In this week’s sex diary, a woman keeps up flirtations over text, meets new people on Hinge, and sends lots of nudes. 26, single, Maine.
DAY ONE
11:30 a.m. For the past two weeks, I’ve been isolating in a cabin in the woods in Maine with a friend from growing up, whose family generously offered to let us stay here for a while. The decision to leave the city was hard, but the opportunity felt like the only way to make a safe getaway, so I said yes. It’s crazy how quickly everything moved, how quickly we adjusted to an unthinkable situation.
8:00 p.m. Now, we’re spending a Sunday evening drinking wine on the couch and listening to music. My friend, L, has just started messaging a guy she’s liked from afar for a long time. Seeing her get excited about it just makes me want someone to talk to, so I scroll back through my texts to find H’s number (I never save my hookups in my phone — a stubborn, weird habit that makes them impossible to find later).
9:00 p.m. H and I started hooking up maybe a month or so before social distancing began. We matched on Tinder, immediately made plans to see each other that same night, met at a bar with some friends, made an Irish exit after an hour, ran back to my apartment, and had crazy good sex all night. We saw each other every weekend for the next few weekends, and each time, we would fuck for hours and hours, fall asleep, wake up, and do it all over again. I’ve never been in a relationship before and didn’t start having sex until my 20s (religious upbringing, working through traumas, deleting the concept of hell from my subconscious, etc.). I don’t really want to date H but I also wasn’t planning on quitting anytime soon. He’s not my usual type, which is probably a good thing. He has all of this energy and a childlike enthusiasm and is not doing anything discernibly productive with his life. But he’s also non-judgmental, easy to be with, dependable, and really, really good in bed.
11:00 p.m. Still there? I text him. The last conversation we had was me telling him I couldn’t see him until it’s safe again. He told me he wasn’t taking any of the rules seriously, which worried me. Still here, he responded right away. Just checking in to say I wish we were having sex rn, I texted, grinning like an idiot. L and I keep making fun of each other for our boy-texting faces.
After a while I tell him that I’ve been so horny I’m wet just from texting him about nothing. He tells me he gets it and he’s hard all the time these days. I’ve never sexted anyone before! But I decide to go for it because the attention feels so good, just knowing H is sitting in his bedroom thinking about me. Are you wet right now? He asks. I check. Really wet, I respond. Hot! Wish I was there, he wrote back. I put my vibrator in my sweatpants pocket and creep downstairs to the basement. I just don’t want L to hear me and it’s so quiet here at night.
I sprawl atop a traditional quilt and take a sexy topless selfie and send it to H. He tells me he’s so hard and asks if he can see me touch myself. I take a quick video and send it to him. So hot!!! He responds, followed by a picture of his hard dick in his briefs. The camera lens looks extremely dirty. Skater boys. I ask to see him stroke it and he sends a video, and I feel genuinely very saddened by how much I miss his penis. I just want to sit on it, I say. He tells me that would be incredible, and he can’t wait until this is all over.
DAY TWO
9:45 a.m. I love my job — I do marketing — but it’s been really hard to focus on selling stuff to people when my brain is everywhere else. I enjoy going through my emails every morning because it’s easy to respond to everyone, delete what I don’t need, and feel immediately productive, even though I haven’t really done anything.
6:00 p.m. Six on the dot! I close my laptop and pour a glass of wine. I’ve never been the type to drink every night, but now that I’m actually cooking, I love the instant calm of sipping pinot noir as I chop and sauté and try not to burn anything. Isolation is domesticating me.
9:15 p.m. L and I are drinking wine and swiping through Hinge in unison. T, a boy I matched with earlier in the day, messages me. We banter, talk about isolation, being lonely. He’s exceptionally good at the back and forth, which is a relief after my weird texts with H. We talk for an hour or so and then I go to bed.
DAY THREE
10:00 a.m. I’m sitting on the porch working but also talking to T. He mentions how much he misses touch and I tell him that just talking about it makes me sad. He apologizes and then tells me he needs sex to live. Wow! He doesn’t waste any time and it feels weirdly reminiscent of the first moment you realize you are definitely going to sleep with somebody — the touch or remark that makes your stomach flip with excitement. I tell him not to bring it up and he says he’s logging off to go fuck himself all morning. I send him my cell number.
10:15 a.m. He texts me. That was fast. I tell him I hope he’s enjoying himself and he says he’s enjoyed himself twice already. I keep doing this weird smiling gasp thing every time he texts me because I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be so outrageously mutually horny. He asks to see my abs so I send him a pretty straightforward pic in a cropped turtleneck. He tells me I’m hot and notes that he can tell I have great hips too. I tell him I’ve felt surprisingly sexy in isolation and then tell him it’s his turn. He sends a topless photo in sweatpants. He has a nice body but he’s not really sexy to me, not someone I’d be into in real life.
11:30 a.m. We keep sexting. T tells me he’s been laying in bed imagining what it would be like for me to sit on his face. I tell him I’m officially at zero percent productivity, staring out into the distance, completely useless. He reminds me that I asked for it and, yeah, I did.
3:00 p.m. He is texting me about how badly he wants to go down on me and I am … having trouble focusing at work. I set an away message on Slack and make myself come in the guest room. Whatever! Consider it the time I would have spent taking a walk to get an afternoon coffee if we were still in the city.
8:30 p.m. L and I are sitting out on the porch drinking wine when T asks if I’m still free to talk. We decide to hop on the phone. I head down to the basement, which L and I are now jokingly referring to as my “sex dungeon.” The call starts off awkwardly with us making small talk, like any Hinge date. Maybe because I have no idea what I’m doing, I abruptly announce that I’m going to get naked. There’s a long silence as we both get situated, then we start talking about what we would do to one another. Although I’m using my vibrator, it almost feels more like therapy to be so vocal about what I want in bed. I tell him I don’t want to be in charge, don’t want to make the decisions, and I know that applies to more than just sex.
He sends me a photo of his abs after coming and I look at it as I finish, which takes a really long time. I joke that he can go to the dishes or something and he scoffs, telling me he’s not going anywhere and it’s so sexy to just hear me, that he loves the sounds I make. It’s so tender I want to cry. I finally finish and we hang up. I’m proud of myself for trying something new and feel oddly encouraged that I could do something I’ve never done “in bed” before even during isolation.
DAY FOUR
10:00 a.m. I’m working and I still haven’t heard from H. Kind of annoying since last night was so hot.
12:00 p.m. Finally I break down and decide to text him. I keep looking at this, I say. Fyi. Referring, of course, to the really beautiful dick pic he sent me when we were having phone sex. He responds quickly and says the first thing he did in the morning was look through my nudes. I send him another one just for fun and he tells me I’m so hot it hurts.
6:30 p.m. One of my sexually adventurous friends and I have been talking about doing a nude shoot together for over a year, and today she texted saying we should share our nudes to keep ourselves inspired. I go into the bedroom, close the blinds, and take a lot of very rustic cabin nudes. My favorite is one where I’m standing plainly and laughing. I feel like I’ll forever treasure this naked expression of joy in a sad, weird time.
DAY FIVE
2:00 p.m. L looks up from her laptop and says: “You know what’s weird? We would say the phrase ‘why don’t you,’ but you could never say ‘why do not you,’ ‘cause that sounds wrong.” I think about it for a while.
11:00 p.m. Nothing remotely sexy has happened or will happen today.
DAY SIX
12:00 p.m. T checks in to see what I’ve been up to and I end up sending some of my new cabin nudes since I was so happy with the way they turned out. You would look so good riding my face, he responds.
7:00 p.m. T sends me a video of himself coming and asks me what turns me on, what I want. I tell him something that’s never really come up with any other guys, which is that I’m a total exhibitionist and would love to (a) film myself with someone, and (b) have other people in the room watching. He tells me he is down for all of the above and has done it before. At this point I can tell I’m not attracted to him, but we have a mutual respect for each other’s isolation horniness.
9:00 p.m. L and I occasionally have dance parties around the kitchen island. Tonight, we blast our favorite pop tracks and bounce around for an hour, breathless and laughing and shouting the wrong lyrics.
DAY SEVEN
12:00 p.m. I didn’t hear from T and I feel happy to just let the conversation lapse, knowing that I don’t really want to meet him in person after this ends. Who knows if I’ll talk to H again since he’s not a big texter, but I hope we can pick things up again when it’s safe.
5:00 p.m. The pandemic has me feeling like I might be ready for a relationship. It’s easy enough to find someone to fuck (even virtually), but having an actual connection with someone would be comforting. I used to think all of these random hookups were cool and fun (and they were!), but now I can see myself feeling that way about actually dating someone.
9:00 p.m. I feel a little bummed out knowing it’s unlikely I’ll meet someone serious while I’m outside the city and we’re all stuck inside anyways (or working a very stressful essential job). I guess there’s always 2021.
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