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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
I was drunk and horny so I decided a one-night hookup wouldn't violate my ambiguous vows. Then things got messy.
Jul 16, 2003 | There are these rules, the sexual waiting period mandates. Of course, I determine the rules, which are morally relative and shift according to my own mental whims and physical needs. It's sort of like the waiting period to purchase a gun -- my rules are just as varied and arbitrary and can result in major injury to one or more parties.
For my first time, with the artist, the grace period was a month. A month is long enough to know that someone isn't an ax murderer and generally long enough to know that he's not teeming with syphilis. I also needed to be certain that I wasn't a slut. While I was in high school, the waiting period was different and required a commitment of at least a year or the purchase of some kind of expensive jewelry; in college I felt a month was perfectly sufficient to maintain my good-girl status.
So, after the first time, a month was the time frame fixed in my head. With the second boy, an ill-advised summer rebound, I waited a month. We were co-counselors at a summer camp for Westchester babies, and after work I would keep him at bay in his stifling Bronx apartment with sweaty protestations. The night I finally gave in, he ran shirtless to the nearest bodega and returned, panting, condoms in hand, with a huge grin on his face.
Although I waited a month the second time, it didn't feel quite right. I didn't really like this guy and wasn't overwhelmingly attracted to him. I mostly just slept with him so I wouldn't have to listen to him beg me anymore.
The third time was with the sweet stoner and I only waited three weeks. Three weeks is nearly a month, I rationalized, and anyway, we spent most of our waking hours together for those three weeks, so it clearly counted as at least a month, if not longer. He had broad shoulders and big green eyes and I knew it was serious and I wanted it so badly.
And now to the fourth and most recent. With this one, I waited approximately three hours after meeting him before luring him back to my dorm room and having my way with him on my creaky wooden bed, the frame crashing monotonously against the cinder-block wall like in a bad '80s movie.
We met at a Rhode Island School of Design grad student party. I saw his perfectly tousled head sticking up over the crowd, the requisite black-rimmed glasses perched on his upturned nose. He and his friend were about a foot taller than every other guy at the party and clutching Colt 45s and lollipops. Bolstered by the half-bottle of wine I'd ingested at my girlfriends' weekly ritual drunken dinner, I walked directly up to him and said, "I like your 40."
Apparently that was sufficient as a pickup line, delivered in confident and sultry wine-loosened speech. I quickly found out that hipster boy was visiting his best friend in Providence for the weekend and that he was a graphic designer and lived in Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, N.Y., like all graphic designers. They grow on trees off Bedford Street, fully formed and wearing corduroy.
He wasn't what I deemed as my physical type: I usually go for light hair and light eyes and bulky bodies. I dream of having Aryan babies someday, little tow-headed blonds running around me in Lily Pulitzer dresses. The hipster was tall and lanky with dark curly hair and small dark eyes -- a legacy from his Italian father -- but he was definitely my style of guy. I often go for the artsy types. They're creative and interesting and I entertain fantasies of having songs written for me and paintings inspired by me.
The hipster was an impulse buy: He was pretty and shiny and stuck out from all the other boys in the checkout aisle. As I was leaving the party I thought I would pick him up.
As he and his friend were parting ways, the hipster said, "I've always wanted to see the Brown dorms."
