Hi. I’m Mabs, and I am a demisexual woman trying to date after a particularly nasty divorce. I don’t know what I am doing.

Learning to live as a solitary person after twelve plus years is not fun. I go to work alone. I run errands alone. I cook dinner alone. I go to bed alone. There is no one to decompress the day with, no one to share all of the little pieces of life beside. I am learning to adjust to my independence and finding parts I enjoy in it, but I know myself. Left to my own devices, I will hunker down. I will crave companionship, but I will not actively seek it. My friends worry.

“Girl, you need a hoe phase.” Laughter tinged with concern. Sarah is the steady anchor of our friend group. She protects and encourages in equal measure.

“It’s been over a year since I left my ex. I think I’m past the hoe phase.”

“Whatever. I downloaded dating apps a few days after I left my ex. It’s been raining dick ever since. It’s time.” In contrast to Sarah, Heather is always blunt and always affectionately willing to call me on my bullshit. The combination of these friends both balance and push me. I listen to them.

What the hell even is a hoe phase, though? Why do we shame, laugh at, and simultaneously encourage women to fuck the frustration of divorce out of themselves? I do not wince one bit when my fellow divorced friends plow through the population as they fight to rediscover themselves. They need it. They want it. Let them have it. But don’t call them hoes for it. They are not selling themselves, and even if they were, who are we to judge? They’re taking back every pound of flesh they invested in a person who never returned their efforts. They owe this time to themselves.

For a writer, I wrote a lackluster dating profile and invested little in the experience while my friends cheered me on. The “appropriate time” for my hoe phase arrived during the pandemic. There was nowhere to go, much less anyone to fuck. Just me, my complex PTSD from over a dozen years of narcissistic abuse, phone meetings with my counselor at the women’s shelter, and lots of nights spent staring at TikTok trying to do anything but think. I had a few side quests, wince-worthy diversions from the overall messy narrative of the year, but mostly I marveled at what it felt like to come back to life after years spent silenced. Sometimes, I still vibrate with the energy of it. More often than not, I willingly accept the title of human train wreck.

Adventures in Online Dating: Swipe Left

You would think an app would be a relatively soft opening into the world of dating, but I was instantly overwhelmed. After a day or two of trying to navigate it without a paid subscription, I broke down and ordered the premium version. I was surprised at the number of people who liked my pictures. It was an ego boost after a year of relatively sexless isolation, even if the intro messages were excessively uncomfortable.

“Hello, pretty eyes.” Creeper. Swipe left.

“You look like you aren’t wearing makeup. Beautiful skin.” Hello, Silence of the Lambs. Swipe left.

“You say you’re thick. How thick is thick? Send me a pic.” Okay, say hi first. Swipe left.

A dozen awkward conversations. Right. Nope, now left.

One almost-date and mutual ghosting. Unmatched.

Dick pics. Unmatched.

So many poly couples. Swipe left.

Matches that never message back. Limbo.

How was this the dating world? But there were no other options. All of my friends were hooked up or married. If I was actually serious about putting myself out there, I had to give it a try.

Side quest: I Never Saw Myself as A Cougar

He was twenty-two and beautiful. Worse, he knew it. We’d known each other for four years. It started out as a mentorship, but time gradually molded our association into friendship. I had always been aware of how he watched me, and I’d laughed it off until about a year prior when he confessed that he wanted more. I’d been visiting my mother on a weekend trip away from home, and I’d met with him to catch up over dinner. After, he sat facing me on my hotel room couch, bit his lip, openly raked his eyes over my body, and told me he’d spent years masturbating to fantasies of fucking me.

“I know you want me, too.”

I’d frozen, already miserable and hating my marriage, and stared back at him. It had been years since I’d felt desire, and it hung in a haze between us. I could do it, I told myself. I could give myself this. And oh yes, I wanted to, but I am not an asshole. And for all of the terrible things my ex-husband did to me during our marriage, I am not a cheater. I’d risen, hands shaking, and offered to drive him home.

A year later, the landscape of my life was far different. It was the summer after quarantine, I was leaving my husband, and once again, I sat on a hotel room couch trying to quell my heart as it shouted at me to obey the warning signs. Roles were strangely reversed. I had only been with two other men before my ex-husband, and the twenty-two-year-old had been having casual sex since he was a teenager. At thirty-eight, I may as well have been a virgin beside him.

I was nervous and we drank a few beers to kill the anxiety. We waited for the other to make the first move. And then we had atrociously awful and excruciatingly bad sex. He couldn’t stay hard from penetration, a problem he explained he experienced occasionally, and wanted me to sit on his face and smother him. I’m not into butt stuff, so I was not excited, but damned if I wasn’t committed to trying. It was an hour of that. Smothering. Letting him breathe. Asking if he wanted to keep going. Him enthusiastically agreeing. More smothering. Me regrettably continuing a never-ending hand job. Him at last reciprocating by insisting that spelling the alphabet on my clit with his tongue was going to get me there. Me finally telling him to stop after a half-hour of inconsistent disaster. It was some of the worst sex of my life.

After, as he pulled on his pants, he was breathless and laughing. He’d finally cum, my hand was cramping, and he looked me dead in the eyes, cold, and said, “I’ve been trying to get in your pants for years. It’s about time you spread your legs.”

I felt like I’d been slapped. There’s no real recovery from realizing you weren’t seen as a person, just a goal. I took him to the door, watched him saunter down the hotel hallway clearly pleased with himself, bolted the lock, and walked to the bathroom. I turned on the water and stood in the shower under a scalding stream and hated myself for being stupid. I scrubbed my skin raw, and after, wrapped myself in a towel and sat on sex scented sheets wondering if this was what life after my marriage was going to be like: disappointing and foolish.

Reflection Time: Is This My Prime?

I’m thirty-nine. It’s a weird age. Your whole young life, you’re taught to think of forty as a benchmark. Careers should be settled, retirement should be secure, kids should be overrunning your backyard, and you and your spouse should have settled into a deep, emotional friendship that is likely sexless, but hell, you have so many other plates you’re spinning, who really cares?

I am not living that life. I’m staring forty in the face, and I don’t know what I want from my career. I left my job in higher ed for financial security teaching public school. I have my teacher retirement savings that Texas might choose to yank at any moment, and I sold my backyard dreams with my divorce. I have an apartment balcony that lists ever so slightly and might support a solitary outdoor chair and one person. Two is questionable.

The most humorous but perhaps also most pressing fact about being a middle-aged woman is that your body starts screaming around thirty-five. Suddenly, you desire on a level that is staggering. People joke that women peak in their thirties, but we do not understand the amount with which we will yearn. Guys get this in their early twenties, but women? We wake up at midlife. One day our eyes open and these bodies we have punished and starved in our youth demand. We roar.

Side quest: How to Fuck Up a Friendship, the PhD Edition

First, don’t date your male best friend. It sounds like a great idea. It isn’t. It’s how you get massively hurt and how best friendships are destroyed.

When I left my ex, the PhD called me from Mississippi regularly to try and get me to talk about it. He was my go-to person in my grad program, and he’d been through a divorce, too. Many mutual friends insisted he was manipulative and toxic, but he’d never shown me that side of himself. I trusted him completely. So, we texted every day, throughout the day, for months. Around March, I made it clear I was interested, and in May, I visited him in Mississippi on my way to see my dad in Florida.

We drove to New Orleans, made out in bad lighting at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop, and then had loud sex in our creaky hotel bed. I’d never been with someone who complimented me before. “You’re beautiful, so smart, sexy.” He wasn’t afraid to take control, and I was able to enjoy myself during sex, which I realized had never happened before. On my return trip, I stayed with the PhD again. While sitting on his balcony with his dog’s anxious panting at our feet, we listened to the sound of rain falling through the balmy Mississippi air.

I spoke first. “I know you are finishing a PhD program. You have three years left. I understand if this isn’t right for us. But I have enjoyed it. . . . What do you want?”

“You. All I want is you.” His voice was steady, confident.

“. . . Are you sure?” Who doesn’t dream of a relationship with their best friend?

“Yes, I want to be with you.”

A week later, he told me he loved me through a text message and then freaked out when I called him on the phone. He blamed it on not liking to talk, so I accepted it as a boundary. It didn’t sit well with me.

A month later, he broke up with me on my birthday. I’d felt him pulling away; he’d stopped sharing anything emotional, and there were long stretches of silence, a sharp contrast to our years of friendship. I didn’t understand the change until I read a flirtatious exchange with another woman on his Facebook wall.

His text to me: “How was your birthday dinner?”

Me: “It was good, but who is X and should I be concerned?” No assumptions. Friendships are complicated, and God knows, I am overly close to my best friends.

He spent hours switching his story, telling me he was trying to lift her up because she’d been abused, insisting he was trying to manipulate her so that he could get a writing residency, and finally saying he could do whatever he wanted because I should accept his behavior regardless. He tore apart my character, refused to acknowledge that my feelings mattered, and told me I wasn’t ready to be with anyone. It was a painful and long night where he showed me all of the horrible behaviors I was warned about for years.

He apologized the next day and blamed the entire incident on his “trauma.” “I do this. It’s me. I freak out when I feel tied down. It’s a pattern.” All texts.

We had one phone call after two weeks, and he made a point of calling thirty minutes late. His message was as clear as his casual disrespect. “Yes. It was wrong. But my feelings were changing. I needed you to show agency in the matter.” These words still haunt me for their infantilization. They make me furious. He held me at arm’s length while I was steady. I am not responsible for his emotional instability.

I’d like to say that I summoned righteous anger, picked myself up, and acted like nothing happened, but that would be a lie. I didn’t get out of bed for days. It wasn’t all the breakup. The loss of a best friend hurt, and the incident resurfaced a feeling of fragility I thought buried after years of similar treatment from my ex. Part of me simply departed for a while, and when I did start moving again, it was because I had to and not because I cared.

Recently, I learned he was actually cheating on me and is now in a relationship with her. I have the screenshots of him telling me he was manipulating her, but I have not sent them. What’s the point? I ignored the red flags. So will she.

Reflection Time: Let’s Level Up

Every divorced person needs a few months of “fuck this shit.” Time where you simply give up trying to get yourself together and allow the days to stretch past while you rediscover your new normal. I helped my mother through a surgery and her move to a senior living home, worked on cleaning her hoarder house, and started my job as a teacher. I sidelined my body and my heart while I focused on what was in front of me. Belatedly, I enrolled myself in therapy. I recognized that I have an overwhelming tendency to let people treat me like I am disposable. I do not walk when it is time to go. I stick and hope for a better future that never comes. It was definitely the right investment to make. I had to start learning to prioritize myself.

Gradually, life fell into a pattern. Get up. Work. Home. Cats. A hobby. Sleep. I found a rhythm in it. And that rhythm began to feel like balance. I started to assert boundaries with the people in my life that overstepped them. A sense of self-worth woke up after many years of dormancy. It had now been over a year since I left my ex, and I was finally starting to feel whole on my own.

Life Advice with Friends: Heather

Heather narrowed down her entourage of dating app men after a few months of madness. The juggling act became two, and then, she made her choice. One guy made the cut.

Her text: “He figured out how to make me squirt! Holy shit!”

Me: “Damn. Good for you.” Ah, the sex I am not having.

Her: “Like. He freakin’ researched it. He is a monster in bed! Thank God I left my ex! How many people are you talking to?”

Me, talking to a whole lot of no one: “Yeah. I deleted my apps.”

Her: “What?! Girl, you’re hot. Get out there. How have you not gotten laid yet?!”

I am, unfortunately, a stupid level of complex and would never be content with just getting laid. I thrive on emotional connection and need it to enjoy sex. I wish I were wired differently. It would make my life infinitely easier and probably save me a lot of heartache.

Nonetheless, Heather was right. I took her advice and downloaded a dating app again.

Adventures in Online Dating: The Stranger

A stranger that is not a stranger lives thirty minutes away from me. I know the names of his pets, and that his high school ex-girlfriend stabbed him in the leg with a fork his senior year. I know that he dreams of becoming a science teacher and vastly prefers being the little spoon to the big. I know that he both loves and hates his family, escapes into hours of gaming, grapples with body dysmorphia, why he was fired from his last job, and his nickname for his best friend. I know that he will never forget the image of his wife dying in his arms, and I know that each day has been a battle to survive ever since. I know that he is not proud of the person he used to be, and he is fighting to become a better man. I know what he physically desires from a partner and the positions and the kinks that turn him on. I know exactly how intuitive and smart he is and how absolutely scattered he can be the phone and I know and I know and I fucking know.

But what I do not know is how to define what happened between us. Something and nothing. A thousand texts that amount to a stranger thirty minutes away and my uncomfortably bruised heart. Because in those few months of talking, between all of the sexting and trading of the details that compose our lives, I decided he was a friend I wanted to keep.

There are things that confused me, weird fissures that disrupted the person I thought I was beginning to understand. Pauses that spanned days mapped out a discordant pattern throughout our conversations. Requests to get together in person were never quite the right time. One night he asked me to be patient with him because he wasn’t ready and then there was an uninhibited, desirous flood of texts the next day. I would watch the pendulum swing in steady ticks.

I finally forced myself to call his bluff. I knew it was a finishing move when I did it. He would not follow through, and I was ultimately shutting the door for myself. But really, how much is there to lose when he couldn’t even meet me for a cup of coffee? A few days of silence settled in. I cried about it before I did it, and then I texted him.

“Why haven’t you fucked me yet?” Blunt and entirely out of character for me. But he knew I wanted him. Neither of us were shy about what we wanted from each other, and there was only so much chasing I was willing to do.

“Haha Very subtle. Soon.” He explained he was leaving to visit family in another city early the next morning. We talked for a few texts, and the exchange quickly closed out.

“Okay, but before you go, do you want me to stop? Communication has been patchy lately, and you don’t seem to have a lot of intent. I will back off if you want me to.” Consent matters. If his breadcrumbs were his attempt to walk, I was giving him an out.

“I don’t want you to back off. I just can’t tonight.”

I took him at his word. He sent flirty texts the next day, and I was a little surprised. He apologized that his life was messy. I knew what was coming. I wished him luck while he was with his family the following day. I didn’t hear from him for a week and a half, and though he did eventually text, his messages became increasingly random and infrequent.

I couldn’t make myself feel angry. For all of the myriad of things I know and don’t, I am well aware of what pain and the compulsion to protect oneself looks like. And while I would have been happy to hold his hand through it, sometimes life is just too complicated to share. We fight our greatest battles alone.

I wish missing a stranger didn’t hurt, though.

 Life Advice with Friends: Sarah

Sarah and I were two vodka Sprite mixes down on a Friday night, eating Chinese food on my couch and waxing nostalgic to the sound of Simon & Garfunkel’s greatest hits. It was an awesomely on-brand scene for our friendship.

“So, I’m trying to write this essay about my lack of a hoe phase. I’m not having one.” Buzzed me paused. “Or maybe I am having one, and I’m just an emotional slut.”

“What??” Sarah laughed, clearly amused.

“Okay. So, hear me out. I didn’t screw a million people. I just gave my stupid heart away a half-dozen times like a half-assed version of a hoe.”

“You have got to be kidding me. In the past year or so, what really happened like that?”

“Okay. So. The Twenty-Two-Year-Old. The Phd. The Stranger where like nothing actually happened. And now I’m going out with this guy on Saturday.”

“Bitch, that’s like four people in a year and you haven’t even slept with all of them!” She giggled. “That’s not a hoe phase! It’s normal.”

I laughed, but the years I spent married echoed in my head. Not caring for one consistent partner still felt strange, but she was right. This was supposed to be what it’s like when you’re single. People fall through your hands like water until you find a person self-contained enough to hold their own beside you.

Was I even holding my own? I was trying, but it was taking a while to get there.

“So you downloaded a dating app again?”

I cringed. “Yep.”

“Good.”

Adventures in Online Dating: Captain Ahab and the Great White Whale

I met Captain Ahab for a date at a retro gaming arcade downtown. We’d only talked for a few days, but his communication was consistent, respectful, and just flirty enough to intrigue me without crossing the line. Plus, my long-awaited divorce was at last finalized by a judge the day after we started talking. Why not go out with him? He seemed nice enough.

Captain Ahab did not look like any of his pictures, but he wasn’t unattractive. He surprised me by kissing me when he hugged me hello and set the tone for the night: he was going to touch me, and my bemused self was going to accept it. Six months had passed since my breakup with the PhD, I hadn’t had sustained physical contact with anyone in the meantime, and my skin hungered. I was tired of ignoring my body.

He kicked my ass at Street Fighter. I remember laughing about it, him explaining he hated using Zangief, and we waited for his character to die so he could change out for Bison. His hand traced up my back and settled on the nape of my neck. When he gently pulled a fist full of my hair, I closed my eyes involuntarily. I knew I was in trouble.

“I know, baby. It feels good,” he whispered.

I didn’t try to fight it. We made out in front of our abandoned Street Fighter game, walked to the other half of the arcade, and made out again in front of another ancient relic from the 1980s that I no longer cared about enough to register. We had zero emotional connection—I think we both already knew we wouldn’t go out again—but our bodies had plenty to say to each other.

We moved to the parking lot and then the backseat of my car.

We were sweating, and the windows were fogging up. I knew we’d reached a critical point in the evening. “What do you want to do?” I asked. A stupid question. We both knew what we wanted to do, but my long dead Judeo-Christian upbringing was telling me to slow down.

“We can’t do anything here. But I want to do everything.”

“I have never met anyone and within an hour of meeting them told them to come home with me.”

“We don’t have to do anything if you aren’t comfortable.” He never stopped asking for consent throughout the night. I felt safe, like I could say no and he could handle it, and that lack of pressure is probably exactly why I said yes.

“I want to.”

“Say it.”

“Fuck me, please.”

I have a lot of insecurities about my body. I’ve had six reconstructive back surgeries, and not only am I covered in scars, but my rib cage is rotated and it throws my symmetry off. I know I am not unattractive, but my body is a sore subject for me. He made me completely forget about it all.

I didn’t cum. My need for an emotional connection got in the way, but it still felt good. After, we lay across my bed and laughed about it.

“Your ass is so fucking big.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I actually like that part of myself.”

His eyes sparkled as he slipped into a pirate accent. “The moment I saw it, I knew I had to have it. The Great White Whale was a rare sighting. The hunt began in the parking lot and traveled into the arcade sea. It was there that I decided I would spear it.” Several minutes passed where he mused through a fictionalized quest for my booty. Who knew hearing my butt called a whale could feel like the ultimate compliment? He even liked my scars. We laughed together for a while longer, and I have never loved my body more.

When he left, there was an intimacy between us. No soul connection. No great romance. But we’d shared an experience that was gratifying for us both. I reached a turning point in how I viewed dating.

I needed to stop taking myself so damn seriously and have fun.

Reflection Time: Is It My ADHD or Am I Just Bored?

Boredom is a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it means life has stabilized enough for you to feel the surrounding silence. On the other hand, it stimulates you to fill the space. My neurodivergent brain is unable to tell the difference.

Every woman on dating apps learns her dealbreakers early. For some, it’s how soon a person is willing to meet. If they ask you out in the first conversation or ask to add you on Snapchat, it is too soon. They just want a hookup. If they are willing to wait a few days or a week to get to know you through conversation, they are showing a willingness to discover you on a deeper level. If it’s longer than that, you likely have a pen pal, and for whatever reason, they never intend to meet you at all.

I learn a new skill: how to get men to talk about themselves for hours. If I ask questions, flirt just a little, and maybe mention sex without going overboard, I will hook a man instantly. It becomes a valuable vetting tool. If I talk to a potential partner and he readily responds to my questions by disclosing the details of his life, he needs to also show enough awareness of me to reciprocate this unboxing and ask questions in return. If he can’t do that, I know he is just enjoying the attention.

It’s a curious power, and once I learn it, it is hard not to see its effect. I also recognize it means I am getting comfortable with the game. I feel slightly ashamed of myself. But only slightly.

Adventures in Online Dating: The Talker and the Pocket Relationship

The Talker worked contract shifts on supply boats. He was experiencing the aftermath of divorce and still actively mourning the loss of that dream while trying to navigate co-parenting with an egocentric ex. He was frustrated and sad but also clearly excited to learn that life could restart elsewhere.

In similar form, I was finally experiencing what it felt like to no longer carry any legal ties to my ex. I would like to say the feeling was profound relief or release, but really the expiration of tension just felt exhausting, like I had escaped something inexorable.

The Talker and I found solace from our mutual tensions together. We leaned on each other through long hours of phone conversations, and I would get lost in the rhythms and pitches of his words, southern and lilting when musing about the day, calm, still, and confident when thoughtful. Real potential was knocking, and we both knew it.

Him: “I feel like we’ve already had a month of dating in a week and a half.”

Me: “Right? What haven’t we talked about at this point? Is it even a date we’re going on?” We were meeting that Friday for dinner, the evening his boat pulled into port.

Him: “It’s more like we’re having a Relationship Test Run/Try Not to Implode. An rtrtni.”

Me: “We’re making up our own language now?”

Him: “Yep. It’s pronounced Art Art Knee and we’re going to enjoy our time together . . . provided neither one of us passes out from nervousness.”

Meeting a match you have only seen through pictures is a surreal experience. I knew the timber of his greeting and could pick up on the subtle signs of anxiety in his hello, but his physical presence was new. We hugged immediately, and suddenly, I wasn’t sure if I was standing beside a stranger or a best friend. It was a weird, definitive split. But as dinner progressed, we relaxed. By the time we were standing beside my car in the parking lot, I was comfortable. And when he kissed me, I knew there was chemistry.

We went back to my apartment and pretended to watch a TV show. We played with my dog, made random small talk, laughed as my cats climbed all over him, and when we began to touch, I didn’t want to stop. We were very different people who likely would never have met outside of a dating app, but after two weeks of buildup, we knew we were in this together. And when our bodies met, it was unexpectedly good. The first time with a new partner is typically awkward or clumsy, and though we had those moments, I also felt no fear of them. We laughed. We fucked. I came for the first time in my life from penetration. And after, we joked about being out of practice and mutually sore. We curled up beside one another, and I tried to rest, but a knot was forming in my heart. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was about to get hurt.

The next morning, a cold front was moving in, I had a migraine building, he argued on my balcony with his ex about plans with his son, and our connection felt off, like we had fallen out of sync with each other just as quickly as we had learned to walk in step. We ordered pizza, and I tried to figure out if it was that the rtrtni had lasted too long or if we just weren’t right for each other. I don’t remember how the subject drifted to politics, but before long, we were debating all of the sensitive issues of our time.

Me: “I understand what you are saying, but I feel like you are invalidating my experiences.”

Him: “I acknowledge your experiences, but you’re not listening to what I have to say.”

The argument was circular. We tore through race relations, opinions about Trump, and landed on feminism. Though he never outright discounted the feminist struggle, my anger festered. My ex and I had these divisions too, and I used to swallow my protest to keep peace between us. I wouldn’t do it again for anyone.

Him: “I should leave.”

Me: “Okay.” I felt the situation slipping out of my hands. I wanted to pull us back to that morning, when we woke up in one another’s arms and all I had wanted was to feel his calloused hands on my body and to slip back into the sanctity of our long conversations again. Instead, I watched him close the front door to my apartment without making eye contact. I shuddered at the foot of my stairs and tried to figure out if I wanted to cry, scream, or collapse. I settled for sitting on the floor and babbling my bewilderment to Sarah. He called thirty minutes later.

Me: “That was awful.”

Him: “I know. And I just kept talking and I wasn’t verbalizing what I was thinking well, and we kept missing each other.” He was right. We had. But as we made amends and connected over the phone one more time, I felt myself closing. The start of a new relationship should exist in a bubble where nothing can touch the bond you forge together. We’d failed to do that, and I hated the thought of seeing those fissures slowly fracture us. Because they would.

We agreed to a friendship, but there was a strange, raw quality to the sudden sewing together and tearing apart of our connection. Like in the space of two weeks we mutually saw all that we could be to one another and yet we still couldn’t make it work. And whether that was a sin of timing or personality, I’m not sure. But in the days after the door closed between us, the silence echoed.

Reflection Time: The Present, Emotional Unavailability, and Being a Hoe

The Talker did not let me close the door. In fact, he persistently stands in the opening and waits for me to meet him there. His confidence scares me, like he feels the metaphysical throughline connecting us and speaks its threads into the softest of handwoven nets. I could tear myself loose, but our conversations continue past my decision to distance myself. Short texts, then paragraphs. Confessions of errors and miscommunication. And before I know it, I am tangled. Just as he holds the door ajar, I can’t seem to stop myself from walking toward it, and whether that path leads me to him or the exit, I can’t tell.

There is a peculiarity in realizing you are emotionally unavailable. I am all but paralyzed by the fear that I might care for him. It makes me want to run. It makes me wonder when I became like this. I am afraid to feel and afraid to drop my guard.

The twenty-two-year-old hurt me. As absurd and ill-fated as our experience in my hotel room was, I had honestly expected our friendship to supersede the fallout. When in the months that followed, he continued to prove he no longer saw me as a person, I was embarrassed. What the hell did I expect to happen? Why didn’t I listen to my instincts? Why did I allow a foolish man-child to compromise my sense of value? I should have known better.

In like form, the PhD remains a painful memory. It took me months to find my anger, and I still feel that rage, fresh and seething, half a year since. But I also feel the lack of what I thought was one of my strongest friendships. Were we even friends? Or was I just a fool again? His vacancy sits in the back of my mind. From time to time, I think I feel him there, like his presence waits and extends the comfort we used to share, but he destroyed the bond between us that would have welcomed that reaching. In the past, I would have come to him for advice about the Talker, but now, the opportunities to infiltrate my heart are infrequent for anyone, much less him. I don’t trust as easily, and I hate living with that level of heartbreak.

I think back to the Stranger with forgiving acceptance. I recognize that for all of his flirtatious fuckboy energy, I was also as equally closed off emotionally as he was. I volunteered little of myself because I’d run out of the capacity to offer it. I’d allowed my identity to thin out in favor of finding equilibrium interspersed with brief moments of simulated joy. In similar form, he gave me what he could for someone steeped in mourning and trying to thrive with half of his soul torn loose. There were no stakes connecting us, and there was no room in our lives for a tangible outcome. Our struggles to refind ourselves took up too much space.

I laugh a lot about Captain Ahab. He was a one-night stand, pure and simple. We never spoke again after our night together, and I bear him no ill will for it. I needed the release and the confidence he helped me find. Our brief hours together were silly and charged but fun. I also recognize that he was an expert at the dating app hook-up game. He romanced me a little, made sure I felt safe, we both got a bit of pleasure out of it, and we moved on. It was a clean and painless exit that could only be executed by a pro. I never want to master that skill. Ever.

Perhaps that is part of why it is so hard to make up my mind about the Talker. I love the level of honesty I share with him. I love our bodies together. I love when he makes me laugh and the ease with which we fit into one another’s presence. But I do not love the flood of fear that confronts me when I think that I am starting to fall for him. His views are often different from my own, and his background is darker. We could probably overcome the obstacles inherent in these incongruities if I committed to trying, but I can’t stop myself from mapping out the danger. Part of me hates that self-knowledge, and part of me is proud that I am making my peace a priority. To become the center of my life, I cannot allow anyone to harm that capricious balance.

I guess that is what a hoe phase is all about. Finding your independence amid a flood. I could continue to funnel through the interested people in my life while moving through my matches online, infiltrate each interaction by treating my body like a vessel that requires servicing or imagine myself as some fictitious seabound prey, but I would continuously come to the same conclusion. What I am really searching for is my security, because what is a hoe but a woman who is unafraid of putting her needs first? I need my friends and the much-loved advice they offer. I need myself, complete with all of my flaws. And eventually, I might decide I want a partner. But for right now, I need me. Because for the first time in my life, I am everything I want and more.

At last, I am enough.

-Mabs Mitchell

Mabs Mitchell is a former professor and a lifelong educator. Her research focuses on minimized feminist voices and disability studies while her work as a creative writer also explores lessons in empathy and representation. She is a graduate of Texas State University’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program and Best of the Net nonfiction nominee. Her work has been featured by Exposition Review, Rejection Letters, Uncomfortable Revolution, Inverted Syntax’s Fissured Tongue Series (publisher’s pick), and Waxing and Waning. She lives in Texas and fills her time with friends, shenanigans, and living life as fully as possible while in the midst of a lingering pandemic.