the scientologist

Well, I've got to begin somewhere, and in some ways this is as good a place to start as any. That's because this was my first encounter with the opposite sex after the earth-shattering mid-twenties break-up I had set in motion in my life four months earlier. Given that disclaimer, I only hope you can sympathize with the less-than-ideal decision-making abilities I display in the following little vignette, and do your best never to imitate them.

After a night of dancing, I ended up at the apartment of some 'friends' of new friends I'd been out with. Actually it was the apartment of two mid-thirties hollywood dudes, and the one who I ended up hooking up with introduced himself mostly by way of making out with my friends in a nonchalant and random spin-the-bottle fashion (read: sober), all the while taking poloroids of each encounter and presenting it to the lucky girl of the moment as an evidentiary momento. I was not so blessed and was actually rather annoyed by his clowning, or so I thought, but as it turned out, in a dysphoric spate of destructive curiosity brought on by my lonliness and my drunkenness, I was compelled to accompany him to the garage to 'fuck around with the pool heating' upon being summoned to do so.

What happened next is easy enough to piece together without my adding that it involved a dress pushed up in a very underemployed elevator. It was over before i knew it, and it felt pretty gross. But it sort of suited the low place I was at during that time, and so I liked it. In fact, I apparently liked it so much that i did it again, on two other occasions.

I've never really been sure what the term 'hate-fucking' refers to, especially when it is used by a guy, and while I'm still not sure about its Webster's definition, I can say that my experience in this particular instance has forever imbued it with its own special meaning in my life. To put it concisely, in my world hate-fucking is an enactment of desire that derives from despair and self-loathing. I know that sounds all scary and psychobable, but let us look at some of the details characterizing this fateful pairing, and it will soon become clear how unsavory it actually was.

First of all, he sucked. He took himself very seriously, and as you can imagine, it seriously sucked. I am not saying this just to be an asshole; it happens simply to be true (and highly convenient). He was a scientologist, a born-and-raised angeleno trust-fund type with a navel piercing, and (of course) a serious and inspired artist who painted, played music and acted with all the mediocrity of an entitled white kid, while working some lame day job. In other words, quite the phenom, or hadn't you already heard? During sex he would give me 'tips' in a dry matter-of-fact tone, such as "You should do this with your mouth when I kiss you" or "When I say 'Do you like that?', you should say 'Oh yeah bay-bee'." It was really creepy and of course, I wouldn't go along anything, just to be antagonistic and retain my sense of self. It also had the effect of making me truly hate him. However, let the record show that I also broke my own cardinal rule by hooking up with him, which is do not do ANYTHING with a guy if you are not really attracted to him, either in looks or personality (Why bother?). And this made me hate myself even more than I hated him. Yet somehow the ironic appropriateness of it all was completely satisfactory in its unsatisfactoriness, at least for a moment. I felt like I was getting just what I deserved and that actually felt good. This interaction had been a pathological panacea for my masochistic tendencies, and in that way it served its purpose, though I must admit I quickly shook him off and moved on. After all, the ego always has to triumph and gross is only hot for so long....

To this day, when I see this guy I pretend I don't know him. Thankfully, most of the time he doesn't recognize me.