“What's a fuck when what I want is love," Henry Miller asked.
It took me two hours to do something that should have only taken 15 minutes, but I’m looking for love, strange dates, laughs around 2am at a Thai restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard, and someone who can sleep in on weekdays every so often. I need my Bumble, Hinge, and Tinder profiles to reflect that thoroughly. Apparently, in the two hours it took to create the greatest online dating profiles ever, a new sexual revolution began and no one bothered texting me to keep me from being the one man on these apps actually looking for something serious. Everyone’s fucking with no emotions and I’m in the streets looking for like, love, and maybe a thigh to hold tight to while driving across some flat lands.
I’ve always been a little behind the curve when it comes to sexual expectations. I lost my virginity after all my boys, according to them. I’m also the last one to complete my bucket list of sexual partners, but honestly, it’s difficult finding a dwarf who’s into role playing and down for a donkey punch. I’ve never successfully executed a one-night stand. I stopped each of them before they turned the knob to leave and days later we’re sitting on the side of a mountain laughing at how out of shape we are and just how much we have in common. They’ve all become more than intended and I cursed my ability to make people feel comfortable and loved. NSA (No Strings Attached) has not been my forte. I hate being forgotten. Perhaps had this tidbit remained unknown to those friends I speak with so candidly about sex, I’d have know about the beginning of this sexual shift.
My dick no longer gets hard for the same random encounters I’ve enjoyed time and time again. There are now prerequisites that must be achieved; an amazing conversation and a strong opinion around politics, religion, and rape apologists. Now, when there are glances exchanged with a stranger across a restaurant or across a bar, hopping into the bathroom with that stranger is no longer my first thought; walking over, introducing myself and talking about life and the possibility of a first date where we’d get to know one another is. Equally, when swiping up and down, left and right, and tapping yes’s and no’s, I’m thinking about the adventures, the hikes, the weird shit that’ll happen when we randomly get left by our bus at the UK border during a spontaneous-as-fuck weekend trip, not which nude would make the perfect ice breaker.
“You want too much,” Jason, my friend and possible coiner of the term, hook-up culture, told me. “All these dating apps are just for fucking. I thought you, of all people, knew that.” I pretended to not know, remaining foolishly optimistic that each conversation wouldn’t quickly go from planning the first date next week to agreeing to meet tonight by the river to fuck on a park bench hidden by a tree. I’ve advanced the culture as far as I could. I’ve been learning my body at least since I was six, and learning bodies that didn’t look like mine since seven. I’ve remained opened to explore and have been lucky enough to find partners open to do the same. At 19, my girlfriend was 44 and she held nothing back in the lesson planning and execution. When I started wearing suits to work in my early 20’s, I found lovers in chats rooms and social media who wanted to see if blindfolds and straps would take us to new limits. It wasn’t until 31 that I realized I’d never properly made love after waking up in a bedroom doorway, having never made it to the kitchen to get the water we thought we needed to stay alive after pushing each other to our spiritual, physical and emotional limits. I’ve had the threesomes and I’ve played voyeur, exhibitionist, and master. I stopped wearing deodorant for one lover, and drank the breast milk of another, and each time, I’ve attempted to normalize these things through loud, public conversations.
This revolution, from the beginning, has been set to music, and now it’s set to car horns, to babbling brooks, to balloons popping, to slightly new fetishes like sneezing. It’s becoming more difficult to walk into a Starbucks and not hear the 19-33 year old Macbook owning latte sippers talking about pissing in the mouth of a stranger they met on Craigslist. I can’t throw stones. I love that we are opening up and discovering our own pleasures, not just leaning on that old line, “I just want to make sure you’re pleased” because it excuses us from being vulnerable for our lovers. It is now and has always been a cop out. We showed up in that bedroom or in that kitchen or restaurant bathroom to both be pleased, and damnit, we will be pleased. We will leave our inhibitions in our pants pockets and bra cups and search for every pleasure point on our bodies like our happiness depends on it. I laughed at the time, but am now proud of my brother who, 10 years ago, told his girlfriend to stick a finger in his butt because it made him feel good. Did he come from the future?
I’m beginning to understand why my friends made the silly mistake of getting married in their 20’s and not waiting until after they’ve traveled the world, falling in love in nine languages, and running naked with nuns alongside the Thames at 5am. They’ve hooked up countless times and felt empty after and knew it was only going to get worse. They needed to reach for the straws sooner than later. Circa 2008, “I love you” was replaced with “cum inside me” and “we don’t need condoms” and Chris, almost immediately, got married to Francesca in that tiny Brooklyn church because she was an “I love you” girl and he knew how rare that had become. They saw a revolution coming and wanted no dealings in it, so they bowed out gracefully. Meanwhile, here I am wondering where the fucking is taking place, who’s participating, where it will lead us, and if I’m ready and properly prepared. Or is this where I bow out?
By 16, I’d found all the porn stashed around the house and my friends’ houses as well, and I’d read every word of Anais Nin. My mother read E. Lynn Harris, and passed it to me when she was done. A teacher loaned me the copied pages of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, I undoubtedly know every explicit move Prince ever made, and I used college to experiment like the others who came for more than sitting in classrooms. Not long ago, a friend watched no less than 12 people defecate, urinate, and spit on a man sitting in a tub in the basement of a German nightclub. I’m prepared to stay or go.
Watching <em>She’s Gotta Have It</em> in 2017 is not as political as it was when we watched in in 1986, 1991, and 1995. I assume most women I date are dating at least two other guys much different than me. That’s just not revolutionary. It’s not new.
We are free to love whom we want and where we want, and as long as it’s within the law, how we want. All of which were accelerated by the work of Masters and Johnson and Kinsey and Stopes and Gooch. The beauty of now is that we are able to do all of this with much less judgment. The definitions and roles and expectations our parents attempt to push on us were aborted with the babies and thrown out with the bath water. Stephen, my friend since the college years, is doing his part in unapologetically normalizing polyamory and I love him for it and I respect the hell out of his relationship. Stigmas are disappearing, and there are pills available to help in the prevention of diseases that scared the shit out of us just a few months and years ago. If the sexual revolution our grandparents were either participating in or hiding from brought us better porn, coffee shop conversations about anal sex and cum play without whispering, the normalization of premarital sex and the pill, what will happen when this one ends?
This revolution must label itself as such, then give us a mission. The pioneers of the past wanted people to experience true pleasure, whether they talked about it or not outside of the bedroom. This new revolution should result in screams from windows and open talk in barbershops. Sex, however it’s happening between consenting adults, should be normalized. Andre should be able to tell Sarah he prefers to be pegged twice a week and Sarah shouldn’t flinch.
If I am going to participate, I want it to mean something. I already come naked to all conversations about sex, and make sure others are just as comfortable when sharing. Otherwise, I’ll give the last few years of steady, amazing erections to some rare swipe who’ll help construct a relationship that works for us.
When I was 14, my dad, tipsy on a Friday night, said, “I used to cum all night. Now it takes me all night to cum. One day, you’ll understand.” At 35, I’m at the door of understanding what that meant. He’s a man who’s remained on the surface with his communication, taking everything exactly as it was said, meaning exactly what he’s saying. As the son, a better version of him and everyone before me, I translate his uncouth words: Time spent is now important. At this age, invest, sit with it, and be patient.
Barbara, a once-dated, fucked, hated, now-friend, suggests for every 3 dates that lead to a second date, I should accept two offers for - or suggest a drink, and spit-deep conversation that leads to talks about fetishes, fantasies, and how much room could possibly be in the backseat of a Fiat 500.
If I come into this thing, I can’t leave my emotions at the door anymore. I believe in the movement and will do what I can to keep it moving forward, but I need it to mean something.
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