A Hard Man is Good to Find

What happens when sex goes from a relationship? Do we revert to the friendship it began with? More importantly, is that enough? We are trained to believe in the importance of sex. Personally, sometimes I think I've had enough sex to last a lifetime. And then I want the comfort of friendship; the security that comes along with platonic relationships. Then what happens to our friend-relationship when we find someone as insatiable as ourselves? Is desire merely a function of limited access? Could it last a lifetime? If so, what is it worth? Perhaps it's worth calling off a wedding three months before walking down the aisle. Maybe even worth hurting the only man who ever truly loved me--loved me without sex. But without sex, what am I?

Sex on Fire

Sex used to be it.

On a Friday night, a Tuesday morning, a Thursday lunch--it was always the perfect time. I usually never had a shortage of boys to fill my bed. It was a good life.

But these days, it just hasn't been the same. I'm not sure what the difference is; if it's the relationship or the birth control or the stress. Maybe it's too much beer and cheese. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe I'm all sexed out.

Whatever the cause, this crisis has shaken me to my core. Being oversexed was part of my identity, thread in the fabric of my very being! I pulled out every tool in my arsenal: initiating sex more, wearing thongs (or no panties at all!) everyday, introducing phone sex and new toys. I got a wax and spent about $300 on new lingerie. I even bought some of that KY Intense (sidebar: not as good as miracle orgasm gel. Nothing seemed to make much difference. I was at the end of my rope until an idea popped into my head at the most inopportune moment. Let's do it in the bathroom.

No, not the bathroom at my apartment. The bathroom at this bar. Not just any bar. The bar we're at with our friends, family, and, yikes, your parents! The thought came into my mind so quickly that I didn't have time to think of consequences or talk myself out of it. Before I knew it, there I was in the handicap stall of the women's bathroom with my skirt bunched up around my hips. Passion, spontaneity, heavy breathing--it was all back. Every time I've fallen asleep since then, I've woken up soaked in sweat with my heart racing. It's still a good life.

I just spent an hour on a post about how my relationship is failing. I deleted it because I'm sick and fucking tired of thinking about it. While many good things have come from living here, the worst possible thing is that I feel as though I've lost myself. Most everything I ever connected with my identity is no longer part of my life. Honestly, I miss the sex. Relationships do not yield good sex and I don't fucking get it because every movie I've ever seen has led me to believe that they do just that. Then again, every porno I've ever seen indicates that the best fuck comes unexpectedly from someone there to service your plumbing or cable. Interesting.

The whole thing is about feeling independent. As it stands, it feels like my whole life is wrapped up in one person--a person who doesn't have the greatest track record with me. And it's not just the present. I've built a future in my mind that continuously seems futher away rather than closer. Should I stay or should I go?

2007

Two months of leaving the same message over and over again: "Hey, it's me. Just calling to catch up. Call me back when you have some time. Miss you."

Radio silence.

Every logical cell in my body indicates that I shouldn't care. My relationship with The Friend of a Friend was terrible, emotionally damaging, and volatile at best. At worst, it produced the greatest regret of my life and plunged me into a four month depression in which I barely recognized myself. To this day, I have nightmares about the things we went through together.

Perhaps that's why it bothers me that he's fallen off the face of the earth. Over the years, I've lost touch with nearly every lover I ever had. Most went unnoticed, but the absence of some hurt, but not like this. It was a fading pain, quickly erased when someone new and shiny caught my eye. This is not about lust and maybe it's not even about missing someone. I've considered that it may be vanity. I occasionally wondered why he didn't remain as screwed up about me as he once was. But I can accept that love fades and you miss people less and less every day. Thinking about him inevitably leads my thoughts to memories that break my heart. Sometimes I felt like they broke his heart too. I miss the camaraderie of shared misery.

Mostly I worry that he has forgotten everything about us (plural as in "us three"; not as in "we"). I feel like I lost everything connected to that moment in my life and he was the only thing I had left of it. And now he seems to be long gone too. 2007 was our best year and I wonder why it doesn't keep him up at night, like it does me.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

"For her everything was red, orange, gold-red from the sun on the closed eyes, and it all was that color, all of it, the filling, the possessing, the having, all of that color, all in a blindness of that color."

In every anxiety filled moment, I keep wondering when the other shoe is going to fall and where it will land. As summer ends, I am riddled with fear of the future, be it the next 24 hours or the next 24 years. I've tried to pinpoint the source of all this anxiety, because, for all intensive purposes, I have everything I once desired. Well, not everything, but close enough to be happy.

The thing I fear is that all things that I've come to love are going to abruptly come to an end. Most frequently, people advise me to live in the moment and just enjoy life for what it is. Then I worry that I will be blinded to reality, blinded by all the rich, beautiful color. Maybe one day he'll wake up next to me and realize that he doesn't love me, and I will no longer be beautiful. Maybe our relationship will grow more serious, and it will be all the more unsettling when I finally open my eyes. I am worried about what will happen when the moment ends.

About the only idea I've found comforting recently is this: "There isn't any need to deny everything there's been just because you are going to lose it." It may not be tomorrow, but eventually, I will lose everything I work for, everything I love. The end may be inevitable, but there is so much in the interim. Why not be happy and embrace the warm glow around me. Let love in and let today be filled with the beautiful sun. Who knows for whom the bell tolls? It may be for thee. Or for me.

You know when you have an orgasm so intense your eyes well up with tears? Yeah, those are the ones that clue you in to the fact that you're in love.

Beautiful from Behind

Last year, I noticed my first wrinkle while on the way to dinner with my then boyfriend's parents. Right between my eyebrows, clear as day, reminding everyone that I scrunch up my brows too much. Try as I might, I can't stop running my finger over it.

Then there's my ever growing collection of grey hairs. And cellulite. And hips that seem to widen every time I go to sleep. And a stomach that is not flat despite the optimistic claims of Nivea. I'll acknowledge that I'm pretty, but not beautiful by any means. In addition to that horrible wrinkle, I have a tiny birth mark on my upper lip that appears massive to me. This is overshadowed, of course, by the enormous nose I inherited from my father. Obsessing over these things is not unique to me. All the women I know have these same fixations, these same inconvenient little truths about our bodies.

Getting into my bath tub, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirrored doors of my closet, and for the first time in ages, became positively fixated on the beauty of my body. The perfect outer curve of my thigh leading up to wide hips which taper off into a small waist. This is all topped off with strong, broad shoulders and well defined blades. An hour glass dripping with inked raindrops and magnolia flowers. Say what you will, but I am beautiful from behind.