Incidental Sex

Her: "You do realize we'll be stuck like this for *eternity*, right?" Him: "Aww, yeah..."

Some sex is meaningful.

It means something when you finally sleep with that guy in your building you’ve been flirting with for months but never got the guts up to ask out. It means something when the girl from your kickball league you wanted from the moment you laid eyes on her, finally says yes and you end up going all the way. It means something when you sleep with that college RA you always had a crush on, who you hadn’t seen for years but just moved into your city.

In those instances there’s a connection, and the sex is memorable even if the act itself isn’t particularly good. In fact, it’s actually hard for it not to be good, because anticipation is half of what dopamine release is all about.

Damn, boy... that fire's not the only thing that's smokin'!

There’s also the kind of sex where the physicality itself is so good, so explosive, so raw, that it doesn’t matter who it was with. It’s that guy you met in Brazil at a bonfire with whom you could barely communicate (at least verbally), who traced his fingers along your bare shoulder until you were the one dragging him down the beach with a blanket and whatever Portuguese is for Trojan. It’s that girl that rubbed up against you while you did the merengue at your favorite salsa place until you were totally incoherent, who you took back to your place and continued the incoherence nonstop, all night.

Hat trick, anyone?

It’s the pro hocky player who spotted you from the stands and came to ravage you after the game, not even fully taking off his uniform but taking his time while he bent you over the benches in the locker room and lifted you up with your legs around him while he did you against the lockers themselves.

(Obviously this is not a personal fantasy of mine).

At any rate, in those cases your mind is overrun because the only space that exists is taken up by your body. The bends and ridges and curves of you can do nothing but remember the sensual, sexual, creative, intoxicating power of it, the way skin and lips and limbs and thoughts melded into one. It’s the kind of experience where the sex itself carried you beyond the present into the Present, that place where words are lost and grace is found.

Then there’s incidental sex.

Incidental sex is exactly what it sounds like: it just happened to happen. It was a Monday night, it wasn’t particularly inspiring, and it wasn’t particularly memorable – it just sort of occurred.

I had incidental sex this past week. We met up at around 10pm on a weeknight. We had a nice drink at a nice hotel bar. We got along well, both having gone to good schools, both knowing who Kanye is and who Romney isn’t. And after about an hour and a half, we went back to his place.

Now, just to clarify, the sex was good. He could get it up and keep it up and liked to kiss while fucking and could read my body for the most part and genuinely wanted to do what I wanted to do and liked to give oral sex. So really, technically he was a great sexual partner for me.

And yet, even just an hour after I’d gone home and was about to go sleep, I realized that the sex (and the guy) were hardly even in my consciousness. I’d spent the taxi ride home thinking about other things – what classes there’d be at the gym tomorrow, whether or not it was going to rain, my weekend, friends, my life. And the next day when I got a text from a friend asking how the date had gone, I was surprised. I’d practically forgotten I’d even had sex the night before.

To be completely honest, I think this did, in part, have to do with the guy’s technique. It was a smidge mechanical. I think that frankly, I wanted a little bit more care, a little more love, a little more tenderness. (Also, I hate it when men grab my breasts like they’re door knobs. Wtf is that? Does it feel good to you? Do you really think it feels good to me? Well, if you do, think again. It’s doesn’t just not turn me on, it turns me off. In fact, if I were a lamp, you’d be in the pitch-ass dark, motherfucker).

But I digress. The point is, if the sex had been truly spectacular (as I love to harken back to), I wouldn’t have been surprised at the text from my girlfriend. I would have been texting her, because I would have been replaying the scenario in my mind, or looking at my phone hoping he had texted, or simply basking in post-coitus-excellentus bliss.

But I wasn’t. I was thinking about my upcoming workshop and acting and music videos and my writing and all of the rest of the things I’m excited about in my life. I didn’t regret the night before, but I also didn’t want to relive it. I just felt neutral.

In other words, it was a bit like going out to dinner at a good restaurant – not a great restaurant, not a truly extraordinary restaurant, but a good one nonetheless. It’s good while you’re there; the sauce flavorful, the food hot, the waiter attentive.

But it’s not truly exceptional, where even the next day you’re remembering how exquisite the soup was, light and buttery and delicious, or how perfect the bread, crunchy and warm and delicious, or how extraordinary the dessert, a delectable chocolate lava cake with just the right melt-in-your-mouth, feed-it-to-me-slowly-and-make-me-beg-for-more factor.

Nope, most of the time going out to eat is incidental to your life. It’s a meal, a way of nourishing yourself, something you do because you don’t feel like cooking and you don’t want fast food.

And that’s sort of what this was. It was incidental, not fundamental. It was a like going out for a sexual meal, a way of nourishing myself because I didn’t feel like cooking for myself, so to speak. Sometimes a girl just wants take-out, you know? Or in this case, take-ME-out.

You get the idea.

The point is, while there’s nothing wrong with incidental sex, I’ve decided that I’m sort of over it for now. The next sex I have, I want to be good. I don’t need it to be The Best I’ve Ever Had, but I do want to have a few transcendental moments. I want to have at least a times where our bodies are moving together in exactly the right way, where the way that I’m being touched is perfect in that moment, connected and exhilarating and relaxing at the same time. Maybe even transformative.

My body wants this. My mind wants this. My heart wants this. I’m in alignment.

And it’s been a while since I had it, but I’m willing to wait. I’m even willing to forgo some incidental sex.

But if I’m truly honest, I’m hoping I won’t have to wait long.