kind of sad, like why am I even doing this? But if the sex was good, if the person was hot, intelligent enough for me to elevate their characteristics in my own head to talent and brilliance, then I wasn’t able to just fuck and move on. I did catch feels.
There was Hunter, who was the first boy outside my marriage. Hunter taught me not to include my head in the photo when I sent nudes. That was very nice of him. I met Hunter at a holiday party. I thought he was gay, because he worked for Barneys and talked about how big his dick was. But then he said he was great at eating pussy. I was like, Hi.
Over the course of a month, Hunter and I made out on the street and fucked each other twice in his apartment. He had a big, crooked dick. Also, as foreshadowed, he was great at eating pussy, but I wasn’t relaxed enough to come.
I obsessed about Hunter, waited for texts from him, writing a narrative in my head that he was a genius art boy (sometimes he made weird videos from his roof), when in fact he was more of an IT person with a penchant for colorful hair dye. One night I invited him to hang out and he said sorry, but he was playing video games by himself. I knew then that this was not safe for me emotionally.
Then there was Paul from creative writing class, another boy who at first I thought was gay. On the subway platform one night, I asked Paul if he had a boyfriend. Heterosexual, Paul was appalled. The next day he began doggedly pursuing me, posting on my Facebook wall the words I’ll show you hetero. We made out in the street (I like boys who seem gay and making out in the street). He never tried to fuck me though.
Paul and I texted on and off for months. He was a disappearer. In his disappearances, I obsessed. When I confronted him about his vanishing, he said he couldn’t get involved with a married woman. I don’t know whether he actually was gay or was a boringly conservative straight person or just had good morals, but it wasn’t going to work.
Then there was Brandon, the motorcycle boy from Long Island, who I met on cougarlife. I went on Cougarlife because, while I was only thirty, I think the illness made me feel older. Brandon and I rode around on his motorcycle. We also fucked in his van. I fantasized that I would move out to Long Island and tend the house, while he worked at his auto repair shop. I don’t think that’s what Brandon was looking for.
There was Adam, who was cute, but into Bukowski, so no.
There was Tom, who lost his virginity to me. He basically broke my vagina, but I left him with some tips on how to be gentler with the next woman.
There was Nathan, who I really liked, even though he couldn’t get it up. Nathan never got a full erection yet somehow came in about fifteen seconds.
There was Matthew, who I made out with in the street to get over Nathan. Then I fell for Matthew.
There was Ben, a gorgeous twink who is actually gay. We would kiss for hours and talk about existentialism and the boy he liked in California.
In all of this, I felt like a teen—flitting between excitement and heartbreak, compulsive analysis and gameplaying. What I wanted was both my husband as well as a harem of boys who were totally devoted to me, at my beck and call at all times. That isn’t really fair. Actually, it’s totally fair to want it. You can want whatever you want. But the types of boys who are going to go for a woman with a husband are probably not going to be at your beck and call.
None of these experiences seemed to jeopardize my marriage in any way. If anything, they made my marriage hotter.
There is something about a long-term relationship that takes away the ability to see the other person. We stop seeing them as their own entity. We stop seeing them as a possibility, rather than a possession. Or we stop seeing the possibility of them not being there. The gap we have to cross to get to them is no longer there: the gap filled with doubt as to whether we are loved or whether he will text or whether he