Oh man, what have I gotten myself into??

I left off with the company manager girl’s invitation for me to dogsit for her while she’s out of town. We’d only known each other about a week at this point, so I was skeptical (to say the least) that this would be the casual sexual acquaintance I was hoping for.

Eve suggested I was being paranoid in thinking that this girl might be clingy, even though she so quickly asked for a domesticated favor like dogsitting. So I agreed. She’s tall and blonde, after all…

I show up at her place yesterday morning to meet the dog, get the house keys, etc. She shows me around her place. She seems anxious, talks really fast. In addition to being a company manager, she’s an artist, and uses her apartment as a studio. Now when I say “uses her apartment as a studio” what I really mean is “her apartment IS her fucking studio” because the place is littered with these odd, abstract installation art pieces (odd=three scattered puzzle pieces on a pedestal…and no, that’s the finished project).

It becomes very clear very quickly that this girl never leaves the house, completing the mystery of why someone so gorgeous hasn’t had sex in a while, and why she was acting so nervous around me.

We finish the tour, the dog and I get along fine, and we’re standing in the kitchen making small talk. She’s repeating herself a lot, and I can tell she’s breathing fast. We’re standing close, as it’s a small kitchen, and she’s shifting from side to side, talking about where the dog food is or something like that.

So I kiss her. It was kind of abrupt, but it needed to happen, right? It’s lingering in the air, waiting to happen, and if I don’t do it at that moment then who knows how long I’m going to have to stand there hearing about exactly when I’m supposed to give the dog his pills in the morning (as if I’m even listening).

SO THEN SHE GOES NUTS. Ten seconds of kissing and she’s sitting on the counter, legs around me, ripping off my clothes. She’s kissing really fast, really hard, and she’s very loud. It was like popping open a can of Pepsi after it’d sat in a paint shaker. Ten more seconds, and her hand is down my pants, she slams my face into her neck.

Then BOOM, like a snap, she pulls back. “Are you seeing anyone?”

UH-OH!!!!

Me: “Umm…no, I’m not. But I’m not really looking to.”

“So…this would be, like…just unrestrained, awesome sex?”

Me: “Well…”

She goes back to kissing me (I say kissing, I mean the tongue-jabbing that Eve described), and it gets even more heated, then she pulls back again and says she needs to think about whether she can handle a friends-with-benefits type situation (rule of thumb: if she has to think about it, it means she can’t). And then I leave, her house-keys and the responsibility of taking care of her dog in my hands.

Now I get to look forward to living in the lair of this crazy sex-starved hermit woman for a weekend, and I’m probably not going to get any sex out of it (as if I’d even want that at this point, right?).

HEY EVE: YOUR GENDER SUCKS AND YOU’RE ALL CRAZY.

Here’s the problem with going home with a guy on the first date: you have to stay the same or escalate on the second date. So going to his apartment seems inevitable, even though he SHOULD have to work for it a little bit more.

Maybe we can go to the Opera after dinner…personally, I love opera, but if this Banker, clearly not a big patron of the arts, is willing to sit through Rigoletto for me, then he deserves my sex. Or at least to make out on the couch.

Yeah, that sounds good, right? Making out on the couch…maybe a little nostalgically trendy?

Ok, that’s the plan, and I’m sticking to it.

-Eve

Over a period of about 20 minutes, we messaged back and forth, discussing restaurant options, schedules, etc. (“Risottoria?” “I hate paying for food I can make better myself. Risotto is my best recipe.” “In that case, maybe we should just stay in…” “I don’t put out Risotto til at least the 4th date…” etc.) (note: Thomas Hardy I’m not.)

Anyway, it was going so well, and I found myself smiling at the thought, when, all the sudden, horror of horrors, my phone rang.

“Hello?” I say, bewildered.

“It’s me.”

“Uh, hi.”

Awkward silence.

“I was just calling cause I figured, instead of going through a whole long back and forth thing we could just figure it out over the phone…” He says.

But….but….we were texting!

I don’t know, guys. On the one hand, everyone hates an immature boy who panics at the thought of making a phone call, so I’m pleased to see that at least this social function is not lost on him. On the other hand, why ruin a perfectly good,flirtatious text messaging session with a perfunctory and utilitarian phone conversation?

Making dinner plans is not that hard, but the beauty of a text is that it’s supposed to be drawn out…shouldn’t he want an excuse to talk to me more?

The Banker may be a little too no-nonsense for me…

-Eve

Eve, can women ever really handle a true sex-only casual relationship without things turning dramatic? And is the dogsitting a sign for me to back off and look for non-commital sex elsewhere, or am I being selfishly paranoid?

Well, Adam, the answer to your first question is simple.

Yes, a woman CAN really handle a true sex-only casual relationship without things turning dramatic…..as long as she isn’t really into you.

If you are having casual sex with a girl, i.e. hooking up now and then, maybe the occasional flirty message, without her being clingy and dramatic and obsessive, it means, she’s not that into you. Which isn’t the end of the world, right? I mean, she likes you well enough, she obviously thinks you’re good in bed, you don’t rock her world, probably, but you’re still worth her time, occasionally.

But! If the girl starts to like you, I mean really, actually genuinely develop a crush or feelings for you, casual sex becomes impossible.

And as for the dogsitting….you’re being a little selfishly paranoid. The truth is, even the most liberated feminist New Yorker, who knows she is perfectly capable of taking care of herself, knows it can be pretty nice to have a guy around who will be happy to do you favors every now and then, just because you are pretty.

A girl likes a guy who will do things to for her.

It’s the nature of my job at a theatre that every week I work with a different company manager. This person acts as a liason between their dance company and our theatre, and last week this person happened to be tall and blonde.

We flirted at work, cautiously at first, but by the end of the week it was pretty obvious even to the people I work with that something was going on. One of my co-workers, who had worked with her before, told me that she was into me, and that when she arrived at the beginning of the week she had asked said-co-worker if there were any straight guys around. She wasn’t exactly looking for a boyfriend, she said, just, you know…had some needs that have gone unfulfilled as of late.

Cont’d…

Naturally, this is music to a young guy’s ears (especially one as adamantly single as I am), so the flirting continued. But then we discovered that we live about six blocks from each other. I told my roommate about this, and while she said I should be excited (neighborhood booty call!) I had some reservations. Surely there could be a downside to seeing someone that lives close enough to be called your neighbor?

Well, the downside showed itself the following day at work. We were flirting via email (I asked her why she was late to work, she said she had to go shopping for new underwear…I asked her if it would be inappropriate if I asked what kind), and then, out of the blue:

SHE ASKED IF I COULD DOGSIT FOR HER NEXT WEEK WHILE SHE’S OUT OF TOWN!

I am pretty much freaked out now that this girl-next-door is going to turn out to be a clingy waiting-for-me-on-my-front-porch, spread-rumors-about-me-at-work disaster, unless I am ready to move in next week and start tasting prospective wedding cakes.

Eve, can women ever really handle a true sex-only casual relationship without things turning dramatic? And is the dogsitting a sign for me to back off and look for non-commital sex elsewhere, or am I being selfishly paranoid?

Short answer: Most guys don’t care.

Longer answer:

“…I kiss him passionately, because, after all, he was a pretty good sport and didn’t try to pressure me into staying.”

A pretty good sport, Eve? You mean cause his genius plan of first-date stroll around the corner to “Suprise! It’s my apartment!” didn’t get him laid, but he still walked you to the subway like a gentleman anyway? (“Oh, but he was still sweeeeeet!!!”)

I don’t know how Meg Ryan that scene is, kid; maybe Meg Griffin.

Cont’d…

Here’s this story’s Rule I Wish Women Would Adopt: Don’t reward guys you’re not really into with pity sex/kissing, or anything in-between, just because they’re being chivalrous. It’ll just make them hopeful and confused, and more importantly, they’ll never learn how to actually attract you.

Basically, there exist two possible versions of the date you described: it’s either a sweet First Date (capital F capital D), wine, cheese, with some innocent fooling around at the end, or it’s a quick few drinks before going around the corner to his place to hook up. It seems pretty clear that he was banking on the latter (he directed the walk, after all), but I can’t tell what kind of scenario you thought it was/wanted it to be, and I think that’s important.

As for your question: Did he notice that you were being disingenuous? If you mean physically, then most definitely not (to be fair, grabbing him to make out on the walk to the subway isn’t exactly hinting). Most guys can live in a pretty thick state of denial about whether the girl is enjoying things (even if you’re not trying that hard to fake it). But more to the point, from a horny guy’s perspective, why should he care if you weren’t into it (even as he deceptively led you to his doorstep, awkwardly threw you on the bed, and jabbed his tongue into your throat)? He still had you making out with him by the end of the night, didn’t he?

But here’s the real question: were you turned off to the point that you won’t go out with him again??

I met him at a party. He attached himself to me from almost the second I walked through the door, and though I thought he was friendly, he didn’t make a strong impression. He had a zit on his forehead. He owns a snuggie. At one point he spilled beer down my dress, but when he brought that up on our first date, I had already forgotten.

A few days later, he sent me a message on facebook, inviting me out for a drink. (“So lame!” he bemoaned later, even though I had been flattered.)

The thing is, I don’t get asked out on a late of dates. I get a lot of “hey, we should hang out sometime.”. I get a lot of “what r u doin now?” text messages at nine pm. I get a lot of “Meeting some friends for drinks, you should join”. But a true “Let me take you out for a drink, at this bar, at this time” is a rare treat, so of course I said yes.

Con’t…

I meet him at a nice, small wine bar on the Upper West side, a real departure from the grungy lounges of the LES that I seem to spend a lot of time in. He knows a lot about wine, he orders a cheese plate, we make polite conversation. Grown up. Halfway through the date, he touches my hand. I make a quick decision, and grab his in return. He pays the bill. 

“Want to take a walk?” He asks.

I do. The Upper West Side is nice. I decide that if he takes me on a stroll through Central Park, I may let him kiss me. More Meg Ryan than my usual drunken hookups. We leave the bar. He puts his arm around me. We don’t have much real chemistry, but we do a pretty good imitation of flirty brevity. It’s a warm spring evening in New York, I’m wearing a pretty dress, and life is good.

Suddenly, we stop outside a door on 68th.

“This is my apartment. Let me show you the digs.”

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

We walk through the foyer. He apologizes for the lack of a doorman. Uhm, that’s ok. 

He takes me to his studio apartment. The tour, predictably, does not last long, and then we’re kissing. In terms of romantic setting, his studio is hardly Central Park. I check and see if his eyes are open. They are. It’s weird to kiss and stare at someone, so I close mine. He keeps jabbing his tongue into my mouth. Jab. Jab. Jab. I try to be extra soft and gentle with mine, as a hint. The jabbing continues.

He picks me up and leads me to his bed. I resent being picked up and I resent being plopped back down so conveniently on the bed. But then maybe if I was more into him, I’d think that was hot. We keep kissing. His hands wander. I tell him I can’t stay. He seems genuinely shocked. Sorry, pal.

“Five minutes?”

Sure, ok, five minutes. He attacks me with ferocious tongue jabbing relish. I kiss his neck while I look around the room for a clock. 4 minutes to go.

Finally, I extricate myself from him. He walks me to the subway. I stop and kiss him every few blocks, just to see if his technique has miraculously improved, or if I was just imagining things worse than they were. Jab jab jab. It hadn’t, and I didn’t.

We get to the subway entrance, and I kiss him passionately, because, after all, he was a pretty good sport and didn’t try to pressure me into staying.

“Did you have a good time?” He asks.

Ew. Uh, I had an okay time….must I reflect on it now? Do you really need the validation?

“I had a great time” I reply, sweetly, and kiss him goodbye.

Adam, my question to you is, do men ever have any idea when we’re being disingenuous? Because it’s just so easy.

We’re Adam and Eve: we’re fairly new to this city and its strange, strange dating customs. Sometimes it helps to get the perspective of the opposite sex. So, we created this blog, to chronicle and comment on each other’s sex lives.

Hopefully, we can shed some light on each others experiences, and learn what the other sex is really thinking…