What Happens When You Connect With Your Missed Connection

Three hours later, I awoke to the sound of the alarm on my phone honking wildly. I hit snooze and snuggled further under the top sheet before remembering that the bed I had slept in was not my own. Dick rolled over, still asleep, placing a hand on my ass. Waiting until he rolled over again, I slipped out of his bed and into the previous night’s clothes, looking over to see he’s facing the wall. I don’t wake him up before letting myself out to walk home.

I’m still half-asleep; trying to convince myself that there was no shame in having sex with a guy I met off Craigslist as I walk by the beginnings of the morning subway rush. Do I look like I was up all night making bad decisions? Either the people I’m passing on my way home are actually staring at me or I’m projecting. I decide it’s split 50/50 and keep walking, happy to have the pair of “just in case” sunglasses I tossed in my bag the night before.

I breeze through a shower, washing off the scent of a strange man’s secretions before stepping onto the towel I’ve laid out on the tile, not bothering to dry myself off. I take my time studying my body in the mirror. The circles under my eyes are darker than they were yesterday. The vein that bisects my forehead is unusually pronounced, boldly protruding through thin skin. A hangover is starting to thrum somewhere between the back of my skull and temples. A quick check ensures I didn’t miss any visible marks that would allude to what I was up to the night before. But there were no bite marks, no bruises, no hickeys — the gentle giant having left nothing behind but the lingering reminder that appearances deceive, and that good men have no place in bed with a slut like me.

_____

The reason I agreed to a second date with Dick was simple: I wanted someone to pay attention to me. We met up at the artisan pizza place of the moment, but wound up focused more on uncomfortable silences than slices. Conversation faltered until back at his apartment: we added slugs of whiskey and Budweiser silos to the mix and that was enough for me to explain away the dullness of our evening as awkwardness instead of incompatibility. The sex was better, though it still leaned toward the low end of mediocre.

While I relished in the attention, I battled an increasing ambivalence about seeing him. The more I flaked on plans, ignored his texts, and made myself otherwise unavailable, the more frequently I heard from him.

When my friends beg me to join them for Monday night cocktails, I cave. Maybe some much-needed catching up with the girls over drinks will help me get my head on straight — or at least make me laugh at the situation enough to think it’s genuinely funny instead of downright sad.

By 1 a.m. we’ve drifted from ‘buzzed’ to simply ‘drunk’; speaking freely about men and sex in a mostly empty bar in Greenpoint. After I overcame the embarrassment of not only admitting I had posted a Missed Connection, but had already hooked up with the guy I posted it for, the girls are quick to urge me to continue seeing him. They’d spent months listening to me lament over the fact I wanted a man in my life, one who would be sweet to me. That was the word I’d used: sweet. And now that I’d ostensibly met one, I was already beginning to resent him for it.