This evening I thought I would take stock. With markets crashing all around me, and people intent on scaling back their financial portfolios, I thought that I might participate in the only similar way I could, not by reassessing monetary investments, rather it would have to be my time investments, which never really pay off the way you like, you know…boys.
It had been over six months since Bjorn and I had officially ended our relationship. My momentary insanity induced desire for another man had been the catalyst and having been left little recourse for reconciliation (a continent stood between us) I decided to take up arms against myself in the same way all good self-loathing break-up artists do, and go, not on the rebound, but on the hunt, like I had been placed in a vast field of lame walking breakfast specials after starving for years.
Being an open-minded sort of person, most all discretion was put on the back burner as I re-enacted, as I realize now, the same pattern of behaviour that had emerged once before with me, after the break up with my first real boyfriend, Dan.
Dan and I being finished was somehow “carte blanche to fuck” in everyone’s eyes, and since I was in high school, there were a lot of generous college boys willing to be there for me. How sweet. In retrospect I believe that I was just looking for an excuse to get drunk and laid in the bathrooms of houses I didn’t know because a good sort of girl of relatively benign repute couldn’t really get away with that sort of stuff in my small hometown unless she wanted to come under the harsh scrutiny of other ladies, and hooooooboy can they be unforgiving.
I reminisce with profound nostalgia about those times. Having been oversaturated with Tom Robbins by that point I quickly explained my hormonal activity as “feeling power of woman”, to devour sexually, with pure reckless abandon. The kind that included car hoods, driveways, bathrooms, car seats, bunk beds, antique couches and sketchy apartments.
Sigh, the good old days.
I really regret nothing of that time since what stands out to me is not the memory of a broken heart and a desperate search to help heal it, rather I remember discovering, quite happily, that really good sex existed.
Before Dan I had slept with only one other person, Rob, who was also a virgin. How stereotypically cute, no? He was a few years older, he took me to his prom and only after staying up until 8 am drinking cheap Baby Duck champagne all over the city and getting into mischief did we finally first have sex. Terrible, terrible sex. But what did I know? I was a virgin. So, when Dan came along, and the sex was ever so slightly better, I thought I had found my soul mate and, formerly an atheist myself, was suddenly willing to spend obscene amounts of time practicing Buddhism with him (his family’s chosen religion).
I think I had been expecting the same sort of sexual re-awakening this time with my break-up with Bjorn, and unfortunately you can’t learn to be sexually free twice, the second time, you learn that you are an irrational emotional being, and without having noticed it you’ve become attached, in love and fundamentally soulfully entwined with someone you thought was just a good lay and pleasant company.
I feel bad for the fist guy I tried to sleep with after Bjorn. A few glasses of wine and blasting Peaches explicit lyrics was not enough to get over the fact that this body was different, this body was not Bjorn’s, and was therefore a stranger and therefore…terrifying? As the moment of truth approached I grabbed my clothes and ran out, not even able to make up an excuse.
Embarrassment.
And so went the discovery that my inner slut had disappeared, had been stolen in the night and replaced with some forlorn overly romantic idealistic little girl. Later I was lamenting this to my friend Jared (incidentally the man who had stolen my attention from Bjorn) and he told me that I had to re-mythologize myself. I was now a woman of emotional depth, not bawdy provocation. It sounded nice so I thought I’d go along with it and decided that I would seriously mature and become a 2nd date lay.
So, now that sex was off-limits to me without a “connection” I had to make due with low level messing around, so a lot of making out and a little head here and there.
There was Mark, who I had an excuse to stay away from as my friend had already put her “crush dibs” on him, though the moment she had moved on, I found myself guilt-free sticking my tongue in his mouth and letting him stick his in me.
There was Robert, the scientist, who tried to woo me with date conversation about fish dissection. We spooned a lot and watched Planet Earth. We made out a lot until one session where he pulled back, looked me deep in the eyes and recommended a moisturizing routine.
There was a minor flirtation with Ben, but he had a girlfriend.
Then, I thought I had found a new love and there was a serious sharing of hearts and minds over post mail with Jared, who was in Europe at the time.
***Brief interlude where Bjorn comes to visit and we try to work things out, but I am completely unreceptive as I am mad about some drama from a few months earlier and starting to get excited about slowly re-discovering my sexual prowess.***
Jared came back to Canada from Europe to go on a road trip home with me for the holidays. This has been my beacon of hope for some time. Jared will be a man, he will set things straight and we will be able to go one from there as a newer and better happy couple. A few hours later, lying in bed at By the Bay Cabins, I am wracking my mind over and over to try and figure our what the hell I’d been thinking all this time!
Worst sex ever.
And I mean the goddamn worst!
Not only does he have some over humpy aggressive monster in him, but his dick was too small to measure up to the bravado, so a question of time was also on the shelf, because although for a brief moment I thought that I might be able to work with him, teach him… it was over and I was hurled in to a den of misery and shock at the fact that I had turned Bjorn away for this. I was completely disgusted with myself.
Ever since it’s been an endless search for new meaning in music and partners.
There has been Gesar, the over praised Buddhist leader with the dick that makes all Asian jokes true, three ex-boyfriends, two who have proven they still can’t give head and one who has proven to have the most beautiful cock I’ve ever seen, and why didn’t I realize that when I was eighteen?
There have been several musicians from bands I could brag about, randoms in the bathroom and artists who live in their parent’s basements.
The only thing I think I’ve been able to further learn from all of these new and finally repetitive sexual forays in to the promiscuous adult world, is to learn to love the one you’re with. Of course, in cheesy fashion that means you.