I feel it’s my duty to inform you every time New York Magazine’s Sex Diaries feature a Sapphicly-Inclined Human, and thus it’s my pleasure to announce that today’s Sex Diary stars a “29-Year-Old Lesbian Whose Dreams Are Dirtier Than Her Sex Life.”

The diarist is a PR agent with a 46-year-old girlfriend/partner/”lover.” They volunteer at a soup kitchen, go to flea markets and art museums and talk about ‘academic events.’ Most of the sexual situations in the diary, however, are solo affairs, fantasies about ex-girlfriends and dirty dreams:

Lover looks sexy. I can see her pierced nipples through her little tank. She’s 46, but has the physique and spirit of a much younger woman. Unfortunately, her hormones don’t match up and menopause is rearing its ugly head, battling my own high sex drive. I throw some verbal flirtations her way and follow up with kisses on her neck and chest, hoping the morning might replace channel surfing with some body surfing. I’m met with a tender turndown sealed with complaints of bloating, cramps, and a hot flash to round it out. 

Most comments on New York Magazine are pitying — “I must say that I feel a bit sad for her. This woman needs more sex, love and affection – Woman, will you please communicate this to your Lover?” — and some are gross (“why not just have sex with a dude”) and some are weird (“If you live in Long Island City you are stupid and I hate you.”).

After trying to think really hard about whether or not I know this girl and coming to terms with the unnecessarily elevated and flowery language the diarist employs, my number one feeling about this diary was that it made me think of this Stephen Dunn poem “After Making Love.” It’s perhaps unfair to Stephen Dunn to mention him within the context of a New York Magazine Sex Diary, but whatever — that’s what poets are for, I think, they take our crude poorly-expressed stupid flowery melodramatic feelings and make them sound like, well, poetry.

After Making Love

No one should ask the other
“What were you thinking?”

No one, that is,
who doesn’t want to hear about the past

and its inhabitants,
or the strange loneliness of the present

filled, even as it may be, with pleasure,
or those snapshots

of the future, different heads
on different bodies.

Some people actually desire honesty.
They must never have broken

into their own solitary houses
after having misplaced the key,

never seen with an intruder’s eyes
what is theirs.

 – Stephen Dunn, from Loosestrife

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