On a warm Thursday night in July, hundreds of New Yorkers \u2014 most of them single women \u2014 gathered at Littlefield in Gowanus to trauma bond over the horrors of modern dating.<\/p>\n
They came to attend About Last Night, a nationwide event started in 2016 where people get up on stage to tell tales of terrible dates and lament the misery of looking for love.<\/p>\n
The event aims to help singles feel less alone, but the stories of diaper fetishes and perverted coworkers actually showed just how much bad behavior singles \u2014 especially women \u2014 are letting their partners get away with.<\/p>\n
Attendees at About Last Night in Brooklyn were disproportionately young and female. Emmy Park for NY Post<\/p>\n
One woman, Jesse, recounted having her first one night stand in New York City at age 22. The older man she was hooking up with got up, sat on his standing desk, and rode it up and down naked as she watched, baffled.<\/p>\n
Another young woman, CJ, recalled hooking up during lockdown with a \u201cJapanese cocaine dealing skater boy with a lisp,\u201d only to realize that she was actually in love with another member of her 28-person cooperative housing living set up. After leaving his apartment high on cocaine, she spontaneously joined a nearby Black Lives Matter protest, where police tear-gassed her.<\/p>\n
A guy named Jared recalled going on a date with a woman who admitted she was in a 24\/7 dominant-submissive kink relationship with an older man who had been reading all of their texts and controlling whether or not she could see Jared or be intimate with him.<\/p>\n
Sarah Inkateshta, Erica Rose and Nicole Brian, who are all 21, said their generation struggles with dating and commitment. Emmy Park for NY Post<\/p>\n
There were also quite a few appeals to bathroom humor.<\/p>\n
Frankie recalled a budding romance with a coworker who admitted on their second date that he was sexually aroused by women farting.<\/p>\n
Julia Small and Anna Helms agreed that women are more able to laugh at the absurdity of modern dating. Emmy Park for NY Post<\/p>\n
Chase James, the Los Angeles-based founder of About Last Night, said the event was inspired by his friend group\u2019s ritual of sharing their own terrible experiences from the night before over breakfast. He started the series in San Francisco a decade ago and has since expanded to Chicago, New York, Denver and Seattle. Soon, they will host events in Austin and DC, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just this really special feeling of trust and camaraderie, and I was wondering how I could bring that on a grander scale,\u201d he told The Post. \u201cFor a moment in time, it\u2019s not the worst thing anymore. It\u2019s kind of the best, because we\u2019re all laughing about it together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frankie Benz went on a date with a co-worker, only to find out he had a fetish for women passing gas. Emmy Park for NY Post<\/p>\n
To my ears, though, the stories all seemed to be oriented towards one conclusion: young people are treating one another like disposable sexual objects, and often ignoring their own values to keep up with a fast-paced dating scene.<\/p>\n
I found myself asking, Why did you end up in bed with a man you promised yourself you wouldn\u2019t hook up with? Why did you let your co-worker continue to send you porn for days before speaking up?<\/p>\n
About Last Night founder Chase James said singles laughing at their own misery can make looking for love more tolerable. Emmy Park for NY Post<\/p>\n
We talk so much about how horrific modern dating is \u2014 and rightfully so \u2014 but it\u2019s only being made worse by our collective relinquishment of agency.<\/p>\n
The final speaker, a New Yorker named Daisy, told the audience about a time when, after a handful of dates with a man she was interested in, she violated her own boundaries and allowed herself to be talked into sex before commitment.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d mustered up the courage to tell the man, \u201cI really, really like you. I would love to maybe not have this be casual. I would love to maybe get in a relationship, what do you think?\u201d<\/p>\n
Jessie Lee told a story about an older hookup partner who rode up and down on his standing desk while naked. Emmy Park for NY Post<\/p>\n
She was \u201cdevastated\u201d when he rejected her proposition, but stifled her disappointment \u2014 and went along with casual sex hoping to gain his affection.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, yes, of course this 25-year-old man is saying I\u2019m ready, so I must be ready . . . [and] I kept telling myself, \u2018This is what it means to be 20,\u2019 \u201d she said on stage.<\/p>\n
Daisy Friedman talked herself into a hookup, only to find herself bleeding out and in emergency surgery as a result. Emmy Park for NY Post<\/p>\n
The story crescendoed when Daisy, who received a triple organ transplant as a child, starts bleeding profusely during sex and needs to go to the hospital \u2014 only to be left by her hookup partner in the waiting room. She had to head into emergency surgery all alone.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a dramatic ending, but with a relatable conclusion. \u201cIt made me realize how much we push ourselves to do things we think we should based on societal standards,\u201d she told the crowd<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s any one takeaway from the messiness of About Last Night, it\u2019s that: so much of the horror of modern dating is the result of us, as women, talking ourselves into participating in a system that doesn\u2019t serve our own interests. We give in to avoid conflict, have casual sex when we don\u2019t really want to and accept terrible behavior because \u201cdating sucks.\u201d<\/p>\n
We can keep complaining about it . . . or we can start demanding better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a warm Thursday night in July, hundreds of New Yorkers \u2014 most of them single women \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,11830,235,232,9,24,63,6493,118739],"class_list":["post-314500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-dating-advice","tag-gen-z","tag-lifestyle","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-sex-relationships","tag-sex-advice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}