Jake on what’s going on in both of his brains
April 7,2009.
How much do I miss my last girlfriend, Claudia? Put it this way: It hurts to look at a packet of Splenda, her sweetener of choice. I’ve barely dated, let alone gotten naked with anyone. But unless Claudia reads this and rushes back to me, eventually I will end up in bed with someone else. And when that happens, I already know what will be running through my head. Because as wildly, excitedly unpredictable as sex is with a new person, men are not a wildly, excitedly unpredictable bunch when it comes to our thinking. It pretty much always goes like this:
Wow, she smells good
My first thought whenever I get close to a woman is how much better she smells than I do. Part of this is relative, as men basically aspire to smell like nothing. (Except for cologne dudes, and half of them slather it on in lieu of a shower.) But with women it’s not just lotions, creams and perfumes—you all just start off smelling yummy. Claudia has this spot on the back of her neck that’s…there are no words. It was earthy and natural and so delicious that I was constantly coming up behind her to kiss it.
“What is that?” I kept asking.
Her answer: “I don’t know. Soap?”
Whatever she touches, flex
Shoes had been kicked off, jeans were in a tangle on the floor and shirts were seconds from being flung with abandon. This was precisely when my friend Charlie got spooked. “On a good day, my body is a five,” he later said to me. Fearing his new girl’s disapproval, he sucked in his stomach and held it for dear life. “It wasn’t until I got dizzy that I realized I’d forgotten to breathe.”
Every guy has shared Charlie’s self-consciousness. Sure, we notice stuff about you—things like boob shape, unshaved legs and old lacrosse scars. But we’ve been known to miss major details because we’re so focused on our own flaws. Avoiding this crisis of confidence is 97 percent of the reason we work out. (Health and being able to lift heavy stuff make up the other 3 percent.) Not that you even seem to care. One summer I was a madman at the gym and couldn’t wait for the woman I was dating to see my abs. We were in bed after our first time together, her head resting on my almost-washboard stomach. In a sexy, sleepy voice she said, “I love your…hands.” What? I hadn’t consumed a carb in months and she loved my hands?! I ate an entire pizza that night.
What the hell is she into?
By the time you’re in bed, any props that helped us move the action to this point—jokes, cocktails, flowers—have exited the building. We have nothing to fall back on but our bedroom skills. Not helping matters is the fact that we don’t know what you like. One woman gets turned on by ear nibbling, while another gets ticklish. And what about neck kissing—sexy or icky? I’ll never forget the time I launched into my patented nipple routine and the recipient gave me a withering stare and said, “Don’t touch them.” Lots of guys end up playing it too safe. So let us know if you like something. That’s why we love those great little noises you make.
Once a groove has been established and our bodies are happily colliding, you’d think we would wrap up the internal conversation. Instead, questions haunt us in rapid succession: When do I pull out a condom? How long will I last? How long does she expect me to last? How long did the last guy she was with last?
And then, finally, we get out of our own way, and the only thing on our minds can be summed up in four little words: Man, this feels great.
Jake is a real, live single guy dating in New York City.
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