I think a lot of us live in fear that the sex will dry up for us, and we’ll be left horny, frustrated, and humping furniture. Or maybe it’s just me. My first relationship set a precedent for that: at some point Reginald Sleeth just stopped wanting to touch me, and that damaged our longevity and my self-esteem almost as much as all the abuse did, if indeed in our case one can completely separate the two.
I still don’t understand how it happened. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that everything Reginald found challenging and attractive in my personality had withered away by that point. Maybe he’d mentally moved on to his next victim. Maybe he’d been faking everything sexual with me and got tired of humoring me. Maybe finally having vaginal intercourse was too great a turn-off to recover from. Whatever made the sex die, I’m glad now that it did because it made it easier to walk away, but it was devastating at the time.
But my second relationship wasn’t exactly validating either, and brought up the question of whether it’s worse for the sex to dry up, or to have to keep wondering why it never got around to getting damp in the first place.
Perhaps Aldo Melastophilus and I shouldn’t have started dating. We were so great as friends. Our conversations popped with absurdity and hilarity in ample and equal parts. We could spend hours doing art projects together like six-year-olds, or have super serious time discussions about the sociopolitical wisdom that Opeth songs held for dinosaurs, if dinosaurs were to still exist and like death metal. We got along famously. It didn’t bother me that he was also very good looking. I’m open minded like that.
Then one day he walked me to my car after an evening together, and lunged forward to kiss me. Which was very surprising indeed, but I regrouped eventually and we kissed a little more.
Eventually we evolved into regular making out, but not significantly fewer art projects. After our early progress, it seemed like I was doing all the escalating. I was the one to introduce his hands to the concept of potentially interesting things being present under my shirt. Eventually I removed my shirt, and then later my bra. I put my hands down his pants. I put his hands down my pants. I may have given him his first blow job, and I could tell– like some kind of disappointed sixth sense– that I was the first girl he tried giving oral sex to. He didn’t seem to dislike any of these activities, but damned if they weren’t always my idea.
This sexually forward person I’m telling you about really doesn’t sound like me, does it?
The first time we tried having penis-in-vagina sex (on my initiative, naturally) it was awkward. His bed was lofted and he’s almost a foot taller than I am. Add inexperience squared to those key facts, and there was no immediately obvious solution as to how to configure our bodies to make our genitals match up correctly. I think we just ended up on the floor, or possibly his computer chair, which I remember us breaking somehow either then or on another attempt. He got inside me, but went soft soon after.
A word on losing your boner: it’s really, really not a big deal. Until it is. First time pressure to perform is just too great? Understandable. Stressed lately? These things happen. You swear this never happens to you? Let’s just cuddle. It’s really not the end of the world, although I would respectfully like to remind you that you still have fingers and I still have needs. But when it happens every time there’s a problem, and that problem is my ego.
Turned out, Aldo could keep wood all the way to orgasm when I gave him oral sex, but not so much when my vagina came into the picture. We just failed at having vaginal intercourse every damn time. I don’t think we ever rode that pony for more than a minute or two, tops, before his erection faded. And he never, ever came when we were fucking. After many failures I quite naturally concluded, as any reasonable person might do, that my pussy was repulsive and that I was probably also disgusting in every other way that matters. I slipped into a sadly resigned stone approach: forgetting about being touched; just trying to give him orgasms and abandoning any idea of my own.
Of course we were doomed. I’m not saying that stone/pillow queen relationships can’t work, but when I am part of us and that’s what we’re doing, we’re doomed. So very doomed. Doomed doomed doomed. He was embarrassed, I was frustrated, and eventually we just stopped calling each other. Much later he told me that he’d been slipping into a clinical depression at the time.
“It wasn’t you; it was me,” he confided.
“I can not believe you just retroactively it’s-not-you-it’s-me-ed me,” I disclosed. It was truly a time of healing.
Maybe it was just depression. Maybe I wasn’t repulsive. I really don’t know. Maybe Aldo just isn’t a very sexual person. For all the conversations we’ve had while and after we were dating, he has never once mentioned dating anyone other than me. Manifold nuances and forces could have conspired to keep his penis out of my vagina. All I know is that I’m still much, much less aggressive than I was back before Aldo and I became fuck-crossed lovers.
Fuck-crossed (Pt. 2)
