2 really unsuccessful one night stands and a 5am booty call
By Ellen Kirkpatrick
I think sex is a humorous topic more than not, and people like to read about it because it’s embarrassing but entirely relatable. So, despite the fact this story will be shared on Facebook where I am Friends with my mum, family, my boss, and people who know this boy, here’s another sex story. Like my last sex story for No Filter, its humour comes in its anticlimax. I guess that’s just a running theme in my sex life. Ba dum tish.
I didn’t know many boys in school. I went to a Catholic girls school and I wasn’t very cool. I didn’t participate in sports or extracurriculars where I might encounter boys, and the social activities I participated in outside of school tended to be all-girls. I had a boyfriend in grade eight – we went to the movies and didn’t hold hands and later we broke up over MSN. And then there was a bit of a boy drought. So for my Formal dance in grade eleven I had no one to bring as a date.
My (cooler) friends knew boys, so they were able to find me a date. He was my friend’s boyfriend’s friend. Let’s call him Taylor. I don’t think we even met before the night of the Formal. He was just there to tick a box, and we probably didn’t chat that much. I was more interested in enjoying the night with my friends.
I had nothing in common with Taylor, and after our date we didn’t have much contact. We were perhaps aware of each other as people of overlapping social circles, but for the most part we completely fell out of touch, finished school, and grew up. But, coincidentally, each of us had a significant long-term relationship that ended about the same time – around four years after we’d first met.
Newly single, I was out with girlfriends at Friday’s, in Brisbane city. Friday’s tries to be a classy bar by refusing entry to boys that aren’t wearing leather shoes, but it has a cheesy DJ and dance floor so it attracts the kind of calibre of twenty-one-year-olds who think they’re sharp in their Saba shirts but get drunk and throw up in the bathroom. I hadn’t seen Taylor for years, but out on the balcony, overlooking the Brisbane river, I ran into him. He was with guy friends and I was with girls, so our groups converged on the dance floor. We got drunk and kissed (I remember seeing my friend, over his shoulder, cheering at newly-single me for getting a hook up).
I took him home, thinking that he provided a pretty great rebound. He was someone I knew, but not too well, so I knew he wasn’t a creep, but I didn’t have to see him again. Plus, I’d always thought he was pretty hot and it provided a good book end from our semi-formal date. We got home – I still lived with my parents, so I snuck us through the garden and into my bedroom – but when we got to bed we just chatted before falling asleep. In the morning, I expected something to happen, but he left without anything exciting happening. We’d both recently been through a big break up, and I assumed that while I was ready to go at it with someone else, he wasn’t. Disappointing, but understandable.
The next week I found myself at the Eatons Hill – that unsacred, soulless mega-pub. Like a pub, it has pokies, TV screens for the football, and a beer garden, but it’s huge, and turns into a club on weekends. It attracts girls in their Boohoo bandage dresses and high heels who get drunk on vodka soda, while the boys sweat in their Ben Sherman shirts, dancing to the Stafford Brothers.
Somewhere between the bars and the pokies I noticed Taylor with his mates. It was a week after our encounter, and I hadn’t spoken to him since. I immediately grabbed my friend and dragged her away, explaining to her what had happened in embarrassment. I couldn’t believe I’d run into him again. Brisbane isn’t that small, and we were in a completely different part of the city. We’d managed years after high school without ever bumping into each other, and now it was two times in as many weeks?
I got drunker on vodka sodas, and when he spotted me on the dance floor I gave a self-conscious wave, and then eventually dragged my friend over to talk to him. Fuck it, I thought. I didn’t get my rebound sex last week, but this week I would. This time, we went back to his house. Here we goooo, I thought. And then, he set an alarm for 5am, telling me he had to get up for work. We went to sleep.
Taylor got home from work at 10am (I can’t remember what he does, but it’s something that involves a fluorescent vest), and I thought maybe now something would happen. I was still in his bed, battling a hangover. But then his friend was there and they were playing pool and I was lying in his bed, again, with no rebound sex, just marvelling at the ridiculousness of the situation. I went home.
I could have just left it at that. But now, it was a mission. If I’d failed after one time and never seen him again I’d have let it go, but the idea that we’d gone home together twice without anything happening irked me. Why had I gone to all this effort if I wasn’t even going to get a bone out of it? I needed something – a box to tick – to say that I’d had a cool, casual rebound, and was ready to move on. And I’d already decided this was my guy.
I started messaging Taylor. I suggested we meet up, and he suggested we get dinner. I said no, I wasn’t really after that. I alluded to something of which the modern equivalent is Netflix and chill. Actually, I was painfully unsubtle, but I don’t think girls should be ashamed of wanting sex and I wasn’t playing games here. I thought we could be useful to each other – a no-strings-attached rebound after our respective breakups.
The following weekend, I was at a friend’s birthday dinner. Over wine I was explaining to the girls the absurdity of going home with a guy twice without having sex. I told them that he wasn’t biting on my suggestive texts – which in my opinion, were pretty blatant – and that either he was really not into me (uh, impossible, right?), or he was just really dumb. So my friend took my phone and sent him a message that straight up said: “So when are we having sex?”
I wasn’t even embarrassed, to be honest. I was trying so unnecessarily hard with this guy and I figured a message like that would at least force his hand. And voilaa! Finally, he bit. He told me he’d come to mine later that night. I told him I’d let him know when I was home, and I kept drinking wine.
After a big night of dinner and drinks, I got home pretty drunk. But I was ready for a booty call. I kept my makeup on, I tidied my room a bit – this was happening. But suddenly, he stopped responding to my texts. Fuck. Eventually, I fell asleep. At about 5am I woke up to a new text message. In his text he asked me if I still wanted him to come over. I think he must have had a weird sleep schedule because of his work, because it was literally sunrise. And yet, I was like, fuck it, let’s do this, and he came over. I was in my pyjamas, but I was so determined for this to happen that I didn’t care about the absurdity. And to be honest, it was kind of worth it. The fact that he’d been in a relationship for a few years showed. He… ahem… knew what he was doing.
It’s still a bit of a puzzle to me as to why nothing happened those first two times. He told me he was just tired – and maybe he was, given his weird ass sleep schedule. But I like to think he’s a sensitive guy – genuinely caught up on his ex-girlfriend, and not ready to sleep with someone new. Is it overly romantic of me to think guys like that exist? Maybe, but I guess I’ll never know. I haven’t spoken to him since.
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