As the advice column was mostly a thinly veiled attempt to talk myself off a ledge every week I’m going to cut the pretense and just write about my feels as they relate to sex and relationships.
Today something reminded me of that time my Greek Orthodox friend explained away my sex blogging with, “Oh, you grew up Evangelical. They’re obsessed with sex.” I instinctively objected. You could probs sum up my entire personality in that reaction: instinctive objection to whatever is put in front of me.
And then I remembered the abstinence retreat. Which forced me to admit that maybe a flavor of church that takes a bunch of high schoolers into a cabin in the woods for a weekend for the primary purpose of talking about why they shouldn’t have sex until they get married could be accurately described as being obsessed with sex. I dunno. I have no idea what the Lutheran kids talked about on their retreats.
Between the abstinence retreat and now I’ve had a statistically high number of sex partners (they tried), and developed a closer-than-average familiarity with the statistical average number of sex partners (they succeeded?).
Fine, Greek Orthodox. Hi, my name is Cathy and even though I’m not an Evangelical anymore, I’m still pretty obsessed with sex.
So now I’ve met a boy who I really like. On Hinge, if you’re wondering. Which I was doing great with until I accidentally found myself drunk on a date with a law enforcement agent. Mrs. Officer this wasn’t. (I arrived drunk because I’m classy. And considerate. I saved him two drinks.) And then found myself yelling “That’s what the Nazis did” and freaking out the lowbros (that’s a clever portmanteau of lowbrow and bro) at Carpool. In my defense, you can’t seriously claim that police officers have to enforce the law as written. The average American commits three felonies per day. Enforcement is necessarily selective, homes. Luckily for us both he was tasked with enforcing the set of federal laws I knowingly violate least often. When he said Eric Garner shouldn’t have resisted arrest I told him I was walking home.
But I sent this to the boy I like after our first date. Actual text:
You are so handsome [Redacted]! Your pix don’t do you justice. I had a lovely time. You are funny and engaging. Next week or weekend can’t come soon enough.
“Way to play it cool,” Cynthia said after seeing the screenshot. But really I think the ship sailed on cool when I started showing Cynthia screenshots of my texts to dates.
Okay, there was never any ship.
I am actually the least cool person ever. Cool is detached. I have a lot of feels.
Cool is confident. I am super conflicted. Cool is probably not really wanting anything you don’t already have but if you do want something you for damn sure know what you want and pursue it. How in the fuck can I spend as much time as I do reading, writing, and thinking about sex and yet still have no idea what I want? It’s amazing. I amaze myself.
Okay, “no idea” is stretching the truth. For a good 24 hours at a time I’ll have a basic idea of what I want. Pro tip: The only relationship goal I can achieve in 24 hours is sex.
Anyway so this boy, I like him, and we haven’t had sex and I’m actually freaking out a little. For me, the instances where having sex follows being emotionally invested in someone are rare, on purpose. Well, mostly not on purpose but also a little bit on purpose. Because who needs the stress of caring whether a guy is grossed out by my pale and dimpled body? Sex is like marketing. Throw something (my body) at the wall (a boy) and see what sticks (doesn’t make him throw up). Moreover, who needs the stress of wondering whether said boy can tell that I’m actually still quite bewildered by the idea that I’m supposed to be present and engaged and yet relaxed enough to orgasm while interpreting social signals well enough to be sure he’s enjoying himself and not barfing ALL AT THE SAME TIME?
I can do maybe one of these things. Just the computer.
I don’t multitask! I barely monotask!
So, maybe we can be friends. The big thing I see getting in the way of that in the short term is that often when he’s talking I’ll be thinking about how cute he is and wondering how he looks under his clothes. Usually the solution to that problem is finding out. Stay tuned to see what I come up with.
Ha. Confirming what guys always say, that sex is the route to intimacy, not the other way around.
You can never really tell how someone is going to react to another person without the intervening diversion of clothes; but there’s a decent chance, if the lad has any taste, that he’s also wondering about you look, much as you are wondering about him. Try not to worry to much, and if you can only focus on one thing, focus on enjoying yourself. As a general rule, boys like that sort of thing.