The night I was awarded my doctorate, I had sex with a stranger on the beach. It was easy to get there, to that point of false intimacy. I’d seen the script.

Pick the most attractive person at the bar. See that they’re unattached.

In this case, a twenty-something cisman crooked over his phone, bench-press-produced chest curling like paper.

Order a drink without consulting the menu.

At a civilized bar like this, a whiskey sour—an egg-white sour requires a kind of quotidian violence, and violence is the sign of civilization.

Wait.

I sat, sipping my drink and studying the other women in the room. Women who’d gotten all dolled up on a Friday night for men or for each other but most of all, I chose to believe, for themselves. To feel the weight of your lashes cloaked in black, the pinch of no-stretch denim against your depilated thigh.

And just like that, he set his phone down and turned to me. “Come here often?” he asked.

So we were sharing a script. Indeed, as time would soon tell, in the hours wedged between that predetermined line and our so-to-speak roll in the hay (i.e., sand), little about this man surprised me. But I surprised myself. My hunger for risk. (According to the rules of straight respectability, a first encounter should not end where I took it.) My interest in power. (Was it his or my own limits I wanted to test?) My modest shame. (It clung to me like the sand that stuck to my pubes for days, materializing on clean sheets and the wet shower floor.)

Now I reminded myself to smile.

“Every now and again,” I said.

In fact it was my first time. The place was way too pricey.