Exposed by Jessica Love Page A

relationship. I think during this time I had the opposite scent, that men could tell I was not available, regardless of how nice or accommodating or charming I tried to be.
    And they were right. I wasn’t interested.
    I’d sit alone at a table for lunch reading the current week’s The Sound . They were still hyping their exposé of the anonymous benefactor they now called the  “Prince of the Poor of Pike Place Market,” in a scandal they named “Meals at Midnight.”
    Street people would gather from around the area, from behind fences or under the bridges and get a hot meal handout that seemed to appear from nowhere. The Sound had identified someone from Microsoft or Amazon as the donor.
    If somebody came up to me while I was reading, I’d wait silently with my newspaper for them to go away.
    But after a while longer, I’d have the occasional date with someone I’d met through a chance encounter, or with someone who someone else said I just had to meet. It took a while, but I began to see guys for coffee, then dinner.
    More occasionally I’d agree to a sleepover, always at their place, or a weekend trip to Friday Harbor or Port Townsend.
    For reasons that weren’t clear to me at the time, I never, ever had anybody to my place. I never, ever told anyone where I lived. Not even girlfriends, though I didn’t have many of those. I thought about getting a dog, or a cat, but I wasn’t inclined to walk a dog twice a day or ever, ever scoop up cat shit.
    So I started dating, and I had occasional sex. Never great sex, but okay sex a few times. Good enough sex, certainly.
    Most guys are not content to be told the sex was “okay.” They need to hear that it was mind-bending, the best ever, cataclysmic, galactically orgasmic, change of consciousness great.
    Which is just stupid. If everything is the best ever, then there can be no best. Everyone can’t be above average, and all that.
    And every time we have sex, it does not have to be the “best ever” for it to be satisfying, good, or even damn good. So it became pretty obvious when men asked me if the sex was good, or above average or whatever, the question was not really about how I felt about the sex.
    It really wasn’t about me at all.
    It was about them. In some ways, it had little to do with the sex and nothing to do with sharing, even affection. They wanted me to judge their performance, but at the same time, they wanted nothing of the sort. They wanted accolades.
    An honest, even a half-honest, response was not going to satisfy them. That was not as easy a lesson for me to learn as you might think.
    The fact is, for the most part the sex wasn’t that good…
    We’ll start with the obvious. Men often think they have to “lower my inhibitions.” I think we’ve dealt with that issue here. I really don’t have many inhibitions. If you want me drunk, it’s about you, not about me. And what that’s about, I don’t like all that much.
    You don’t want me to be fully aware, fully participating, fully consenting with all my faculties? Too bad for you.
    Secondly, many men are just not good at sex. It’s like once we get to the bedroom, they bounce between “can’t shut their mind off” to “can’t think at all.” Maybe when they get an erection all the blood leaves their brain.
    The mystery here is that these are men who spend hours in the gym to look good, or who will study every stroke of their golf game, buy books on how to swing a club, how to hold a putter, how to read a green. “Keep your eye on the ball. Swing relaxed. Concentrate on the the ball in front of you, forget the last shot.”
    Some of the same techniques apply.
    Or those who take driving lessons:
    After my divorce was final, I went down to Seattle Raceway for a day of driver training in my Porsche. Just for fun. There was one other woman there, about a dozen guys.
    They taught us to look where we wanted to go and not at the wall, to drive with relaxed hands, and that we’d lose