One Night Stands

As a young twenty-something, I’m sort of expected to participate in the classic one night stand, a few passionate beddings with strangers filled with nothing but lust and hormones. I’m supposed to be sneaking away in the morning or waking up with an empty bed and a head full of foggy, sexy memories.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been there, if I tried to claim otherwise my friends would step in with a “Hell no” and an “admit it, whore."

But I haven’t for months. Not participating makes me feel like an outsider, like there’s something easy-to-understand that I’m missing. My peers just giggle and hook up, casually toss around words like “slut” and exchange stories about the morning after. Sure I’ve accumulated some stories, but these one-time hook-ups don’t work for me.

Essentially, it always feels like masturbation.

Sure, there’s another person there, but that person doesn’t know me, and let’s be serious, that person is usually drunk. Chances are this person has no idea what they’re doing. I end up whispering quiet suggestions, moving a hand here, a mouth there. By the end I’m just playing with a sex doll.

That just isn’t fun for me, and I’d rather load up some cheesy porn on my laptop, make a snack (which is for some reason socially unacceptable when there’s somebody waiting to fool around with you, I thought this was AMERICA), and hang out with myself and a bottle of lotion than have to deal with all the extra work of manipulating some foreign body and then having to satisfy it as well. Maybe I’m just selfish.

So for now I’ll be content waking up alone and hung over, trying to figure out if my keyboard is greasy from lube or pizza.

But I know that most of the time it’s both.

Hey you guys I'm Internet famous. Well not really, but still...

I recently submitted an article to the necessarily honest, always funny Curvy Girl Guide.

Please don't ask how I know this website exists, because honestly I don't know how and when I stumbled across it. I've tried to connect all the sites I visit regularly and piece it together, but I haven't figured it out. I can only assume that this is what happens when you spend eight hour shifts working at the front desk of a library with Internet access.

The point is, I woke up this morning (erm, afternoon) to find that they actually published my nonsense.

This is so much better than the time the magazine I've been working for published 45,000 issues with one of my articles and misspelled my name as "Justine."

Danielle

This post is dedicated to Danielle, who wouldn't stop screaming in a jealous rage after I referenced another one of our friends on this page.

Sex

Let's talk about sex.

No, really, let's do it.

I should start by saying that writing this is probably a mistake. Because it implies that I get laid regularly, and while sometimes I wish that was the case, it isn't.

Unfortunately there isn't a high demand for skinny, neurotic, white boys in Columbus. You'd think there would be, because nothing says "sexy" like awkwardly bumbling through conversation and compensating for social anxiety with alcohol.

But let's talk about sex anyway.

Because politics and religion just piss people off. But I think everyone can agree that sex is a generally okay thing, in moderation, of course.

I know some of you have an incredibly distorted definition of the word "moderation," but I'll let that slide for now.

I have this problem, the problem being that I think too much, even when I'm capable of tricking someone into hopping into bed with me. You'd think all of my focus would be spent thinking about things that will keep me from ejaculating entirely too early, but my overactive mind stretches, speculating about the other people that have touched my bed partner in the past.

That awkward grope she just made at my thigh? She learned that on her first Homecoming when a Senior boy did it to her, and being fifteen, she thought it was sexy, because fifteen year-olds think everything is sexy. Nobody's ever told her how clumsy and uncomfortable of a move it is. I'm not going to tell her either.

The way he slides his finger down my side? He learned that from his first gay experience with somebody eleven years older than him, and he's been trying to find a similar experience ever since. I'm not that experience. Nobody ever will be. You can't just relive your first sip of alcohol.

That desperate grasp around my neck, the way the nails are cutting into my skin? It just screams past sexual abuse, and it's hard to maintain an erection with somebody so afraid of the world, so desperate not to be hurt again.

My mind spirals into a kaleidoscope of cocks and vaginas from the past.

And let's not even start with the blow jobs. Because what I see isn't just my own penis in someone's mouth, but every other penis that's ever been there. I imagine the mouth stretched into a perfect ring, crowded with dicks, like those old cartoons where the character would cram an entire pack of cigarettes into its mouth. Suddenly I feel like I'm in competition with every other imaginary penis in the room. There's a bartender from Atlanta, a football player from Cleveland, a stripper from Las Vegas. I know these are just characters I've imagined, products of the overactive imagination my parents have been nurturing since my childhood (thanks a lot Mom), but it doesn't make the feelings any less real, the envy and shame and embarrassment.

I can't give her what the lawyer gave her. I can't give him what the artist gave him. I'm inadequate.

I'm inadequate and I'm going to die alone with three cats, and I don't even like cats, and even though I haven't decided what the cats will be named, one of them will have a spot behind her ear and another will be overweight and the third will be orange with stripes. I won't tell the other two cats that the orange one is my favorite, because I won't want to hurt their feelings.

And of course, being in such a ridiculous, uncomfortable situation with my mind churning out completely insane scenarios, sometimes I laugh.

This never goes over well.

"What's so funny?"
"What's wrong?"
"You never take me seriously."
"What am I doing wrong?"
"Is this a joke to you?"

At this point I have to explain why I'm laughing.

And I'm met with answers like this:

"So what, you think I'm some kind of slut?"
"I don't get it."
"What kind of person do you think I am?"
"What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"Huh?"

But occasionally, someone will laugh, and think it's just as hilarious as I do.

These are the best people in the world, and I totally recommend sleeping with them, and maybe even going so far as to date them, hell, some of them might even be worth getting married or gay-married or partnered or whatever word you want to use.

Because these people are fun.

We can use all the big, meaningful words we want to analyze and over-analyze human interaction and relationships. We can make it messy and complicated and impossible-to-navigate.

But in the end, it's hard to deny that we're all just looking for a little fun.

And that sometimes we just need to shut the fuck up, relax, and let ourselves have some.