Butt naked and unafraid, I rifle through the papers on his desk and rigorously examine the posters on his walls, the cigarette stumps on his windowsill, the earrings and hair-ties (from past hookups I’d assume) fallen in the crevice between his bed and the wall, the full-sized bottle of Lubriderm on his bedside table. A brief peek into his trash can if time allows. He had finally left the room for his post-fuck piss and I instantly clambered out of his bed — where I’d been pretending to fall asleep until I heard the door close behind him — to begin my ritual investigations of the man I’d just let cum inside me.
The sorts of questions I have when first meeting a guy are ones I can’t ask him on the first hookup, at least not all at once, without coming off as kind of creepy. Creep I am, though, for I decipher most of the answers on my own via a thorough scan of his bedroom. Does he use face lotion or does he use body lotion on his face? Can he skate, or does he just dress as if he can? Does he buy his books used or new? Does he even own any books — can he read? Does he clean the earwax off his airpods? Screw dick size, I want to know how large his bong is, or his bookshelf, or his desk monitor.
Does he have a printer? Or a car? Or an adderall prescription? Anything else I might find it worth continuing to fuck him in exchange for complimentary access to? These are all rather important questions to ask.
Of course in most cases, a person’s living space hardly speaks at all to their character. I could choose to admit that I’m wrong, then, for not having texted some skinny urban planner back because of the massive (framed) Pulp Friction poster above his frameless bed and the curious abundance of white rappers pictured on his walls. But if I ever again wish to fuck a pale artboy with a protruding rib cage, why should I see him again and have to fuck to the sound of a playlist curated by a boy who probably lacks respectable taste? Especially if I’d have an easier time just scouting out some other boy on this campus with a skateboard and a middle part.
Given that I dig around so much for meaning in a boy’s bedroom decor, I prepare for the same in return when I invite a boy into my room. I only ever let them into my bedroom because I like what the look of my room suggests about me — the way one designs an Instagram profile to portray a favorable image of themselves, I might have done a bit of the same with the art on my walls, the red handkerchief draped over my Ithaca Reuse glass lamp, the never-opened cookbooks on my shelf. Of course the foremost priority in my interior design practices is that my own space appeals to me. But second, admittedly, is that it paints an appealing (and at least semi-accurate) image of me and my aesthetic preferences to my visitors.
I actually use my room as a tool to help me get laid, believe it or not. With its soft red glow, its rust red blankets and pillows and rugs, the vases and decorative antiques placed here and there, the countless posters and cut-outs on my walls all joined under a reddish-brownish-copperish-orangish-goldish color scheme, my lair lures simple-minded men inside on its own. The room’s intriguing atmosphere, of which the little white rat I keep in a cage in the corner is an integral element, exudes quirky, sexy auras that I gladly let these boys mistake for my entire essence. Steering them towards the notion that I’m a sexual being with an artistic soul and a bold disposition, my room helps me herd boys like sheep towards my own ends. And that, folks, is the trick of my trade.
Brat Baby is a student at Cornell University. Pillow Princess Diaries runs alternate Sex on Thursdays this semester. Sex on Thursday runs every Thursday this semester