Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

and I understood that I was probably never going to have sex again. Because if you only know one
road into town, and the road collapses, what can you do?
Alcohol was the beginning of sex. It was there the first time I kissed a guy, at the age of 13. It was
there the last time I slept with a guy I’d only just met, two months before getting sober—a bartender at
Lisa’s fortieth birthday party who spoke just enough English to convince me to leave with him. In the
nearly quarter century that spanned those two points, alcohol let me be and act however I wanted.
One of my favorite ways to have sex was right before a blackout, when I was still there but I’d gone
feral, and I could let all those low and dirty words spill out of my mouth. Do this. Do that. But now I
wasn’t sure if I liked sex that way because it felt good or because guys dug it when I got wild. That’s
what I wanted more than my own pleasure. To make myself irresistible. To blow his freaking mind.
I was worried men wouldn’t like dating a sober woman. After all, drinking was a part of our
erotic social contract. It was a long-standing agreement that we would all drink away our nervousness
and better judgment. I’d heard about men who got frustrated when their dates weren’t drinking. “How
am I going to take advantage of you now?” one guy asked my friend, which was a joke, but a lot of
uncomfortable truth was beneath the punch line. Alcohol is the greatest seduction tool ever invented,
and to order a seltzer with lime is to take that shining scimitar out of a man’s hand and toss it in the
nearby Dumpster.
I went to dinner again with the doctor. I was torn about him. He made me laugh. He was a great
listener. But he cussed out some dude who cut him off in traffic. He told this overinvolved story about
his ex and described her with various synonyms for “psycho.” The jeans: Was it shallow that I cared?
That old pendulum swung in my mind the entire evening. I’m going to kiss him / Oh hell no, I’m not.
I couldn’t tell if the tics that bothered me about him were red flags or convenient excuses to stay in my
hidey-hole. I’d lost touch with my own gut instinct.
And I thought: If I could take a shot of Patrón, I could kiss him. If I could suck down the beer (or
five) that he does not order on my behalf, then we could do this the way it is done. We could find
ourselves wrapped in sheets, clothes in a heap near the foot of the bed, my tricky Grecian top in a
tourniquet around my forearm because I was so frantic to rip it off, to be unloosed, to be free. And
afterward we could evaluate. Do we work? Is this a thing? We could exchange flirtatious glances
over brunch, or we could scatter to other corners of the galaxy and avoid each other in grocery stores.
Either one was fine. But at least something would happen.
Something else happened instead. I sent him an email that took way too long to write. I can’t be
more than friends with you. The drawbridge, which for a brief moment lowered, snapped shut again.
I was so relieved.
When I said I would never have sex again, that probably sounded dramatic. The kind of grandiose
proclamation a teenager makes before slamming the door to her room. It’s not as though every
intimacy in my entire life had been warped by booze. I’d had quiet sex, and giggling sex, and sex so
delicate it was like a soap bubble perched on the tip of my finger. I knew such joy could exist
between two people, but I had no clue how to get to it anymore. My only directions involved taking a
glass of wine to my lips and letting the sweet release show me the way.
Clearly, I needed a new map.
I KNEW ONLINE dating would come for me someday. It was the fate of all single women in their late