Daddy. Long gone are the days when I can call home on a Sunday evening and say, “Hi Daddy!” to my father without feeling like I yakked and must swallow it again. The word “daddy’” has become a word that I moan into the ear of some twenty-something boy as he utterly rails me.
I use the word ~daddy~ sexually, but ironically. I’ll shoot off a flirty text message at 2 a.m., “Hey daddy, you up?” Or when a spicey man brushes by me on the street, I’ll think to myself, “Hello DA-DDY!” The word daddy often makes my sexual partners squirm, but in 100 percent of the cases, deep down, I think men get off to it. For better or worse, I am a heavy user— maybe abuser — of the catch-all term daddy. I’ve referred to my girlfriends, best friends, hot Chipotle workers, TAs and even George Washington as daddy, and more than once.
Flash forward. College party. Dance floor. I was drunk-ish (read: shart-faced). As I spun in a whirl of colors and loud trap music I locked eyes with my perfect man. He was dangerously tall, rugged, and muscular with a charming lopsided smile and a tussle of dirty blonde curls. As if we were two sex magnets, we were pulled to each other from across the sticky, beer-soaked floor. We met in the center of the crowded room and when we first touched: electricity. My heart leaped into my throat and I was overcome with an all-consuming fire of lust. The party around us dissolved and dropped away; we danced as one person that night, his hands were curious and exploring. Together we were dirty, conspiring and alive. When I turned my head, his salty-sweet kiss met me. As he pushed me against the wall still kissing me, he whispered in my ear “Want to go up to my room?” I was a little nervous; fucking guys on night one wasn’t my go-to move, but this felt right. “Sure, daddy,” I responded coyly.
We made our way up the stairs winding through rogue party-goers. He opened the door to his room, and the first thing I noticed was how fucking neat it was. The bed was impeccably made, and his notebooks symmetrically lined his desk. Only a few moments later, his bed was no longer impeccable. Because we. were. fucking. We were fucking like I’ve never fucked before. We couldn’t take our clothes off fast enough, and he touched my body as if he owned its secret map. I went wild. It was the kind of sex that when he entered me, my eyes rolled back and my back arched like it was separate from my being. That sex was transcendent, supernatural. I left him that night with a kiss on his scruffy cheek and a note slipped into his back pocket with my number that read, “Daddy, call me.”
As a scholar at Cornell, you may be familiar with the theory of the Oedipus complex. Sigmund Freud introduced the concept in his Interpretation of Dreams. The Oedipus complex: a desire for sexual involvement with your parent of the opposite sex. Oh Daddy Freud, what a cruel joke you’ve played on me.
If you’re not uncomfortable reading this yet, get ready to be. In a horrible, karmic twist of fate, I fell tits over clit for this salty-sweet man… So where’s the catch? My perfect man is deathly similar to my own flesh-and-blood father. I didn’t realize the likeness of the two until long after my lust turned into love. When I realized my boy-toy loved toast and butter, just like my father, was impeccably clean, just like my father, and was obsessed with working out, just like my father, I felt so disgusted that I could’ve showered for a week and still felt disgusting. Routine-based? Check. Introverted? Check. Outdoorsy? Check. Mind-blowingly intelligent? Check. The person you take your bike to when it’s broken? Check.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t like this. I don’t find it funny or cute that my lover reminds me of my father. I did not seek this out. It disgusts me.
When I first put two and two together, I even considered ending it. Instead, I sat down with him and told him how I felt. I told him that I felt uncomfortable that he reminded me of my father and yet I still felt strong sexual pulls toward him. He reminded me that the features I saw and loved in him: his work ethic, his intellect and his down to earth nature, were features of all the people I surround myself with. I can love these two important men in my life differently and separately.
My sandy hair man may be my daddy, but he’s NOT my father.
Goddess Horny is a student at Cornell University. Sex in the Stacks runs monthly this semester. Sex on Thursday appears every other Thursday.