BEYOND THE BIKINI WAX
We met at a mutual friend’s birthday dinner. I was 28 and just postbreak-up. James, as I’ll call him, was older, an artist in his forties. Seated next to each other, we’d been making appropriate conversation about things he loved that I wanted to be able to say I loved, like Paul Bowles and the Hotel du Cap, when he casually said, as easily as he’d recommended The Sheltering Sky, “I know exactly how you need to be fucked.” I looked around, sure someone else had heard him. (No-one had.) Then I blushed. Then I met his gaze.
For the next few weeks we texted back and forth. I was baffled by his blend of authority and vulnerability. He’d describe in explicit detail what he wanted to do to me, then admit that I made him extremely nervous, as if confidence and openness were one and the same. He liked me. He didn’t hide it. But he had no plans to be my boyfriend, and I didn’t really want him to play that role either. He was too weird, too wild, too not-of-my-world for the long run. And yet I felt completely invaded by him.
The next time we saw each other was at an album release party a few weeks later. I told myself I didn’t care if he showed up, even as I dressed for him: my leopard-print, super-short silk DVF wrap-dress, suede Chloé platform boots, lots of black eyeliner. I felt him walk in the door. He asked me to walk him to the corner store for cigarettes. I wasn’t ready yet, I kept saying in a manic stream-of-consciousness rant as we made our way down the block. He listened attentively, said nothing and then, when we were safely out of view of our friends, grabbed both my wrists in one hand, shoved me into the shallow doorway of some grimy apartment building and slid his other hand up my dress. After that, it was on. We slept together for the better part of a year.
When it began, I was one person; by the time it ended, I was someone else. I’d lost my virginity more than 10 years earlier, but until James, I hadn’t really had sex. I mean, I had, but with a few exceptions I approached it like everything else in my life: something to analyse, get good at, master. I avoided internet porn in my adolescence, but I’d still got the clear message that what I needed to be good at sex was a rigorously groomed bikini line, a toned, tanned body and the ability to chastely moan.
James wouldn’t stand for that kind of soft-core posturing. It wasn’t even an option. With my arms pinned behind my waist and his hand firmly gripping the back of my neck, I didn’t need to go through the motions of being dominated because I actually was totally overcome, physically and, by extension, emotionally. He met my relentless stream of chatter with bemused silence, and in response I shut up, on the outside and inside. The voice in my head that nattered on during sex, wondering if my stomach looked fat in this position or if that noise I just made was gross, faded away. And because of James’ willingness to tell me the truth about what he was thinking and feeling and wanting, in bed at least, all the while radiating alpha authority, I too started to be accountable for my own desires. I had to show up and be myself rather than just impersonate a girl having sex on Melrose Place, which was essentially what I’d been doing for a decade. The result was a reframing of my perception of sex from anaesthetised to alive, from slick and stylised to rough and ragged. And a rewiring of the very notion of being “good in bed”.
We parted when the chemistry faded, about eight months in, and I wondered what mark he’d really left on me. After all, I’d never really loved him; I’d known he’d leave my life as quickly as he entered it. That was part of the thrill, really; since I didn’t want him to be my man, I could try on a rowdier version of myself without worrying I’d be obliged to keep her. But a switch had been flicked. Before James, I thought good sex was about control, but it turns out for me it’s about release. The more I let go, the more he wanted me; the more I enjoyed myself and the more powerful I became.
“WHEN IT BEGAN, I WAS ONE PERSON; BY THE TIME IT ENDED, I WAS SOMEONE ELSE. I’D LOST MY VIRGINITY MORE THAN 10 YEARS EARLIER, BUT UNTIL JAMES, I HADN’T REALLY HAD SEX”