On our second date, I accidentally black out. I drank too much on the first date and puked in his toilet while he held my hair back and kissed my shoulder. He said he liked that I was crazy. I think he likes it a little bit less now, now that I am feral, begging him to fuck me on the couch even though his roommate could walk through the front door at any second, tearing apart a magazine cover that displays the face of a writer who broke my heart eight days ago, blabbering about a shooting that happened at an Amish school in 2006 (ten girls shot, execution-style, against a chalkboard). He fucks me like a dog at the foot of the bed, because otherwise the frame will squeak into oblivion. He spits on me and pulls my hair like I ask him to. I ride his face. We give each other head at the same time. In missionary my teeth sink into his arm; when I’m on top I bite his neck, close to devouring him. At some point we finally fall asleep.
He told me, after we had sex six days before, that it was his first time in two years. I’d heard things about him before we met. A couple of weeks ago, a girl was talking about him behind me on the line for the bathroom at a literary reading, saying he was negging her. There were some passionate but vague tweets about him being a creep but they were always deleted. We met at a bar after he accepted my short story for his online literary magazine. He drank seltzer with bitters and asked why I agreed to see him, like I’d gotten myself into trouble. I didn’t say the truth, that I’d had my heart broken two days before by a writer, and I figured the best way to get over a writer is to get under another one.
I wake up and we fold into each other again in the morning light, dazed. I call him daddy. He comes on my tits. He’s twelve years older than me, thirty-six, which I think might be the perfect age for a man. On the couch last night he came inside me and apologized when I said I hadn’t wanted him to do that. Now we’re talking excitedly about our hypothetical baby. We’re talking about his friend’s birthday party he’s taking me to next weekend. I say I’m nervous; I hate socializing with writers.
Last night he gave me his first novel with an inscription on the first page. I published this when I was 27 but it took about four years for my groupies to find me. Never give up. Never kill yourself. As long as you’re writing and publishing there will always be freaks who love and hate you. Some of them will even go down on you. He handed me his copy of my book along with a pen, and I drunkenly scrawled silly smut, basically illegible. He told me he was going to review it, and I made jokes about sitting under his desk as he typed the article, writing it with my mouth.
I say I want to go home. I don’t know what time it is. Probably eight. I like to run away in the mornings and spend the hangover alone in bed. Strangely I don’t have a headache. I just feel like I’ve lost all of my brain cells, like if I keep drinking like this my life will morph into one big blur. I should probably have a desire to prevent that from happening. He starts yelling at me. You use me for sex and free drinks, he says, you get wasted and you leave a big mess that I have to clean up, and a mess in my head. You rip up my roommate’s magazine, he says, and you throw up and I hold your hair back. Why won’t you get breakfast with me, he says. There’s a pause because I’m just staring at him, speechless, frozen; it has been a while since a man has yelled at me, and I forgot how terrible it feels. I stutter, amorphous sounds leaving my lips. What? he says. I’m trying to formulate my thoughts, I say. I say that sometimes being around people makes me anxious. Okay, so you don’t want to get to know me then, he says, yelling still, this isn’t going to work out. We can’t just fuck all night and that’s it. That’s not good for me. I feel empty after. I say I know, I feel the same way, I want more than just fucking. Okay, well, show me then, he says.
He says maybe we can make it work. I don’t know why I’m going along with it. I have the urge to convince him that we can figure this out if only for the sake of not feeling abandoned. I also just want to leave. This feels never-ending and torturous. He’s talking softly now, talking about how maybe he shouldn’t bring me to his friend’s party this weekend, maybe we should take things slow. It feels like I’m losing privileges. He keeps talking and I’m getting bored of it all, I’m hungry and in need of a bagel, I’m hitting my vape while he’s being vulnerable, I’m suppressing laughter because I always have the impulse to giggle at inappropriate times, like at funerals. But externally I’m holding his hand, caressing his face, kissing him on the cheek, comforting him and reassuring him like a loving girlfriend, playing the role I need to in order to safely escape this moment. Maybe I’m touching him sweetly because I know it’s the last time. I don’t think you’ve ever been loved the right way before, he says, and you’re scared. You’ve never met anyone like me before, he says.
He begins talking about how Catholicism is a big part of his life. He says he went to confession after we had sex last week to ask God for forgiveness. He says that before me he tried meeting people at church. He goes every Sunday. He’s been including me in his prayers, he’s been talking to God about me. He doesn’t want to sin. He wants to be good. Do I understand that?
