He told me he was Swedish. The hookup gods were smiling upon me that night because he spoke English quite well and had great teeth. We walked back to my flat, intermittently making out. I was reticent to share with him what I did for a living, because it isn’t sexy. Having to explain that I’m the kind of famous where some people care and others don’t is a weird thing that does not remotely qualify as foreplay. He said he watched a lot of American TV. I assured him he had never seen me. Also, him being Swedish, who knows what season of Law and Order they were on over there. We got back to my place and I soon uncovered something I wasn’t prepared for but should have been: he was uncircumcised. Being American and Jewish, I had never encountered this before. My ignorant side came right out with red, white, and blue sparklers and a Bud: “What do I do with that? It looks like a Russian grandma wrapped in a shawl.”
He replied, "Why would I be circumcised? I’m not Jewish. Most of the world’s men aren’t circumcised. I can’t believe you’ve gone this long without knowing that.
What got me was his…maturity. I was thirty-two; he was twenty-seven and looking at me like the hideous American idiot I was acting like.
He had tapped into an insecurity of mine: the fear that I do not, in fact, know everything. He was right, of course. Still, meeting a new penis is one thing, meeting a new penis that doesn’t look like any other penis you’ve ever met is a mental hurdle you have to clear quickly if you want the night to end well.
I needed a minute. I went to the bathroom and, of course, got my period. I sheepishly came back to the room and said, “Sorry, I can’t do it; I just got my period.” He didn’t even blink. He ripped my underwear off and said, “What am I, in kindergarten? I don’t give a fuck.” (But he said it with an accent, so, like: I down’t geev a fahk.)
And we were off to the races. It was a combination of his beauty, confidence, and his unwillingness to let my own mind get in the way. And we just fucked. And I never once, that night or in the subsequent week we spent together, thought for a second that he wasn’t 100 percent into me. My GL was actually telling me to enjoy it. "You never allow yourself to just be casual and have fun. This one time, let yourself do something you genuinely want to do without judging yourself for it. If it doesn’t work out, no big deal.
