NOT SURE WHAT I WANT TONIGHT

by

Liz Doherty

ISBN: 9781617926754

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Not Sure What I Want Tonight

Open to Suggestions

Raggin’ Woman with Beers, Videos, Music Seeks 420 and Company

Smart, Attractive, Discerning Woman Needs Distraction in the Rain

Do It on the Steps

Show Me Your Scars

I Really Want to Watch Thelma and Louise Tonight

Herpes Positive and Have the Urge

Straight Girl in Guerneville Needs Priming for Party

I Really Really Wonder What Will Happen After This Post

Cloudy Day Spontaneity

I Found Mr. Right on Casual Encounters

Cranky – OK, Bitchy – And Positive

Would You Ever Take a CE Woman Home to Mom?

Hookie Today, Nookie Tomorrow

Fucked Up with Baggage and a Past

420 and Dolores Park

What Kind of Love Are You Looking For?

Do Provocative Clothes Make a Woman Hot?

Can’t Sleep – Can You Help?

What I Want Tonight

I’m at the Hyatt – Cum Quick

Do Me Now – Hard

Hot, Single CL Guys

Meet a Random Woman for a Drink Tonight?

Epilogue

NOT SURE WHAT I WANT TONIGHT

(Casual Encounters w4m)

Just looking at the menu tonight here on the list, and not sure what I want. Some titillating phone chat? A drink at a local dive spot with a handsome stranger? A scintillating guest to share this 420 and beer w/ me? I can't decide. Can I please see a dessert menu?

“Sure, ten thirty works.” I cradled the slippery phone against my shoulder as I took off my coat, hoping I wouldn’t drop it mid-sentence.

“Great. See you at the Attic in fifteen,” Larry said. From D.C. Late thirties, good writer, nice picture, strong, deep voice. Unusual for Craigslist.

“Cool.”

Ten minutes later I walked into The Attic, a dark and dusty bar just a block from my apartment. A soft spot under the old linoleum gave gently under my boot as I entered. Even earlier than I was, he spotted me immediately from a stool near the door. The first man I’d met earlier that day for coffee had been so late I’d almost given up. That one was a straight date, my term for one made through the more traditional Men Seeking Women dating board on Craigslist. This was to be a casual encounter.

“You’re Liz,” he said. “You look just like your picture.” He had shiny white teeth in a tanned, taut face.

“You, too,” I said. I saw deep brown eyes, a knit skull cap and one pants leg rolled up, I assumed because he was a biker. I was learning to trust my first instincts when meeting strangers this way and this one felt good.

“You want a beer?” he asked.

“For sure. Hefeweizen’s good,” I said, putting my leather jacket under my ass on the cracked leather barstool. I hoped the dark room concealed the fine lines that had begun to form around my eyes, and the deeper grooves around my mouth. I was older than him by about ten years. As I pulled out my wallet, he stopped me.

“This one’s on me,” he said, with a dazzling smile.

Larry had answered my Craigslist post just an hour or so ago this way:

I'd like to share smoke, drink and whatever may come, become friends and give you the special attention you deserve. I’m a really nice, dominant man with brains, good looks, and I know how to treat a woman right. Fun in and out of the bedroom. I sent him a couple of chaste pictures of me in return, and he was interested. I’m really not into the naughty pictures thing.

In our brief e-mail exchange, he also offered up that he was well-endowed. I’d posted on the casual sex board, so this was relevant and welcome information, and he looked pretty good in the G-rated tuxedo photo he sent. I paused to consider if the photo was from his own wedding day, but decided the corsage was too small for a groom’s. He wouldn’t be that tacky, even on Craigslist, where men will say and do almost anything, on e-mail anyway. I was discovering that Craigslist really is a candy store of sorts, for a sexually motivated woman who knows how to use it. And I have quite the sweet tooth.

“So,” I said.

“So, yeah, no, yeah… I guess I wasn’t really expecting you to show up, you know?” he said.

More and more I was learning that I often made better connections with people who weren’t raised here in California, especially the San Francisco bay area. Some kind of fundamental difference in the way we approached social interaction. The Californians seemed flaky and slow to commit, preferring to wait until the last minute to see if they got a better offer. Compulsively connected to their cell phones, they appeared to me to make multiple sets of plans and then wait to see which ones were their best choice at the last moment. Back east, we made plans and kept them, even days and weeks ahead. We made promises to friends and strangers—and kept them.

Larry’s corsage was small, but he’d said his business wasn’t. I don’t always ask for a large cock in my posts, but I try to hook up only with the well-endowed. I guess that makes me a size queen, an anatomical preference of mine that’s not meant to belittle those with smaller packages. I know what I like, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’ve heard of men who lie about their cock size, say they’re well-hung when they’re not. Do they think I won’t figure it out? On Craigslist, where people routinely give all their stats—age, race, height, weight, marital and STD status and cock size—it can be a touchy thing, asking guys about the size of their dicks. I guess because there’s nothing they can do about it. Unlike breasts, which women can enhance and augment, a guy’s got whatever god and his genetics gave him. You’d think they’d be less sensitive about it for that reason, but I’ve offended some with my polite requests for something big. Several have been pretty hostile about it. But I know what my body wants and needs, and my Mr. Right, when I find him, will definitely be packing a big one.

“So tell me what brought you to San Francisco,” Larry said. He was a little guy, no taller and not much heavier than I am, which is pretty slim. I could see that he was wiry and strong, and he sure didn’t look thirty-eight. He looked like a boy and it was working for me.

“I came here a few months ago, and I guess I was running away, starting again, in a sense, after my divorce. My kids still live back east. It’s not really a very original story. How about you—how long have you been here?”

“Yeah, sure, yeah, almost ten years now, but I still travel east a lot to see family. I have two nephews in DC, my brother’s kids, and I can’t seem to stay away from them for long.”

“How old?”

“Liam’s four and Laird will be one next month. He’s almost ready to walk.”

“Talking yet?” I asked.

“Yeah, no, not yet, but I can’t wait to hear what he has to say.” I told him some about my own kids, one of my favorite topics, and we drank our first round fairly quickly.

Then he changed the subject. “So, yeah, Craigslist. Pretty funny shit, huh?” I had learned already that most men—even the playful hook-ups—don’t really want to know the extent of my play on CL. I imagine it activates their fear of not measuring up to the competition, so to speak. I gave him my standard “Yes, I’ve met a few people from Craigslist” line, and left it at that.

Mostly through our second beers, I said, “So, I have some good weed at my place. I’m just around the corner—shall we?”

“Well, yeah, sure. That sounds real good. Let’s finish these? No good letting them waste.”

After leaving a generous tip on the bar, we walked to his titanium bike, which he said he’d built it himself. We took it back to my place, clean and neat and ready for a guest, and I let him park it in my entryway. I put on a mix of music with deep bass lines, lit a candle and grabbed us a couple more beers, joining him on the couch as he rolled us a joint.

“Yeah, good tunes. Yeah, nice place. How long have you lived here?”

“A few months now. Still trying to make it feel like home. It’s pretty different from what I left.”

After opening a couple more beers, and taking a hit or two of my excellent California weed, I climbed on to his lap, straddling him, and took a taste of his mouth. Every now and then, I meet someone who just tastes or smells wrong, but Larry wasn’t one of these. His sweet and beery breath was a good match for mine, and he was a great kisser. Under the sleeves of his T-shirt, I found the smooth, hard upper arm muscles I love. I guessed his biker’s legs, when I got there, would be equally strong and muscled. His well-defined shoulder blades and back were completely smooth. His skin was as soft as a baby’s. But the growing hardness in his jeans was decidedly adult. It didn’t take long for us both to be pretty warmed up.

“Come with me,” I said, not wanting to leave expensive stains on my second-hand Craigslist couch. I led him to the rear of my apartment, to my sparsely furnished bedroom, where I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him undress. This man was beautiful. I walked around him a couple of times, running my hands over him.

“Are you sure you’re thirty-eight? You’re in amazing shape.”

“Yeah, uh, yeah, thanks. Biking. I bike a lot.” He reached for me, pulling my sweater over my head and helping me unbutton my jeans.

That velvet skin, the muscled thighs and calves, the tight round ass… and oh, my, the strangest shaped cock I’d ever met. This one wasn’t just curled like a banana, it was bent. Really bent, in the middle, almost like it had been broken and hadn’t healed properly. Bent back towards his body, even fully erect. He hadn’t lied when he said it was big; it was, at least eight inches or so, but still. I sensed some looming geometric problems, but wasn’t going to stop now. He had me all worked up.

After a good half hour of kissing, licking, nibbling, pinching, twisting, tugging, stroking, exploring, I laid him down on his back and prepared to have at him. My mother said I never sucked my thumb or fingers as a baby. Maybe if I had I wouldn’t be quite as into sucking cock as I am now. I positioned myself on my knees so his fingers could reach me, and bent my neck at the peculiar angle needed to get him in my mouth. But for the life of me, I couldn’t keep him there. It was like his cock had a life of its own, and it kept popping out of my mouth, heading back between his legs. I needed my hands to prop myself up for balance, but it was taking both of them to control this thing.

“Let’s just fuck, shall we?” I said.

 That was even worse. I started on top, facing him, but couldn’t even pull him in that way. I turned around so I was straddling him and facing away, leaned forward until my face was on the bed between his legs, but still no go. We quite literally couldn’t even get it in. He pushed me down on my back, where we got going for a few strokes at a time, face to face with my right leg thrown over his left shoulder. But he kept popping back out just when we got a rhythm going.

I had been holding out for my favorite position, not wanting that to fail, too, but I was beginning to lose my focus. As tasty and smooth as this guy was, I feared even this might not work.

“Let’s try something else,” I said.

Pushing him off the bed, I placed myself at the edge on my hands and knees, hips pushed high. He stood behind me and pressed hard into my still pretty flexible lower back. We did a little better here, but he still kept popping out every ten or twelve strokes. Just when I thought we had it, we’d lose it again. It didn’t help that I was so wet, and I considered going for a towel to try to dry things off a bit, but knew that wouldn’t last long, not the way his other hand was working my nipples and his mouth was licking my ears and neck.

Finally I pulled away.

“We have a geometry problem here.”

“Yeah, no, yeah.”

“This may not work. I think we’re…. shaped differently or something,” I said. He looked stunned or stoned, it was hard to tell which. Now what?

“Let’s take a break,” I suggested. “Where’s that joint?”

He put his boxers back on, I pulled on a robe, and we went back to the living room, where the beers and the rest of the joint waited on the little coffee table. I was definitely coming down. Sure, we could have gotten each other off with our hands. Maybe I could have asked him to help me out with his mouth, but that’s never really been my thing. And quite frankly, I was a little sore, but that dick had been pushing me in some pretty peculiar directions, ones my body wasn’t used to.

We smoked the rest of the joint, finished the beers, and made some small talk.

“So… what now?” I asked. It was probably close to two by then, and I didn’t know about him, but I had to work in the morning and needed some sleep.

He smiled. “Yeah, no, yeah, really fun, for sure. Thanks.”

I was dying to ask him if he’d had this problem before, whether his cock had always been bent like that, whether he’d had trouble finding lovers who could accommodate it. Instead I let him pull my head down into his lap, where from the side, with my head on his legs, he was able to find a way into my mouth until he came a few minutes later. I, on the other hand, hadn’t found the release I wanted, but was feeling more tired than horny now.

Taking a big swig of beer, I said, “Listen, I’ve got to work in the morning... in like seven hours.”

“Yeah, for sure, me, too.”

“This has been great—thank you for meeting me on such short notice. And for actually showing up,” I said. He retrieved the rest of his clothes from the bedroom, hugged me briefly and backed his bike out my apartment door.

“And hey,” he said before the door closed. “Yeah, no, yeah, so like if you want to call me again that would be cool.”

“I have your number, yes. And you can do the same.”

“Ciao.”

Larry and I have kept in touch. We met again for drinks, he’s been over to smoke a joint a couple of times, and he even spent the night once when we got so tired talking, drinking and smoking. We tried sex one more time a few months later: same problem. Kind of a shame, that. He’s answered a couple more of my posts, including two that I posted not on Casual Encounters but on the Women Seeking Men board. We’re both looking for love—and sex—and the second is just not going to work for us.

OPEN TO SUGGESTIONS

(Casual Encounters w4m)

Smart, attractive, talented, educated, slender, healthy, classy, brave, open, humorous, quick-witted woman of a certain edge and age seeking new experiences, friends, adventures and clarity. Always curious, sometimes intense, a bit kinky, willing to learn. I thought I knew what I want, but am finding some offer what I never considered. Whatcha got? Chemistry is key, 420 friendly, safe sex only, no cologne, we meet in public first. No pic, no response.

“Can’t you find sex the usual way?” asked my friend Ellen, calling from Vermont, my home for fourteen years before coming to San Francisco. “You look good and you’re smart and friendly. Just pick up somebody in a bar.”

A few months before Larry, when I had been in San Francisco just a couple of weeks, I started to explore Craigslist. She had a point. Why was I using the Casual Encounters board to find a date?

“This is so much easier, and you can meet people during the day, before the bars open,” I told her on the phone. “And it feels safer, somehow.” We talked almost every day, and she was one of just a handful of people who knew what I’d been up to for the last weeks.

After twenty long, faithful and largely sexless years, I was the proverbial sex-crazed divorcee. What better place to indulge my pent-up sexual energy than San Francisco’s Craigslist? Besides, I didn’t know much of anyone in the city yet, and I’m terrible at picking up men in bars, always have been. I think I come off too smart and intense and scare them away. I’ve never been good at playing dumb and easy. Finding company on Casual Encounters isn’t much harder than ordering Chinese food, if you don’t mind taking your chances on the quality. And I was bored and lonely.

And a bit tipsy when I posted this, late on a Sunday night in January. I was feeling pretty good, after a lucrative night at the waitressing job I’d picked up as soon as I got here and some drinks after with co-workers, but feeling randy enough to wish I wasn’t heading home alone. I was here trying on San Francisco for two months, seeing if I wanted to move here.

I crashed soon after posting, on an Ikea futon with its pilled polyester sheets and loose Allen bolts, in the tiny studio in the Mission I’d sublet for the first month of my stay. One thousand dollars bought me four weeks of bargain blue walls (this color had to be someone’s mistake), filmy scarves that attempted to separate the sleeping area from the rest of the twelve- by twelve-foot room, and an odd little triangular kitchen with no cooking equipment of any kind. I guess these people always ate take-out. They had shoved a bunch of stuff into a closet to make room for mine, but I didn’t need it. I hadn’t brought much.

I set the tenants’ “Sleepy Rain” CD to play all night, hoping to block out the late night sounds of partiers returning home, the four a.m. bottle cart guy, the whistles of the drug dealers plying their wares at 24th and Capp. In the morning, with gently pounding head, fuzzy eyes and dry mouth, I staggered to the bustling Café Boheme a block away, ordered a tall coffee, dosed it heavily with cream and sugar, and opened my e-mail to fifty or so responses. It was barely nine on Monday morning, and the lonely, the horny and the bored had been cruising Craigslist all night. When did these people sleep?

I had two rules that morning, with fifty e-mails in my box. First: no picture, no response—there’s just not enough time. Besides, I’d said that in my post. I deleted every e-mail that didn’t show that little paper clip on the left. Sure, some hot guys probably embedded their pics in their e-mails, but I had to work at eleven. Sorry, delete. Second: e-mails with no punctuation or initial caps (OR THOSE WITH ALL CAPS SCREAMING AT ME) were also out. I know where you were and who and what you were probably doing during high school English class, while I was at least making an attempt to learn something. Delete.

Having successfully thinned the pool to about twenty, I began reviewing the messages and pictures. I might as well just say this now: I kind of like cock shots, and that’s what many of these paper clips were holding, painful as that may sound. I was just beginning to learn that cocks came in all kinds of shapes, not to mention sizes. Plus I’d only seen the one in twenty years, and it didn’t interest me much once it had helped create my two children, so a classy cock shot is not a deal breaker for me, even an unsolicited one. Sometimes I grow weary of them, especially the ones I receive over and over again, but I’m a curious girl.

One response clearly stood out from the rest. David was close to my age, smart and funny. He sent a witty response, accompanied by a shirtless but still G-rated picture of himself and a PG picture of his dog licking his balls (ok, maybe R). But the guy sounded smart at least, and he was tall and blond, which I like, and he’d obviously read my post, not just slammed out a cut and paste response. I answered him, don’t remember exactly what I said, sent him my face picture, but didn’t hear right back. I was looking to set up a meet for that evening and I only had a couple of hours, so I kept going.

This one had promise:

Hi, I am a cute guy from europe with the accent. I am sending a pic, but i also have the web cam if u wanna be sure. Hope to hear from u soon. I can bring along some mary jane. hugs and kisses.

Well, he had some punctuation and spelling issues, but he was European so I gave him some latitude, and oh my, the pictures. This guy was a looker. Broad shoulders, chocolate brown skin, taut abs, well articulated upper arms (yum), soulful eyes, pouty soft lips. He didn’t say how old he was—I guessed he was barely skirting thirty—but I was interested. Even through my hangover I could feel this guy already. A few flirtatious e-mails back and forth, my tame pics and some more from him, and we arranged to meet that night, if we were both still feeling it. Simon.

I had a long day, and called him back around nine.

“I am just home from my workout in my gym, and must to have a shower before I come to you,” he said.

“Please don’t, I prefer you ripe,” I replied.

“Ripe?” he asked.

“Please don’t shower. I like the way you will smell after the gym.”

Five minutes later another call from him.

“I have not shaved in five days—will that work for you, my lady?”

Yes, indeed, that would be no problem at all. That whole Miami Vice thing worked for me in the eighties and still does, whatever it’s called now.

“Very well.” He was impeccably polite and formal and heavily accented on the phone, but at least I knew he wouldn’t be wearing the cologne so many European men favored if he didn’t shower. Would he be deferential and accommodating? That’s not what I wanted, not tonight, anyway. We agreed to meet at a club in the Mission.

My friend Gene was already outside Twelve Galaxies, where his friends’ band was playing, when I arrived. I told him of my date.

“You’re a peeg, a sex peeg,” he said, his Louisiana accent once again striking me with its humor.

“Yeah, what’s your point?”

“He doesn’t have a Mohawk, does he?” Gene asked. “I saw this hot guy over there with amazing hair.” I told him that Simon would be wearing a leather jacket and cap, and we scanned the crowd out front together, until the January chill began to be uncomfortable.

Ten minutes later, inside with a cocktail, I saw Simon walk into the cavernous and noisy room. I could swear I wasn’t the only one to do a double take, even among these young, beautiful hipsters and trustafarians who presumably saw it all, enjoyed it all, all the time. This guy was hot. Smoking hot. Forget pleasing my eye, this guy went right for my sex, and I felt him low and deep, in my pelvis, and so did most of the other women and maybe some of the men in the room. I was in my uniform of jeans, sweater and black leather jacket, all I had with me for this two-month San Francisco audition. I approached him as he paid the cover and came in.

“Simon?”

He smiled and nodded, looking me up and down as I did the same. We were both obviously pleased with what we saw. Like most of the people in the room, I was already wearing ear plugs—the music was deafening and forgettable. We weren’t going to be doing a lot of talking anyway.

“Good evening, lovely lady.” My knees nearly buckled. I handed him a pair of ear plugs, my mind searching for other playful uses for them but coming up dry. “Do you need another cocktail?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” He got himself a Corona and we stood shoulder to shoulder, in the back of the room, moving to the music.

“Where are your friends here?” he asked, leaning in close. I could smell him now. Oh, yeah.

“My friend is up front there, dancing.” I yelled over the music. I pointed out Gene, hoping I had been clear that I had no obligation to him this evening. Another song started and I leaned in to Simon again, savoring his everything. “I should try to stay for at least two or three songs.” He nodded benignly and I realized he probably couldn’t hear me.

Ten or twenty seconds passed, each of us moving with the music, watching the other move, then it was his turn to sniff me.

“I thee weesh oolee foffer the shomp,” he said close to my stoppered ear. I pulled out an earplug. “I think we should leave after this song,” he repeated.

“Yes, I think you’re right.” I was so ready for this guy.

As we passed a bus shelter heading the two short blocks to my sublet, I shoved him up against it and kissed him, hard. “I can’t believe I just ordered you on Craigslist and here you are.” In retrospect, I hope he didn’t understand me, because that was kind of rude. I’m raunchy sometimes, but I try not to be rude.

We climbed the narrow, carpeted steps, the air reeking of what I was coming to know as that cheap San Francisco apartment smell: old cat and broccoli and stale smoke. I turned on the cheap little bedside light to start a CD, another mix of the bass-heavy music that I really get into, then shut the light off again, plunging the room back into near darkness. I’m slim and fit, but I was in my forties after all, and gravity is a powerful thing.

“Please can we leave the light on?” he asked. I obliged, although I feared his smoky, dark eyes would burn my flesh if he stared too long at one spot on my body.

“Now may I to take my pants off?’ he asked.

“Oh, yes, you may.” I laughed as I did the same. Down to my bra and underwear, I sat down on the futon, oblivious to how my body might look to him at that point.

I guess he’d forgotten his shorts at the gym. He deftly slid his jeans down and presented me with a huge, erect cock, beautiful in shape, in size, in curve, and remarkable for its color: a deep bluish purple. He smiled and stared at me as I took it in visually, stupid grin on my face, I’m sure. I couldn’t decide where to look next, at his eyes, at this magnificent cock, or at the assortment of silver medallions on black cords that brushed against his taut nipples. He was beginning to dance, naked, and I needed to smell him again, get my mouth and nose on his chest, his sides, under his arms; I’d only gotten a hint so far, at the club. My knees would not have held if I’d tried to stand to find him, but he lowered himself to the bed to join me.

He smelled of sweat and lust and power and success and confidence. “My beautiful woman, before I touch you, I must to ask another question please.”

“Yes?” Conversationally correct, but I was prepared to say yes to anything this magnificent creature wanted.

“Are you clean? I have to know this, because I have a great deal to lose.”

There was a question we could have tackled sooner.

I paused for a fraction of a second, and through my beer and weed-induced fog said, “Yes, as far as I know. Yes… well, I might have HPV.”

“This is AIDS?”

“No. Good god, no. Human papillomavirus.” He looked puzzled.

“What is this?”

“I had an abnormal PAP smear do you know what that is and I don’t know why so it could be caused by HPV and I’m still not sure.” He turned slightly away from me as I looked down and saw his now small and soft and pink penis hovering close to his thigh. “It’s not necessarily sexually transmitted and I’m not sure I have it and a condom will protect you either way you know, it will protect us so I don’t think you should worry.” This was a libido killing conversation, for sure.

He paused, then said, “I hope you can understand, I have a very successful career, and a future to look forward to, and I hope to have a family some day. There is a great deal to lose for me, and I have to be very careful for myself.”

I understood. I understood that I was about to miss what might have been some of the best sex of my life to date. I understood that this loss was attributable to an honest admission on my part. I understood that this man was a powerful, capable machine who knew how to get what he wanted, and that he did not want any STDs. And I understood that I was going to be emotionally—if not immediately physically—comfortable respecting this boundary. And I was going to be horny as shit without the release I was expecting. I raised his arm up over his head and buried my nose in his armpit, savoring one more deep draw of him, before moving away. He dressed and left, with an impeccably polite, “Thank you for a lovely evening.” Uh-huh.

RAGGIN' WOMAN WITH BEERS, VIDEOS, MUSIC SEEKS 420 AND COMPANY

(Casual Encounters w4m)

Yeah, I'm raggin’ tonight, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't still enjoy your company. Yearning for 420, good conversation and the promise of something in a day or two if chemistry's right. (And, yeah, there are things we can do now if we just can't help ourselves.) It's wet out there, but I'd walk a bit, or you can come here. Prefer to meet out somewhere first. Send a photo and something witty.

Little boys dream of being firemen. Little girls dream of being fairy princesses. I dream of sliding down a firehouse pole in a sparkly dress and seeing where I land.

Not really. I never understood the whole dress-up thing, or Barbies, or pretend weddings, the stuff of many American girls’——’“”—’“”