october 3rd 2005
part 2: trust
ah, selective video. purveyors of porn, pasticheurs of all things decidedly un-puritanical. their body is a wonderland; nooks and crevices and crannies crammed full of everything you need to make your wet dreams come true.
items range from the ridiculous (penis napkin holders) to the raunchy (loincloths, anyone?), from the bodacious (lubes and gels in a variety of yummy flavors) to the truly bizarre (several different items which, even after careful perusal, i still couldn’t discern their intended use.). they very definitely put the tit in titillation.
on a recent jaunt to their fine establishment, the subject of bondage came up. i was fascinated by the many different ways there were to restrain and subjugate your significant other. handcuffs with fur, or made out of leather, studded, spiked, and coming with matching whip/mask/indiscernible sexual aide. the variations were endless, and i thought well, gee. maybe there's something to this.
now, i’ve never been tied up, down, or sideways, but i find the idea intriguing. i’ve never taken that interest beyond the abstract to act upon it, however. there are several reasons for this: namely, that i’m continually unattached and i have a few control issues that would need to be taken care of first.
the idea of someone slipping manacles around my wrists and pocketing the key gives me serious pause. who’s to say they won’t walk out with my clothes and leave me (quite literally) hanging? i mean, how well to you have to know someone to feel comfortable being cuffed? what level of trust allows you to revel in restraint?
trust is a big issue with sex. at least for me. my previous sexual experiences have left something to be desired. okay, a lot to be desired. like an orgasm. so i have to concede that my viewpoints are informed by my past, and that my opinion isn’t exactly objective. then again, it’s impossible for anyone to get a good distance from something so intrinsic, so basic to our nature.
admit it; sex takes up the better part of all our waking thoughts. it's there when we wake in the morning with a hard on, or at lunch when we fantasize about a quickie with the water cooler guy, or while eating a particularly juicy piece of asparagus at dinner. it's ingrained in all of us; eat, sleep, fuck. and not necessarily in that order.
of course, i realize i'm painting this in pretty broad strokes. i know some people who put more thought into what brand of toothpaste they want to try than who their next bed partner will be. on one hand, i laud the freedom they seem to have found. on the other, i can’t help but feel that they’re really missing out on the good stuff.
the way two bodies move together, sure of one another, trusting the other to touch the right spot, say the right word, go fast, then slow, then fast. the way you can surprise yourself by screaming when you’ve always been more of a moaner, because you suddenly feel completely free and wild and uninhibited and sure that your partner won't start laughing at you. the way you find joy in pleasing each other, almost more joy than you find in being pleased. at least, i think that’s the way it should be.
it's possible that i'm missing something. i fully realize i’m a relationship retard, a sexual schizoid with only a very basic understanding of the way the game is played. maybe there’s something to be had in anonymous couplings, the thrill of the unknown, the danger in discovery.
i'm just don't think i'm built that way. i like to know the lips i'm kissing, who's skin is sliding against me, what heart pounds in tandem with mine. the thrill then becomes exploring the infinite uknown of someone so seemingly familiar. i know i'm not making the concept of sexual familiarity seem, well, sexy, but different strokes, people. my trigger gets tripped at the the idea that, at a certain point with the right person, a kind of sexual shorthand develops that frees you to go where you've never gone before.
but how do you find that right time with that right person? wouldn't it be nice if there was some universal litmus test you could take to make these things easier? "oh look, honey. the paper is green. get out the sling." but there is no magic flashpoint. no unilateral measuring stick to determine when and where and how and with whom you do what things.
in the end, i suppose the person you need to trust in is yourself. it all comes down to what's comfortable for you. anyone who asks you to do anything you’re not comfortable with, politely decline or suggest an alternative more up your alley, so to speak. if they still don’t get the hint, a decisive “hell no” should suffice. if they keep it up and try to (insert genitalia here) your (insert orifice here), a swift kick in a sensitive area combined with a strategic and prolonged squirt of mace/hairspray/wd-40 to the ocular cavities should do the trick.
then get out of there and find someone who feels good to you.
because really, it takes a lotta trust to try and fit that big key into that little lock. but with the right comination, and a little jiggle this way and wiggle that way, it just might open. oh, and think of all the wonders to be found inside... i think i’m beginning to see the merits of getting tied up and getting down.
now if you’ll excuse me, i’ve gotta go practice some knots.
october 7th 2005
part 3: the sexes
how to impress a woman:
compliment her, cuddle her, kiss her, caress her, love her, stroke her, tease her, comfort her, protect her, hug her, hold her, spend money on her, wine & dine her, buy things for her, listen to her, care for her, stand by her, support her, go to the ends of the earth for her....
how to impress a man:
show up naked, with beer.
go ahead, laugh. it’s funny.
there are endless jokes about the difference between the sexes. in the majority of them, men are portrayed as crude, monosyllabic degenerates, neanderthals whose only concerns are sex, sports, and booze. women are alternately shown as overly emotional soap opera addicts who only think about shopping, chocolate, and getting her man to commit.
for the most part, these jokes work. because, for the most part, they’re true.
women will never understand the fascination with fantasy football, and men will never understand the quest for the perfect black purse. it’s neither a good nor bad thing. it’s just the way it is.
let’s look at product marketing. women extol the virtues of the new swiffer sweeper. men tout the advanced features of the new range rover. women get sold hamburger helper and mr. clean, men are pressed to buy craftsmen tool sets and captain morgan rum. the entertainment industry even creates different movie trailers, selling themselves as either a weepy romance or an action adventure flick, depending on the desired demographic.
of course, there are also metrosexuals with skin care regimes and liberated women who can change their own tires, thank you very much. the lines are blurring, and the sides are shifting in this war between the sexes. and i call it a war on purpose, dear readers. constantly at odds with ideas on how to live, how to love, and how to do the nasty, gals and guys struggle every day to come out on top. literally and figuratively.
it’s like electrical outlets. work with me here. a female, the outlet, is mounted on the wall. she’s content to hang out there, worried that if she abandons her post she’ll miss the opportunity to get to know a really great…appliance. her job is to be the ready and waiting source of power. a male, the plug, gets around. attributing it to the whim of a higher being, he goes from the upper outlet to the lower, one wall to the next, room after room after room. his job is to tap into that power and use it for all it’s worth.
it’s not always the right fit. sometimes the plug isn’t the right model, and his prong doesn’t fit into her hole. sometimes it’s simply the wrong time and place, and karma redecorates the universe just to keep things interesting. but when the combination is right and everything fits and the output and input of ergs is equal… sparks fly.
and the juice really starts flowin’.
but sometimes it’s not that simple. personally, i love using power tools. i get an almost obscene rush from using a router. among my other “man-like” qualities are: basketball, dirty words, whiskey and an almost perpetual desire for sex. i’m also a confessed “girly-girl” in other areas: shoes, candles, romantic comedies and an almost perpetual desire for bubble baths. does this make me a lipstick lesbian? no, although i’ve had a few tempting offers. how do i reconcile these two halves within? is it even possible to plug yourself into yourself? for god’s sake, people, i’m lost.
conversely, i know several men who love to bake, clean, and have meaningful conversations about deep and important issues. they are not afraid to start a sentence with “i feel…” and they are not ashamed to wear pastels. does this make them gay? okay, for the most part, they are. but some of them aren’t. how are they to survive in a world that values a man’s muscles more than his mind? i think they’re just as lost as i am.
i know we’re not alone. there are countless others out there, addicted to the man show and the daily show, obsessed with smooth skin and smooth brew, tantalized by the thought of lawn mowers and lawn ornaments. we are at war with ourselves, and there is no discernable victor as long as we continue to characterize ourselves by our bumps, be they high or low.
we are, none of us, meant to be defined by our gender. it is a touchstone, certainly, a part of what we are. but it is not who we are. we are the amalgamation of our incalculable parts. we are the product of everything we see or read, everyone we say hello to or have sex with, every choice we make that spins our story along to its inevitable and yet invariably surprising end. and guess what? when we get there, the punch-line will not be “because you’re a woman/man.”
whenever someone asks if i prefer to be called a girl or a woman, i reply, neither. i prefer to be called cara.
now if you’ll excuse me, there’s an appliance headed my way.
october 8th 2005
part 4: the sex
i’ve recently given up smoking. it’s been hard as hell to fight the cravings and not light up when the urge to stick something in my mouth and suck takes ahold of me. which it often does. i told a friend of mine that i was going to have to find a new oral fixation to devote my time and energy to, and he replied that hard candy or a hard cock would be my best bets. not to be outdone, i promptly opened my purse and pulled out some lifesavers and some condoms. he laughed and the conversation continued on to other, less salacious topics.
he would have laughed harder had he been there when i was buying said condoms the week before. i think i was in the hygiene aisle for half an hour, perusing each box carefully, reading the backs, trying to decide between his pleasure and her pleasure and mutual pleasure. was ultra-thin the way to go? perhaps ribbed? or flavored? feeling overwhelmed, i eventually decided to utilize the process of elimination. lasting pleasure was the first to go, for although the name sounded promising, the description seemed… well, as soon as i read “male genital desensitizer with climax control lubrication,” it just sounded a bit unfair. one orgasm should never come at the expense of another.
ribbed seemed like a possibility until i looked at the drawing on the back, which looked more like some high-tech torture device; two sets of ribs and alternating nubbins, supposedly to stimulate things that need stimulating. flavored might also be nice, but seemed like it would only be useful on specific occasions. i had no idea what kind a man would like, and even less of an idea about what kind i would like. ultimately i went for the smooth lubricated ultra-thin condoms. i figured it’s like learning a foreign language; start with the basics and build upon your grasp of the subject gradually.
you see, it was only the second time i’d ever bought condoms. i don’t even know how to put the damned things on. and the possibility that they might expire before they see any action has become more daunting than the act of buying them ever was.
confession: it’s been almost ten years. dear god, a decade without handholding, neck massages, gentle exploration, deep penetration and out and out fornication. i have become a born-again virgin, not of my own choosing, but through a series of circumstances, bad decisions and fear. so i suppose i am to blame for some of it. but in a society pervaded with casual copulation, it seems like i’m the only one in the world not getting any. so along with quitting smoking, i’ve also decided that it’s time for me to get over it and get under someone.
but how does one begin? with my aforementioned predilection towards the desire to let things just happen naturally, the requirement of major trust and the understanding that my needs are as unique as my tongue print, it may be awhile. and i’m notoriously bad at signals. i can’t seem to distinguish between a friendly touch and an interested caress. how long does a hand have to linger before it’s a declaration of intent? what areas of the anatomy are innocuous, and what areas are fair game for foreplay? when is it too much, and when is it not enough?
i was raised in a religion that prohibited dating until the age of 18, considered the act of masturbation an unforgivable sin, and condemned anyone who had sex outside the bonds of marriage. i never had the sex talk, in part because i was such a shy little thing and the thought of asking questions of that nature mortified me. also, i think my parents found the idea too unnerving to actually go through with. so i did what any repressed teenager would do; i checked out the joy of sex from the local library and poured through it like a traveler stranded in the desert of ignorance.
unfortunately, it only raised more questions. questions that remain unanswered to this day. the two men i’ve been with turned out to be worse than indifferent to my lack of experience. and as i’ve found no one thus far willing to guide me through the caves of carnal knowledge, i’ve had to rely on love scenes from movies and the occasional hot and heavy passage in the odd novel to add piece by piece to my paltry understanding of sex.
the thing is, i know enough to know that it’s being misrepresented. in any given room i enter with more than 10 people, it’s a sure bet that at least two thirds of them are sexually active. and these people don’t look like movie stars. they are not so verbose or eloquent in their dialogues of desire. they are balding men or wrinkled women, pudgy and gangly and overwhelmingly normal.
but we all watch brad pitt and angelina jolie tango their way between the sheets in moves so choreographed you wonder if stunt doubles are used. we see this, and think that’s the way it should be. but of course it isn’t. most of us don’t have our own personal sex instructor, rehearsing our moves with us so that when the moment comes it all goes smoothly and no one gets hurt. and it leaves us wondering why we can’t seem to find that mutual rhythm, or why we don't come at all during intercourse, or why it isn’t always fireworks and earthquakes and mutual orgasms descending into bliss.
the best we can do is fumble around until we find something that works, something that feels good to us, to them, and together. it takes a careful eye and keen observation, a willingness to find your partner’s buttons and push them in the right sequence. even then, bliss isn’t guaranteed. but if it does happen, at least you’ve gotten there under your own steam.
the mechanics of passion is beautiful in it’s construct. it’s all quite simple really. insert penis into vagina and ejaculate. the rest of the species on the planet have it easy. they don’t have to worry about the faces they make when they come, or the quandary over post-coital conversation versus the immediate need for sleep. they do their business, ensure the propagation of their particular genus, and move on.
but humans require more. it doesn’t matter if you’re a sexual athlete or a prude, a casanova or a virtual nun. we feel the need to attach emotion to the act, and that’s what screws us in the end. we mistake attraction for attachment, and sex for love, until it’s a conflagration of misunderstandings and broken hearts. this is why i fear for the human race. it's also what gives me hope.
that unabashed drive to transform a simple biological process into an act of beauty. the belief that, in the end, what matters is not the way we connect, but the connection itself. the constant striving for that one sublime moment when we are held up as a thing to be worshipped, and feel that we are worthy of such adoration.
the faith that it's all worth it, everything, all the pain and fear and risk, because when we look into each other's eyes and discover that blessed rhythm we see the divine in each other.
that’s when sex becomes making love. and that’s when we know exactly what it means to be human.
now if you’ll excuse me, i’ve got to go practice on a banana.
december 31st 2005
part 5: love, love, love
so i’ve given in to the urge and started smoking again. it was a nice experiment, while it lasted. and although i miss the mornings free of phlegm, and the extra moola stuffing my wallet, i realized that some habits just take longer than others to kick. there are several things i simply have a hard time letting go of, like the notion that my age is perpetually arrested at 24. and the need to fix everyone’s problems but my own. and the pathological hope that someday i’ll fall in love.
i think perhaps some distinctions are in order at this point. i’ve loved several people; this means that i hold their happiness equal to my own. i’ve been in love twice; this means that i hold their happiness above my own. but i’ve never fallen in love; this would mean that below or above or equal isn’t even a factor, just that i am more myself with them than i am with anyone else. and that i would be loved, cherished, even worshipped for this.
of course, cara being a girl and cara being human, i thought for a time that i had fallen. hard. thump-kabump. ah, kyle. he was my first in many ways, both good and bad. and i thought that’s what love was, right? sticking it out. i realize now that though i had the concept of the thing correct, the application of it is much more tricky.
it was instantaneous, the attraction between us. he praised my intelligence, my beauty, my passion for theater, my smile and my ass. i was enamored of his sense of humor, his stature, his passion for music, his eyes and his lips. but we had several things plotting against us from the start.
i lived in iowa, he called virginia his home. a length of 1,200 miles does not bode well, dear readers. sure, some people can make it work, but in the end, i was not one of them. i am a very tactile person, and the endless nights of phone calls and countless days of e-mails just couldn’t cut it for me. in the eight months we were “seeing” each other, we only actually “saw” each other for two weeks. a trying situation, and one i was never able to overcome. i wanted to touch him, damn it. and i wanted to be touched. damn it.
he was just barely 19, i was well into my 23rd year. now, four years may not seem like much of a difference, but at that age, and with us being who we were, it was a chasm of time. he lived at home, wasn’t attending college, had no immediate or future plans for the direction of his life. i was in the middle of obtaining my degree, was on my own, and had known for years where i wanted to go. and it’s hard to imagine adding someone into the unfolding fabric of your life when they’re not even sure how to do a load of laundry.
also, and perhaps most telling, he didn’t read. i don’t mean that he couldn’t, just that he didn’t. after overcoming a childhood struggle with a reading disability, he was never able to develop a love of learning. and i have an almost obscene attraction to the written word in any form. peas in a pod, we were not. the intelligence he praised so early and so often soon became an obstacle to understanding. i had to start censoring my language to use words he could understand, as he would get frustrated when i had to explain what certain words meant to him. yikes. i wanted to be his girlfriend, not his english teacher.
in an incident that later came to be called “the antiques roadshow revelation,” i had an epiphany. while on the phone with kyle and watching the antiques roadshow, i was telling him about how much i loved the show. after a while, i realized that he had been quiet for some time. he finally said that he didn’t get why people watched shows like that, since it’s always about old stuff, and what’s the point? since we’d spent so much of our relationship talking and writing to each other, we knew a lot about each other. but it was at that moment i realized that though he may understand a lot of things about me, he didn’t really understand me. an unholy desire to know the unknowable, to discover the undiscovered is intrinsic to my nature. and the fact that he didn’t get that… well, i was shocked into a state of doubt.
needless to say, the end came soon upon the heels of that pbs episode.
after a lot of crying and writing and a one-night stand and more crying and more writing, i came to the sad conclusion that while i thought i had fallen in love, i had merely fallen in love with the idea of love. i wanted the roses and the chocolates so much i was willing to pretend for eight months that i was surrounded by the scent of love and filled with rich emotion. in reality what i had was a distant connection with pain and empty, lonely words.
so badly shaken by my brief and disastrous foray into the field of love, i have become wary of entangling my heart with another’s. so soundly trounced in the war of passion, i have retreated to the rear to salve my wounds and repair my pride as best can. it’s been difficult to return to the front and resume the fight, because i look at my scars and remember how much they hurt when they were inflicted.
but recent events have convinced me that i’m looking at it all wrong. it is not a battle among two enemies for supremacy, it is a dance between two hearts for hope. hope that there will be more good days than bad, that when the cuts come they will be small and leave no scar, that your careful steps around each other will become easy moves with each other, melded and in tandem, leading you around the floor that bears no resemblance to a battleground.
so, pathological hope? habitual desire? absolutely. because, cara being a girl and cara being human, i find the thought of a life without falling pretty damn awful. and i’ve spent years perfecting my steps.
now if you’ll excuse me, i’ve got to go find a dance partner… |
