Don’t expect me to suck your dick if you don’t respect my time

I thought I was going to have sex on Wednesday evening. I thought I was going to have sex right up until 7pm, when I realised that he wasn’t going to text me back and I’d wasted a whole day not making plans because I wanted to make plans with him. I’d been eager to suck his dick, and he didn’t respect my time enough to text me to tell me he wasn’t up for a fuck. It was’t until then that I understood that I’d let myself be vulnerable. And when I realised that, I broke down.

I ain’t a play thing
To make life exciting
You fucked with my feelings
Safe from heartbreak
If I never fall in love

Wolf Alice, Safe from Heartbreak (If You Never Fall in Love)

I felt stupid that it hurt.

It shouldn’t hurt, I told myself as I dug my nails into my arm and tried to focus on the pain so I could breathe. You’re pathetic for caring so much that you’re crying over a boy you don’t know. And it’s true, I didn’t know him. I had challenged myself to have sex while I was down in London, and he was a guy I’d matched with on Tinder. A cute, subby guy, whose flirting made me grin and whose sexts made me hard. It felt like he shouldn’t have the power to hurt me.

He did though.

I matched with him on Monday morning after some concentrated Tinder swiping towards my goal of getting laid. I smiled when I got the notification that he’d matched with him, and I felt excited when he messaged me back quickly. We talked about books and about transphobia in media, and soon we were talking about sex. I was up front about what I was looking for – my directness surprised him, but he liked it.

Talking to him was easy. It was fun. We flirted and he followed me eagerly when I led the messages in a more overtly sexual direction. There was no explicit negotiation – we’d obviously need to go over STIs and safe-words, but you can learn about each other’s likes and limits while sexting. He told me that he was into being bent over and fucked hard. I told him that I wanted to use my mouth to edge him until his dick was so hard it hurt. He told me that my words were making me wet, and I called him a slut.

Anxious that he wouldn’t have more than glanced at my bio, I tried to make it clear that I was trans. I sent him a photo of the dildo I wanted to fuck him with, and we discussed how I prefer the adjective ‘thick’ over ‘fat’ when describing my cock. Despite my worries, he seemed to see me as who I am. I liked turning him on with increasingly filthy messages, I liked the idea of doing something slutty, but I also liked him. I grinned every time my phone buzzed with a new message.

On Monday night I barely noticed when he stopped replying to me, because I was curled up on a friend’s sofa with a glass of wine in my hand. We were listening to a Wolf Alice album as we talked, and ended up discussing whether we would trade away the highs of love if it meant we could also escape the lows of heartbreak. I wouldn’t choose avoiding heartbreak over experiencing love, of course, but sometimes I wish I was rational enough to pick the other option.

You see, sometimes I hate how much I care. I definitely hated how much I cared on Tuesday, when I woke up to find that he still hadn’t messaged me back.

At midday I was sitting in the coffee shop above a book shop and working on an article that was due that day. I’d given up on hearing back from him. I’d done some more swiping on Tinder and talked to a few other people, but didn’t feel the same chemistry. I went through the motions of finding someone to fuck, not realising how unexcited I felt about it until he finally replied to me.

He apologised, explaining that it had been a hectic morning at work. When I said he didn’t need to, that he didn’t owe me apologies, he said he did. He told me that he wanted me to know that he wanted me. Surprised at how good that felt to hear, I suggested that we switch over to WhatsApp, which I use more – and thus check more regularly – than Tinder. I asked him if I could save him in my phone as ‘Cute Tinder Slut’ and he said yes. He said he probably would be working late that evening, and asked if I up for him being my slut on Wednesday evening so we’d have enough time for a proper fuck. I said yes.

I was disarmed by how he drew vulnerability out of me.

He told me that he wanted to touch me. Instead of redirecting the conversation so it focussed on him, I let myself be vulnerable. I thought about not just what would make for hot sex that left me feeling powerful and slutty, but what would feel good in my body. I want you to kiss my thighs, I told him. He told me that he wanted to be on his knees between my thighs, running his mouth along them, kissing and licking.

I shivered thinking about his touch and admitted that I wanted him to bite the soft skin there too. He told me that he wanted to taste me, that he wished his hands were wrapped around me. I believed him. I felt exposed, leaning into the idea of not just performing a role of a confident, dominant guy, but also having my needs met. It felt like I was walking a tightrope, trusting him with the honesty of how hungry my skin was for touch. It was exhilarating.

He wanted to know whether I liked oral sex. It was clear not only that he wanted me to find the sex hot, but he wanted me to experience physical pleasure. When I admitted my mixed feelings on receiving oral sex, he asked what the best way to make me come was. I told him that the only reliable way for me to get off was with a . It needed to be my hand holding it against me, I explained, but I like having someone else’s hand on top of mine, moving my hand and helping me jerk myself off.

God that’s hot, he told me. I would love to jerk you off.

He distracted from my deadline and I loved it. When I submitted the article and set off on the rest of my adventures, we kept texting. We flirted. We sexted. I sent him photos – not nudes, but selfies where I was grinning and felt like a complete mess. He asked me what my absolute favourite thing was, and I answered honestly even though my answer wasn’t hot. It’s giggling and laughing with the person I’m fucking, I told him. It’s feeling intimate with them and being touched.

At around 9pm on Tuesday, he stopped replying again.

Because he’d done the same thing the previous night, I wasn’t worried. I tossed my phone aside and got stuck into my plans for the evening. Maybe he goes to bed early, I thought. Maybe he’s just busy with a work event or a late meeting. I tried to shrug it off, biting down the tide of anxiety rising inside me. We’re going to have sex tomorrow, I reminded myself. I’m going to bend him over and fuck his arse and it’s going to be so fucking hot.

Even though I want my casual sex to have connection and intimacy, I try not to lay myself completely bare – metaphorically. It’s easier to take on the role of someone who is in control of himself, whether or not he’s dominant. Being that person – someone who is self-assured and clever and confident and knows exactly how hot he is – is fun. It’s powerful. I’m not pretending to be someone I’m not: it’s more that I’m being brave enough to be the person I wish I was every day.  

Despite the fact I was looking for a casual hook up, I’d been more vulnerable than intended.

I spent Wednesday morning trying to stop myself checking my phone every five seconds, telling myself that he’d text me. After all, we’d all but agreed to fuck – we just needed to figure out the logistics. By the afternoon, my anxiety was eating me from the inside out. I knew what time he finished work, so I hadn’t made any plans from that point. I didn’t want to make any plans that could prevent me from getting to fuck him.  

By 4pm, I couldn’t choke back the tide of panic. It felt like he was holding my whole evening hostage. I couldn’t make any other plans, so I was stuck in this weird limbo where I was waiting for him to text me. I had nothing to distract me from the awful reality that he wasn’t going to text me at all.  And I felt that I shouldn’t care, that it shouldn’t bother me so much. So what if he didn’t want to fuck me, I told myself. It’s his loss. It felt like mine though. My eyes stung with tears.

I felt stupid – feel stupid – that such a little thing could trigger my suicidal ideation.

What he did was rude. If he’d told me that he didn’t want to meet up to fuck, I’d have understood. If he’d told me that he was too busy, I’d have been able to make other plans. Instead, the uncertainty of it all fucked with my head. It’s not nice to feel like someone doesn’t even respect your time enough to tell you that they don’t want you to suck their dick. He’d made me grin and blush and feel like he was genuinely into me, and then he ghosted me.

He probably was into me. If I’m being generous, he probably did get caught up in work. I asked for his WhatsApp because I prefer talking that way, but maybe he rarely checks his.  Maybe he genuinely never saw my messages. Maybe he had a perfectly legitimate reason for not replying. Or maybe he – like I have so often – fell into a black hole of depression and was unable to summon the spoons required to send a tiny, little text.

I wish he’d sent the tiny, little text though.

The thing that makes me feel most pathetic is that if he’d texted me later, I’d have fucked him. If he’d messaged me at 9pm, after I’d completely fallen apart, I’d have still said yes. I’d have wiped away my tears and pulled myself together. I’d have strapped on and fucked him, burying my hurt deep inside so it wouldn’t show. I was so desperate for touch and connection that I’d sucked his dick even after he showed me how little he respected me or my time.

Maybe I think that’s all I deserve.

It’s not though. I deserve sex with people who treat me with respect. You deserve sex with people who treat you with respect. What he did was hardly unheard-of Tinder behaviour, but it was still shitty. I shouldn’t feel stupid that it hurt, or that I cared, or that the anxiety of him ghosting me triggered my suicidal ideation – these are normal things to feel. They don’t make me weak. They don’t make you weak.

Sometimes – when everything emotion I have feels too much, too painful – I wish I was rational enough to not having love over not feeling heartbreak. Other times I love how much I care. My passion what I do, my love for the people in my life, my ability to feel things very deeply – these are some of my favourite things about myself. Vulnerability – our willingness to expose the softer, darker parts of ourselves – is a fucking super power.  

But don’t expect me to suck your dick if you don’t respect my time.