My name is not Naomi. It’s a nom de plume to protect my identity. Though names and identifying details have been changed, all the stories in Gen XXX are true. My anonymity means that I rely on word of mouth to grow my reader base, so if you’re intrigued by what you’re reading, please do share with friends and consider becoming a paid subscriber. (Upgrading to paid means that you get exclusive access to my “Saturday posts”: bimonthly Q&As about sex with other women in my cohort. Here’s a recent one.)
I disconnect from the profiles of three men over the course of three days. The first is “Geoff” from Hinge, with whom I have a back and forth over the weekend. Geoff, who has given me his full name unprompted, keeps wondering if I’ve Googled him. This makes me suspicious, and irritated – why is it so important that I Google him? Is there something he isn’t telling me? Does he want to brag about an accomplishment? Does he have a confession to make? Something else? Then why doesn’t he just say so?
It turns out that it’s “something else”: Geoff has physical limitations stemming from a bad accident in his youth. This, I realize, probably explains why all of his photographs, save one, show only his face.
I don’t unmatch from Geoff because he has a disability, or even because he doesn’t tell me about his disability directly. I unmatch because over the weekend, he becomes weirdly hostile and defensive, misrepresenting both my intentions and my words as our conversation progresses.
Geoff, who, as you’ll recall, is traveling the country in his RV, is holed up at a camp about half an hour outside of LA and says he wants to talk on video with me before meeting. When I tell him I’d like to hear more about his accident, and his recovery, he suggests that we use an app called Marco Polo.
“It’s important for me to get to know you as friends in this manner before we could possibly meet,” he says. “I don’t want to put you in an uncomfortable position and I don’t want to be in one.”
“Yes, I imagine text isn’t good for it,” I say. I ignore his comment about Marco Polo. I don’t want to download an app if we’re already texting from our iMessage accounts. “I’m open to FaceTime if that’s easier,” I say. “Since we already have one another’s numbers.”
“We can schedule a video date at some point,” he responds.
The next day, in the early afternoon, I get a message from Geoff that seems to come out of nowhere.
“Naomi, I don’t think we’re politically aligned: I don’t support the AIPAC-owned branch of the DNC, I’m a progressive,” he says, a little self-righteously. He appends a shruggie emoji to the end of the text.
This gets my hackles up. “What leads you to believe I have a positive opinion of AIPAC?” I ask.
“Because it includes Biden/Harris,” he says. “I thought you were a Kamala supporter.”
I realize that Geoff is referring to a picture on my profile in which I’m wearing a Kamala campaign button.
“I am a Kamala supporter, especially in the context of her running against a sociopathic fascist,” I write. “Regardless, if that’s a dealbreaker, so be it.”
I send my own shruggie emoji back.
Things devolve from there. Geoff says that no, supporting Kamala Harris isn’t a dealbreaker, but that “it didn’t seem like you wanted to communicate except for a phone/meetup date.”
“I wanted to get to know you better first, like the political discussion,” he adds.
“Political discussion”? Does he mean the one he just initiated? My head is swimming.
“I’m confused by this,” I write. “Yesterday I mentioned a FaceTime meeting — directly — and your response was ‘…at some point.’ Not exactly a vote of confidence, or moving the ball forward. I interpreted that as you being lukewarm on the idea. We are obviously not communicating well.”
Geoff says he was “very clear” about his preferred method of communication. He adds that “all anyone from California has told me about LA is not to go to LA due to the insane traffic. So it’s a huge effort to travel there, and you don’t want to communicate until I get there? That doesn’t make sense to me.”
Geoff pivots to something else: a brief conversation we had as to whether I have tattoos.
“I asked if you have a tattoo and your response was, ‘Why are you asking me questions?’ So yeah, the communication was bad.”
I begin to get heated.
“I said nothing about not communicating until you get to LA,” I tell him. “Absolutely nothing.”
“You may be confusing me with someone else, or misreading me. Probably the latter, because I also didn’t say ‘Why are you asking me questions?’ in response to your query regarding tattoos. Literally didn’t type those words. I encourage you to go back and look at that exchange.”
Now I’m beyond heated. I’m furious. I feel like I’m being gaslit.
“Listen, words and accurate characterizations matter to me,” I continue. “I don’t like assumptions, and I don’t like having words put in my mouth or my motives impugned or my politics questioned.”
Then I tell Geoff “good luck,” block his number and unmatch from him on Hinge.
Later, I tell Astrid and Olivia about the exchange and show them the screengrabs.
Olivia explodes in disbelief. “Combative, controlling, depressive, morose and presumptuous,” she declares. “He’s a terrible person. And he’d be a great character for a bad TV show.”
“Jesus,” says Astrid. “I think the kids say, ‘Bye boi.’”
“It was too much,” I tell her. “He made things up that I didn’t say.” I tell her that it feels like self-sabotage.
“A hundred percent,” she says. “Don’t sit with this too long but definitely write about it. Does it all boil down to the assumptions we make? The stories we write in our heads?”
Dick #2 is named Michael, a 35-year-old who I match with on the sex app. Michael tells me that he is in town for one night. Staying at the Biltmore downtown. He describes himself as Sicilian, which is technically true, but when I press him on it, he tells me that he was born and raised in Bensonhurst.
“Why not just say you’re Italian American?” I ask.
Michael claims that Sicilians are known for having large penises – he says his is 10 inches long. I think about telling Michael that I’ve been with enough Italian men to know that their penises range in size from small to large like everyone else’s, but decide not to burst his bubble.
I give my regrets to Michael. I won’t be able to meet up this evening, I explain. I’m babysitting my friends’ kids. Michael assumes that I’m displeased about this. I explain that no, I really love hanging with my friends’ kids. They’re delightful and fun and smart and hilarious. In fact, they’re some of my all-time faves, and, as someone who knows a lot of great kids, that’s saying something.
Michael suggests that maybe he can come meet me for a drink after I’m finished babysitting.
“I’ll think about it,” I say. “But I think I’m a little old for you!”
“Well, you look good,” he says. “I bet you have perky tits and a flat stomach. And I’d move here just to be with those beautiful eyes and legs.”
Perky tits and a flat stomach! I laugh out loud.
“Also, I like older women, because you know how to fuck,” he adds. “I want to be your boy toy. Can you send me more pics of you?”
I’m pretty sure I know what Michael is asking for, and I’m not going to indulge it. “There are enough pics on my profile,” I say. “Also, I don’t send nudes.”
I get up from the dining table to get a glass of water. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four-one thousand. Five.
I go back to my phone, and it’s just as I predicted: Michael has “left the conversation.”
“Called it!” I holler to no one in particular. Then I get things ready for when the kids come over.
You know who isn’t a dick? Antoine, with whom I have a lovely video chat earlier that day. Antoine has a bad cold and is wearing a hoodie. I tell him he looks cozy. I want to kiss his heart-shaped lips and stroke his beard, I tell him. We talk about how we miss one another. I tell him that I miss him most at night, when I’m getting ready for bed. There was something comforting about the way we went about our nighttime routines, swapping places in front of the sink to brush our teeth. Taking showers. Cuddling up.
The conversation takes a turn for the erotic. “I wish I was there to fuck you,” Antoine says. “Me too,” I say. I’m sitting in the sun on my patio, wearing shorts and a tank top with no bra. I rest the phone on the back of a chair chair opposite mine and put my feet up on the seat so that Antoine can see the entire length of my bare legs from a low angle. He goes wild.
“Oh my god,” he writes.
Antoine tells me that he needs to call me back in a little bit and I realize that he’s probably going to go make himself come.
On Sunday, Max texts me a link to an episode of the New York Times’ “Modern Love” podcast, featuring an interview with Mireille Silcoff, the author of the February NY Times Magazine feature in which she says that Gen X women are having the best sex.
Silcoff is well-spoken and engaging but, as is the case with her piece, she offers zero racial analysis or acknowledgement of the heteronormativity of her thesis. Nor is there much, if any, discussion as to how the third-wave feminist movement might have influenced Gen X women’s ideas about sex. In other words, things feel a bit myopic. At one point in the podcast, when Silcoff describes her youth as a time in which women didn’t want “big butts,” it occurs to me that she probably didn’t know any women of color.
I text Max a list of my complaints about the episode.
“But, hey, maybe she’ll put those things in her book,” I say.
“Maybe you should put those things in your book,” Max says.
Is it unfair to call these guys “dicks”? On Saturday, I go on a date with a man named Alejandro at Alcove on Hillhurst — I have a coffee and he has a plate of eggs Benedict. We have a lovely time chatting. It turns out that he’s in a non-monogamous relationship with a woman who lives back in his native Mexico. He hasn’t seen her in months, though. She’s spooked about the political situation in the U.S. and is unwilling to travel here to see him, and he, quite understandably, is not willing to leave the United States in order to see her.
After about an hour and a half of conversation with Alejandro, I get up to leave and we make plans to hang out again on Wednesday. He sends me a few voice memos later that day, telling me how much he enjoyed meeting me and making references to certain elements of our conversation, like how mortified he is about a bad cold sore on his lip. But on Sunday I don’t hear anything from him at all, and by Tuesday he hasn’t confirmed our date for the next day.
Tuesday is the day that I’m supposed to go on a coffee date — also at Alcove — with Jonathan, a 60-something self-described “successful filmmaker and artist.” The morning of the date, Jonathan messages to say that he has to cancel because he has a bad cold and is leaving for London the following Monday. He needs to be healthy for the trip, he says. I tell him I understand, and that I hope he feels better, and then I unmatch him. He said nothing in his message to me about his scheduled return to L.A., nor did he mention anything about meeting up after he gets back.
I also note that it’s been six days since I texted the high school art teacher “hello.” He hasn’t yet responded.
I remember what Astrid said.
“Does it all boil down to the assumptions we make? The stories we write in our heads?”
Sometimes I wonder if I need to scour the internet for information about myself. Male flakiness, or ghosting, or sudden about-faces make me worry that the men I plan dates with are Googling my picture and finding something that they don’t much like. Images of me from when I was heavier? This Substack? Suggestions that I’m aligned with the AIPAC wing of the Democratic party? Something else?
When I talk to the writer Kimberly Harrington about her experiences on sex and dating apps — like my other Q&As, my conversation with Kimberly will be available to paid subscribers — she makes it clear that she’s well-acquainted with online dating’s more negative aspects. “Obviously it’s not all ups,” she tells me. “You get ghosted, you get blown off, you do something and you push things too far, you feel like shit or someone bails on you,” she tells me.
Kimberly is glamorous and smart and funny, so the idea that she gets ghosted, or blown off, or bailed on, makes me feel somewhat better about my own struggles and occasional humiliations.
I have some things to add to last week’s list of dating profile red flags:
•Captive tigers. (Cruel.)
•Thick necks. (Too much weightlifting.)
One green flag:
•Jon Hamm’s extremely attractive body double.
But the guy who claims to be Jon Hamm’s body double never responds to my message on Bumble, even though he liked my profile first.
I’m torn as to whether I should tell Antoine about the sex party I might go to. I mean, we haven’t discussed our sex lives outside of the one we have together, and I don’t know if it’s even accurate to say we have a sex life “together” since we’ve only been in one another’s presence on two separate trips and he lives 6,000 miles away. I suspect the reason Antoine hasn’t asked me anything about my sex life is because he doesn’t want to know the answer or thinks it’s none of his business. Same goes for me. I suspect it would upset me.
But maybe I’m making assumptions. Writing stories in my head. Maybe it would be better — healthier, I mean — if Antoine and I were not just open about our wants and desires vis a vis one another, but other people. Maybe I should accept the idea that the Shibari rope that we bought together at the fetish store in Echo Park will be used on other women — and maybe I should be okay with that. Maybe, instead of just saying that we miss one another and want one another, we should broach the subject of what happens if and when that stops.
I haven’t been dreaming much about Nico anymore, though, during my waking hours, I often wonder if he thinks of me. Sometimes I’m tempted to re-download the app on which he and I used to talk. (I’ve done this in the past.) But any possible scenario — he’s gone silent, or he’s deleted the chat, or he’s attempted to re-engage — will cause me upset. So I stay away. Also, I had the last word. A simple and final-sounding “thanks.”
Margot is having a hard time unhooking from that guy Luke. She sends me information about anxious attachment styles, like an Instagram post titled “The Nervous System of a Woman Who Was Always Left to Regulate Alone.” I click on this. A couple of days later she sends me a story from Cosmo: “Can You Still Date Men While Decentering Them From Your Life?” I don’t click on this one.
“I want to decenter men,” she texts me.
“I do too!” I respond. “I mean, maybe.”
Margot sends me a laughing emoji in return.
Like I said last week, I do a lot more on a day to day basis, or in conversation with friends, than just center men, though the centering of men — meaning, my use of dating and sex apps — takes up a fair amount of time, usually in the evenings or on the weekends.
Using apps and focusing my attention on guys makes me feel both excited and ashamed. Excited because I feel like a teenager again. Ashamed because centering men is not supposed to be part of my politics, or my person. I’m a feminist, for fuck’s sake, and giving male attention more currency than it deserves, or even getting irritated by men who act like dicks, makes me disappointed in myself.
I mean, who cares? Also: At what point in a (cis, heterosexual) woman’s life are men of little to no concern? Is there an Ozempic-like drug we can take that will stop the dude noise in our heads?
A young, strapping, Armenian plumber comes to fix my refrigerator. Something is wrong with the ice maker. After the plumber figures out that he’s not strong enough to pull the unit away from the wall, he tells me that he’s going to have to get another guy to come help him.
The Armenian plumber is tall with dark hair and olive skin and light eyes. He has a friendly manner to him. I wonder if he ever has sex with his clients.
“Where’s your husband?” he asks, as he stands up from a kneeling position in front of the refrigerator.
I make a slashing motion with my hand across my neck.
“There’s no husband here,” I say.
The plumber laughs.
“No husband now? Or no husband ever?”
“No husband now,” I say. I make the slashing motion across my neck again.
The plumber packs up his gear and I walk him to the front door.
“Do you live alone?” he asks.
I lie to the plumber and say that I have a female friend who lives with me half the time. But why? I could have easily said I have a boyfriend. Sometimes I can be so fucking stupid. My dad would be disappointed in me. Me, a single divorcee, telling a strange man with my home address that I live alone. My dad, who sees danger around every corner, especially with regards to men. (He’s not wrong.)
I shudder to think how my dad would feel if he found out that I meet up with men from a sex app on a semi-regular basis. I know for sure that my mom, a total prude who grumbled about sex scenes on TV shows and in movies, would find what I do absolutely horrifying and break out into hysterics. But she’s been dead for eight months now.
Dear God: If there’s an afterlife, or ghosts, or specters, or spirits, or if people who have passed on can watch us as we go about our daily lives, please make sure that my bedroom is off limits to any and all of them. I can’t bear the thought of my mother or my ancestors seeing me ass-up or spread-eagle.
Olivia tells me to tell them directly, the ancestors, to look away, give space and let me come in peace.
On Wednesday morning, I decide to message Alejandro one last time.
“Good morning! I haven’t heard from you about meeting up later today and I need to plan my day. Are we still on? Or did you change your mind?”
Normally, I’d interpret a man’s silence as passive rejection and let it go unremarked upon, less I admit to, you know, actually caring. But I’m trying to make myself more vulnerable, and besides, I’m genuinely curious as to why Alejandro has gone dark. Hence the direct question about changing his mind.
Alejandro writes back within about a minute. “I am so sorry,” he says. “I had an accountant confirmation yesterday and I forgot to let you know. I won't be able to make it today, so sorry.”
I know that he’s offering up excuses. I decide to make it clear that I’m aware of this, but without coming across as bitter.
“I’ll take that as a change of mind — let me know if things shift for you, because it was nice to meet you,” I say.
Alejandro comes back online and reads my message but doesn’t say anything in return.
I sigh, open the sex app and hit “disconnect.”
A few minutes later, a handsome, 6’3” foot fetishist likes my profile on Bumble.