Scrappy Little Nobody(30)
(Check.)
he’s just not that interesting
The summer I turned twenty-one I dated a musician named Connor. Well, I thought he was a musician and that we were dating. He thought he was a screenwriter who occasionally played music and that we were “hooking up and not labeling things because labels cause drama.” He was twenty-eight and something of an introvert. I took this to mean that he was deep and artistic and probably judged me for talking as much as I do. Once we broke up I realized it just meant that he was kind of boring. And probably judged me for talking as much as I do.
This was my first lesson in He’s Just Not That Into You. Sure, that episode of Sex and the City had aired and the book had been written, but guess what, TV writers can’t learn your life lessons for you. I plowed ahead, actually having conversations with friends that sounded like this:
“Do you think I’m coming across overeager? Do I need to play it more cool with him?”
“Maybe? Why don’t you just not call him for a while and wait for him to get in touch with you?”
“Well, if I didn’t call him at all we’d never talk again.”
(Oh. Sweet Anna.)
When we first started hooking up, I was twenty. He would play in clubs and bars at night, which meant that at first, it was simply unavoidable that he’d spend most of the night without me and invite me over once he got home. I reasoned that it wasn’t a booty call if the law was keeping us apart. A fake ID was out of the question, since I looked like a guilty fifth grader on my best day. So at a certain point my only goal became to not get dumped before I turned twenty-one; then I’d be able to really get my hooks in. Oh god, it hurts to write.
Looking back, it’s hard for me to understand what I was doing. Why on earth would I pursue someone who clearly had no interest in me? It’s not like we had fun together; the man didn’t like me so much as tolerate me. I suppose the easy answer is that I hadn’t had a decent relationship yet, so I thought bagging a “cool” and attractive male was the whole objective. We would have made a terrible couple. But his indifference blinded me to all the red flags. He drove a BMW but slept on a futon. He watched the History Channel like it was a reliable source of information. Part of me knew I was only determined to bring him around because he was resisting me, but the idea of acknowledging the rejection hurt more than pretending it might be going somewhere.
I’d been so nervous when we met (and only got increasingly nervous as I tried to win his affection) that as a result, I have no idea what I was even like around him. If I could see tape of us interacting, I doubt I’d recognize myself. Who was I supposed to be making him fall in love with? My strategy was to just be agreeable. I had this fantasy of a braver, parallel-universe version of myself, but I was the most sterile, inoffensive version instead. When he said things to me like “You use humor as a defense mechanism,” I should have said, “Yeah, and you use pithy proclamations that let you maintain your sense of superiority as a f*ckin’ defense mechanism.” Instead I clenched my teeth and made a plan to be more serious from then on.
We saw each other sporadically. Sometimes I’d send a breezy text, start a casual conversation, and spend the day staring at my phone until he got the hint and invited me over. Our group of mutual friends would get together a couple times a week and I’d invariably end up going home with him after those nights, so I did not miss one group hang-out that summer. At the time this group seemed impossibly cool to me as well. I’m sure their allure was wrapped up in my desire to stay connected to him. Also, I don’t know if being motivated by amazing sex would have made my desperation more pathetic or less, but I cannot say that was part of it.
Nothing about the sex was bad, but after a month or two, I still hadn’t, you know . . . arrived. (Mom, I’m sorry, but I told you not to read this chapter! If you’re seeing this, it’s your own fault!) Obviously, in my pitiful state, I wasn’t disturbed by this orgasm drought for myself, but for HIM. I assumed that if I wasn’t enjoying myself enough he’d end up feeling discouraged and less interested in doing it at all. If he was rocking my world, he’d want to do it more, right? For all I know, he wouldn’t have noticed if I’d turned to stone mid-thrust, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. So. No masturbation. Cut out all solo activity. I just won’t climax for so long that eventually he’ll have to make me.
Six weeks went by. SIX WEEKS. And I was getting nothing supplementally speaking. I was sticking to my guns. I was the master of my domain. Finally, I went to his apartment one night and I knew it was going to happen. I was on a hair trigger. (SIX WEEKS.) Oddly enough—or not odd at all since I hadn’t come in six weeks—I got there during actual sex, which had never happened before. Now, creepy sex checklist aside, I was pretty damn inexperienced at this point, so this wasn’t some huge accomplishment, it was more like a statistical inevitability. As we lay on his futon, I thought I’d tell him.
“So hey, first time I’ve had an orgasm during that whole situation.” I raised my hand for a high five. “Up top!” He chuckled sardonically and shook his head.
“You know, you could say, like, ‘Wow, I’ve never had an orgasm from doing that before, you’re the first.’ It should be a nice thing to hear.”
Was this dude using his therapist voice to tell me how to better stroke his ego after sex? I should have said, “I haven’t come in six weeks. A mammogram could have brought me to screaming orgasm, so you really shouldn’t be smug.” But instead I clenched my teeth and scolded myself for ruining this moment I’d worked so hard for.