There was a year of flirting, of sharing fantasies, late-night 'would you ever want to...' and early-morning 'wouldn't it be fun if...' And there were a few near-misses, calendars that just wouldn't line up. And then suddenly there were a few days in the same city, a precious couple of hours of overlapping free time.
We met in a place familiar to both of us, a sex shop with hidden depths. Literally. Three floors of play space and video booths accessible out the back door, down the stairs and in a little door under the stairs. Like a sexy TARDIS ... it's kinkier on the inside.
At 4:30 on a Tuesday afternoon, the place was not packed. He was already there when I arrived, and he waited for me on the other side of the turnstile, my ticket in his hand. We're both a little shy, and, without the comforting anonymity of a messaging app between us, face-to-face conversation was only small talk as we explored the space. Holding hands, we might have been walking through the park on a Sunday afternoon, but for the too-loud bass line echoing around the empty dance floor and the hot guys in the corner giving each other hand jobs.
We finished our tour back on the lower level, a labyrinth of black-painted doors set into black-painted cubicles, built against black-painted walls. The only bit of not-black came from bare bulbs above each door, glowing green or red, and blue bulbs in the corners that added neither light nor ambiance.
'Is this one ok?' he asked, gesturing toward a green-lighted door. I noddedβone is as good as the other, right?βand he guided me through the door. Inside, we sat drive-in-movie style on a bench against the back wall, facing the screen and next to a letterbox-sized slot cut into the wall dividing our booth from another. He fished in his pocket for a dollar to feed into the machine, and I scrolled through the channels on the control panel to my left. It's no easy thing, trying to set a mood with porn for someone you just met. What if we're porn-incompatible? What if he storms out of the room in disgust at my selection? But after a couple of rounds of little glances, little smiles, little comments on the disappointing sameness of mainstream porn, we were worn in. And we were on to another room.