(
)
When comedian Ophira Eisenberg moved to New York 12 years ago, she was already a self-confessed “slut.” Dedicated to the pursuit of bawdy adventure and the rejection of boring domesticity, she hooked up with guys on her terms. The 40-year-old stand-up comic and host of the NPR trivia show “Ask Me Another” tells The Post about her wayward path to finding the man of her dreams, which she chronicles in her new memoir, “Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy,” out April 2.
When I was 15, I decided to lose my virginity. My friend Cheryl and I dressed up: sparkly scrunchies, belly shirts with zippers and snaps. Tons of makeup. Peacock blue on the lids. Fuchsia pink lipstick.
We met two guys in a bar in my hometown of Calgary, Canada — they were probably 19 or 20. They told us they were Air Force pilots. They had short haircuts and a nice hotel room, so we believed it. We nicknamed them Goose and Maverick and went back to their room with them.
I did it in the hotel bathroom with Goose. I was like, “Let’s get this done with.” There was no trauma, no change to my body. It was so . . . nothing. I remember thinking, “This is what our culture is obsessed with? This is what the songs are about? This better get better.”
PHOTOS: OPHIRA EISENBERG’S DATING LIFE
After that, I started sleeping around. I was like, “OK, I did it! Let’s do it again! Let’s figure out what this is about!”
I went to college in Montreal, where I had intellectual sex (we dressed in costumes from a Shakespeare play), and then I moved to New York in 2001 to pursue my dream of being a comedian. At the time, everyone was quoting a scary statistic: That there were five women in NYC to every man.
I met all sorts of New York girls when I first moved here. They all worked in design. They dressed really well. They had income. And they spent it on themselves.
I was intimidated by them and wanted to be like them so badly. But when it came to men, they were all completely befuddled. I mean, just hours of sitting around being like, “What do you think he meant by that?” I couldn’t believe it. I felt this was my one area of strength. I thought, “Just call him! Ask him what’s going on! What are you doing?”
I saw these girls crying into their blood-orange margaritas, and I thought, “I am not doing this.” Why did the guys have all the power? I just wanted to take them down. Refuse them so they could be put in their place.
For the next three years, I bonked my way around town. I had dozens of flings and shagged everywhere from the lows of basement comedy clubs to the highs of Brooklyn loft beds. I think I pretty much did something in every New York park. Except Prospect.
If we were talking about food, I’d be considered “adventurous,” in wine circles “unpretentious,” and in dating terms, “a slut.”
One night I met a guy at the Magician, a bar downtown on Rivington. I wasn’t enjoying the birthday party I was at, and we ended up standing side-by-side at the bar fighting for a drink. Like me, he was originally from Canada, but he’d been living in New York for a bit. He had blond curly hair, a little messy. The one deterrent was this beaded white necklace he was wearing. We went back to my place, and it was a little drunken — I’ve never been into talking dirty but he was like, “Let’s try it!” So we sort of giggled and did it. I let my inhibitions down, and he did the same. We kind of dirty talked but mostly for comedy’s sake. The sex was just fun. We went for breakfast the next day at the Waverly Diner. And we would text every once in a while. He was really nice, but I wasn’t crazy for him. It was experimental and fun.
I certainly did not move to New York to settle down. It’s the wrong place to move if that’s your ambition. And I never dreamed of the wedding gown or the whole princess thing anyway. My mom always told me, “Never let a man tell you what to do.” My whole lack of monogamy meant, for me, that I was in control.
My friends didn’t judge me much. Some thought I was wasting my time with a guy or could do better.
Then, in 2004, when I was 32, I had the worst sex of my life.
I asked a guy for a ride home from a gig — we’re both comedians — which he gave me. We went out for drinks. I was like, “This is going to be easy.”
We went back to his basement apartment in Astoria. There was a framed picture of a sports car on the wall. One of those. And he opened the door to his bedroom and said, “You’re about to see something very special.”
The room was full of Garfield toys.
Ceramic ones, plastic ones, stuffed ones. Shelves of Garfield playing tennis, playing golf, wearing a hat. And then a jumbo, human-size one on his bed.
“Can you get rid of that?” I asked him.
He laughed, which normalized things a little bit.
We still went for it. He wasn’t a bad kisser. But when it came to the sex, I was utterly baffled. He was incredibly well-endowed, and I was honestly scared of it. I was like, “I don’t know what to do with this!”
Suddenly he was on top of me, his eyes closed, just this constant, fast thrusting. Something you’d expect from Garfield’s little dog friend Odie, instead of a man.
It felt brutal, and I hated it.
I started thinking about my strategy. I remember a guy telling me once, “Dating you is almost like not dating anyone at all.” Because I would really be like, “Don’t call me.” I was so into that. But of course, it also meant I picked guys for whom I didn’t fall head over heels.
Shortly after Garfield guy, I met a guy called Jonathan at a show I was doing downtown. He had these amazing blue eyes — I saw them beaming at me from the crowd.
He left me a voice mail, asking me out. At that point my dating was mostly a collection of texts or drunken meet-ups, so this stuck out as being different. I didn’t trust it.
We didn’t wait that long to have sex — third date. We made out half the night, and then things went pretty quickly. I liked the fact that I could tell he was really into me. It was the antithesis of 80 thrusts a minute!
We moved in together within a year. He wrote comic books for a living — perfect! And though he had a rough idea about my dating history and was a little intimidated by it, he was mostly thankful he didn’t meet me earlier when I was in a different headspace. He got the finished model.
Then, one day, he asked me to transfer some files on his computer. I saw a file called “All the Girls I’ve Ever Been With.” Find me a person alive who wouldn’t open that.
It was a list of 34 names. All these girls’ names with these objectifying descriptors beside them, like what he thought of their bodies, or their kisses, or if they had nice underwear. And then at the bottom was my name, and it just said, “Comedienne.” I thought that was the biggest insult of all. People don’t understand what an outdated term that is.
(I also thought: “I have great underwear that I spent a lot of money on! And one thing I do have is experience. I want a good rating on that!”)
So I blew up at him. He told me the list was for a comics anthology about sex and he was trying to organize his thoughts.
He said, “You think I’m some crazy mastermind who’s been hiding who I am, I moved in with you, just because it’s all part of this ultimate scam where I’m taking whatever I can and will dump you?” And as he said all this, I realized I was overreacting. After all, I had written stories about a lot of my conquests myself.
“Ophira,” he said, his blue eyes on mine. “I’ve always wanted you to be the last person on my list.”
He was the last person on mine. Jonathan and I got married at city hall not too long after our argument. He was my final conquest, finishing around the number 40.
It’s funny, all the clichés in life are true. I don’t care what nontraditional path you take, you will end up with someone where you’re like, “We got together because we have the same values.”
And now that I look back at my hypersexual past, I realize I’ve learned a lot. First of all, forget bad boys. I like people who are warm — who can smile genuinely, and it doesn’t make their face look weird.
I can recognize intimacy — a great sense of touch, and eye contact is very important. I’ve learned about chemistry, too. Sometimes you go, “I don’t even know why I like this person, but I’m so attracted to them.” You don’t have a lot to talk about, but you feel something crazy in the bedroom. Overall just connection — it’s a very ethereal thing.
Ultimately, my story reminds me of a “Lords of the Rings” quote: “Not all who wander are lost.” I wouldn’t recommend anyone sleep around, the same way I’d never say, “Go out and get drunk.”
But I do think it’s OK to find out what you like. Maybe some people know what they like right away. But my path was trial-and-error — and, boy, did it pay off.
sstewart@nypost.com