Flotsam

Watching previews for new television shows now is different than it was five years ago. For one thing, the G-spot gets alot more mention.

In the wake of Sex and the City, it seems there have been a spate of comedies focusing on the sexual–if not romantic–exploits of single women. Which is a subject in which I have more than a passing interest. I was the least promiscuous of any of the women I knew out of college, and arguably the loneliest. My friends tore through relationship after relationship while I stayed home with a book, and friend after friend sat me down for a well-meaning scold.
“You have to put yourself out there,” they said. Or: “You have to kiss a lot of frogs…”
I didn’t like frogs. And I hated dating. I even wrote a piece about it, 5 years ago.* After hearing said piece at readings women came up to tell me how much they enjoyed it, how true it was. But I wondered: If so many women, like me, can’t conceive of spending the night with a man they don’t particularly care for while there are perfectly good books at home, crying out to be read—why are they doing it?
About a year after I wrote that piece, a friend and I filled out one of those online matching-service questionnaires together, after having 3 or 4 too many martinis. By the time I dragged myself out of bed the next afternoon, I had matches. And a week later, I started doing something I never thought I would do:

I began sleeping with a near stranger.

I realize that what with nine-year-olds performing fellatio on school buses (well, really on other nine-year-olds, who happen to be riding on school buses) this announcement has less the zing of a locker-room towel snap than the feebly moist startle-power of a wet-noodle lashing. I was well past the age of consent at the time, I was not sleeping with a married stranger, nor was I performing sexual acts in the hopes of receiving chartreuse or magenta jelly bracelets. But try, please, to muster up a little prurient interest.
In college, virginity was referred to as The Club, as in “How long were you in The Club?” or “She says technically she’s In, but let’s just say she hasn’t been a full, dues-paying member for a long time.”
I was a member, for reasons unrelated to religion, or indeed any moral or ethical code, until the summer after my freshman year, when I sent out the following notice, typed on expensive notecards:
“To Whom it May Concern:
We are writing to inform you that as of Friday, July 28th 2000—after nearly twenty-one years of devoted membership—Ms. Alexa Flotsam is no longer a member of “The Club.” This has come as a great shock to many, who assumed that as a founding member (and indeed one whose longevity of membership has become something of a legend) Ms. Flotsam’s association with “The Club” would be terminated only upon her death. Ms. Flotsam herself, when asked whether she regretted the termination of her membership, languidly lit a cigarette and replied simply: “No.” She could not be reached for further comment at press time as she was locked in her bedroom with an obscenely attractive boy.”

One Friday a few years later, as I stood on the doorstep of The Near Stranger With Whom I Was Sleeping wearing only earrings, a coat, and expensively pointy shoes, I remembered that announcement, and marveled at the distance between my present and past selves. Imagine The Three Bears, shocked to find Goldilocks, a tarty changeling, in their place.

The Near Stranger With Whom I Was Sleeping was a 29-year-old financial analyst—we’ll call him Roger. I was between freelance jobs, and had nothing better to do, unless you count taking an online quiz to discover which Olsen twin I’d be (I’m an Ashley). Our affair began conventionally—one drink, two phone calls, an email message outlining favorite colors, etc. And then one evening Roger tried to read my palm, and through some inevitable physics-related process, beginning with his tracing of the lines of my hand, like the cracks in snow signaling an avalanche, we began sleeping together—only sleeping together, not dining, not dancing, not taking in a show—commencing an arrangement that glossed prettily over our incompatibility.
Roger bought his mother a refrigerator for her birthday. I paid for my coffee each morning in dimes. Roger lived in a condominium. One of my friends lived in a rented practice space roughly the size and shape of a fun-size candy bar. One week Roger left a copy of The Wall Street Journal at my apartment. Before Roger, every man in whom I was even peripherally interested was essentially the same. Musicians all, with shaggy haircuts, frequent sojourns to Europe, Super 8 cameras, and a skittish, don’t-fence-me-in approach to relationships. My ex-boyfriends all play different instruments, and I have a persistent fantasy that one day they will come together to form a band, perhaps choosing to call themselves “It’s not you, it’s me.” Presented with a copy of the Wall Street Journal, they would probably find some way to make a bong out of it.

Now, let’s address what I was, or was not, wearing on Roger’s doorstep that Friday—the earrings-coat-shoes ensemble. Showing up in nothing but accessories and outerwear was hardly my MO. At the beginning of each of my previous relationships I had been a single, raw nerve. Ill from adrenaline, I feared appearing foolish, cruel, oversexed, ugly—I was half-certain that any sudden movement would break whatever trance bound my date to my side; whatever witchy inadvertent spell had fixed his attention upon me.
But with Roger, I was fearless. I didn’t care if I seemed brazen, or loud, or poorly lit. On weeknights, after he had finished ravishing me, I asked him to leave so that I could get some sleep. I said things like “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” and “No,” without smiling to offset them. Bikini wax? What bikini wax?
This fearlessness was due to the fact that if Roger had called one day with assurances that it wasn’t me, it was him, I would have been just fine. There was no danger of becoming too depressed to carry my dishes the six long feet to the kitchen, causing my apartment to look as though I had a time-share arrangement with The Black Crowes. My telephone would not be transformed into a live thing full of malice, a mute and spiteful creature with the power to reduce me to tears. It lay helplessly in its cradle—and I felt like Alice, my eyes clear for the first time: Why, you’re nothing but a deck of cards!
I liked Roger. He was smart, attractive, and laughed at my jokes. He was a good, kind man. But I did not love him, did not wish we could spend our whole lives together, and had no desire to know everything about him–what he looked like as a child or whether he untied his shoes before removal. We rarely saw the outdoors in each other’s company, unless you count the wall of the adjacent apartment building visible from my window. Was this wrong? Did the fact that I wanted no more from him than I was getting make my conduct pathological? My mother thought so. Because I am a fool, I told her about Roger—I tried to explain the charm of our relationship, the relief entailed in knowing that if he left, I wouldn’t be heartbroken.
“But shouldn’t you be?” was her response.

I remember lying in bed with my first real boyfriend, the one for whom I let my Club membership lapse, and holding his forearm in my hands. We were in a hotel room in Duluth, with a balcony, and I could smell the lake, fresh and sea-like. My boyfriend was asleep, and I smoothed the gold hair on his wrist, gazed dopily at the knoll of bone at the base of his hand, traced the paths of his veins. I handled his extremity like the Shroud of Turin, thinking, This is the wrist of the man I love.

Roger called one morning, wanting to come over, and I asked him to wait an hour, saying “I look like a scullery maid.”
“Really?” he asked, excited.
I meant that I hadn’t showered yet. He thought I was wearing a French maid’s uniform.
This is the impression I had given him, with my brazen fearlessness, my earrings-coat-shoes ensemble. This is the kind of girl he thought I was, sitting around, on a Saturday morning, maybe doing a bit of light reading, in a French maid’s uniform.
“With the little apron and everything?”

Roger didn’t know me at all, really. Sure, I liked being viewed as a glamorous, uninhibited sexpot, but the flutter of shyness I have had with other men in my life, the nervous stomach, the fear (so often justified) of saying/doing something incredibly stupid, was as much awe as neurosis. It was there because I had found something good, something I cared about enough to hold onto. So while I didn’t think there was anything really wrong with my relationship with Roger—consenting adults and all that—sometimes I did wish his wrist were more than just any old wrist, if you know what I mean.
In conclusion (isn’t it about time?)—yes, there is something to be said for a relationship that allows you to have multiple orgasms and still get to bed by eleven. There was no surreptitious brushing of my teeth at 5 am to make him think I awoke tasting of spearmint. No “I always have breakfast in bed like this, on a silver tray.” I heard on Oprah that having 200 orgasms every 365 days reduces your physical age by six years.

But if I had it to do over again, I might do a few things differently. I might go back to the night I sat on my couch in the near dark, with my palm outstretched in that of a near stranger.
“Do you see this fork here, in your love line?” he would ask.
And this time I pull my hand away, and use it to turn on the light.

*FIVE YEARS AGO—if you follow the link to read the piece, please do remember that before you mock my writing skills.