I only ate pasta that day. I forget what kind but it was red and sweaty and I gobbled the noodles with a fork that had no shine. It was expensive and when he went to the bathroom the bill came and I slid the check to his edge of the table — which I didn’t regret.

I was an intern and my summer in New York City was coming to an end; it was August, and the train stations blasted heat and dirty air and garbage-smelling oxygen into my lungs and I was living for every second of it.

Hours before I had walked 30 and maybe more minutes up the road to the “local” — why was it so far? — Rite Aid or CVS (who cares?) and purchased a cheap douche for, like, barely $10. Being from the midwest, I felt on fire; I felt like a slut. Nobody knew that I was going to get fucked by a rich white dude who lived across the street from Sarah Jessica Parker in the West Village and who had random art hanging on his yellow walls, offered me a weed pen that was clearly his way of trying to be cool, and probably inherited all of this from his finance-driven-to-depression’d father.

I told my internship manager, a stylish and chic and super cool girl with black eyeliner, that I didn’t eat that day and I had a date in the evening. She was like OMG. I didn’t know how to pry the shit out of my rectal walls and was unaware until recently — six years later — how to fully clean my bowels before getting fucked in my boy pussy. I squirted the pH-balanced liquid up my hole and then filled it with regular sink water just to be safe. I sat at dinner on a mission: He’d ask me over, I’d say Yes, we’d have sex, he’d fall in love with me, I’d date an older man who was a version of “successful” that at one time in your life — or for some, sadly, always — you want to take home to your parents. He checked boxes. And he was also boring.

He paid. It was like $200. He said he had to get home and I said fine; I called an Uber back to my sublease in DUMBO that was tiny and I texted him: I would’ve totally come over.

He said I should’ve, and I thought, Well why didn’t you invite me over, loser?

I invited myself, a few hours after I had douched and definitely digested my disgusting Nolita spaghetti. I re-imagined the kiss on my cheek right before he hopped on the F train as the orange blur of the train “Stop” sign flashed behind his head and he headed down the stairs. I thought about how fancy he might be. I thought about how big he might be. I thought about if I was even good enough at sex to sleep with him. I thought about when he might propose.

After almost another whole hour of stupid conversation on his couch, I lied on my back as he thrusted andI stared at the most lifeless white ceiling in the history of lifeless white ceilings. It was dark and I only saw his shadowy figure move to the beat of Wall Street. I was tipsy and wanted to go out with a bang before I flew away to the suppression of my sexuality.

Then it happened. I felt a rumbling in my stomach as we both were about to cum. He was touching me and honestly, his strokes were fire. My feet were flopping in the air and his Target bed sheets wrinkled with each patterned movement. Right as we both almost climaxed, I felt something — panic. The room got quiet, I think I blacked out, and my face was red but he couldn’t tell because we were suffocated by no light. It sounded like a fart but it definitely wasn’t. The space we were in started to stink like the subway air I thought I was obsessed with. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a discolored stain and something goopy and I seriously was like, OH MY GOD WHAT DID I JUST DO I HATE MYSELF WHAT THE FUCK. I pretended, of course, like I didn’t care and that that was normal and it happens and I’m so sorry sir with the giant apartment and please, please don’t tell Carrie Bradshaw that I painted near your pillow case.

He picked up his entire sheets, did not say anything, walked to his bathroom, washed them in the shower, and I truly don’t know what else he did in there. He disappeared for 15 minutes. I laid on his mattress-pad with confusion and regret and embarrassment and a sense like this would ruin my life. Would he still buy me a diamond ring? I broke my silence like a TMZ article and asked: Can I shower?

I forget exactly what he said, but he let me clean up, but the vibe was incoherent, irreplaceable, and in the weirdest way ever, magical: We might never forget this night. I still haven’t. I showered and squatted and washed my fuzzy peach and couldn’t form the right words because this had never happened. I had come out just a year or two prior, and anal sex was new. Nobody taught me anything.

I dried and hopped out of his super small bathtub and did — yes, this gets worse — the unthinkable. I went back into his bedroom. He was already in a horizontal position, on his side, head turned towards the wall, completely quiet, and clearly wishing for me to exit the premises. I disobeyed and I have no idea why. I, too, laid down next to him, facing the other way, back to back, as if we were a divorcing married couple who just had the next biggest fight of our lives and had no way out of the lawyer fees and custody battles we knew we’d soon face. I didn’t say goodnight and neither did he.

I woke up at 6 a.m. and left. I never saw him again. But, eventually, little old me moved back to the West Village with my partner and, one day, spotted that awning that led to the stairway that leads to the apartment where I first shit in someone else’s bed. And everything ended up exactly the way it should.