Fresh from a go-nowhere relationship, Gemma Sieff writes an engrossing personal essay in Harper’s about her passing encounters with a series of men she met on Tinder. Sieff’s quick, vivid scenes put the reader there in the kitchen with the stranger, they put your face on another good-smelling man’s chest, and they show that, as she says, “there’s such a thing as a good man you don’t have to keep.”
An awkward segue to suggest lying down in the next room, but I muscle through, and he’s amenable. He takes off his sneakers in the living room and lies in the bedroom wearing all his clothes. I cuddle up to Kenneth, who smells nice, and objectify him from the side. He puts his hands all over me with enjoyable urgency. He takes off his clothes and I take off his socks. We sit facing each other and kiss like the most beautiful pornography never made.
“You took off my socks,” Kenneth observes afterward.
“Isn’t it nice?”
“I don’t always do that.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I thought it was romantic.”
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