The “Safe Space” Guy – Survived by Sarah

WHO: An ex-boyfriend who shall remain nameless

WHAT: A strange sexual encounter of sorts

WHEN: Basically a hundred years ago, but really Fall of 2007

WHERE: Nevada City, CA

WHY: Because apparently I “loved” him. Oh, past Sarah.

THE ENCOUNTER
So, this one takes place a really long time ago. I was living in San Francisco but had made the decision to move back to Nevada City after a year and a half away. My sister and I were looking for a place to rent, and I took a weekend in early September to drive up and look at a few houses.

My good friend at the time graciously let me stay with her. When I got to her house, she told me an incredible thing: a boy had asked her about me. These things don’t happen to me now, and especially didn’t then. I’m not the girl who gets approached, like ever, so I was tickled. And having just gone through some intensely awful Craigslist dating in San Francisco (see here, here, here, and here), I was ready to meet someone good.

Here’s the hilarious part. She told me he’d seen my MySpace profile and thought I was cute and wanted to meet me.

Yes, this romance began through MySpace. Like, way back before Facebook was a thing outside of colleges. Like, when MySpace was actually a thing.

Yes, I’m old.

So this boy had seen my profile because I had commented on something on her page and they were friends. She told me his name and said we’d all gone to high school together, but I didn’t recognize the name. Our graduating high school class was over 800 students in a school of over 3000 so no surprise there.

She asked if I wanted to meet him and I said yes, sight unseen. I had only ever seriously dated 3 people at that point and those relationships were all with people I was already friends with. I was excited to meet someone I didn’t know.

My friend arranged for us all to meet at the local coffee place (yes, there was only one at the time…tiny town), and she said he was bringing a friend too. The second I walked in the door and saw him, blue eyes sparkling, I grabbed her elbow and whispered, “Yes.”

We got along splendidly. We all rented a movie after coffee and went to my friend’s house to watch. The boy sat close to me. We arranged a second date for the next night, and I didn’t leave his side for the next 4 days. I was supposed to drive back to SF to pack on Sunday, but I dragged the weekend out into Tuesday before reluctantly leaving him and driving back to the bay.

My sister and I moved a week or so later, and the boy and I dated for almost 3 months. It was fast and heavy. We said I love you after 7 days. There are countless stories I could tell about this guy, as that period was one of the most stressful and intense of my life. It was short, but a lot of shit went down both with he and I as well as generally in my life. That three month period takes up a whole chapter in my life book. 

But the rest will come later. This story is about one of the weirder things I’ve been a part of in the bedroom.

And don’t worry, it’s not graphic. Or sexy.

So, this guy was slightly off. At the time I found it dreamy, but now I know better. He had serious issues, and I don’t say that lightly or judgmentally. He had very real mental problems, but that wasn’t made clear to me until later. Hindsight and stuff. 

He was weird about sex. He told me once that he got tired early and if I wanted to have sex at night I had to ask him before 6pm.

The things you put up with in your very early 20s. Oh past Sarah.

I had had an extremely traumatic event happen to me 2 years previously, and to his credit he did things in his own way to help me deal with it.

This event was one of those things….I think?

We were at his house one night talking about my trauma, and I was getting emotional. We were lying on his bed (clothed, you pervs), and he suddenly asked me to stand up. He told me he wanted to create a “safe space for us to make love in.”

Cringe.

But at the time, swoon.

I’ve always been terrible at dating.

This boy was into Shamanism, and he got out a knife that had either been given to him by a Shaman or blessed by one. Either way, he told me we needed to use it to create our “safe space.”

Luckily, that didn’t involve stabbing or cutting or anything like that, but the fear did flash across my mind.

He had me hold it and he stood behind me with his hands on mine. He had me repeat weird things as we pointed to the four corners of the room with the knife. He wanted to make sure we made the circle big enough to include the bed so it was safe too. So we did.

I realize now how insane that is, but at the time I was enchanted. I thought he was healing me. But the sex inside that circle remained unenchanting and mediocre at best, so maybe I should have seen the signs of his crazy earlier on.

Max Fox Part 2 – Survived by Sarah

WHO: Max Fox, part deux

WHAT: The prolonged conclusion of a successful (I thought) Craigslist date I’d had about a month earlier.

WHEN: early 2007ish

WHERE: San Francisco

WHY: Because he was still a musician and still cute and still tall and still a musician. And I’m still only human. Also, CraigsList had still not provided any other viable dating options.

THE DATE
Max Fox and I had spent a totally magical evening on a swing set. He wore adorable black plastic hipster glasses before hipsters were a thing. We had a lot in common and I thought for sure a second date would materialize, but a month went by and I didn’t hear from him. I had called and emailed him a few times with no response. This was 2007 and I didn’t yet have the ability to Facebook stalk people. I may not even have had Facebook yet.

I’m so old.

As I was writing this, I was wishing I still had these old emails from Max. And it turns out that Gmail is the greatest thing. Like, ever. I’ve had my account since about a year after college, as my UCSB account was deactivated. Though Gmail does empty your deleted folder after 30 days, it turns out they do not empty your sent mail. So when I randomly did a search for Max Fox, you can imagine how thrilled I was that several emails popped up.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the email I received after Max’s hiatus, but I do have a few others that helped to fill in the holes in my memory.

I may have under-exaggerated how drunk I was when I met Max the first time. I do believe Karen and I either drank before we went to his show or we drank at the show. Then we drank at our roommate’s party, and then I drank with Max on the swings. I have this little gem of an email I sent Max after he didn’t kiss me when he dropped me off at home:

2/25/2007
Max,
Sorry if I was a little intense tonight. I wasn’t supposed to let myself drink that much before meeting someone new. 🙂
I really enjoyed meeting you. You guys rocked it tonight.
I hope we can meet up sometime this week. I’ll give you a call tomorrow.

So I spent the next several weeks of not hearing from him kicking myself for being a lush. I figured I’d been annoying and loud and he wasn’t interested.

Then suddenly, an email from him appeared the following month. Max apologized for blowing me off. He had just started seeing someone else when we met and didn’t want to lead me on, but he’d recently broken up with her and hadn’t stopped thinking about me. He wanted to know if I was still interested, and yes I was. Because Max Fox. Musician. Etc.

We emailed back and forth for a while trying to align our schedules. I believe he may have been in college at the time in addition to being a musician, but I can’t quite remember. Finally, he made the best date suggestion I’ve ever heard. One of his friends hadn’t been able to go to her prom in high school, so for her birthday she was throwing herself an adult prom, complete with a photo area and photographer and punch and crummy dresses.

I immediately said yes, because obviously. You totally would have too.

I had the perfect polyester, canary yellow, floor-length, pleated maxi-dress from the 70’s that I had purchased for $3 at a thrift store and never had the right opportunity to wear. This event was definitely the perfect time if there ever was one. My roommates all helped me get ready and took my photo just like real prom.

Max Fox showed up in a full khaki brown suit from the 70’s, complete with the white ruffled shirt. Picture Ben Stiller in There’s Something About Mary but with better hair and no braces and adorable glasses. Max brought me a corsage he had made out of pipe cleaners, and my roommates took photos of him putting it on my wrist. We took the cheesy couple photos in my kitchen while my roommates oohed and ahhed over us. It was hilarious and so fun.

He drove us to the prom and we had a really good time. We had drinks, we danced, and he finally kissed me. A lot. And we made out gratuitously in front of everyone on the dance floor. A lot.

At some point he warned me that his ex had shown up. Drunk Sarah said, “Let’s make her jealous,” and we continued sloppily making out and stumbling around the dance floor. I eventually stumbled into the bathroom where said ex was, and she gave me the bitchiest resting bitch face I have ever seen. I shook it off easily even though at the time I hadn’t yet heard that Taylor Swift song. She might not even have been born yet. Again, I’m old.

Max Fox and I had an amazing prom night. He took me home and there was more making out in the car, just the way every prom night should end.

We made plans that week for the following weekend for our third date. I’d never dated before, and I was thrilled I’d found someone seemingly normal to date who appeared to like me and who I liked back. He had invited me over to make dinner at his house, and I assumed we would probably go to bang town.

We had discussed books the first time we met. He’d suggested I read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and I had suggested some book I like that now eludes my memory. So when I showed up at his house for dinner, I brought whatever book of mine I wanted him to read as collateral for the book he was going to let me borrow. We’d both said how much we treasure our books and how we hate lending things to people because there’s no guarantee you’ll get it back. Hence the collateral. But I couldn’t imagine things going poorly between us, so I wasn’t worried.

Spoiler alert: I was wrong.

I showed up at Max’s and he kissed me. We were both a little awkward as our last two encounters involved copious amounts of booze and now we were both dead sober. We walked to the grocery store to get dinner supplies, and then he cooked for me and poured me wine. We were like an adorable couple doing couple things. He’d kiss me whenever he walked by, and I fluttered around flirtily. Or at least I tried. I’m not great at that.

Dinner was great and we continued drinking wine. We eventually moved to the bedroom and yes, we went to bang town.

Except here’s the catch: It was hands down the worst sex of my life. It was dead silent. It was bumpy. It was never not awkward and it was not good. At all.

I spent the night but barely slept. It was too awful. The next morning he drove me home in silence.

I didn’t hear from him for another month. At some point I texted him with no response. Eventually he wrote me back and we arranged a time to meet to trade our books. That was all either of us wanted out of each other at that point. The sex was that bad.

It was incredibly uncomfortable when I saw him, and he didn’t really look me in the eye. We had met outside his apartment, made the switch, and I drove off. Neither of us really said anything.

San Francisco is a hugely populated city and I didn’t know many people there as I’d been there less than a year. So you can imagine my total surprise/mortification when a few weeks later I ran into him. Karen and I were going for a walk in Golden Gate park and a big group of guys were walking towards us going the opposite direction. As they got closer, Karen grabbed my arm and loudly whispered, “MAX FOX MAX FOX!” I looked up and sure enough, there he was with a huge group of his guy friends. They all fell silent as they approached us and stayed silent as they passed us. Karen looked back at them after they’d passed and told me they had all turned around to look back at me. The sex was that bad.

Sigh.