I met a boy on the train ride back to New York from a weekend away with a friend. I saw him first walking through the compartment, asking about an outlet for his laptop. He didn’t find any in this and walked on. 

He carried a bag that looked like it might have been Burberry, wore Raybans and a perfectly fitted blazer, skinny jeans. He looked like he might have gone to Yale—that was what I fantasized, anyway. I was in Conneticut and it didn’t seem impossible. That was sexy and romantic in a way that only an idealized Ivy Leaguer could be.

I got off the train for a transfer and there, on the platform, I saw him again, smoking a cigarette. There was my approach. I said hello. I asked for a cigarette. I was wearing all black, a coat and tights and combat boots. He said he’d just bummed his cigarette but offered to share it. I took him up on his offer and my fingers grazed his as I handed it back after a drag. We talked. Do you work? He asked. For American Apparel? I laughed. I didn’t think I looked particularly like anything AA might have favored. But maybe I was wrong. He was a hipster, but one who went to film school at a community college in Jersey, who took few credits to allow himself traveling time. Weekends away. New York, New England. 

We sat together on the train and he suggested we watcha movie on his laptop. Changed his mind a few times about what we wanted to watch. Especially after I mentioned the book of violent hardcore gay sex I just read. We switched to a bizarre nineties movie with ridiculous outfits and ridiculous drugs and ridiculous sex. We shared headphones and I thought about placing my hand on his knee and running my fingers up his thighs. That would have been a fun start. My dream romance turned to real life. A stranger on a train. We talked about the right things—movies, books, interests. 

He ended the phone calls he got with Hey but listen, I’ve got to go, I just met this amazing girl. At Grand Central we exchanged information and he hugged me goodbye. I couldn’t stop smiling on the subway back home. This was too easy. Impossible. Perfect.

That night a friend invited me to a show by bands I hadn’t heard. But I felt like dancing and the show was cheap, the venue nearby. I went. Dancing was exhilirating. But even more so when the tall man in front of me, seemingly with a beautiful, skinny tall blonde girlfriend by his side kept glancing back towards me, and smiling.

I hoped that she was his girlfriend. That made our flirting looks more deviant, and delightful. I loved the idea that he’d so obviously display interest with a girl at his side. In a bit, I shuffled up front and he shuffled next to me, then behind me, danced with me. I’m from Denmark too, he leaned down and shouted into my ear. Just like the band. He had a cute accent, but I didn’t stay for the afterparty.

*

All week I woke up early for work and found unexpected forms of entertainment, everywhere. I could no longer keep count of the numbers of stares or comments on the street I got walking to work—it was spring, I wore skirts and dresses, but it shouldn’t have been extraordinary. I kept getting texts: from Bad Idea, from the Teacher, from another redheaded old friend of mine I’d been meaning to fuck, and emails, emails planning a different sort of indecency. I was brimming with plans and expectations and everywhere I turned desire met my eyes.

Was it really this easy? I had trouble believing it. I didn’t think about the boy from the train much. I wasn’t sure I had the time. (Once upon a time, I’d have obsessed.)

It’s stupid, but, I’ve always had this fantasy. Of being the girl that stopped a room filled with the hip and beautiful, of being chased after by ten sought after guys. I’d step into a party and minutes later they’d be by my side, smiling, competing with wit and innuendo. It doesn’t happen like that, of course, but I suppose this is some what close. I like attention. Adore it. Especially the elation that I get from knowing how much (and how many) men want to fuck me. Maybe they have lower standards, but there are plenty of girls who walk down the street, and ones with longer legs and bigger breasts, impeccable makeup and hair. 

I’m not one of them. I’m not jawdropping gorgeous. My body is imperfect. But it doesn’t matter when there’s this bizarre validation, this surprised ease. For maybe a year or two I didn’t fuck anyone and only rarely fostered heartbreaking crushes on boys who just weren’t interested. 

Then, somehow, this. I think a part of me will still be forever surprised. My whole life is a fantasy. 

But I guess all of it is still so easily shattered by the minor annoyances of reality. A small but irritable infection made sex painful the last time I tried and had me, for a few days, panicked and paranoid. What if I could never enjoy sex again? I imagined my life without any of this—or with all of this and no way of acting upon it. It’d be a wreckage. Despair. I hadn’t realized, truly, how important this is to me. The attention, attraction, the lust. The arousal and giving in, this beautiful, brutal surrender. 

With luck, though, my fears will be settled soon. I have so much lined up on my agenda. And in a few day’s time, rather than soaking in daydreams and ideas, I’ll be back to being a full time debaucherous slut, in my very real and very extraordinary reality.

Being a debaucherous slut is hard.

For instance, I am convinced/terrified that my roommates secretly hate me (though they’ve not brought anything up). Surely this bringing home two different boys on two consecutive school nights is not winning me any points in the pure and quiet and studious scholarly roommate department. And I’d imagine that the sort of noise that’d carries through our thin walls/doors, like the sound of a metal ruler or a sadistic hand smacking hard against skin is not exactly the most reassuring.

Then there is the fact that I’ve hardly gotten any sleep—staying up late and getting up an hour earlier to clean up traces of the night’s dirty deeds is kind of delightful to keep in mind as I stuff ancient morally righteous texts into my schoolbag, but staying conscious in droning lectures becomes that much more unlikely. (This is problem because this slut is also a studious one.)

And the bruises everywhere—sometimes a surprised glimpse when I change in front of the mirror, plum and rose stains from fingers clutching into breasts, snappy red bite marks on exposed thighs, bare stomachs, red ass cheeks…well, given my adoration of reminder marks, perhaps it is not such a bad thing. Though it has become harder to remember/distinguish which ones Bad Idea left and which were the punishments of the Teacher.

The worst of it is, I think, as always, that I still, still, like Bad Idea much more than I should. And his careless affections, painful teasing, ironic compliments, unintended sweetness…his company that inspires anticipation like nothing else, our conversations woven with the too obvious satire of our actually quite wretched affairs—or just mine, I guess.

So much so that when I see the Teacher the night after, half of my thoughts are detached from the cock shoved down my throat and even more so when we are not fucking, and talking, and reading his writing and my cursed mind and hopeless sentimental heart that just can’t connect to the girls he’s fucking/dating and him and me in any way. So that I feel completely interchangeable. And maybe I am.

But to make up for it I have memories painted in raw flesh tones and pure indulgence, of feeling and acting like a perfect dirty slut with two different cute boys on two different nights.

Like Bad Idea’s threats and promises (I’m going to fuck your throat tonight. Think that hurts? It’s going to hurt so much more when that cock is in your ass.) Of dressing him up in my apricot American Apparel deep vneck and a poofy white tutu-like skirt, straddling him to paint on a coat of purple mascara (he looked cute dressed like a girl). Even better when, in those clothes, his expression changed to that of the sadistic dom he does so so wonderfully, tying my wrists to my ankles with a pair of my thick winter tights, choking a patent leather belt around my neck and gripping the free end to position me as he willed. A delicate, precious boy in girl’s clothes fucking me and the pure delight in his eyes when he slapped me, so hard that my cheekbones stung after. Or beating me with his ruler with a ball gag in my mouth, my teeth still straining to bite into the edge of a pillow as to not cry out at the red welts forming on my ass.

Or the Teacher and his fondness of me dressing up, so putting on a too small, too short, nearly school girl dress with a row of buttons up the front. His instructions to unbutton from the top while I did the bottom, and sitting at the edge of the bed with the dress peeled open (but on), spreading my legs and meeting his eye while he told me the next step (stick your fingers down your panties) and the ones after that. Eventually ending up  with me on my knees on the cold marble floor, in front of the mirror while he fucked me from behind, jerking my hair up so we could watch the direct projection of our debauchery. The relentless nature of his tongue flicking and sucking at my clit, and after hours of so much rough sex I could hardly stand another shove of his hips (and yet, still so desperately craved it). The eventual reward of his cum splattering not just across my face but even dripping down my shoulder, a translucent painted line down my back.

Oh, alright, I suppose sexual indulgence has its upsides. Still, on nights when I can only listen to sentimental music and the thoughts running through my head are not just about potential threesomes but potential threesomes where I end up with my head nestled against the chest of the boy I like and the dirty memories on our tongues, I can’t help but wish for…well, a Better Idea.

Okay—forget about the pathetic attempt at turning into poetry the utterly filthy, rough and deliriously hot fuck the Teacher and I last had. When my mind drift to thoughts of our debauchery in the midst of my three hour long 18th century novel class, I’m certainly not thinking in verse. And though we’ve been texting about the Marquis de Sade (whose work, ironically enough, is part of recommended reading for another one of my classes) and speaking in eloquence, as usual, I doubt he’d be thinking of it in lyrical images either.

But so there’s that—belt buckles and bruises everywhere and both him and Bad Idea’s total, aggressive dominance and dirty kinks and my favorite sort of libertine mindset, and then there is the Poet.

This boy, who warrants his title in every sense of the word. Who sent me long messages with language that make me stop and stare, just for a bit, because it’s intense and real and scattered and beautiful, and words are the only thing that can make me believe it, in this other, transcendental world and language of touch and taboo as being possible outside of a bedroom. Who sends me texts that sound like poems and who is a poet, of course, who looks and talks and moves like one.

This boy. When I saw him at the teahouse we were to meet at my heart fluttered relief. Better than relief, really, because I had seen photos but it could not have captured this, his angelic white blond hair and the way it fell into his eyes, the slope and angle of his bare shoulder, the way the slipped off jacket just fell at the shadows and outlines of his slender arms. His facial tics and mannerisms, the slight half smiles and twitches of his cheeks, the delicate nature of his bony fingers and god the things he says. Like, after a few moments of pause, are you gathering your thoughts? Yes, sort of. What are they about it? Well…right now they’re about. Kissing you, and such. I think, as of this moment, I’ve actually begun perspiring.

And then, oh, holding my hand when we walked outside and it started snowing. To a bookstore where he couldn’t find the book he was going to get for me and then to seek warmth and to cross off his goal, of kissing me, until we finally wandered into the non romantic dark corner of a Ricky’s with tacky music playing overhead. He dropped his Muji notebook (and his books of poetry tacked inside) on the floor and looked down towards me, him a whole 10 inches taller, standing close and smiling and nervous while I’m used to first kisses that start and end in bed, without question of the fucking to follow. Was he nervous?

I was never good at waiting and so I clasped my cold cold hands around his neck and he said he liked my cold hands on his skin so I stood up on my toes and kissed him. Slow, soft, unsure. So so different from anything I’m used to.

He didn’t want me to have to say goodbye, but I had logistics and obligations and my own concerns about him and headed home alone at the end of our night. Mostly I worry that someone this adorable and sweet simply can not put up with me—no, I’m too much of a slut, too obsessed with my kinky violent sex and delicious degradation. I couldn’t picture him playing rough at anything. And anyway, I certainly don’t plan on stopping my fun with the Teacher or Bad Idea.

But I can’t quite say no when he sends me incredibly endearing texts about how much seeing me would be a delight, either. And his angelic presence/words are a bit inspiring—I’ll have to find out how long the charm lasts after we spend some time doing more than adorable gestures of poetry.