Sex Toys & Spelling Bees.
Playing (word) games with guys.
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 solely on word of mouth to grow my subscriber base, so if you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please do share with friends.
I’m in bed and chatting online with a nice young guy, “James,” with whom I’ve had intermittent conversations over the past 6 weeks. We’re talking about dreams — whether we have them, the sort of ones we have — and I’m switching between WhatsApp and The New York Times’ “Spelling Bee” game, which has been stumping me all day.
“How’s the dating and exploration world over there at present?” James is currently in Maryland dealing with some family issues and working on a short documentary about a jazz musician.
“It’s ok,” I say. “I’m not particularly impressed by some guys — they can be very passive or they don’t ask questions.”
James asks me to elaborate. I explain that I like mutuality, and not having to carry a conversation. It’s exhausting! And even when I don’t have to carry a conversation, often the physical attraction just isn’t there.
I tell him about the rocket scientist trying to launch his tongue into my mouth. I tell him about the really tall writer-director with whom I had absolutely no chemistry. I also tell him, a bit reluctantly, about the guy who kissed me when I had coffee breath and then ghosted.
“Sounds like no one is inspiring enough for you to take your sex toys out of the drawer,” James says.
Ah, the sex toys. James is trying to get me to engage with him in dirty talk by alluding to the contents of my nightstand, a subject he’s shown a keen interest in hearing more about. But I’m not really feeling it tonight.
“Yes, the sex toys remain in the drawer, untouched,” I say. “Which is the default. After all, they’re used only on special occasions with special people.”
I go back to Spelling Bee. There are seven letters to play with: A, R, I, B, L, O, and D. The “O” is the constant. I’ve gotten up to the rank of “Amazing,” having already found words like “Doodad” and “Baobab” and “Billboard,” but I’m otherwise stumped. Then I see it:
D-I-L-D-O
I text James. “You’ll never believe what happened,” I write. “I was stuck on finding new words for my Spelling Bee game. And then this occurred to me.”
I send him a screengrab of “DILDO.”
“Ha. Either the universe knows or it’s surveillance capitalism on a new level!” he says.
“Or we’re all living in a simulation,” I respond.
James tries again to segue into sexting, claiming that, after a conversation we had the week prior, he had a “sex-toy related dream” that I was in.
I roll my eyes; I’m not interested in hearing about James’ sex toy dream. Or sexting with him. So I decide to ruin the mood by telling him that I suffer from regular bouts of sleep paralysis, in which a person’s mind wakes up but their body does not. Sleep paralysis is terrifying, I explain. Once, when I was a young kid, I tried to yell to my mom for help but my voice came out in a hoarse whisper.
“I have to go to bed now,” I add. “Talk to you soon.”
Dildo. What a hilarious word that is. I actually own a dildo — I think — though I’ve never used it and I’m still not sure why I bought it. It’s not exactly my style. Or is it? It’s beautiful — sleek and well-designed, like so many things that come out of Scandinavia — and I was feeling flush when I walked into a sex shop in Berkeley back in 2023, looking for something to spend a lot of money on.
Nico knows I have a dildo, but no one else does. One time, he asks me to arrange all my sex toys on the bed and take a picture of my collection. And what a collection! In addition to the dildo and five vibrators of varying sizes and colors — most of them gifts — I have a small U-shaped object, one end of which is meant to be inserted into the vagina. (The other end rests on the clitoris.) There’s a weighted butt plug as well, though, like the dildo and the U-shaped object, it’s a virgin item, meaning it’s never been used. Sadly, all my impulse purchases have gone ignored.
Nico wants to know if I’d ever walk around and go about my day with the weighted plug inserted up my butt. I suspect he’s asking as some sort of test of his influence over me. Or because he’s just trying to be a jackass. I laugh and say no.
“Not even for me?” he asks.
“Not even for you.”
Nico’s been a little absent as of late. We haven’t been talking much, which is on him, not me. Who knows why. Family and work obligations, no doubt. Plus, maybe he’s feeling bored. It’s coming up on a year since we rekindled our affair — is it fair to call it an affair? — and things feel more stale than they used to. That’s also on him, I decide. I’m a good conversationalist, and I’m game for just about anything — save the butt plug.
Nico asks me whether I’m watching the latest season of The White Lotus. I tell him that I’ve seen the first half of the first episode and that I’m waiting for a few more installments to be released so that I can binge. “One of the storylines reminds me of you and your friends,” he says.
“The three girlfriends?” I ask. “What is it? That they’re privileged and bitchy?”
I wonder if Nico thinks I’m privileged and bitchy.
“No. Just that they’re older,” he says. “You know, sexy older women.”
“Don’t say it,” I write. “Don’t say the word ‘cougars.’ It’s sexist and it’s dismissive.”
“I agree,” he says, not entirely convincingly.
The three female friends on The White Lotus are definitely privileged, and they can be a little bitchy, but who isn’t? I identify most with the woman from New York — the lawyer named Laurie — and that’s not just because Mike White has made her the most relatable of the trio. It’s also because I feel a certain familiarity with the situation she now finds herself in, what with Jaclyn’s duplicitous seduction of the hunky energy healer she’d been encouraging Laurie to hook up with.
You see, my friend Olivia once did something similar, egging me on in my pursuit of a beautiful, shirtless, bronzed millennial we met while hiking on a mountain and then meeting up with him for sex later that night. (Olivia has a different memory of how things went down; she says that she was getting over a traumatic breakup and that she asked me for my consent to meet up with the millennial that night. And she says that I gave it.)
No man is worth coming between two women in a deeply committed friendship — as Olivia puts it, “easy cum, easy go.” But I’ll be honest: I was pretty mad at her for a few days. I felt that she’d done me wrong.
Olivia’s tryst with the millennial also stung because it reinforced feelings of inadequacy in me that go back decades. Olivia is petite and blonde and all-American looking — a regular Reagan-era sex symbol — and I am none of those things. In other words, I am not the type of girl that boys in the 80s salivated over.
There’s another guy I’m in conversation with, “Ivan,” who seems a lot more promising than the one who’s visiting family in Maryland. (For one thing, Ivan is actually in LA.) He’s a tall, strapping Eastern European furniture-maker in his late 40s who lives in the Valley and looks like a younger, sandy-haired Pierce Brosnan.
In other words, he’s hot. But there’s also something sort of unserious about him. Though I don’t mind flirting, Ivan regularly swats away my attempts to have a more earnest conversation by defaulting to the subject of sex. One morning, he asks me what I’m doing and I tell him I’m staying in for the day. It’s uncharacteristically cold and grey in Los Angeles, and I’m not in the mood to leave the house.
“It’s the cuddly weather and you’re missing out,” he says. “Soon there will be no cuddly mornings.”
A moment passes.
“I’m exceptionally good at cuddles,” he says. “All kinds. Innocent cuddles, sensual cuddles, naughty cuddles, even dirty cuddles. But always with passion, so you can’t miss.”
“Ask if you have any questions,” he adds.
Hmm. “Questions?” My phone rings. It’s my friend Michael. He has a complaint about a guy he met on Grindr.
Half an hour later, I text Ivan back. “I’m curious what ‘dirty’ and ‘naughty’ cuddles might entail,” I write. “I guess that’s one question.”
“Naughty cuddles is when I’m being lightly selfish and move my mind and hands freely over your whole vulnerable self,” he responds.
Lol. Is he talking about Reiki?
He continues: “Dirty cuddles is when we make you cum.”
“What about innocent cuddles?” I ask.
“That’s when our underwear stays on,” he says.
This back and forth about Ivan’s prowess with physical affection begins to bore me, so I start playing Spelling Bee. Right now my ranking is at “Nice.” The letters today are E, L, P, O, U, and D with a constant of “C.” I fiddle around with the letters a bit.
Suddenly, it appears: C-U-D-D-L-E
I send a screengrab to Ivan.
“It’s a sign!” I write.
Our text chat displays a read receipt, meaning that Ivan has seen the message. But he isn’t responding.
An hour later I try again.
“BTW that was supposed to be funny, not creepy.”
Still nothing.
Ivan appears the next morning with no acknowledgement of the previous day’s conversation. We make a plan to meet that Sunday night after I have dinner with visiting friends, but on Sunday afternoon he tells me that he’s “not in the best mood today.”
“Do you have anything else to do this evening?” he asks.
!!!
“Sorry to hear about your mood,” I reply. “Sounds like this is not meant to be. I’m big on momentum, but I think ours is waning.”
I’m relieved, to be honest. Ivan is extremely attractive but he also has a self-described “predator/prey” kink — he likens himself to a “tiger” — that makes me feel a bit nervous. I just don’t relate to the idea of primal fear as a pathway to seduction. Do I want to be ravaged? Sure. But my bedroom is not an African savanna, and my kinks do not include thwarted attempts at escape or playing the role of impala or other ungulate. (Yes, I know that tigers don’t live in Africa.)
I go to the app and unmatch him.
Olivia is a bit blown away by the word game synchronicities. (Turns out I’m not the only one who’s noticed them.) “Is the algorithm spying on your texting???” she asks.
“The puzzles are set in advance,” I explain. “I had been working on them all day. The letters were the same. And I did not bring up the topic either of sex toys or cuddles.”
Max videocalls me from New York, where she’s visiting her boyfriend. We talk about our struggles with procrastination and perimenopausal mood swings. I tell her about the date I had with a struggling filmmaker who took my hand within five minutes of meeting me and asked to kiss me on the cheek a few minutes later.
“I don’t like to be touched that quickly,” I explain. “I don’t think he has a good concept of personal space. And he was being weirdly familiar. Almost tender.”
Max smiles at me strangely, like she knows something about me or understands something about my interaction with the filmmaker that I don’t.
I change the subject and tell her about dildos and cuddles. “Weird, right?” I ask.
“What’s weird is that you’re having these conversations with people while playing Spelling Bee!” she yells.
“Good point,” I say.
Max gets off the call. She has to leave for the airport to fly back to San Francisco. I head over to you-know-what. I’m at the rank of “Great,” on my way to “Amazing.”
C, N, Z, A, T, and I, with a constant of “O.”
And there it is: I-N-A-C-T-I-O-N.
I put my phone down and go back to work.