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I’m not much for New Year’s resolutions, but at the beginning of 2008 I came up with one I thought was solid, if self-indulgent: it was time to start having sex that was, on the whole, more satisfying than funny. This came at the end of a couple-year stretch of random hookups, during each of which, it seemed, I would resign myself to the inevitability that this wasn’t very much fun, but at least it’d make a good story. I’d think about my best friend. She’s going to love this.
The second to last of these zany affairs was in December 2007. The boy was named Vince, though it should be mentioned that, on the night in question, he also introduced himself to a friend of mine as “Tony.” I met him at FKA, the monthly queer party at the north-side bar Big Chicks, where we started dancing and, pretty quickly, making out. We made small talk: “How old are you?” “What do you do?” He worked at H&M. He had been a model. He was part Japanese, part Cantonese, part French, part Vietnamese. He acted eccentric, and he dressed like a hipster. He was hot.
He was also forward. He asked if I lived nearby, and if he could come over. He could! As soon as we left the bar he started bitching about the people in it—he hated “scenesters” and “queers,” people for whom he was too “sophisticated.” “I mean, I’m just totally rock ‘n’ roll,” he said, once. And then again. And then, maybe, ten more times. Totally rock ‘n’ roll.
But now it was time to really get to know each other. So he started peppering me with questions. “Do you like Asian guys?” “Have you ever been with an Asian guy?” “Do you like Asian culture?” “Do you like Asian food?” He asked all these questions repeatedly. I answered awkwardly.
As I closed the door to my apartment he was still talking. He took his pants off right away. “I should tell you,” he said. “I’m not easy.” Indeed: he was not easy. We made out a little more. At one point, he paused and looked at me, thoughtfully. “You’re not a very good kisser,” he said. He offered to set me straight: “It’s like dancing—one person leads. Here, I’ll lead.” Then he stuck his tongue as far into my mouth as he could and rotated it in a perfectly circular motion, like what my mouth needed was nothing so much as a good, thorough scrubbing. He gave me a satisfied look. “Now you lead!” he said. He was still talking when I fell asleep.
And he was still talking when I woke up, though I’m sure he must have stopped at some point. “Would you sleep with a black guy?” he asked, by way of a little morning pillow talk. I would, and I told him this. He said, “Oh my god, you’re so not shallow like other gay guys!” If I left for work now, I’d be about an hour early, but it seemed a small price to pay. We started getting dressed. Vince, who never stumbled across an observation he didn’t think worthy of repeating five or six times, now said, “God, this is just like Sex and the City.” And then he said it a few more times.
I left him at the bus stop. He made me write his phone number on my hand because, he told me—more than once—he wanted us to watch “artsy” movies together. I washed my hands as soon as I got to work.