The Furthest You've Traveled For Sex

It’s getting hotter and that means the possibility of summer flings is in the air. Summer used to be my favorite time of year, when I lived in west Texas and was blessed all day every day with zero humidity—but in New York, it catches me off guard every year. I’m never fully prepared and because I’ve moved roughly once a year since I got here, I always have to scramble to buy an A/C in time. That yearly search, which I am about to embark on again, reminds me of one of the unspoken rules of summertime in the city—which is, if you’re going to bone someone anytime between the months of June and August, you must first make sure they have A/C.

All of this got me thinking about the lengths to which we travel for sex. I’ve either been extremely lucky or extremely lazy (probably the latter) when it comes to this and never been in a relationship, casual or serious, with someone who didn’t live in the same borough as me. But maybe, if I didn’t have A/C and I knew someone really cute who lived in Washington Heights who did have A/C, I would travel up to an hour or more just to see them and make out within arm’s distance of their icy-cold window unit. Maybe! I have traveled further for less.

Which brings me to my question for this week: What’s the furthest you’ve traveled for a casual, no-strings-attached relationship? I know obviously people in serious relationships do long-distance, and that is all fine and dandy—but how far is too far when you just wanna a good bang? Across the country sounds reasonable to me (what do you think they invented airplanes for?), but I want to hear your story. What about another country? What about outer space? (Just kidding… unless you are an astronaut with a story, in which case, HELLO—please comment now!) Let me celebrate your wildest, long-distance sexual escapades. I already can’t wait to hear them.

For now, here are the best answers to last week’s question, which was about the worst summer flings you’ve ever had.

Nice job, Auntie-Socialite:

I met a super geeky, super shy, super HOT dude when I was 18. We hooked up after a beach party, but after we’d boned he started CRYING. Turns out, he was also super RELIGIOUS. I wasn’t just the first girl he’d had sex with, I was the first girl he kissed. We saw each other off and on all summer, thankfully with no more post coital crying jags.

Fall rolls around, we part ways. A friend who goes to hot guys church calls me a month or so later to regale me with the story of hot guy getting up in church to confess how I had “tempted him” into sex, which culminated in his pastor lecturing the congregation on the perils of wanton hussies.

I like to think that appellation was the formation of my future career as a sex worker.

This is my literal nightmare, itsnotaboutthepasta (great name)—congrats on surviving:

Oh man, okay. So mid-20s me had just arrived in NYC, heartbroken because my POS father had just abandoned my family to go live halfway across the world with his mistress. One of my buddies from college (we met when he was a senior and I was a freshman, and we hooked up once, early on, but never again) comes to town and we meet up with a grad school friend of his for drinks. Friend is cute and flirty and a little bit older, so over the next few months we occasionally text each other and say “we should grab drinks again soon!”

Six months later, it’s his birthday and we finally make plans. We go out and get absolutely shitfaced (at one point I puked-and-rallied in the tiny bathroom of a tiny wine bar, thank god for gum) and end up back at his place. We have decent sex, I sleep for a few hours then get lost on my way to the train (no smartphones/GPS) and couldn’t catch a cab so eventually just limped halfway home. He probably texted me at some point that day or the next, I don’t remember.

So 48 hours later I’m at my customer service/ticket booth desk job and go on break. As I’m in the bathroom stall peeing, I feel something drop out of me. I looked in the toilet and it was his condom. At no point did he tell me that the condom had come off. I don’t even know if he knew it had come off.

So I prayed, eventually got my period and a clean bill of health from the gyno, and never spoke to him again.

A reminder you can have a fling at any age. I tip my hat to you, YoloMcSwaggins:

Summer before last, I had a fling with my high school boyfriend (we graduated 30 years ago). I was going through a separation and then reconciliation with my then-husband, who was an abusive ass, and the high school boyfriend (going through his own divorce) apparently deduced this from my FB photos. He reached out to me on FB messenger. Damn those breakup quotes I posted! Anyhow, after FB messaging for a couple of weeks, I visited him and had a week of crazy sex and it seemed like one of those “rediscovered “ love happily ever after tales would ensue. Supposedly he had been “loving me from afar” for three decades. Alas, he dropped me cold after a couple of months for a woman he met on OKC. He dropped her after a year to go back to his wife. All turned out ok, though, as it gave me the push to end my shitty marriage and face life on my own.

Honestly this one shouldn’t win, because it ends in decidedly not-disaster, but it’s so cute that I have to include it anyway:

After my abusive, mentally ill ex-husband left, I decided that I needed to figure out who I was. Obviously the only reasonable way to do that was to join OKC. I was COMPLETELY uninterested in actually dating people, I just wanted to see what was out there and what I would talk about other than being a mom and taking care of my ex. I went on a date or two with this one totally boring guy who ended up sleeping with me but was weird about it because he thought I was going to fall in love with him or someshit because he was the first guy out the gate. No, dude. No.

Anyway, I scheduled a date with some other guy on OKC and went on that one, mainly hoping that he wouldn’t be all emo about things like the last guy. He was cute, although his clothes didn’t fit right and who wears all black to a post-Memorial Day date? He seemed pretty chill about things, which was kind of nice, since I wasn’t interested in anything serious. We went to dinner and had a nice conversation and then to drinks, then back to his place to smoke a bowl and watch a cartoon, like adults in their 30s do? I was feeling kind of bummed about the whole thing, since I kind of felt like getting laid, but what can you do?

Then he kissed me. It was a fucking disaster, guys. One kiss led to another, led to sex, led to more sex, led to WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED YOU GUYS. OUR BABY WILL BE TWO TOMORROW. WHAT THE FUCK.

(His clothes didn’t fit right because dudeman turned out to be a trained kickboxer/MMA beast and has legs like a goddamned treetrunk. They don’t make nice clothes for dudes who should be naked at all times.)