I guess that was why Wendy was so confident we’d be perfect for each other. I drunkenly told her I was looking for a pervert, and Josh was obviously comfortable with sex. In fact, it seemed like he still worked in the sex industry, but from the standpoint of making it
legit
. Much of his career, he said, was founded on the mainstreaming of sexuality, which is a nice way of saying he made porn more popular. And, on top of that, he was a nice Jewish boy who grew up minutes from my native Scarsdale. Even if this guy was the total square I suspected—AVN Awards notwithstanding—I was at least probably going to get laid for the first time in what seemed like forever.
When it came down to our making plans to meet, Josh asked me “what I liked to do,” which seemed weird. Don’t you just ask somebody for coffee or lunch before getting written confirmation that your date doesn’t hate drinking or eating? I told him to meet me for a drink, and got to the restaurant he suggested to find a good- looking guy a bit taller than me in a newsboy cap drinking at the bar. He was wearing a vest, too, and a thumb ring, which is never OK, but I tried hard not to overjudge his overaccessorizing, and let him be nice to me, which he was. He was very, very
nice
.
For a guy who did so much work in the euphemistically generous “adult entertainment industry,” Josh was shockingly dull. He didn’t have much to say about our mutual friend except that she was “great,” and he hadn’t heard of the TV shows I wanted to talk about. He told me that he was close with his dad and wanted kids one day. He said he did yoga and tried to eat healthily. And when I asked him about his work, he bragged about being responsible for getting a travel kit with a vibrator, lube, and condom tucked inside a discreet makeup case sold at high-end Manhattan department stores.
He was, true to his goals of “mainstreaming sexuality,” very comfortable talking about porn and sex, which are not the same thing. And even though he mentioned having been more professionally involved with porn than he was currently, it was clear that Josh still considered himself in “the industry.” He wanted to talk shop about which actresses did anal and which only did lesbian scenes. He debated the merits of broadband versus DVD formats. And just like a teenager who’d fallen love with pot, it wasn’t enough for Josh to watch the occasional dirty movie—he had to wear his vocation on his sleeve, like the seventeen-year-old who brandishes the culture of his chosen vice, buying marijuana-themed clothing and taking up hacky-sack. Josh had taken what was unspoken into what was everyday for a living, and “everyday” is, coincidentally, another word for “boring,” which he was. We parted that night with a hug.
Josh called me a few days later, which was also very, very
nice
. It was clear he liked me and I appreciated that he followed up the way I think somebody should after a date, so I agreed to go out with him again. That’s a rule I made up that I think is a good one: If I’m iffy about being attracted to somebody right away, but he goes about pursuing me in a way I think is upstanding, I always give the guy a second chance. It’s a way to be strict about your standards, but open-minded about your contenders. Men are way more likely to become more appealing to you over time than they are to magically grow manners.
BEFORE OUR
second date, Josh flirted with me in an e-mail, warning me that “If I was a good girl, Santa would bring me some presents.” Both of us were Jewish, but maybe he thought it was sexy to refer to himself as Father Christmas, in the third person. This time we both had dinner, because I guess he assumed that dinner was something I “liked to do.” He was right!
As soon as we sat down at our table, Josh gave me a shopping bag full of porno-themed comic books, tchotchkes with his porn-star client’s face all over them, a copy of her erotic novel, and that travel kit with the lube and vibe inside of it.
“I figured it was too soon to bring you the big glass dildo from my office,” he disclosed, tipping me off to his decision process and referencing our nascent courtship. “So I brought the travel kit. It’s really high-end, and it comes in a nondescript makeup case, so it’s
discreet
.”
I intoned the same “heh-heh-heh” he gave me on the phone, then watched Josh get way too drunk way too fast, which was embarrassing for both of us. He ordered sake, and fed me the cucumber garnish that came with it. The first time I bit into the cucumber, to be sporting, but the second and third time, I declined to play along, unwilling to stop midsentence to chomp on crudités.
Josh had a lower booze tolerance than me, which I did not believe was possible. It takes a Butter Rum lifesaver and a teaspoon of Dimetapp for me to wear a lampshade like a hat and forget I can’t dance to hip-hop. But after two and a half sakes, whatever inhibitions Josh actually had melted away like a suppository, and as soon as we got outside the restaurant, he impulsively decided he wanted to take me to a movie. He leaned on my shoulder while I helped him stumble to Union Square, only to find the theater was closed, to Josh’s cries of “Damnit!” He suggested we go to his apartment to watch a movie instead. Saying “sure” and meaning “why not,” I hailed a cab and pushed Josh into the backseat. He was a mess.
I WENT
back to his apartment and recoiled at its details. It was spacious and in a lovely building, like Wendy had told me, but everything Josh had added to it spoke to his poor taste. There was bad art on his walls,
The Family Guy
on DVD, and only two books: a vegetarian cookbook and the new Oliver Sacks in hardcover.
“How is
Musicophilia
?” I asked my gradually sobering date.
“Oh, I haven’t read it,” he admitted. “It was a gift.”
Josh opened a red Netflix envelope and put in a DVD as I made myself as comfortable as I could on his deep velour couch. The movie he’d rented was a documentary called
Paper Clips
, and it was about the efforts of an elementary school class in Tennessee to collect six million paper clips in an effort to represent, with office supplies, the number of Jews killed during World War II.Yes, that’s the movie Josh chose to show me back at his place to set the mood for seduction. I’m as shocked as you are: Who knew they taught about the Holocaust in Tennessee?
He hit PLAY, and then began to give me a back massage, which is a coward’s way of making one’s way to the sexy bits that live on the front of a lady’s torso. As his hands migrated over my shoulders and onto my breasts, the audio from the movie morally distracted me from being sexually aroused. “Josef Mengele . . . paper clips . . . millions gassed . . . about an hour from Chattanooga.” The smell of sake on Josh’s breath and the coldness from the metal ring he wore on his thumb invited the comparison to the film’s subject as parallel atrocities.
I’m going to go ahead and say it:
Paper Clips
was a misguided choice for mood-making. But it was only Josh’s latest in an evening-long series of gaffes. The booze at dinner enabled him to tell me, over my protests, about a three-way he had with two women that he swore was “the most beautiful, nonjudgmental,
natural
experience ever,” which was sad and gross and not something I wanted to hear from a guy on a date, even if I
were
attracted to him. Josh just didn’t know when to shut it. Now that we were back at his place, I just wanted to close my eyes and pretend he was somebody smarter, while I made the best of a mediocre date and let him feel my boobs.
I grabbed the remote and muted the movie when they started showing photos of the ditches the Nazis used as mass graves, because I am a
class act
, and then we started kissing. It was tepid and twee; there was a lot of caressing and ear-breathing. I kept my eyes closed after noticing the persistence of his moronic grin. Things proceeded predictably, until Josh took his pants off and I noticed that he’d shaved all his pubic hair. I credited his grooming choice to the double-pronged influence of watching a ton of porno and thinking too much about one’s genitals.
Josh nodded at me while I beheld his shorn business with an imbecilic smile on his face, and maintained his facial expression as I removed my clothes, like I was stripping for a toddler with gas. I don’t like smiling or laughing in bed, by the way. I’m funny in real life: When I’m getting fucked, I’m off the clock. I prefer a little reverent solemnity, like in church. But once I was naked, Josh piped in again with his “What do you like?” shtick, and I said, bluntly, “Coming.”
I let him use the sex toys he got for me until I was done, and then began deferring his offers to sleep over. I didn’t like him enough for that kind of intimacy, and if I wanted to wake up to a shitty painting of a flower pot hung on an exposed brick wall, I would sleep in a college town coffee shop.
As soon it was clear to him I wasn’t going to be convinced to spend the night, Josh threw clothes on and insisted on walking me downstairs. I begged him not to, hoping he would get it that I was done. But soon, he had his Mets cap on and paraded me past his doorman, with whom he exchanged overly demonstrative pleasantries for my benefit. They high- fived each other, so Josh could show off how friendly he was with the guy who worked in his building. I wanted so badly to get out of there.
“Maybe I’ll call you about Saturday night,” he said, on what was now Friday morning.
“OK!” I said in an overly high-pitched voice intended to indicate an enthusiastically noncommittal “Maybe!” to an optimist, and “No, thank you,” to the layman well-versed in social cues. Josh, who was not moderately versed in anything, took my response as a cue to
imitate
me.
“OK!” he said, the same way I did, only exaggerated, and with a “funny” face.
What was once neutral about him, then annoying, instantly became obnoxious. You just don’t imitate people like you’re making fun of them if you don’t want them to hate you. He asked if he could put me in a cab.
“No,” I said. “I live four blocks away.” He insisted I call him once I got back to my apartment. It was, again, very, very nice of him, but at this point, his second chance was up.
I walked home feeling guilty and awful. Was there something wrong with me that Josh’s offer to hail me a cab made me so angry? What was my problem, anyway? A guy asks me to call him so he knows I got home in one piece, and I want to puke on his shoes and flee the scene of the crime, maybe stopping at the good deli on the way home for a cookie. Is that normal? How was I ever going to find a boyfriend, a husband, or a man who might actually be a good father from the pool of guys I actually found attractive? Would the guy who told me to come out to L.A. so he could slap me in the face while I sucked his dick laugh patiently at my cousin Sherman’s corny jokes on Passover? Would the guy who said with utmost romantic sincerity that “fucking me was like porno” be there to wipe down my sweaty forehead after hours of labor? To nurse me through panic attacks and career shifts and the alternating Saturday afternoons of crying in long stretches for no apparent reason other than that it’s simply a part of a messy, human adult life? Here was a good guy—a
mensch
—with the libido of a teenager and a nice apartment who makes a good living, who wants to take me out on a Saturday night, and I couldn’t even do him the favor of falling in love with him and teabagging his shaved junk.
I DID
a lot of things in the mid-90s that were incredibly embarrassing. In college, I wrapped myself up in packing tape and read the last chapter of
Ulysses
backwards in order to get a passing grade in a performance art workshop. I took part in a potluck/play reading of an experimental musical written by a skater named “Piglet,” which was based equally in part on the music of Frank Zappa and the aphorisms printed inside fortune cookies. I wore blue fishnet stockings with green Doc Martens. I ate a pot brownie and saw a film about roller coasters narrated by Harry Shearer at the Sony IMAX Theater, which I remember being deeply confusing. But I also made the foolish choice to connect deeply with a Milos Forman movie about a filthy pornographer. No, I’m not talking about
Amadeus
.
In
The People Versus Larry Flynt
, the handsome, charming Woody Harrelson plays the decrepit, revolting pervert who founded
Hustler
magazine, and Courtney Love, when she was an emerging actress instead of just a mess with a melting face, played Flynt’s wife, Althea.
I remember nursing an adolescent infatuation with pornography when I first saw that movie in college. I was reading books mired in the philosophy of post-feminism, which bred in me a hefty contempt for the 1970s kind of feminism that held stripping, hooking, and posing for nudie photos as vocations degrading to women. “Don’t you know how
empowering
being a sex object is,” I would exclaim to sociology professors, expecting their hair to stand on end and monocles to magically sprout from nothing, only to pop out of their eye sockets in amazement.
Now my attitude toward pornography is markedly different; I don’t think the insane amount of crazy porn that’s instantaneously mass-accessed on a daily basis by men of all ages is so great for women, in general. Maybe I’ve gotten cranky in my old age, maybe I’m scared of the Internet, or maybe I’ve just concluded that life is harder for girls; that it’s more difficult for us to rise to any sort of professional prominence than it is for men, or to be taken seriously if we’re too sexy.
I’m not saying I don’t watch porn. Of course I watch porn, because I am not a
nun.
And I don’t watch “erotica” with a “story” or “period costumes” in it, because I am also not a
lesbian
. The stuff I watch is not stuff I would ever do in my life, but I also know the difference between what I want to fantasize about and what I want to do with my weekend. If I were going to watch a man and woman of average height and weight grope and fuck one another, it would be a waste; like shopping at a chain store when you’re on vacation.