Well, the people have spoken. Several of my guy friends emailed me privately (perhaps ashamed?) and assured me that guys, too, obsessively overanalyze emails from romantic/sexual Persons of Interest. No definitive word yet on whether they CRAFT such emails with the same absurd care, but one of these liaisons to the Y Chromosome told me he puts a lot of thought into his text messaging. And I don't know about y'all, but that makes me feel less alone.
Sidenote: I was originally going to title this post, "From The Stallion's Mouth," but it seemed weird and a bit creepy to refer to my male friends as stallions. Though I'm sure they are.
Showing posts with label FRIENDS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FRIENDS. Show all posts
Monday, December 15, 2008
From The Mouths Of Dudes
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Babes In Babeland
[OK, that is a lame post title, but it's hard to out-pun a pun.]
Following closely on the heels of my latest girl fest, this weekend I went on my first group sex toy shopping trip. Yes, Babeland, aka the happiest place on earth, was having a 20% off sale at ALL its New York stores, and on Sunday I went down to SoHo with a group that included veteran vibratorers and first-time shoppers alike.
OMG, why had I never done that before?
True, the first time I ever went to Babeland I brought my sister, which I thought made me a very cool older sibling, but this was the first time that I actually went with a group of people all intent on buying things, all happy to compare appliances and weigh issues of size, speed, and design together. I definitely snuck up on someone with a buzzing plastic beaver to the shoulder, and when your roommate is willing to sample edible oils off your forearm, you know you're in good company*.
Lately I've been realizing/remembering how wonderful it is to share my sex life with my friends--actually share WITH, as opposed to going on about my own stuff on this blog. Sometimes, I'm ashamed to say, I forget how cool and vibrant and in charge my friends are. They're a fun bunch. And in the spirit of my last post, this goes for boys, too--I love having guy friends I can talk openly with about sex (as I did last night over drinks and gyoza on the LES).
So to those of you playing along at home: I HIGHLY recommend buying sex toys with your friends. It's a bonding experience, a fun way to spend an afternoon, and a good way to profit from the opinions and experiences of others.
I couldn't find what I actually bought online, but here's my very first [official] vibrator, which I still use and which I did not see at Babeland on Sunday. Fortunately it's still on their site:
The Wahl 7-in-1. Tell your friends.
*They were all kind of gross, but the Chocolate Raspberry beat out the Blackberry Creme.
Daring Not To Fuck
This is a story I've been meaning to put up here 4eva. It happened in January, judging by my gchat log. I had received two free tickets to David Mamet's piece-of-shit new play November and gave the second one to Neighbor Steve. (Check out his blog!) Afterwards, on the subway, we were momentarily distracted from how awful the play was by the following encounter:
There was only one seat left, and Neighbor Steve offered it to me. Neighbor Steve ALWAYS lets me have the seat and (perhaps already feeling guilty for having brought him to the terrible play) I stubbornly insisted he take it. He did, and the gentleman sitting next to him turned and said something to the effect of:
"No, you gotta keep your lady close to you."
A blank pause from both of us, until I finally said,
"Well, we're actually brother and sister, so that's kinda gross."
Neighbor Steve is, of course, not my brother. But nor am I his lady.
This is a situation I have always found awkward. I have a lot of guy friends, I usually do, and when I'm out and about with one of them we are sometimes mistaken for a couple. So, what do you do? It's awkward not to correct the person (you almost worry about sending your friend the wrong message, even if that's silly), but if you say "oh we're not a couple" it creates a weird feeling that you're somehow disowning your friend. And then sometimes the person who made the mistake gives you a skeptical look, like you might THINK you're just friends, but actually this stranger knows better. Annoying. So my spontaneous lie was a refusal to feel awkward about something that shouldn't make people feel awkward, and united rather than divided Steve and me. (He immediately rolled with it and together we answered a lot of questions about "our" upbringing.)
Which is not to say that cross-gender friendships are always clear-cut. More than once I've gotten drunk with an old dear friend and we've had sort of a "we're not kids anymore" moment that led to some fooling around. Even in 9th grade I wrote a poem about how I sometimes I worried I'd fuck things up with my friend Jake by developing feelings for him. (He recognized immediately that it was about him and did not mind it being published in the school lit mag. Now that's a good friend.) And sometimes I'm not even sure what the recipe is--I have guy friends whom I love, and whom I think of as totally attractive, so is it weird that I don't want more? Is that pathological of me*, or even somehow insulting to them? Not really, of course not. But every now and then I have to ask myself the question. Sometimes I even feel the urge to justify to my guy friends why I don't want to date them, even though I don't remotely think they want to date me--nor should they. I suppose I just want to reaffirm that friendship isn't a consolation prize. It's not second place. It's its own event. And especially in the past year or so, my guy friends have done a really good job of making me feel like I'm *worth* dating--and hopefully I do the same for them, because they tend to be serious catches.
The upshot is that I'm lucky. I'm lucky to have had such great guy friends, and from an early age**. When my mother was in school, her only options on that score were her female friends' sweethearts. She had no co-ed post-Halloween sleepovers, no intellectual coffee groups that were both easy and quietly fraught with mismatched desire. I may have secretly wanted more from a few of those friends, but they were first and foremost my friends, people who shaped my life independent of sex or my longing for it. Because sure, when we went on those 8th grade movie outings I had a crush on Ben and Rebecca had a crush on Lucas (or was it Chris?), but that was part of the fun. That was almost more about my friendship with Rebecca***.
So here's to Neighbor Steve and all my other faux-brothers out there. I'm proud and pleased to be in a position where someone might think I'm your girlfriend.
(Side note: when subway dude asked which of us was older, we said me [because I am] and the dude seemed surprised. Cuz brothers are supposed to be older than sisters? Weird.)
*Y'know, cuz I'll always be alone and whatnot.
**Like that Sharon Olds poem. Sort of.
***Incidentally, it was on those same outings that Rebecca and I tested out our fledgling feminist outrage. Ben may have been cute, but asking what time "Mr. Movie" started? Patriarchal! They just didn't understand.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Eureka!
Quite some time ago, a friend asked me why I would care what our friends think of my sex life, and why it would bother me if they had problems with it. As I reported back at the time, I couldn't come up with a clear answer. For some crazy reason, buying a mini-scone at Starbucks just now, the answer came to me:
It's mean.
There's also stuff in there about losing respect for people who pass judgment in misogynist ways, et cetera, and not wanting to spend time with people who are that square, but come on guys--it's mean! And who wants their friends to be mean? Not me.
But yeah, also all that other stuff.
Friday, November 16, 2007
That Helpful Third Wheel
Your friend Susan B. does not date a lot. It's not that I'm a sad sack sitting around moaning for a boyfriend*, and I've dated nicely this year, but usually I am not in a relationship, and don't have many serious ones under my belt.
And yet.
I have always found this really funny, but my becoupled friends love to ask me for relationship advice. I don't understand why. Sometimes there's a clear reason--like, there's a specific issue and they know I have knowledge or experience in that area--but much of the time there is not. One pair in college simply tried to make me into their couples therapist. And I wonder about the impulse. Is it because I was a psych major? Because I seem generally wise? Or is it partially--and I've long suspected this--that they think my chronic singledom means I know something they don't? A lot of people in relationships romanticize being single to a degree, but I wonder if some of my friends (especially ones who are younger or don't know me THAT well) view me as somehow above the fray. There was a Times article after the Dumbledore outing about how "[t]he master wizard is not a sexual being; he has shelved personal cares and embraced a higher mission." So maybe I'm some kind of paladinic guru! (On the other hand, no one that I recall asked Gandalf for relationship advice.)
But seriously folks. I guess it's that people want an outside perspective, and a single person is more outside than someone in a different relationship that comes with its own problems and biases. But why a PERPETUALLY single person? Eh, I dunno. I don't dislike it --except in situations where I feel like people ONLY want to hang out so they can tell me about their romantic problems--and I love being there for my friends and being trusted to help, or at least sympathize, with their important issues. But I don't really understand it. One of my friends posited, mostly joking, that I was single BECAUSE of all the relationship tsuris I'd ingested over the years. She envisioned me meeting the man of my dreams, getting flooded with the memory of every bad story I'd been told, and running in the opposite direction. Which is a convenient excuse--I'm not a dateless loser, I've just been scared straight!
But, yknow, probably the Loser Hypothesis is a little more accurate :)
*That would be what we call "four years of college."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
