28th St. Diaries

We fucked in probably every hotel on 28th street: Springfield, Townplace, Fairfield, Hayden, Aloft. Occasionally, we’d be at Fifth avenue at Le Meridien, which was our favorite, it had bougie lighting and a good bathroom. We both stole the toiletries. Once we were there for half the week, eating MDMA, lighting candles, listening to sex playlists, fucking until we collapsed into each other. 

The first time Lou flipped me over to fuck me , she whispered in my ear:  “I’m gonna fuck you all summer.” And she would, and she’d fuck me in fall too, again in spring, and the following summer, but we didn’t know that at the time. 

The morning after, she texted me asking what was on my mind. Before I had a chance to answer, she wrote, because I just got out of an hour-long meeting where I was lowkey throbbing thinking about pushing you up against the wall. 

I invited her to come upstate to my apartment, and when she got off the train she was wearing a jacket with mushrooms on it, and her smile melted me. At the bar she told me I was acting antagonistic, but she didn’t realize it was only because she brought out my feral, bratty side, and I couldn’t pretend to function in society as a normal person on a normal bar stool drinking a normal beer when all I wanted was to melt into her, for her to fuck me until I couldn’t remember my name or the name of my street. 

She would say, “Get it all out” to my orgasms. Sometimes with her I’d just keep orgasming, it never had a clear ending. I sat on her face, she spit in my mouth, spit in my ass. 

Sometimes I’d send her orgasms over music, specifically to Janelle Monae’s “The Rush.” I didn’t care that this was vulnerable, personal, unhinged. I didn’t consider whether I trusted her or not, it didn’t matter. Trust wasn’t something I was interested in. I was only interested in eros. 

“I like how crazy you go when I play with it,” she wrote.

“I do?”

“You know you do.” 

Sometimes during sex she’d say, “You like that don’t you?”

“There she is,” she’d say, knowing my body better than I did. 

Weeks later, she sent me a photo where she was wearing a blue robe. 

You look like you want to devour something.

Mmmhmmm.

You’ve looked at me that way. 

I definitely have, she said. 

In the fall, I wore the same dress and leather jacket as I did with Lou on a date with someone else. She was a stone butch, telling me ahead of time she always had tape over her chest, even, especially, while sleeping. I’d only slept with a stone one other time, a decade prior. I asked her if she brought her strap in her tote bag, the way Lou had, but she hadn’t. That would be presumptuous, she said. 

Since the Stone was sober and a gym rat, she could cum easily. She could cum just by pressing, which is one of my favorite ways to cum and is also why I’m sexually compatible with Stones. She showed up at my hotel with coffee, and I grabbed the see-through pale blue and navy lingerie I’d brought for the occasion. Is anything better than sex at ten in the morning? The ultimate luxury. 

Deeper into the fall I met Kerensa and brought her to 28th street after our first date of appetizers and cocktails. My dress was long and leopard and I had to stand to get it off, lifting the whole thing above my head.

I’d gone without pleasure like this for six years — I thought it was something we had to give up when we were in what our culture values as “stable” relationships. None of my married friends seemed to be having great sex either. It is unfathomable and even tragic to me now—I thought pleasure as priority was a thing of the past, a thing of my twenties. 

Why is it that our culture wants us to think this way? Why do movie and television tropes drive this message home even more? Why does the patriarchy want women to walk around miserable, unsatisfied? I know why. Because it serves them. If we are sexually powerful, then we are too powerful. 

“This is the sexiest part of a woman,” Kerensa said, tracing down the lower part of my back. She began fucking me with one finger from behind, then two, and put her hand on the small of my back, which is exactly where my long hair hit, so her hand was on my back and hair in a simultaneously sexy and caring way. 

But I always went back to Lou.  While I waited for her at the Aloft, I showered, my body anticipating her touch. As soon as I opened the hotel door I melted onto her. 

Get on the sink, she said. 

I’ll do whatever you say.

Your pussy takes me to places I shouldn’t go. Takes me to places I’ve never been. 

I want you.

You want me? That’s not enough. I need you to need me. 

I need you.

How much?

So much that I can’t remember my name. 

Good.

Will you give it to me now?

Soon. Kiss my neck the way you know I like it. 

She put her fingers inside me, always scratching the itch I needed scratched deep inside, in places I couldn’t reach myself. 

This feels too good, I said. 

Too good? You want me to stop?

Never. Why does this feel so good?

I’m just playing with your G spot, she said, her eyes on mine, her head on my stomach. 

I love the way you fuck me back, she said. 

No one else fucks you like this, does she? she asked, while I was catching my breath from the thrusts. 

She doesn’t, no one does, I said. They don’t know how.

A few days later, back home, Lou texts:

Come to the city so I can blow your back out.

That was all I needed to book a hotel and get on the train. 

It was one of those sticky August days it was impossible to wear any clothing except for a thong and slip dress. Skin was everywhere. We reunited on the bed, me straddling her lap. I couldn’t get enough of her sex and gardenias smell. The warm, soft skin of her face and neck. We fucked until our sweat was combined, my hair dreaded. We’d both come multiple times. She could come wearing the strap, my favorite way to have sex.

Get it all out, she’d say. Let it go.

She went down the hall to the ice machine and brought the bucket to the bed, where she began slowly melting it through my thighs and inside me, while we talked and listened to music. We lit tea lights. 

In the morning I’d press up against her. 

Your ass feels good to me, she’d say. But she’d fall back to sleep. I’d keep pressing, desperate, moaning. It would take so long to break her. But wordlessly, she’d start pressing with her hands into my hip bones until the tension in them released. I’d move her hands down and she’d playfully pull them away and make me beg more. 

You’re using too many words, she’d say. Beg with your body. Finally she’d break, and with one swoop be inside of me.

Is that what you wanted? 

We moved until I was on top facing away from her. She reached around and stuck her fingers down my throat in one motion. 

On the train home later that day:

I like thinking of you in public being wet for me.

Dripping.

Go home and masturbate and think about me. 

~~~

Jordan was a photographer who only wore black. We met up at Purple Passion so we could purchase rope together. I was holding an iced coconut matcha which I’d gotten a block away. Neither of us knew how to use rope, but we wanted to try.  Rope-store-as-foreplay was a first for me. She wore all black and I was wearing black too. We walked to 28th street. I wore blue lace underwear and a red lace bra. She began tying me, not knowing what she was doing, and I stood between her knees.

When she came, she wanted me to cover her mouth and she wanted me to choke her.

The rope, the bra, the underwear all stayed on.

“Do you like this hotel life you live?” She asked me. 

“I love it,” I said.

“I love watching your face at the first moment it slides in,” she said. “It’s like you fully relax.”

“It’s the only time I’m relaxed,” I said.

Jordan and I made a plan to meet at the Arlo Hotel for her to take photos of me. I stripped down to black lace boyshort panties and a white T-shirt without a bra. As she shot, we got more turned on, I peeled my tight T-shirt off and turned over to my stomach, which is my favorite way to masturbate. She began grabbing her strap she was packing under her black jeans, begging me to stop shooting so we could fuck, but I kept her waiting. The click of her camera and my moans and cars honking outside. When I was about to cum, I let her put down the camera and get on top of me. 

~~~

The first street Lou and I fucked on would also be the last. It was June, again, and we were sleeping on 28th street, at The Hayden, one we’d never stayed at before. I remember sitting on her face, something I have almost never done with anyone. With Lou, I could be completely free, and freedom was what I was looking for. 

In the morning, I got a coffee from the lobby and she walked out the door to work. I went back to the room, smelling of sex. Every time I had sex with Lou, I’d have to masturbate twice in the morning when she left. 

I hate this, she texted. 

What do you hate, babe?

Not being with you. 

~~~

I’ve been missing our sex like crazy, she texts one day. I want to fuck you deeper than I ever have. I don’t think I’ve ever made anyone cum, as hard as you. I need you, she texts. Tell me you need the same.

It’s what I need and want, I write back. 

I need to be inside you, the soonest I can be. 

She sends me the song “Paid In Pleasure” by Janelle Monae, and I blast it while we have text sex across the country from each other.

Photo by Nina Hill