I dated this guy on and off for about a year, about a year ago. Well, to say “date” would be generous. We had a mutual understanding.
Everything about us was transactional. We knew what we were to each other, and treated each other as such, no more, no less. He is the only partner I’ve ever had who respected me. He never told me that he loved me. Never promised me a future, never questioned me about my day, no, how was work? What do you do? How was the ride in? Do you have any siblings? He never pretended to care about my life. He never asked me anything. His name was Steven, or Stefan; I honestly could not tell you which.
He was short, and full of himself, boastful 5’7” standing at, 5’4″. He worked at a bar and never had much to say. I’m still unsure whether he could even read. On our second date I had made a few passive references to To Kill a Mockingbird, to which his response was, “Oh, cool. I didn’t know you liked to hunt.” He sculpted his hair into a swooping tidal wave, so stiff with gel that I genuinely got a paper cut once trying to run my hands through it.
Stefan—Steven and my rapport was built on mutual apathy. I don’t think he ever actually listened to anything I ever said but would take me out, let me talk about whatever I wanted for a few hours, and then take us back to his place, where he’d get what he wanted—sex, and someone to hold him while he fell asleep. He always ordered my Uber home in the morning. There was no holding each other in the morning, no lingering kisses, no promises of plans we had no intention of keeping.
One might wonder why go back, again and again, to someone I did not like, who I found aggressively uninteresting, our conversations one-sided and encounters insipid? Surely, he must have been good in bed. He must have been SPECTACULAR, really, if I was so willing to haul ass up to Yonkers to sleep with him.
You would be mistaken.
Steven—Stefan—was—is, the worst sex I have ever had in my entire life.
We would start the same. We would stumble into his Yonkers condo, drunk off a mix of Guinness and shots, always from an Irish place in Midtown. He’d grab my face, call me beautiful, tell me I reminded him of all the girls back home—the Saoirses and Niamhs and Caoimhes and Theresas—and kiss me with the fierceness and passion of a horse eating peanut butter, smacking lips and tongue, trying to slurp sticky residue off teeth.
He’d pick me up and try to carry me to the bed, but then, shortly thereafter, put me down and call me a “big girl.” He would ritualistically slap my ass and sing, dat ass though! We’d collapse on his bed, and he’d kiss and lick and bite me everywhere while I would think about whether I had unplugged the hairdryer before I left my apartment, if I should go to Trader Joe’s in the morning or if I could hold off until Monday. He’d shout, Yeah, you like that; Good girl; My little Yankee slut. The things he shouted during sex were the most interesting things about him. I could see a glimpse of potential intelligence in his creative outbursts. I cackled when he called me a “Yankee slut.” He couldn’t stay hard after that.
After his huffing and puffing and shouting and gnawing on my labia and my vulva and the insides of my thighs—never my clit—he’d be, totally justifiably so, tired, and ask me to get on top, where I would happily comply, hoping each time that, this time, it would be different than the last. It was always the same.
I’d straddle him, kiss his neck while I guided him in me, and then I’d get into a rhythm, close my eyes and arch my back as I’d grind faster, more intense as I’d start picturing literally anyone else other than him—an old boyfriend, a former teacher, Gillian Anderson. As I would go to touch myself, he would respond with a general disdain for female pleasure—Why are you touching yourself? Masturbation is sinful! (yeah, while inside me); and secondly, with the same plea—Babe, no, let’s not. I don’t want to fuck. Let’s make love. His version of “Making love” was utter stillness, a complete lack of friction with a singular pathetic thrust, barely a pulse, every, maybe, thirty seconds or so.
Nonetheless, Steven—Stefan—remained a part of my roster, on-again off-again until he returned to the Saoirses and Niamhs and Caoimhes and Theresas. I think of him now and then. Not with longing, but with a … curiosity. Maybe for the clarity his detachment offered. There were no games, no performative warmth, no future promised and never delivered. I was a body, and he was a body, and sometimes, yes, that can be enough.
I think that kind of honesty—clear-eyed, unromantic, impassive—might be the closest thing to respect I’ve ever experienced from a man.
I miss him. But only sometimes, as I said, he never asked me anything, but most especially, he never asked me to be smaller, or demanded I be quieter, never implored me to be easier to stomach, easier to love.
