Of course, I do everything to extremes, and two-and-a-half years was too long; I married the first person I had sex with afterwards.
I'm just putting it out there that solitude is ego-defining and strengthening. Neither of those boys lacked the courage to face solitude. They're both brave, decent men with the characteristics I cherish in 20-somethings—compassion, total willingness to engage with a woman as a person, openness about sexuality, and truckloads of snarky humor, self-awareness and geeksmarts. But the thing is, I am kind of a special girl, and you only get so many shots at a really thrilling affair with a really special girl before you settle down and have kids or whatever. Some times you have to jump even if you feel you're not quite ready.
One of those boys missed his shot, because he was only willing to dip his toe in the, shall we say, waters of intimacy.
The other boy, the second one, came back to my bedroom a month later.
I'm not going say sex is not scary. Sex is scary, intimacy is scary, taking a chance on changing the way you relate to a person you like and respect is risky. Everybody's been hurt, and if you're lucky, sometimes being hurt really badly actually leaves you more open to feeling things, which makes the risk even greater.
Last night I was scared; I put my hand on his bare shoulder in the dim light and asked him to give me a minute to check in, to come down a little for a minute. Not because I didn't trust him, not because I didn't want him to do what he was doing, but because I was so turned on and so dizzy with wanting him.
I needed to connect with him, see him as a person, as my friend, as a peer, because I was so open and submissive to him that I was completely vulnerable. He'd done a thing to me, I don't even know what it was—twenty-something guys are amazing in bed—some intuitive Tantric thing involving what I would suspect involved moving energy through my chakras, if I dared to believe in such things. It felt like my limbic system had cracked open, like he'd hit my chest with crash paddles, and I was vibrating all over.
The tidal surge of intense physical chemistry is a formidable energy exchange, a place where it can be hard to stay present and in awareness of your partner. Because we'd talked really openly and negotiated a lot of baseline details, about what we want from a lover and how we might relate to each other, it felt like there was a perfectly reasonable space for crazy physical phenomena to happen. In that kind of space, your lover feels like a friend, an ally, a partner, a fellow traveller, a kite string. Yes, it's serious; sex is serious; but it's also perfectly silly and human and harmless and anyway we're animals who were made to do it. If we do it like grownups, if we are excellent with each other and kind, we might get hurt down the road anyway, because sex causes feelings, especially good sex.
Is it worth it, to risk getting hurt, to risk hurting someone you like, just for sex?
Couldn't just holding each other achieve the same kind of connection, the same kind of sustenance? Not for me.
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