Max, surname “Grindr,” is in my phone, but our short message history doesn’t tell me much about him. He claims that we’ve already met—Before I went to Barcelona, remember? I don't. My recall can’t be trusted, and I’m pretty slutty, but because I like to record things I have a spreadsheet of people I’ve slept with recently, and Max isn’t on it.
Instead of blocking him, however, I admit that the possibility that he’s lying is kind of hot.
I'm honest, Max promises. It's probably my sole virtue.
He sends me a photo of his cock and it’s big and pretty, so I decide to see what happens.
My doubts are confirmed when I arrive at Max’s Upper West Side apartment building. Even my THC-addled brain would remember a place like this. It’s new, built in that boxy, trendy style that you can see for yourself if you Google “gentrifier architecture.” A man in a suit hustles to open the door for me, then makes a phone call. A second suited man is seated at an island at the end of a glass corridor, beyond which is a landlocked garden with a redwood deck. Though he watched the first doorman make his call, the second screens me, too. At the top of the elevator and down a hallway, a short middle-aged man that I don’t recognize answers my ring. He is wearing a plaid button-down over khakis. He smiles.
Max is not attractive, but I didn’t expect him to be. He told me he was “ethically non-monogamous,” so the only reason he wouldn’t send me a photo of his face is that he knows it can’t do the heavy lifting his dick can. But it’s not so much his appearance that I don’t like—that ranks fairly low for me, when it comes to these things. It’s his demeanor, his vibe. Ushering me into a foyer that’s half the size of my own apartment, Max is politely apologetic, and not interested, seemingly, in convincing me to stay. As I look around, I realize why.
I start removing my coat, spinning on my heel to take it all in. There’s unblemished marble and unsmudged steel. The appliances, Scandinavian and Japanese, are brand-new. Whoever cleans the place obviously doesn’t live here. I see, from the corner of my eye, that Max is watching me. By the way he holds himself—tensely, as if waiting for the Russian judge’s decision—I can tell there’s room to be bratty.
I’ve never seen you before, I announce, tossing my things on an upholstered chair the color of ivory and cream and the shiny side of tungsten.
I guess not, Max says, still smiling. His glasses have thick, black frames. I thought you were someone else.
I laugh at him. Another t boy?
I was going to offer you a drink, Max feints, but why don’t I give you the tour first?
Even New Yorkers use this expression, even those who don’t have more than a room to call their own. This is not the case for Max, whose apartment, glass-walled like the lobby below, has two offices, three bedrooms, and a stunning view of the River. Any single piece of furniture costs more than my rent, or at least my student loan payment. The walls are full, though not cluttered, with vast paintings and prints. As we move through the apartment, Max recounts the origin and value of every piece, with a smattering of boorish detail. Have you heard of so-and-so? He painted this before he killed himself. The art, most of it reminiscent of Basquiat and Banksy, is, without exception, hideous. One painting features Donald Trump with a ball gag in his mouth and graffiti-esque squiggles around his body.
When we return to the open kitchen, Max announces that he’ll make me a Negroni (hold the Prosecco), taking care to explain to me what exactly that is. I know what I look like to him, in my crop top and piercings. I think of the little white trans boy he mistook me for, and wonder how old he is.
We take our drinks to a circle of Eames chairs, where Max tells me about his homes in Maine and the aforementioned Barcelona; I half-expect him to ask me if I’ve ever heard of it. When he stands and turns to dim the lights, he exposes his cheap, ill-fitting boxer shorts. He won’t tell me what he does for a living—or used to do, since he retired years ago—but says he divides his time between consulting for a nonprofit and writing books. He is coy about what consulting means, as he is about the books, although, he says slyly, they both did quite well.
And what do you do? he finally asks, seizing his Negroni from its makeshift coaster, a copy of Artforum.
I also write books, I tell him. He Googles my new novel. A New York Times Editors’ Choice! He almost hollers it. Oh, fuck you, David!
Max is impressed and sheepish; his evening has taken an unexpected turn. I take a big swig of Negroni. It tastes great.
We talk some more, which is to say, I listen some more. He tells me about his wife, his adult children (who he believes are older than I am), the sex positive community he was once a member of in San Francisco (but you're too young to know what that is). Max is under the impression that his sexual lifestyle—polyamory, group sex, gay sex, casual sex—is a recent development made possible by the creation of a “market” by hookup apps. When he tells me that older men, like him, couldn’t find beautiful young boys, like me, before Grindr, I laugh in his face. He laughs with me, looking more confused than pained.
Still, he senses that I’m having a good time, and I can’t say I’m not entertained. The Negroni starts to hit and the apartment is warm. All is going well. Max starts putting the moves on me in the most juiceless way imaginable.
You're so fabulous, he says. Now we’re on a couch together, our empty glasses abandoned in a different room. I find you so incredibly appealing.
I find him fascinating, if repulsive. I don’t want to have sex with him, but I do want to see if I can get things out of him, this wealthy man who seems inclined to generosity. It’s a fun game. He asks me my age, and is shocked to learn that I am, in fact, older than his adult children. The transsexual he had me confused with was 19. In comparing us, he struggles to describe the trajectory of our transitions, though of course I did not ask him to. This is also fascinating to me: the chaser who can’t learn the language he needs to get the pussy he wants. From the couch, I peer into his wife’s office, where a Peloton twists in the shadows like a dozing xenomorph. I suppose a chaser like Max doesn’t have to learn anything he doesn’t want to.
In the interest of keeping my options open, I decide that I won’t have sex with him, but that I will let him cum. I take my clothes off, and Max admires me while I stroke the shaft of his big, pretty cock. I know what you like, Max says, affecting an unnaturally deep voice. He wraps his fingers around my throat. He doesn’t have a strong grip, so his bad form isn’t dangerous. I repress more laughter. (I wish that this sort of thing wasn’t fun, but it is.)
When he cums, and he cums quickly, Max emits a loud, abrupt scream. Remember that (maybe apocryphal) viral video about a group of scientists who recreated the voice of a mummified neanderthal and it’s hilarious? That’s what he sounds like. As his blood pressure returns to normal, he gazes up at me, squinting a little without his glasses. I await more compliments, or else more demands. Instead, he asks me why the Times chose my book. He’s still catching his breath.
I’m caught off guard. But I tell him why they chose it, or why I think they did, anyway. I’m still wondering if I’m even close to right when then Max says something else: that trans kids shouldn't get to transition until they're at least 18.
Only the day before, the most recent transphobic hit piece from the Times, this one about the “dangers” of puberty blockers, had rocked Twitter, the platform itself newly acquired by a billionaire transmisogynist who’s since reinstated a bunch of banned accounts, including Trump’s. Max’s projection is obvious to me—put the tranny faggot in its place, while insisting on the clockiness that is clearly more to his erotic tastes—but I can’t escape the coincidence. How can I, with the Times’ audience right here with me, a liberal with cum on his belly and Campari on his breath, a rich white straight man—I don’t care who he fucks—with everything to lose and nothing to fear?
No. I don’t care to argue with him, but it must be said. You’re wrong.
Realizing his mistake, Max attempts to explain himself. He tells me about a trans girl whose family he knows. Her parents did not permit her to medically transition until she was 18, and she turned out just fine, he insists. He misgenders her until I correct him. It’s difficult, I think, to balance dominance with satisfaction.
Kids die because of that mindset, I say. There’s nothing else.
Only kids from bad families! Max retorts.
The game is over. I used to mock women who had sex with men for free—who’s the loser now? I go back to the living room for my clothes. Max is still talking about the girl who is now beautiful and happy and surged up, intercutting her story with fantasies about fucking me with his cis boyfriend, who’s 24 and, according to him, has a long, skinny dick. I wonder how much he pays the boyfriend. A lot, I hope.
Max insists on getting me a car home. He shows me his phone, proving that he’s ordered a copy of my book. Now that the balance has been restored, he is generous again.
Find me on Twitter. Get my second novel, X, right here.
David Davis