Slut Shamed?

I recently experienced some conflict with a dear friend of mine in regards to a subject that is very important to me. Neither of us is right or wrong in this instance, the situation is complicated and I don’t pretend to have all the answers. This is simply my perspective on events.

So, it finally happened. Something you would think I experience often but oddly don’t, something I write a lot about but often feel impervious to. I was slut shamed. By a close friend, someone I love whom I had always thought encouraged and supported my life choices, because she has always responded that way to me and my stories.

The incident in question was when I fucked Burly Man, the guy with the girlfriend, in the elevator. During the events leading up to the sex itself, my friend had been so encouraging of the whole scenario I figured she was on board with it. She egged us on, telling him not to invite his girlfriend back to her and her boyfriend's place so it could be just the four of us. She all but put out an air mattress and turned off the lights.

After we left her apartment and did the quickie in the elevator, on my drive home I received a text from my friend that simply said "So........."

So, I told her what happened. She wanted details and I provided them, because I know it's thrilling for her and I really don't care to keep anything to myself anymore.

The next day, when I brought up the fact that she had told Burly Man about my blog, she scoffed.

"Well I never thought you'd actually fuck him!"

This stung for a moment, but I wasn’t sure why so I let it go. Later I thought, really? After all the canoodling and groping at the bar and her helping push it further, she didn't think it was even a possibility we might have sex? Truth is, I didn't think we’d actually go through with it either because he seemed pretty adamant about not wanting to cheat on his girlfriend. So I was going to respect that, while respectfully pushing it to the limit. He was the one who stuck his hand down my pants and initiated the kissing that led to fucking in the elevator.

After it happened and I texted her the gory details, she asked,

"How are you?"

“Fine. You know I don't take responsibility for other people's relationships." 
“He should be able to sleep in the same bed with a porn star [and not do anything]," she responded.

I took this to mean she agreed that I wasn’t responsible, that we were on the same page, but when I felt the disapproving vibes coming off of her the next day, I asked her about it.

"Yeah I do disapprove. It went too far."

"What's going too far and why do you get to decide that?" I asked.

"Fucking him in an elevator is going too far!" She laughed through the phone, incredulous that I didn’t obviously see her point. I asked why she had encouraged the hookup if it made her so uncomfortable.

"I can understand it's fun to walk that line," she admitted.

"Don't you see how it's a little crazy that you would encourage me to do it and then disapprove when I actually go through with it?"

She didn't seem to agree that this was a crazy thing to do.

I understood in that moment a couple of things about my friend: that’s she's a person in a long term relationship and it might be fun to live vicariously through me in these moments of wild abandon, but that she maybe has some of her own feelings of guilt about actually living out these fantasies. My problem was, why hadn't she told me she wasn't okay with it beforehand, but also why was she making this my issue? I don't have a boyfriend, and Burly Man's relationship with someone I don't even know is not my problem. I didn't understand under what moral code I was meant to feel guilty for this and why it's okay to want to fuck someone else and cheat on your significant other but the second you act on those impulses you've done something bad. Isn't wanting to do it cheating in itself and following through on it just the natural progression?

I asked why she had never told me before that she disapproved of my life choices.

"I didn't want to hurt your feelings,” she said. “I didn't want to slut shame you." I wondered why it would even occur to her to slut shame me, why I was being slut shamed now for doing something that in my eyes was not a bad thing. Something I didn’t feel bad about then, and I still don’t now. Why should I hold myself accountable for anyone else's moral compass, even hers, which I never before realized bent this way?

In the moment I felt good about this conversation, I felt good that we’d cleared the air between us and set some things straight. But upon further reflection, I realized I was pretty angry and felt wronged by what had transpired. I also realized I was really sad because I felt a great trust had been broken that I wasn't sure we could get back, now that I knew I was being secretly judged by my friend.

The day after this talk, I headed to Portland for a month. Arriving in this new city, I thought I would be filled with wonder and excitement. Instead I felt depressed. I wandered the streets trying to get out of my head, but found myself back where I started. Within a couple days, I got more sick than I have been for as long as I can remember and was bedridden for four days. During these four days, I sweated profusely and moaned, my body aching to the point that I couldn’t stand up. I crawled to the bathroom and threw up and then lay on the floor staring at the ceiling. I felt like absolute shit, but coming out of the sickness was like coming out of an exorcism and I felt oddly cleansed. Like I needed to purge my body and get back to zero in order to move on from this emotional ordeal.

I’ve thought a lot about what happened with my friend and how initially it didn’t feel that bad, how it was subtle enough to sort of fly under the radar, only to emerge with these intense feelings of anger and frustration. And I started to really wonder why women do this to one another. Why we constantly judge one another, but also why we hold single women responsible for other people’s relationships. Why are we so quick to call another woman a “homewrecker,” as though the man in the scenario had no choice, or no self-control, so it’s up to the single woman to hold the line? That’s one of the great benefits of being single—not being beholden to anyone else’s feelings or the rules of a partnership, so why should I take on that responsibility for someone I don’t even know? Maybe I can’t control myself either, maybe women should be allowed to be as impulsive as men are allowed to be. Why are we supposed to always stand on the moral high ground?

I remember what it was like to be in a relationship, to deny certain impulses in order to stay in that relationship past when I maybe should have. I think we all do that—we don’t admit to certain things in ourselves or in the person we’re with until we’re ready to maybe let those things go, or let the relationship go. I guess what I would wish for myself for my next relationship is that I would demand honesty of myself and my partner and have the kind of relationship where I don’t need to keep my desires and fantasies a shameful secret. I don’t know if that’s possible—I haven’t been in a relationship for four years and in that time my views on all of this have changed immensely.

I feel like I have my own moral code and it has a lot more to do with honesty than it does with being “faithful” or “moral” or “good.” I think truth and honesty are harder and nobler goals than any of these things combined. I think we should be honest about our human impulses. And look at them, and talk about them. Rather than sweeping them under the rug and pretending they’re not there. Once we look at these human impulses and moments of vulnerability, we can start to accept ourselves for who we are and forgive each other a little bit more.

Romance

I had sex in an elevator. With a friend, a colleague, a guy who lives with his girlfriend. It was the second to last night of our collaboration on an all-consuming project that had us working long hours and forced us to get close very fast. We had been strangers a week ago and now we suddenly felt like old friends. That’s how it is on these kinds of intense projects. On this particular day, the flirty banter of the day before when we likened moving furniture to trying different sex positions, had escalated to some pretty touchy behavior. While we waited for the rest of our crew, I sat on his lap in the backseat of a friend’s car as he massaged my back and put his arms around my waist. The more he touched me, the more I felt like a cat in heat. My pelvis throbbed and I responded by digging my butt into his lap. He was big and burly and I hadn’t had sex for like a whole month. You do the math.

My friend Adrienne and her boyfriend were also working on the project and our plan was for the four of us to all go out for drinks after work. I heard Burly Man talking to Adrienne's boyfriend about inviting his girlfriend, whom none of us had met yet. I had to run a couple errands before I could meet them at the bar. I called him from the road to ask a work-related question.

“When will you make it to the bar do you think?” He asked.

“Actually I don’t think I’m going to come.”

“Why?”

“I just don’t really want to be the fifth wheel with the two couples. You guys are gonna start talking about real estate and I’m going to be like, why am I here?” Having had my fair share of experience as the only single person surrounded by couples, I now try to avoid this scenario at all costs.

“Well, I don’t think my girlfriend is coming to the bar.” I suddenly found myself in the awkward position of deciding not to go because his girlfriend was invited and then changing my mind now that she was being removed from the equation. Even to me, it sounded like I was trying to fuck this guy. And I honestly didn’t have any intention of actually fucking him, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the attention, the groping, the flirtation, and I wasn’t in any hurry to replace this situation with one in which I would be forced to keep a polite distance while he canoodled with his girlfriend. Who would want that?

I arrived at the bar and he gave me a big bear hug. It was delicious. Everyone else was a few beers ahead of me, so the conversation quickly veered towards sex. As Burly Man massaged my calves with my feet resting in his lap, I wondered aloud why he was allowed to massage my calves but not my breasts.

“Because breasts are sacred,” he said, half-jokingly.

“What if I do this?”

I sat up, took his burly man hand in mine, and put it on my boob. He squeezed. A ripple of energy went through my whole body.

“You better be careful. It’s been a long time for me,” I said.

“How long?”

I looked to Adrienne, who knows my sex life as intimately as I do.

“Like a month,” I raised my eyebrows.

“That’s a long time to you?!” He seemed almost offended.

Adrienne whispered in his ear, asking if he needed a safe word, if he needed to set some boundary he wasn’t allowed to cross. He hesitated, clearly reluctant to make any promises he wouldn't be able to keep.

“There will be no penetration,” I declared.

Between trying to help him set boundaries and safe words, Adrienne egged us both on, encouraging him to spank me while I was bent over the bar. I glanced around the room, which had filled out substantially since we’d arrived in the late afternoon on a Tuesday. Everyone was obliviously chatting away—was no one noticing the raunchy goings-on in the corner of the bar?

I sat on Burly Man’s lap and he grabbed my crotch. This surprised me. It occurred to me this was a new level of crossing whatever boundary he had or had not set for himself. He dug his fingers into me from outside my pants. I wondered if our friends saw this happening and were politely ignoring it, or if they really had no idea. I tried not to moan out loud.

“What’s going on down there? You feel ready to go,” he said.

“I am,” I whispered into his face.

Then our friends started making plans for us all to go back to their place. The guys wanted to invite Burly Man’s girlfriend to join us, clearly intending to put a stop to whatever the hell was escalating between us. I said if she was coming I would probably go home.

“I don’t think you want the two of us in the same room right now,” I scoffed. Clearly he hadn’t thought this through.

“If I’m alone in a room with her, I’m going to have sex with her,” he pleaded with Adrienne, pointing at me, looking genuinely worried. I have to say his lack of self-control was thrilling.

Adrienne made the call: “Why don’t you two come over for an hour, and then your girlfriend can come over. Or you can just go home.”

I laughed. We all agreed to this plan, knowing it was a lie.

Back at their place, we drank more beer and ate some pizza. I was tucked in with Burly Man and when I sat up to grab a slice, he unhooked my bra, bringing his hands around to cup my breasts. I took off my bra and put it on the couch. Adrienne picked it up and studied it, musing that she wouldn’t ever wear a bra that wasn’t padded.

We settled in to watch the latest episode of Silicon Valley and he grabbed my crotch again, again digging his fingers into me through layers of clothing. I wondered if he’d dig a hole in my pants. I glanced over at Adrienne and her boyfriend on the other end of the couch—was it possible they didn’t see what was going on next to them?

Adrienne got up to get some blankets. She put one on herself and tossed one next to me, as if to say: ‘Now you can have some privacy.’ The second the blanket was on us, his hand was down my pants and his fingers were buried inside me. I could hear fabric ripping, so I quickly and quietly unbuttoned and unzipped to make it easier for him. I tried not to moan as he dug into me. My breathing involuntarily quickened. I held the blanket aloft in an attempt to mask the aggressive movement going on underneath. I reached over and felt his crotch. His cock was hard in his pants. We continued to laugh at the appropriate moments in the show, but I honestly don’t remember a single thing that happened in that episode.

When the show ended, I reluctantly re-zipped and buttoned my pants.

“Okay, I’m gonna go,” he announced to the room. I went to the bathroom and prepared to leave myself. I got a text from a coworker with some annoying news and I was back in work mode. Well, that was fun while it lasted, I thought. We hugged our friends goodbye and the two of us walked towards the elevator, me staring at my phone, wondering aloud how I should deal with this issue. The second the elevator doors closed, he was on me. He kissed me, and I remember thinking that kissing was the biggest boundary crossed so far—one I thought we wouldn’t cross. He reached down my pants again and pulled up my shirt. I had left my bra off. He started sucking on my nipples as he fingered me. We hadn’t pressed any buttons in the elevator, so it just sat there. I waited for someone to walk in on us. He took his penis out. It was pink and beautiful and I wanted it the moment I saw it.

“We can’t do that,” I said.

“We’re not going to,” he replied.

And then he tried to stick it in me. Facing one another with my pants around my thighs wasn’t working, so he bent down to take off my boots, and I thought: fuck no, there’s no way I’m going to be the one who's completely naked if and when we get caught fucking in this elevator. Instead, I turned around to give him easier access from behind. He pushed on my low back, holding me down as he fully entered me. My face flushed hot and I felt filled with that old familiar feeling. After probably about five minutes, he pulled out and came on my back. I still had my purse hooked around my arm, and for some reason decided this was the moment to let it drop. I reached down into the convenient bag of clothing I had left at my feet and took out an old sweater. He mopped his cum off my back and then, seeing that some had spilled onto the floor of the elevator, I wiped that up too. 

I buttoned my pants, he pressed the Ground Floor button on the elevator, and we walked out of the building, stunned and grinning.

“So, that happened,” I said.

“No, it didn’t,” he said.

“What happens in elevators, stays in elevators.”

“I’ve never done that before… Cum that fast.”

I laughed. “Oh, I thought you meant had sex in an elevator.”

“Yeah, that too.”

He walked me to my car. We kissed goodbye.

“Okay, see you tomorrow. Bye!”

The next day at work, he asked me if I planned to tell our friends. He told me not to write about him (Adrienne had told him about my blog—I’m hoping he forgot the name of it). He told me we should do it again sometime. I asked if he wanted to go find an elevator. He told me I would meet his girlfriend that night. He laughed when I told him I thought she was probably really cool.

“That was like a dream. It’s like it never happened,” he said. Whatever helps you sleep at night, I thought.

We finished our all-consuming project and we all went back to our normal lives. I went back to my nights of watching TV in bed by myself, and was suddenly struck with a strong sense of loneliness I don’t usually feel. I watched a sad, romantic indie flick on Netflix called Beginners starring Ewan McGregor and just bawled my fucking eyes out.

On Saturday night, I went to Best Guy Friend’s apartment for our weekly ritual of getting high, eating dinner, and having deep stoned talks in the hot tub followed by watching a movie. In a stoned stupor, I told him about how I realized watching this film that I feel really starved for romance in my life, and that I’m suddenly craving it. I struggled to articulate what it was about Ewan’s portrayal of the character in Beginners that had so affected me. How the way he is with the French girl he falls in love with in the film is how I want a man to be with me.

“When he looks at her, he really sees her. He listens. He sees her whole self and appreciates everything about her. He wants her fully and completely. He’s sensitive and sad and sexy.”

We mused on whether this character was in the writing, or was it just the quality that Ewan brings to every role he plays. Then we tried to find a female equivalent for Best Guy Friend—a famous actress who brings something to all her roles that he could actually see himself in a relationship with. We continued down this stoned rabbit hole for awhile.

“Well, you can have that,” said Best Guy Friend. I didn’t hear him, and he pointed that out too. “You could fall in love next week.” I thought about whether I believed him. “I don’t know if that’s actually what you want though. You’re so busy. Do you have time for it?”

I don’t know if I have time for it, if love would derail me from my life mission right now. But I want to feel that again. That feeling of being in love. That all-consuming, I want you every minute of every day feeling. I don’t know if it’s healthy, and my logical mind says it sounds codependent, but there’s no doubt I’m craving it. It's been awhile for me. Sometimes I worry that my biological clock has started ticking, and that these feelings are connected to a deeper yearning. I am suddenly at an age where several of my close friends and colleagues have babies, and when I'm around said babies, I do feel a persistent throbbing in my ovary-area that’s slightly alarming. Every time it happens I have to remind myself, there’s time for that and now is not the time.

Single For Life

I know I’m supposed to be writing about sex this week. And BDSM. I was supposed to have gotten myself into some epic kinky fantasy adventure so I could come back and report on it. That didn’t happen. Unfortunately, I find myself presently more celibate than I have been in quite some time. I’m not sure why. Probably because my focus of late is on other things besides cock, which I know is shocking and appalling to all of you. I even recently tried to get back into Tinder and the one guy I started chatting with turns out is good friends with the roommate of High School Lover, so I kind of had to put the kibosh on that one.

I’ve also been in a bit of a strange state because my dear friend Heidi is moving away to North Carolina with her husband and the baby boy I watched come out of her body nine months ago. On Sunday we had a little impromptu going away party for them at their house in the valley, and looking around the backyard, a melancholy rendition of Baby It’s Cold Outside playing out of my ex-boyfriend’s iPhone, I realized I was the only single person at this party. I found myself surrounded by five couples, one of which was my ex and his girlfriend. And I didn’t feel bad for myself or that I particularly wished to be part of a couple, but I did suddenly feel like an outsider. Like I didn’t belong. This was no longer my tribe. And that was an odd feeling.

Earlier in the day, we had all gone out to Barney’s Beanery for some goodbye nachos and beer. As we headed for the car, I was planning on riding with Heidi, her husband, and the baby. As I got to the car, I realized our friend Adrienne and her boyfriend had the same idea. Without missing a beat, I headed for Heidi’s brother’s car instead, asking if I could ride with him and his wife. I thought no one had noticed this small moment of single person awkwardness, but Heidi, being an ultra-sensitive observer, spoke up when we got to the restaurant.

“You just had one of those single moments. When we were back at the car. One of those moments of, I have nowhere to go,” she laughed compassionately, clearly feeling for me.

“It’s okay. I’m the leftovers,” I joked back.

Something strange is happening now that I’m in my late 20s. People are pairing off in a more serious way and it suddenly feels like the party is ending and everyone is trying to find someone to go home with so they don’t end up alone or paired off with the only other person that remains: everyone’s last choice. I found out today even Gaffer Guy is engaged. Fucking Gaffer Guy?! Truly the last man standing. Even Mr. Sociopathic alcoholic womanizing misogynist doesn’t want to go home alone.

Heidi and her husband moving away to build a cob house from scratch and start their real life as two adults with a child, that feels like a new chapter for all of us—a chapter that for me feels a million miles away. And I wonder what that means for these friendships. All of these people are going to start getting married and having children probably years before me—it’s already starting to happen. Where does that leave me in this group? Am I forever to be that single friend that is perpetually called out when a group of hot firemen walk by? Am I really going to be that cliché?

Sometimes I feel like the gals in Sex and the City when they go to their friend’s baby shower and they remember her as this wild single lady and find she’s now a stay-at-home mom living in a no-shoes-allowed house in the Hamptons with her husband and two kids. When Carrie arrives at the shower, the woman asks her to take off her Manolo Blahniks and Carrie’s like, “but this is an outfit.”  Sometimes being the kind of woman with screaming babies and toys lying around the house feels so foreign and far away, I wonder if that’ll ever be me.

Last year, one of my girlfriends had a birthday party for which her boyfriend organized a scavenger hunt and assigned each of her friends an hour to take her on a surprise adventure. I didn’t know about this. I was invited to the “after party” later that evening. I arrived at the apartment where a group of their friends sat around reminiscing about the fun they had had that day taking my friend through her various birthday activities. As I tried to laugh along with the general merriment of the group, I found myself instead feeling like a tourist and asking myself, why as one of her best friends, was I left out of the scavenger hunt component of the day? And then I realized that every single other guest at the party was part of a couple. I probably hadn't been left out on purpose as a punishment for being single, but it didn't matter--at that moment, I felt like the last girl in middle school to be picked for kickball teams. I sat there watching the couples ooh and aah as my friend unwrapped the giant set of luxury pots and pans her boyfriend had bought her for her birthday, and thought: this isn’t my world.

Less than a year ago, the six core members of our particular group were having a dinner party in the very dining room now filled with packing boxes. My ex and I were still in a rather undefined post-relationship stage in our friendship. His girlfriend was still a pretty new presence in his life, and he was resistant to even calling her that. Now they live together and I swear I can see marriage and kids on the not-so-distant horizon. Seeing how much has changed just this past year, I can’t imagine what this group will look like a year from now.

It’s interesting how defined we are by singlehood or coupledom. Lately I feel my identity is so entrenched in being single that I literally can’t picture myself in a relationship. And when I’m with other single people, I feel more connected, less alone. I can’t help it, surrounded by couples, I usually feel like the odd one out, no matter how close we all are. One of my girlfriends recently told me that if she’s invited to something, she just assumes her boyfriend is invited too. This drives me insane. The couple of times it's happened that I’ve had plans with a girlfriend and she’s showed up with her boyfriend, I become so irrationally angry. To me the time between friends, particularly girlfriends, is sacred and to assume you can invite your boyfriend is like admitting that you’re so codependent he’s essentially just another appendage and therefore barely counts as a separate person. It’s like when people become part of a couple, they have amnesia about what it was like when they were single. I guess I do too. I can remember back to a time when most of my decisions were made as part of a unit, but that time feels ever so long ago. I can’t imagine that for myself now.

There are so many seemingly inescapable qualities of coupled people that make me want to never be part of one again. Certain subtle freedoms that simply don’t exist, and as a single person I completely take for granted. Like the fact that if I want to leave a social gathering, I don’t have to quietly negotiate with my partner and decide in hushed tones when we want to leave and if we want to have another drink and who’s driving. I can just say goodbye and walk myself out of the house and drive my ass home. There are none of those awkward public disputes where you have to go off to the side to quietly fix whatever the issue is, or passive-aggressively pretend that everything’s fine when everyone in the room can tell by the shift in energy that something is up between you two. The fact that if there’s a hot single guy at the party, I can flirt with him openly and unabashedly without keeping an eye on where my partner is or feel his eyes watching me across the room, monitoring my behavior. The list goes on.

Things like this I remember about being in a relationship, and I see with my coupled friends, make me want to stay single forever. But the truth is that, obviously, I don’t want to be single forever. Who does? But I know myself, and my track record. I don’t date people casually. I fuck people casually, and then I meet someone I actually really like and I end up seriously dating them for four years. Although I would like to meet someone I like, I’m not in a big hurry to give up my hard-earned identity as an independent single woman. Being on my own has become so a part of who I am, and I’m proud of it. I think it’s made me a stronger, better person. I like that I can show up at a party by myself and find someone to talk to and I don’t need a familiar crutch to lean on. I like who I am when I’m single. I like not having to compromise or check in with anybody. I like that I can do what I want 100% of the time.

That said, I do get tired of making all of my decisions alone, and generating all of my own energy, and never having anyone to lean on. It does get tiresome, and lonely. I’ve been thinking a lot about this as I watch Heidi and her husband take this next step in their life and relationship.

When Heidi met Alex a couple years ago, she was already entrenched in a relationship with her first boyfriend and they lived together and seemed to be in it for the long haul. Then she met Alex and her world got turned upside down. Within a short time, she broke up with her longtime boyfriend, he moved out, and Alex moved in. Not long after that, they got pregnant and decided to have the baby. And then within a year they were making plans to leave LA and start a new sustainable lifestyle in North Carolina where they found they could fully commit to the living off the land model they had been trying to create in the backyard of their home in the valley. I think about if Heidi hadn’t met Alex, how her life would be different now. Meeting him changed her world and her priorities, allowed her to fully commit right now to a dream that felt very far in the future.

I feel like it is often the woman in a relationship who will adjust what she wants to compromise with what her partner wants in their life together. I guess one thing I love about Heidi’s relationship is that the opposite happened. She had this dream of building a cob house out of the ground and living a sustainable lifestyle, and Alex totally got on board with that dream, and it became their shared purpose. Now Alex is going to be the one doing the internship and learning how to build their house from scratch, as Heidi takes care of their baby.

“I had this idea, and I thought I would be the one doing it, and now he’s doing it instead,” she marveled. I could tell she had mixed feelings about this, part of her wanting to be the one to execute their dream. But I suppose that is constantly the balance and dilemma of motherhood: wanting to be with your baby all the time while they’re in those first precious couple years you’ll never get back, but also wanting to live your full life and continue feeding the passions you had before the baby came along. Mostly, Heidi seems in awe that she has found a man who shares her vision and wants to put his whole self into living it with her. She knows how rare that is.

I realize, watching them head off on this journey, that this is the kind of relationship I want. The kind of relationship that will inspire me into the next chapter of my life. Someone I can truly co-create with. Someone who supports my dreams and whose dreams I want to support. Or better yet, someone who has the same dream as me. I know now that at this moment in my life, I won’t settle for anything less. Until I find that, I’d rather be alone.