What You Do When You Aren’t Getting Laid
The first boy I kiss in Los Angeles is someone I meet at my housewarming party. My friend Maggie brings him and she tells me halfway through the night, “Hey, I think this guy’s into you. If you want it, he’s down.”
I look over to see if I want it, and I do, I do! He looks like River Phoenix mixed with, I don’t know, sadness.
An hour or two passes. I ignore the boy and have a blast with my friends. I’m planning on going over to him at the end of the party and making a move but there’s no rush.
Finally the party winds down and I walk over to Sad River. He is wearing a white t-shirt that accentuates his tiny tan muscles and his eyes are a shade of leafy green. I look closer and realize he might be a little stoned.
Whatever. I kiss him, anyway. Fast and hard. Then he leaves.
I text him the next morning, “Nice to meet you.”
He writes back an emoji of a red balloon.
It’s a few months after my housewarming and I’m the fattest I’ve ever been — almost 200 pounds, babe. I’m getting a massage at a fancy spa in West Hollywood, which is only making me feel sorry for whoever has to touch me. In this case, it’s a twenty-something dude named Josh. Josh has long hair and kind of looks like Mowgli from The Jungle Book. He has a soft-spoken voice and keeps asking me if the pressure is okay.
Josh turns me over like a rotisserie chicken and puts a warm washcloth over my eyes. He starts massaging my hands, and then he, uh, starts kissing my hands. Before I can yell “FIRE, FIRE!” Josh’s lips are on mine and we are kissing. It’s strange. I’ve never kissed my masseur while blindfolded before. Even though I have zero interest in making out, I’m not sure how to spurn Josh’s advances so I politely kiss him back. “Maybe this will end in a handjob,” I think to myself. “Maybe if I kiss him long enough, he will go down on me.”
It doesn’t end in a handjob or a blowjob. After kissing me awkwardly with my face stuck under a washcloth, Josh tells me that I’m handsome and that he’d like to take me out on a date.
Um, I mean, sure? I mean, why not? Here I am, feeling disgusting and overweight, and some guy RISKS HIS JOB to go out with me. It’s fucking romantic!
I give him my number.
“Great,” he grins. “I’ll text you.”
He kisses me once more and leaves the room so I can get dressed. I decide to leave him a good tip, even though I never asked for a damn kiss, and go on my merry way.
I smile to myself. “Looks like Mama’s still got it!”
Or not. My masseur never texts me.
This is not my first time at the celibacy rodeo. In fact, when I was 19, I went almost two years without any physical contact. I guess I’m just a little fucked up when it comes to guys. I’m deeply insecure and shy, so unless someone grabs me by the dick at a gay bar, my natural assumption is that no one wants anything to do with me. This has been a struggle my entire life and it’s one that I’m still fighting.
When you go a long time without sex, your senses get dulled, you care about things that do not and will not ever matter, you lean on your friends more than you should, you feel repressed, a tightness in your stomach/penis, you look at a lot of porn, you get startled when someone brushes your shoulder on the street.
You see sex in everything — in a croissant, in a fire hydrant, in your frumpy friend from high school’s Facebook page who’s now married with children.
“I can’t fucking believe it,” you say to yourself. “Tammy Hill is getting laid and I’m not!”
A few months after MassageGate, I start to lose weight. I do this partially for health reasons but the main motivation is obviously due to vanity. I know that if I don’t get my body into a better place, I run the risk of never having sex again, and that’s not okay. My last blowjob cannot be My Last Blowjob. The last dick in my ass cannot be The Last Dick In My Ass. No. Fucking. Way.
So I work out. I eat healthy. I lose weight. It’s so boring and I’ve already written about this, so I’ll spare you the details. Just know that when I’m running on the treadmill, I’m running towards a dick in my mouth.
Whenever I feel like I’m about to explode, I go on Grindr and look for new messages. Unfortunately, the only people interested in talking to me are gross and meth-y. On the rare occasion I get messaged by an attractive guy, I become paralyzed with fear. “His body is better than mine,” I think. “He’s going to take one look at me and be like, “Uh, that’s not what I ordered. Goodbye.” So I choose to stay silent. And the frustration just builds and builds.
When I go out, it’s a different story. I feel thin and confident. I’m in control. Boys give me their numbers, which gets me so excited, but they always end up being unstable or flaky. This is harder than I thought it would be. Yes, I feel comfortable in my body again but I only solved half the problem. Thin or not, I still have to deal with the rude mindfuck that is our modern dating culture. I still have to be a part of a generation that fears intimacy.
There’s no happy ending to any of this—at least, not yet. Just take my advice and never go through a long dry spell. When nobody is fucking you, you’re fucking yourself.