We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. Read online

  This Is What Wearing a Harness Is Like.

  I felt like to really commit to the lesbian thing we had to get ourselves a strap-on, that it wouldn’t be really real until I’d awkwardly tried to have hands-free penis sex. So I did some research (meaning I read two short articles on the Internet), then decided to make a purchase.

  First of all, I had to go into Early to Bed and ask for the plus-size kind, which was weird because I made it weird, not because they did. The woman at the counter handed me a plastic bag filled with what looked like a tangled mess of black jump ropes. She asked me if I wanted to try it on, and I just stood there, dumbfounded, flushing scarlet as I imagined this young woman helping me navigate all those hooks and pulleys, trying to get my angry joints through the right holes. Also, it was like three in the afternoon and I’m not sure what my baby parts smelled like, and please just give it to me in an unmarked plastic bag, okay? I chose a large lavender penis, smooth silicone with a curved tip and a couple of soft ridges, paid for it and the harness, then promptly hid them in my closet for three months.

  Mostly because I’m lazy. And everything I read on the Internet about fucking someone with a strap-on said I would need to practice while also subtly hinting that I could probably stand to be in better shape to provide the most fulfilling sexual experience. What would Helen Keller be doing while I was tiptoeing around my apartment with my big plastic penis waggling between my legs? Or worse, while I was simulating doggy style on a pillow while standing next to the bed?! The one time I took everything out of the packaging to practice assembling it, I walked out of the room for half a second and came back to find the goddamned cat hugging and kicking the dildo while gnawing on its head. “Put my dick down!” I yelled, swatting at her with the edge of a blanket as she continued scratching up my new penis. “Put my motherfucking dick down!”

  I’ve watched enough porn to know how to do it. At least in theory. I was especially anxious to try that move where you mount the lady from behind and push her head down so she won’t notice you’re reaching for that last piece of bed pie you left on the nightstand for a snack. I wasn’t so sure about the other positions:

  Missionary: BORING. Also, I am a heavy person who has a very real fear of collapsing a skinny person’s lungs beneath the weight of my tits or whatever. Also also, the idea that I would have to do something with my face other than grimace in excruciating pain is the worst.

  Girl on top: Fine, but again, I would be thinking a lot about what’s happening on my face, which would be a direct reflection of what was happening with my strapped-on member. So, mostly nothing.

  Spooning: Well now, this sounds lovely and nice. Like cuddling, but more intrusive. But I would for sure go to sleep. Guaranteed. Especially because this asshole is always trying to serve me wine with dinner and then put the moves on me.

  What else even is there? Seriously, do men have to think this goddamned hard?!

  —

  On dildo night Mavis cooked dinner at the lake house in South Haven: salmon, rice, bok choy, and these purple green beans from the farmers’ market that turn green after you cook them. Miniature lemon chess pies. Bourbon. Glasses of wine. This was going to be an event. We crawled into bed afterward, queueing up that Denzel drunk-pilot movie on the iPad, and I was asleep within thirty seconds, not even kidding. Mavis nudged me awake with a rolled-up New Yorker, peering at me disgustedly over her reading glasses, hair tied up in its bedtime topknot. “Seriously? You’re just going to sleep?!” And at that moment I turned into every chubby sitcom dad on every show you’ve ever watched while picking at the peas on your dinner plate.

  “Nope!” I rolled out of the bed and into the bathroom to change into my night caftan, this gauzy black thing that your aunt Susan lent me and that I think is pretty sexy but am probably totally wrong about. I tore open the nondescript plastic pouch the harness came in, slipped my penis through the rubber O-ring attached to the back plate, and secured it at the base. Once I was satisfied that it was firmly in place, I stepped awkwardly through the nylon leg loops, then pulled the loose ends through the backpack strap fasteners to tighten them under my butt meat. Mavis looked on, unimpressed. This is worse than waiting for some flaccid dude to get his dick hard. I connected and tightened the top strap and immediately started giggling because my nipples fucking got caught in that shit and I had to, like, free them. I don’t know what the fuck I was picturing. I mean, I guess I thought it would be like a horn sticking out of my stomach or something? But the fabric backing molded to my mons pubis and the dick dangled between my legs like, well, like an actual dick. Except purple and silicone and unlikely to require Plan B. “IT FEELS WEIRD,” I said, frozen, standing next to the bed like an idiot.

  —

  I lay on my back and she straddled me, grunting as she struggled to jam my huge member into a vagina that had clearly dried up while watching me fool around with all of those stupid levers and pulleys. I circled my hips and laughed while she humped me, feeling nothing below my waist other than a leg cramp that, with my luck, was probably a blood clot. She dismounted moments later, her smoking inner thighs smelling like a Barbie doll someone had set on fire. “That was dumb,” I whined. “Let’s just eat some more pie.”

  She e-mailed me her feelings about the whole thing afterward, because that is what some ladies do.

  If you really wanna know the truth (and this gets all mushy but it’s real) the longer we’re together, the more emotionally intimate and committed we get, the more I want that intimacy and connection during sex. Not all the time, it doesn’t always have to be fingers laced intense eye contact weeping afterward sex, but I love that we can and do have that. And the strap-on isn’t that, at least not yet, and it’s also not yet just fun taboo banging—we’re not skilled enough at it for that. so we’ve gotta practice if we want to get there. And we have such limited time it’s hard to see strap-on expertise becoming our sexual priority. Not saying I want to stop playing around with it (or try one myself), just giving you a little glimpse into my heart.

  Oh brother, all these feelings. This is the part I’ve found I’m less good at, all the processing we have to do. All the thinking and the feeling and the talking that is required. Licking her asshole? Not a problem, bro. I just held my breath and did it until I thought she was going to shit in my mouth and then I backed off. Talking about my emotions for an hour after I just put in thirty-seven minutes of really taxing physical labor?! PROBLEM. I’m not one of these Neanderthals who pretends I was hatched before having fully developed the feelings part of my brain, but talking about them all the time is exhausting. I can’t just pat her on the back and say, “Good job, sister,” I have to stare into her eyes and tell her how much these experiences move me. And I have tried, but I can’t stop laughing. And that shit is rude.

  Couldn’t she have just said, “Meh, your sex game is whack,” while rolling over to fetch her nighttime-specific hand cream and reading materials from the library? Why we gotta be all heart glimpsing about it?! Man, having a penis has turned me into such a dick.

  Fuck It, Bitch. Stay Fat.

  I mean, isn’t this what we really want to do anyway? Because we already know how one loses weight: eat less and exercise more. Or get surgery. Why are we still playing around with the Oreo diet or the whole-milk-and-unpasteurized-cheese diet or the diet where you still get to eat a pound of pasta?! Either you’re ready to eat vegetables and get on a treadmill, or you are not. And I’m ready. I just lost five pounds and here’s how: for two weeks I quit drinking booze and soda and I stopped eating dessert. I didn’t exercise—someone please tell me how you fit heart-rate-raising exercise into a schedule that includes working a real job and trying to get a good night’s sleep?—but I tried to set reasonable goals like “Don’t order one meat on top of another meat at lunch.”

  Dieting is crazy and turns most of us jerks into insufferable babies. Either (1) you’re a crabby asshole on the verge of tears all day long because you’re desperate for a hand
ful of Cheetos, or (2) you’re perched atop a high horse made of fewer than twelve hundred daily calories, glaring down your nose at me and pointing out how much saturated fat is in my unsweetened iced tea. Man, don’t you hate a fat-skinny bitch more than anything else on the planet? You know who I mean—your friend who used to eat mayonnaise straight from the jar but who recently lost twenty pounds doing Whole30 because she was going through a midlife crisis and is now suddenly an expert on health and nutrition, totally qualified to rip the corn dog out of your greasy little clutches. HOLY SHIT, SHUT UP, GIRL. Can’t we all just decide that if you’re over the age of twenty-eight you don’t have to worry about being skinny anymore? Thin is a young woman’s game, and I’m perfectly happy to chill on the bench this quarter with a chili dog. And if I happen to burn a few calories while texting, then great.

  Now, let’s not be crazy. Should you work out? Of course you should. But you don’t need some magazine intern clucking at you from behind the computer screen about taking a jog around the block every once in a while. It doesn’t even have to be hard—just go to Curves a few times a week and trade a couple of meals a day for some Special K or a salad (but not the meat-and-cheese kind). And drink water. To make your belly feel full and distract you from how much you would die for a Dove bar. Also running to the bathroom all the time has to qualify as minimal cardiovascular exercise.

  The hard part isn’t the knowing what to do, it’s the doing. I just had a yogurt. It had 150 calories in it and 2 grams of fat. I wrote it down in a little notebook full of lies that I keep in my backpack to motivate myself to try to eat better. In theory, that notebook is supposed to hold me accountable for all my food choices so that I can get on a path to better eating. In reality, I willfully ignore its existence every time someone brings a pizza to the office or the nights my friends coax me out to the bar or the entire week I spent in LA pretending I didn’t just vow to end my love affair with cheese. I know what I’m supposed to do; I just need someone to tell me how. Every single day until I die.

  Seriously, though, every woman in America is probably an expert on health and exercise based solely upon her subscription to SELF magazine. Do you really need another article about how important it is to eat a big breakfast full of healthy fats and whole grains to curb afternoon snacking? NO, YOU DO NOT. You need bitches to write about how comfortable maternity jeans are for women who aren’t really pregnant. And sexy ways to remove a bra that has four hooks. I’m always amused when they encourage you to eat “instead” foods, like eating an apple when you really want to rub a bacon cheeseburger all over your boobs is a fair substitute. Why not instead list which ice creams have the least calories, by the pint? Oh, sure, you can tell a woman just to run five miles and take up crafting after she gets dumped by some asshole and her friends won’t call her back because they’re tired of listening to her dissect every single aspect of their relationship (“Do you think we’d still be together if I hadn’t hated on that Flight of the Conchords show in 2009?”), but she’d much prefer knowing whether an entire pint of Talenti has fewer calories than one of Häagen-Dazs. That’s an “instead” a girl could really go for.

  “¡Dale!”

  I became legitimately obsessed with Zumba before the grinding of bone on bone in my knees made it impossible to enjoy. Obsessed, even though I am wary of most forms of physical activity, including sex. It all started when I had taken some files to the kennel area of the hospital and found all of the techs and assistants gathered openmouthed around the giant flat-screen computer monitor that hangs in the treatment area. They were watching a YouTube video where an upbeat Latinx woman in sherbet-colored workout gear stood in front of a dance studio full of gorgeous, scantily clad thirtysomethings in clingy dancewear, leading them in choreographed Salsa-lite dance moves. “What are they doing?” I asked Betty. She rolled her eyes and was like, “This is Zumba, Sam,” like I was the asshole for not knowing.

  “I thought Zumba was a region in Mexico.” I shrugged, starting to walk away so I wouldn’t inadvertently step in dog puke or get sprayed by anal glands, then did a double take. “Wait a minute, are they dancing to Pitbull?!” I shoved Betty out of the way, tossed the files on the floor (sorry, animals!), and started to cha-cha and shake my jelly along with the sexy young things in the video. Pitbull makes me want to take my pants off. We painfully mimicked that video three times, and by the end I was sweaty and hoarse from screaming “¡Dámelo!” at the top of my lungs for twenty minutes. I signed up for a class the very next day.

  Working out is a bummer. Walking on a treadmill for forty-five minutes while listening to the same Metallica playlist over and over and trying to read the closed captioning of a television show you don’t even care about is a total drag. The elliptical machine makes uncoordinated people like me look stupid. The stair machine reduces mere mortals to tears within four minutes. The stationary bike feels like uncomfortable butt sex. Who wants to put the Twinkies down and get out of bed for any of that? I’m not sure that I have even once experienced the shot of endorphins surging through your body that is supposed to occur when you’re exercising, unless I didn’t recognize it because it feels the same as a heart attack or vomiting up your breakfast onto the sparkling white gym shoes you bought because flip-flops are frowned upon at the gym.

  A couple of months ago my vegan Russian trainer moved to Hawaii so she could run ultramarathons in a temperate climate and mack on girls in grass skirts. At first I was sad, but then I thought, “Now there will be no one to scowl disapprovingly at my attempted push-ups! Hooray!” During our last training session, right after I’d completed seven of the fifty sit-ups she’d asked me to do, she said, “You are my most disappointing client.” And I interpreted that as “This tiny human says it’s okay for me to keep eating red meat and cupcakes in bed. Good talk.” We did some partner stretches, and after she adjusted my knee for the fourth time, she said, “I worry about you. We are going to text after I move.” I nodded in agreement while my brain said, “Fine! Joke’s on you! Texts don’t have eyes!”

  A week after she left I got a text from THE RUSSIAN.

  THE RUSSIAN: What’s for lunch?

  ME: Lean Cuisine!!!

  THE RUSSIAN: and what?

  ME: Water…?

  THE RUSSIAN: AND WHAT?

  ME, breaking into a liar’s sweat: Um, oxygen?

  THE RUSSIAN: WHAT ELSE?! [I could hear her shouting in my brain.]

  ME, still trying to be on that bullshit: Granola bar.

  THE RUSSIAN: You’re lying.

  ME: Okay, okay, you caught me. A granola bar and an apple.

  THE RUSSIAN: …

  ME: And a Diet Coke.

  THE RUSSIAN: …

  ME: Oh, and I had half a doughnut this morning.

  THE RUSSIAN: …

  ME: Okay, fine, a WHOLE doughnut.

  THE RUSSIAN: …

  ME, sighing at my screen: *Two* doughnuts.

  THE RUSSIAN: …

  ME: And I might have also had a beer before work.

  THE RUSSIAN: I hate you.

  —

  I’m not going to lie and say that I started caring about myself, because for real I mostly don’t. But at some point I was just like, “Yo, I do not move,” and I’m not old enough to get away with that yet. I’m lazy and research is boring, but I got on the Internet anyway to try to find out whatever I could about this Zumba torture I was about to subject myself to.

  “Ditch the workout and join the party!” the official website shouted at my eyeballs. Zumba “is the only Latin-inspired dance-fitness program that blends red-hot international music and contagious steps to form a ‘fitness-party’ that is downright addictive!” I am suspicious of words like “addictive” and “contagious,” and I immediately blanched while clicking through all the pictures of lean and toned soccer moms gyrating in crop tops and neon bicycle shorts, their perfect bodies beaded with sweat, their toothy, openmouthed grins screaming, “I AM HAVING THE TIME OF MY YOUNG AND CONVENTION
ALLY ATTRACTIVE LIFE.”

  I am a negative person by nature, and I typically shy away from anything that requires me to be having visible fun. I like to do stuff that I can sit quietly in the back and enjoy, and I have spent my entire adult life perfecting a bored-yet-slightly-amused-and-entertained facade. And I just don’t understand being excited about exercise. It’s like doing a cartwheel on your way to have a root canal; my face just doesn’t light up at the prospect of abdominal isolations. Also? The pictures. Look at that instructor guy with his shirt off. I’m not trying to embarrass myself tripping over my feet doing watered-down salsa steps while some red-hot international instructor rolls his eyes at me in disgust and bounces quarters off his ridiculously chiseled backside.

  The Sunday morning of my first class, I got up and put on socks and my old New Balances while remaining in my pajamas. I can’t compete with these jerks doing a revolutionary new fitness concept while wearing bikini tops, so I decided it was in the best interest of my self-esteem to go to the opposite end of the clothing spectrum and just look like absolute trash. Because even if I busted my melon open while trying to cumbia to the beat, at least my jibs would be appropriately covered. I took thirty-seven Aleve and a Norco and tried to inconspicuously stretch my Achilles on the train platform so it wouldn’t snap in the middle of a routine. When I got to the gym I paid the fifteen-dollar drop-in fee and found my way up to the dance studio. I hovered nervously near the back of the gym, anxious for all the JLo look-alikes to start pouring in and making me feel bad about that container of Greek yogurt I’d eaten in the locker room.