"So, you gonna..."

Sometimes I think I hate sex.

I know; it's an odd thing to write in a blog which is, in fact, about sex.

When I think about it rationally, I know that it is not actually sex that I think I hate. It's the issues surrounding it - the murky waters of love and emotion, attachment and relationship, which I have such a hard time wading through and which sometimes, when it seems that I'm drowning, just don't seem worth it.

What it comes down to is that I am horribly, horribly, confused by my own sexuality.

It can be so hard to straighten it all out - what do I really want? What do I convince myself that I want in order to make someone else happy in order to get what I really want? What do I think that I want which, when confronted with the reality of it, I can't handle after all?

Well, I've got at least one tried and true answer to that question. Once, after B. told me of some of the sexual exploits of one of his exes, with whom he had first spent time at a gang-bang, I thought that I was turned on by the thought of myself in such a situation. He arranged for it to happen at a hotel right out of town and when, a few minutes after we got there, he told me to get on my knees and suck off the guy whose room it was - who, at that moment, was sitting at his laptop and arranging the arrival of the other participants - I freaked out and couldn't do it. We had to leave.

Why was that? Why couldn't I go through with something which I, myself, had suggested? I have thought about it but found no clear answer. To some extent, I think, the outright, well-then-get-to-it-ivness of the situation was too much for me.

Slut though I may be, I do have some peculiar attachments to setting, to foreplay - and just going down on some guy who I've just met without so much as a hand-shake whilst he's staring at a computer screen doesn't quite fit into my idea of whatever it is that means. At least, I didn't think it did at the time.

I am sure there's more to it, but I'm not quite sure what. (Did I think that's what B. wanted? Did I have a sense of competition with the ex, perhaps? Of wanting to say "hey, I can do that too?")

Though I hadn't made the connection before now, there is something about that reticence (okay, cowardly flight) which reminds me of another situation in which I had found myself, a few years prior:

I was, I thought, madly in love with James. We had met at a concert and subsequently hung out a few times, having a drink or watching movies on his roommates couch. Nothing had happened yet. He had been out of town, and while he was gone our flirtatious messaging escalated to ridiculous innuendo.

The first time we got together after he came back we were, as usual, watching a movie together when, seemingly out of the blue, he just looks at me expectantly, sort of motions to his crotch, and asks, "so, you gonna..."

Don't get me wrong, I wanted to suck his cock. Badly. I had been thinking about it for weeks. But I was horrified. He could tell, and asked what was wrong. I blushed and stammered something about his not having even touched me and that he made me feel like a prostitute.

For the record, I did suck his cock that night, swallowing his first load before he fucked me in the ass. He almost always fucked me in the ass - my hands against the wall, his arms wrapped around my throat, he whispering dirty-sweet nothings in my ear as he came. It was his favorite position. (And, for quite a while after I met him, mine).

In retrospect, especially after having actually been paid to get fucked in the ass after sucking someone off, I find something hilariously ironic about the fact that, at the time, I objected to his blatant proposition because it made me feel like a whore.

My fling with James actually serves as a perfect example of my confusion, of how mixed up and emotionally invested I get when, when it comes down to it, it's just about the sex. And the better the sex, the more worthless stock I've invested in it.

Sex with James was better than good. It lasted, off and on, for several months - even after he moved a state away, resuming whenever I happened to be in town. Many people, I think, can just count themselves lucky for a regular lay of such quality, enjoy the other's company for the duration of the fucking, and leave it at that. Not I. I was In Love with someone who, ultimately, I knew next to nothing about. I had all sorts of stories about who I thought he was which, I am sure now, had little resemblance to his true character. If I had had any amount of sense I would have seen that, but I was young and naive, and a bit of a romantic - a character trait over which I have caused myself plenty of grief. Once, after he moved, I had to leave an art gallery because I started crying over a sculpture of nails welded into the likeness of the tip of a penis perched between a pair of plump, steely, lips. It reminded me of him.

Most of my sexual partners, previous to B., were acquaintances to whom, in one way or another, I became as emotionally attached as I did to James - and usually on even flimsier grounds than I had with him. There were a few one night stands, and even fewer actual relationships, peppering the mix, but for the most part I fucked my friends.

The picture I paint here is of a romantic monogamist. Someone who has, mistakenly, used sex as a path to completion with The One; and perhaps subconsciously that is exactly what I was doing. Perhaps what I really want is just to be wanted. But while there might be some truth to it, it's an incomplete picture, a misrepresentation - because I've never really believed in The One, that someone else's wanting can make up for whatever it is I think I'm lacking, and I've never been any good at monogamy. And by "never been good at", I mean that I've never managed to sustain it. And by "never managed to sustain it", I mean that in every relationship I've entered into it wasn't long before I went straight out the side door and became a dirty, cheating, whore.

Sometimes I hate myself for it, and when the hopelessly confused self-loathing kick turns on it's easier to deflect it by deciding that sex, itself, is the culprit, and that I'd be better off without it.

Then I do it again and wonder, "what the hell was I thinking?".