On the subway the following morning, I reflected on saving Sadie's name in my phone as "Sexy Sadie." But really, "Sadist Sadie" or "Superfreaky Kinky Sadie" might have been more accurate. I wasn't in any real pain, but in the eyes of a true believer, my back might have incited references to the stigmata, or at the very least, The Passion of the Skinny Geek. Sadie was a biter, and she slapped, scratched and generally abused me. In short, it was great. But the notion that I was auditioning for any role other than "random hookup guy" was dashed just prior to our getting down to business.
"I have a boyfriend, Ryan," she said. "Do you have a problem with that?"
"Not at all," I said. Of course I didn't. I was a twenty-first century kind of guy, and she was a twenty-first century kind of girl. Neither of us were married, and it turned out her boyfriend was in San Francisco. In the evolution of my sexual enlightenment, I felt as if I were growing legs and taking to the land.
I talked about the situation on the phone with my old girlfriend, Gabriela, a few weeks later. Old girlfriends have many magical powers, and the ability to sense when you're getting good sex is chief among them.
"If the sex is really good, what's the problem?" she asked.
I told her the problem was that I felt like I was a perpetual booty-call.
"Now you know how I feel when you call me drunk." This is another magical power old girlfriends have: the ability to remind you how un-evolved you actually are.
It soon became apparent that Sadie's modern approach to sex wasn't limited to me. The next time she texted me to come over was from some kind of swinger party in her building, where she had supposedly just gone down on another girl. When I entered the foyer, there was indeed a girl leaving at that very same moment, high heels literally slung over her shoulder. She looked at me with both mild contempt and affected apathy.
There was every chance this girl had not actually just engaged in a sapphic tryst with my would-be mistress. I could have been projecting this character on to a perfect stranger.
I reflected on saving Sadie's name in my phone as "Sexy Sadie." But really, "Sadist Sadie" might have been more accurate. |
Indeed, it was possible that I was projecting the character of swinger onto Sadie in an attempt to sexually deify her in order to assuage my sneaking suspicion that being modern or progressive had nothing to do with all this, and that I was actually just an ordinary slut.
When I entered, Sadie was topless, wearing a skirt, garters, high heels and crotchless panties. She started telling me about how one of her female neighbors had just made her come. She was a little drunker than I was, and it wasn't clear if we were getting turned on by each other, or by Sadie's dirty talk. There's a good reason why porn often includes dirty talk, girl-on-girl action and crotchless panties. It works.
Our relationship continued exclusively in the confines of Sadie's apartment, where she existed in a permanent costume of underwear and pajamas. Often, we would dirty text-message each other while at work, which is a funny thing that happens between people these days.
"What kind of panties are you wearing?"
"The one's you like." As if I don't like all of the panties. I may have well been asking, "Which naked body are you wearing today?"
While removing a gag (my necktie) from Sadie's mouth one night, I finally decided to ask her what she did for a living. She told me she worked in the offices of an upscale salon in the Meatpacking District. I told her an old flame of mine worked there, Allison.
"Yeah, I know her." Sadie said. "She's cute. Maybe we should have a threesome with her." Which was a very interesting thing for Sadie to say, because Allison was very, very bisexual.
"We should do it at your job," I texted Sadie from bed later that night.
"Just text me sometime when you're in the neighborhood, and we'll fuck under my desk," she replied. "Maybe Allison can watch."
If Sadie was serious, it would be one of the greatest sexual conquests of my life.
