Action: A Book About Sex (8 page)

The above proviso works beautifully for one-night stands, which can easily turn into longer courtships/extended engagements if you’re both so inclined. However, though I do not buy the idea that someone forsakes the prospect that you are a person of value that incites prolonged interest if you deign to submit thine precious flesh upon first meeting them, I like to attenuate the mystery if I want to see somebody again. I don’t recommend dishonesty, but it’s worth noting that the majority of the romantic relationships I’ve ever had, successful or otherwise, have come from waiting for at least one more rendezvous before getting more physical than making out. Instead of inviting a new person straight over, I’ll agree to share a cab, but depart alone at my destination instead of continuing a dual ride home or asking them up. I’ll flirt back a bit less aggressively or otherwise insert some distance when a person thinks for sure that they’ve got me
in the bag (and when I’m like, “BUT THEY DO—AM I KIDDING MYSELF? THEY ARE A BASTION OF PERFECTION,” I remember that anyone can literally bone any flirtation-mate they want—“leagues” don’t exist as long as you behave like they don’t).

If I do like them a lot straight out of the gate, I might say, “Sure, we can go out. I think I’m free in eight days?” I have meant this every single last solitary time I’ve said it. That’s because I have a life to lead—meeting a cute person doesn’t have to crown them the monarch of your head. You still have friends to see later that night/some sleep to catch (the taxi goodbye)/a business trip to California to make (Hanukkah-length SEE YA LATER)/or other people to break it off with in order to respect their feelings (the guy who texted me, “Wow your super anti huh,” which no one says unless they are profoundly about it, while I took my time kindly ending things with another person—which I was doing anyway, I solemnly swear). If you would like to stretch this to longer than a night without having to employ these pretenses and have shared a significant deal of interesting and intriguing time together already, just fail to say goodbye when you leave. Nothing incubates a fledgling crush like ghosting out on it.

If they
don’t
sleuth you down by the next evening, follow or friend them on social media, or otherwise bat-signal, “Hiiiiiiii thar.” If another day passes, write a brief note: “You have a funny way of saying goodbye.” This is the only subterfuge I am willing to recommend, and only because it works so well. On the off chance they don’t write back, leave it—rejection is the condom of the universe &c. If they do, WE’VE GOT A LIVE ONE HERE. What you do now is all on you, McBeautiful.

Introducing Everyone

Online dating can be a laborious hell-venture. It can also get you VERY laid if you simply prod at your cell phone a few times. The latter might sound like an appealing premise, but it’s also one of the reasons that I don’t recommend it unless you live somewhere remote, are queer (homos tend to be more capable at acting like actual humans on the cold, vast internet—we often need to, because of scarcity and safety, even in big cities)—or are a thick-skinned pillar of resilience who doesn’t mind being told to “show me ur ass cheexz.”

That’s right, me friend: I’m one of those knuckle-dragging curmudgeons who believe that, whenever possible, in-person tomcatting is where it’s at. As with every way of relegating tasks that used to be done in person to the solitary convenience of your computron, the online method is desocializing—unless it’s your
only possible means
of socializing. In order to curtail my online spending habits, for example, I stuck a note to my computer that reads “REMEMBER THAT EVERY TIME YOU BUY SOMETHING OFF OF THE INTERNET, YOU ARE ROBBING YOURSELF OF A STRANGER.” Unless I cannot find the sought-after item in person, this tiny imperative reminds me that whatever low cost Amazon is luring me in with is actually unaffordable, because it keeps the world and me apart.

Many of my friends have culled a love that is truly bulletproof from among the gnashing gyre of the dating internet, but if you’re just looking to get nailed and nail in kind, then I think you should hit the streets. “LOOK HERE, YOU LUDDITE,” you could protest, “I am painfully socially inept! I could never screw up the
nerve to drop myself in front of a babe in the flesh!” I see and feel and know and, so often of the time,
are
you, my dude. That’s why I can tell you that it’s crucial—essential—that you don’t widen that shyness via the curt binary of ACCEPTANCE/REJECTION that online dating cultivates. Do you think it’s going to do wonders for your taciturn, self-winnowing introversion to bob around in a system that turns people into baseball cards? To send out a well-curated sample of yourself, and then plotz when even that miniature clipping of you withers under the rejections of people whose misspellings are so difficult to decipher that you can barely tell which vulgarity they’re attempting to lob at you? (This inevitably happens to everyone and is not a commentary on you; it’s a part of all boning endeavors, but especially this one.)

If you are inhibited by tendencies toward convenience, or meekness, catering to that won’t help you change it. Shut down your computer and thrust yourself into the outside world, which has not only most of the same people you’d have encountered online striding around in it, but also plenty of others. While you can absolutely have hot sex ordered on-screen with the help of your internet provider, part of what makes being your own sexual pioneer so revelatory is the discovery that there are all varieties of smokin’-hot and willing voyagers looking to cross your physical path.

The bright side of online dating is that it makes those who are friendly and cool as they hit on people in the flesh seem brave and self-possessed for well-executed macking. This is not to say that online dating is
ab
normal. It’s rightfully accepted as the territory of sane, well-adjusted, and pleasant people, where once it held the stigma of the exclusive homeland of the interpersonally maladapted, which was as unfair (and mean, and reductive) back in the internet’s infancy as it is now. I hope it doesn’t feel like I’m contributing to that stigma! I do feel that the internet can be a wonderful conduit for getting in touch with like-minded horny people (who are not me). But if you have the means to meet those selfsame kinds of crush-inducers in person, I find it to be so much
sexier when you’re able to get a feel for what their voices sound like, how they move across a room (especially from the back, heyyy), the purposeful gestures they conduct with their hands, the graceful shapes their mouths form as they talk… because I, as you can probably tell after that in-depth little daydream, am the perviest of them all!!!

So you’re putting your shoes on and ready to head out the door to…
Wait, where do sexually viable people even congregate?
Your first guess is correct: If you’re not feeling creative when it comes to striking out into the world, I have met many paramours in bars. So many bars, a cavalcade of bars, a city-populating-if-you-amassed-their-clientele amount of bars bars
bars
bars bars. If you’re sober and avoiding those places, disinterested in hanging out lounge lizard–style, or just bored of the bar barrage: I am happy to report that THE WHOLE REST OF THE WORLD EXISTS.

Context matters here. You can meet somebody anyplace, hence my advocating that you create your own palatial life to hang out inside. Just in case you need initial ideas on this tip, though, here’s a selection of unlikely-seeming places where I have scammed on, or been scammed on, to good success:

•
Bookstores.
If you see a babe milling around, ask them for recommendations. Done and done. I have met two paramours between bookshelves—and was also introduced to Dylan Thomas’s short fiction by one of my book-marks, the greatest outcome of them all. I thought that dude only wrote poetry! And I got laid!

•
The ever-lovin’ sidewalk.
I had the best sex of my life, easily, resplendently, world-and game-changingly, with a person whom I met loitering curbside.

I was at an after-party for an out-of-town work conference, and everyone was standing outside on the sidewalk because watching a group of writers dancing can begin to seem cruel after the first few minutes (keep in mind that mine is a breed of people who spend most of their time alone indoors). This should also persuade you that if I, a native to this taciturn, housebound clan,
can get laid by a coincidental chance meeting, it should be cake for everybody else.

On this particular evening, two editors walked up to my friends and me. One of these men I had not previously met. I interjected my hand and misunderstood the introduction proffered as he shook it: “Brafe? It’s ‘Brafe’?”
I actually asked this
, even though in no conceivable dialect or tongue is that an intelligible name for a human male, furthering the point that my getting laid can serve as a font of hope for the rest of the general population, and that maybe if, as a writer by career, I also lack the basic facilities of speech, maybe the dancing thing is more of a “me” problem than a professional one.

The human male in question corrected me graciously: He was really called
Jake
, but we agreed that he’d keep my updated appellation, and that he, in turn, would call me “Emro,” close in pronunciation to “Elmo.” I noticed he was fiddling with his hair, which fell to his shoulders, and also that he had an abdomen reminiscent of an Italian sculpture. He watched me take stock of both and asked me for a ponytail holder, which he sent me a picture of after sleuthing out my contact information the next day. (I never give out my contact when I know someone can find it—it’s part of the fun, and they almost always make good on it.) As far as Brafe and I were concerned:
It was absolutely on.

Or, it would be. We met up later at a different party, and he rented a luxury sports car so we could drive through some nearby snowcapped mountains (?!??!?!!!), but I had an unforeseen conflict come up preventing the joyride. (I have cursed not having just canceled those less-fun plans for the rest of eternity.)

All was not lost. A week or so later, when we had both returned to our home city, I agreed to meet him at his apartment. It was a mansion of a unit. The building had the name TRUMP emblazoned on its edifice, and it was dim and choked with paintings and pianos inside. Brafe emerged into the doorjamb, and he looked even better than I remembered—and my mental configuration of
his features and body was already in its fullest overactive thrall. We didn’t even have time to say hello.

(Brafe, if you’re reading this: Thanks for the follow-up texts, dude, but I didn’t want to see you again because it was so gargantuanly perfect that one time that I didn’t want to risk altering the memory, which… I’m now infuriated by how ferociously boneheaded that decision was. I still can’t believe you post-coitally played me Backstreet Boys on the piano while singing along in perfect pitch. The sex was also that perfect, times about 72.) (Brafe, were you even real?) (Call me, Brafe.)

•
The fried chicken spot near my house.
At Palace Fried, the guys behind the counter call me “Miss Spicy” and can recite my phone number from memory, but not because I use this place as a pick-up spot. It’s because I order a spicy chicken sandwich three to four times a week when my vegetarianism is lapsing particularly exceptionally… wait, wait. No. It’s
definitely
because of this. Goddamnit.

Any solid nickname is borne of a reputation. I first earned this one on some summer night. I had just come from a tepid party next door and was in no great rush to return—I had dipped for chicken upon hearing a cluster of bona fide adults literally talking about their SAT scores,
shudder
. A guy was in front of me in line, and as we waited for our respective three-piece and characteristic spicy chicken, I noticed that he was wearing a Hüsker Dü shirt. Since I am, apparently, still of the seventh-grade mindset that if a person likes what you’re into musically, they are definitely meant to come home and neck with you, I complimented it. We got to talking. Then we got to eating our drumsticks together, and I decided to see what would happen if I told him that my apartment was around the corner if he might like to drop by real quick. Smash cut to us smashing, then cheerily parting forever. (Dear Hüsker Dü: I love you even more now, which I did not think previously possible. Ever yours, Miss Spicy.)

•
Concerts.
If I am willing to come out and advocate for capitalizing on common musical tastes as shared at a scrappy purveyor of breaded poultry, please trust I find it even easier to do so at venues that more straightforwardly celebrate the musical acts I love. Just go up to some hot person and talk about the lineup, or related acts, or other shows you’ve seen at the outlet in which you’re both standing. I have gotten laid via this brand of taxonomizing/cultural fetishism more times than I can now recall.

•
Tasteful midafternoon parties at an accomplished colleague’s or associate’s house.
For me, these situations are rare enough that I feel it’s my duty to capitalize on them each and every time they go down. Here’s what to do: Compliment the wristwatch/necklace of the person with the crispest-looking pocket square or pastel lipstick if you’re into an older, august sexual partner. If you choose to become the conduit for a member of the bourgeoisie’s “normal-person” fetish, that usually guarantees very very very scandalous sex or your white wine with one ice cube back. If getting off on condescension and class rage is not your thing, which, HIGHLY understandable: You are surrounded by a supremely hot waitstaff composed of peers from class and age brackets that, in all likelihood, are more closely concentric to your own. These heroes are bored, stoned, and used to being alternately verbally pissed on/hit on by the aforementioned upper-crusters. Given all three conditions, you will be an even more welcome refreshment than the pitchers of mint julep set jauntily on each wicker table. Depending on how flossy your venue is, there may even be additional needless help-for-hire around: I fooled around with a twenty-four-year-old event photographer with literally nothing else to do on a lawn swing at a super-tony house last summer, thanks to the misguided largesse of the overstaffed host, and it was the most memorable fete of the summer… maybe the host was cannier than I realized at the time? Was this just another way in which they provided for their guests? Crafty.