Intimacy Idiot: Home Invasions

This is an exclusive excerpt from Isaac Oliver's hilarious and heartfelt autobiographical book, Intimacy Idiot (Scribner), out now.

Home invasions are one of my biggest fears. I don't mean simple burglaries. I'm talking psychotic-symbolic breaches, like in the movies--you know, where some sicko sets out to punish modern bougie excess one house at a time--which is why I try to make my home life as much of a drag as possible, in case there's a potential invader at the window: No trips to Aspen being planned in here! Just eating a bowl of Crispix in the dark! Often is the night that I lie in bed, worrying that the footsteps in the hallway are not the loafers of my pianist neighbor but the soleless boots of soulless men who will kick in the door and torture me, or, even worse, not touch me at all and say they'd rather just be friends.

So I am not the person with whom you should be enacting a home-invasion sex fantasy. The fetish eludes me.

And yet there I was, at the apartment of a man I did not know, opening the front door that he'd left unlocked for me. Once inside, I followed the only apparent light to its source, his bedroom, where he wanted me to "happen upon" him. I slowly pushed open the door and, sure enough, there he was, prostrate and naked on his bed. I figured at this point we could drop the charade and proceed like normal adults with emotional issues, but when he rolled over I noticed he'd blindfolded himself with an Hermes necktie.

I paused. This was not part of the plan. I'd never hooked up with a blindfolded person before, someone with no care for what I might look like in real life.

Do I say hello? I wondered. Do I make my presence known? It was clear the level of anonymity he sought was total, so I kept quiet and awkwardly began to undress. My belt hitting the floor was Civil War loud. Saliva caught in my throat, and I tried to pass off the subsequent cough as a titillating grunt. Gay Oedipus stirred on the bed.

Finally naked, I stared down at him. I thought he might say something or do something, but he didn't, so I sat on his face to ease the tension. (Gentle readers, of the many things I wish for you, the first is that at some point in your lives you, too, get to rest your taints on Hermes.) For a minute or two it was as if I'd sat on an unmanned garden hose, but when I grabbed his dick he steadied himself. I generally think sixty-nining is pointless chaos, but it was our only means of communication--a writhing nine tongue-stabbing in the dark, and a six shouldering the sight burden.

He came, and I learned that you can fake a male orgasm when your partner's got Hermes around the eyes. We collapsed next to each other, and he removed his blindfold and smiled goofily at me. "Hi," he said, with deep significance, as if he'd run to meet me at an airport at the end of a movie, and kissed me.

He pulled away and kept smiling, so I said hi back, and couldn't really think of anything else to say, because what can you say to someone whose tie you just ruined, but he didn't seem to mind; he sighed, as if to say What more is there to say? We've said it all already, and smiled some more, and frankly it was all starting to get a little Landmark-y, so I kissed him again to buy time and plan my escape.

That's when I heard a key in his front door.

"Who's that?" I asked, pulling away.

"My roommate," he said.

"Don't you want to close the door?" I suggested, a bit panicked. "He'll see us."

He shrugged and smiled even wider. "No biggie. He's a modern dancer."

Okay, the last person I want seeing me naked is a modern dancer. Fuck that shit. Unless it's an actually blind modern dancer--a blind modern dancer who's never been on a roller coaster before and teaches me to see the world in a new way and has such calloused fingers that when he touches my face he thinks I look like Andrew Garfield.

His roommate was having trouble unlocking the door. "Oh, you must have locked the top lock when you came in," he said, hopping off the bed.

"Was I not supposed to?" I called after him.

"No, we never lock it," he replied, and trotted off down the hallway, the darkness engulfing his bare ass.

I called after him, "Are you going to answer the door naked?!"

He called back, "Yeah, we're naked all the time!"

Fucking god, I thought, it's hippie madness in here. They are just asking to get home invaded.

I looked at my dick and panicked. You do not leave a WASP naked in plain sight--we'll shatter into a thousand tiny offwhite pieces. I crossed my legs, but I looked like I was waiting for a Caesar salad, so I hugged my knees to my chest, trying to look like Keira Knightley on the Tom Ford Vanity Fair cover. No dice. I hid behind his door.

His roommate shuffled off to his own room, probably naked as well, why not. Gay Oedipus came back and snuggled among his pillows. I dressed quickly and desperately. I would have put on all the world's clothes if I could.

"Oh, are you leaving?" he asked over his shoulder, once it was undeniably clear that yes, I was leaving. He insisted on walking me to the door, his dick swinging to and fro in front of us like a well-oiled lantern down his dark hallway.

"You should lock your top lock," I said to him at the door, and he gave me another goofy grin before closing it. As I waited for the elevator, I heard him turn only one lock, the bottom one. I shook my head. Can't say I didn't warn him.

Isaac Oliver is an award-winning playwright, author, and performer. He lives in New York City. Follow him on Twitter @mrisaacoliver.

Copyright (c) 2015 by Isaac Oliver. From the forthcoming book INTIMACY IDIOT by Isaac Oliver to be published by Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Printed by permission.