What Girls Think After Sex With A New Guy

You would think that “Did he come?” would be a common reaction, but there is rarely any doubt. While the female orgasm is as shrouded in mystery and insecurity as a suspense novel no one has ever read the last twenty pages of, male orgasm is usually pretty clear. She worries, though. Because his route to climax is so straightforward — so attainable even if she wasn’t there — there are always the questions about performance. “Will he talk to his guys?” “What will he say?” “Is there something I didn’t do enough of?”

Clips of Cosmo articles dance in her head, titles she was once so quick to brush off as ludicrous (as if there could be 101 foolproof ways to do anything, let alone a blowjob) become something of a cautionary tale. If only she had remembered to do a few more of those special tricks, maybe he would be leaning over and pulling her into his arms. After all, aren’t we taught to believe that part of this is a trade off — she gives me good sex, I give her a little bit of that affection I know she is so starved for?

She wonders if she’s really all that starved for affection, if that’s why she came to his apartment in the first place. She looks around at his room and thinks of all the things that she might change, that she might move, that she might scoot to the side to get a little more room in his life. But does she even want to be a part of it? Now that he is spent and snoring softly next to her, the whole glow of the charming bachelor pad has been reduced to something a bit more grimy, a bit more in need of a good coat of paint and maybe someone who loves him enough to help him find the right color.

“What is appropriate to ask for?” she wonders. Maybe she’ll be hungry in the morning, can she ask for breakfast? All of it is a dance that she hasn’t learned the steps to, and she’s the new person in the group class who keeps stepping on her partner’s foot. She thinks about the things she might have done wrong. She didn’t take off her bra, but then, she didn’t really feel okay being fully naked. Isn’t it weird how a girl can let someone inside of her and still not feel open enough to put her tits out in the open? Maybe if she would have taken her bra off, she would have been more sure about what was going to happen next morning.

Should she take the initiative? Grab some bagels from the cupboard and put out a pot of coffee? Should she run down to the corner store for fresh orange juice? Or would that show of dedication and attention be seen, like so many others, as a step into the inappropriate and strange? Probably. Best to just stay in bed the next morning and maybe borrow his shirt.

She wonders if he came, kind of. Not like, “Did he reach orgasm and ejaculate,” because that is obvious. But she wonders if he was present. If he came to her, and stayed for the duration of the evening. She puts his hand on his shoulder and lets it move up and down with the rise and fall of his chest, and wonders what it would be like if she came here every night. Maybe she could be comfortable. Maybe she could have a towel, and a toothbrush, and a pet name of her own. She hopes that he enjoyed it, but she was too nervous to honestly tell if she did. It was exciting, but it could have just been the thrill of the new and the hotly desired, and nothing really to do with the actual moves he made. But she wants to stay and see if it is still good tomorrow. And maybe the next day, and maybe the next. She kisses his forehead too lightly for him to have felt anything, and watches his soft, closed eyes. She imagines herself in the crook of his arm.

But then he stirs a bit, and she pretends to be asleep.