn't take a pill..."

It took me a moment to register what that meant. I guessed we wouldn't be fucking. We talked about what we liked, and his list was pretty long and explicit. It seemed he'd done a lot more, and with a lot of toys. He also said he liked to over-communicate. He told me he liked being dominant, and liked seeing his partner in pleasure. I could really see it - I just had the sense that I could just let loose and enjoy myself and he'd feel good about it.

He flipped me on my back and wanted to eat me out from behind, but I was self-conscious and asked if we could shower. In the shower he took the shower-head and turned it to the pulsing setting and used it on me. I laughed--he was really obsessed with getting me off.

In bed I started sucking his dick, but he stopped me with "I'm really sensitive for some reason." He put on one of my condoms, and we tried to fuck, but he stopped and switched to a condom that he'd brought, but then also stopped. "I'm having a bit of performance anxiety," he said. I touched his arm to try to reassure him. We lay down, semi-spooning, and he put his fingers inside me and I touched myself at the same time. It felt really good, whatever he was doing, and I moaned and let him listen to it, and eventually I came. It was the first time I'd come on a first date hookup.

He didn't stay the night because he needed to go home to take care of his cat. He cuddled me while he waited for his cab to pick him up. After he left I slept like a log.

[blackberryblueberry]

M, sixth meeting

After the whirlwind move, M kissed me on the cheek before I got out of his car and told me to let him know when I'd settled in. I didn't contact him. I felt intense disappointment about falling for him in spite of many signs that he didn't want a relationship and saw this as a casual thing. Could I even trust my own feelings? Was I being puppeted by oxytocin? Was it that easy to attach? I needed to stop chasing mirages. I decided to let go, to try to find an appropriate partner.

Two weeks later M texted me. I responded immediately. We went back and forth a bit and made vague plans to hang out. M picked me up and drove us to Flushing for food and then the park at College Point, where we sat on a stone bench and ate lychees. In the intervening two weeks I'd moved past hoping for anything from him other than friendship, so I had intended to keep the mood platonic. We stood by the water and watched the planes land at Laguardia, backgrounded by the Manhattan skyline, and M put his hand on my back and I didn't object. I hadn't ever been to this part of this city and hadn't realized that Rikers Island was next to LaGuardia, such that the incoming jets flew directly over the prison. M said that he'd often bike up here on his own. On the walk back to his car I asked him absently if he'd texted his father for father's day, only to realize immediately that this was his first father's day after his father had passed away.

We tried to drive to Orchard Beach but it was closed, so we drove onward to City Island instead. We ate at an elaborately decorated seafood restaurant (large wooden fish decked in neon signs and model propeller planes hung from the ceiling). Then we walked down to the bay and sat on the wall marking where private property began. There were sailboats sitting in the bay and the moonlight played on the water and ahead was still the Manhattan skyline. We sat on the concrete wall for a while. We drove through the Bronx down past Mott Haven and back to my neighborhood in Queens. It was 2am and the highways were mostly empty. M looked for parking in his usual spot, but found none; as we crawled slowly and inquisitively over the bridge, sex workers peered into our car.

At my apartment, we cut up some honey melon. I showered, and then he did, but first he fixed my over-door hanger so that the bathroom door could shut. It didn't seem clear to me that we'd even hook up, or who would initiate it, and eventually he kissed me. We kissed and groped a bit. He was the only person who'd ever licked my nipples in a way that felt good. I asked whether we might try something, but I couldn't think of anything to try, so we just talked about trying things, and eventually we talked about domination, and contempt, and being mean, and resistance, and conflict. And we got on the subject of hating, and he said, "I don't think I could be a you-hater" and I said, "I don't think I could be a you-hater either" and he asked, "Why not?"

"I think you would beat me to it. Any character flaws I saw you'd already have seen."

"I don't think hating has to be about finding character flaws," he said. He said that you could hate constructively, like telling your friend, "Why are you doing that shit, you know it doesn't matter, why don't you do what matters?" I was in awe at the idea of constructive hating. I think I said something vague about hating on clout-chasing and careerism, but it seemed to infect everything, and he said that it was more possible to withstand these things once he'd clarified his own values. He was right, I knew he was right. "You're wise," I said. At that moment I grew very tired. It was 5am. "I feel like I've hit a wall," I said.

"A sleepy wall?"

"Yeah."

"Let's go to bed."

We crawled into bed, and I think we could have just slept, but then I kissed him and pulled him on top of me. He ate me out, putting his fingers inside me at the same time, and at times I almost came, but not quite. Then I went down on him. When I raised my head, he pulled me up, and I crawled onto my stomach while he put on the condom (Okamoto 3.0), and then maneuvered me onto my knees. He fucked me, pulling my hair, and then I lowered down to the bed, and twisted to kiss him. He turned me onto my back and pulled my legs over his shoulders. We fucked that way, with me all folded up, a position I've now gotten used to because of him. He fucked me intensely and then broke off, flopping down next to me. "Did you come?" I asked.

"No," he said, in a tone like it should've been obvious.

I held him for a bit. We were breathing heavily. He kissed my forehead. Eventually I climbed on top of him to ride him. That's how he eventually came, fucking me from below. He was groaning and I could see the whites of his eyes as they rolled back into his head. He held my hips and pushed me down onto his dick as he came. It seemed like he was having a powerful orgasm.

And it felt good for me too. I lay down next to him, and he held me and kissed my face all over, including in the inner corner of my eyes--a very tender type of kiss. It would have been nice to get this type of kiss from someone who loved me. He took my hand and turned on his side so that I was big spoon. I couldn't sleep. Eventually I left the room and went to sleep on my couch, but I didn't have my ear plugs so I couldn't sleep then either. The birds were chirping loudly, and a few hours later there came the usual thumps from upstairs like a kid was running around.

I remembered that I had to go to work early. At 9am I went into the room and woke him. "You can let yourself out," I said. "Don't forget to take the leftovers." He nodded OK to all of it. I kissed him, but he didn't seem interested in the kiss. On my way out I doubled back and said, "Let me know if you want to see the Kaurismaki on Tuesday, I can get comp tickets." He was on his phone. "Sure," he said, in a way that indicated that he wouldn't.

The whole day I didn't hear from him, not even to let me know that he'd left my apartment. At work I learned that the project I'd worked on for two years had been terminated. I hadn't cared about it the entire time - I'd thought it was shit code written for a shit purpose - but knowing that it'd been terminated cemented a feeling of directionless and pointlessness, and also loss and self-abandonment. I wanted my work to feel purposeful. Seeing M felt pointless, too. I wanted to be around people who gave a shit about me and to work on things that mattered to me.

[blackberryblueberry]

M, fifth meeting

More radio silence from M. One sleepless night I had an epiphany about anxiety: anxiety was worrying about outcomes, and it was the opposite of real engagement. I decided that I wanted to stop being so anxious about dating and value transient connection. It's not that the future didn't matter to me; it's that I was so miserable in the present that I couldn't rouse myself to do anything anymore. I could try to just enjoy being in someone's presence, flirt, and savor what we could exchange and learn about each other, without worrying about some kind of result outside of my control (whether they'd like me, whether we'd be able to become life partners).

I texted M to ask how he was doing. He responded that he was still stressed about work, and said he was just thinking of asking if I was free for dinner (how doubtful). I asked if he'd still help me move, and he said he could still do it. So on Thursday I called him and we made plans to cook together, and we grocery shopped and he cooked chicken adobo and veggies at my place while I packed a bit. I hovered around him while he was cooking and he told he to not worry about it. He told me about his friend who'd gotten out of a long-term relationship and how that friend had been the caretaker; his friend's girlfriend seemed like a sheltered rich girl who relied on him for everything and was contradictorily possessive and also dismissive (she wanted him to include her in his outings, but then didn't want to spend time with his friends), and his friend was always aiming to please her, and even after the breakup was largely concerned with her well-being. I recognized myself in both of these people: a younger version of myself was contradictorily jealous and also judgmental, but also I was the caretaker who worried about my ex's well-being even after he'd indicated that he was cutting me out of his life. Listening to M describe his friend's situation was a welcome glance at the emotional lives of straight men who were open to sharing about it with their friends; M was an astute observer of people and relationship dynamics and talked about it in a way that wasn't judgmental. And watching M cook very competently made me walk back my conviction that men were not domestically capable.

M seemed to have infinite energy to do things: to drive places, to cook, to talk, to hustle on his career, to date and meet people, to go on outings. The day after he helped me move he'd be helping another friend move. During the week he helped a friend, recently out of a relationship, buy toilet paper. And when I talked to him about my life, in my despairing and self-doubting way, he'd figure out exactly the right thing to say to set my mind straight and adjust my attitude to think positively. I was down really bad.

After dinner we watched A.K.A. Serial Killer, a Masao Adachi film comprised of random shots of landscapes and occasional voiceover about the life of a serial killer who'd grown up around those landscapes. It was monotonous, and in the middle of the movie we started making out. M's hands went up my shirt, squeezing my body, unhooking my bra; then he was licking and sucking my nipples while I had my hands entangled in his hair. We pulled off our clothes, and then he went down on me, his tongue searching deeply, and I guided his hand to my pussy so that he could finger me while eating me out. I couldn't come, but it felt really good, and then I asked him to fuck me, and he did as usual, with my legs over his shoulders, until he came. We watched the rest of the movie, and then took a walk in the park. Eventually I was sleepy and wanted to go to bed. Lying in bed, I was suddenly anxious, feeling like I wanted to tell M something; I wanted him to tell me where he thought this was going, because it was stressing me out that it was going nowhere and yet I liked him so much.

"Are you asleep?" He was. A few minutes later, again, I said his name.

"Mm."

"Are you asleep..."

"Yeah I was kinda. What's up?"

"Can we talk?"

"Yeah. What's up?"

Long pause. I was rallying. He was waiting.

"I like you and I'm not sure what to do with my feelings."

"Why do you have to do anything with them?"

"Do you just want something casual?"

"Yes," he said immediately. "Yeah I guess so."

"You guess so..."

"Yeah, I'm kind of lost these days and stressed about work and can't handle anything serious."

"But you are in a serious relationship."

"Yeah, I am," he said. "Even that one I wasn't sure I could handle. But it seems to be going okay for now."

"I'm kind of mad that you didn't disclose it on your dating profile."

"It wasn't that serious at the time that we first matched." That time when we first matched, he was more pursuant, reaching out to hang out, suggesting things to do. I hadn't responded at the time. He'd mentioned traveling to Hawaii with someone, but I vaguely remembered him referring to this person as a co-worker. Great, I thought, now I'll languish in regret at the possibility that I'd missed my chance, even though I doubted there would have been one anyway. Chance or no chance, dating him in the winter would have lifted my spirits, and probably turned a very depressed winter into a much more tolerable one. But as this sex diary has already logged; I had found ways to dismiss him out of hand.

Already I had the sense that seeing M was altering my life. My misandry was disappearing. The way I was falling fast, but unable to extract any kind of futurity, resembled what I had with A, but M's volubility and energy made it easier for me to process my anxieties with him. "I think feelings are always worth feeling," he said. I told M that I wasn't sure whether we'd end up being friends. "That's something we get to decide," he said, reminding me again of my passivity. I thought about it and knew I wanted to be friends, but wasn't sure I could handle it emotionally. I told him about A, and it was fun processing that with him. "I would like to be friends," I said eventually. M extended his hand and we shook on it in the dark.

The next day M stayed with him and stayed with me while the movers were at work. He helped me clear out my fridge and we put my plants in his car and drove to Jackson Heights, where we got arepas and then walked to a little park in Elmhurst. M constantly pointed out things around me that I should try, and I was happy at the sights because I was seeing it through his eyes, and he really liked this neighborhood. M was looking around; I was mostly looking at M. We held hands on the way to the park, and then at the park I gave him a massage because his back was hurting, and on the way back he walked with his hands behind his back, which made me sad. I was starting to worry that I would always be a person who could only enjoy life vicariously. During the unpacking, M was fielding recruiter emails, still looking for a job, and eventually we started talking about my industry and M lit up; he wanted to know how to get a job like mine. He told me that he'd had to drop out of school twice and had ended up working in the music industry because it was accessible where corporate employment was not. In other words, the things he did that looked interesting and exotic he'd had no choice but to do; what he really wanted was a cushy, corporate desk job like mine. I started to give him advice and he became suddenly more energized. At one point, I blurted, "You're so pure" because unlike me, he wasn't captive to institutional authority--he resisted the allure of the art world, recognized when he wasn't getting support in what he wanted to do, and had a strong sense of what interested him. He looked taken aback and said, "I'm really not." Later he gave me a brief rundown of his life; he'd experienced real precarity and homelessness and had hustled and thieved and been played for the life he had now. It'd led to him being homeless and living in his car, working as a line cook in different restaurants. He then worked for a strange guy with a trust fund until that guy became convinced that he'd stolen camera equipment from him and started stalking him for months, until M snapped and actually stole equipment from him and started his career in video work, leaving that life of precarity behind. I could see his intense drive as a symptom of knowing how far he'd climbed and how far the fall could be. And I realized that what I considered purity was just clarity, from inner strength and not-sheltered-ness. It was not purity but experience and survival.

There was no sense in trying to go back to locate inner strength in the past. In a way this had been my project, one encouraged by therapeutic methods. I was trying to re-engage my inner child, wishing my parents had or hadn't not done this or that, wishing I had not gone through schools that made me think this or that, wishing I could re-capture an untarnished self, hoping I could dodge future pain, rueing that I'd lived by false principles. But principles aren't true or false. They only organize your efforts, whose results testify to the principles. And childhood is not a sanctum, it's madness. Pain can't be avoided. My parents always loved me and assured my survival.

If he'd wanted me, I'd have dropped everything to be his support system. This was what I'd done with the person I nearly married. This is what I wanted to do for all the hustling underdog men I was falling in love with. I was a freak for underdogs; I wanted them to love me, I wanted to make them my purpose, to devote myself to their care and their success, and take on their worldview.

[blackberryblueberry]

M, third & fourth meeting

With M I wanted to test him out, to see if I could get acts of service from him, since I'd decided I'd been too servile in all of my other dating experiences. It was nerve-wracking, because he'd be effortlessly agreeable to doing favors for me in person, but then would never text, making me think he'd changed his mind or hadn't been truthful in person. I had to be very proactive in following up. Still things would generally always work out as agreed: he picked me up from my hometown on his drive back to the city from his hometown. We had some Indian food in my hometown, and then on the drive he played some music by his favorite artist, and when we got to my place we cuddled. I was still having what I imagined (half jokingly) to be an allergic reaction to him, since each time we had sex I'd have some kind of itchy reaction a few days later. So we didn't have sex, but I did work up the nerve to tell him about the itchy reactions, and the conversation was surprisingly easy. He was thoughtful about it, and wondered if it could have been an allergy to the condom, and he ended up recommending me this Japanese brand (Okamoto). It was really pleasant, it felt like we were just hanging out and shooting the shit, even though we were talking about sex and possible infection. He offered to take a walk with me in the park before going home, so we did that--I brought him to the Boathouse and we looked at turtles. When we got back to his car I didn't know when it would make sense to hang out again, and said I'd need to check my calendar. "I'm down for movies, or to make dinner," he said, again seeming so agreeable to seeing me again, and again not texting me at all after we parted. I was disappointed he didn't even check in about my doctor's appointment.

A week later I texted him late at night asking if he wanted to get dinner the following day, and he responded "ya sure let's do it," and suggested we drive to Queens. He picked me up and we drove to get Jamaican takeout, and then drove to the beach. As excited as I was to see him and go on a city adventure, I was nervous and despondent once I got in his car, because I think I was already crushing on him but feeling insecure about whether he liked me since he never texted. Still, he was his usual talkative and friendly self, and when I did share small bits about myself (always, I realize, about having some kind of anxiety) he would immediately say something positive and uplifting. My crush, and my hopelessness, simultaneously deepened.

I relaxed a bit more on the beach, and we talked about health stuff, some family trips he had upcoming, his father's illness and death. I learned he was a hypochondriac. We walked along the beach, and there were some stretches of silence. At the end of the beach we made out, and then we drove back along the Belt Parkway at dusk listening to music. We got to my place and he stayed until he had a work call at 10pm. We gave each other head on my couch, and when I went down on him he came quickly again. I spat it out into the bathroom sink and it was tinged pink; I was concerned, but then remembered that I'd been drinking a deep purple sorrel-ginger drink.

"So I'm good at it?" I said when I got back.

"Yeah. I think I told you last time that you were. You have like... good technique." Somehow I wished the praise were more effusive, although obviously the best praise was what had already happened: him cumming in what felt like less than two minutes of me sucking dick.

The conversation wandered onto the subject of kinks - different things he'd tried, different things I liked. He was so open to everything, even the idea of being pegged. "I'm down for anything," he said, in that open and friendly way of his that I made me feel happy and safe. I told him that someone else (someone I'd met on the apps before) had once told me that someone had come to him with the request to be praised. That was new to him. He said, "You mean like, 'Oh you're doing so good'?" When he said this he dropped into a bit of casual character, but in a way that was somehow absolutely and perfectly tuned and reader it really fucking did something to me.

Eventually I told him that I wasn't sure if he actually liked hanging out with me because he never texted, and he said he did, but he was just really busy with work. A had made essentially the same excuse to me, and I had really doubted it with A, who did not seem to have a job (unless the job was just chasing women who could also advance his social position, in which case he had many jobs). M on the other hand did seem to be working a lot. "Didn't I just see you?" he asked. "Like over the weekend--Sunday?"

"No, it was a week ago--last Friday you picked me up."

He was losing track of days, he said. He was stressed about work--he'd been laid off a couple months ago and was freelancing and also cold-emailing for more opportunities, and considering backup plans as well. He emphasized that he was really very introverted, with spurts of being extroverted, and he could go days without seeing anyone, and not notice. I asked if he was free on the day of my upcoming move, and he said he could definitely help me move. He promised that we'd see each other again soon, and patted me on the head.

That was shaping up to be our dynamic. I had gone into this new round of dating looking for signs of people who could bring me ease and take care of me, and even though he was a horrible texter, in material ways he was showing up for me where no one had in the past, and even emotionally I was somehow able to be a sad and anxious and depressed baby around him without facing rejection or judgment. But also he could not give me the kind of daily touch that I needed; he had legitimate excuses but I needed more. I'm not sure I could get this person to fall in love with me--that'd be out of my control--and even if I could, I'm not sure a relationship with him could satisfy all my needs--but I'd try very hard to make him a lifelong friend. I already liked him so much.

[blackberryblueberry]

interlude: ideology

I have the kind of mind--we can go along with social norms and call it an unsophisticated mind--that refuses nuance. I quit DSA because someone who harmed me (over the course of ten years raped me, caused me multiple times to lose housing, villainized me, emotionally blackmailed me, and ultimately treated me as disposable)--let's just call him the Rapist--is a prominent member of the DSA. I stopped taking an interest in Korean culture because the Rapist was a Korean. I hated all lawyers because the Rapist was a lawyer. I stopped talking to all of my college friends because they were still friends with my Rapist. I have tried several times to re-involve myself in political activism, only to wind up reproducing the dynamic I had with my Rapist, a man who had strong opinions about how people should live their life, who accepted all manner of care and attention and effort from me without recognizing them as such, and then who left me to die. The people who helped me pick up the pieces of my life were liberals, apoliticals, moderates, reactionaries. Not a single man whose public image invokes a "radical left" political ideology has ever helped save me when I was lost, but plenty of times such men have exploited me. At this point, a proclaimed radical left cis man is a red flag to me.

What nuance I have left in my reserves I plan to spend on not seeing radical, visionary thinking as the domain of these men. I will throw away plenty of babies with the bathwater--Korean food, DSA, respect for the legal system, sucky college friends--but not this one.

[blackberryblueberry]

M, first & second meeting

Maybe as a means of distraction, I tried to date again. I went on dates with many upstanding folks who seemed stable and intelligent, reminding me that in this city, everyone is interesting, accomplished, driven, and brilliant. Most of the time I felt no energy to pursue any of those inroads further. One of these, the only one I slept with (this is, despite my long bouts of femcel-ness, still a sex diary), we'll call M. We matched on Tinder. He was yet another chaotic queer-coded wasian art boy--I am embarrassed to learn my type--and with no introduction asked me out for drinks. He picked the time and place. We met at a bar near me, and despite exuding waywardness he was pretty punctual. He had a pleasant face, and reminded me of a friend of my ex's that I used to have a crush on (also a wayward art boy).

He was pretty chatty. We split a pretzel, I ordered some forgettable drink, he showed me his website. We walked in the park after, and I steered us towards my block. He didn't seem to care where he was, nor did he seem very aware of his surroundings--he followed me through the park and we sat on strangers' stoops. I brought him up to my roof, asked him about his birth chart. Cancer Sun. He asked to kiss me, and I said OK, and the kiss was just OK. His face and mouth were large and indelicate up close. Going back down to my apartment involved climbing down a thin, wobbly metal ladder which scared him a little, puncturing the devil-may-care impression I had of him (as broadcasted by his Tinder pics and his outfit). He talked a lot more than I did, and always about himself, and I felt my interest in him subsiding. The sex was awkward--his dick was long and curved and pencil thin, and he kept maneuvering my legs over his shoulders even though I kept bringing them down. But he was good at eating me out and didn't seem to be doing it out of obligation; it seemed like he liked doing it. I could sense he wanted head from me, and I dug my heels in and didn't give it to him. We tried to sleep, then we had sex again but I got tired before he finished, and he ripped the condom off and threw it on the ground, to my utter shock. I asked to spoon, and we did, but it was tense and devoid of affection.

In the morning we walked out together - me to work, and him to go home, and I was very tired and hadn't slept well. Before separating he said, "Hang out again soon?" and I said, "Let's text." I texted him later the day to say it was nice to meet him and he told me he was going to watch a few films, and recommended me the work of an animator that I turned out to quite like. After that he texted twice to make plans, and I wasn't opposed, but couldn't summon the energy to go, so we fell out of touch. I felt the disgust of a one night stand, the memory of the pencil dick and the discarded condom on my floor. A few days later, an itchy painful bump appeared on my ass, and I thought, was it reckless of me to hookup with strangers in this way? We used protection during penetration, but not during oral. I decided to stop having casual sex.

Later, in the depths of my femcel-dom I thought about him a few times, and looked him up on social media. I saw that he was dating someone--and was probably dating them even while we'd hooked up. I liked her: she seemed pretty and creative and outgoing. She'd tagged him in a few pictures, and it raised my opinion of him. He seemed to be accompanying her on fun world travels. That's really all I wanted--someone available and accessible and down to hang out with me and go places with me. My dating life had been so shitty up to this point that something like that seemed totally inconceivable.

I thought to reach out again, but through triangulating Tinder and Instagram realized he was traveling around in Asia and wouldn't be back till mid-spring. After he got back, I took a few weeks to muster up the decisiveness to contact him again. (Alternatively put: it took a few weeks for the depression and isolation to get bad enough for me to reach out.) He was down to meet up. I invited him to a live music set (Eiko Ishibashi presenting the music of Drive My Car), and we met up at the fountain in Washington Square Park on a beautiful late spring afternoon where again he sort of just followed me wherever I led him and chatted about himself. It turned out we'd been in Tokyo at the same time, and I felt sad knowing that maybe if we'd kept in touch I could've been less lonely there. He seemed confused as to why I didn't go out and meet more people; he'd partied a lot and was really active. I didn't exactly say that I was extremely depressed and burnt out and couldn't find joy and meaning in anything at all, but made some vague reference to having "ADHD brain."

But those months of deep depression, trying a hodgepodge of ways to feel better including acupuncture and indigenous healing ceremonies and getting mad at my friends, combined with the onset of spring, made me feel much more disposed to think well of him. If he was chatty, then good, it meant I didn't have to produce verbiage. If he wanted to talk about himself, then good, it meant he was open and unguarded and I could just listen and observe. If he seemed totally unaware of his surroundings and was content to follow me around, then good, he'd be a good companion to my stubborn and willful nature. He was a horrible texter, but he wasn't flaky so far.

We had a longer date this time; we got dumplings after the show, and talked for a while in Seward Park. We talked about family, relationships, art and the superficiality of the art world, the difficulty of living in New York, his previous relationships. He recalled an emotionally tumultuous adolescence with intense mood swings, that he'd grown out of. I don't know if I shared much about myself. He reminded me of my other Cancer friend, whose way of talking about themselves at length felt tedious, but it wasn't that they were idiotically self-absorbed, they'd still listen carefully if you spoke to them.

He hadn't disclosed whether he was dating someone, and so I asked him. Yes, he said, he was seeing someone, and it was kind of serious. Not "move in together tomorrow" serious, but serious. An open relationship. She didn't like labels. I felt disappointed. It sounded serious to the point that it would have been ethical to disclose.

But I'd been living with insomnia for weeks. I felt a tremble taking over my body, and my heartbeat was fast and erratic. My body wasn't holding together; I was dying. I was desperate: sex, a warm body in the bed, maybe these things would work. I'd wanted to go to his place and had actually brought my things, but he said his place was too messy, so we went to mine. The journey felt very friendly; I didn't feel lust and excitement so much as comfort and pragmatism. We had talked about how we were both struggling with insomnia. "We'll sleep ten hours tonight, right?" I asked--setting the tone, probably, for a peaceful and wholesome evening. At home we talked for a while. He said my apartment was nice. "Do you ever have friends over?" he asked. I told him I hadn't, that I'd actually been pretty ashamed of moving into this bougie apartment, and he said, "I think if you have a nice apartment you should invite friends over" and I sort of appreciated that he said that. Eventually we got ready for bed. It felt like cohabitation; he showered, we brushed our teeth, we got under the covers, we kissed. He pulled me on top of him, and at that moment I remembered to ask: "Do you get tested?" He seemed surprised. He'd gotten tested a few months ago, before his trip, and then had slept with two more people on his trip. I said, I won't go down on you, then. He looked surprised, like he didn't know what to do with this information. After that it didn't seem possible to keep going. He wasn't initiating anymore, but we were cuddling.

"How are you feeling?" I asked.

"A little nervous," he replied.

"Why?" I said. "Don't be. Did I kill it?"

"No, it's totally fine. Don't overthink it."

A long silence. "I'm overthinking it."

"I know you are, and I don't know what to tell you to not make you overthink. It's totally fine, everything's OK." He held me to comfort me.

Eventually we started making out again, and then he went down on me, and I started to think, why not. Why not just go down on him. So then I did, and he came quite quickly, into my mouth. I was surprised he didn't give me any warning. I got up to spit it out, and he laughed. He'd been waiting to see if I'd swallow; it was significant to him. Everything felt so boyish, like he was trying to do porn: take turns going down on one another, then push the legs up, plow, do a bunch of positions, swallow the cum. If we hooked up again, I'd have to tell him to be better; to go off no scripts, to use the body's signals as a guide. I realized that's what was so intoxicating about sex with A: it was his alertness to the body's signals, and the way it was always absolutely, completely okay to stop at any time, which made me never want to stop. I'd never had sex like that before. It'd felt safe and intimate and felt like love, and I did fall in love. I would have given him anything he wanted, I wanted exactly that kind of sex, every day, multiple times a day. Every other sexual experience I had--all with straight men--fell so vastly short of it. I wasn't sure if M was straight, but I feel I had a more direct answer to the question I really cared about: straight or not, the way he fucked me was normatively pornographic.

In the morning I woke up first, and puttered around the apartment trying not to wake him. Around 1pm I woke him up because I needed to leave the apartment. We had sex. It was better, maybe simply because we'd spent so much time together and my body was habituating to his. I asked him what he had going on this week, and we said Sunday we'd be free; he said he'd text over the weekend.

I suppose I need to decide if it's worth continuing to invest in him. Already he'd shown that he wasn't very thoughtful about disclosure or about boundaries, and he took up a lot of space, and was consuming a lot of my hospitality without offering much in return, and also was emotionally involved with someone else. Was I being stupid? I feel, as I did with A, that it didn't make sense for him to be attracted to me on the level required for relationship (compatibility in lifestyle and goals and communities) and so probably he wasn't. I was so deprived of physical touch. I wanted to grab onto anybody.

[blackberryblueberry]

interlude: limerence, celibacy, depression

I read over a couple of past entries and felt bitter. Particularly the entries with H, where I can see him being shitty and disrespectful and manipulative, even provocatively so, and I'd maintain a thoughtful equanimity. In hindsight, I always wish I were more reactive, more angry. He treated me like he was superior to me. At least, I was able to forget about him quickly. It was much harder to forget A, who I saw a few times socially when I returned to Brooklyn, with the hope that I could create a friendship with him. (He told me early on that he wasn't sure if I'd liked him early on, and I asked him why he thought I kept dating him. He replied, "Because you wanted a friend?")

First, I saw him at an art show where he introduced me to a number of his friends. Outside the gallery I caught one of those friends tying their bandana onto his head; as soon as A saw me step outside, he hurriedly pulled the bandana off, fumbling with the knot. The friend--a really young thing, just out of college--bent down and hugged her knees. It was strange, and maybe I hoped it didn't mean what I thought it meant. After the show we all went to dinner and karaoke, and I smoked outside with another one of A's friends who told me that she'd met A on Tinder. "We're friends," she said, and then added, "I think." Inside, the young thing and A sat close together, legs touching. A couple people at the show were taking a car back to Brooklyn, and I signaled I'd like to ride home with them. I think A heard me; shortly after, he and the young thing left together. As they walked out the door my heart sank to the ground. I hadn't known these feelings were lurking in me. I probably should have: I had been thinking about A constantly. While I was traveling, I read his writing and looked at his childhood photos; I grew fonder of him even though I was trying to forget him.

Through the summer A texted me sporadically. The texts announced that he was very busy and cooped up. At no point did he say he wanted to see me, and he would ignore my invitations to see shows or films. A few times I asked if we could talk, and he'd delay. We never talked. Still, every few weeks, he texted to check in on me, to announce again that he was busy and cooped up. If I asked him what he was working on he'd answer, "Things I'd like to forget."

I was engulfed in sexual desire for A that I couldn't bear to admit to anyone. A few times I imagined, what if I just asked him for sex? What if I really got across to him that I didn't need anything from him, that I was willing to make myself as inconvenient as possible, if only he'd sleep with me? Even to get a no would be a relief. I didn't do it. To some extent I didn't want to appear desperate, although true desperation overcomes the need for appearances. It's that with even ten seconds of reflection it was clear that my desperation was far from just sexual. It was physical and emotional and social and intellectual; it was all-encompassing. Of course I wanted more from him, but I was trying to settle for less, and to lie about these terms would mean that I further wouldn't be able to manage rejection of these terms.

I described my romantically disappointing situation to a straight guy friend (a fuckboy), who told me, "They're maintenance texts. He's keeping you as an option." It was embarrassing to know that this was true and yet suffer on account of it. Every time I responded to one of A's texts, even if my response was trivial, I'd become wracked with anxiety, imagining the texts being judged or dismissed. (And I imagine they were; but confusingly, he kept me on the hook.) It didn't feel safe to say anything. All of my fantasies of us transmuting our fleeting fling into a generative and unique friendship were not coming true. Some nights I would visit the reddit page for limerence, and take comfort in others' descriptions of their their painfully intense feelings of unrequited yearning.

I began to feel that my circumstances were not only romantic in nature but also technological. The hell that I lived in--A's ability to project enticing images, to keep a version of himself alive in my thoughts and heart without needing to reveal anything or sacrifice any of his time--was critically assisted by texting and social media; and here I was medicating my anguish on the internet as well. I felt scared. I was living in a world without physics or chemistry; the slightest touch could have outsized effects on my psychic wellness, and my enormous inner drive could be effortlessly dodged by their object. And yet it bore a resemblance to the rest of my life; one where my desires were kept secret and my outward displays were either punished or misheard. I couldn't escape the feeling that I'd been rejected for not being queer or artistic enough for A, who moved on to wooing more visibly queer femmes and more successful artists and scholars. I had always felt that my hyper-sensitivity, my emotional reactivity, and my sense of isolation from the rest of the world was what made me an artist and a queer (or what made me claim these terms from the social realm as my own). I had never been to translate any of these characteristics into externally recognized sexual or artistic achievement.

Eventually, after a few weeks where A was texting more frequently than usual (but still avoided spending time with me in person), I told him I was feeling awful and that I needed to talk to him, face-to-face. I've logged that conversation here. I got the "no" that I was searching for. It didn't bring me total relief; the pain reverberated for many more months, over the course of a long winter in which the world bore witness to genocide and A and his circle of anarchist and activist artists and filmmakers organized visible responses (cultural boycotts, art builds, exhibition withdrawals) and I felt helpless and isolated and atomic and useless, with no organizing base. It became even more important to me that my life have purpose and meaning, and yet none of my previous constructions of meaning and purpose made sense to me anymore. The ways in which we made meaning, and gave people purpose, had been totally discredited. But I tried to show up in these spaces, and meet people, thinking that the answer lay in the social realm, and with other people.

[blackberryblueberry]

dream diary

I had a dream that I was in an airy empty house, and this house was imperiled by rising water, and I saved myself from this house. And then my ex found me, and he embraced me and seemed so glad I hadn't perished. Being embraced by him felt like being home again, and I thought, here we are together again, and also I thought, why not. Then we walked, and we decided to go on a tour up to the Continental Divide. A ski lift would take us there. We got on, and some people around us had bundled up, but I didn't think it was necessary. We were just going to ride up, take a look, and come back the same day, anyway.

So the gondola started to go, and my ex and I talked. As we talked, I realized the mood was not one of reconciliation. There was cautiousness in how my ex talked to me, as though he wanted to keep an emotional boundary between us. I asked him about his life, thinking sooner or later I'd figure out if he was single. He said that he'd bought property, and he'd used the term "we," so I asked him, did you buy this with your partner? He ignored my question. But I remembered that he'd said "we" and I was disappointed, but manageably so.

The ski lift passed through a wood-paneled building that Harvard Law professors often took breaks in, and as we passed through, my ex saw his old professor and excitedly leapt out of the gondola to greet him. So then I was alone. But then the ski lift passed through a little hill-side village, and I saw someone that I recognized. People wanted to say hello to me and show me the aquariums that they were keeping, that I had helped them set up. I leapt out of the ski lift and walked around this micro-village paved with mossy stones, but I couldn't find any of the aquariums or the people, and I decided I'd better get back on the ski lift. Getting back on was quite intense; there was a podium where you could hop back on, but the lifts didn't slow down, so you really had to know what you were doing. I eventually caught a one-seater, and by the time I was sorted I'd realized I'd lost my laptop. I now had just my wallet and a paperback book.

I saw that my ex had caught another lift chair. He waved at me. I was sad that we weren't on the same chair. There was so much I wanted to ask him and to tell him about. The chairs just kept going and going, rising to the top of this enormous mountain. We were so high up we were passing through clouds. I realized it would be frigid and that I wasn't prepared at all. When I'd boarded the ski lift, I thought I'd be at the Continental Divide in under an hour. But the journey was going to take several more hours, and I was alone and not totally sure why I'd come aboard, or what I'd do and how cold I would be when I got to the top.

[blackberryblueberry]

bye H

Things did not go well with H, who continued to act in that puzzling way of his that I've now come to associate with gaslighting. He said that, were it not for a glitch in my own brain that would sour on "us" whenever I had space apart from him, everything between us was super "fun and nice". The interesting thing is that I helped him narrativize it this way; it was I who first offered that I had the potential to "overthink" things and catastrophize. The thing is, when I want to connect with someone through conflict, I generate explanations of that conflict that leaves space for uncertainty; sometimes it resembles self-deprecation. What I have found is that this serves as a kind of litmus test for the intellect of the person I am dealing with: several male romantic partners of mine have leapt to embrace these narratives, because it suits what they wish to believe about themselves (that they do no wrong in the pursuit of their own pleasure). The same men also dismiss narratives that they don't like. In neither case is the quality of the narrative the issue--narrative is just narrative, it's something to be held, turned over, processed. It's a tool for communicating with someone, and I love when someone both accepts and challenges my narrative (which is different from shooting it down), and we create something together. But a narcissist uses narrative to evade responsibility, accepts it so as not to think for themself. Often the worst pain in my relationships is when someone takes a narrative of mine where I am hard on myself--villainizing myself or debasing or doubting myself--and accepts it as truth and not an effort of my own mind to make sense of something--and even further, weaponizes it to "win" conflict.

When I wished to ghost him after our first tryst because he didn't show respect for my boundaries, I re-engaged with him because I valued giving people the benefit of the doubt, the opportunity to change. My dating experiences have chipped away at that value; I'm not sure I hold it so strongly, anymore.

During our short bout of long-distance romantic texting, H would say something upsetting and, when confronted, dodge responsibility (blame it on his mood rather than own up and apologize), and then act perplexed when I would then distance myself from him. "I don't understand why you won't communicate," he would say. "Everything is great between us when we meet in person, and then you just withdraw and start believing that everything is messed up between us." His memory and his listening were selective; I did communicate with him and express when I was hurt or discontent or frustrated, but after being ignored and withdrawing, then he would produce this fiction that I was not an open communicator.

He started telling his friends that I was his partner. We had never had a conversation establishing what we were to each other. I had tried, while we were in Berlin, to talk about emotional intimacy, but at that time he bristled. "Why can't you just enjoy this for what it is? Why are you even looking for love when you're only here for five weeks?" In that short conversation he not only refused to provide what I was asking, but attempted to influence what I desired. He wouldn't articulate how he felt about me when I asked. "Let my body tell you how I feel about you," he said, pressing my body to his. In other words, learn how to substitute physical affection for emotional intimacy. Make the translation of what he offered into what I needed my problem, not his.

"I want to normalize on friendship, not partnership," I texted him. It shouldn't have been a breakup, but the ensuing conversation felt like it. I made myself available to listen to him, but I came to regret it. For each of my unmet needs, he justified his own behavior in not meeting them, as though I owed it to him not to hold my unmet needs against his desire for partnership from me. I chewed him out. I told him he was obfuscating and ignorant and that we would never agree to the same reality. I told him that I didn't think he knew what he was doing. He'd been in an open relationship for years and knew almost nothing about the concepts of non-monogamy--the kinds of radical principles that underlie the practice of polyamory, the kinds of pitfalls that experienced polyamorous people have learned to navigate but when not learned, can hurt partners. All of these things are readily discoverable online and in books and in polyamory communities, but he hadn't taken the time to learn. As a result, in a practice where transparency and communication and respect are everything, he boxed me in, rebuked my questions, blocked my efforts to meet his partner (who was also willing). Each time he'd respond to my complaints by saying he had to do what was comfortable for him.

I conveyed to him that I saw him as an ignorant person whose irresponsible cluelessness towards non-monogamy was the least damning thing about him. And I told him I wouldn't say more. He wanted to hear it, but I already felt I'd given him more of my energy than he'd deserved.

The truth was that I thought he lacked the intellectual and emotional depth to keep up with his primary partner, who was cultivating another partnership, and that he was desperately casting about for other partners in order to put himself on more even terms with her. He was insecure and unexamined. He echoed the woke talking points of various queer and anarchic subcultures but possessed no originality, no articulate politics--as evinced by his inability to discourse with another human being about these things. He could flag his politics, but not express them. He referred to his "artist days" ad nauseum--a period of a few years of his life when he traveled internationally and received awards with his artistic collaborator. When I watched snippets of his work, I found them uninspiring and gestural at best--operating at the level of image and mood but nothing further.

The hubris of my slutty spring, which led me to start this blog, has been vanquished. I don't actually have the capacity to have lots of sexual trysts that lack emotional safety and connection. I briefly considered "solo poly"--dating multiple people without a primary partner. But the next time I found myself in the company of a partnered man who was uncomfortable with my questions and who insisted that our connection was for him only ("I'm exploring this connection for myself only"), I decided to stop doing this. Out here, there are many fools.

[blackberryblueberry]

H, last meeting

H came to the club and brought ketamine. We did ketamine in the stalls, the first time with a gentle-natured Asian man who offered some of his own ketamine and talked about its purity, and then proceeded to take a quantity large enough to kill me; and the second and third times depleting H's stash. It was the first time I really felt the effects of ketamine; it was a nice feeling. It's often described as a dissociative high but it felt just like a head high to me, with a tinge of euphoria. I wanted to dance with H more, and make out, but he seemed to like being by himself, and I felt a kind of uneasy truce with the whole matter of him being there. I liked clubbing alone in this city; I felt I made more connections with strangers when I was on my own. But I thought, why not try to bring H to the club with me.

We left together after closing down the club and then biked back to my street where we picked up some breakfast. We ate in my flat, and then got into bed. H tried to pick up where we left off last--to say something insulting to me, and I told him right away, "I don't want that right now."

He looked chastised. "Should I say something nice instead?"

"Yes. I want you to be nice to me."

He switched, and immediately the dynamic felt natural and comfortable: he said I was beautiful and that he was lucky to fuck me. I told him, "I've made it too easy for you."

"Too easy? Why do you want to punish me?"

Why did I want to punish him? Because he was an attractive white man who pushed his needs over others' needs, who ought to have things made a little more difficult for them.

"Is it because I deserve punishment?"

"You do. You're spoiled and you take this for granted."

"I'm really thankful that you're letting me fuck you."

"Then show me you're thankful and fuck me harder."

We were both simultaneously exhausted and horny. H said, "We need to make you come." Finally, I thought. Someone who would chase after my orgasm. Once H was focused on something I knew he'd see it through, and I knew that it would be okay if I took a long time, and I knew that I wouldn't have to worry about needing to stop after coming. We'd figured all of that out in our previous times together. I touched myself while he fucked me--I had a pillow propped underneath me as well, and as I felt the orgasm washing over me, I told him I was coming, and suddenly he pulled out for some reason. "Wait, no..." I said. "What is it?" he said. I rolled over to my side with my eyes closed. I was coming, and I didn't want to answer him. "Did you come?" he said. I lay there, quietly riding out my orgasm, trying to salvage it from total ruin. "Speak your mind!" he demanded, getting impatient with me for not answering. Eventually I replied. "Yes, I came." Immediately he lay down and masturbated and I nearly fell asleep next to him as he was doing so. He came into the condom this time. We washed up and climbed back into bed, totally exhausted. My flight was that same evening, and I hadn't packed. "Set an alarm for yourself," he said. "I don't think I'll be able to wake up in time to remind you."

Later I'd wake up and pack and clean, and then wake him up to bring me and my giant suitcase to the airport, and we'd share an affectionate journey on public transit to get there, and he'd wait with me in the check-in line and kiss me and the pleasant memory of that day would compel us to stay in touch across continents and time zones. But for now, there was no real indication of a future beyond this time, and we cuddled briefly and passed out.

[blackberryblueberry]

H, 7th meeting

H met me at the theatre. My friend A was there. She'd been announcing that she was sober, but her hands were shaking as she offered us Haribo gummy bears. I've seen relapses, and the way a person would try to conceal them, betting on your obliviousness. She was alone; her boyfriend, whom I'd encouraged her to leave, was spending the evening with his ex-girlfriend. The doors opened and H and I sat together and watched two pre-revolution films by Kiarostami; his first feature film, Experience, and an interview-format documentary called First Case, Second Case. Before Experience, the programmer screened a video that he'd received from the writer of the film, a sweet and enthusiastic message of gratitude. Before screening First Case, Second Case, the programmer showed us a slide show of the people interviewed in the documentary, and listed where they'd gone to school (always some Western liberal arts institution) and what role they eventually played in Iran after the 1979 revolution. Some of them became influential, brutal, and oppressive state actors after the revolution. But while watching the documentary, you couldn't sniff out the future brutality. Everyone sounded conscientious and idealistic.

After the film, we said goodbye to A, and then got Turkish food, and then took the S-bahn home. We took some selfies on the train. Selfies could never quite capture how attractive I thought H was. We'd caught a train that ran on a ring outer to the one we needed, so we transferred at one point, and then I mused that if we'd rode the train one more stop, we could have gotten off near Treptower Park and walked. H was struck with disappointment. "I would have really enjoyed that walk," he said. He fell silent, lost in regret.

The walk we eventually made crossed over the Spree, and was a walk I didn't mind. It was late when we got home and I was very tired, but I had made up my mind to have sex with him because I'd canceled on him rudely the night before. "I want you to talk to me," I said, while under him. "Disrespect me. Tell me I'm not good for anything except sex." I wanted to work out the frustrations I had the past week, feeling like a failure and a doormat, feeling like I'd lost control of my own time, hadn't done what I'd come here to do and ended up pulled in many directions by many different people.

H obliged. "You're not good for anything except getting fucked," he said. "And that's what I'm going to do--come around whenever I want to and fuck you and you're going to be waiting with your collar on, and your collar is going to have a little H on it to signal that you're mine."

"I'll be sitting at home waiting, doing nothing but waiting," I said, gasping. It was a release to say this aloud, to be naming that thing I hated while someone was aggressively fucking me.

I got on top of him and rode him slowly, almost as a break for myself, but also to relax into something more sensual and stimulating. H was moaning. "Here you were saying you don't ride dick but you do it so well," he said. After he said that I adjusted my position and tried to do what I thought was "riding dick" in my head-- to be more upright and move on the dick faster. But H said, "It felt good what you were doing. Do what feels good for you," and I came back down, slowed down again, brought my face and body closer to his. It was interesting that he'd noticed; I was turned on by him telling me to do what felt good for me because it also felt good for him.

H's command of English wasn't perfect and sometimes I had to wince my way through the things he'd say. "I'll fuck you very well," he said once, and had me composing a tweet in my head. But at one point he said, "You came to Berlin to find yourself, and you've found out you're only good for this" and I immediately started coughing. I threw my hands up, waving it all away. "Oh God," I said. "Sorry. Um. I can't." My constant existential crisis, exposed--too real. I pushed him out of me and lay on my side in the fetal position, cringing but laughing to myself.

Sex with H was only getting better. He was very careful around my need for breaks, and I trusted him. So I was free to make it more obvious that I was hungry for his aggression. He topped me and pretzeled my legs, and later fucked me while I lay on my stomach, with his hands pressing my lower back into the bed and angling up my ass. I used up the leftover water-based lube that H had bought previously and we went until I dried up from simply being too tired. H obeyed as soon as I asked him to stop. I hadn't come. He masturbated as I played with his nipples. He came all over the both of us and also on the sheets. By the time we showered, it was past 3am, and we were both dismayed. I pointed at the cum stains on the sheets and asked, "Are you okay with sleeping with cum on the sheets?"

"Yes, but let's change it because you're not," H said. I realized how indirect I'd been. I could have just said, "I don't want to sleep with your cum on the sheets" or even earlier told H not to take the condom off.

So H helped me change the sheets, and then we went to sleep.

The next morning we lazed in bed for a bit, even though I thought perhaps I should ask him to go so that I could have time to myself. But when H actually announced he was leaving, I grew moody, because I didn't want him to go. And I went, "Is this just sexual?"

H grew frustrated. He sat down on a chair and said, "I thought this was resolved. Why are you bringing this up again?"

"Why are you getting mad?"

"Because we talked about this already, but somehow the issue isn't closed."

"I need to talk about it again."

I didn't really know what I was trying to say. Only that I felt bad. I felt unfulfilled. I wanted someone who would stay in bed with me and we could tell each other that we loved one another. I didn't want a relationship, but my little bird brain wanted love. "I need to know how you feel about me. It feels bad that we don't talk about feelings."

"So you want me to tell you I love you and say this kind of shit?"

I grew tearful. I avoided. "Well, I don't know the difference between like and love..."

"Yes, that's true, it's a spectrum. Why do you even want that? You're only here for a few weeks."

"I know," I said hastily. "That's why I'm with you. Because I made that calculation." But I should have said, "Don't tell me what I should want."

An honest answer could have been, yes, I do want love. I want to fall in love and be in love. I've wanted this for months. I struggled to find the words, and H said, "Speak your mind!" And I produced this answer: "I'm unhappy because things aren't the same between us; you have an emotionally committed relationship and I don't; I have a desire for partnership and an emotional connection that I can't release. And I want to release it."

It was a "correct" answer--the type I make when I'm uncomfortable--but it wasn't a totally dishonest answer. It was true; I both wanted to fall in love and also didn't believe it was right to fall in love with H, who lived on another continent and was already in a serious and committed relationship. But perhaps in the moment I did want H to stay in bed with me and to simulate for me that loving romantic partnership, because it'd feel good. It'd lull me to sleep. I don't like saying goodbye. I don't like to be left alone.

I like being alone. Just not being left alone. Alone is always fine; it's often better. But the moment of leave-taking is always unhappy.

"I think you're good," H said. He hugged me tightly. "Let my body tell you how I feel about you." It sounded like a cop-out. But unlike with A, with whom it was impossible to talk, H not meeting my emotional needs made it easier for me to emotionally detach. His hug made me feel better, and when he left I felt all right.

[blackberryblueberry]

H, 6th meeting

H and I had made plans to meet up late-night after I got back from a short trip, but on the train ride back my mood darkened. I'd suggested to H that he let me meet him and his partner (and their friend) after a music show they were going to, and H looked into it but eventually came back and said he wasn't comfortable with it. I felt that H was isolating me. This collided with an existing frustration I had with my American friends imposing on my time and hospitality, and I started to feel like everyone's door mat. When H called me around dinner-time, I brusquely canceled on him. I didn't want to see him again. Then I remembered that he had my water bottle and swim suit in his apartment, and I wanted to get that out of the way. He'd turned his phone off after I hung up on him, so I biked over to his place and rang his doorbell.

When I got to his room, he gave me the swimsuit and water bottle in a paper bag that also contained four bars of chocolate hand-tied in a blue cotton string. Suddenly I realized I was an asshole. H had picked this water bottle up for me after I'd left it behind at the sauna, and he'd taken my swim suit home with him, and he'd cleaned both of these things. He'd been very kind to do so. I realized I had fucked up. He gave me my items and then sat on a chair, keeping a bit of distance from me, and asked how I was. Being around him made me feel, again, that he had a calming energy. I told him a bit about my mood, but soon I was asking if he could sit next to me. I wanted to touch him. He smiled uncomfortably and didn't come to me; I asked if he was angry with me.

"It was super uncool for you to cancel our plans so last minute. I had been looking forward to it."

I was experiencing a bit of whiplash too. I'd been fine with our plans, and then within the span of only a few hours my mood was so dark that I'd wanted to cut him out of my life again. And now, in the presence of his composure and his quietness, I wanted to touch him.

We went through our texts together, trying to figure out how I responded to each one. The string of texts he sent about the music show he was going to, followed by the ones where I offered to meet up with him and his girlfriend and he'd eventually declined, was where some of the trouble was. I wanted to meet his girlfriend, even though I didn't think there was a high chance of it happening. He'd been the one to first suggest it--we were sitting on the grass at Viktoriapark--and I'd been enthusiastic. He said he'd ask her, and then never brought it up again. I asked him about it later, and he said she'd been willing to meet, but he hadn't wanted us to. Partially it was selfish, as he'd admitted--he said he got more out of seeing me himself. The feeling started creeping up on me that he was keeping two people who wanted to meet from meeting. Now he asked, "Why do you want to meet her so much?" I said I liked seeing people in their relationships, and he said, "There's no set tourism here," which offended me instantly. Sensing this, he backed off and wouldn't explain what he meant when I pressed him on it. Eventually I backed off on wanting to see his partner, when he told me that she hadn't wanted to meet me, she had only agreed to meet me. I felt discouraged; I didn't want to meet someone who would begrudge the encounter. But in retrospect, I still wanted to.

Eventually H gave in and cuddled me. He'd made up his mind to spend his evening alone, but I was reluctant to leave. "Would you like a massage?" he asked. He'd bought a massage oil from the sex shop we went to together, and applied that on my back (and accidentally poured too much), and gave me a long and deft massage. While he was rubbing my back, I told him I was sorry for canceling our plans.

"What?"

"I'm sorry for canceling our plans."

"It's okay."

Eventually he said softly, "The massage is coming to an end," and it was my cue to leave (as it'd been for a while). On my way out I reflected on how I'd been vindictive and inconsiderate, and then had barged into his apartment without warning, and he'd given me my items that he'd cleaned, and also a gift, then then he'd listened to me vent, and had given me a massage without asking for one in return. He wasn't the entitled asshole in this relationship, even if he was a white man. At this point I decided to trust him more.

[blackberryblueberry]

H, 5th meeting

In the time since leaving H's city, I've read more about polyamory and I've come to see that I should have owned the things I needed to hear and not felt ashamed to ask for it. There's no shame in asking your partners to articulate what they like about you, and if they push back or struggle, it's not because you've wanted too much; rather, they need to learn this skill. And likewise, it was absolutely normal for me to feel boxed in and disempowered; I was the third, and H was in a committed relationship and not letting me into the rest of his life. There's nothing wrong with not liking that, with feeling vulnerable and distrustful and uncomfortable. If you feel that way, surface it, ask for what you need, ask your partner to help you address your need. If they minimize how you feel, they're dehumanizing you.

Anyway, on to the 5th meeting (these are just meetings that involve sexual contact, not an exhaustive list of all the times we'd meet):

H invited me over for lunch. When I arrive he's wearing a pink plaid button-down shirt and a grayish linen apron covered in crimson birds. It's a vision to behold; an attractive man in an apron, chopping vegetables in his sunny, colorful kitchen. He fries tofu and makes bok choy again and he makes one cup of rice. As nice as the lunch is, it's not nearly enough food. He opens a few packages during lunch, one of them containing charcoal sticks imported from Asia, and he talks about his methods for softening and purifying water. At some point he pauses and says, "Should I stop talking about this?" I urge him to continue. If I was zoning out, it was only because I was thinking about what his deep knowledge of water filtration was saying about him. A special interest?

Last time he'd come over to mine, I'd asked for a quickie, but there wasn't time. This time we got into his bed after eating and he suggested a quick one again, and we did. I was wet before we even got into bed. "I want you to come," I told him as we were fucking--and he came inside me (with protection), which was a first for us. I ran off to an art museum afterwards to meet my American friends. Fed and fucked, and allowed to fly off--without even doing the dishes.

[blackberryblueberry]

H, 4th meeting

H and I had trouble getting ahold of each other for a while. I had a week during my trip when I felt very worn out and overwhelmed and scattered and irritable, and it might have been PMS, but it coincided with H canceling plans with me for going to a lake, and later on, after we'd rescheduled, making adjustments to the plan. Particularly grating to me was the way he'd assert that the adjustments had already been made ("we will go to this lake, which is closer, because I need to get back at a certain time, to go to an event with my girlfriend"), rather than asking me if I would be okay with it. I didn't realize that this was the issue until much later, and I cancelled plans with him in my unhappiness.

He texted me one afternoon to ask if we'd see each other again. I responded, "I can't answer that. I can say yes or no to certain proposal, but I can't just promise that we'll see each other again." At this he asked me what was the matter. He said he'd made plenty of plans with me and I hadn't accepted or followed through on those plans, which was true. I was still of two minds about seeing him. I felt suspicious of him - that he was using me as an experiment, and that I was making a sacrifice of my time and energy by spending time embroiled in his experiment.

After a few back and forths over text he biked over to talk to me. As soon as he came in the door I felt drawn to him again--partly it was how undeniably physically attractive he was, but also his composure. The repulsion I always felt towards him over text disappeared. We sat in the living room to talk. I tried to articulate my various discontents.

"I feel like I am a project of yours. Like when you told me that you were interested in making out on the park bench as a project to increase cruising in public parks."

He thought over the term and said he didn't think he'd use it anymore because of this connotation.

"And I feel that there's no future to what we're doing--it seems rooted in sexual connection, and I need to know there's a future. I care about having friendship with the people I'm dating - that it's not just going to end with me leaving."

He replied that yes, he really liked the sex we were having--some of the things we did, particularly when it came to power dynamics--was totally new for him. "If you lived here, I would want to continue." He told me that usually he's the one who's not interested in going further with people, and that I was the first person he'd wanted to continue seeing. He'd mentioned this before. I pressed him on this, "Why do you think this is?" He said, "It's the vibe." I wanted him to articulate it. He thought about it and eventually said he thought my interests in writing was cool.

I waved my hand. "That's all superficial." This made him defensive, which I hadn't meant to do; but of course, I was the one who was needling him to give me something I wanted to hear. So I said, "The thing is, I get this a lot. A lot of people say they vibe with me. And I think it's because of the way I pay attention, and reflect people's energy back to them, and give people the thing I think they need and will be excited by, and I am always thinking about what people want and how I can give it to them."

"I'm this way too," he said.

"Yes, that's true," I said, slowly realizing. "And actually I saw that in you when we met." I continued, "I'm trying to say that doing this takes energy, and it takes something away from me that I worry I won't get back from the people I'm with. I have trouble with boundaries, not just with asserting what I want but even figuring it out in the first place." My voice was trembling and my eyes were welling up; this was an uncomfortable effort for me, and sitting in front of me was H, who did not look tender but instead looked stony, displeased, impatient, and totally unmoved by my display of emotion. I pressed on, "What I need in my partners is someone who understands that I have these troubles with boundaries and who is able to help me feel them out and not push me." Finally I had articulated a need.

H's whole demeanor changed. "I think it's really cool what you just said there."

It was my turn to stiffen. I told him I thought he was being patronizing. That I have these thoughts all the time, and I don't like being congratulated as if I've given birth. "This isn't a therapy session," I said.

He responded, "But I think life is therapy."

I nodded because he had a point.

"Do you want to be cuddled?"

I nodded. He enveloped me and it felt great, and we kissed and eventually started groping each other. He had somewhere to be. "A quick one?" I asked him. I could see him thinking about it. But truly there was no time. He put his fingers inside me and I didn't come but it was fun to kiss deeply and get fingered and then have him run off.