I never was one for picking up men in bars or in the next seat on an airplane. I usually met them at parties—New York is a city of parties. The two of us would start to chat, and the chat became something more serious. We talked about work and our ambitions. We’d find a common interest in Edith Wharton, or Fellini, or the Boston Red Sox. Soon we were sitting somewhere private. We would have another Scotch or another glass of wine. Then we would begin to touch each other—a hand on a shoulder to make a point, a light squeeze of the knee if a joke was particularly funny. I felt that familiar hot and cold feeling, that soaring and sinking, which I knew was my mind being overwhelmed by my physical excitement. I let it happen. Sometimes, we would leave for a drink at a neighborhood bar; sometimes we simply took a taxi back to my apartment. In the cab, we kissed. I wondered about the condition of my apartment—had I made the bed? We kissed again and I forgot about housekeeping. Soon, we would be in my unmade bed, embracing each other and experiencing the awkward, thrilling moments of sex with a stranger.
If you are looking for love, sexual intimacy can be a short cut. It is among the fastest ways to get to know another person. During sex, we show physical parts of ourselves that are usually kept covered; we display our private likes and dislikes. In its moments of unconscious response to physical pleasure, the body reveals a great deal of involuntary information: a need to dominate or a difficulty following orders; whether we are good at letting go or are uncomfortable with how we look. All this is revealed in the two-person drama of the sex act.
It’s scary to do something that lets another person in on so much private information, but it’s also ruthlessly efficient. Dinner in a fancy restaurant or even a long conversation in a dimly lit bar can be completely misleading. In e-mails and letters and telephone calls, people can act their way into being someone different. It’s easy to fool someone with a turn of phrase. Sex tells the truth.
Most erotic fantasies are about one-night stands. In my own, I imagine having sex with someone I’ve started dancing with at a party; we end up in a bedroom on a pile of coats left there by the other partygoers. I smell the scent of someone’s perfumed lining and feel the softness of mink against my naked legs. Somehow, I never fantasize about sex with my husband in a marital double bed that I’ve neatly made with hospital corners. Marriage can be sexy too, but in my experience, it is never the stuff of fantasy. I think this is nature’s way of telling us that what’s wonderful in bed can be disastrous in the nursery or the kitchen.
When I was a young woman in the sixties, I knew my life wouldn’t really start until I was married. In a world without legal abortion, one-night stands were both dangerous and prohibited by parents, teachers and everyone else in authority. So I planned to sleep only with men who were willing to marry me; the trouble is, my sexual enthusiasm far outweighed my desire to be a 20-year-old housewife. Still, I managed to restrain myself: By the time I did get married at what I thought was the ripe old age of 23, I’d only been sexually intimate with a few men I’d assumed I would eventually be with for the long haul. It wasn’t until the sad end of my first marriage eight years later that I was released into the wild, fevered atmosphere of the 1970s to discover that a one-night stand is the erotic manifestation of carpe diem—only we are seizing the night instead of the day. Sex with a long-term partner is many things, but it is not that. A long-term partner is not surprised by the moles on my back, nor is he self-conscious about the hair on his shoulders. There’s a kind of connection that is more than the sum of body parts linked, as if this most physical of acts was also the threshold to spiritual intimacy.
One-night stands are spiritual in another way: They are a leap of faith because you never know quite where they will lead. My one-night stands were always, in their own ways, mysterious. Once, there was a dazzling 10-minute interlude bent over a washing machine with a fellow Sunday luncheon guest in someone else’s suburban laundry room. Another time, a writer I admired was also working late, and we ended up walking out of the office together and into the romantic early morning streets. The editor offered to see me home.
When we got there, I opened a bottle of wine. “Let’s drink this in bed,” he said. Afterward, we both fell asleep for a few hours, and I woke up thinking how much happier I’d be if he wasn’t there. He snored. He took up a lot of space in my bed. After that, we went back to being friendly office mates. We had tried out a different kind of relationship and found that it didn’t work.
One night stands can be nothing more than a few hours of pleasure, or they can be the beginning of something much more important, and it’s impossible to tell which until it’s too late. Another man I slept with was married to an acquaintance of mine, but she was far away. It was summer in New York City, too hot to feel guilty. Slowly, with a lot of laughter and in the kind of emotionally woozy state that results from staying up too long, we repaired to my bedroom. The sex wasn’t particularly memorable; we were both tired and quite drunk. I woke to find myself sheltered in his arms. His flesh was pleasantly warm; he smelled good. I drifted off again, feeling buoyant and safe.
When we officially woke up a few hours later we tried to pretend that everything was normal. I made coffee and changed the sheets. He called his wife and checked on his children. It was no use. By the time we wandered out to lunch we both knew something huge had happened. Our connection felt capricious, as if a rascally little boy had aimed an arrow in our direction. We sat in a bar holding hands, reveling in our exhilaration at having found each other and in our suffering at having to part. The world, however, didn’t care. I had to be in Boston for dinner. He had a plane to catch.
That one-night stand led to a 35-year love affair—the most enduring love of my life. After more than fifteen years of obstacles: our guilt, limited resources and confusion, we eventually married and had a wonderful son. We are now separated. I had no idea what was going to happen when I casually invited him up to my apartment. If I had known, would I have gone home alone?
That is the real danger of the one-night stand. Not that it will lead to nothing, but that it will lead to everything. Those who are not ready to have their lives changed should probably abstain.
