Tag Archives: sex

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You Shall Not Pass

I’m not someone who avoids change. I wouldn’t say I embrace it fully, but the thought of my life changing isn’t one that’s terrifying. Instead, it’s exciting. I accept and anticipate the fact that a year from now, my life may look entirely different. I may want different things, I may be still with Mr. P, with someone else, or single. I may be at a completely new company, freelancing full-time, living overseas, or in an opposite industry. I could be ten pounds lighter or heavier, I could be fluent in another language, I could be in love, I could be nursing a heartbreak, I could be…anything.

Our youth is good for encouraging spontaneity and the pursuit of change. Before I’m sanctioned into a marriage, busy with children, or at a point where money is more for saving and planning than for passing this month’s rent check and blowing dollars on brunch. Before my life as a Mrs or mommy begins, I get the chance to really take chances. To take the detour instead of the hard way, to date someone just for the hell of it, not with the intention of forever-and-ever-and-always. To leave New York if I wish or to stay. It’s a beautiful thing really – knowing that in any moment, with one phone call, with one glance, with one chance, with one experience,  with one connection, with one single something, life as I know it – could be transformed. I could look back at this moment, wearing Mr. P’s tshirt, eating leftover spaghetti while listening to a mix between his attempt at learning German via Rosetta Stone and some John Legend, and it all may seem like a distant memory, a universe that I’m not longer apart of, but a vision I’ll never forget.

My mother (and my friend K) always spew off the cliche promise, “This too shall pass” when I’m worrying that the now that’s not working seems unbearable. When I’m frustrated or feeling like there will never be anything better than this awful experience I’m part of, this seemingly hopeless existence I’m existing in – I remember that time passes, people change, and life will look different before I know it. The world will turn and so will my attitude, in a passing, fleeting moment that I won’t remember in a few years.

But while things will change and so will I – the me that I am at my core, won’t pass. Just as some graffiti artist said in surprisingly legible handwriting…

Life changes and we’re allowed to make mistakes that make us into better people. We’re allowed to stay put longer than we should, move this way or that, love this person and then stop, be who we want to be and then be someone new. But that heart that feels so fragile, that soul that continues to thirst for more, and that mind that won’t stop spinning both in the good times and the bad – those all stay the same. Sure, they’ll get tougher and stronger, learn how to endure and decide when enough is enough (or when a little more is better) – but they don’t pass us by.

Maybe that’s the trick of it all. If time tells us that it’s coming with or without permission or notice and we’re just all an object of the universe, meant to be manipulated and stand trial in front of the heavens – then our only responsibility is to keep ourselves in tact. To let life change, let people come and go, let everything around us crumble and fall, be built again, love and lose – but to not pass ourselves by.

 

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Crazy Little Freaks

There’s this girl you see on the street – she’s dressed from head-to-toe in black with a gold belt and designer shoes and bag. She pulls her blonde hair back sleekly and tightly and her eyes are hidden away from sunglasses far too large for her face. She walks with an extra kick in her step displaying a certain confidence to the world. She looks like business and watches those around her with scrutiny – even from far away, she appears to be someone I’d let lead if we shared a sidewalk.

She walks through the park swiftly and takes a seat next to a man on a bench, crossing her legs away from him and looking in the opposite direction. From M and I’s view atop the hill looking down at them sneakily under our own sunglasses that are too big for our faces, it’s obvious there is some tension between the two. They start by sharing headphones and after a while, she muscles a grin and he rests his hand on her knee. Sensing all was well, I returned to my trashy magazine and attempted to sun myself when M nudges me to pay attention again.

Now, she was standing up, her hands are up, her chin is up – she’s all up in arms about something. Although New York’s background music prevented M and I from eavesdropping, she was so upset by something he did or didn’t do that tears were now destroying her precisely-applied makeup. He, however, wasn’t budging. He sat firmly without moving, the iPod still in his hand, the headphones flirting with the pavement. A family with a child on a bike pass them by and she looks off into the distance, arms crossed and her body heaving as if she was sobbing.

Though she probably started to walk away from him and the conversation, she stopped, meaning she wanted the chase. He obliged and came over to console her, wrapping his arms around her and kissing the side of her head. For a moment it looks like they reconnect, but then she pushes him away and the rampage starts again, signifying the fight is not dissolved. She goes to rush off in a hurry, even grabbing her Louie and marching away – but this time he doesn’t go after her. He sits down on the bench, placing his hands on his head and sighing deeply. She comes over and smacks him to look up at her and when he refuses to continue the argument, she spits on him.

Yes, literally spit on the man.

At this point M and I are leaving the park to head back to our respective apartments, so I have no idea how this ended or what he did in response to her loogie. But as we departed, we chatted about how the girl was acting crazy. She was obviously upset about something – and maybe he did something profoundly shitty – but is it ever appropriate to spit on someone? Especially your significant other?

During our discussion, it occurred to both of us that all women are crazy little freaks from time-to-time.  I’ve had my own share of emotional outbursts, shoving a boyfriend up against a wall in anger, throwing a four-inch stiletto at another’s face, and breaking a bottle of expensive cologne in haste. I’ve refused to go to bed frustrated, though if I would have it would have saved both of us some tears and regrettable words. I’ve shown myself in an ugly light in front of friends and family, strangers and people I probably should have tried harder to impress.

But that’s the thing about emotions is that everyone, no matter how mature or together, no matter how many breakups or makeups we’ve endured, lets them get the best of them at times. And it’s not just women – men just happen to show their crazy little freak differently. Some guys take flight and some stay to fight, some are violent and some remove themselves from the situation, turning off their phone and disappearing for a few days to clear their head.

Yet the double standard persists, when a guy does this, he’s being a guy; when a girl has an emotional outburst, she’s labeled a crazy bitch. Even if the majority of time, she’s rather level-headed and collected. Is it that men can’t handle it when we have a hard time handling something or do they not want to take responsibility for provoking us? Or do we tap into our insecurities and our own trust issues, only letting those back-burner demons out to play when everything seems to start boiling?

I don’t know – but the key to being a cray little freak is to learn to forgive yourself. If a guy loves and cares about you, if he’s worth that energy, emotional stress, and commitment, then he will forgive you too. These things happen, we all lose our cool when something or someone gets the best of us, and while spitting isn’t encouraged, getting out that frustration is. And if you worry about the guy hitting the road, don’t stress. If he goes, he goes. Rest assured there is still someone out there who will handle your crazy little freak with care because he knows deep down, even in his super-duper cool facade, a crazy little freak lives in him, too.

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Girls Can Be Girls

As I write this blog in my steamy living room, my NYC best friend M is hugging a bag of ice. No, I’m not exaggerating – she’s literally curled up on the couch, one arm over some $1.99 cubes left over from my Bubble-Q from many weeks ago. We just spent the day phone-less and one-kitten-richer, laying out in the overcast and logging miles at the gym. We picnicked with chicken salad and burnt turkey sandwiches, Vitamin water and orange juice while reading trashy magazines and witnessing a breakup in the park, complete with the girl spitting on her boyfriend out of spite.

We traveled from one of our apartments to the other and though they are only about 10 blocks apart, when there are hills and 90-degree weather, it feels like miles. We walked her kitty around on a leash in bikinis, decided to skip the showering ritual for the day, and settled in for a night in to save money, cooking tacos and choosing Criminal Minds over Sex & the City, perhaps showing our maturity or just that we’ve seen Carrie & pals way too many times to matter anymore.

You k now how they say the best things come when you’re not looking for them? How love will find you when you don’t want it or the dream job throws you a line when you thought they ignored your bait? Or how those couples who try and try to get pregnant and can’t, suddenly, one day, see the line appear on a $10 test?

I think friendships are like that too – the best ones come when you least expect them. And if you’re lucky, you settle right into happily-ever-girlfriend, sharing stories and chatting about hopeful futures while bitching about things in a language that only women can understand. Being the type of crazy and ridiculous that we’d never show to our boyfriends or acquaintances, families or even our one-day husbands.

Because these types of friendships are rare, where girls can be girls and that’s okay. In fact, where it is encouraged and celebrated.

M and I were in the same major in college, in different sororities, and in separate social circles. We knew of one another and had a class together (though neither of us can figure out which one), and though we never were friends in real life, Facebook kept us connected for four or so years. And so, when she reached out to me about her big move with Milo her kitten (and my god-kitty), I was more than willing to help her find her footing in New York. It felt like a scene out of Pay it Forward, me handing over the keys to my first apartment to someone in the communications field from North Carolina who happened to be a bubbly brunette with blue eyes, too. I was transitioning from one stage of my life to the other and so was she, and if I could assist along the way, I would without hesitation.

What I didn’t anticipate was how much she’d help me.

And not just about finding the right career path or how to uncover the hidden happy hour gems of Manhattan – but she became the missing piece of my the puzzle of my adult life. She’s the best friend, the girl who I can be a girl with and not think twice. We’re enough alike to relate but different enough to compliment one another, and we remind each other to let loose while also taking a healthy dose of reality from time to time.

We all put a lot energy as we put into attempting to figure out men, analyze our relationships until we’re out of breath and annoyed with the sound of our own voices – but what we forget to concentrate on is how valuable our friendships are. Without women to stand to be our side, to tell us when we’re out of line and we’re on target, to be there with puppies, tequila and cupcakes when things go wrong – we’d be far more lost than if we happen to part from yet another man who didn’t deserve us.

Instead, let’s be worthy of healthy friendships. Let’s be the best friend we can be instead of figuring out how to match our boyfriend’s schedule with ours. Let’s make the women in our lives priorities and let’s be the lady who keeps that old saying true, “Girls rule and boys drool.”  (I mean, isn’t that still accurate?)

Because, yeah we may marry a boy one day, but if we don’t have someone to be a girl with, to complain about our husbands and talk about sagging breasts and the memories of when we had nothing to do all day but browse around the Upper West Side with empty pocket books and youthful spirits – then that marriage will never last anyway.

Men may capture our last names if we allow, but as for me and what I consider soulmates, I think I believe in destiny more because of the friendships I have, not the men I sleep with, love, and obsess about. Those men may leave, but my girls, my soulmates, will smack me silly all the way through that relationship and the many more to follow.

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One Night Stand-less

I’ve never had a one night stand.

While not all of my sexual encounters have been in the context of a relationship, I’ve known each of the guys far longer than the evening and at least trusted them somewhat. Yes, I’ve embraced a few friends-with-benefits-strings-loosely-attached relationships and I’ve stayed over at a guy’s place the same night I met him. But those sleepovers were PG-13 at best – I always kept my boundaries and my walls strong and tall, protecting all parts of myself – body and soul – from harm.

For a while I was overly concerned with what I would say to my future husband when he asked about my sexual resume or inquired about a number that remains private, unlike most things on this blog. I wanted to be proud of what I told him and I wanted him to view me as someone who thought before she leaped into the beds of strangers or spread her legs for Manhattan. I wanted to feel honorable and somewhat pure, though I passed up the virginity card nearly ten years ago.

But then that stopped mattering to me so much. Instead, I became more interested in what I felt like. If I wanted to makeout with the tall drink of water in the corner of an Irish pub, then I’d do it. If I wanted to have sex with someone I met on the first night, I’d do it. This is my body, these are my morals and my choices, and if I can stand confidently behind them, then what did it matter what my husband thought? He wasn’t around for those evenings because it wasn’t time for me to meet him, so that part of my past didn’t include him. As long as I was sexually safe and emotionally smart, then I could be what I wanted to be and well, do who I wanted to do.

And by the time I finally reached a point where I thought that maybe, just maybe, I could have that steamy one night stand I fantasized about, I met and started dating Mr. Possibility, and a few months later we implemented exclusivity, deleting the option of a fling from my New York itinerary.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m very happy with Mr. P and I’m not lacking anything I think I’d find in a one night stand, but it is something I’ve always wondered about. As a 20-something, it almost feels like a rite of passage before we reach 30, where suddenly worries about fertility and wedding rings become priority over the “Oh my god, I’m three days late, but he didn’t finish inside of me, does that mean I could be pregnant??? Should I buy a pregnancy test?” text messages we send our friends now.

I have more than enough time before I turn the big 3-0, but I wonder if I have it in me to actually execute the infamous one night stand. Almost all of my friends have done it, some more than others, some just because they wanted to try it, and some because they really dig it. A few of my friends are rather empowered by it – claiming their sexuality as their own and sleeping with whoever they damn well please, and best of all, demanding an orgasm out of it. These women are so sexually liberated that it makes me blush and envy the way they view sex. I mean, they can actually sleep with someone without trusting the guy, without knowing his last name, where that scar on the left of his knee came from,  if he has brothers or sisters, if he likes chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla, or if he has any intentions of a relationship or is this just sex?

Maybe that’s what has always held me back – the idea of just sex.

My girlfriends who dig the one night stands like them because they’re not messy like relationships. They don’t come with rules and commitment. They don’t require compromise or a phone call the next day or a birthday present. They don’t grow, they begin and end with spontaneity. They don’t need care and concern to function, they don’t need reassurance or someone calling you beautiful. They just take two willing participants who at that moment, in that apartment or that bathroom or during that vacation – who want to just have sex.

But in my mind, which is probably far too relationship-oriented for this discussion to begin with – one night stands aren’t like that. When I envision my unrealistic notion of what a one night stand entails, I picture sultry kisses that can’t be stopped, conversation that is steady and fervent, and warmth radiating from my lips all the way down my body. I see a chiseled chest and my bare stomach, sweat rolling down places that are only sexy when you’re naked, and I feel the irresistibleness  of a man’s weight on top of me. I see white linen sheets with the light of a candle competing with the summer air and the undeniable smell of raw sex on me as this man calls a cab to my apartment the morning after. I hear myself saying “Stop, don’t tell me your name. It’ll ruin it,” as I blow him a kiss and give him a playful wink out the window as he watches me leave, wondering what could have been, but both of satisfied with the anonymity of it all.

I know the more realistic snapshot is a drunken couple stumbling out of Joshua Tree in Murray Hill, draped over one another as the guy with greased hair attempts to wave a ride while the girl giggles because she can’t think of anything else to do. I know they involve stumbling into things on the way to the two-bedroom shared with three roommates with jack-hammer sex that’s barely decipherable in your memories, and ultimately end with texting your friends to ask if you should get the morning after pill, even though you’re on the pill. They must involved a long hot shower, or at least I think it would for me.

I suppose I haven’t had a one night stand and denied every opportunity to change that because I want them to mean something. I want it to go down in my book as an encounter I needed to have to fulfill my appetite, not as a last minute decision I made because Mr. Tequila thought it was a good idea. But if I want a one night stand to mean something, doesn’t that go against what a one night stand is?

Isn’t a one night stand just a stand-in before you find the guy who lasts longer than a night?

Daily Gratitude: Today, I’m thankful for rain. It’s been a while, dude. 

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Practice Makes Patience

For 12 years once a week, I took piano lessons. I actually wanted to take voice lessons, convinced I could be as talented as the Go Go’s (the first cassette my mom gave me from her stash), but once my teacher, Mrs. A, heard me sing – she persuaded my mother into piano. After some practice and an understanding of notes and measures, I could switch back to training my voice for be the next Whitney Houston.

Eh, never did return to voice and now that I can hear myself without blinded childlike certainty, I think piano was a much better fit.

I caught on pretty quickly and after a year, had my very first recital. I never did fall in love with piano, but I loved being able to perform and I grew quite attached to Mrs. A – she served as one of the most precious mentors in my life as a kid. She was tough with a stroke of kind and I admired her endlessly. She encouraged me to try harder, to go for a piece that was out of my comfort level, and complimented my courage.

But one thing that Mrs. A never liked was my practice skills. My mom wasn’t a fan either, considering she was paying for piano lessons. When I would refuse to practice for the alloted 30 minutes a day, claiming I had something to do, a bike to ride, a swing to sway on, a friend to visit across the street, she’d drag my 7-year-old self back into the house and sit me down at the piano she and my father graciously bought. If I didn’t practice, she’s stop paying for lessons and I just couldn’t have that – I wanted to be that singer. Or at the very least, I wanted to have another recital and hang out with Mrs. A some more.

Practice never came easy to me. I’d rather just go for an hour a week and play through the chords while Mrs. A instructed me. Sure, I knew that the more I practiced, the better I’d get, but I figured I’d get better eventually anyway. For a while I was convinced Mrs. A didn’t notice when I hadn’t spent any time in front of the piano. If I just played with confidence, even when the key was flat or I missed an entire measure or my beat was off, if I pounded the keys hard enough, if I held my head up high enough and made my back perfectly straight, she’d think I was brilliant. She’d think I had slaved over the black-and-white noise makers for hours upon hours.

I soon discovered playing loudly doesn’t mean playing well, it just means you’re pushing way too hard to make up for a lack of confidence. And Mrs. A could see right through it.

While I stopped taking piano lessons when I landed my first internship, choosing writing over music (though I can still read music and I’m thankful for that), I haven’t ceased to overdo my insecurities with an unfaltering ego. Or rather, when I’m upset or unsure about something, I try to push it so far out of my mind or dwell on it so deeply that it either goes away or it haunts me. I can knot up my stomach with a single thought, I can be my own cruel critic, and if given the opportunity, I can devise the worse possible outcome if I let my mind get the best of me.

And when I feel like something, someone, or the essence of who I am is slipping away, I grab onto it for dear life. I pull the pieces together next to my heart, just like I did with those scattered notes on the piano. I hadn’t seen those measures before because I failed to practice and though I’ve felt lost before, I’ve never practiced learning to find my way, so everything feels new when it falls apart. And just as I did in front of Mrs. A, I still feel vulnerable and fear disapproval, no matter what kind of happy face I may put on.

Unlike piano, there isn’t a set course of rules for life or for love. Things are sometimes out of key and things fall flat when you’d like them to be sharp. Sometimes you push yourself before the measure and while I’d like there to be a metronome to steady my rather-chaotic pace, the only beat I can really listen to is the one that’s in my heart.

That beat, my heartbeat, isn’t something I can fake. It’s not something I can ignore or push aside or beat with a silly ego. And keeping it in check, listening to it, and believing in its rhythm is something that must be practiced each and every single day. Practice doesn’t make perfect because perfection is quite honestly a beautiful allusion – but with practice, comes patience. And with patience, some understanding, and mastering the art of feeling it out instead of forcing it, sometimes, life makes one hell of a lovely melody.

Daily Gratitude: I’m thankful for my roommate’s keyboard that she let me play today. How I’ve missed it!