We lay next to each other in silence afterwards, his arms folded in a pretzel shape behind his head. “That was really good,” he said, half-sighing. Then he offered me a make-up wipe from his bedside table, which made me think about how many women must pass through there. In the morning he gave me one of his T-shirts and some joggers and dropped me home in his car, the sort that has a computer screen at the front that shows how close you’re getting to things when you’re reversing. That evening, he sent me a meme with the caption: “Send her this with no context.” It showed a golf course, and when the white ball hit the grass and rolled into the hole, the words “You have nice tits” took over the screen.
The sex was good for me too, not necessarily because of how it felt, though it did feel good. It was good because it made me feel like a certain kind of person. I knew what he wanted, and I did it well—or it seemed like I did, judging from his response. I took a more active role where sometimes I can end up following the other person around. Everything was spit-covered and seamless. We moved about the living room, then onto his bed, as though it was something we’d rehearsed. A yoga flow or a dance.
It reminded me of this section I read in a book my friend Moya recommended me, called The End of Love. It’s by an academic called Eva Illouz, and it’s an exploration of how “unloving” has come to define contemporary relationships. In it, she describes how the end goal of sex has changed since the sexual revolution: “Traditional heteronormative sex was sex with a purpose (whether this purpose was marriage, love, shared life, or a child),” Illouz writes. “Casual sex subverts the narrative telos of heteronormativity. Instead, it aims at the accumulation of pleasurable experiences, which in turn becomes a status signal, a sign of having a body marked by others as attractive.”
I’ve known this—that sexiness and sexual performance communicates something about our worth in society—since I was much, much younger. When I was 16, I was desperate to lose my virginity because, back then, it seemed like if you were a virgin at 17, your life was essentially over. My friend told me that the guy I was “getting with” back then wasn’t sure what to do because he knew he’d have to ask me out in order to have sex with me, and he didn’t know if he wanted a girlfriend. I told her to tell him that he wouldn’t have to ask me out, and I’d have sex with him anyway. The next time he had a free house, it happened. It seems so stupid now. When I look at 17-year-olds, they look so young, unable to hold eye contact.
In many ways, I haven’t changed. Needing to have sex, or to be someone people want to have sex with, guides so many of the decisions I make in my life. Like, I always find it confusing when people ask that question, “Would you rather have food or sex?” because to me the answer is obvious. Most people always say they’d rather have food, but I always say sex because I’m not sure how to make sense of myself without it, or even just the possibility of it. It might not be the end goal of every action I take, but it will at the very least have informed it in some way—the job I do; the clothes I wear; the TV shows I watch; every ab workout on Instagram I save; every clever book I reread a page of to try and understand; every time I write in my journal, trying to unpack my feelings about something that’s bothering me.
It is working in a lot of ways. I get more attention than I used to. Most of the time, I don’t even need to have sex; I just need to feel desired. It’s so delicious to me, that moment when you’re at a bar or party, and they look over at you for a little bit too long, and you turn back to your friends and you’re talking and laughing but it’s more like you’re a person doing an impression of someone talking and laughing because you’re poised and ready in case they look over again. And as the night goes on, you slowly inch over to each other on the dance floor, or maybe you see them outside the bathroom queue, and they say something stupid like, “Are you following me?” and then one of you makes fun of the other one for being slightly posher, or for working in recruitment, or for having a little earring and a mullet and being a walking cliché, or maybe you just talk about Succession, and it’s a back-and-forth you’ve had a million times, but you stay there regardless.
And there’s something sweet even in that, the two of you persevering, fumbling in the dark to find something in common because of this small electric pulse glittering in the air between you. You sit there together in the smoking area under the fluorescent red of the heaters, forget where your arms go when you’re not thinking about them, drink from your drink until ice cubes sting your top lip, but you can’t stand up if you need the toilet or another drink, because you know it could break the delicate architecture of this encounter. One of you could end up in a conversation with a friend, or it could be too hard to get back on track with what you were talking about. So you stay there until you build up enough of a rapport for one of you to ask for the other’s number. And in the morning, you go on their WhatsApp, you zoom in on the picture there, and you try to work out whether you still find them attractive.
It’s fun—so fun that when I think back to moments like this, my stomach somersaults and sparkles. I feel the smudgy outlines of my existence filed down to a neat edge. I understand why I’m doing it all: the gym, the nights out, the insane number of images I have saved on Pinterest for outfits I think would look good. I love flirting, I love the moment when you realize, Oh, they weren’t being rude, they just fancy me. When they sit down next to you and your knee rests against theirs. Sinking into a sofa at a house party with someone you fancy. I actually don’t know if there’s a better feeling, and yet somehow it’s not a sensation that satisfies. The more of these moments I have, the more I need them. My friend and I met these guys at a party last weekend, and we thought about inviting them to this other birthday we were off to, but then I thought, What if there are other guys there? More opportunities? I feel itchy, restless, until I’m sitting there again, looking across from someone, wondering when he’s going to ask for my number.