objects in mirror are ____-er than they appear
do you believe me? do you trust me? do you like me?
A couple of weeks ago I went home with a man I didn’t really want to fuck.
Let me clarify: I didn’t NOT want to fuck him. I just didn’t actively WANT to, but he wanted to and he asked if we could go back to his and I asked if he would pay for my uber home after and he said yes so off we went.
When we get to his place, after I sit on the floor examining his meager library and ask why he has A Moveable Feast in French of all things and he tells me he’s trying to learn the language and thought Hemingway would be good (short sentences, small words) and I nod — after that but before he pours me a glass of wine and himself a glass of water and tries to “cheers” and I tell him it’s bad luck to toast with water and so he pours himself some wine and I tell him I won’t be held responsible for his fall off the wagon — before that and before he asks to kiss me and I say sure and we kiss and much later he tells me I was making soft sounds the whole time that drove him wild, sounds he said would haunt him, sounds I didn’t know I was making but now can’t stop myself from trying to channel with other men — before all that and after Hemingway, he tells me about his bathroom mirror.
“I swear the guy who built that bathroom was 8 feet tall, it’s ridiculous.” I laugh.
We all know about men and height and dating apps.
“6’2” if it matters.”
I am on one app (guess) and the amount of times I’ve seen a version of that bio is astonishing. It tickles me, especially when that’s all there is, no interests or intentions or innuendos. As if all one needs to find a lover is a small collection of photos and a measurement (something about the modern dating marketplace and the go-see episodes of America’s Next Top Model).
A well crafted dating app bio is an art, to be sure, and while I wouldn’t call myself a master, I’m confident in mine:
“just moved back to nyc — tell me what you want to do to me”
That, along with a charming list of semi-highbrow interests and a curated selection of photos in a spectrum of outfits (overalls, lingerie, oversized sweater and tights, minidress that shows off my ass, bikini, sweater and tights again) has served me well. I’m a relatively conventionally attractive thin woman with a profile that suggests I like sex and am not looking for anything serious, I pretty much have my pick.
But here’s the thing: while I don’t particularly care about a man’s height as long as it is even a touch above mine, I have found that there is a correlation between a lack height disclosure (theirs) and disappointment (mine). The rare dates of mine that have not ended in some kind of physical intimacy have been with men who did not include their height on their profiles, and it was not because they were shorter than expected.
There is something in the impulse towards transparency, even transparency with an eyeroll, and chemistry. The way revelation allows the recipient to craft a more dimensional image of the other. The way it paves a path towards intimacy…
I’ve been going on a lot of dates, it’s true, and most of these dates lead to sex.
Between January 3rd and January 9th I slept with 5 different men, one of them twice and two in the same Williamsburg hotel. I have no shame in this, though I do hide the note on my phone of names and dates that my friends refer to as my little black book.
These friends want to know all about my exploits. They’re fascinated by them. They want to know how many and who I’m seeing regularly, if I’m safe. Eyes brightening, chins in hand, they ask if I let them hit me, if I like it, if I cum.
I tell them I’m always safe, rarely sober, and generally leave feeling somewhat satisfied, which has little to do with orgasm. It’s a sense of accomplishment, fulfillment. A literal fullness while also being an emptying out. A sense of purpose.
I have learned what I need to feel this way: more than one cocktail but less than three, some degree of reciprocal banter coupled with some degree of attraction, certain physical gestures, and either a guaranteed uber home or a warm bed (which is against a former rule of mine, but I got sick of subwaying with mussed hair after midnight and like to snuggle).
The uber is important for more than safety and financial and laziness reasons: riding in ubers these men call me at 2.5 am after 2.5 drinks and 2.5 orgasms between us is when I feel most like a writer. Sitting in the back seat of some indistinguishable car while a deeply unsettling pop song called “Victoria’s Secret” plays on the radio (ubers! the only time anyone listens to the radio!), I write run on sentences about sex and my body in a way I can’t elsewhere. Hemingway, eat your heart out.
An example, from the uber home after that date a couple weeks ago:
“love to blow a 41 year old divorcing man’s mind with my body and my pilot idea…”
Another:
“…using these men to show me myself. positioning myself as an object, creating distance through intimacy to find desire. where am i finding it? the bottom of the second drink, the space between near-stranger’s shoulders as they move between destinations, the way my laugh gets throatier after my clothes come off, the way i like everyone better (truly enjoy their company more) when i’m lying naked in their bed…”
Another:
“…i scare the shit out of these men because i know myself and i know they ain’t shit and i know and they know i’ll let them fuck me but afterward I’ll make them look at themselves in their bathroom mirror that is built for a taller man (for the man they think they are, want to be, the man that is as tall as they say they are on their dating profiles) and my easy transparency will make them see themselves in the opacity of their too, too solid flesh…”
Apologies for the Hamlet reference, I am who I am.
A week ago, on Valentine’s day, Lana del Rey released another 7 minute masterpiece.
I've listened to it every day since, often on repeat. As the majority of my girlfriends are settled or settling into a nest of committed monogamy while I go to yet another Brooklyn bar and am bent over yet another Brooklyn bed, I find something incredibly comforting in Lana’s performance of the pleasures and pitfalls of American whoredom.
And it is a performance: the cartwheel, the schoolyard singsong, the way she swallows the word “rape”. “I mean look at me, look at the length of my hair and my face, the shape of my body…” Positioning herself as an object, creating distance through distortion to find… fame? purpose? power?
When I walk down the street with my leopard print coat and my cigarette, mouthing along, is that what I feel? What about when I’m on these dates, or in the ubers? Is that sense of purpose really a sense of power? Is that what I’m after?
As I’m working on this one night, I have a crisis of confidence. I reread what I’ve written about my sexcapades, the honest transcriptions of facts and figures, the unabashed un-anonymous NYMag sex diaries of it all. I wonder why I’m doing it. I wonder if it’s a good idea. Personally, and professionally, I have second thoughts.
I think about the difference between being an actor and being a writer, about playing a role vs crafting a narrative, about the chameleon and the creator. In writing personal narrative, which am I? In crafting this image of myself and once again leading with sex (not unlike the image I’ve made in my dating profile) who am I trying to be? Why?
I say I’m an open book and I am generally (sometimes troublingly) transparent. I tell my secrets, I wear my heart on my sleeve; but at what point do the secrets become stories when told to an audience? When does the heart on the sleeve become a costume?
Back to the man and the mirror:
After we have sex and have lain together for long enough (him on his back, drained, me on my belly, alert), I get up. Naked, I move through his bachelor pad, past the artful combat photographs on the wall, the cabinet he painted purple, the pastel pink door, to the bathroom.
“Let me know if you need me to lift you up to see yourself.” I laugh.
I enter, find the light switch—
This would be a cleaner metaphor if the mirror was only slightly above average height, if I could see to my top lip or cheekbones.
This essay about transparency and self-image-making and dating app culture would really stick the landing if this man (who did not include his height on his profile and was a surprisingly different figure in three dimensions) had been grossly exaggerating and I had seen through it.
I would be a more reliable narrator if the image I have been offering though my so-called transparency, the image of the American Whore, was 100% truthful.
Truth: I haven’t been on one of these dates in more than 10 days, haven’t gone home with anyone in the last two weeks. I haven’t eaten a proper dinner in 7 days, am staying up into the wee hours doing creative work for no money, and the only american whoring I’m doing is sending nudes to men I’ve already slept with and fooling around with men I shouldn’t. I barely open my dating app. I wait around for texts. I am more purposeful but my grasp on power is slipping, and so I create an image of myself through selective transparency. I fudge my height. I lie.
When I stand before his pedestal sink, I see nothing but the wall in front of me.
A week ago, on Valentine’s Day, a dear friend told me I’d be good at Survivor because of how I’m handling my current crosshatch of social/professional/romantic scenes. I’d been calling myself a free agent, a fly on the wall, pointing to my curiosity as an aspect of my social capital and an instrument within my control. The privilege of being the new girl in town, of being single, of finding where I fit.
I’d been performing for her, sure, performing a role of detached engagement and doling out only the information I thought she’d think better of me if she had. I like and respect this woman and want her to like and respect me in return. Whether it was an effective performance or she saw the wheels turning, the pen redacting, I don’t know (likely the latter, as another friend pointed out, game recognizes game and this woman plays the damn game) but in that moment I felt like I won. The image of myself that I was trying to make had been accepted. I was 6’2”.
Later that night I catch a secret glance from a desired eye as I hold court on a barstool, gesticulating wildly about my work (power). Later on I leave the bar, listen to Lana, and text a friend unconnected to this crowd, “I have a crussssssshhhh” and we bounce messages giddily back and forth (costume). Later still I get home starving, eat too much cereal, and force myself to throw it up (transparency).
All of this is a story. All of it is a character. All of it is true. I’d be terrible on Survivor.
I mean look at me, look at the length of my hair and my face, the shape of my body…
A few nights later, I’m writing from the bath, my laptop perched on a squishy plastic toadstool borrowed from the living room of my current sublet. It’s late, I’ve already been out and come home, but my roommate is away and I could do this all night, letting the water slowly leak from the improperly sealed drain, adding more hot water as it does. This is the kind of single girl writer shit I live for, a romantic ideal, a role. I only wish I had the audacity to chain smoke indoors.
Instead, I peel an orange.
As I have the idea to peel the orange I have brought to the bath (and as I had the idea to bring the orange to the bath along with the laptop and the tea and my naked body and my brain) I think about the image of myself doing so and I decide to write it down because I like what it communicates. My phone is charging in another room, or else I would have taken a picture.
I eat the orange. I write some of this. I look at my email. I look at messages on a sugar daddy website. I look at theRealReal. I decide I can’t actually do this all night. I decide to get out. I pull the plug. I stand in front of the fogged up mirror. I wash my face. I apply prescription retinol. I floss my teeth. My gums bleed. I put on my robe. I apply generic moisturizer.
I look at myself. As an object. As an image. As a story.
The man with the mirror texts me and then messages me on the app. I don’t respond.
“I swear the guy who built that bathroom was 8 feet tall, it’s ridiculous.” I laugh.
100% juice. can’t wait for what’s next