the messiness of sex

Virgin. Virginity. It was something to hold onto. It was something you weren’t supposed to give away. I held onto mine much longer than most. I don’t really know exactly why but one day you wake up and realize you haven’t had sex. Ever. And everyone else has. You are almost done with college. You had hoarded yourself because you saw the causalities of junior high and high school and college and you didn’t want to be a statistic. Part of me didn’t trust myself. That expression. Secretly I collected the numbers, the crushes, the beginnings, the attention, the ask outs at the bike racks of junior high becoming prom dates. But then there was the stopping point. The roadblock- you can’t cross over until. Until- until I was ready to. Ready to believe that someone loved me, loved me enough to share and show that love without leaving. Which in hindsight now seems pretty hefty. But it is still there.

So how do you give yourself or allow yourself to join in the hush hush ever-important game of sexual activity. Very slowly at first. The truth is when you hold onto the idea of perfection, finding someone to love, loving someone to do it, it’s hard to actual do. But it seems like the ideals and ideas have seemed to dissipate over time. Over time they have. I used to have sex with only people I was in love with. Today that is not the case. I still hold onto it not like I held onto my virginity but how and when I decide to do it. It is like either a drought or a monsoon with men and sex and although I tried, tried not very hard in the cafeteria line of casual sex, it ultimately doesn’t work for me. And you know what it shouldn’t. It isn’t casual. It is intimate. You are sharing yourself in an intimate way and there is no separation for me. I need real intimacy and everything else that entails. Yet there still is the biological need. That is something harder to hold onto. As I am beginning my thirties that urge and need seems stronger. Or is it just the urge and need to have someone, someone you are intimately in a relationship with. Regularly, Not sporadically. Not just when you have a too many cocktails. Not every six months. But Regularly. Regularly. I have done the gray. You know the in between the love affair and the official breakup or after the breakup and the crashing into. This last time the only thing I couldn’t say was we aren’t just sleeping together but we are going through the motions of a relationship. Motions that lead me to believe this would end differently.

The other reason causal sex can be messy other than the typical attachment possibilities, stds fun, or pregnancy at the wrong time, is the possibility of having sex with entirely boring but mostly stupid man. I tried it once. It almost killed me. I can’t fuck you if you can’t engage in a meaningful conversation. That might be why casual sex died for me. But the thing is I don’t feel like its causal even if it happens “too quickly” if we continue to date. Continuing on the path, the trajectory seems more comfortable for me. Still if it happens, when it happens. I am happy because it usually been a while. But I am worried, worried. And waiting. Waiting like I used to join the game of sex. I play. I play way differently than I used to. Sex has changed for me. Still I know how I like it best and we aren’t just talking positions.

Last night I had a dream that relationships could be as easy as the sex. The sex part has became easy but the follow through of the relationship, the relationship, a real relationship has. The type with or without definitions that makes me say I love you, I love you aloud sometimes, but I love you in my heart always. So as you held me as I cried and looked intensely and fiercely into my eyes and said, “I’m sorry Kate”, I knew that glitch meant nothing and everything all at once. I was left with what to do with your mess, your inherited mess, now our mess together.