The first person I had sex with after my break up last year was this postman called Tommy. Day trips to Kew Gardens or someone who put their mug in the dishwasher on the way out. And so I decide to give casual sex another go โ only this time I make a promise: to give as little as I get. None of the nice stuff. I go to the pub with a guy called Dan I matched with on Hinge.
He keeps telling me he might leave at some point to meet his mates at a bar in Peckham called Tola which makes me do weird things to keep his attention. Like letting him explain who Carl Jung is even though I studied him at university.
On the way back from the toilet he stops to talk to some skaters he knows for ages. We go back to mine. I am drunk, the room swirling and bending under my eyes, knuckles pressing into the sides of my skull, tongue bitter from cheap chardonnay. He presses into me and something tightens as though turned by a wrench and I let out a moan, voice modulated higher to a pitch I hope he might like. And then nothing. Instead, I just sat thinking about what gave him the impression that I would do something like that.
Perhaps I held his hand too tightly on the way back from the pub? Dan swings over on his bike, the two corners of his checked shirt flapping in the wind, like a character from a Harmony Korine film.
For some reason, I invite him over again. You ask for the minimal amount of respect and somehow they still manage to go lower. I thought I was giving nothing this time, but still a man manages to give less. There was part of me that enjoyed imagining that when I saw Dan pulling up on that bike in his backpack, there were the ingredients to make a lasagne together or chocolate brownies.
