Whew--I'm wiped out. Need a cigarette. Writing two articles about sex for the SBGradMag has done this to me and I still need to muster up the energy, libidinal or non-, to write this blog. I don’t want to write about sex, really, for this, though to be honest at this point I don’t know what else to write about.
If you’ve read my articles for this month (yeah, you should), you might get the sense I know a little about these spaces. It’s true. At first I thought about asking if I could get them published anonymously but, in the end, I’m going to say that I don’t really care if you (as I can only imagine you, dear reader) know that I’ve been in either space. Because why should I? Publishing these under the auspices of “anon” only furthers the mentality that sex is--or should be considered to be--something secretive, shameful, or even just, well, personal.
But this really isn’t the direction I want to go here. Between the two articles and my weekly 50-minute hour of therapy I need a little break from talking about sex.
Love.
Yeah, maybe you were waiting for me to mention it. Maybe I should have snuck it into one of the articles. But you see, for me love really has no place in a discussion about sex--at least the way sex has a place in a discussion about love. (Understatement: I'm no romantic.) I don't think sex is necessarily better when one is in love; I don't think that love is necessarily better than "just" sex. Of course I can go off on some rant about how the Disneyfication of love and romance is what causes people to think within the boundaries of these necessarilies--or that the desire to enfold sex and love, to take two distinctly textured, colorful things and smash them together into one mushy grayish uninteresting mass of chocolates-and-roses romance is not simply bullshit but destructive to the two things it smashes, but I won't. (Though in the act of saying what I wasn't going to do I realized I did...) What I will say is:
Today, “love” makes me think of three things.
One:
Last night at the bar someone let loose with a, ummm, rousing karaoke rendition of Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is.” C’mon, you know it. It’s an awesomely bad song. I’ve experienced heartache and pain, I’ve been walking this lonely world alone, baby show me how to love. Yes, you. My hotel room is on the 8th floor. Ok, so I will admit to really kinda liking this song. There’s something about my secret rock-star alter-ego that allows me to identify with really wanting to “know” love but in the end ending up wanting that special someone who showed me to get the hell out of my 8th floor hotel room so I can brush my teeth and go to sleep in peace.
Two:
Next Friday I’m going to a wedding where I a) haven’t met the bride or groom and b) will only know two people. What I do know: a) I hate weddings and b) I bought the hottest little velvet & lace dress ever created to wear to it. I love that dress.
Three:
I talk in my sleep. I’ve done this as long as I can remember. People have called me out on it that long, too. Lovers love it. There’s something secretive about the things one says so late at night, the cautious things one whispers when one has no control over what one is whispering. Now to be honest, most of the time I’ve been told I was talking in my sleep I either make no sense at all (which is the case when I’m awake, too) or that I list things: things to do or buy or see, places to go, even my favorite types of coffee (Jamaican Blue Mountain, Ethiopian Yirgacheffe/Yemen, Costa Rican). But sometimes there’s something more. Angers are expressed (once I was told I sat up and shouted at the person next to me, “I f*ing hate you”), inadequacies are articulated, insecurities are laid bare. Like last night. So after the bar I swung by my boyfriend’s apartment to say goodnight. I ended up doing his dishes in an attempt to sober up (and yes, it was a sobering array of dirty dishes) before driving home and by the time I was done with that task I was just too tired to drive home. (It is difficult for me to be direct here.) Now, preface this as I like (I was really tired, a little inebriated, I was coming down with what is today a full-blown cold/flu/misery) there’s no escape. At some point during the night the aforementioned sig-other got out of bed. And, apparently, I asked him not to go.
So much for my life on the 8th floor.
Until next time,
Emily.