The quick and dirty about Denver

The quick: Denver is the shortest leg of my trip so far!
The dirty: Read on.

Denver, you are my second favorite city. And that’s only because nothing will ever beat Boston. This decision may be influenced by the fact that I rode a super hot dude’s face last night while high on my favorite sativa, but who’s to tell, y’all. Who’s to tell.

The funny thing about Denver is I almost skipped this leg of my trip. I was so the-opposite-of-jazzed about it that I only planned to stay the month—to go to that sex therapy and education conference and then peace out. And then, of course, every time I go into something thinking I’ll know the result, I’m always wrong.

• I think I’m going to become a therapist > Not so sure (I’m thinking education now)
• I think I’m dead set on monogamy > I question it every fucking week 
• I was feeling lackluster about Boston > I ended up falling completely in love with it
• I was SO EXCITED for Asheville > I loathed it
• I thought dating in Austin was going to be fabulous > I wanted every dude there to sit on a parking cone without lube
• I really wanted my time in Denver to pass quickly > Now I don’t want to leave

Here’s why Denver became my second favorite leg of the trip:

1. Weed.
2. Weed again.
3. Weed one more time.
4. It’s so sunny and comfortable and every day feels like spring.
5. My apartment complex has a pool and I like to get stoned and go swimming in it at night.
6. I took a lot of time for myself to read good books, meet new friends, explore, and not focus on dating.
7. Then I started going on dates with someone here.

#7 probably has a lot more to do with why I like Denver than I care to admit. He’s a good dude.

​This is how it went down. First, let me set the scene:

Austin left me feeling completely beaten down. The men there were truly awful and the one woman I connected with turned out to be pretty emotionally unintelligent and deceitful (though the sex was great). These feelings were worsened by me leaving Hawaii because, c’mon, Hawaii was paradise and I missed it and my stupid friend HB. It’s hard to go from 11 days of laughing nonstop from the moment we woke up to the moment we went to bed in one of the most gorgeous places in the world (with zero plans or responsibilities cuz VACATION) and then move back to our respective homes thousands of miles away from each other. It was a bummer.  

So when I got to Denver, I was pretty mentally exhausted, but I had some hope that dating here would be good. Because anything was better than Austin. And it is! Except for one thing.

The men here are terribly uninteresting. Have you ever swiped on a dating app and seen a man who is completely dead behind the eyes? He works an uninteresting job, has a bio that says “just ask,” wears a button-up shirt of some synthetic, striped fabric whose colors are very aesthetically displeasing, and has a haircut that’s so basic, it’s what someone off the street would draw if you instructed them to just “draw a haircut”? There’s a lot of that here.

And they all fucking hike. All of them. I have never seen so many men who believe their love of the outdoors is an adequate substitution for an actual personality. 

The problem with men like this is that they don’t have passion. I try to ask “what’s your story,” and it’s like pulling teeth. There’s nothing there. It just seems like they’re climbing shit to pass the time. I would be so down if climbing shit was one of someone’s many hobbies, but that’s not the case here. A love of pizza isn’t a hobby. IPAs isn’t a hobby. Sarcasm isn’t a hobby.

And so I was like fuck it. I’m going to spend this month in Denver just focusing on myself. Like I had mentioned in my last post, I sent out a text to everyone I had been talking to on apps and said “boy bye.” And then one of those guys said he'd be happy to meet up for dinner with zero expectations if I ever changed my mind. I agreed because I was bored--and then on the day of, I almost canceled. On that first meetup, I was a giant bitch to him. Afterwards, I have no idea why he wanted to see me again. And maybe that was the point. I wanted him to hate me so that I could stick to my plan of swearing off men in Denver. If he didn’t like me, then there was no way I was going to like him. And then we could part ways.

I called him a schmoozer to his face. When he made a joke I didn’t like, I told him, he said he was sorry, and I said, “Good. You should be sorry.” I told him I thought he was trying to manipulate me into meeting up so that he could consider it a date.

But the thing is, this guy never pressured me. He was so laidback and took all the shit I was giving him in stride. Instead of getting defensive when I told him who I thought he was, he did the best thing to prove me wrong: he showed me who he is by his actions. Very sneaky, sis.

(Just kidding; that is what you should do in that kind of scenario.)

And he did. Because what he showed me was that he is a good person who had zero agenda. By the end of our first dinner, I liked him. And by the end of our second dinner, I wanted to sleep with him. I asked if he wanted to sleep with me—and very nonchalantly said it was totally cool if he didn’t and cool if he did. He said yes and then we fucked like complete animals.

Now before we get any further, I want to make one thing clear: this is NOT a “just keep trying until you convince someone to go out with you” narrative. That narrative is bullshit. He later told me that he was surprised I had asked him to fool around and that he had no plans of ever bringing it up himself. He had listened to me. When I first said no, he heard me. He never flirted or cajoled me. He treated me like a person. And him treating me like a person with a brain in her head and respecting my initial wish to not date and only be friends--that was what made me like him, NOT him convincing me. He was just himself with no ulterior motive. And I know that if I had never asked to become bed buddies, we could have spent my time in Denver hanging out as friends and it would have been just as great.

That’s how consent works. Both parties need to mutually agree that they want to act sexually together for it to work. Consent can be given and taken away at any time. And a lack of consent ultimately changing to real, enthusiastic consent (“yes please”) does not mean that the original lack of consent didn’t count. You being offered a sandwich on one day and deciding not to eat it and then getting offered that same type of sandwich a week later doesn’t mean that the first time you refused the sandwich, you didn’t really mean it.

I wanted to set that straight. And the reason I do like this person is because I know that if I said to him right now “I don’t want to be in contact anymore,” he wouldn’t ask any questions or try to fight me or say “fine” and then try to follow me on social media a bunch of times. He would respect me and not contact me again. I know this. I like this person because he respects the fuck outta my boundaries.

Good. I’m glad we’ve settled that. Because now here’s the fun stuff.

Denver friend comes up with really good date ideas. Once, we went to a bookstore and played a game. You can play this game as well: you pick a book out for the other person, and then choose a passage for them to read loud enough for other people in the bookstore to hear them. The purpose of this game is maximum discomfort. We did five rounds and chose five different genres of books. One genre was erotica (obviously), but you have no idea how embarrassing it is to read out loud how Giada de Laurentiis describes steaks, in a bookstore that's a converted theater with incredible acoustics nonetheless. Every fucking person in that bookstore heard me talk about thickness and juiciness. Well played, Denver friend. Well played.

We also decided to ask each other the famous 36 Questions to fall in love. It can get fairly intimate at times, but it's a lot less awkward than you would think. One of his answers to #25 was so good I had to write it down. The question was to make 3 "we" statements about us. "We both like," "we both seem," "we both feel," etc. For some context--he is a nonmonogamous person by choice and I am a nonmonogamous person by circumstance. We've talked about relationships (past, present, future) a fair amount. We've spoken about our independent nature and our thoughts around having an "anchor" person. When he answered question #25, he said, "We both are people who are searching, but not yearning." I loved that.

Also, there are three things that were never in my sexual repertoire: mirror play, coming from riding someone’s face (it’s a position I have a hard time orgasming in), and going to someone’s office after hours and fuckin’. I changed all of those things in Denver with this dude.

The second time I slept with my Denver friend, he bent me over the back of his bed and I realized that we were right next to the full-length mirror he uses to get ready in the morning. The visual was pretty insane and made the already hot encounter even hotter. I got a text soon afterwards that he had found another full-length mirror and he’d find a good spot for it. That spot ended up being propped up horizontally on a chest of drawers facing the bed. So while in reverse cowgirl, I could see everything from my neck down. AND IT WAS INCREDIBLE.

I know mirrors have a bit of a stigma--I'll admit I had preconceived notions that mirror play was cheesy as hell and/or vain and/or some Patrick Bateman-type shit (like when he films himself flexing while fucking two sex workers). But I’m here to tell you I was wrong. So wrong. It’s incredibly fun. We took a bunch of photos and videos because, I’m sorry, but we both looked so, so incredibly hot and this trip is all about making and collecting memories, you guys.

So after we had some mirror play, we went to dinner. Then, on the drive home, my sex friend and I talked about all the crazy places we’ve gotten down at. I get off VERY hard on sex in public places. I don’t want to ever get caught—and I haven’t—but I like being in situations where the risk of getting caught is very high. I tell him this. He’s fucked in some crazy places himself. And then he says that he started a new job recently and ahh never mind it’s a crazy idea, etc. etc. My face lights up.

No, no, we can’t.

[me absolutely beaming]

Well, maybe…?

[me shimmying]

Ok we’re doing it.

[me bouncing up and down in my seat]

He turns around and we head to his office. We get past security and he gives me a tour of the place. His office is pretty high up in the building, so the view of Denver is amazing. I end up blowing him while he sits in his chair and then he eats me out while I’m lying naked on his desk. It was a blast.

My life is essentially a porno.

We ultimately make it back to his place, where we get stoned and give each other massages. For massage, I like to smoke a nice sativa-leaning hybrid because it makes me super tactile (all I want to do is touch things) without feeling tired. When I want to have stoned sex and be able to have orgasms, I take a small hit (and I mean SMALL) of some indica. The thing about hybrids and sativas (sativas more so) is that they're GREAT for massages because everything feels eye-rollingly good, but that’s the problem—your body stays at 99% the entire time and it’s hard to get to a full 100. Touch feels AMAZING, but it’s difficult to get pushed over the edge and actually come. So I don’t smoke sativa or hybrids if I want to have a ton of orgasms. Usually that sexual encounter (especially on sativa) is a lot of work towards one orgasm. It takes a while.

So we’re massaging each other and it’s so pleasureful (a word I just made up—just roll with it) that I’m like well, this guy has asked me to ride his face in the past and I never did it. The last time I rode someone’s face was, like, in 2014, because I had tried it with a few partners and it just never worked for me. But in that moment, I was like fuck it. Let’s see how this is gonna go.

The thing about this dude is I forgot how good at oral he is. I came fairly quickly and I was high on that sativa-y hybrid. This man deserves a medal.  
​
Always believe in yourself, you guys. I leave Colorado next week (I can’t believe how quickly it flew by!) and I hope to ride this man’s face off into the sunset.