Polyamory.
Bad dates, non-monogamy, and a nice guy named Ari.
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, I encourage you to share with friends. And if you’re already subscribed, won’t you please consider a paid subscription?
My second date with the Belle and Sebastian guy, the softboi named Matthew, is a dud. It is clear that what seemed promising on the first date — meeting a man who is attentive, and curious, and open — is, on the second go-round, without spark or sexual tension.
I admit: Things don’t start off well. I’m annoyed that Matthew wants to go to Figaro for dinner. (The food is mediocre, though the people-watching is great.) Matthew speaks quietly, and without emphasis, which means that I can hardly hear him over the din. He’s wearing a t-shirt that feels a little too casual for a second date, and I notice that his silly hipster haircut bugs me in a way it didn’t before. Also, there just isn’t much I have to say to him. I ask about a recent trip he took but don’t care about the answers he gives.
After dinner, we head next door to the Los Feliz 3 to catch a late screening of Eddington. (Not really a good date movie, I realize in retrospect.) Spending two and a half hours in a theater seat next to Matthew makes me uncomfortable. He is too physically familiar with me; cuddly in a way that comes across as toddler-like. Holding my hand on the first date, which felt sweet, if a little premature, now feels needy and out of proportion on the second date. I wonder whether Matthew, who has a wife, is feeling starved for a woman’s attention. Maybe his wife doesn’t touch him, I think. Not that I can blame her. If this is the way he is with women, I wouldn’t want to be petted by him either!
I’m really torn about this polyamory thing. All the men I’ve gone on dates with over the past week are non-monogamous. In addition to Matthew, there’s Simon, who, I’ll note, hasn’t reached out to me since our third date last week. (I texted him a note of thanks the morning after our dinner and his only response was to “heart” my message.) There are two new guys, too: Ari, 48, who is separated from his wife and father of a teenage daughter, and Jacob, 54, who is still married. Both of the new ones identify as polyamorous.
I’ll be honest: I’m pretty suspicious of middle-aged men who describe themselves as “poly”. I feel like they’ve got a “have my cake and eat it too” orientation — what Olivia calls a “non-committal candy store approach” — towards relationships, sex and women, and are basically just excited that recent widespread acceptance of nonmonogamy gives them license to fuck multiple women.
Which…fine. We all need intimacy, of both the physical and emotional sort. But the way that some of these men talk about their position on relationships suggests that they think of themselves as somehow more highly evolved than those who chose monogamy. Their polyamory, it seems, is not just a point of pride, but a badge of honor. It feels almost political – performative -- in nature.
“What I think is at the root of this is fear of failure — middle aged men who have failed at their marriages or long term partnerships,” says Olivia. “They don’t have it in them to attempt depth, and intimacy and commitment, so they slap on the label ‘poly’ so they don’t have to show up for anyone and still get their dicks wet.”
“Gross,” I say. I don’t want to hear about wet dicks.
“I get it,” Olivia continues. “Failure is rough. But I don’t like the bullshit openness label, which is another way of saying ‘I don’t want to hear about what you actually need, and I don’t want to have to remember your birthday, or pick you up from the airport.’”
On Saturday, a few days after I see Simon, I go out with one of the new guys, Ari, who I met on the sex app. He works in tech and lives in Pasadena. We agree to meet up in Griffith Park for a hike and then grab a coffee, but the hike, which he assumes is going to be short, takes two-plus hours. (My bad.) Afterwards we go to Bub and Grandma’s in Glassell Park and stuff our faces with sandwiches and soda.
I’m intrigued by Ari. Like Matthew, he’s present and attentive and curious and forthcoming. (Unlike Matthew, he doesn’t have silly hair.) We have an easy rapport, and he tells me a little bit about his marriage and why it ended. When I share my own story, explaining that my ex-husband cheated on me, Ari admits that he also had an affair. I’m not exactly sure how I feel about this, so I decide to say nothing in return and just sit with it.
Our areas of discussion during lunch are far less serious. We mostly talk about food and music, and he mentions a bunch of bands and artists I’ve never heard of. After we pay the bill he walks me to my car and gives me a look. That look. The “I want to kiss you” look. I decide to let him.
He’s not a bad kisser but I’m a little stiff and self-conscious. It’s the middle of the afternoon and we’re on a busy street and, as always, I’m acutely aware that I’m a woman of a certain age making out with a man in public.
“A kiss for the road,” Ari jokes, when we stop kissing for the first time.
“This is a long kiss,” I say when we stop kissing for the second time.
“It’s a long road,” he says.
Ari reaches out a few hours later to check in.
“Thanks for the date today,” he writes. “What a nice hike and chat and nosh. (And I never use the word ‘nosh.’)
“You just used the word ‘nosh,’” I point out.
I can tell when guys get excited about me because they send me things like pictures or videos or links to stories we talked about during our conversations. I like that Ari is excited, and that he’s open about that, though I’m not quite sure how excited I feel about him. Regardless, I decide that I’m going to go out on a second date and see what happens.
On Sunday night I meet up with a man, a restauranteur, with whom I’ve chatted on the sex app earlier that day. I can tell that the restauranteur, whose name is Jacob, is new to online dating: he seems a little overeager with me over text, going so far as to invite me out to dinner. I say “no” to dinner — I have an expensive piece of salmon to cook, I tell him — but offer to meet him for a drink, even though, by this point in the week, I’m finding dating exhausting.
Jacob and I meet at Edendale, which I know will be open late on a Sunday night. We sit side by side at the bar and order non-alcoholic drinks and talk. Jacob looks like his pictures — he’s handsome — and asks all sorts of questions. He’s only been on the sex app for two weeks, he says, and he’s gone on a bunch of dates, including a few with one particular woman. I don’t ask about the dates, or about her.
Jacob tells me that he and his wife have had a sexless marriage for years and that they recently decided to open up their relationship. He makes this seem like it is her idea, and for all I know, it is. Jacob also says he’s had affairs. I try not to roll my eyes back into my head. I mean, I appreciate the honesty but wonder about the integrity.
I’m bothered by Simon’s continued silence. My friend Alison tells me to lower my expectations. She says that Simon is showing me that he just wants to be casual. “He did this before, didn’t he?” she asks. “Sort of get vague and disappear after the other dates?”
“He did,” I say.
Still, I don’t like sharing hours of intimate emotional and physical moments with a man who can’t be bothered to respond to my messages in writing. I understand that he’s a dad, and that he’s dating other women — probably many other women — but I expect a little more than, well, a heart.
My friend Robyn tells me to be upfront with Simon about what I want. “When he writes to you again, and I promise he will, just tell him that you’re interested in dating men who show a lot more excitement about you,” she says.
I like this approach. It’s honest without being pushy and if he’s at all mature, won’t put him on the defensive. It also gives me an “out” I can use so that I can leave the situation with my head held high.
Max likes this framing as well.
“You’ve made such progress,” she says. “Two years ago, you would have been feeling sorry for yourself and taking his behavior personally. Now you’re taking charge of what you want and need.”
On Wednesday I go out for coffee with Olivia and tell her about Ari. Olivia tells me that I should avoid divorced men with daughters. I burst out laughing when she says this.
“They’re obsessed with their daughters,” she says. “Nobody can compare to their perfect little princess. You’re always going to be an older, less luminous version.”
“Is that a bad thing?” I ask.
“The sex starts to get too polite – they get concerned about disrespecting you,” Olivia continues. “Are you going to slap my ass and call me a whore? Probably not.”
“Do you like that?” I ask. I don’t mind the ass part but the “whore” part gives me pause.
“I don’t crave it,” she says. “But I like it when men are able to access their dirty dog stuff, the stuff they feel they aren’t allowed to do because it’s transgressive or offensive.”
I wonder if Ari has transgressive sex. Just then, as if on cue, he texts me a picture of his daughter.
“Look who got a new haircut!” he writes.
I find this a bit strange. I’ve gone on one date with him and he’s sending me pictures of his kid.
“TMI with the bangs!” Olivia says. “Maybe he thinks that because you’re female that you can relate, but maybe he doesn’t realize that you don’t care.”
Maybe I don’t care now, but maybe I will later. That night, Ari and I have our second date. He and his daughter are leaving for a three-week trip to the East Coast, and I’m interested to see where things go before his long vacation. I decide that, during dinner, I’m going to gently grill him about his thoughts on polyamory. Unfortunately, because we’ll be together in person, I won’t be able to take notes.
Ari tells me that he was first introduced to polyamory via people that he met in the gaming community. (He’s a gamer.) As time went on, and his marriage deteriorated, he began to read up on “relationship anarchy” and decided that non-monogamy is an orientation that he was interested in trying.
So far, he says, he’s dated a few people, one of them for over a year, though that relationship is now over. He tells me that he’s a fan of “compersion,” which Google AI defines as “…a feeling of joy, happiness, or pleasure derived from witnessing or experiencing the happiness of others, especially in the context of romantic or sexual relationships.”
I listen to Ari with a smile on my face and I’m making sure to show teeth. Earlier that day, Olivia sends a voice memo explaining that the best way for me to get polyamory information out of Ari without coming across as interrogative is to smile and flirt a lot. But I tell her I’m bad at flirting.
“Just lower the register of your voice, be a little breathy, just play slightly, slightly dumber than you are,” she says. “Be really mindful that when you show your teeth in a smile, people think you like them!”
I burst out laughing.
“These are your non-verbal communication tools,” she says.
Her tone of voice changes.
“I dunno, act like you’re talking to dog! Just be gentle, and really inquisitive and like, ‘Oh, that’s so interesting!’ Whatever girl, just lay it on.”
Nothing that Ari says about polyamory surprises me, though I note that none of the women that he’s dated seem to have stuck around, and I wonder why this is. He has a very eager, almost puppy-like energy that I find engaging but could probably quickly become exhausting. He’s also a little too focused on me, which I know sounds horrible to say. I also think his geekiness (or is it preciousness?) could also become tiring: When I suggest that we take the uneaten portions of our meal to go, he reaches into his bag and pulls a set of metal food containers.
“I keep these on me just in case,” he explains, as he transfers some Japanese sweet potatoes into the smaller of the two containers.
After dinner, Ari and I head across the street to a bar and have two mocktails. Then he walks me to my car. I’m tired, I decide, and the date has been going on for many hours at this point. And I have to get up early.
At my car, we kiss a bit. He’s a pretty good kisser; good enough that I suggest we get into my car and make out like teenagers. He agrees.
After about 45 minutes of this, Ari and I are so worked up that I invite him back to my house. Things get more intense there; he nestles himself in between my legs and I make him take his shirt off so I can touch his soft, hairy chest. (I love a hairy chest.) He pulls my shirt up and begins to kiss my breasts, then puts his hand down my pants.
My friend Saskia says that I need to be more “titillating” in my newsletter, so I guess I should mention here that Ari is very good with his hands and his mouth. (My pants stay on.) The kisses are just the right mix of sensual and passionate, and he moves his hands and fingers around, and into, my body with confidence. I like the way he sucks on my neck and grabs my breasts. I like the sounds he makes when he does this, and his sharp intake of breath when I touch the outside of his trousers.
But something is bugging me. I can’t…feel anything. Not when he’s positioned between my legs, not when we’re on our sides facing one another, and not when I put my hand down his pants. Maybe he’s a grow-er, not a show-er, but we’re half an hour into heavy petting and I’m not feeling any growth. Or anything at all.
As I’ll soon find out, that’s because there isn’t much of anything for me to feel.
The next morning I text Alison.
“I went on a second date with the guy I went on a nice hike with,” I say. “I invited him back to my house and we fooled around. And he has a tiny penis. Tiny.”
“Oh noooo,” she says. “How tiny?”
“It’s not quite a micropenis but it’s close,” I explain. “Might be smallest one I’ve ever encountered.”
Alison goes silent.
“Is that mean?” I ask.
“No, that’s what happened to me in Paris,” she says.
“I don’t know what to do,” I say. “I’d love to see him again because of his other skills but the penis is a problem.”
Just then, my friend Joanne sends me a YouTube link. It’s to a just-released South Park clip with a title that reads “The PSA contains synthetic media.” I don’t like South Park but I like Joanne, so I click “play.”
The South Park clip (AI-generated) depicts an obese and pasty Donald Trump trudging through a hot, arid landscape, ridding himself of clothes as he goes.
“When things heat up, who will deliver us from temptation?” the voiceover asks. “Donald J. Trump.”
Trump is down to his skivvies.
“No matter how hot it gets, he’s not afraid to fight for America!” the voiceover continues.
The AI-generated Trump is now totally nude. He falls to the ground on his hands and knees and turns over onto his back. We see a tiny penis inch its way up into his (and our) line of sight. It has a pair of eyes.
“I’m Donald J. Trump and I approve this message,” says the penis.
“Trump. His penis is teeny tiny, but his love for us is large,” says the voiceover.
I guess I can relate.