My Last Five Dates: Pandemic Picnics, DMs, and a Full Week of Hookups

A 20-something on risking it all for touch while her roommates were out of town.

My Last Five Dates: Pandemic Picnics, DMs, and a Full Week of Hookups

I know that lots of people are doing reasonably safe dating right now. I respect that, and I would definitely do the same if I could. But I’ve been living with roommates who have serious preexisting conditions, so we’ve been treating pretty much every day since March as near-total lockdown—we go grocery shopping, we go to parks, end of list. I tried distance dating—FaceTime dates and outdoor dates, sitting six feet away from each other on park benches, shouting “SO, WHAT KIND OF DATA SCIENTIST ARE YOU?” over the sound of wailing sirens. Would you believe this got depressing? So I stopped. I don’t want to start what is essentially a long distance relationship as we wait for the vaccine.

But this week is different: All three of my roommates are planning to be out of the apartment on COVID-safe vacations for more than two weeks. That means that whatever I do this week, any risk I take will be a risk only I take on, it won’t immediately affect the people I live with. Welcome to my sexual rumspringa.

At 9pm, James knocks on the door. We met on an app months ago and went on a few of the distance dates. For our first date we went to a park on a hill overlooking the city and drank wine and talked until we were shivering cold. I wanted to hold his hand so badly. (I know this sounds revolting, but please remember that prior to that my most sexual contact in six months has been when my thong goes up my butt.) Since then, we’ve gone on a few bike rides and exchanged essay-length texts, and every time I see him I have a strong desire to climb his body like a tree. (What would Doctor Fauci say about that?) He walks in, shaking off the rain, holding his bike helmet, and I lace my fingers through his and pull him towards me. The choreography of making out feels almost unnatural after so many months of isolation—I find myself flinching and pulling away, like I’m on a crowded city bus during rush hour. I’ve gotten so used to creating negative space between myself and other people wherever I go. We sit on the floor of my room drinking gin and comparing reading lists, in the shadow of a bed I haven’t shared with anyone for more than six months. I stand up and guide him to the bed, feeling like a teenager, like I’m doing all of this for the first time—pushing him down on the mattress, waiting until he’s underneath me before I peel off my shirt and toss it dramatically on the floor like a circus performer about to do a trick. I let him scoop me onto my back and pin me to the mattress, and I undo his belt in the dark, hearing his breathing get heavier and faster, remembering how I used to do this all the time, and now it’s this rare, wild treat.

We don’t have sex. I fall asleep sweaty, more shocked than turned on by the fact that there’s a whole adult man in my bed. When we wake up it’s light outside—we kiss in bed for a few minutes and then I stumble around making coffee and he leaves to get home in time for an early morning meeting.

James has to start a two week quarantine so he can roadtrip to see family in another state. I didn’t count on that. It’s self-centered, but I’m frustrated! I only have a week to hook up, because I want to spend seven days in isolation before my roommates come back so that if symptoms appear I can go get an Airbnb. If I can’t get what I want from James I’m going to get it from someone else. I scroll through another app, looking at my matches from earlier in quarantine. I went on one distance date with this guy, Sam, a while ago. He was so cute, but our conversations didn’t really go anywhere. I text him, and once we have a solid back-and-forth going I state directly that my roommates are out of town for the week, and does he want to come over and...drink together?

At 9pm, a knock at the door—I feel like I’m in a time loop movie, as I repeat the exact same actions under just slightly altered circumstances. Same girl, same gin, same flirting in the hallway, same laughing and pulling him into my room—different guy. Except Sam is actually very quiet and awkward. Our conversation has no flow. It feels like he’s the first guest at my party, trying to politely keep up a conversation while silently cursing himself for ever leaving his couch. This goes on for over two hours. Sitting three feet away from him on the edge of the bed, I realize that I would rather be alone in my tiny shitty apartment eating a quesadilla and watching YouTube videos than continue to make small talk with this stranger. And then, after a particularly painful silence in the conversation, he leans towards me. I’m thinking “Is he reaching for something behind me?” even as his lips brush against mine, and then slide in between mine, and then open my mouth, and then he flicks his tongue inside my mouth. It feels like he’s passing an important secret to me, and I just have to be still and receive it. His chest presses against me and I’m intensely and instantly aware of every centimeter of my body that is touching his, like countless little simultaneous messages, saying—“This feels right, keep doing this.” He pulls back and takes me in, silently, breathlessly, and tucks a loose piece of hair behind my ears. This feels ridiculously on-the-nose—like, this is the guy who just sat on my bed for two hours, talking about the fucking BBC Sherlock adaptation? I break the silence, and we start laughing, and now it’s like he’s a different person. A desperate, bizarre part of me whispers, “Try having sex on the floor! See what happens!”

“May I?” he says, politely, and I nod, trying to smother my feeling of confused hysteria, as he lifts my sweater over my head, and flicks my bra straps down, and licks me. I reach back and unhook my bra and motion for him to take off his T-shirt. It feels like I’ve never touched anyone before. I press my face into his neck, and we lie on the bed, not kissing, not talking, just touching, his fingers running gently up my back and through my hair. The feeling of skin-to-skin contact is so intense, so complete, drug-like. He slides his hand down and tries to take off my pants and I stop him and say that I should go to bed soon; I have approximately 47 meetings tomorrow. He kisses me and then puts on his clothes, and kisses me again and I remind myself that I cannot and should not beg this complete stranger to sleep in my bed tonight. He leaves and I fall asleep, feeling high, overwhelmed with what I am afraid to call joy.

I spend two days staring at my phone, jumping every time Sam texts, trying to manifest him back into my home without outright demanding his presence. We make plans for him to come over on Friday night after his work meeting (I was honest with him that I hadn’t been doing serious social distancing in the week before we met and he said he’s okay with that, he has been taking serious precautions and lives in a studio.) He comes in and I’m so ridiculously happy to see him but try to remember that to him, I might just be some girl he’s known for about four hours. We share a bottle of wine that he brought and when he goes to refill my glass I stand up and kiss him. And it’s—I simply want to pause time, go into another room, call three-to-seven of my best friends, and discuss. Why does kissing this person feel completely different than kissing every other person I have ever kissed? Why is this attraction so strong that it wipes every previous hookup from my memory? What is he doing to me—and am I doing anything to him? We stop and, for some reason, have a stupid conversation about the election. He goes to the bathroom. I go over everything I said in my mind. He comes back and we talk some more—it’s stilted, strange. I must have offended him. He sighs, and kisses me, seeming bored by my mouth. I take off my shirt—if he’s bored by my body that will be a thrilling new low. We kiss and he seems into it again, maneuvering me onto the bed. He pins me, kissing my neck, rolling my pants down my legs. I unbutton his jeans, and pull them down. I really don’t know when I’ve ever felt such a strong desire for another person. I don’t feel embarrassed to go down on him, I only want to make him feel good. He stops me after a moment and asks if I want to have sex. Guess what? I really, really do. I have to hide how much I do.

Sam gets a condom, and I’m suddenly self-conscious, aware that I’m naked and actually very cold, and that we are being quiet and courteous of each other, as if we’re embarking on some kind of very serious business, a deposition, a minor surgery, something very unlike what we’re actually doing. He kisses me, and lays me down gingerly on the bed, and gets on top of me. Something is terribly wrong. The room is silent. It feels too late at night, like we can already taste the tiredness we’ll feel in the morning. I am abruptly aware that he didn’t go down on me, that this is hurting, that it hurts because I wasn’t really physically ready to have sex, and that he didn’t try to get me there. I’m embarrassed, having this sex I wanted so much, not liking it very much at all. He’s moving on top of me and I’m miles away in my mind, wondering if he knows that this sucks for me and just doesn’t care. He finishes, and I lie still, realizing that this part of the evening wasn’t a sexual experience for me as much as it was a moment when I loaned my body out and waited for it to be returned. We lie there for a few minutes. And then, as I’m thinking of any way to go back to before, to repair this damage we somehow created together, he does something that is so familiar to me from movies and books and friends’ stories but so alien in my own life that I don’t even recognize it until it’s almost over—he gets up, puts on his clothes, and leaves. And then he doesn’t text me for a few days. It feels like a movie again, but in an awful way—a cliched story about a girl who gets used for sex and then dropped on the ground like a dirty sock, even though I know that there’s nothing dirty about sex and that I deserve to be treated like a person even when there is zero commitment involved.

I work up the courage to text him, he responds in just a few words. I give up on the dignity thing and ask for a reason, and he says that actually he’s very busy with work and not looking for anything serious right now. As if I was trying to put a ring on BBC Sherlock guy, smh. As if I have some epic dream of having a happily ever after with a person who doesn’t go down on me or inquire whether I came. I cry, wishing that he had just been a little bit nicer. I can’t work out how I liked him so much, and he liked me not at all.

My roommates come back. They don’t have COVID, and I don’t give them COVID, and we’re safe for now, whether or not we deserve to be. Dating is over for me, for the foreseeable future. On the weekend, while my roommates are busy making pancakes instead of monitoring my bad choices, I slip out for a walk and call my ex. Yes, yes, I know, and I don’t care. Our relationship was a long time ago. I broke up with him. It’s interesting to announce that you’re removing yourself from the life of someone you love and see that you’ve hurt them so badly that they almost start to hate you. Over the years, we’ve kept up a sort-of friendship. He asks about how my roommates are doing. I ask after his current girlfriend, and he’s very polite and careful, but I can tell that he’s in love with her. If you have ever been brutally dumped, some solace: there is a tiny possibility that the person who broke your heart is doomed to love you a little bit forever, while you are going to grow and move on. I knew that would happen when I broke up with him, and I was right. I want to ask him to tell me about every page of every book he’s read in the last five years, every piece of art that has moved him, every friendship that really meant something. Instead I say goodbye and go home, where my roommates are waiting, and the pancakes are still warm.

Weeks pass. James is back from his road trip. We text, and I convey that I would love to go for a bike ride and maybe more, but I cannot—my roommates are back, we’re locked down, I am available only as a mummy embalmed in surgical masks, separated by other people by the length of a balance beam. I love my roommates and I don’t regret the deal we made. James and sit on separate picnic blankets in a park near his house. We chat, but everything feels muffled by our masks, even the mood. If this wasn’t a raging pandemic, who knows what would happen. But it is. So we sit for a while, talking about our friends and families, and say goodbye, lingering for a moment by my car. I drive home, thinking that, in spite of all the what-ifs, a half-hearted sort-of date was better than nothing.

I’m okay to wait for real dates, for as long as it takes for me to get both of those damn vaccine doses. If any man is worth dying over, he hasn’t shown his face on my dating apps.

This story originally appeared on: Glamour - Author:Anonymous