After a six-hour drive and constant repetitions of Adele’s 21, I finally arrived in a small town in the East Bay, Northern California. My life after college wasn’t as shiny and glamorous as I expected. Before graduation, I foolishly thought that a STEM degree would be a magnet for six-figure jobs. When I threw that stupid cap in the air, I imagined recruiters would line up at my front door fighting over my cute ass.
The reality, however, couldn’t be more different than my fantasy. After graduation, trying to get a decent job was a struggle, and the only kind of jobs I got were handjobs and blowjobs. It was tough to have a respectable career in LA when botox and 10% body fat were part of the job requirements. So that’s how I decided to be stranded in a predominantly white neighborhood, trying to jumpstart my career with a shady tech agency.
Moving to the East Bay, the biggest culture shock for me was not finding a guy rocking six-pack abs within a one-mile radius. The median age of the gays was 35— they mostly had a faceless profile picture and wrote zero Mean Girls quotes on their bio. The East Bay gays had no place to host because most of them, I assumed, tried to suppress their wild side or had a wife. A few weeks after moving into town, I had many quick sexual rendezvous in someone’s Toyota at a shady corner of the mall parking lot. On a few occasions, I had to sneak into a guy’s bedroom through the window so his sister and nephews wouldn’t gawk at my iconic ass. Every hookup was spontaneous as most guys were busy maintaining their image as respectable professionals (and, for some, loving dads) in their regular life.
Basically, I was the freshest, most sought-after mistress in town.
After countless attempts at destroying the sanctity of many straight(?) men’s marriages, I had accepted that maybe the mistress life was my calling and that was all there was to life. But then, somewhere between the Toyota parking lots and the bedroom windows, I met someone who made me want to stop being someone’s dirty secret and start being someone’s actual person. He’s around my age, recently got out of a long-term relationship with another man, and was hot as fuck. The curly-haired guy was like a breath of fresh air because I didn’t have to worry about the potential of being a new stepdad to a fifteen-year-old brat. He’s got a charming smile, well-defined pecs, and most importantly, zero wives. According to the East Bay standard, he was a 10/10.
Our first date, albeit pleasant, was never gonna turn into a best-selling Netflix rom-com adaptation. Sure, he came to pick me up and took me on a cute quick In-N-Out date. We later laid on the stained carpet of my bedroom floor and had thought-provoking conversations about Blue is the Warmest Color. For a first date, everything went well. But getting him to meet me was an exhausting process. He’s one of those guys who wasn’t a big fan of emojis. His texts lacked any form of emotional expressions— deadpan messages so dispassionate that they could be mistakenly thought of as written by a zombie.
“Thanks for the offer, but that won’t help.”
“I’m at the office. What’s up?”
“Can’t meet today. Had plans with friends.”
Perhaps there was a lack of physical interest from his end. Perhaps he didn’t see me as someone worth investing his time for. Perhaps he was perplexed by my massive In-N-Out order. But I was young and naïve, and I was willing to go to war for this guy. I thought if I fought harder, and showed how I was more than just an average bimbo LA transplant, that I had more emotional substance beneath this semi-flawed exterior, he would finally see me as a worthy gem. I was trying to convince myself that I wasn’t just a supporting character in someone else’s epic romance. I, too, for once, deserved to be the hero of my own story.
My delusion reached an all-time high. I kept bothering this cute guy regularly, asking him what he liked about me how his day was, although his responses were bare minimum. After countless attempts, he eventually agreed to meet me again one day, and I was on cloud nine. He was going to pick me up at my apartment, and I would take him to my favorite Malaysian restaurant downtown. The plan was cute and, most certainly, innocent.
It wasn’t until three minutes before he arrived at my apartment that I received a text from my date.
“So you’re a bottom right? I’m vers, but mostly top.”
I would be lying if I told you the thought of having sex with him didn’t cross my mind. He’s an attractive guy, and I was a young adult filled with raging sexual hormones. But I would also be lying to you if I told you I wasn’t disappointed. I thought by leaving LA, I would detach myself from my former promiscuous lifestyle and had a chance to be a brand new person, redefining what emotional intimacy meant to me. The whole point of me physically distancing myself from the city that psychologically tainted me was for a fresh beginning— a chance to start over.
But it’s only been a few weeks since I moved to the East Bay, and I was already back on my bullshit. Whatever life mantra I was trying to ingrain in my stupid little head went out the door.
“Would love to ride your dick, stud,” I replied with the utmost confidence and little to no self-respect.
The wholesome vibe between us immediately dissipated. The moment my date walked through my front door, I could sense the hunger in his hazel eyes. And no, he’s definitely not hungry for some rendang and laksa. When he unpromptedly removed his white tee, I gasped. His lean muscles were bulging in all the right places with the right amount of chest hair on his sculpted torso. His proportion was correct. Everything about his body was correct.
I was so mesmerized by his body that it took me too long to notice the tattoo on his left arm. The tattoo was of a Balinese Barong, a pattern I saw innumerable times growing up. But before my mind went to dark places, I simply chose to ignore the tattoo. There was no time to contemplate whether it was a cultural appropriation issue. There was no time to worry if the Balinese holy spirits would bear witness to the sin of my homosexuality. At that moment, I had a more pressing issue at hand, as this curly-hair cutie was ready to press his dick into me.
We first fucked on the sofa bed in my living room, the same living room I shared with randos from work. Yes, I knew it was gross and morally problematic, but we’re not here to talk about morals, aren’t we? The moment his 7-inch penis sprung out of his black undies, I immediately dropped to my knees and showcased my oral technique— a form of art I had ruthlessly perfected after years of experience. But I could sense the impatience radiating from his throbbing member as I gradually upped my fellatio game, surprising him with how each brush from my tongue kept getting better and better. My date wanted something more. He was hungry for the main dessert, and I was ready to serve him some cakes, the cherry on top of this delicious culinary journey.
Even after one semi-decent Malaysian lunch and two mind-blowing, back-to-back sex, I didn’t notice a change in my date’s behavior. The curly-haired cutie still appeared to be as distant as ever; even after he wrecked the shit out of my bussy I poured my heart and soul into this guy. It was as if I was still an outsider to him, even though he had been inside me.
It wasn’t until one of those evenings when I just did not know when to fucking quit bothering him that he finally confided to me.
“I’m really flawed, and I’m going through a hard time. And I think I might be bipolar. I’m currently off of my depression/anxiety meds. And every time something remotely stressful happens, I feel like my head will explode and I want to die.”
It finally made sense to me. I didn’t understand it back then, but I’ve since learned that I was fighting a losing battle from the very beginning of my valiant effort of winning this curly-haired stud’s heart. I tried so hard to insert myself into his life (no pun intended) and be a ray of sunlight when all he needed was a time alone to grow and stand on his own.
Looking back, it wasn’t even my job to “fix” him, and even though I’d wanted to, I didn’t even have the tools to fix his problems. I was in my early ’20s, and I didn’t know shit about depression or anxiety. At the time, I thought depression was an overly-used word to convey an intense amount of stress, and a funny YouTube video of a panda rolling on the grass could simply fix that. That’s how naïve and clueless I was about mental health. It wasn’t a surprise that I knew nothing about mental health as, back in the days, I only filled the dark voids in life with penises and alcohol.
These days, I sometimes find myself on his Instagram or checking out his YouTube videos. He looks good — genuinely good, the kind of good that tells you someone figured something out. He’s doing music now, playing with his band, and there’s an ease about him in those photos that wasn’t there when I knew him. I’m happy for him. I really am.
And sometimes I think about that text. The honesty it must have taken to send it. A guy who couldn’t string three words together on Grindr, somehow finding the exact ones that mattered. I didn’t know what to do with that kind of honesty back then. I’m not sure I deserved it.
But he did the work. Whatever that looked like for him — the therapy, the meds, the music, the slow and unglamorous process of deciding you’re worth saving — he did it. And I think that’s the bravest thing a person can do. Braver than sneaking out of hotel rooms, braver than texting strangers at midnight, braver than anything I was doing at the time.
So yeah. I see you out there, the guy with the Barong tattoo, looking fine as hell with your guitar and your peace of mind. And I’m still here for you, in bed, with both my options and legs wide open.
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