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.

Mr. Intimidated

I haven’t written in weeks because life and work have been keeping me too busy for the moments of reflection I need to blog about it. I guess the main thing to report is that I got rejected by Mr. Intimidated. Which, although I sort of felt it coming, was still a bit of a shocker.

As a refresher, this is the guy with whom I had three consecutive dates. On the first, we had sex and he initially expressed that he felt intimidated by me and that he was going through a bit of a life crisis. On the second, we saw It Follows and when he dropped me off and I went in to kiss him goodnight, he kept his lips pursed tightly shut. On our third date, we ate ramen and talked and laughed and when he dropped me off, I decided to not initiate the pursed-lip kiss and he didn’t either so instead we sat awkwardly for a moment until I shouted “okay, goodnight!” and ran into my house.

If you remember, I liked this guy a lot despite his obvious baggage and the awkwardly sexless nature of our interactions. I felt that he wasn’t quite what I was looking for and that I had a lot more going on than him, but still enjoyed spending time together and wanted to give it a try.

A couple days after our third date, I booked tickets to see Sleater Kinney perform at the Hollywood Palladium and, with no angry feminist female friends excited to go with me, I invited him. He said yes, that he loved Carrie Brownstein and was excited to go.

“It’s gonna be like an episode of Portlandia,” he said.

“Cacao,” I responded.

Then I didn’t hear from him for two weeks. A mutual friend told me he was out of town at a movie premiere. I texted him “congratulations and have fun” and he sent me a pic of his premiere outfit. I felt something was up when I didn’t hear from him again. A week before the concert I texted to check in.

“Hey, are you still going to the concert with me next week?”

I headed into a meeting and forgot about it. During the meeting, I was midsentence when my phone vibrated and I glanced down at it. I caught the following on my lock screen: “Hey. I know I sort of fell off the map these past few weeks. I appreciate you inviting me but I don’t think I want to go...” My words caught in my throat and I lost my train of thought. I thought it best to wait until after the meeting to read the rest, but having no self-control or patience whatsoever, I couldn’t resist. It continued: “I’m sorry. I’m just not feeling it. I know I expressed to you how I feel this is a weird time for me, and my lack of sex drive. I think I just don’t want to be going on dates, and want time alone to just figure shit out. Hope you understand.”

The coldness of the message unnerved me. It had none of the usual rejection niceties: “It’s not you, it’s me. You’re amazing. I like you a lot but (fill in the blank). You’re too good for me…” etc. I was also frankly surprised to be rejected by this guy who I felt was (I know this sounds douchey) lucky to have my attention in the first place. I wanted to write: “You’re rejecting me? Seriously?” But I didn’t. I wrote: “I understand. Thank you for your honesty.” I did appreciate his honesty. And I actually did understand—after our very first date, in light of his personal crisis and recent breakup, I had told a friend of mine, “He probably shouldn’t be dating anyone right now.” But I was still taken aback by how quickly and cleanly he had cut it off.

And I sort of felt like crying. I thought we had fun together, and that was worth something to me. For whatever reason, I actually liked him more than most of the men I meet. But then I was also grateful, and felt profoundly that I had been let off the hook. I would have let it go on for weeks because I liked him. Even though it was awkward, and I knew I wanted something more, and it clearly wasn’t the right thing for either of us at this moment in time.  

I was also slightly annoyed that he hadn’t told me sooner he didn’t want to go to the concert. Would he have told me at all if I hadn’t asked, or would he have let the day roll around and offered some last minute excuse? I scrambled to fill his spot, and decided to invite my friend the DILF, a 40 going on 25 year old Man Child I had sex with over a year ago. He said yes immediately, although he didn’t know the band. Then, apropos of nothing, he texted:

“I am so angry today. I gotta meditate before shooting this gig.” Immediately, I regretted inviting him. Not knowing what to say, I asked why he was angry.

“I’m just frustrated with everything and blaming myself therefore taking it out on the world today.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I replied lamely, not wanting to hear any more.

Why are all the men I attract carrying so much baggage, and why do they all feel the need to take it out and show it to me without my asking to see it? Why do I feel more like a mother figure to these lost boys than an equal, a partner, a lover? Where is my equal and why can’t I find him? I went on Facebook seeking distraction and soon found myself stalking the Hot Guy I slept with at my Housewarming Party back in October. I found a photo of him lying on the beach next to a girl kissing his sweet bearded face, #staycation. A wave of sadness passed over me. Not because I necessarily want to be with this guy, although I did have a slightly desperate moment of trying and failing to see him again after that night we slept together. And I haven’t seen him since. But I suddenly viscerally felt the reason people feel sorry for single folks, and this is not a feeling I usually relate to. In a way, I also felt relieved. Because I could let it go—that weird distant hope in the back of my mind that I might someday run into this incredibly hot man I slept with once, and we would go on that follow up date. 

“You’re strong, you’re like a sturdy tree, that’s why these guys are attracted to you,” said a wise friend. I guess that’s true, but I also think these men somehow think I’m stronger than I am. They don’t see my vulnerability and therefore feel intimidated or insecure around me. Maybe this is my fault. I know I do present with a lot of confidence and bravado, and maybe I’m looking for a man who has the strength and confidence in himself to help bring out my vulnerable side.

I was chatting to this guy on Tinder, a kinkster looking to get into some dom-sub play. Naturally, he wanted me to dominate him. He said he was into “feet, ass worship, objectification, voyeurism, domestic servitude, to name a few.” When I shared that I was from NorCal, he shot back: “I was just telling my roommate how San Fran women are so masculine. They need men to inspire their feminine side.” At the time I thought this was an incredibly dumb thing for him to say and showed an extreme lack of good sense. What kind of man thinks it’s a good idea to call the woman he wants to sleep with “masculine”? Masculine to me means I have a mustache and big calves. I value people putting thought into how they communicate, and his word choice was so thoughtless it was virtually irredeemable, and a big reason why I never ended up meeting up with him.

Now I think part of my strong reaction might have been that, poor word choice aside, maybe this guy was actually onto something. Maybe I do need a strong man to bring out my feminine side. The best relationships I’ve had with men have been when they could see past my feminist rants and loud mouth opinions and crude jokes into the sensitive and thoughtful person underneath. They have been with men who feel empowered, rather than belittled, by my strength. Despite my know-it-all personality, my ex-boyfriend always knew how to find the softness in me, and he always understood his value in our relationship. Best Guy Friend will debate me all day long—he knows how to find the weak spots in my seemingly ironclad arguments and enjoys poking holes in them. This is the kind of give-and-take I need in a man. I think I often like to be right and I get frustrated when people argue with me, but conversely it’s hard for me to respect anyone who doesn’t have their own strong opinion.

I realized after my second date with Mr. Intimidated that I didn’t know what he thought of the movie we had seen. I didn’t remember him saying one way or another. I asked him about it on our third date, shoveling ramen into my mouth.
"I just realized I don't know what you thought of the movie."
"What?" He looked surprised that I would bring this back up.
 "I don't think you ever said what you thought of It Follows."
"Oh. I loved it," he responded flatly.
"You did? Really?! You didn't tell me that."
"Well, you just seemed so weirded out by it I guess I just didn't know what to say."
I stared at him. Something in me felt disappointed. I couldn't imagine being in a relationship with someone whose opinion they wouldn't share for fear of disagreeing with me. I would eat that person alive. I pictured a future of me monologuing and him nodding vaguely by my side. This image made me shudder. I should have called it right then and there--at that moment, I knew instinctively that this would never work.