“Let’s talk about Gramsci,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, and we did.
I put my arms around him, my hands resting on his back.
This made him nervous.
“I have a girlfriend. She can’t see scratchmarks all over my back.”
“It’s okay. I bite my nails really short, see?” I said, holding them up to his face.
But I lay my arms at my sides.
“Will you cum in my mouth?”
“Okay, but I probably won’t accept it back into my mouth…” (He was making a reference to how I had told him about my friend being into snowballing, and then I had to explain what snowballing was.)
“No, that’s gross, I agree.”
I didn’t actually think snowballing was gross and I really wanted to try it with someone, but I didn’t want him to think that I was into things that he thought were gross.
One of us brought up cumming on my face instead.
“I’ve never done that before…” he said.
He said he would do it, but then said he wouldn’t, and he kept going back and forth like this until I rolled my eyes.
“Oh, now you’re rolling your eyes at me.”
“Well, do you want to do it or not?”
“That’s a fair question…”
I looked up at him, feeling vaguely annoyed.
“Okay, I will,” he said.
And then a few minutes later he pulled out and took the condom off and was sitting on his knees above the side of my face.
I could tell he was really nervous, and I was afraid he wouldn’t be able to cum.
To put him at ease I decided to reenact a scene from a Japanese pornography I had once watched. I opened my eyes and looked into his and smiled up at him.
Then when he finally came on my face I moaned and moved the cum from my cheeks with my finger tips to my mouth, and then sucked my fingers. His face changed to this huge dumb grin, like he couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe his luck.
“I feel so vulnerable,” he said, his voice shaking.
I felt annoyed that he was only focused on his own feelings, after he had just shot a load on my face.
“Can you take a picture of me with my phone?” I asked.
He got up and got my phone, and then after I told him how to, took a photo. He didn’t ask why I wanted a photo, he didn’t say anything about it, like I hoped he wouldn’t.
“Oh, you can’t see anything, it’s too dark,” I said, looking at the photo.
We talked more about Gramsci, and then our feelings.
My face felt tight as his cum started to dry on my face. I wondered how he could respect me, have this intelligent conversation with me, when I was laying there with his cum all over my face.
So I stood up.
“Come with me,” I said, and grabbed his hand and led him to the bathroom.
I wanted to look at myself, but a pink towel was draped over the mirror.
“Why is the mirror covered up?” I asked.
He said it was usually covered up. He talked about how he hated mirrors and looking at himself. I remembered an article he had written about “mirror fasting,” and how it ended it with “what seems to be called for is mirror fast after mirror fast.”
I turned the sink on and rinsed my face off. I then took hand soap from the counter and rubbed it all over my face. I was afraid of the hand soap drying out my skin, but I was more afraid that he would think I was gross if I didn’t wash my face off with soap.
“Oh, you have a hickey on your neck,” I said after I dried my face off.
“I was worrying earlier you did something that gave me a hickey…did you do it on purpose?”
“No, I didn’t! I swear to God! I had no idea that I was doing anything that might give you a hickey!”
He seemed convinced that I hadn’t done it on purpose by my anxiety.
“I guess it looks like it could just be a zit or something,” he said.
We went and lay down in his bed again.
“Was I like how you thought I would be in person?” I asked.
“Well, I figured you would be inward and quiet, and that I would have to talk a lot.”
“I’m sorry I made you do all the talking.”
He said it was okay.
“Did you look at my Facebook?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t look at anyone’s Facebook…”
He went on to talk about how he was afraid not using Facebook made him a loser. I thought back to the first thing that I had read by him that had really made an impact on me, when he wrote about how he would literally cover his face with his hands when going on Facebook because of all it meant with regards to self-promotion and commodification of self.
Then he went on to ask me if I understood something about talking to people and wondering why they should care, and what the point was, but I didn’t really understand what he was getting it. And then I told him how there were a lot of times I couldn’t bring myself to care about my friends when something bad happens to them, but he didn’t understand.
We talked more, and then we watched Annie Hall for a while.
Then we started to fool around, but he was out of condoms.
We went to Duane Reade to buy more condoms. While walking to get them, we passed the cosmetics section. I grabbed onto his arm in order to stop him, and then picked up a hand mirror and held it in front of our faces.
“We look cute together,” I said, and was happy when he agreed.
He bought a three pack of condoms, cigarettes, and a candy bar.
We went back to his house, and lay down together on his couch.
I picked up a book called Intern Nation that was laying on his coffee table.
“I have to read that. I’m not looking forward to it,” he said.
I thought it was funny because I always think back to this joke on Hipster Runoff about how unpaid internships are the contemporary version of slavery, and here was a book apparently about that for real.
“Will you feed me a Reese’s peanut butter cup?” I asked as I put the book down.
“Of course,” he said, unwrapping the candy bar he bought.
I opened my mouth and he placed the whole disk in my mouth. I chewed it and swallowed it quickly, grossed out by how sweet it was.
“Yucky,” I said and wiped my tongue off with my hand.
He said it was a bad idea to eat chocolate when you haven’t eaten all day.
I got up and lay on his bed again and he followed me.
We started to make out again, and then he started to finger me.
“You feel very wet.”
He was excited by this, and put a condom on right away.
“Do you want me to be on top?”
“No, I like being on top.”
“But guys like you always love girl on top.”
He insisted again he liked being on top.
I wanted to ask why, but I didn’t for some reason. I made a note to ask him later, but never did. I had never met a guy who liked doing it in missionary before. I kind of even trained myself out of liking it, because most guys are so bored by it.
I felt very connected to him, like before, and enjoyed having sex with him very much.
He came inside me, and lay on top of me for a while. I liked the feeling of his warm cum pooled at the tip of the condom inside of me.
We lay like that in silence for a while.
“It’s very different when you cum like this,” he said.
I wanted to say, “This is how you’re supposed to cum, right?” But I didn’t for some reason.
He got up and threw the condom away, and then we cuddled, our eyes closed.
“I’m afraid to go to sleep,” he said.
“Why?”
“I’m afraid of losing the connection, I guess.”
If you’re afraid of losing our connection just because we went to sleep it’s not lik
e it was very strong in the first place…
We did eventually fall asleep.
In the morning we got up and I used his toothbrush and he showered and then we got dressed and split his last Adderall.
We smoked out front of his apartment.
He wanted to go for a drive so we did.
We drove around for a long time. We talked about Joan Didion and when he taught English composition courses.
I asked him if he was ever attracted to his students and he said, “There would always be some…I hated it when they would try to make it about that…”
We reached an empty beach and we walked to the shore. The sky was all grey, but he said that it probably wouldn’t rain until later in the day.
I took my heels off and carried them in my hands.
“Will I like step on a needle or something?”
“It’s fine.”
We sat by the shore.
“I really need you to hold me right now,” he said.
I lay on top of him.
He talked about how he used to feel like male subjectivity is false while female subjectivity is true….
I have had a lot of experience with some men, who want to otherize women and make them out to be somehow pure or in a way “better” than men, but still not quite human. I could see him being that type, and felt glad he wasn’t anymore.
We lay there in silence until it was interrupted by my phone beeping. I checked it, and saw I had received a text from the boy I was staying in my hotel with, John.
He was wondering if I was okay. I responded that I was fine and missed him and would see him later today.
“What was that?” Adrien Brody asked.
“Oh, it was John.”
“Do you have to go back to your hotel?”
“No, I think he just wanted to know that I’m not dead.”
He asked me more about John.
“He has like really unrealistic expectations of what people will do. Like you know how Tao Lin was selling a bunch of his stuff on ebay a little while ago?”
“Yeah.”
“He bought it for me, he spent like $250 because he thought Tao Lin would let him pick it up in person, and then we could go together and meet Tao Lin.”
He talked about how Tao Lin probably has a lot of people trying to get too close to him and so was very cautious.
“And just like, I feel like he wants me to be this manic pixie dream girl archetype that I just can’t be.”
“Like Amélie?”
“Yeah.”
“I feel like so much of life is about getting past that, seeing idealized versions of people. No, it’s definitely better to see the real person…”
“Yeah. He has this weird idealized image of me. Like he called me a ‘genius’ and I think he thinks by associating with me he can become a part of what he calls ‘the Internet writing subculture’ which I’m not even a part of… I feel like he’s just trying to use me because he thinks I’m living this weird alternative life, and he’s afraid of ending up an engineer living in the suburbs. But he is studying engineering at Dartmouth and is working as a businessman. I think he should just accept his life like that.”
He talked about “selling out” and other things.
“I don’t know. I feel kind of bad that I’m using him. I mean, John makes all of his own money, and I live off of my parents. I don’t have any right to judge him.”
“Using him how?”
“To go to New York. He paid for the hotel room and bought me a ton of drinks and gifts and all of my food and everything. And then later to go to China.”
“You’re going to China?”
“Yeah, he works in China, and he said I could live in his apartment near Shanghai with him.”
“Well, he’s probably getting as much out of buying you things as you are,” he shrugged.
We lay there talking more, but then it started to thunder and incredibly heavy rain poured down. We got up and ran, holding hands, to get shelter under a roof nearby. This worked until the wind started to blow the rain at us.
He stood in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders, acting as a barrier to protect me from the rain.
I felt strange that here we were two leftist feminists I guess, and of course the feeling was that we had this unconventional relationship, a way of treating each other, but here now when it was pouring down rain he automatically fell in the role of being a man and shielding me from the rain.
“We should just run for it,” I said.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
We ran back to his car.
On the way I got soaking wet; my hair was dripping as if I had just gotten out of the shower.
We sat in his car with the heater and windshield wipers on for a while. Then he asked me if I was hungry. I said a little bit, so we drove to a diner in his neighborhood.
He ordered eggs and bacon, and I ordered a Greek omelette.
I felt sick when this huge omelette was placed in front of me by the waiter.
I tried to pick at it, but every bite was a struggle.
“I’m usually like a vacuum, I don’t know why I don’t feel like eating,” I said.
“It’s probably the Adderall.”
“Oh.”
We left and drove back to his apartment.
I went and lay down on his couch, and instead of lying next to me he went over to his computer.
“Why are you over there?” I asked, my voice needy and whiny.
“I’m just…checking my email.”
“Come back over here.”
So he did and I sat up and hugged him.
I held him for a while in silence.
“Can we go back to my hotel so I can change my clothes?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“I’ll have to text John and tell him to leave for a while…”
“Are you sure? I can wait on the street.”
“No. I really want you to see my hotel room. Is that weird?”
“I want to see your hotel room.”
I was really happy that he wanted to, and that he implied he wanted to spend the rest of the day with me.
“Do you want to have sex in your hotel room?” he asked, grinning.
“No, that’s kind of fucked.”
“I can see why you would think that…”
I wondered why men are so turned on by cheating.
I texted John that I would be back to the hotel room with Adrien Brody in about half an hour, and could he please leave until I texted him? And that I was really sorry and would make it up to him later.
Almost instantly he replied, “I suppose so.”
I felt really guilty.
“I feel bad kicking John out of the hotel room that he paid for…”
“Will he get mad at you?”
“No. Like he thinks I’m really exciting, and he probably just sees this as an extension of that…”
“I can understand how he finds you really exciting.”
I wondered if he misunderstood “exciting” to mean “sexually exciting,” and I hoped he didn’t.
We got into his car and he started to drive from Astoria to Midtown.
I saw that his iPod was connected to the car stereo, and so I looked through his songs.
He said his iPod was very classic rock based, and it was. I was also surprised by some of the bands he had on it, like U2.
“I thought your iPod would be like more hipstery…”
I wanted to play Belle and Sebastian, but I was too embarrassed to, so I played France Gall then Serge Gainsbourg, and then Felt.
“Is this Felt?”
“Yeah.”
We drove in silence listening to music.
When we arrived into Midtown I gave him directions to the hotel. After he parked I led him to the entrance.
“You’re staying at the Hotel Wellington?” he asked.
“Yeah. John picked it out.”
He talked about how he used to get coffee and lunch there every day when he was working a job in the area, and about how the staff at the cafe inside once knew his name and his order by heart.
I texted John that we were there.
He responded to give him 15 minutes to get out because he had just gotten out of the shower.
I didn’t want John to see us on his way out of the hotel, so I grabbed Adrien Brody’s hand and led him to the bar next door to the hotel.
“Let’s hide in here,” I said.
We sat at the bar.
The bartender greeted us and asked what we would have.
“Can I have a Bloody Mary, please?” I asked.
“I’ll just have orange juice.”
“Can I see your ID?” the bartender asked.
I handed her my passport.
She stared at it for a while.
“Oh, you’re not…oh, no, you are 21. I’m sorry,” she said, and smiled and handed my passport back to me.
I felt embarrassed that I had ordered booze and he was just having juice. And I was surprised to learn that you could order juice at a bar.
The bar was mostly empty, so we got our drinks very quickly.
We mostly sat in silence, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.
I drank my Bloody Mary very quickly, absent-mindedly.
“Was that good?” he asked, kind of taken aback.
The bartender also seemed taken aback and asked me if I wanted another one.
I said no, feeling embarrassed.
John texted me that he had left the hotel, so Adrien Brody paid for the drinks and we walked to the hotel and then rode the elevator up to my room.
As I opened the door, I apologized for the mess. The floor was covered in my clothes and packaging from gifts John had bought me.
“John hates how messy I am.”
“It’s a small room, but being lazy in your hotel room is what it’s all about…” he said.
I lay on the bed, tired. He lay next to me. We lay like that in silence for a while, and I wanted to for a long time, but I realized I had better hurry and change so I didn’t kick John out for too long.
I stood up and undressed, and then went to the bathroom and washed my face and then started to brush my teeth.
I walked from the bathroom to the bed and sat naked on top of Adrien Brody while brushing my teeth.
what purpose did i serve in your life Page 8
