Scary!!!
I went on a date to Rockaway Beach with a very tall very hot man who has a car and a little dog. So tall and hot that even after he told me he’d been roofied three times in the past four years and that he believed he should be allowed to own a gun for fun, I was still rooting for him. He took me to a restaurant for day cocktails and oysters. Sitting at the bar, the oysters came out big and warm. There’s something about only eating oysters in months with an R in them. SeptembeR, I thought, fuck it. They weren’t good, but I am so grossly conditioned to be polite, and because he picked the restaurant, I ate three. We were in the middle of a conversation about what our grandparents used to do for jobs or some similarly bland topic one would only choose out of discomfort when he spit, or rather, sprayed rotten oyster juice directly into my face. If that’s confusing to understand, I agree! I was in shock. He was coughing, he said he was so embarrassed, that it went simply down the wrong pipe and gently patted my cheek with a napkin.
But something about the force it took to spit that far, the way he grabbed a fist full of my ass later that day laying on the beach and bit it hard with no warning or read on the room, the drama of it all, the confidence, felt off. Scary, even.
Dating can be genuinely terrifying. I’ve had nightmares about people I’ve kissed just hours before on my doorstep. Men are scary sometimes, like this pet possum I met once who’s eyes are sharp and black. Untrustworthy, like one could actually kill you- especially if he owned a gun for fun.
I like to think of myself as somewhat adventurous. I can make any bad story funny with time and have learned to dissociate during sex, not habitually, but when necessary. I don’t mind collecting stories and I often think I’m at my best totally alone, unsheltered by the opinions of others. When I have a serious crush, my art suffers. I try to figure out exactly what it is my crush wants and become it. Every post on social media is, unbeknownst to them, for them and only them. I write in a voice that is a mashup between me and whoever I’m most threatened by in their life (a pretty ex girlfriend, a cooler more successful girl they are friends with etc.). It doesn’t matter if I know these women or not, in fact, not knowing them makes it easier to become them. This way I can invent them from scratch.
Non- monogamy is suggested to me often as a cure for putting men I’m dating on pedestals, once by a therapist. It’s also been suggested to me by men I’m dating who want to sleep with other people, but I’m digressing. It’s not natural to me and it’s not what I’m looking for. I suspect that even in the most sensitive communicative open relationships one person is silently making adjustments in fear of losing the one who wants to stray, or both people just aren’t that into each other or its two gay men.
The thing is, I’m not looking for ways to make casual dating easier. I want to be loved. So much that I’ve mistaken certain kinds of attention for love, and compromised what I really want which is to be known. To be loved and not really known feels good momentarily, but to have this entire personality projected onto you and in moments of weakness try to just shape shift into it is ultimately horribly lonely. I have repeating patterns. I’m scared it’s because I’m in this category of pretty where I’m not as beautiful as I look online. I think if I was more beautiful I could trick people into loving me and then once they spent time with me they’d know me too, but when I look at videos of my face it looks totally crooked. Lately my strategy is leading with trying to be known, but I’m afraid I overshare and freak people out. The scariest thing in the world though, is being known, really understood and still not loved. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to never know the deep painful rejection of being known and not wanted. The confidence I’d have!
It should be illegal for me to have a platform like this where I have boundless freedom to share all my thoughts and feelings. It’s so embarrassing yet I’m still doing it as if held at gunpoint.
Don’t worry about the oyster guy he’s on a social media cleanse & will never read this.
I’m going on tour this week with Langhorne Slim!!! TICKETS are here <3
