So, there I was, in class with this Brick Shit House (so unattractive) but, hmm, he did have a speaking voice that was compellingly deep and gravely. Miss Thing over here is drawn to men with voices; nice hands are compelling too, but back to Mr. Brick House. He was clearly smart, very much so, and I can be caught, surprised and a little overly pleased, thrilled almost, by having my (clearly idiotic) prejudices being upended, as in ‘Oh my, he’s not an over-muscled dolt, he’s a smart hottie with thighs the size of tree trunks! Yuuuummm.’ Our acting teacher, previously mentioned in this space, thought we would be perfect for one another and pushed me at him, which I resented (embarrassing!) but, I had to admit an interest had been sparked, even as his push was another red flag I shoulda, coulda, woulda paid attention to as that guy thinking we’d be a good pair was not just a red flag, it was a literal sea of them. Mistaaaaaaake.
We began flirting with one another, and went out to the movies. We talked, a lot, on the phone, and as the older and wiser man he was, and I was perfectly willing to believe he had to be (N.B.: age is just an arbitrary, mostly meaningless number, people), I allowed him to set the tone of our relationship, which he did by asserting that yes, he was older and wiser, and yes, he’d been here before, numerous times, thus he wanted to get to know me (!!!) before anything sexual happened between us (!!!). He wanted us to get to know each-other. Awwwwwwww. That’s so nice. That’s so unusual! That’s so special. I was touched, genuinely taken aback and pleased as punch. Oh, but, by the way, he was dying to jump my bones. Dying. Awwwwwwww. How sweet! How sexy! What a turn on – and, huh, a relief!!!! Mistaaaaaaaaake.
Of course, he was – like a Brick Shit House – full of shit. Ladies, vital lesson two, pay attention: if a single, available, presents as straight man does not want to fuck your brains out, putting off sex out of respect for you, until you know one another better, or for some other reason including religion, he is lying through his teeth or has something serious and seriously bad to hide. He is a liar. Deceiver. Fibber. Falsifier. Prevaricator. Fabricator. Teller of untruths. Bullshit artist. If a fellow does this he is either married, about to be married, lives with his girlfriend/fiancée/wife, is in the closet, has a seriously bad STD, is a religious wing-nut best avoided, or – well, let me continue and I will share option number whatever, as that very nuanced reason applies here.
(Look, I’m not saying it can’t happen, a man wanting to get to know you before sex, I’m just saying the odds are stacked against you, and against what he’s saying being true. And don’t let any dude set the pace of your relationship, no matter the context. Why? Because I said so. Okay, okay because the best, healthiest relationships are equitable partnerships, constantly negotiating terms, yet as human beans we tend to go on as we begin, so begin with parity, duckies.)
About a month into our no-sex relationship, we auditioned for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, directed by that same encouraging us to couple acting teacher. After the audition, we ran off to our respective and separate jobs and homes, but later that night, Brick House called me in an uproar because he was sure I would get a lead role, I was so much more talented than he, I was also younger, sooo good looking, I would go on to stardom, I would cheat on and eventually leave him, and he was a total loser. Awwwwwwwww. Staaahp! So not true, you silly! I comforted him, best I could, and then he surprised me by saying, I think we should have sex. What?! What?! Now? But, I thought we were going to wait, in fact you said let’s wait ‘til July, and that’s only a month away, less! He responded by saying that the July thing was an arbitrary date, completely meaningless, and that he wanted to have sex. Um, okay, but, um, Brick House, what about us getting to know one another? That was a line, Mahhhhhj. A line. A line. A line?!?!
Okay so here’s where I truly fucked up. Women! Do not do this! This ‘line’ thing should be a deal-breaker! Because, instead of being angered by the lie, the line, the manipulation, I instead went to confusion, to compassion – for him, already established in the conversation, poor sweetie, even though he’d gone on to say it was a deliberate ploy to plump up the sexual attraction, one he’d used before. You have? Most of all, I went to a place of being stunned and even more idiotically compliant, because– after all – he was older and wiser, a man with whom I had begun to seriously fall in love, and his deceitful ploy had succeeded in ramping up the frisky, big time. June is busting out all over!! I was horny as all get out. So, while there was no way I was getting in a cab that night after the day we’d both had, I agreed to meet him the next day, as we had previously planned, but hoo-fucking-ray for sex. Yay. To my credit, I did think, I hoped, maybe a good night’s sleep would make him reconsider; maybe he hadn’t been lying, playing me, exactly, more that he was speaking from his insecure place in this post-audition moment, the poor sweetie, maybe he really did want to continue to get to know me better. Because ding, ding, ding what I’d begun to fall in love with beyond the voice and the hands and the tree trunk thighs was the feeling of being respected, of being valued, and of being treated less like a possession, a trophy, a piece of ass or prey, and more like a human-fucking-being. I also thought that having sex with him when he had just admitted he was depressed was bad idea, right?
Ah, yes, Brick House’s depression. I was having a hard time getting out of bed myself at that point in my life, but his black moods were on a whole other level, it seemed. This was yet another red flag in that sea of red flags I blissfully overlooked, rationalized, and undervalued as I got to know him during those weeks; I even thought, egotistically, naively, that I could fix that, maybe? Yeah, sure (I couldn’t, you can’t, get out now). He had shared with me that his father and grandfather had known Ernest Hemingway and his dad, back home in Michigan (how cool is that!? So cool); they’d gone hunting together in the upper peninsula, the setting for many of Hemingway’s stories, classic stories I loved. And, the tale Brick House shared went on, his dad, Brick House Sr., and his grandfather, Brick House the 1st, had committed suicide, like Hemingway and his father, which was another point of connection he was – celebrating? Noting. Pointing out. He even owned, he kept, the gun with which his dad and grandfather had killed themselves. I know I said something like, ‘You have the gun?!!’ but, I was twenty-four and dumb and inexperienced as a box of rocks. And in love. Or lust. Whatever. Blind to the waving Texas-sized red flag flying in my baby-face, programmed to think anything, anyone was fixable with enough love and TLC from a willing, nurturing female such as myself. Mistaaaaaake.
The morning after he came clean about his ‘line’, we found out we’d both been cast in small roles in Twelfth Night, and when we spoke on the phone, I did make an argument for waiting, still, because it was clear to me that he was not feeling good about himself and his prospects in general. But, I also really, really wanted to have sex. Oh my. Ladies, if you have an engine like mine (100 horses, galloping), it is vital you take many deep breaths, and do not plunge headlong into bed with men who are not what they represent themselves as being. Now, of course it’s important to believe in people, and to open one’s heart, but – FFS – keep those horses in the barn until you’ve sussed out what’s really going on if at all possible, and please, please, please take this opportunity to learn from my mistake! The internet, which didn’t exist at the time, is a great help. Look him up; scroll baby, scroll. Insta. Fakebook. Tweeter. My Space. Reddit. Linked-In. Search. Review. Protect thyself!!
So, hey, we did it. We tried to do it. Y’see, Brick House was unable to maintain a hard-on, and I had so little experience with sex at that point, I wasn’t sure what to do, if anything, especially as he was off down the road of anger and distress at a 90mph clip. Also, to put it bluntly, his penis was tiny. Tiny. Think five-year-old’s pinky finger. I’d never experienced that, and my first response after a silent, ‘wait – what is that? is that it?’, was to go to the place of whatever, it’s okay, right, if you love someone? Maybe? Sure. No biggie (Ouch). But, hey, hands, tongue, skin on skin, whatever the specifics, it’s sex and it’s all good. I certainly wasn’t going to say anything about it. Nooooooooo. No. He’d already established he was capable of aggression, and potentially of violence, another red flag I totally ignored, when he’d punched me on the shoulder after I tapped his playfully with my fist. Tap. Boom. Ow. Ouch. Owwww. What was that? In my face: don’t hit me, don’t you ever hit me. Ooook. On St. Mark’s Place. I will never forget it, but at the time, I let it go as intense and weird but, okay he must’ve suffered physical violence, the poor sweetie!
Mistaaaaaaake.
After the non-sex sex, and no discussion, he turned his back on me, and eventually fell asleep. I was left wide awake trying to figure out what had just happened, and what I was going to do or say, if anything, about it. I finally fell asleep too, turning my back on him, opening my eyes several hours later to find Brick House was already awake and in the mood to try again, evidenced by the presence of a teeny pinky finger poking me in the region of my bodacious bum cheeks, as well as the smile on Brick House’s face when I turned my head to look at him. Okay, I’m in!! I guess?
Again, a total failure. He could not stay hard, after which he said, you know why this happened, don’t you? No, no I don’t. I really don’t (I really didn’t). It’s because you, Mahhhj, have marriage written all over you, that’s why. What?!! I do? And I actually looked down at my body to see what, if anything, was written there, and repeated, I do? I don’t think so, Brick House, I don’t think I do. Do I? He insisted, you have marriage and children and crippling convention written all over you. The pressure is so intense, I can’t deal with it. I can’t perform. This is on you.
A conversation ensued that I will sum up as he accused and blamed, I defended and tried to comfort, saying it didn’t matter, and then he finally came clean: historically he was unable to get it and keep it up with any woman over the age of eighteen or nineteen. The partner he’d moved to NYC with, a relationship he’d spoken about as having been important and lengthy, but failed, had been with a former student of his in Michigan – a former high school student he met when she was fourteen and he was thirty – who was attending NYU. She’d broken up with him during her Sophomore year, and here we were, a couple of years later.
His shame was so great, as was my ignorance, we barely ever spoke intimately again; I’m not even sure I tried to talk to him about it because I felt so clueless, so naïve. I didn’t know how to help. But he’d also made it clear he didn’t want my help, my support, my pity, or, finally, me. He said it that morning in bed: I was too old for him. Too old? I’m too old? He said he’d thought he’d give it, me, ‘a try’ because I was that attractive, but – I was too old for him. At twenty-four. We got through Twelfth Night by avoiding one another as much as possible. I felt sorry for him, a lot, but I was also finally angry, angry at him for blaming me for his issues, for not being up front about stuff, for manipulating me, for taking steroids (another confession after our failed attempts at sex) in the false hope that massive muscles would compensate for a lack of penile inches. And I was angry at him for rejecting me, for not trusting me to love him regardless, angry too for his being as intelligent as he was and as stupid. Well, we were both that, intelligent and stupid. He moved to California for his acting career (running away, I thought) shortly after Twelfth Night closed, and we casually stayed in touch via snail mail for a year after that. The Brick House made it out of his thirties and beyond alive, which is good, because whatever his flaws, I cared about him, and he was in a lot of pain. I found him on Facebook recently, while writing this, but I haven’t and won’t reach out, ever: not a mistake.
Don’t do it, ladies. Let these errors in judgement of mine, my credulity in the face of ‘mature’ male certainty, my dismissing his having punched my arm, accepting his insistence on putting off sex, etc., etc., be your cautionary tale. Whether it’s sex or religion or your body, don’t give your knowledge of yourself away to anyone, however ostensibly wise they might be. Be a skeptic, your own advocate, and private investigator. I lived it, and learned from it, and now, thanks to the interweb, so can you! There’s a wonderful memoir called Pure, by Linda Kay Klein, which is particularly powerful regarding the harm evangelical religion – total male certainty and total male bullshit – does to women (and men) with its emphasis on virginity, and women’s bodies being tainted with all manner of temptations for girls and women to suppress because men can’t help themselves. Whatever. Be skeptical in the face of wisdom, certainty, and maturity, which is very likely to be bullshit dressed in the robes of what we – our collective culture – think of as inherently respectable and credible, i.e. white men who have advanced degrees and deep voices.
They say when someone tells you who they are, believe them. Well, okay, but also, please, question whatever it is they do tell you, because it might not be the whole truth, and nothing but. And, trust your gut, because if he doesn’t do it for you on first sight, that might indicate a little something (pun intended). Men and boys are uniquely vulnerable in a culture that prizes size (penis, truck, car, wallet, house, influence, etc.) over substance, and yet this is the system we have, one that men have built, one that feminism seeks to fix, to cure, and reconfigure. I might be a size queen, but then again, I might not – preferring, always, substance over size, because in the long run it really isn’t the meat, it’s the emotion, it’s the human being you are in bed with, because sex lasts for – how long? ten minutes? five? twenty? thirty? – but a great conversation laden with laughs, and a relationship based on love, humor, and acceptance, now that’s a keeper, and can last a long, long time.
