Illustration: by Marylu E. Herrera
New York Magazines Sex Diaries asks anonymous townsfolk to record a week of their sex life – with comedic, tragic, often sexy, and always revealing results. The column, which began in 2007, is the basis of a new docuseries on HBO.
This week, a woman in London introduces her girlfriend to new things (and continues to flirt with women in the city): 47, in a relationship, London.
DAY ONE
8am I’m on schedule, so I get up at a decent hour today. I am an American journalist living in London. I cover everything from sports to art.
10am I’m here thinking about my new relationship when I should stay focused. Although I’m a lesbian, I haven’t had a relationship that lasted longer than four years (defying that cliché U-Haul joke that’s a constant when a lesbian goes out on a second date). I felt relief when I found out I was gay at 22 because it took the pressure off me to get married – then gays fought for marriage and all the lesbians I know got married and got pregnant. I’ve always found it boring!
I’m in an eight month relationship with a new queer woman (I’m her first gay) and it’s been pretty good. I’m very attracted to her, but I’m afraid we don’t have enough sex to satisfy her. What can I say ? I am not a guy. I don’t particularly like this masculine quality either. Also I work a lot.
5 p.m. Independent living offers plenty of time for a wank during the day, which I’m doing right now.
7 p.m. Evening call with my brother who lives in another country. He is also gay. We are talking about secure love versus passionate love. Both are ideal if you can find it. I still want that heartbreaking, “I can’t get enough of you or your body” love and sex that I had with my first lesbian relationship. It was 24 years ago.
8 p.m. Meet my girlfriend, Mr. We have three proseccos in the cinema, where we see She said.
10 p.m. Go home and watch the first L word. It was revolutionary for me as a young lesbian in 2004, but M was 16 at the time, straight and living in Eastern Europe. She has “cultural gaps,” as she likes to call them, which means she knows most but not all of American and German culture. After a while we go to bed.
DAY TWO
10am Awake, slightly hungover and sleepy.
12 p.m. M puts the radio on while I make more morning tea. We listen to BBC 6 on Sundays – a routine. When I come back with my tea, she asks me if I made her some green tea. I didn’t, but she didn’t ask.
2 p.m. We play fight over tea. This leads to foreplay. Back in bed, we start kissing, and she runs her vagina against my leg. My boxers and t-shirt come off and I do my signature move, which is a slow slide against all M while I’m on top of her. Skin against skin is for me the best feeling in the world – very intimate, and I love feeling his chest against mine. M is a good five inches taller than me, so I’m usually on top. This is the reality of lesbian sex.
I’m M’s first girlfriend, so it’s usually me who decides. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t know what she’s doing. We do some scissors, then I start touching her. She’s not a G-spot woman; she loves her massaged clitoris. I’m good at it, but M’s been using a vibrator for years, and no human hand can rumble like that, so finally we pull out my toy, and she comes. She is blessed with female ejaculation, which is messy but fun.
4 p.m. “Shit, it’s 4 p.m.,” M says. “Lesbian sex is a time killer,” I reply. He is. Those three minute fucks in a bathroom The word I are totally fictional. Plus a toilet cubicle? Raw.
7 p.m. We watch a few more episodes and call it a night. She sleeps.
DAY THREE
10am Trying to get my assignments and spur new ones – that’s freelancing life. A constant grind. But I can’t complain.
2 p.m. M and I meet friends at the freezing King’s Cross Christmas Market. They have kids who are cute but seem to take up all of the mother’s time. Honestly, I don’t know how couples live through children.
5 p.m. On the way home, M confirms that she doesn’t want kids either (even though she’s a nanny, by the way). Thank God.
7 p.m. We head to a bar to meet the friends of M’s lesbian couple. They don’t have kids, which is a relief. They don’t want it either.
9 p.m. I like his friends. However, M told them everything about our relationship, including that I tend to drink to excess sometimes. That is true. I was sober for eight years until I took a trip to Uzbekistan in 2019 – if you didn’t drink vodka there, you were crazy. But I can’t keep drinking like this because the hangover is killing me. One of M’s friends, the one who had an abusive alcoholic father, watches my every move while we’re at the bar. I know we will discuss this later.
Midnight: Another pub. A snowball fight. Then home to sleep, too tired for any drama or sex.
DAY FOUR
8am A slight hangover, then comes the argument. It’s not with MI that I have a problem, it’s the friend, but we argue a bit about it – her oversharing and making me feel judged – and then it’s fine. Nothing serious. She brings me a coffee, and that’s it.
10am We agree that the friend is just being overprotective of my girlfriend, and that’s not a bad thing.
1 p.m. Heavy snow is falling, the likes of which have never been seen in London. M is up and at work; I’m ready for a nap.
5 p.m. A bit of hell because one of my magazines shuts down three issues in a week so we can have two weeks off. I spend the rest of the night getting things done.
9 p.m. I am still working. The eyes are heavy. Will fall asleep soon. M is at home tonight.
DAY FIVE
10am Wake up and meet lesbian friends for breakfast. They’re hungover and doing two Baileys to kill the hangover, and I’m joining them just for fun. They are happy to hear that I am satisfied with M, but I try not to be hypocritical and share too much.
1 p.m. Back home, I saddle up in front of my computer. I forgot that I also have a 3,000 word article on Iraq, which I came back to a few weeks ago.
2 p.m. I turn on the Formula 1 while I work. Usually I listen to music, but BBC 6 has been playing rubbish lately.
3 p.m. Texts M. She goes out with her German friend to see die hard. She didn’t know it was a “Christmas movie”. As she said, the cultural gaps of her childhood in Eastern Europe. I am charmed by all.
5:30 p.m. I take out my vibrator and open a new window. I search for gay porn and about three minutes later the job is done. One of my other secrets that no one knows is that I can’t come when I’m having sex with someone else – except once in my twenties. I usually fake orgasm. I don’t know if it has to do with my Catholic upbringing, my extreme self-consciousness, my preference for vibrators, or what. I haven’t even discussed it with any of my therapists. But I hate the idea of someone getting bored and tired and wondering when I’m done while they fuck me. When I feel like I’ve had enough, I make noise and gestures, and that’s it. Nobody ever questioned it. Maybe I should have tried acting as a profession.
8 p.m. I call my girlfriend to say goodnight. Then I read a little in bed.
DAY 6
10am Back to work. It doesn’t matter what day of the week: when you’re freelance, deadlines are deadlines.
2 p.m. M arrives. I’m always working.
4 p.m. We put on BBC 3, the classic channel. I ask her jokingly if she has always been so “weird”, as in a 37-year-old opera and theater scholar who talks about My Neighbor Totoro at the Barbican. She says “No!” like a defensive little boy. We flirt, it’s nice.
7 p.m. Ms. plays Hey, a Polish pop band she used to listen to in the 90s. It makes me laugh hysterically. It’s only when M speaks or sings that I think she’s actually from another country – and a former communist at that. We fight a lot for money.
12 p.m. I finally finished the first third of my story and I quit. M is sleeping soundly.
DAY SEVEN
9 am M wakes up and kisses me goodbye. The children including M nannies are in private school and on winter vacation now, so no opportunity to have fun in the morning. During the school year, she doesn’t have to be home until at least noon, so we can have sex in the morning, which is good.
10am We are heading to Morocco for Christmas – no family obligations for either of us this year. I can not wait. So I put my place on Airbnb, which is boring but worth it.
2 p.m. I finally dragged my shit and shit from M and the cat to her place. She lives in a house owned by a baby in trust which is an absolute nightmare. There’s always drama around her (she comes from a famous, dysfunctional family), the planet (she’s an environmental activist in Extinction Rebellion), or the home (no shoes on the stairs!) . I’m too old for this shit. It’s a shame because the house is pretty cool and Hackney is the Brooklyn of London I guess.
3 p.m. Go to a specialty magazine store run by a very cute Scottish lesbian for that special tennis diary I’m writing for. That I volunteered to help put it on the stands in the UK is my fault, but it’s still ridiculous. Still, I can flirt with the store owner.
I was once with someone who I cheated on quite regularly (with a French estate agent), but we didn’t have sex, so I think that was pretty fair. In fact, I had never cheated before. Once you’ve opened this Pandora’s box, does it close? I had a little fling this summer with a 34 year old South African tennis player who was 34, but it was just a kiss (I think – I had drunk about six pints). M and I talked about what would happen if we wanted to sleep with someone else. She said she wouldn’t leave me if I kissed someone. Each of us, however, has our “celebrity pass”. Hers is Gillian Anderson. Mine is Carey Mulligan. Carey, if you’re listening and you’re willing to trade Mumford’s guitar for my typewriter, look at me.
8 p.m. Head to Camden for dinner with Mr. She will be worried about something before our trip to Morocco on Saturday and will probably see a shopping bag and imply that I am a spendthrift (remains of communist culture) but she is still the big spoon to my little one.
11 p.m. I lay down for the night and put saturday night live on the iPad. It’s time to snuggle up.
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