A couple weeks prior to my birthday (which was yesterday), I wrote a list of things I wanted to do for it: get a haircut; hike with my pup; get a lymphatic drainage massage for inflammation; delete Hinge; start muay thai again; start writing again; have great sex; buy an air fryer.
I deleted Hinge and got my haircut last week. But, yesterday, the rest of my grand reset plans went awry when I woke up depressed as hell. I took my pup out to potty, fed him, then went straight back to sleep.
I had therapy today and cried. We spoke about my birthday, solitude versus loneliness, my fucked up life and resulting fucked up perspectives, financial illiteracy, my best friend’s upcoming death anniversary, and.. serial fucking.
I really love sex (after a lifetime of hating it), but I don’t think sex can erase the things I feel. It’s become an escape, just another drug; I’m constantly thinking about it, constantly searching for it, and when I have it I still want more. I think all I really want is to be held. To be cuddled and coddled and told that everything is going to be ok.
Today in the grocery store, an older woman kept staring at me in the produce section by the mangoes. I thought she was going to tell me off for something. Finally she was like, “You’re cute. You look cute.” gesturing at my up-do-bangs-mask combo. My fear quickly melted into a relieved gratitude. I told her I’d just gotten bangs and thanked her, a smile waxing to full beneath my mask. In the parking lot my friend asked if that happened to me often. It didn’t. Not from old ladies anyway.
I just got home from being held tight. No sex. My request. He told me endearingly that I’m fucked up, but that I’m gonna be fine. That I am much better off than he was at my age, and that my life is just beginning.
I told myself in the car yesterday that I haven’t yet done what I’m supposed to do on this earth, so I can’t leave yet. But God knows it hurts to stay.
Spent my Friday night reading my friend’s old blogs, inadvertently training myself to refrain from being an offended-by-everything millennial when I read, sometimes flinchingly, of their twisted sexual fantasies (and realities) that tickle the brim of aberrant ephebophilic misogynistic sex addiction.
But. I know a lot of people think and act in this way. These are valid human thoughts and actions — not saying they’re right or wrong, but they are real. I 1000% was interested in flirting with much older men in my teens. Not trying to normalize this, just saying it’s a real thing that really happens. So me acting shocked at this person’s real accounts of similar situations would be ironic. Shit.. my own self-hatred, self-sexual-objectification, and suicidal tendencies could qualify me as misogynistic too.
We’ve all had fucked up upbringings (admittedly or not), and we all have some fucked up desires, fantasies, and experiences that we wouldn’t share with anyone. And all of us addicts (sex or otherwise) have addictions and compulsions that exacerbate rather than ease the shit that caused the hurt in the first place. The difference is — this person writes and talks about them openly (albeit under a pseudonym); just a human being completely honest about being human.
No doubt my friend’s more ribald entries (of which there are many) would cause 99% of people to be offended and outraged and think this person’s an insufferable miscreant because people aren’t nearly as compassionate or open-minded as they like to believe. But when I feel between their lines and peer beyond their ostensibly mangled mind, I know there lies a delicate person that has merely responded to life in the best ways they knew how. And maybe they weren’t the best ways, but they knew no better.
One particular post I came across proved my between-the-line assumptions correct — it exhibited the other extreme of their encounters: something less lascivious, more romantic. Something gentle, something fragile. A longing, a losing, all too familiar.
I know my friend’s writing may come off crude, but to me it’s just honest. I know it is, because I can relate to it, so it must be real. We’re similar. We fuck and we fucked and we fuck up when we fall in love. We love sex but we want love but we fall in love with the wrong people. It’s hard to love healthily when you’re used to fucking toxically.
I crave something deep, something lasting, something stimulating but not addicting. Something slow, something vulnerable, something less chaotic than I’m used to, less destructive than I’m used to. What I’m used to is causing my body to work overtime and my brain to work undertime, causing my callous to thicken and my heart to deteriorate. I have to go to therapy to remind myself of the parts of me I’ve numbed and neglected.
The only thing consistent about my dating is my compulsion to date. Dates have ranged from:
meeting on the upper deck of a Ralphs parking lot and talking in my car for five hours (this was honestly one of my favorite dates ever. I love doing the lowest-key thing possible and just showing up in my home clothes, no effort, cos there are no distractions — no impressive looks, no meals to eat, no drunkenness, no loud music — just you two as your complete selves, and you can really truly figure out if you vibe or not)
meeting at Silver Lake meadow at 1130pm in the midst of winter to smoke cigarettes and talk about addiction, capitalism, and chipped teeth
walking in to a dim bar to spot this freak genius reading a novel quietly by candlelight, glass of red on the side, then wildly fondling each other, blacked out, in his pick up truck to wrap up the night
meeting at a dive bar and getting social on whiskey in the tiny outdoor area, chain-smoking for hours, then retiring to his mid-century wooden home atop a hill to fall asleep cuddling then wake up to fresh fruit and a cig with a view
meeting at his for a game of Yahtzee, some stiff hot toddies, and a stiff cock
meeting at Birds across from the Scientology compound, sitting at the bar and drinking slowly but steadily to blackout, discussing suicide and smile lines, then making out aggressively to the point where I wondered if my lip was going to be swollen the next day
riding on the back of his dirtbike to a secret makeout spot in the Hollywood Hills
going to a movie, leaving early to enjoy a drunken night at the strip club where he paid for endless lap dances for me from the only girl in the club with A cups (my choosing), followed by a cool down and a dry hump at the beach
a motorcycle lesson around Atwater then back to his for tea where I realized he had zero awareness of social cues
going to his dream of a home in Laughlin Park with chartreuse cashmere carpeting, a hyperactive orange kitten, an ofuro tub in the bedroom atrium, and him rehearsing Schubert or Schumann on a Steinway only a collector would own
going birdwatching and grocery shopping with an author then back to his to watch VR porn with goggles for the first time
going on a hike with a guy whose profile said he was 5’9” but he was 5’1” (I’m not anti-short king, just anti-being lied to), who spoke neurotically, endlessly, out of insecurity, I didn’t get a single word in
getting picked up in an orange 1970s Porsche and going to lunch at a tiny french restaurant then walking around the city like we were in Before Sunset, pretending not to feel nervous as hell
meeting him at his hotel suite, sunbathing and cuddling by the pool, strangers approaching, commending, fucking with a 90s comedy playing in the background, dropping him at his show wondering why the big crowds - it was for him
being surprised with coffee at work cos he knew I had a rough night mourning my dead friend’s birthday, both clad in construction ‘fits, we touched dirty boots under the table at Popeye’s for our first date
going to the most textbook-autistic non-alcoholic drinks date ever, driving up a literal snake of a road off Mulholland to the top of a mountain to meet his dogs, being led out to the backyard where I just couldn’t believe the view, I could barely speak
going on a rainy day date in a Model S Plaid (Teslas are insufferable but this was pretty impressive) to watch Triangle of Sadness and makeout like teenagers in the back row
meeting at Taix right after my yearly haircut, sitting next to the fireplace in hopes of romance, but it was too hot, we moved tables and sat side-by-side, some laughs, some talk of health, of alcohol, my admission of nervousness due to his clearly very high IQ and vast vocabulary, he had a work event but was from NY so didn’t drive, I dropped him off at that famous stainless steel Gehry
being taken to brunch at a classy establishment and not finishing our food cos the conversation alone was satisfying enough and being surprised with a Kindle cos I had mentioned in passing I wanted to get one for school
getting picked up in a truck and driving to Mulholland to park up and look at the city with the Dodgers World Series playing in the background, both needing to pee so driving down to use the Erewhon bathroom, both being hungry so stopping at a random restaurant where our server happened to be a girl from my online class who recommended an incredible vodka rigatoni with a touch of sweetness, holding hands on the way back to the car, getting ice cream at Wanderlust then talking in the car for hours and wanting to talk more but we could no longer keep our eyes open
There are so many more — all memorable, some special, and others undeserving of another date.
These dates seem to vary vastly, but really they’re just weird permutations of one another. On the surface they’re different, but there is a common thread that underlies all of them — the fact that I’m still dating as an escape from myself rather than as an opportunity to discover more of myself. Dating is fun, sure, but it’s also exhausting. Is it modern dating in general? Or is it dating in LA specifically? Or is it me, and all the reflections of me in the people I choose? Either way, I find myself having to delete dating apps and retreat from the outside world pretty regularly.
The apps are too easy. And so am I.
Full grown adults are binge-watching the horniest high school tv shows, and then we get mad at them for being horny over teens. Life’s a fucking set up. It’s no different than the hypocrisy of Big Industries that create both the cause and the cure. We set ourselves up. The concepts of moral and immoral, right and wrong, are too deeply mingled. Society has been rendered confused and fucked up, with no one to blame but ourselves. Humans are twisted, existing is insane, and we’re doing our best.