To All The Men I (n)Ever Loved
Like the highlight reel before you die, when I think back on my collection of lovers, I see them in flashes of warmth, of hurt, of longing. The ones that changed me appearing largest, the ones I didn’t know had an effect on me taking surprise guest spots. I have often imagined a room full of all my lovers together, in which they get to observe each other, and slowly realize what they have in common (me.) When I imagine this I imagine them naked, peacocking, inwardly fretting, wondering who meant the most, whose cock shaped my vag for life, whose kisses made my clit tingle.
I will share only some of the best and the most memorable here, I simply cannot detail it all with the proper attention. The writing of one’s life story in lovers has turned out to be an undertaking I entered like an airport en route to a tropical destination—shades on, tits out, the smug smile of a woman who deserves a spa day on my face—but upon a turbulent arrival I found unlikely companions, darkness, loss, untold feelings. I hadn’t packed correctly. Eventually I found the sunnier side, full of unexpected rewards…the way I can still feel my body held by these people. Still recall the way they held my mind, eased my worries, carried me, literally carried me some of them, through the streets of Mexico, to the bed, carried my bags up and down the hilly streets of Portugal, carried me on their salary, fed me, bathed me, housed me, held me. I still feel the power of their eyes meeting mine.
This is part one.
~~~
The motel was called The Adventurer. The neon flickered and hummed, a beacon for moths. People loitered in the parking lot. It existed in a dreamscape, an unknown location, somewhere deep in Los Angeles. Bunny had picked me up from a punk show and ferried me away. We called each other “bunny” because we fucked like rabbits. In those days, my mom was often out of town, and I could disappear through the night without causing a stir. I trusted Bunny so entirely, I never questioned our destinations—I knew he would always get me home safe. It’s a feeling I can’t even fathom from this distance. The freedom of time, mind, and body. The freedom of not knowing any better. Being a child and entrusting your safety completely to a bigger child. Anxiety hadn’t been invented yet.
The best thing about The Adventurer was the pool, centered in the courtyard, steam wafting off the surface, glowing David Hockney blue. The water was like a bath and we went in, up to our necks in our underwear. My legs wrapped around his silky waist, my breasts floating, nipples hard against his firm pecs. There was no one around at the pool, but there had been a strange man in the motel room Bunny brought me to. I paid him no mind. He had drugs and we did them together. I could tell the men were doing business out of this hotel room, but I was there to float, gorgeously unaware, 15 years old and open to anything.
I had been having not so dry sex with Bunny for months, “waiting” because I thought my first time should be special—as if rose petals and meaningful planning could ease the guilt and shame my Catholic mother had attached to sex. But I was too horny to wait, and once when it slipped in I didn’t stop him. I cried as he drove me home afterwards, he cursed himself for upsetting me. I let regret wash over me for a week, and then I donned my scarlet letter like I was destined to.
When I think of Bunny I think of drugs that unleashed my deepest reserves of serotonin. I think of warm water, the jacuzzi we snuck into where I had my first orgasm while he positioned me against a jet. I think of dancing with my soul, the profound power of combining drugs and music. And drugs and sex. Kissing with tongues on ecstasy, the rhythm of making out feeling like an ancient ritual I was the first to discover. His pierced tongue. Later his pierced dick. I was lucky that my first loved to eat pussy, and I took it for granted that this was something everyone would do. His cock was the perfect entry level size, his body sculpted from the gym, tanned and hairless, like the boy bands in Tiger Beat during my formative years. When I got sent away he visited me several times a week, wrote me love letters in a childish script, took me through the drive thru at McDonalds after school. We’d fuck in his car, my pussy shaved and pink with friction, his cock endlessly hard, we’d feed each other french fries then kiss with salty mouths.
I came back from my time away enlightened and sexually experienced with women. A bit more serious, it was senior year, I started attending my high school classes. I left Bunny through a series of fizzling sex sessions—it was hard to give up my first dick. But T offered something Bunny could not: respect rather than notoriety. Sex with status. When I think of T, I think of the pride of being a local rockstar’s girlfriend. Where Bunny and I existed in dangerous, shadowy spaces, T and I were publicly showy and poetically declaring our love in private. We whispered to each other that we were soul mates—I’d share poetry I had saved for years waiting for the one who’d understand, he wrote songs about me with devoted lyrics. He was tall and slim and so was his dick. His hair was heavily gelled, bleached blonde, and styled into a point like soft serve. He had pierced nipples and wore skinny ties with tight-fitting short sleeve button downs, pins clustered on his chest: Bad Brains, Depeche Mode, obscure SoCal punk bands. I thought he was so hot. We fucked with heavy eye contact, tender, except for his spiky chest which was never shaved perfectly.
At some point our way with words turned dark, possessive, mean. A couple months before I left for college in Boston, he told me I’d end up with some guy named Tod, mocking what he presumed would be a preppy mix of dirtbags. I told him I couldn’t get pregnant when I was on my period, that he could cum inside me. One week before I was to leave, he took me to get an abortion.
My first two lovers were heavy, memorable. My third was blurry and cheap. He was my boss at the restaurant I worked at. It was an end of summer company party, and tequila was flowing. I still have pictures of us from that night, myself and the other waitresses. In shiny, skin-tight clothing, we smiled with glassy eyes sitting on the laps of the owners and cooks, legs kicked toward the sky, heads tipped back. The owner’s son was a big guy with swagger, he drove a nice car and had eyes that undressed me. His belly obscured his cock. I let him fuck me as he had likely dozens of other women, but he was only my third. He grabbed my hair as he squeezed his eyes shut and pounded me carelessly until he came, then rolled off of me to sleep. The next morning I was depleted—dehydrated and raw. For the first time but not the last time, I felt that particular loneliness of waking up next to someone to whom you didn’t mean much. But this third was the charm—the hurt set me free. After that, I let go of all my notions that sex had to be meaningful. I understood sex could just be sex and that I could have it with people that didn’t care about me. I understood I didn’t have to care either.
~~~
I arrived at university in Boston and realized I was much more sexually experienced than my peers. This made a lot of sense when I considered how much time I had spent fucking and how little time I spent studying. I barely got into college, I owed my attendance completely to high SAT scores and a killer essay. I was a graduate of the school of hard knocks and hard cocks, unaware there was a higher world order.
There was a youthful energy at university and I felt older than it all, a sexual sage. I met many pretty, nice boys, who were smart and had bright futures and came from good families…they were foreign to me and so very alluring. I graciously decided to show these boys how to fuck. I took their “virginities” riding their dicks cowgirl style, forcing them to look me in the eye, while they tried with their whole body not to cum, amazed by my breasts bouncing over them. Boys who were virgins were clunky, movements unhinged rather than flowing. They knew intellectually what to do but physically they were fawns on new legs.
Eventually one virginal boy, who was equally awkward but also quick witted and fucking hilarious, became my boyfriend. He had the perfect cock, not too long, but girthy enough to make me feel full. He was a skinny smoker studying business, and I was the first woman he ever loved. His name wasn’t Tod, but it may as well have been—it was three letters and he wore polos and hailed from New England. He wasn’t at all a preppy dirtbag though, he was the most loving and meaningful relationship I possibly ever had.
Even though Tod and I stayed in a relationship for years, my sexual demons led me into other beds—I wanted to be desired by many and taste many, then come home to a man I felt safe with, one I loved above all the others, whose ass I’d be willing to wipe when he was 80 years old and couldn’t do it himself. But I didn’t have the vocabulary for that kind of relationship then. So I cheated and lied and begged his forgiveness and he took me back over and over.
A metal band absorbed my friends and I under their dirty wings, and I took a liking to the boys. They took a liking to me, too, they must’ve smelled the filth in me. They had hair down to their waists which I used to find flossing my butt cheeks, thick beards, ironic tattoos, septum piercings and insane body odor. Maybe because they didn’t mind getting dirty, they were really good in bed. Faces shining wet with my pussy, they’d come up and kiss my mouth wholeheartedly. Shoot their shot on my face. Growl into my ear, fucking me rough, sometimes overwhelmingly so. It was a place I could get lost, and then go home to my safe relationship with Tod. Things got complicated when a love triangle formed, me between two of them, best friends. The three of us locked ourselves in the bathroom at a party and politely discussed how to work it out. I’ll never forget one of them whining when I explained why it made more sense for me to be with the other. Looking back, we should have had a threesome, hair everywhere, spit and sweat and cum.
New Year’s Eve, 2005, my childhood friend and I managed to convince her older sister and boyfriend to take us with them to Rosarito, Mexico. There, at a Senor Frogs that smelled like old beer and cleaning fluid, I spotted a gorgeous man whose name I possibly never knew. Before he took me back to his hotel room, where he would proceed to eat my pussy deep into the new year, I had my friend snap a picture of us on my disposable camera. The next morning, hungover and truly wanting to be alone, I lied about where we were headed, and said goodbye, never to see him again. The weeks spent using up the remainder of the photos were harried, I needed confirmation that he was indeed as hot as I remembered him through the fog of several frozen margaritas. As I flipped through the glossy images fresh from CVS, I felt something I can only describe as pride when I saw the image, him, arms wrapped around me and gorgeous head dipped into the crook of my neck, as if we were longtime lovers. My first true one-night-stand.
Studying abroad in Paris, I met G, a chef who made the best duck l’orange, but he was always creating drama, he loved to fight but the make up sex wasn’t worth it. I decided instead on a college boy who went to the American University, he was hippie-adjacent, studied at Berkeley. He never wore underwear and his pubes would seduce me, visibly poking out above his low slung jeans. We fucked on a trip through Italy in carpeted hotel hallways so as not to alert our friends to our tryst. I strolled the Arno with rugburns on my knees.
Back in Boston, there was my “independent study course” with The Professor. Fulfilling my childhood dream of the classic taboo, we kept in touch long after. He sent me love poems through the years, I sent him this story.
And then I graduated college and went straight to South Korea, to teach English. I was scared about my future, scared about how to find a job with an English Lit degree post 2008 crash, and scared to make my first adult decisions and mistakes. There I met S. He was tall, and a writer with a useless education, too. He made me feel like we had chosen something more beautiful than practical and that it was okay. He was a little subby with a desire to please, a baritone voice, and the most chiseled jawline. He’d message me during school hours, tell me he could still smell my pussy on his upper lip, that he wouldn’t wash his face until he saw me again, he didn’t want to lose my scent. His cock was short and thick and I loved grinding on him until I’d cum. He’d groan in pleasure at my pleasure, massage me for hours, grazing my pussy lips with his piano fingers. He told me he had a vision of my future—me sitting on a fancy balcony while a man in a suit loomed behind me.
I returned from Korea and moved to New York. By now, Tod and my relationship was fractured by distance and my dalliances, but because he was a good person, he picked me up from the airport and brought me to my first home in Brooklyn. I made him pull over in Queens so I could suck his dick from the passenger seat. The room in the loft apartment I moved into was made of paper thin plywood. I could hear my roommate typing in the cubby next to us. We fucked quietly, fitting together perfectly, even after everything.
Late one night out in Bushwick I met R. He was British and beautifully gentle, with eyes that crinkled when he smiled. He ate my ass with incredible zeal—I loved the way his stubble felt against me, like scratching an impossible to reach itch. He’d lick me from behind, enveloping my pussy and asshole with his thick tongue, then fuck me gracefully with his large, uncut dick. We’d giggle like children holding my vibrator to each others ears and play house when he’d come to visit. He was one who would come in and out of my life and bed for many years. He’s one I still hold love for.
My first year in New York was rough. Tod and I were on the outs. I was trying to be a writer, but really I was a babysitter, a cocktail waitress, and a slut. I met Sober Jock at the bar, which in retrospect doesn’t make much sense, him being sober and all. He was very good looking and perhaps that’s why he fucked me like a jackhammer, no one had the heart to tell him, his eyelashes fluttered too disarmingly. He’d do pull ups on the bar in his doorway after sex, then pour himself a giant bowl of cereal, casually offer me a bite. I never orgasmed with him but I kept going over to his cramped apartment, thirsty to have my thoughts pounded out of my head.
There was the sweet vegetarian, who had a handmade woodworked loft bed. He was petite but made up for it with energy and knowing his angles; he made me eggs florentine the next morning. Then I fucked my editor at a magazine where I interned. He was a neurotic ginger and I wanted him to think I was smart. One night I went over to see him and he confessed he’d just popped a viagra. We had sex, but his dick would not go down! I didn’t have enough interest in it. I told him I had to go meet friends and left him begging me to stay with his cock in his hand.
It was in this time adrift I met B, the man in the suit from S’s vision. He had money and he moved like it—his hand caressed the back of my thigh while I served him at the bar (a power move I’d typically recoil from, I welcomed). Our first date was a steak dinner, he ate my pussy for dessert. He was the first dom I’d ever met and I fell hopelessly for him, ready for someone to instruct me, show me how to live in this daunting city. He’d growl at me and fuck me with full body force. He’d spit on his hand for lube, spit on my pussy before he fucked me. Our sex was primal and I tapped into a part of myself I hadn’t met yet. I didn’t know enough about D/s dynamics then, and while the sex felt like coming home, the power he exerted over me in the rest of our relationship caused me to lose myself.
But still, when I think of B, I think of a sexy smile with incisors that were a bit jagged and eyes that sought beauty and indulgence in everything. He loved me and his generosity was expansive. Ours was a whirlwind romance, I can’t think of another time in my life when I fell so quickly and completely for someone. We said we’d marry each other two weeks after meeting and I meant it then. I laughed when the pregnancy test showed positive, and when we went for the abortion, he held my hand, looked into my eyes and said, “I’m so proud of you. You’re so strong,” as the doctor scraped our baby from my insides.
I broke up with B, but still had to break the spell he had over me—Hamptons houses, lavish dinners, mind-numbingly violent sex and clit melting doggy style—so I panic cut myself short bangs, chain smoked cigarettes, and said yes to nearly every invitation. I met what seemed to be a nice normal guy at a party, but he turned out to be a fuckboy incarnate. I’d make myself cum over and over again fantasizing about the next time I’d see this unattainable man. A couple years after our last meeting, he reached out and apologized for treating me terribly, telling me he had been thinking about me for months, wanting to be with me (for real this time, he said). After a couple weeks of texting back and forth, he died suddenly. It was the most exquisite grief, unrequited and sharp, but it cut through me as if excising a tumor—knowing he was gone forever provided emphatic closure.
Delusional with my own mortality, I met my friend’s husband’s Kennedy-level-handsome younger brother at a dive bar on Valentine’s day, then left the bar with someone else: a surfer boy from the Rockaways. Simple in thought, intentions, and sexiness (he was sculpted with a little extra, dark and furry, just the way I like them) we slept that night on his friend’s couch. In the morning during sex, he asked if he could cum on my face. “No,” I responded. “Okay,” he said.
I tagged along with a friend to Miami for Basel, and the surfer followed me down there, in a van with his friend. He was happy to share me with his friend, and I was happy to share him with mine. I kissed everyone that weekend, Miami made me feel potent. At one point during the trip, we ended up at a strip club on the other side of the bridge. The surfer slipped off my heels and massaged my bare feet while his friend with big lips whispered in my ear. I never felt so alive.
~~~
Back to reality, 30 years old and single, I had an existential crisis and decided to date younger men, convinced the secret of youth was in their semen—it was not. Still I sucked and fucked and hoped to find a cure.
Around this time my friends delivered me a brooding musician with depressive tendencies and a massive cock. He had floppy hair, with perfectly curved biceps. He was always wearing a leather jacket, unless he was shirtless, as we often undressed him at parties. I think I could have loved him, I could’ve let his cock destroy me forever, but something always got in the way.
Next, The Bruiser helped me further explore my interest in submission. He was dubbed as such for the marks he left on me, I’d show up to friend’s places purple with bites, grabs, belt whippings, and more. I was scared of him and I trusted him. His legs were tan and taut from years of sun and sports and his face looked like it should be sipping something waspy at a country club. He gave me a sweet escape every now and then by choking me within an inch of consciousness. He also gave me chlamydia and HSV1.
Then there was the one I’d known in college, although never really known in college. Never looked twice at him, until more than ten years later, when suddenly, I was looking—everywhere. In those years of madness, dating and fucking incessantly, a little carelessly, with C I found a safe space to be intimate with no expectations. When I think of C I think of the Jersey shore, his quiet presence, chain smoking, and a shower we shared, my mouth sliding over his salty skin, licking, sucking him. Maybe because I never truly considered a relationship with him, I allowed myself to be soft where I was usually guarded. I think of the night in my bed he got me so wet, he slipped into my ass using the lube of my vag.
Around this time I met N, from a wealthy Upper East Side family, he fashioned himself as a bohemian patron of the arts. He worshipped my breasts like no man ever had before, as if the key to his pleasure was spread across my chest, in the dots of my areolas, the weight of my curves—carrying my G cups finally felt worthwhile. He left me his number on the brunch receipt, but never returned my texts for a date.
Every birthday after my break up with B, at dank bars, when friends yelled make a wish over a melting candle, I fully and seriously wished for love. I wished to find someone to be with. The first couple years the wishes were veiled designs to escape myself. But eventually, my wishes for love became grounded in what I wanted to give and receive. I felt the pressure of being a woman over 30, not knowing what I wanted for the future but frightened that time was running out to decide. I still felt beautiful, and sexy, and I wanted someone to appreciate me. I had been dating and fucking in earnest for four years without finding what I was looking for. I was beginning to lose hope.
And so, what proceeds is more extreme, the lovers more monumental. The losses, too. I’ll return to it when I’m braver or older. For now, I’m putting my shades back on and gliding off this island.
Part two to come.
~~~