Would I be OK with having sex with my roommate without developing a relationship? Would the desire for men he’d rekindled seem somehow false, post-isolation, out in the fresh air? I wasn’t sure-about the future, about what to do now.
It became clear through the fog of my fantasy that he wasn’t interested in or emotionally capable of having an end-of-the-world romance but did want to hang out and have sex with me at night. Would we go back to being strangers after this? Each hour my phone remained still, I felt used and more ridiculous for imagining that we could have a relationship.Īt around 5 o’clock, he texted me to hang out. But the next day when he didn’t text me or come out of his room, I started to panic. Whatever the hookup meant about my identity (was I bi now? Was I succumbing all over again to the rom-com fantasies of my youth?), I couldn’t help but smile at the possibility of a quarantine romance. When he went back to his room, I jumped in the shower. I held up my hands as he lifted my sweater over my head. In my life, the chapter on heterosexual romance, I thought, was closed. Even after that relationship fizzled, I started hanging out at lesbian bars, continued dating women, and even came out to mother. That was the length of time that had passed since I’d fallen in love with a new friend on a backpacking trip to Europe and subsequently realized I was more attracted to women. Īs I ran my hands through my roommate’s chest hair, it hit me that I hadn’t had sex with a man in three years. If you have a story we should tell, please email.
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