Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images
Growing up in Nashville, the puritanical buckle of America’s Bible Belt, sex was never something I approached with anything but shame or judgment, certainly not positivity. Like too many women, I was a people-pleaser; too shy to even say the word orgasm, let alone demand one from dudes who should be giving me one (or many!)
That all changed the night a man offered me twenty dollars after a Tinder hookup.
I had driven all the way out to a fancy Hollywood hotel to sleep with a hot Dutch D.J. who was in town for the night. The reality of our sexual whatever-you-wanna-call-this however failed to live up to the fantasy in my head— he refused to go down on me, fucked me like a blow-up doll, then denied my request to even cuddle afterward because he said that was something he “only does with girlfriends.”