"welcome to the hoe life!" aka baby's first hookup
That was the first thing the first guy I decided to hook up with texted me, after I'd spent a few days ruminating on whether I was finally ready to dive (or at least, dip my toes) into my hoe era. I had never been that into the idea of casual sex, or so I thought, but a year of uncertainty, isolation, and general collective trauma sure can change a girl. Honestly, I probably wouldn't have gone through with it if I hadn't been itching for some new kind of excitement in my life, so this was a perfect storm of circumstance: the pandemic was finally "ending", a healthy amount of time had passed since my last relationship, I hadn't had sex in ages, and he was so! fucking! dreamy!
We'd chatted on Tinder for a few days already, and by "chat" I mean he was overtly flirty from the start, but hot (and kind!) enough to get away with it. I was barely ready to re-enter society and hadn't been this aggressively pursued since college, so I straight up told him I forgot how to flirt - and he said I was doing great! Swoon. It also definitely helped that he was half Asian, or more importantly Not White, and looked very much like an indie softboy. Okay, only in two photos to be exact, and honestly the rest of them were kinda whatever, but those two in particular were hot enough to override the others. Also, I didn't even ask to confirm he was vaccinated cuz I just assumed being Asian came with that kind of common sense. He was in his early 30s, a bizarre and near-incomprehensible concept to someone still living and processing the loss of two prime years of her 20s. My age range wasn't even set to include anyone above 30, but after a certain point I'd swiped past so many dudes that Tinder told me I ran out of profiles and would therefore be "expanding my preferences". To top it all off he was a screenwriter, and after a quick scroll through his instagram photos I realized he was like, actually googleable. Impressive, and a nice little detail that I can only assume gets him laid more, especially considering every third guy's profile around here says screenwriter or producer or actor.
At this point I'd already decided I wanted to sleep with him, but I was also having fun swerving his advances and playing coy. I even asked him on a date, not intending for it to be a "let's see if you're relationship material" date but more like a "let me make sure you're not secretly a jerk and I actually wanna bang" date, but he declined!!! Bold, he definitely knew what he wanted and how to get it. In any case, this back and forth was such an unexpected departure from the hundreds of mostly average conversations I was otherwise having on Tinder, not to mention a new opportunity to satiate my boredom. He was abundantly clear about what he was after, and so respectful in making this feel like MY decision that I was a bit taken aback by his politeness. Flirting like a fuckboy but knowing when to rein it in is such a fucking rarity - truly, the bar for men is in hell.
I knew exactly what I was signing up for but that didn't stop my subconscious, which was already developing a crush, a transition plan to friends with benefits, and then some romcom fantasy moves to becoming eventual partners. Obviously this wasn't on the table and had a less than minuscule chance of happening, and having sex with him wasn't exactly gonna stop me from catching more feelings for this idea of him that I'd already created. But he was as good of a first hookup candidate as I was probably ever gonna find off Tinder, and a girl can dream, right?
Well, turns out planning a hookup is way harder than it sounds when you're both working adults. We originally planned for Sunday night but he rescheduled me like two hours before when it was already nighttime, and I was actually getting excited AND horny. The audacity!!!!!! He said he needed to finish a script rewrite or something by that night and sounded so concerned about it so I was like ughhhhhhhh okay go off king chase your damn Oscar I guess LOL... then I think the next day literally when it was already noon he asked if I wanted to be quote "bent over during my lunch break" and I was like dude I have a meeting at 1... but then he ALSO said he was leaving town for a week the day after that, like bro you are clearly too busy to be hooking up with anyone but ANYWAY… I happened to be in his area later that same day and kept thinking about how much more convenient it would be if I dropped by right then instead of trying to coordinate something the next day, soooo that's what I ended up doing.
The actual event itself, including everything before and afterwards, was about as awkward and mediocre as it could've been, and yet I still ended up spiraling with like a two-month crush on this guy. And when I say mediocre I mostly mean by my own doing. As in, it was the middle of the workday and I randomly dropped by his apartment on my way home after getting my car's oil changed, partially because I was looking for any excuse to avoid going back to work and partially because his apartment was conveniently next to my favorite gas station and I needed to fill up. I'm pretty sure I gave him like a 15 minute heads up to see if he was down literally right then, even though I truly didn't have it in me to be horny. I was super nervous wondering what the fuck I was about to walk into and I really needed to pee, not to mention sweaty and gross from sitting at a dealership for an hour. Also I was wearing like a grocery store outfit and really unflattering underwear, cute enough for errands but nothing to feel remotely sexy in. An ideal mental and physical state for anyone's first hookup.
So anyway the sex was fine, I honestly don't remember too much of it because I just wanted to lose my mind for a while, which I achieved at the sad cost of not staring at his chest as much as I could've. He was an ideal level of fit and muscular, toned but not to the point of like bodybuilder repulsiveness. In my defense, it was like broad daylight and I didn't know him well enough to be comfortable watching him watching me, but damn it why didn't I keep my eyes open a little longer!! That's only one thing on a whole list of shit I'd redo if I had the chance, like not being so stiff in the beginning, making out more, touching his body more, and generally being better at sucking dick - although he made a last minute request for that so I explicitly told him to lower his expectations smh. It's not my fault the only other dick I've had in my mouth was literally too big to fit comfortably, like yeah ok choking on dick may sound hot while sexting but in practice it's so painful for your jaw ok!! Luckily his dick was nicely sized but I kept my eyes mostly closed anyway because dicks are weird... big fan of having a dick inside me in general but I don't really wanna look at it... ugh but in hindsight, overall I should've taken more advantage in appreciating all the goods while they were all right in front of me!!!!
I was also slightly worried that my vagina smelled bad after running errands out in the heat for two hours, which was mostly fine since I wasn't expecting him to go down on me, but then he DID go down on me so I got REALLY self conscious about it. But he also complimented it at least five times, and not in a raunchy way either. He like, actually stood back and admired it, kept saying "you have a beautiful vagina" with such awe in his voice, and maybe I hallucinated this but at one point I think he also said "she's gorgeous". The entire time I was like oh... thank you..... I appreciate that?? ? He even asked me if I knew how beautiful it was, and I was like ok kinda yeah because he wasn’t the first guy who's told me that, though he was the first guy who's told me so... elegantly? Even after we were done and I was putting my clothes back on he was like "it looks great from the back... from the front..." and I just didn't know what to say LOL LIKE ? ?? THANK YOU, I was genuinely flattered about the prospects of have a thriving career on OnlyFans (unless those cowards ban explicit content) but also when someone says that to you in real life how are you supposed to even respond? ?
I didn't realize it in the moment, but later that day it dawned on me that I had been subconsciously stalling for time at his place - mostly because I was just so bored and didn't want to go back to work, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't trying to learn a little more about him. After we finished (oh yeah, I didn't finish but I also like... expected that to happen lmao) he went into the bathroom to clean himself off and probably expected me to get dressed in the meantime, except I just laid naked on his bed until he came back out, and THEN I got up and started preparing to leave. I also asked for a glass of water to get rid of the boba aftertaste in my mouth (I guess his dick didn't wash it out enough) and let him fill out the conversation as I responded as awkwardly as possible. Like holy shit I'm humiliated that a straight man made me so flustered!! I was so into this guy and FOR WHAT!!!!! Although in my defense, I was simply taking advantage of all the amenities at his apartment before I left... bathroom, trash, dick, water... when I finally got back to my car, I was so dazed about what the hell just happened that I completely forgot to go to the gas station and drove straight home.
It's mid-September now, and my crush on him has completely worn off, and I've been seriously procrastinating on finishing this draft for the past two months. More specifically, it's the night before my last day at Disney and I promised myself I'd finish writing this stupid post before leaving and tomorrow I'm never coming back! So essentially, I'm hate-writing the rest of this reflection while high out of obligation to my fans, because personally I've extracted and internalized all the life lessons from this already. Luckily I got all my immediate feelings down while I was still v smitten, and hopefully enough time has passed for me to now write a real, slightly less biased reflection. Great cold open for my newsletter revival, huh.
So back to the analysis. Up until this point, there were only two categories of men on Tinder: guys I would never willingly associate with or talk to in my life, who make up like 95% of the app, and guys I find attractive and personable enough to consider dating or being friends with, who make up the remaining 5%. So if someone attractive shamelessly comes onto me, I'll automatically assume they're into me and want to learn at least a little more about my personality. I'm pretty good at being cute and fun on a first date, and if I've decided I wouldn't fuck but we had good energy together, I'm still open to being friends - basically, I'm used to having the upper hand in terms of how the relationship progresses after the first meetup. Not having a single normal conversation with him totally threw me off, especially because outside of any sexual attraction, he seemed like a pretty cool person to befriend. That, on top of the fact that I actually found him extremely hot and genuinely kind, meant that I'd unlocked a secret third tier of man on Tinder: with the right personality traits and under highly specific circumstances, I'd let him rail me.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about whether I regret not letting out more of my personality during that very brief meetup, and I've finally concluded no, I don't. I probably would've taken being ghosted (he made a cute save and I decided to give him benefit of the doubt because I truly didn't have the energy to play 3d chess, but I also have half a mind to ask why not just ghost me? lol) much more personally had I decided to be anything but a brick wall while we talked. In my subconscious I always knew I'd need to do this to protect myself, and had already begun doing it the moment I decided in my mind to hook up, so I'm glad it was such a cut and dry interaction. I guess we just have different flirting styles? I'd rather be a conversational flirt any day over going straight to steamy flirting, because I'd like to have at least some emotional involvement with a sexual partner. At the same time though, I'm v proud of myself for being confident enough to show up and be absolutely selfish during the whole thing. Like I really wasn't that focused on him, and sure part of me was afraid of falling and being sad, but a much bigger part of me just missed the sensation of having a dick inside me so I was mainly focused on my own pleasure.
Also in hindsight, he probably said he was busy at night because he didn't want me staying over, which is kind of amusing because I literally had imagined scenarios of myself asking him "so like do you want me to leave, I do not know how to navigate a hookup AT ALL and will not be offended if you say yes" except everything I outwardly expressed was like the total opposite of that LMAO RIP like! by "date" I truly just wanted to grab a couple drinks to get comfortable enough to fuck but I didn't bother elaborating further for fear of sounding like I was trying to negotiate lmao
It's also funny because like a week after this I decided to actually start make some big changes in my life. I had been feeling stagnant and complacent for so fucking long. In a mostly uncorrelated way (and I'm absolutely choosing to imply a causation here), hooking up with him was a catalyst for me finally deciding that I was unhappy with my life and figuring out what to do about it. I desperately wanted to feel something, ANYTHING again and I got what I asked for! Having a crush on someone and immediately sleeping with them was a big enough shot of dopamine for me to start thinking about what I actually want.
At the end of the day, am I sad that we didn't get to know each other better? Yes, because had we met under different circumstances I think we could have built a good and possibly lasting relationship - whether that was romantic or purely platonic. I don't mean anything particularly substantial, either, like I could see us occasionally checking in on each other as casual friends who met online, talk maybe twice a year and reminisce about this bizarre, unfamiliar but strangely intimate experience that we both chose together. Overall he had like, sweet and thoughtful nerd who glowed up and became a hottie vibes LOL?? Also I might be way projecting here, but he seemed like someone who was confidently single and if/when he does decide to settle down, he would make a great partner to someone. I guess the mystique of never knowing what he's really like sustains this fantasy, but I'm honestly surprised this boy isn't taken yet. Anyway, I'm glad the whole thing feels more like a melancholic memory now. There's no real loss in not getting to know him more, and the feeling that I am capable of building deep bonds with different people is self-affirming in itself.
Is he both the beginning and end of my hoe era? Unclear, but I'm glad I tried it - I'll try anything once if I decide I want it. Given the logistics of planning for anything in LA though, there is no random dick in the world good enough to get on the freeway for, and had getting to his apartment required it, I wouldn't have bothered. There's an upper limit to how good hookup sex can get cuz I don't care how experienced you are, every new sexual partner kinda resets that and you have to explore what each other likes all over again. And there's no room for exploration if we're never gonna see each other again. Sex without real intimacy is just so boring! And on top of that, sex with a condom just doesn't hit the same.
I'm probably projecting waaay too much meaning onto hooking up with some guy, but that's also like, the surreal and chaotic beauty of it all. I think it's fascinating how some people can just detach all emotions from sex because that is such a foreign idea to me, I love that for them and I bet they do too but I'm also like incredibly glad I don't have that capability? I wonder to what extent he's able, or if this is the method he follows so he doesn't catch feelings either. I hope he's doing well out there, whatever he's up to. Maybe one day several years in the future I'll randomly dm him again, show him this absolutely unhinged post and ask what he thinks. Does he have any idea he made a non-negligible impact in my life? Or rather, wouldn't it be funny if he knew how intentional and blown up I've made this whole experience to be? Assigning his brief appearance in my life a greater meaning and going through the stages of a full blown crush has been so fun and made me happy and sometimes a girl just needs that kind of innocent joy in her life! I think it'd be hilarious if he read this someday and concluded I was insane. The human experience is vast and expansive, or something.
Okay also one last thing. I'm like so smug that he fulfilled the superficial bitch in me who was intent on making a bucket-list item out of him. If I don't hook up with a screenwriter while in LA, did I really even live here?