They’re Not Mine, I Promise

Quick note before we get into it: this essay is part of ‘At Every Size I Was Worth It,’ an adult series exploring desire, dating, and intimacy. If that’s not what you came for today, no hard feelings — I’ll catch you on the next one. If you’re new here and this is a surprise, welcome. Now you know. Settle in.

Stephen ubered to my part of town.

I noticed this. A man who ubers to your part of town on a date has made a calculation. He has arranged the evening so that someone will need to drive him home and that someone will be you. This is not an accident. This is a plan. I filed it away and went downtown to meet him anyway because it was a Friday and downtown Saint Petersburg was waiting and I was in my whore stage and my whore stage did not stay home on Fridays.

Stephen was nerdy in a way that was cool enough. Not my usual type but interesting. We had good conversation. And then somewhere in the middle of the evening something shifted and we were making out. Not casually. Not briefly. Like teenagers. All over downtown Saint Petersburg, unapologetically, in public, at the bar and on the street and wherever we happened to be standing when it occurred to us again. I had never done that before. Made out in public like nothing else existed and nothing else mattered and whoever was watching could keep watching. I was a little thrilled by it. More than a little.

We drank until it was time to head home. His home, as planned, in my car, as planned. I drove him. Of course I drove him. That was always the plan and we both knew it and I didn’t mind because the evening had been genuinely fun and sometimes you drive a nerdy guy home because you made out with him all over downtown and that is simply what you do.

His apartment was fine. Stephen was fine. The sex was the most bland I had encountered since beginning this project, which is notable only because by this point I had established a baseline and Stephen was not meeting it. I have had more remarkable experiences ordering off a prix fixe menu. Nothing wrong with it. Nothing particularly right with it either. Fine.

And then I saw the heels.

One pair. Man sized. High heels. Just sitting there in his apartment like they lived there, which they did, because it was his apartment.

I would have been remiss not to mention it. I am not a woman who can let a single pair of man sized high heels exist unacknowledged in a room I am standing in. That is not who I am. So I mentioned it.

His response was immediate.

They’re not mine, I promise.

I want to pause here and note, for the second time in this series, that a thing had not crossed my mind until a man said it out loud. The heels were there. I had questions about the heels. What I had not been asking was whether they were his, specifically, because that had not been the direction my questions were going. And then he said that and now that was the only direction anything was going.

They’re not mine, I promise.

Okay. Okay. I did not push it. It was not my business and it was not my kink and we were not going to be seeing each other again after this evening anyway so I let it go and drove home and thought about it for longer than I intended to.

I think about the pattern sometimes. Stephen with the heels sitting in plain sight that he had no explanation for until I asked. The man I went on a date with who kept mentioning women’s lingerie, casually, repeatedly, until I finally asked him directly if he was trying to tell me something. He was not ready for that question. A second date did not follow. These are men who bring things to the surface unprompted and then seem startled when the thing surfaces.

I have no judgment about what any man wants to wear in the privacy of his own home. None whatsoever. What I have is a preference for honesty and a complete inability to pretend I did not see the thing I saw. If you want to tell me something, tell me. If you are not ready to tell me, perhaps move the heels.

The making out downtown was excellent though. I want to be clear about that.

Whatever else that evening was or wasn’t, I had never made out with someone in public like the rest of the world was irrelevant and I came home knowing I liked it. Stephen gave me that and I am genuinely grateful.

Some evenings you take the making out and leave the rest.

This was one of those evenings.

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This essay is part of At Every Size I Was Worth It.

***Read the full series here.***