Greg is Dating

A few weeks ago, I was at my desk at work, calmly going about my business. Then my phone beeped. It was a message from Okcupid, which I found somewhat unusual, since the vast majority of the messages I receive are replies to messages I have sent out, and I haven’t been contacting anyone lately. This was the rare exception though, someone contacting me first. Imagine that.

I had a quick look at her profile, and found out she was an artist, traveling around the USA with Amtrak. I found this particular fact very interesting, so I replied to her message. Pretty soon, we had a discussion going. It turned out that Xue was in fact contacting me from a train, which was on the way to my city, but would not arrive for another 2 days. She was looking for contacts in the city for when she arrived, in order to find out what’s on and to meet some new and interesting people.

On the merit of her artistic background, and based on her listed interests in her profile, I invited Xue to a gala at an art gallery I was going to that week. She enthusiastically accepted, and told me that she would have to first figure out her accommodation situation. Her plan was to check out couchsurfing.org and find a convenient place around town.

You can already imagine where this story is going, but the truth is that I was initially very hesitant to offer Xue my couch. I have never done anything like that before and I am generally a very private person. At the same time, I am going through a period of change and self-discovery in my life and, as many of my stories betray, I am making an effort to try new things and experiences. I considered that extending my hospitality to a stranger could be one of these new things.

I struggled with the thought for a while, and even asked Dharma’s advice on the matter. I know that Dharma is the kind of person who will not think twice before opening her door to someone, so in asking her perhaps I was hoping she would push me to go for it. Which she did. I took her advice and told Xue that I was considering offering her my couch, but that at the same time I was a bit hesitant about it. She was also somewhat ambivalent about taking such an offer from someone she met on Okcupid. We agreed to meet for a coffee when she arrived, and if we were both still comfortable with the idea, she would stay at mine.

 

Two days later, and after long text discussions with Xue, who had not much else to do while trapped in a moving train, we met for the aforementioned coffee. Xue is 36, Asian, and of average height and build. We chatted for about an hour, we figured that we liked each other, and decided to go ahead with it. Xue was understandably exhausted after the long trip, so we got on a bus and I took her to my apartment, where I showed her around and made sure she had everything she needed. It was still morning, so I had to return to work, and Xue wanted to get ready for a long nap.

Now: during the bus ride, and after arriving at my place, Xue and I had gotten very… friendly. There was a lot of touching, hugging (we are both very ‘touchy-feely’ people), and some holding of hands. I was not surprised at all when we ended up kissing before I quickly broke it off, because I was not sure if this was a good idea, and also because I still needed to get back to work.

I was particularly busy on that day, so I stayed at work until late that evening. Returning to my apartment, I was not sure how things would turn out, and more importantly, how I wanted them to turn out. I had gotten myself into this for the sake of having the couch surfing experience, and I was pretty sure it did not involve having sex with your couch surfer!

These were the thoughts running through my head when I arrived home. Xue was still sleeping, but woke up when I entered. I asked her if she was hungry and whether she wanted to go out to get something to eat. She concurred. Then, she told me that she had had terrible trouble going to sleep earlier. “Do you know how I managed to sleep in the end?”, she asked. I didn’t, so she pointed out her vibrator.

Well then.

If that was in fact not a cue for sex, then I owe Xue an apology, but what can I say, I happen to have somewhat of a weakness for sex toys. I am going to leave what happened next to the imagination of the reader, because if I were to try to describe all the steamy, depraved details of our sexcapades over the following five days, I would have to take several pages. What I will say is that I found sex with Xue particularly wild, all the while realizing that for her things were still relatively mild.

We did end up going out to dinner that night… only much later. The next evening (a Friday) we went to the gala I had invited her to, and had a great time. On Saturday we had brunch together, and then each did their own thing for the rest of the weekend, meeting back at my apartment at night for some more adult fun. On Monday, her last night in town, Xue took me out to dinner, and she gave me a very thoughtful present to thank me for my hospitality: I had previously told her that I have never had a massage, so she bought me a voucher for an one hour massage session at a parlor.

Two more things about my adventure with Xue. First, this was probably the first time in my life that I had completely casual sex, while being brutally honest about what it really was. Sure, I have slept with women casually a couple of times before, but there was always some excuse or pretense that had the conditions been different we would have taken matters more seriously. Not this time; this was about sex, having fun and nothing more.

Second, I relished the fact that Xue is someone who knows exactly what she wants in bed, and who is very easy to satisfy. I am certainly not saying that there is anything wrong with a woman who needs a bit of skill and patience to get there, in fact, I very much enjoy making that effort. But for me, and I hope for most men if we exclude selfish assholes and douchebags, satisfying a woman is a huge part of my own satisfaction, and there is a lot of gratification in knowing that my partner has just had 5, 6 or more orgasms in the last half hour. And that was an experience I hadn’t had for some time.

On Tuesday morning, I woke up and Xue was gone. She had said goodbye with a kiss in my sleep and a “thank you” card. In many ways, quite appropriate.