O n her twenty-fourth birthday, she decided there were three things she wanted to do before she turned twenty-five. s****l things. All three involved taking stupid risks, putting her body into the hands of people she knew nothing about and had no reason to trust. All three involved Craig’s List. She knew she had to do them now. The older she got, the less reckless she’d become. She knew that if she waited until she was thirty, she wouldn’t be brave enough, or stupid enough, to try this. And she knew she’d always regret it if she didn’t try. The first one she called Craig’s List Roulette.
She would go to the Casual Encounters ads, the Men Seeking Women section. She would pick an ad at random. No matter what it said, she would answer it. Unless she was literally and physically unable to comply with the ad’s request, she would answer it. She would use a random number generator, so she couldn’t cheat. She knew how stupid this was, how reckless, how dangerous. But she didn’t want to be just another boring horny slut playing the personals. She wanted to set a new standard for sluts. She wanted to be the slut by which all other sluts measured themselves. Besides, reckless and dangerous was kind of the point. She wanted a real adventure—and in a real adventure, you weren’t in control. The ad headline read, Young, horny, need to get sucked. Perfect. Simple. Easy to take care of. She took a picture of herself, naked on her knees, and sent it with her reply. She was at his dorm in twenty minutes. He wasn’t as cute as she’d hoped—she thought he might have used a fake picture, actually—but that was okay. Weirdly, it was part of the charm. She closed his dorm-room door behind them, and dropped to her knees, thinking with a hard thump in her c**t of how she had been manipulated, how she was being used. She dropped her head back and opened her mouth.
He unzipped and pushed himself into her, and she opened wide and let him f**k her mouth. He kicked her out politely when he was done, and she went home and m*********d for an hour and a half. She m*********d on her knees, with a dildo in her mouth and a vibrator between her legs. She kept thinking she couldn’t possibly come any more…and then she would remember what she had just done, and her sore, tired c**t would throb again, demanding just one more. She was back on Craig’s List the next day. She hadn’t expected that. When she first decided to do her three adventures, she’d assumed that she’d play each of them just once. But she loved Craig’s List Roulette. It was like slut boot camp. It was like an accelerated study program in human sexuality. It was like a multi-week intensive course in letting go. Her requirements got a little more restrictive —the guy had to ask for something specific, he couldn’t ask to do drugs together, he couldn’t ask to do it more than once—but she stuck to the spirit of the game with remarkable discipline. She landed on Wanna watch me play with myself? and was soon in a home-built weight room in a dingy garage, watching an oiled-up bodybuilder straddle his weight bench and stroke his c**k, repeatedly murmuring, “You like what you see?”, his eyes never leaving her face. She landed on Anyone for a car date right now? and found herself fumbling in the back of a Camry with a married ad exec, his hands groping at her t**s, his c**k pushing against her crotch through her panties, his breath pungent with weed.
She landed on Oral from behind and an hour later was on her knees in a cheesy bachelor pad in the suburbs, a noisy tongue slurping at her p***y and occasionally, hesitatingly, perhaps even guiltily, slipping into her asshole. She landed on Offering $$$ for p***y licking, and thought, Sure, why not? and then was on her back in a hotel bed with a tongue between her legs and three twenties on the bedside table. She thought she’d feel different after, and was surprised when she didn’t. She landed on Just give me a blow job and Can a guy get a blow job please? and Looking for a woman in need of a facial with perverse excitement. She loved how openly selfish they were. She loved how slutty it made her feel, how sordid, to get on her knees and open her mouth to a man who expressed no interest whatsoever in what she might need or want. She loved how it made her feel both purely s****l and purely invisible. And she loved feeling like the only woman in the city who would ever answer their ad. It made her feel extreme. Hard core.
Special. She landed on Looking for a woman to spank, and thought, About f*****g time. That was the first one—and the last—where she laid out her own guidelines. “I’ve never done this before,” she told the guy. “I really want to. I want this to go well.” The gentleman was older: in his early sixties, a little soft, a little frail, but patient and careful and grateful. He told her that she was beautiful, that she was bad, that he was going to teach her a lesson, that he was going to take care of her. He spanked her gently, until she wanted more than anything for him to spank her harder; and he spanked her harder, until she had no idea what she wanted anymore. He was the first one—and the only one—that she wished she could go back to. But that wasn’t how the game was played. She always felt a little guilty about the ones who just wanted to service her; the ones who ate her p***y or licked her feet or gave her long, drawn out massages. It seemed like missing the point. But then she’d remember: this was what they’d asked for. When she lay back and let herself be taken care of, she was giving them the service they wanted more than anything. It was disappointing sometimes. Naturally. There were clumsy men, smelly men, liars. But she kept the game up, a bit longer perhaps than she would have…because she was putting off the second one. She was a little afraid of the second one. The second game, she called Motel Slut. It took a little more courage, more aggressiveness, since she had to place her own ad. Casual Encounters, Women Seeking Men. The ad read: I am in the Star Motel on Broadway. I am in Room 314. I am naked.
I will f**k the first man who shows up, in any position you like. Just tell me what you want, and don’t talk about anything else. If the Do Not Disturb sign is up, you’re too late—someone else got here first. She placed the ad from her laptop in the motel room. The first man showed up in ten minutes. He was out of breath from running up the stairs. She hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, and immediately took off her robe. She was naked, as promised. “Tell me how you want to do it.” The man was goggle-eyed. “Can we do it doggie style?” “Don’t ask. Just tell.” He didn’t seem to understand. But he went along. “Okay. Let’s do it doggie style.” She gestured to the lube and condoms on the nightstand, and got on her hands and knees on the bed. She played the image in her head again and again as he unzipped his pants and crawled between her knees. Opening the motel door to the stranger. Dropping her robe to show him her naked body. Saying nothing but a few terse words about s*x. Putting herself silently on her hands and knees on the motel bed, and opening her legs so he could f**k her. She played the image again and again, as he pushed himself inside her. It was like a feedback loop screaming into her cunt. He wasn’t a great lover— crude, a little clumsy—but it didn’t matter. She felt like a character in a porno movie. She dropped into the feeling like a stone dropping into the sea. Like Craig’s List Roulette, she hadn’t planned on doing this more than once.
And like Craig’s List Roulette, she was hooked after the first time. The next day, she did it again. She opened the motel door for another stranger; she dropped her robe; she lay on her back and spread her legs when he told her to; she let herself get f****d. And when he left, she took the DO NOT DISTURB sign off the door, and waited for the next one. She did three guys that day. Seven the next. After that, she slowed down a bit: kept it to once a week, and usually no more than three or four in a day. Some of them were simple. They just wanted a girl on her back with her legs open. And that was fine. It had a certain primal, meat-puppet charm. Some were more imaginative. And that was better. She liked being told to sit on the guy’s d**k and face away from him. To straddle him on a chair like a stripper and give him a lap dance that turned into a f**k. To lie back on the cheap motel desk, her butt scooted all the way to the end, her fingers spreading her cunt apart, her face turned to the wall. She liked being told to lie facedown on the bathroom floor, her t**s getting scraped by the cold tile as she got f****d from behind. Sometimes it was hard. One of them told her, “I want to f**k you in the ass.” She’d never done that before.