Writing in response to my Circling Back Around entry a few days back, cjwss suggested that I come up with some kind of hierarchy of categories, as right now I am assessing every guy I go out with as an applicant for future life partner status.
Crappy Update
Early this morning I received an email from my fuckbuddy. The thing he’s working on now is going to run until midnight tonight instead of 7ish as he had originally thought. I’m not mad. Disappointed but not mad. This is not the first time this has happened with him and I know better than to count on him keeping plans unless they’re made a couple of hours before we’re planning to get together. We’ll try for another time soon.
Much TMI for My Real World Friends – You’ve Been Warned
It was 18 years ago, but I still remember the conversation vividly because of some pretty big life stuff that happened in the weeks that followed. I was 20 yrs old, hanging out with one of my friends in her apartment, talking about the new guy in my life. She asked me his last name. I told her I didn’t know it, and what’s more, it seemed like an odd question to me. “Last name, why would I care about a guy’s last name?” She got rather huffy with me and said, “Look, ___, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be sleeping with some guy if you don’t even know his last name.” I laughed at her and said something about there not being much sleep involved.
In the years since then, I’ve had sex with several more men whose last names I never learned. I don’t actually know how many. OK, that’s a lie. I could figure it out if I really wanted to, but I don’t want to.
I’ve also, and judge me however you want for this, had sex with a couple of people whose first names I never bothered with.
I’ve had and continue to have fuck-buddies who are little more than casual encounters with whom I exchange occasional emails about whether or not they’re free to come over and play.
God this is embarrassing.
So why am I telling you all of this? Well, it brings me to this. Over the last few days there has been an interesting exchange of ideas between this blog and over at Hammertime . Earlier, after Hammer and I exchanged some comments on each other’s blogs (oh wait – I just checked and he didn’t post my comments – whatever), he sent me an email. He took the conversation off blog. He thought I was annoyed and didn’t, in his words, want to hijack my blog. Anyway, this is what he wrote to me:
Women have evolved to be attracted to guys who will be able to protect and provide for their young. This is why alpha male and leadership characteristics are so attractive to women. This is why celebrity status and power are so attractive to women. One of the biggest fears for survival of a woman’s genes is that the man will impregnate her and then leave her to care for the baby on her own. This is why women want to have some kind of emotional connection with men before they sleep with them. It’s why women typically get a little anxiety right before sex with a new guy despite having been imaging it for days.
We have not had contraception until very recently in our evolutionary history, which is why our genetic makeup need only lead us to desire sex and not necessarily unprotected sex.”
Honestly, I laughed when I read this. I know he is an earnest young man. And I know he really believes this stuff. I am not trying to denigrate his beliefs or make him look foolish. As I have tried to point out, more than once, there is a world of difference between our levels of experience – both relationship/sexual and life experience. But as he is so insistent I will address his comments directly.
I have absolutely no need for an emotional connection with a man before sex. ABSOLUTELY. NO. NEED. I don’t even need to know his name. Sex Chat is fun. It’s recreation. It can also be more than that, but doesn’t need to be.
I do not get a little anxiety right before sex with a new guy. Unless of course you count worrying that he might suck (‘cause yeah, a lot of you guys are horrible lays – you watch too much damn porn) and be a waste of my time.
I do not think I am an atypical woman. I think there are lots of different types of women in the world. My old friend, the one who lectured me about knowing a guy’s last name, she’d fit a lot of his stereotypes. But I don’t know too many others who would.
Life is really, really short. It’s scary how short it is. I have no time for generalizations and other random silliness. I realize there are people who take great comfort in that sort of thing, trying to sort and categorize and predict. I guess it would be comforting to believe that you actually know how people will act before you meet them and get to know them. As I said when I first introduced myself to folks out here, I don’t pretend to know a damn thing. I’m just figuring it out day by day, as I go along. And I guess I feel strong enough, and confident enough in who I am as a person nowadays to live with that uncertainty.
Waking Up With Someone
I can’t imagine living somewhere that didn’t have seasons. I love it when the leaves change colors. I love the cool spring nights. I love the snow. I even love the sticky New York summers, when I need to hang out by the river to stay cool.
But I do hate how cold the mornings are in the winter. These last couple of weeks have been the first really cold weeks. Each day, I pull my covers around myself tightly as my alarm goes off in the morning and think, “damn, I hate waking up alone”. ‘Cause you see, someone lying next to me, cuddling, would keep me warm. That’s not the only thing that someone would be good for, mind you, but with the mornings as cold as they are, that’s what I’m thinking about first.
Let me be crystal clear here, I am super picky about who is allowed to spend the night in my bed. Fuck buddies don’t get to spend the night. Not even if I’ve known them for years (which happens to he the case for one of them). Not casual flings either. Not even potential bfs. The only guys I spend the night with are bonafide boyfriends. That means I have already decided that this is someone I care a lot about. He’s no longer auditioning for a role in my life. He’s earned it.
I wasn’t always so much of a hardass about this. I’ve taken the walk of shame more than a couple of times (The walk of shame, for those of you who’ve never heard the phrase is when you spend the night with someone you weren’t planning to, maybe because you just picked them up. You spend the night at their place w/o any of your stuff and wake up w/o toothbrush, hairbrush or any grooming products and have to go home in last nights clothes looking like something the cat spit up.) And I’ve let guys I didn’t know too well spend the night at my place. Then it hit me a few years ago. Fucking is about fun, but sleeping with someone , and waking up with them was actually about intimacy and that why couldn’t I just be clear about having one w/o the other. Have my cake and eat it too. So I have sex when I want to with whom I want to (not just any random person, you know anyone I felt attracted to and wanted to meet and fuck for whatever reason – I don’t consider that random as I’m kind of picky) but only SLEEP with my boyfriends.
It’s nearing a year since my last LTR imploded. That’s a really long time to be sleeping alone. I’ve gone longer, sure. But still, it’s a really long time. It feels like a really long time. And the fact that it’s so freaking cold right now and I wake up every morning wishing for that body next to me, it’s not helping things.
Welcome
This week is getting wilder by the day. I thought I’d post a quick update before bed.
Waking Up With Someone
I can’t imagine living somewhere that didn’t have seasons. I love it when the leaves change colors. I love the cool spring nights. I love the snow. I even love the sticky New York summers, when I need to hang out by the river to stay cool.
But I do hate how cold the mornings are in the winter. These last couple of weeks have been the first really cold weeks. Each day, I pull my covers around myself tightly as my alarm goes off in the morning and think, “damn, I hate waking up alone”. ‘Cause you see, someone lying next to me, cuddling, would keep me warm. That’s not the only thing that someone would be good for, mind you, but with the mornings as cold as they are, that’s what I’m thinking about first.
Let me be crystal clear here, I am super picky about who is allowed to spend the night in my bed. Fuck buddies don’t get to spend the night. Not even if I’ve known them for years (which happens to he the case for one of them). Not casual flings either. Not even potential bfs. The only guys I spend the night with are bonafide boyfriends. That means I have already decided that this is someone I care a lot about. He’s no longer auditioning for a role in my life. He’s earned it.
I wasn’t always so much of a hardass about this. I’ve taken the walk of shame more than a couple of times (The walk of shame, for those of you who’ve never heard the phrase is when you spend the night with someone you weren’t planning to, maybe because you just picked them up. You spend the night at their place w/o any of your stuff and wake up w/o toothbrush, hairbrush or any grooming products and have to go home in last nights clothes looking like something the cat spit up.) And I’ve let guys I didn’t know too well spend the night at my place. Then it hit me a few years ago. Fucking is about fun, but sleeping with someone and waking up with them was actually about intimacy and that why couldn’t I just be clear about having one w/o the other. Have my cake and eat it too. So I have sex when I want to with whom I want to (not just any random person, you know anyone I felt attracted to and wanted to fuck for whatever reason – I don’t consider that random as I’m kind of picky) but only SLEEP with my boyfriends.
It’s nearing a year since my last LTR imploded. That’s a really long time to be sleeping alone. I’ve gone longer, sure. But still, it’s a really long time. It feels like a really long time. And the fact that it’s so freaking cold right now and I wake up every morning wishing for that body next to me, it’s not helping things.