I change into some black sheer Wolford thigh-highs and dance around to Weezer until the doorbell rings. When Ken arrives, I answer the door wearing only the stockings.
“Oh, hey, let me do, like, a fashion show for you,” I tell my new suitor, pulling Ken into my living room before digging through my closet to try on various Halloween costumes. I change into my slutty nurse outfit. Then my slutty pilot one. Then my slutty Sacagawea.
Before I can find slutty nuclear physicist or whatever comes next, Ken lifts me up to carry me to my bed. But my feet stretch out and knock over the Wiccan candle, splattering red and gold wax all over my cream carpet.
“Fuck!” I say. “That’s my love-potion thingy. I need that.”
Ken shrugs and sets me down on my bed, but as he does, something catches his eye. Ken looks a little freaked out. I look over and see what he is seeing.
“What the hell?” he says.
One of the porn props Edward and Elizabeth left behind that fell out of their bag is the most enormous dildo you’ve ever seen in your life.
Ken picks it up off the ground with a sly smile.
“Oh, that’s not mine,” I say by way of explanation. “It belongs to this S&M couple who were over here earlier. We had a failed three-way, and I did coke for the first time.”
“Sure,” Ken says, shaking his head in disbelief. “That makes sense.”
As debauched and ridiculous as the evening is, I love the debauchery and ridiculousness of it all. I tell myself I am a sort of modern Hunter S. Thompson with a vagina. I tell myself these stories are gold. I tell myself that I’m in control because I’m the one doing this. But there is no control. I’m just lost.
Not long after, I have a few more Casual Encounters with men who are seeking “snow bunnies” (women to do coke with) or “girls to show off.” I even answer an ad where the guy offers “100 roses,” which means dollars. But I can’t bring myself to take the cash at the end of it. So instead we watch Apollo 13, and I lecture him on “repetition compulsion theory” and how I totally know what I’m doing with all of these seedy sexual encounters before I leave.
Another night, I go to a high-rolling Post party where I arrive stoned, and a lawyer plucks me right off the vine, kisses me, and takes me back to his place. He orders coke, and I do it off a plate while he watches patiently before carrying me into his bedroom. When I leave, I don’t want the night to end, so I answer an ad on Craigslist from a guy who posts only a JPEG of his dick.
It’s like “Choose Your Own Adventure: Sex Death Wish Edition.” He lives at a Central Park West address, and when I arrive I think we are each somewhat relieved that we are both fairly normal. He’s an investment banker (of course he is). Only when I tell him what I do, he starts to get nervous about how high I am already and how much of his coke I want to do.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t want a Post reporter to die on me, man.”
I wish I could say the same.
NOTHING REALLY FILLS me up anymore, so I decide I might as well just say yes to everything.
As I’m on my way home to my apartment one evening, carrying some groceries I’ve just picked up at the store, a good-looking man approaches me.
“Excuse me,” he says.
“What?” I ask, looking into his eyes, which approach a color close to blackness.
“I wanted to ask you,” he says, looking at me and my bag of groceries. “Would you want to get a drink sometime? I find you very attractive. My name is Carlos.”
“How does now suit you?” I ask.
With me still carrying my bag of now-spoiling groceries, we walk together to Spring Lounge.
“I should tell you something,” Carlos says when we sit down. “About three years ago, I hit on you when you lived in Park Slope.”
He then repeats line for line everything he said and how I reacted. I have to admit, I’m a little weirded out.
“Wait, you didn’t, like, follow me and find out where I live to hit on me again, did you?”
“No,” he says. “Nothing like that.”
I’m not entirely convinced, but he can’t be any more dangerous than all the assorted strangers I’ve kept company with of late in my little apartment-cum-sadness brothel. Fuck it. Who cares.
But when the two of us finally go over to his apartment, I see laid out on his desk a bunch of clippings from the Post scattered around, Homeland theory corkboard style.
“What the hell,” I say. “You are stalking me, aren’t you?”
“You think too much of yourself,” he says.
We go into his bedroom, which is painted completely black, and lie down on his air mattress.
“Can you grab me a beer?” I ask. “I think I need to drink in order to hang out with you.”
We drink and talk and drink and talk, fool around a little, get naked, come close to having sex, and eventually we are talking again. He asks me why I got divorced.
So I tell him how my ex cheated on me and then maybe I veer off into sadness, talking about being sad and trying to have the courage to be an authentic human being.
“I want some attention,” he says. Then he gets on top of me and thrusts his uncircumcised cock into my dry vagina. He groans and it’s over fairly quickly.
“What the fuck,” I say. “I wasn’t ready for sex.”
“That was not sex,” he says. “That was rape.”
I turn to him, aghast.
“It was a joke,” he says. “You do not get my sense of humor.”
No, I get it all
