Oh God, What Was I Thinking

I knew the Newport Years were hazy, because I’m certain now that I’d slept with this next guy before I’d slept with guy #5, but I’m not messing with the titles now. I did warn you that the order may be a little…iffy. Blame the Jägermeister and poor decisions of a twenty-something year old. Or the failing memory of a forty-something year old, depending on how you look at it.

This next person was someone who I had genuinely forgotten about. Not forgotten exactly; more like purposefully tried to have removed from my memory due to sheer and extreme cringe-worthiness and embarrassment.

When I started planning this blog and recounting the people I’d slept with, the number initially felt a little lower than I thought. Was my tally off? Had I been rounding up over time? Several days later it hit me: this person who I’d completely and utterly and no doubt deliberately erased from my memory, landed right back in there almost as fast as I’d let him into my skinny jeans in the first place. I let out an audible groan of shame through gritted teeth, dry-heaving a little at the same time. I can’t even begin to spell the noise, so please use your imagination.

This should be drinking game, where the reader has to drink every time I say I fell for a guy ‘because he was really tall’. Drink at the ready? Good. So, this guy was maybe 6’5”, and I fell for him instantly. He wasn’t just tall, though. He was a regular DJ at the bar we used to frequent (cool), was covered in tattoos (so cool), and… he had a lip ring. Ugh. *swoon* I was obsessed.

My move to Newport coincided with the rise of Emo subculture, and I’d never seen anything quite like it. All around, hot boys with flippy hair (jet black from Directions hair dye), with lip piercings and tattoos, studded belts and band T-shirts, seemed to appear overnight. I was in heaven. This DJ was the cutest (and tallest) of them all.

I’d love to say that I was a hot emo chick back then too, but that was far from the truth. Sure, I’d started getting lip piercings of my own, I’d soon have my first tattoo, and hair dye was a regular occurrence. But I couldn’t apply eyeliner for shit, and I was far too much of an awkward indie kid for cool raccoon-hair extensions and the like. All I could do was admire emo boys from afar.

And yet somehow, I ended up in bed with this hot Emo DJ. Exactly how remains a mystery. I had no swagger. No rizz. No charm, or seduction technique. I probably just blushed and grinned liked an idiot whenever he spoke to me so he figured I was an easy lay (another cringe). He was 6’5” with a lip ring – of course I was going to jump at the chance to sleep with him, and looking back now, I’m pretty certain he knew this.

So yes, sex happened. Awkward, cringey, embarrassing sex. I vaguely remember being on top at one point, and having zero idea what to actually do. I’d slept with several others before him (at least 4 if you’re keeping count), but in all those instances it was generally a few minutes of them floundering around on top of me and generally putting the work in. Years from now an ex of mine would call me a ‘Pillow Princess’ – a term I found endearing at the time, because I thought it meant I had high standards and liked naps.

My opportunity to indulge in passionate love-making with the hot emo guy of my dreams was fumbled because I was utterly clueless. And not just clueless about what to do in the bedroom. I was convinced (there goes that audible groan of shame again) that because we slept with each other, he must be completely and utterly in love with me. Oh, dear reader, how wrong I was.

Several days later, my friends and I were back in the bar. I was flustered and loved up, and totally convinced he felt the same way. He didn’t, of course.

Egged-on by my friends, they convinced this DJ to put on a slow song (he chose Fall Out Boy’s ‘Sugar, We’re Going Down’), and we awkwardly slow-danced to it in the middle of the dance floor. Oh my Christ, how embarrassing this is to look back on. I was expecting fireworks, and I could tell this guy clearly wasn’t into it anywhere near as much as I was. The flirty texts soon dried up, and he had another girl hanging off his arm by the following weekend.

I wish I could say I learned a valuable lesson that night, and subsequently avoided the type of guys who would charm their way into my pants, only to vanish once they got what they wanted. Alas, I did not, and this blog continues. Thanks for the memories, Hot Emo DJ, even if they’re the kind I tried to suppress for nearly twenty years.