I was well past midnight when I found myself leaving his house with my blue lace underwear balled up in my hand and my shirt hanging off my shoulder. I sat in my car staring at the dashboard for what must have been twenty minutes before I put the keys in the ignition and started the engine.
***
I never considered myself the “hook up kind of girl”. Hooking up with someone was never something I considered wrong or immoral – just something that didn’t fit with my life. Something that I just couldn’t do. Something that happened for other people – not me. My friends would tell me stories of their strange and offbeat sexual adventures with people they had just met. I would listen intently as I was told of blowjobs in back alleys. Hook ups with friends. One night stands that ended in slipping out through a window. Even the occasional, yet always “accidental” threesome. All consensual. All fun. All perfectly okay. But when it came to my sex life I preferred a connection first. I wanted something more grounded. I wanted to know someone. I wasn’t sure what made me so uncomfortable with the idea of hooking up with someone, but I did know one thing: I hadn’t gone to his house with the intention of taking my clothes off for him.
His name was Kelvin and we met on OkCupid. I had an on again off again relationship with dating apps. I am, at heart, a hopeless romantic. The idea that someone I could fall in love with was just a swipe away was too enticing to pass up. I received countless messages from men on that app and left many unanswered or unopened. Most of them started with lines about what they could do to me in bed, the color of my eyes, or “hey baby.” Kelvin was different. He messaged me a compliment on my Halloween costume – a photo I had posted – saying, “Spinelli was my favorite Recess character.”
I answered asking, “Isn’t she everyone’s?”
Our mutual love of 90’s kid’s television aside, Kelvin was a sweet guy. We stayed up late that night chatting. Cross-legged on the living room floor I talked to him about school, work, life, and our shared fear of the future. He lived only a town away from where I grew up on Long Island. When I told him I went to school in Manhattan and lived with my uncle part time in Brooklyn he quickly replied that he would love to take the train to the city and have me show him around for a date.
“But,” he told me, “not right now because I’ve only known you for two hours and I want you to feel comfortable first.” I decided in that moment he was a guy I wanted to meet. No one else on any dating app had ever been interested in my comfort.
After our first date –an awkward affair at a taco joint a few towns over a month after we started speaking – he walked me to my car. It was drizzling out and he held his sweatshirt over my head the whole way. He had been quiet during dinner, but the way he smiled when he looked at me lead me to believe that it had gone well. When we reached my car he told me that he really enjoyed the night and that he wanted to see me again a few days later. He went in for a hug and, as he pulled away, looked up at the rain and back down at me smiling. Then he kissed me in the way all young women want to be kissed. The rain started to come down a little harder and both of us were damp so he suggested we go in my car. We ran to the doors and jumped in the car laughing. He reached over my center console and took my glasses to wipe them off. His brown eyes flicked up and down over my body for a moment before he leaned in to me. Before I knew what was going on his hands were over me. I became very conscious of the fading daylight in the sky and the cars spread out before us. I pulled his hand out of my shirt, trying to keep it light, I laughed and said, “sooooo what’s your favorite movie?”
He told me he didn’t think I really cared.
I didn’t.
It was dark by the time he reached to undo my belt. I was anxious at the idea of what could happen between us if I undid his. Eventually I told him I had to go pick up a friend (who I hadn’t spoken to in months) from a job (that didn’t exist). He told me I should stay, but didn’t argue when I said I’d see him soon. When he left my car I drove quickly to get home, but ended up circling my town five times. Hooking up with boys in cars was not a “Marissa thing to do”. I didn’t feel like me. Something about it felt wrong, but I couldn’t pin point it. I was nervous about what had happened. It bothered me that I allowed it to happen – to let a guy I didn’t know put his hands down my pants, but something about it was exciting. Something in me felt different, but I was afraid of that change. When I finally pulled into my driveway I texted him that I wanted to see him again.
I tried to get him to go on another date. Mainly due to the fact that it had been so long since I had truly dated someone and I longed for an emotional connection. But he shook me off and offered for me to come over and watch a scary movie – a coded message I knew the meaning to. I tried to fight and say I knew what would happen if I came over after 10 PM, but he promised he would be on his best behavior and I was excited by the idea that maybe he wouldn’t be. He met me at my car and made sure no one was up when he walked me into his home and ushered me to his bedroom. The only place to sit was the bed. After he started the movie he jumped onto the twin size mattress and sprawled out next to me. We were talking for a moment about our day when he kissed me. I pulled away telling him that I was not the hook up type. He said okay. I said I wasn’t going to sleep with him. He said okay. I said I meant it. He said it was okay. And it was. We kept the movie on for ten minutes and I couldn’t tell you the details if I tried. He snuck me out the back door of his two-family home at 2 AM. He had my lipstick on his mouth when he kissed me goodbye.
That was really the first night. I drove for hours before coming home. I felt utterly unlike myself, but not in a way that made me feel like a bad person – no. Just in a way that made me feel unreal. Like I was straddling the line between two versions of myself. I pulled into a parking lot, flipped down my visor mirror, and took a look at myself. My makeup was smudged, my hair was frizzed, and I had three red-purple marks on the sides of my neck. I drove a little after that wondering how I would cover the bruises, but also how I could have them be seen. Because they meant something – I just didn’t know what. When I went home that night, a little after 3:30 AM, I went to lie down in my bed, but, realizing I smelled like him, went into the shower and washed him off of my skin.
I told myself I wouldn’t go back again. Not because I felt dirty – I didn’t, but because the whole idea of hook-up culture made me uneasy. And Kelvin was beginning to make it clear that he wanted me when he did and that was that. He was still nice - still asked about my days and would text me regularly, but there was no more talk of dates. Just of how beautiful I looked in pictures I posted, how much he thought about me before he slept, and questions of when I could come over – always late, always at his place. For a while I tried to just stop answering him until I realized that I was keeping him around for the same reasons. He was a nice guy – that much is true, but there was little to nothing that we had in common. Our conversations read more like that of two strangers. I realized that we both knew what we wanted. And I called him and told him that I could be over at his house at 1AM. He said he couldn’t wait. When I got to his house he sat down on the bed and I pulled up my dress to show my blue lace underwear and bra and dropped it on the floor. I let my uneasiness fall and let myself melt away.
***
I drove away wondering if I had made a mistake. Wondering if this act had changed me or made me any less of myself. I couldn’t connect myself with a way of life I had always assumed was for others and not for me. I felt like I had stepped over the line and become somebody different. As if I had left the old me in the dust. Leaving, I felt a sense of wonder and excitement. I drove straight home. I would drive away a few more times after that, disheveled in the same way I had been that night, before I realized that I was still me and washed him off of my body for the last time.
