Sex From Scratch

Last week, I turned some words of wisdom from journalist Tracy Clark-Flory into an inspirational poster. In exchange for a handmade “Don’t Fake Orgasms!” poster, I asked people send me relationship advice to they wish they could have given themselves at age 20. Here are my favorite answers: 

• Leave the house more and not be afraid to talk to people. Also, your sister is a bad roommate.” - J. Ryan Potts
• “Wait to get married (the first time). Just slow everything down. There’s no rush.” - Jake
• Talk with your friends about your sex life!  You can get a lot of great ideas/inspiration, you can process the great (or not so great?) sex you are having, and you can share this cool, intimate thing you are doing with more people you care about!  Feel good about the sex you are having!  - Leah
• “Don’t allow heartbreak to keep you from loving again.” - Saundra
•  ”None of the guys you know are as cool as you are. Don’t take them so damn seriously.” - C. McCurdy
• “You’re not done making mistakes or falling in love or being sad.” - MK
• “Sometimes it’s just better to stay home and read a book.” - Lauren
• “As a 20 year old virgin, I would now tell myself to fuck and get it over with. It’s not that sacred.” - Gabe
•  ”Love isn’t destiny.” - Felicity 
•  ”Don’t be that couple that turns everything into a ‘we.’ Don’t let your partner be the center of your life.” — Liz 
• “It’s okay to want and crave sex.  To be slutty and to be queer and to want to do it in public spaces.” — K
• “Break up with them. If you’re thinking about it, you probably want to more than you even know. It’s going to be HARD, but do it. Just rip off the band-aid and move on.” — Clarity
• “Start using lube and stop fucking dudes.” - Em

My own advice to my 20-year-old self would be: “Complain more! Speak up and be assertive, or your minor frustrations will become a resentment volcano.”

Andi Zeisler is one of my favorite feminists. The founder of Bitch magazine is one of those people who, as you’re sitting together picking away at brunch omelettes, will talk off-the-cuff about her life and ideas in a way that’s so articulate that all you can contribute to the conversation is a couple “yeah”s and loud slurps of coffee. On a recent morning in Portland’s City State Diner, I munched on toast while she talked intelligently about marriage, independence, and the need to be impolite.  

YOU DON’T HAVE TO DATE A TON OF PEOPLE. 

The effort of dating, of meeting people, really wore me out. I’m a real introvert, I don’t really enjoy the feeling of needing to put myself out there.  The whole thing of like, oh there’s someone, I have to figure out whether they like me, I have to be in the same place as them, I have to look cute, I have to figure out things to talk about. But I felt like, “Dating is what I’m supposed to be doing, I’m going to do it just so I haven’t left too many paths unexplored. I’m just going to say yes to people.” 

I wasn’t miserable, but it didn’t feel like me and it never felt right.  I remember when I met my husband Jeffery, telling my mom, “I think this guy’s really special.” She was really dismissive, saying, “You’re going to date hundreds of guys.” I said, “That sounds terrible.” 

Jeffery and I have been married for ten years.  I met him at a concert. I literally saw him across the crowded Greek Theater in Berkeley and was like, “I’m going to marry that guy with the tube socks and glasses.” I was not even in that mindset at all, it wasn’t something I’d ever thought before. I just turned around and through a couple thousand people, saw him and thought, “There’s something about that dude.” Than I just turned around and went about my business, I didn’t even really try to meet him.

I don’t really believe in love at first sight.  I feel like I’m very superstitious in a lot of ways and that some things happen when they’re supposed to happen.  But I don’t try to organize my life around the idea that fate happens.

At the theater, we bumped into one another and talked for maybe two minutes, and then were like, “Okay, bye.” What do you say in that situation? What am I going to do, ask him to come home with me? Then, when I left, I was in the BART station waiting to buy my ticket and he ran in and said, “Here’s my number, I’m here for a few days, call me.” 

I think we both felt an instant thing of, like, “I don’t know you that well, but I know you’re going to be really important to me.” I think it’s an illustration of the idea that if you’re not looking for love, that’s what will happen.  I think all the relationships I’d had previous to that, there was a fundamental gut feeling that something was off about them, I was always ignoring my gut to some extent and this didn’t really have any of that, this felt really good right off.

POLITENESS CAN BE PARALYZING

I was in a long-term relationship from when I was 23 till I was about 25. Really from the beginning, I didn’t feel good about it. But I somehow felt compelled to stay in the relationship because I felt like, “This is what a relationship is supposed to be and I need to experience it.” I wasn’t punishing myself, I was  just trying to make myself be what I thought was normal.

What I really wanted to do at that time was sleep with a bunch of people and not have a boyfriend. But for some reason, I couldn’t give myself permission to believe that was okay. So what I ended up doing was being in this relationship and just cheating on him a lot. It felt awful, but I felt like I’d committed to him at some point. After six months, I thought, well I have to stick it out for at least a year. 

We went down to Southern California to visit his family and his mother treated me like I was going to marry her son. She made me this soap cozy—this little cloth dress that goes over your soap—with “Andi’s Kitchen” stitched on it. I was like, “Whoa, she really thinks this is happening.” And then I realized, he thinks this is happening, too.

I think my default is to be very polite and that gets me into a lot of goofy sitcom moments where I just can’t get out of something. This was one of those moments. I was like, “Holy crap, this whole family thinks we’re getting married and meanwhile I’m sleeping with someone else.” Instead of being straight with him, I felt paralyzed. I did not want to admit to myself that maybe I am just not a person who wants a boyfriend. Maybe I just want to be alone and have guys to sleep with when I  want to. I wasn’t able to come to grips with the fact that that’s what I really wanted.

I remember the first time he put his arm around me when we were walking down the street, it felt so wrong. I felt like my whole body was rejecting his arm, it was just so heavy. And that was in the first four weeks dating, so if i’d really listened to myself, I would have said, “Let’s just keep it casual” and gotten out of it. 

I look back on it and there were so many ways I could have mitigated that relationship if I’d had a better sense of myself or the language I wanted to use, or a feeling that I was entitled to something beyond that. The whole relationship became this snowball of bad choices, mostly on my part. 

BE ON THE SAME PAGE WITH GENDER ROLES. 

I used to work at Pottery Barn. It was such a bastion of heteronormativity, we called it Pregnancy Barn. It seemed like someone was either always getting pregnant or getting enganged. I was privy to a lot of conversations about, like, how acceptable is a half carat diamond? What’s a proper proposal protocol? I felt like a real outlier, thinking those conversations were ridiculous. 

Someone from Pregnancy Barn introduced me to this guy who lived in a really fancy part of town and had a really fancy job and a really fancy family. We dated for a little while, but I felt like i was being auditioned as a potential mate.  At Pottery Barn at the time, everyone was on the same trajectory: You go to college, you go to work, you get married, and, if you’re a woman, you ideally stop working. He was on that track and I was clearly not on that track. There was something really attractive about dating someone who had a good job, where going out to dinner wasn’t like, “We need to split this burrito down the middle.” But on the other hand, in that relationship I just never felt comfortable.

My parents are of an older generation that is very gendered. When my father would spill something, he’d say, “Oh, honey, can you get a sponge and get that?” My mom was a real career lady—an executive at Revlon—and then when she and my dad got married, he was like, “No wife of mine is going to work” and she gave it up. I always grew up thinking, “Why should you have to do something just because he says to?” 

MARRIAGE IS AS FEMINIST AS KNITTING. 

Jeffery asked me to marry him just about a year after we started dating. It wasn’t really on my mind. I thought we were going to have the kind of relationship where we just dated forever and then finally got married because we wanted real plates, you know?

I didn’t grow up thinking marriage was the be all end all, and part of that’s because my mother got married very late, she had me when she was 40. So his proposal totally surprised me. But it was not impulsive on his part at all. When I did the math, I realized he had really thought about it, he had a ring made and clearly waited a while.  I was like, “Um, there’s no discernible reason to say no and I can say yes and not have to have everything figured out. So, okay, let’s do this.” 

And then, when I thought about marriage, it appealed to me in a way I never thought it would. We’re choosing to make each other family.

The way I feel about marriage and feminism now is the way I feel about knitting. I like knitting and I’m a feminist who knits. But I would never say knitting is a feminst act. And I’m a feminst who’s married, but I would never say getting married is a feminist act. It’s really hard to say, “I am going to bend this institution to fit my idea of feminism.” You almost can’t divorce marriage from it’s historical ideas about property and patriarchy. Those are really built into it.  I’m a feminist, my husband is a feminist, but saying that we have somehow made marriage feminist, i think that would be arrogant and presumputous. You can’t transoform an institution that huge and that has so much historical baggage. You can do things within a marriage to make it more egalitarian and feminist but it does not make marriage as an instituion feminist. 

MAKE SPACE FOR YOURSELF

Everyone’s marriage, unless you’re Kim Kardashian, is really private. You can’t see from the outside what’s going on within them. 

Jeffery and I don’t spend that much time together.  We probably spend like 45 minutes a day together. We’re both very independent people and we’re both big introverts, so in some ways, it’s a very separate marriage. I’ve always said that my ideal living situation would be two little houses that are connected. We could live very separately and we could choose whether or not to sleep in the same bed at night. He’s much more of a night owl, he works editing and retouching photos late into the night. Often he’ll just fall asleep on the couch with the dog or in the guest room. 

I think what’s good is the sense of neither of us feels like, “You’re my husband, you’re my wife, therefore we must spend x amount of time together.” 

Since having a child, it’s really important for us to have family time. We do spend a lot of time together on the weekends. We’ll sleep in, then eat breakfast, do some activity like go to the museum or the river where the kid can just run around. Then in the afternoon, we’ll have family quiet time, where our son has to stay in his room for some time. That was  very conscious thing, because we needed some structure. 

From an outsider perspective, it can sound really boring, but it just works. It feels right.

Walter Cole has learned a lot over his 81 years—first as a married man; then as the partner of a fantastic man named Roxy; and finally as the proprietor and star of the West Coast’s longest-running drag show, Darcelle XV. While his love life has never been traditional, Cole has always been fabulous. As he applied gigantic fake eyelashes and bright blue eyeshadow in the basement of his famous Portland club, Cole talked with me about how he’s stayed friends with his wife, a father to his kids, and partners with Roxy for the past 45 years. 

YOU CAN’T HAVE A HAPPY LIFE IF YOU’RE LYING. 

My wife and I dated in high school and then got married almost immediately. That’s what you did in the ’50s.  We had a lovely wedding, it was great fun. Honeymoon and the whole business. I went in the military, we bought a home. I thought I could handle the fact that I was cheating.  But I couldn’t handle the lies. It was just me, I couldn’t handle it. I thought, “This is wrong.” I had to be who I am and who I am is a gay man. 

You can’t have a happy life if you’re living a lie, and that’s what I was doing. And so I had to come clean. You have to make sure that it’s not a selfish thing. It was impossible to live the way we were living.  She knew that something was going on, she’s said that she could feel it had started unraveling, that it just wasn’t the same. 

There was only one way to say it: “I’m gay.” We were home. And then we went out and had margaritas. It wasn’t fun, it was hard. Nothing felt good about it, I had just possibly destroyed the life of a person I love. It wasn’t easy for the kids, either. It was hard for them, not having their dad at home. But they realized that to be happy, you have to tell the truth.

I was not just a gay man, but a gay man wearing a dress for a living. So that was a little more poignant for my family. I think it’s probably easier if you’re a “celebrity”—which, I hate that word, but they attach it to me all the time.  When I started up the club, the newspaper published a little article naming me as “Walter Cole, Darcelle XV.” I’ve maintained such a high profile that my kids’ coworkers, all of their friends, all their friends’ mothers and fathers have been here. If the lady down the street thinks I’m wonderful, then they can think, “Oh, I guess he’s wonderful, too.” 

BE KIND TO YOUR PARTNER. 

If I could do it again, I would be a little kinder, not quite so abrupt. 

My wife and I lived together for a while, until it was too tough. I moved out, I just didn’t come home one night. There was no explanation, no conversation like, “Now I’m going to move out.” I guess I was a coward for that.  

She’s still in the same house all these years later and we have the best of times now. We never stopped being friends. We’ve always spoken, but it took probably five or six years after I left to start doing things together again. We’ve been able to stay friends because she’s a wonderful person and I’m a wonderful person. And we have two children. They’re very important to her and they’re very important to me.

We never got divorced, because she didn’t want to do anything like that. We kept it simple—she kept the house and all that. I never gave it a thought. The kids were at home, she was a single mother. If we’d gone the divorce route, some judge would have decided where the house went. This way, we could just decide it ourselves. Also, tax wise, it’s been alright. I have four houses and two children and two grandkids. Each of the kids will have a house someday.  

IT’S EASIER IF YOU JUST AREN’T STUBBORN.

Roxy and I haven’t had a fight in a long time, I’m disappointed. 

When we disagree, we usually argue in the car. By the time we get home, we have to get it settled. We don’t believe we should spend our time at home with problems. It stays outside the house and hopefully not here at the club in front of somebody. 

Small things are sometimes the worst. Am I stubborn? No. I’m the first one to say, “I made a mistake, I did it wrong.” It’s my way and then if it doesn’t work, okay then, I made a mistake. 

I think we’ve stayed together because we’re both so business-minded and we have the same interests. My top priority is the business and his is the show, so it works out just fine. Our whole lives are keeping up this place, 45 years is a long time to keep going. 

It’s not that important to have things in common, it’s just easier if you give in to compromise.  That’s what’s wrong with so many people—they let the teeny little things matter, like where to go to dinner. If you can’t say, “Oh yeah, I’ll go there, I’ll try that place” well then, you’re going to be fighting.

We even look like brothers. People often ask, “Are you brothers?” and I just say yes, because it’s easier than saying, “We sleep together.” 

BE CLASSY. 

I tell my grandkids, don’t put up with any bullshit from these young guys. If they say they’re going to pick you up at eight o’clock and they’re not there at eight o’clock, go out with someone else. These are boys who want to do dada bing bang boong bang. That’s what they want, I know, I was a young man, too. The motive has been the same since eternity. 

I have mothers bring their daughters and their boyfriends in and pull me aside and ask, “Do you think he’s gay?” Sometimes you can spot a queer from a mile away, so don’t ask me if you don’t want to hear. 

My granddaughter Sara had a boyfriend who was supposed to take her out to dinner, so she gets all ready and then he calls and says, “I was going to pick you up, but I’m going to stay and work on my car with my friends.” At the last minute, when she was expecting to go! You know what then? Keep those friends. 

People come into my club all the time and I ask, “You two married?” and they say, “No,” and I say, “Well, how long you been bangin’?” 

I hate seeing little teenage kids walking down the street hanging on to each other, and you know they’re doing more than just hanging on. What happened to being a kid? They go and jump into that sort of thing too quickly. We had fewer distractions when I was young. We didn’t have cars, we had movies to go to, and big dances. There were a lot of ballrooms in Portland at one point, with big band sounds. We’d go all the time.

IF YOU’RE NOT HAPPY, MOVE ON. 

Roxy and I love each other, unconditionally. It’s simple. I care about him. He cares about me. I care about his feelings. He cares about my feelings. 

I have this thing that I say all the time, You have to be happy. If you’re not happy with your family, your friends, your job, your relationship, move on. “It’s not worth not being happy.” That’s been my motto forever. 

JD and I stood in his kitchen, huffing each other’s shirts. He inhaled deeply, his nose stuffed into my balled-up cotton t-shirt.  He exhaled. 

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think it’s smelly enough.” 

This was terrible news. We were two days into preparations for tonight’s Pheromone Party—a social art project/dating mixer hosted by Long Beach-born artist Judith Prays. We’d been dutifully sleeping in these shirts for the past two night and now there are only a few hours left until we would head to LA theater Cinefamily and deposit our sweaty shirts into Ziploc  bags tagged with numbers. Then, with booze in our hands and hope in our hearts, we would smell strangers’ t-shirts and take photos with the ones we find ourselves attracted to. 

“My entire dating life, I dated intellectually,” says Prays, who came up with the project after an “existential crisis”  brought on by too many dead-end dates with guys who she found intellectually charming but lacking in physical spark.  ”Nothing ever lasted more than two months. Then I went on a date with a guy who I wasn’t really interested in at all. We had nothing to talk about, but then at the end of the night he kissed me and the kiss was amazing. We wound up dating for two years. It was my best relationship ever. I loved the way he smelled.”

The Pheromone Party is a reaction to the impersonalness of dating these days. Going straight to the pits, so to speak, cuts through all the self-concious crafting of our online and public identities. 

“I was sick of the digital world,” says Prays. “I thought, I need something physical.” In other words: It doesn’t matter how pretty your profile photo is or how great your music taste is—your sweat can’t lie. 

Or can it? JD and I found ourselves embarrassingly concerned that no one would fall in love with our t-shirts and were willing to swing the odds in our favor in any way possible. Is pungent better than subtle? Should I have gone running in mine? Fearing scent contamination, I refused to store my shirt in a Whole Foods tote bag. 

Before the event, we met up for drinks with Amanda—who had been wearing her shirt nonstop for two days—and Kate, who hastily stuffed her shirt into her bra to enhance the scent. Kate’s shirt was a bright red American Apparel v-neck. My white cotton Fruit of the Loom looked bland in comparison. I wouldn’t date my shirt. 

The party itself took place on the packed back patio of Cinefamily. Over 100 shirt-sniffers squeezed between tiki torches and an open bar serving absinthe (trouble) to snag shirts off two long tables. A long line snaked out from a photographer’s setup, where photos of people holding their favorite shirts were then instantly projected onto a movie screen. The photos, like the shirts, revealed a mixed bag. In some shots, people laughed at the silliness of the whole endeavor. But in many, the expressions showed a mix of optimism and self-deprication, as if running through their minds was the thought, “Oh,  #112. She’ll never go for me.” 

I grabbed a bag off a table at random, took a whiff, and was instantly repulsed. That’s a surprise—I think of myself as a person who likes most people. But I had to sniff my way through eight shirts before I found one I liked. Number 142. I waited in line and, when the photographer focused on my face, discovered the same expression I’d seen on other’s faces. “142 is too good for me. So spicy and wholesome, he’s probably all squared away.” 

As predicted, Kate’s red shirt was in high demand, making several rounds past the photographer’s lens. But now, instead of pressure, I felt at ease, relaxing into an idea of our genetic fate. The shirt-smelling was a kitschy ice breaker, sure, but it also straddled the interesting line between fate and impulse.  In its absurd way, the whole t-shirt smelling process made it clear that’s there’s not just “the one” for us—many people pique our hormonal interest. 

My friends and I struck up conversation with a couple people amid the crowd, but nothing stuck. No one picked my shirt or JD’s, but we both found excuses for that. The were contaminated, the wrong color, not smelly enough. Prays, the artist, had more strange connections than us all: Her well-slept shirt was picked out of the lot by both an ex-boyfriend and she chose a shirt that turned out to belong to a long-ago high school crush who’d turned up to the party. 

The next morning, shaking off a hangover, I walked to the coffee shop and found myself looking at the regular suspects in a new light. “Yeah, the barista is cute,” I thought, “But what’s he smell like?” 

Maybe you’re just the person I’m looking for!

 I’m looking to interview a bunch of people in diverse types of relationships for my book Modern Lovers. I’m trying to track down people who identify with any of the situations listed here.

All interviews will be anonymous, unless you feel okay with having your name in the book.

 ARE YOU…

• Childless by choice, either in long term relationship or not?

•  In an non-monogamous dating relationship or open marriage?

• Someone who doesn’t identify as either straight or gay, but feels ambiguous for some reason?

• A queer senior (over 55) or queer teen?

• A queer person who identifies with a religion that generally does not accept LGBT folk?

• An atheist who’s married?

• A feminist of any gender who thinks a lot about navigating gender norms in dating?

• In a long-term relationship but never gotten married?

• Someone who’s been divorced and who can speak to why it was the right decision?

• Someone who identifies as asexual or has decided not to have sex for a rather long period of time?

• A rad dad or hip mama? In other words, a parent who gives a lot of thought to raising your kids in an open minded and anti-authoritarian way?

• A swinger—either some who participate in an organized swinging group, like a club, or just someone who swaps partners or brings in a threesome partner with some regularity?

I’m interested in talking to you  about the day-to-day of these relationships: What’s hard? What’s easy? How did you get started? How do you communicate and make decisions? The idea is to develop role models and share the nitty-gritty details of these lifestyles with people who are interested by likely ignorant of the logistics.

If you identify with one of these groups and are up for helping others learn about your life, email me at mirk.sarah[at]gmail.com to set up a time to talk! Don’t worry, I’m friendly. And I’ll even buy you coffee!

I live in Portland, Oregon, but will be traveling to LA, SF, and NYC this spring, so if you live in any of those places, we can likely meet up in person. If you live in any of those places and are up for talking, drop me a line! If you live somewhere else or an in-person interview doesn’t work, I’d love to talk over the phone.