My name is not Naomi. It’s a nom de plume to protect my identity. Though names have been changed, all the stories in Gen XXX are true. My anonymity means that I rely on word of mouth to grow my subscriber base, so if you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please do share with friends.
Within a week, two men on the sex app with the same moniker — “Nomad” — like my profile. I like them back.
The first Nomad is a 50-something writer/director/producer who lives in Santa Clarita, which suggests to me that he’s not very successful. But he’s handsome — ice blue eyes, dark blond hair, a sturdy, muscled body — and his profile writeup stands out for its honesty, authenticity, and sense of humor.
“Well, I’m not usually one to make the first ‘move’ but I love your profile,’” I tell him. “Also: I’m Naomi.”
“Well, you just made my day then,” he responds. “Nice to meet you, Naomi. I’m actually Andy.”
We have a back and forth for a bit — about what we do for work, about what turns us on. “Taste is one of my favorite things,” he says. “It’s all just part of that primordial DNA I have.”
I’m beginning to notice that a lot of guys on the sex app like to compare themselves to animals and cavemen.
Nomad No. 1 and flirt some more, and trade phone numbers, though I begin to suspect that he’s more interested in talking than meeting. When we discuss how I like to have my hair pulled during sex, I drop a hint that I’d like to take it to the next level. Like, an actual date.
“I invite you to test it out,” I say.
“I’ll be imagining that now,” he responds.
Imagining? How about doing? I decide to be blunt.
“This is me asking you out, albeit obliquely,” I say.
He responds to this — he has no choice — but is also weirdly vague about when he might be free.
I send him a voice note.
“You seem a little noncommittal, which is fine,” I say. “But I like specificity about plans so if you’re serious about connecting in person, please let me know. I don’t like endless texting.”
We make a plan to meet that afternoon at Figaro on Vermont.
The other Nomad is a bit younger than the first, though he doesn’t necessarily look it. There’s something familiar-seeming about him that I can’t quite place. He has a vaguely-handsome, middle-aged dad look about him. So when he tells me that he used to live in Park Slope it all makes sense.
Nomad No. 2 is separated from his wife, though the separation is amicable. He, too, has an interesting profile writeup, though it’s marred by one sentence: “No drama.” It’s almost enough to make me swipe left, but I’m in a sort of aggressive mood so I match with him and say that though he seems interesting and authentic, his comment about “no drama” gives me pause.
“I find it can be a bit sexist in its implications that women are over-emotional,” I explain.
Nomad No. 2 responds quickly. He explains that what he means is that there’s no drama between himself and his estranged wife.
Ah.
“‘No drama’ was not intended to be sexist, more to convey that we are good,” he says. “Do you think I should amend it?”
“Yes, you should,” I tell him. “Regardless, it’s a red flag for many women I know.”
We talk a bit more, mostly about our experiences on the sex app. He says that this is his third go-round. That he’s met some nice women and is still friends with a few. “I haven’t had the sex party experience,” he adds.
“Is that something you want?” I ask.
“No, I just meant it hasn’t been a ton of hookups or anything,” he says. “What about you?”
I jump at the chance to complain about millennial men.
“I notice that there are a lot of younger guys here and that many of them are badly behaved,” I say.
“I believe those are called Fuck Boys,” he says.
“Lol,” I respond.
Later in the conversation we share details about our domestic lives. I tell Nomad No. 2 that I am divorced with no kids and two cats. He tells me that he has one child and a dog, and that he’s horribly allergic to cats.
“Which pains me to tell you because you seem wonderful,” he says.
“Yeah that sucks,” I say. I send him a sad-face emoji. He backtracks a bit.
“I’d still like to have coffee though,” he says. “But if you’re only seeing potential sleepover friends I get it.”
“Not necessarily sleepover friends,” I say, thinking about my night sweats. “But maybe ‘come over for a few hours’ friends.”
Nomad No. 2 asks me out on a coffee date for Saturday. I say “yes.”
There’s a big magazine feature in the Atlantic magazine, part of Sophie Gilbert’s upcoming book about the impact porn culture had on her generation of women. It’s depressing reading. It’s one more thing that makes me glad I grew up when I did.
The influence of porn on younger guys I meet on the sex app is unmistakable. Their preference for hairless vulvas. Their interest in rough sex and choking. (I allow a light touch, but nothing more serious.) Something to do with spit. The unsolicited dick pics. The rudeness. I mean, some of the things they’ve said to me continue to rankle.
“I want to use you like a hooker,” said one last year.
I told him to go fuck himself.
I don’t know why I care so much whether or not guys on the sex app ask me questions. Alison has a much more sanguine approach to the guys than I do. She doesn’t care if they’re “fuck boys.” Physical attraction is what she prioritizes for a purely sexual experience.
What she used to prioritize, that is. Alison got off the sex app a few months ago because she’s ready to find an actual emotional and mental connection — a real relationship — and even though some of the guys on the sex app are also on the “regular” dating apps, she doesn’t believe she can find love on the former.
I like how Alison goes after what she wants, and I admire the ruthlessness with which she approached the sex app. Guy asked the same question twice? She’d unmatch, because it showed he was not paying attention and probably sucked in bed. She’d also unmatch if a guy took too long to respond. It suggested he wasn’t making her a priority.
Alison wants me to get off the sex app because she thinks I’m really scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point. She also thinks I should stop talking to Nico. I tell her that my adventures on the sex app (and off) are mostly fun, or at the very least, they continue to be interesting. The Nico stuff? That’s a different story.
Nico and I have another “session” and, as predicted, he then pulls back and becomes more uncommunicative. A few days after our online rendezvous he sends me a note — a photo of himself in his home gym and a friendly “Morning!” — but since then, nothing. On Monday, I message him.
“How’s yr Monday? You must be crazy busy.”
He doesn’t respond until the following night. All he has to say in response is “Yes...”
Nico’s occasional iciness really gets to me.
I brush and Waterpik my teeth and go to bed.
Antoine will be here soon. Two weeks. I’m starting to get a little nervous. What if we don’t get along? What if he’s needy? What if I can’t find a sex party to go to? The other day I tell him that I’m going to have to work for part of the time that he’s here, which he says he understands. I also tell him that he should figure out what he wants to do during his visit. Museums? Shopping? Certain restaurants? Concerts? Antoine comes back with…nothing. He wants to buy some vinyl, he says, and go to the Academy Museum.
Vinyl and the Academy Museum are not going to be enough, I tell him. I suggest that he look into other activities.
“I’ll try,” he says. “But I have a lot of work to do between now and then.”
Does he think I don’t? In addition to my actual job, I have to get, in no particular order, a pedicure, a manicure, a bikini wax, and a haircut. And maybe lose five pounds.
I respond to Antoine’s comment with a rather tepid “thumbs up” emoji. I have no interest in playing tour guide to someone who doesn’t even know what he wants to tour.
My date with Nomad No. 1 is, for the most part, unremarkable. We sit at a corner table in Figaro. When he arrives, he’s chomping on a piece of gum, which I find gross.
He orders a green iced tea. I order a Campari with soda. Nomad No. 1 looks older in real life than in his photographs. He’s wearing a thin white t-shirt with a chunky wool cardigan on top. His hair is shorter than I expected. And his skin is more weathered.
We don’t have tons to say to one another, though it isn’t like there are awkward silences either. We talk a little bit about our experiences on the sex app and I complain about badly-behaved younger guys. “Don’t be like those guys,” I say.
I notice that the gum is gone. I’m guessing he swallowed it.
After about an hour of conversation we get up to leave. Nomad No. 1 has to go pick up a camera pack for some shoot he’s going on the next day. “I’ll walk you to your car,” he says. I know what this means. A kiss.
The kiss itself is good. Kisses, I should say. We’re not quite making out — there isn’t any tongue — but it’s not exactly chaste either. As we kiss, I graze Nomad No. 1’s pecs with the tips of my fingers and he places one of his hands on my waist. We eventually pull away. I say something complimentary about his soft facial hair.
“It was nice to meet you,” I say.
“Same here,” he says.
I think about Alison’s approach to guys on the sex app, and how she says you don’t have to want to date them, just fuck them. (Scarlett says the same thing.)
The next day, Nomad No. 1 and trade texts and make a tentative plan for him to come over to my house and make out on my couch the following evening.
About that session with Nico last week. It’s pretty sexy. It begins (and ends, I guess) with him in his bathroom shower stall, naked. Before we start, I put on some of the lingerie I bought for him and place my phone on top of my bureau, angling the camera towards myself. I want to make sure that all that’s visible is my face, chest, and torso; just enough to for Nico to see the top of the underwear I’m wearing but not enough to show my droopy inner thighs.
Nico initiates the video call and I wave at him before he begins to jerk off. I run my hands over my breasts, then down the side of my waist. I shake my hips. I feel a little stupid doing this. A lot stupid. Like I’m mimicking porn actresses who do “sexy” dances in front of the camera before taking their clothes off. All that is missing is the coy biting of my forefinger and the batting of eyelashes above my big brown eyes.
I try a different tack: I stick my right hand down the front of my underwear and touch myself. I’m wet, and I want Nico to know it, so I hold my fingers up to the camera.
“Can you see that?” I ask.
He nods.
I run my hand over the skin of my neck. I wonder if he notices my gizzard.
Nico climaxes a few minutes later. He has his microphone turned on, so I can hear his breathing speed up. After he comes, he turns towards one wall of the shower stall and leans against it, his forehead placed against the tile, as if exhausted. I take this as a compliment.
The next morning, he texts me. “That was so hot,” he says. “I loved the way you ran your hand over your neck.”
“I had to go take a shower and wash myself off afterwards,” I tell him.
What I don’t tell him is that, in the shower, I realized the HRT patch on my stomach had been in full view of the camera.
The Passover Seder at Rachel’s parents’ house is lovely. There are about twenty of us, and I’m seated near two women who look to be in their late 60s or early 70s. As the dinner itself winds down, one of the women and I get to talking about our lives and I tell her about my perimenopause and the horrible night sweats and intense dreams I’ve been having. I think it’s hormones, I tell her, but it’s also probably stress about the general state of the world and my anxiety about work.
The second woman approaches me after the dessert portion of the evening, when people with young kids are getting ready to go. She asks me about what I do, whether I’ve been married, and whether I have kids. I share a little bit of my story, and notice that she perks up a bit when I talk about being a single woman over the age of 50.
“Are you seeing anyone?” she asks.
“Not really,” I say. “Though I’ve been playing around on a sex app.”
(I haven’t really been drinking, so the fact that this falls out of my mouth is a surprise even to me.)
The second woman wants to hear all. I’m not willing to tell all, not to a stranger, but I am willing to tell a lot, and I do. The woman seems unfazed. In fact, she says, a fair number of her girlfriends have undertaken similar journeys following their divorces.
“But…I’ve gone a little bananas,” I protest.
“So have they,” she responds.
I imagine a bunch of 60-something divorcees sitting around a table, glasses of wine in hand, mimicking giving blow jobs to men and howling with laughter. Sort of like the last scene in — spoiler! — Dying for Sex, except those women are in their late 70s or early 80s and their blowjob technique looks a little rough around the edges.
The woman’s husband comes over to join the conversation. I feel my face flush.
“What are you ladies talking about?”
He has a genuine smile on his face. As in, he’s genuinely interested.
“Divorce,” I say.
It’s true, to a point. Surely he’ll hear about it later. And who knows? Maybe with all the sex talk his wife is being subjected to, he’ll also get laid.