My name is not Naomi. It’s a nom de plume to protect my identity. Though names and some details have been changed, all the stories here are true.
A few weeks ago, Nico does something he’s never done before over the course of our online “affair”: He sends me a picture of his cock. Then, a few days later, we do a live video call and he invites me to watch him jerking off in the shower.
This may not seem like much, but over all the months — years! — that Nico and I have been engaged in our erotic, epistolary relationship, I’ve never seen his penis, live and in living color. I mean, I’ve seen photos in which it’s partially hidden, yes, and there’s that one time that he sent me a video of himself lying naked on his back where I could sort of see the top part of it, but the full monty? Not until now. I always demurred when he asked if I wanted a look. I think I figured it would be fun to save something for “later.” Now, I guess, it’s “later.”
Nico tells me that he’s trying to push himself “over the edge.” When I ask him what “edge” he’s referring to, he explains that he’s attempting to drum up the courage to take things out of the fantasy realm and meet me in person.
I half believe this. Or rather, I should say that I believe that Nico believes this, though it’s unlikely that he’ll ever actually go through with any of it. I never bring up meeting him anymore — what’s the point? — though he does from time to time, and, as much as I’d like to say otherwise, when Nico tells me, unprompted, that he’s going to be traveling to Northern California for work on May 12th, my heart skips a beat. He’s talked about it before — made the suggestion that we meet up somewhere in Silicon Valley while he’s visiting his company’s headquarters — but he’s never offered up a specific date.
May 12th. May 12th.
I ask Nico not to tease me, but that, sure, I’ll spin a story with him about how it might all go down. We will meet inside a hotel bar. Or maybe outside the hotel itself. I’ll offer him a cigarette. Or maybe I’ll take one from him and pretend to take a puff — I haven’t smoked in five years and I’m not about to start now — and hand it back, the filter stained with the wet of my bright red lipstick.
What if we met directly in a hotel room? he asks. I tell him “no.” I want to see him in public first; it’ll heighten anticipation. Then we can sneak peeks at one another from across the bar — he doesn’t get the joke about ordering me a glass of milk — before heading up to my room, where we might watch each other masturbate for a bit. Then, maybe we’ll kiss one another and fuck. Or not.
“I mean, I want to kiss you,” he says. “I want to fuck you.”
It’s all up to him. He holds all the cards. I can only just dream about it.
Anyway, back to the video call. It’s short. I’ve already gotten Nico worked up by posing for him in my lingerie, so when he’s done with his workout he heads straight to the bathroom and into the shower. The water isn’t on yet, and he positions his phone in such a way that I can see the top half of his body.
“Do you want to watch me?” he asks.
I take a beat. This is a seal that I’m not sure I want broken — but then I say, “Fuck it, let’s go.” I’ve seen plenty of guys jerk off — I like to watch — but the idea of seeing Nico masturbate feels like we’re crossing a rubicon. Once we go there, we can never go back. And what happens after that? He watches me masturbate on camera? Never going to happen. We fuck in person? Like I said, a girl can dream.
Nico comes quickly; it takes him all of 30 seconds. As he strokes himself, he stands so that I can see him at an angle, though his hand moves up and down so quickly I can’t get a good look at his cock. When he cums, he faces the camera head on. I’m pretty sure that I have a strange look on my face. But then again, so does he.
When Nico and I have regular video calls, I feel like I’m drunk or high. Then it ends and the hangover starts to set in and I want another hit to stave it off. But he’s gone. Like always, Nico pulls away and disappears for a few days. I get greedy; he gets, what, spooked? Satiated? Some combination of the two? As my friend David says, “That’s just the way men are.” Olivia thinks Nico only cares about himself. When he’s done, he’s done.
They’re so goddamn predictable, these post-playtime disappearances, and yet they still sting. There’s something I learn on the sex app, the concept of “aftercare,” which is what some people offer one another after having particularly intense sexual experiences. What I want is some aftercare.
“He’s your OnlyFans subscriber of one,” Olivia says. “He makes requests and you comply. And you don’t get paid.” I laugh.
Olivia and I are talking on FaceTime. She’s in the bathtub, so she’s turned her camera off and I’m sitting at my kitchen table in the dark, my face illuminated by the glow of my computer screen.
Olivia takes an intellectual interest in my assignations with Nico at the same time that she disapproves of them and thinks Nico is a “boring asshole.” “The evolution of the two of you swapping pre-recorded videos to going live is interesting,” she says. “Is it the voyeurism you get off on? The sense that you’re in a relationship? The validation? The feeling of being dominated, whether you know it or not?”
I tell Olivia that I am well aware that I am being dominated, but that I’m not quite sure I can call myself a “sub.” I don’t think I’m getting off on submitting to Nico so much as I’m getting off on him getting off. Maybe that makes me a sub? I don’t know. I also don’t know which comes first. The getting him off? Or the getting him off because I’m somehow submitting to him?
When I think about why I feel drunk during my verbal and visual sessions with Nico, it’s because it feels like we’re sharing the same slow-moving, erotic dream. When I think about what I masturbate to when we’re apart, it’s the sight of his lithe, muscled body and his intense, dark eyes boring into my own.
“I bet if you were in his physical presence you would do anything he told you to do,” Olivia says. (Nico has shared some pretty wild fantasies with me). Olivia isn’t pointing this out to be critical, just pragmatic; she knows that I am under Nico’s spell. I agree with her.
“I wonder if he respects his wife,” I say, in an awkward segue. “I assume she won’t do these things for him.”
“It’s probably a virgin/whore situation,” says Olivia.
“Does that mean he thinks I’m a whore? Because I’m not,” I say.
I realize that I don’t even know what “whore” is anymore. Does it mean “easy”? It’s such a 1990s way of looking at things, using language that feels stale.
When I discuss this with my friend Max on FaceTime one night, she suggests, gently, that I’m “putting things in boxes.” Actually, the first thing she says is, “Have you read any books on sex?” She says this somewhat incredulously. I feel sheepish — I have not read many books on sex, I tell her, not in a long time. I have a book about BDSM in my nightstand drawer, I say, but I’ve never opened it.
“Perhaps there’s an opportunity to explore a more fluid sexual identity,” Max says. We’re talking about the idea of submission, and I’m telling her that I’m having a hard time figuring out and articulating whether or not I’m a “sub” to Nico. “Sometimes you are,” she says. “A service sub, maybe. But you’ve also been bossy.”
I tell Max that I struggle with the idea of submission because it feels like it doesn’t align with my gender politics. I grew up with a staunchly feminist, and sexually prudish, mother, and, like many other Gen Xers, my philosophy about power was that women shouldn’t concede it to a man. To be a “sub” to another person, especially a male, went against my long-held — albeit shaky! — assumptions and ideas about what it means to be empowered.
“Second wave sex,” is how Max describes this. I ask her if that’s an accepted term of art or whether she made it up on the spot.
“I made it up,” she says.
Max disappears for a few moments, then comes back with some books in her hands. She holds one up to the screen. “Unbound,” reads the title. “This one is horribly written but also very good,” she says. Another book, called “The Topping Book,” doesn’t get any praise for its prose either, but Max suggests that I read it for its exploration of ideas around power and consent and sexuality.
I’m thinking about May 12th again. Nico has been intermittent with me ever since our show-and-tell two Mondays ago and, as usual, I’m irritated. It’s like fucking a guy who then jumps out of bed to put his clothes on and leave. A one and done.
“I don’t want you to feel used,” Nico says to me once. Then he disappears for four days.
I decide that I’m going to tell Nico that we need to stop, that his inconsistent behavior is obviously indicative of a deep ambivalence about what we’re doing, seeing that he’s married and all.
“If you ever get serious about making yourself truly available, let me know,” I imagine myself saying. (Nico will not do well with ultimatums.)
I try out another tactic. “I don’t want to pressure you, but this isn’t working for me in its current iteration.”
Another: “I’d love to see you in mid-May when you’re up north. I have things to do in San Francisco, anyway. Maybe we get a coffee or a drink. No sex. No pressure.”
The guy I met in Paris last year, Antoine, wants to come visit me in Los Angeles in early May. He will stay with me and we’ll eat delicious food, and fuck for days — barring another UTI — and maybe take a side trip to the Grand Canyon. I’ve never been, I tell him.
Antoine is interested in Shibari — taken classes in it, in fact — but he’s nervous about bringing ropes through U.S. customs. I tell him that a proper pair of hiking shoes is more important; if ropes are needed during his trip, ropes can be procured.
Antoine also wants to go do a BDSM event while he’s visiting. I don’t know what he means. Does he want to attend a party where people have sex in front of other people? Hit up a conference or class where information is proffered about BDSM practices? To be honest, I’m more interested in the former than the latter. After all, I like to watch.
Antoine says he’s open to either. He can bring some outfits, he says. He sends me a picture of himself in a tight black scoop neck t shirt and tight black pants that look to be made of vegan leather.
“I don’t know what I’d wear,” I tell him.
“We can get you something,” he says.
One of the nice things about Antoine is that he’s smart and thoughtful. Curious. Interested. He checks in on me. I check in on him. He’s also sexy: a shaved head and ice blue eyes and shapely lips. And he can fuck, though his kissing skills are in need of some refinement: he presses his mouth too hard against mine. David tells me to be gentle with Antoine and not criticize his kissing style. “Just tell him how you want to be kissed,” David says. “Better yet, show him.”
Antoine’s is very robust and hungry in bed. For the two days we were together last June he dominated while also servicing: He moved me around on his bed in all sorts of positions and in all sorts of styles but he also dove headfirst into my pussy and went down on me for hours. Well, maybe not hours, but you know what I mean. It’s clear that he loves oral sex, and that he doesn’t mind getting a little messy.
Some men perform oral sex out of a sense of obligation, not desire. You can tell that they don’t actually like vaginas (or women!) all that much. Antoine’s hunger for me and my body makes me feel incredibly sexy. I know that he will want me to come first, and that I won’t have to explain the concept of “aftercare” to him, nor prompt him to engage in it.
It’s not lost on me that the guy I’ve been sexually “involved” with for over two years can’t offer me slightest bit of post-sex sensitivity or positive affirmation and that the one I’ve spent all of two days with can.
I just want to be wanted. Isn’t that what I always say? Well, sometimes I just want to be held, too.