The Sex of My Life.
1) AWAKENING
You see her almost daily, but she means nothing to you.
Then one day, when you ring your best friend’s doorbell and his older sister opens the door wearing panties and a wife-beater, something happens. As you stand there, on his porch, you’re at eye-level with about an acre of cleavage and suddenly, she’s become the most important person in the world
It’s a word and a world you’ve never known of before, but now, in an instant you comprehend its meaning, purpose, and consequence completely. This birth of manhood, however, is unbeknownst to her and she lets you in without thinking twice. You don’t really count, you’re only ten and at sixteen, she’s light years ahead of you (physically and mentally). So since you’re just the little boy from down the street, she thinks nothing of wandering about her little brother’s room innocently, though barely clothed, as she ponders the mysteries of her life aloud and babbles endlessly to her Little League audience. And there she sits, poured over a textbook trying to comprehend the vast complexities of Pre-Algebra. She tells you “Ninth grade is really hard,” and although it means very little to her, you’re stunned that such an important and ethereal being would confide that much in you.
When she isn’t around, you miss her. And you wish she’d be there. But when she isn’t around, another exciting thing happens - Her brother delights you with tales of her outrageous behavior with her boyfriend. Either this girl is a nymphomaniac or your friend has a really vivid imagination, because looking back on these tales, it’s hard to believe you’re friend wasn’t channeling the new paradigm - a wonderful technological advancement known as “The Internet.” But at the time, when you hear these stories and picture yourself in the lucky guy’s shoes, reality doesn’t matter. Your imagination’s been primed.
This girl’s often inches from you. You’ve got a crush but you don’t exist. As she gazes out into the world, you’re stuck glaring at the promised land… Her cleavage. Often times, it’s so large - in your mind - that you feel like you could just fall into it and disappear. Instead, she disappears.
Your friend’s mom has moved her daughter to a new room in the house. She deems it inappropriate for her daughter to be about so innocently… While her son’s horny little friends can’t keep their eyes off her. So now, she’s disappeared behind a door and you only see her when she steps out, fully dressed and made-up, clearly on her way to a date with a guy, who may treat her well... But to you, no other man alive could treasure her as much or treat her as well as you.
2) TORTURE
Niceness versus sex. You struggle with the concept.
Rationally, being nice should lead you toward the goal, but when you look around, it seems like a lot of jerks are pulling girls, and you, who are nice, are not. The idea that girls are attracted to guys who are callous, inconsiderate, and mean is impossible to comprehend.
The problem is that there is this woman out there that you’re interested in, but you’ve made the mistake of becoming her friend. You talk on the phone, you hang out. She has you over all the time; you guys are often caught amidst “friendly” cuddles. She has a Jacuzzi her parents put in the backyard. She invites you over, she invites you in. You emerge, steaming, and lie together wetly on towels draped over her bed. Of course, at this moment, like all others, you’re acutely aware of that peach-like cleft and that tight spot where her bathing suit wraps around her inner thighs. So tight, so close. But yet, there is a separation, and this separation is an invitation:
Come on in!!
But you don’t. Either because you are a fool or a coward, but in fairness, you made the mistake awhile ago.
You went into the wrong room. The room that had the door labeled “Friend.” In this room, you’re separated by only a wall from another room called “Sucking, groaning, owning, moaning, ‘Woo!’” and some other stuff. But you can’t just walk through walls, can you? Yet you hear the noises coming from the other side, in the way of her telling you about this other room. So close, but again, so far. Complete torture.
Yet, there is an occurrence that is not uncommon. Sometimes, the wall will just melt.
Later in life, walls will vanish right and left, and you’ll hear people say “Oh, we were friends for years… but then one day, we just looked at each other and…” Sometimes, the wall will simply disappear. Other times, she’ll just pick up a sledgehammer and crumble it down - and that’s when the prisoner of friendship becomes the prisoner of sex. The only small thing to knock you back is that walls rarely disappear when you’ve got your ear pressed up against them.
3) SALVATION
The task of saving you from the hell of sexless adolescence is so big a miracle that it requires nothing short of an angel. You could meet her at a party. Or a club. Or a club at school. The conversation moves quickly to familiar territory - Kissing, groping. Then she puts your index finger in her mouth and sucks it while looking you dead in the eye. To go where no man has gone before! At least with her anyway.
It happens. People do it all the time. She’s told you, you can be one of those people who do it, too. With her. Right then and there. She’s an angel. The girl who says to you: “Here it is. Take me.” Now you’ve got a whole new problem: What do you do when you get what you want? (That’s a riddle you’ll never solve, but you’ll only get better at refining your response.)
Now, however, you’re fifteen and clueless. You’re in a car, on a couch in a living room, in a bedroom of a stranger’s house while music blasts downstairs, on a balcony, in a stairway, on the beach, or on a bench in a park at midnight. Maybe someone’s parents aren’t home… Maybe the neighbors are asleep… Maybe you can’t see anybody around… But they might come any second!
So keep your ears tuned for the sound of a turning lock, a security guard’s keys, or another couple, like you, looking for privacy. Meanwhile, this little angel is sitting next to you, spreading her wings… Figuratively? Yes. Literally? Maybe. And you…
One of two. Either:
1) You choke. You freeze. A stern morality previously unknown to you suddenly rises up and you wonder if this is the right thing to do. In no time, you’re darting out of that situation faster than an Olympic sprinter. And now, a new place of shame is born - Meaning a physical location that won’t be the same again. Many a nook and cranny of our hometowns hold a reproach to your grown-up self…
Or:
2) You make magic happen. And suddenly, you’re a stud. Or you’ve been used.
Regardless, another place is born, one of either pride or regret. You won’t stick around long after you’ve finished, but every time you see her on the street you ask yourself when scientists will finally develop a time machine so you can go back and change whatever you want to change - like your expressions.
More than likely, you just really want to thank her… By staying the night.
Later in life, when you revisit these places, you’ll probably point them out to friends as souvenirs of some of your earliest experiences with Heaven.
4) DAMAGE
Uh-oh.
In the course of your adventures in love, you will get completely stomped at least once. Ideally, it doesn’t happen too soon, but with a streak of angels, you may not be able to tell the devils apart early enough. Such as when your girlfriend announces that you aren’t dating at all. Or you’re completely stood up, standing around waiting hours on end for someone who’s never going to show. Or if she suddenly announces she’s seeing someone else… Two someone else’s. If you’re lucky, there’s a bit of humor attached to your pain. Like if the new guy she’s seeing happens to be your best friend’s brother. No worries though, you’ll eventually become the perpetrator and you’ll come to know plenty of “best friends,” whether relating them to older brothers, younger sisters, first-cousins, etc. But, hopefully, it won’t be your best friend’s girl, although sometimes…
Things happen.
Regardless, the more serious stomping comes in the latter part, where something harmful is attached to you:
Blame. The blame’s on you. Asshole. You’ll have some woman, and you’ll be into it, you’ll be into her, and she’ll just…
Be there. A fixture in your life. And then one day, the fixture will look at you with an exasperated look on her face, and you’ll suddenly realize that look has been there for a good minute. Then you realize “It’s too late! You blew it!”
So the fierce comeback attempt, the reformed you, the attentive you, the caring-and-loving you who isn’t too drunk by midnight, will in the end not be enough. At which point, you may resort to being you again. At which point, this may result in you burning her by not being serious about commitment. At which point, she’ll either catch you with another woman or you’ll walk away without an explanation. Thus scalded, but still breathing, she moves elsewhere.
You, however, don’t cease to be an ass.
5) EXPERIENCE
Some women have more than you.
More money, more scars, more experience in love, life, more years. It’s in the company of an older woman, however, that you discover the asset you never realized you had.
This asset is you. You and the thing in your pants.
She has a lot of things: a car, a home, a bank account, and who knows - a fiancée? Plans? A future home, with a white picket fence and 1.5 kids picked out? She’s got things. And she’s mature, both physically and mentally. You on the other hand, you’ve got nothing. That’s when you ask - “Why me?”
That’s when you realize it. In some other town or country, in her big vacation house, in her big bed, on her soft mattress, making use of your most valuable asset -
You!
You and your humor, and your intelligence, and your creativity, and your passion, and your smell. You and your courtesy and the attention you pay her when she speaks. You and how you can’t help seem charming to someone whose older, wiser, and much more mature than you are... You almost become her younger sibling, in an incestuous sort of way.
She’s got endless knowledge. You’ve got endless energy. A very good combination.
Now, a slight aura of heroism surrounds you. Because somehow, you’re rescuing her. You are saving her from that obnoxious fiancée (who obviously could never satisfy her like you and who you’ll eventually convince her to dump). You’re rescuing her from loneliness. From fears that her dreams have crumbled. Somehow, you’re breathing life into the hopes she has for herself - and even the hopes she has for the world. Either way, you’re the man!
And at very little cost, at first. If you’re silly and you fall in love with an older woman, though, a problem develops.
You want to catch up. You want to somehow join her in life, but she’s further along than you and she’ll always be further along than you. If you’re smart though, you’ll realize you can never have her as yours, so you sit in gratitude and savor whatever time you can spend together. But what happens when you get home from your getaway? Once you get back to the real world? To everything that was waiting for you before you two met?
First, you don’t forget what you’ve learned - That you’re awesome! And second, you keep her number handy. It’s a Swiss Army Knife of sorts.
6) LOVE ( ? )
The aphrodisiac of wanting is well known. Want implies desire for something not in your grasp. Wanting leads to getting, but then from getting, we arrive at having, and this monster is one to be weary of.
So what about being in love with a woman who is in love with you?
This creature is someone you want to sleep with and someone you want to talk to. She’s someone you want to take out into the world and proclaim: “THIS IS MY WOMAN!” Or maybe she isn’t someone you want to take out, and she’s someone you want to stay in at home with.
Someone who you want to stay in your room with and pillow fight in your underwear as you jump up and down on your bed. You want to read her pieces of poetry late at night and you want to entertain her and make her laugh, because as soon as she smiles, you do, too. You want to give her pastels and oils, so she can keep painting and even if you pretend like you can’t stand it, you want her to sing off-key at the very top of her lungs. You want to ask her deep questions about the way she wears her hair and you want to tell her about her stars, hanging up in the cosmos. You want to introduce her to your parents and bring her into your home.
And even though you live in fear of telling her about you’re angels, you’re demons, and you’re damage, you still whisper to her while she sleeps next to you. You want her so much, that you’ll talk to her, even if you know she won’t listen. If you could, you’d talk to her from the grave. Why?
Because you are a goddamn fool. But you are her fool. She’s the one you love, and she’s also the one who - and this is one of the most terrifying and awkward conditions a man can find himself in - … she’s also the one who loves you. Yet, one day, your gaze wanders over the vast, gorgeous ocean of beautiful women walking and living out their lives in their short skirts and their revealing shirts, reminding you of days past.
That’s when your eye fixes on one woman. That’s when a flicker of the animal erupts and something rustles inside you and maybe you say something you shouldn’t. You asshole. Your biggest flaw, despite thousands of years of evolution, is still taking center stage - Your appetite. Despite all of your feelings, buddy, you’re never going to be above being an animal. Above being a man with a penis. Above your strengths, lie your weaknesses. In spite of that deep, serious, shared love - You want to be the stray dog sleeping in the streets. Often.
So now, the predicament:
To stay where you are or to go forth. Stay where you are, with what you have, the woman who loves you, or go forth and do what calls you. Ass (both because it’s what you are and what calls you). You can’t go back and forth. You can go forth, but you can’t ever come back. That’s suicide. It’s one or the other, either/or, this or that. And what’s that? The endless ocean of possibility that’ll never end. And this?
Well, what is this? Well, this is your life.
This is your future, your responsibilities, and your commitments.
This is your entire world, your entire life, from the day you were born until you read these exact words. This is your life…
Do you want to start living it?
Not now… but one day, you’ll say I do.
~
Well, that's the LiveJournal version at least. Write me back with feedback bitches! LaaAte!
* By the way, this based on Thomas Beller's article of the same name, which was featured in Best Life Magazine. Consider this a re-edit, with my two cents thrown in for good luck. WooOo!