The morning after, I am maddeningly itchy.
This is not itching of the embarrassing localized variety, the type which makes one wonder if the previous evening's rum 'n Coke-fueled bacchanalia also included a surprise sidecar of contagion.
This itch is all-encompassing. Tiny welts cover my skin. As soon as one has been clawed into submission, another is already screeching for attention.
I consider lolling naked in a wading pool full of calamine lotion.
I debate snorting a few crushed Benadryl through a sippy-cup straw.
In a moment of inspiration, I flop to the carpet and commence writhing, an ecstatic self-flagellant of the Church of the Itchy Fucking Proboscis.
In retrospect, I should have used bug spray. Lots of bug spray. I should have located an industrial drum of pure DEET and upended it over my head in honor of my triumphant BugBowl victory.
Bug spray. That, I realize, grinning and making carpet-angels with my itchy limbs, is my only regret.
Female sexuality is a razorblade-seeded apple, a cup of Jonestown Kool-Aid, a banana split with a scoop of vanilla, a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of Semtex.
In other words, sweet, sticky and explosive.
No one fucks in a vacuum. Much like Britney's parenting acumen (breaking news: Sean Preston, 25.3 pounds, carried in Snugli only weight-rated to 24 pounds!), the entire subject has been analyzed, politicized and proselytized into the ground.
No matter how private the act, you can rest assured that every sigh, heave, word muttered and scream uttered has been debated by experts and ordinary schmucks across the moral and political continuum. Culturally, we're much like a five year-old - simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by sex, not to mention utterly incapable of resisting the allure of a closed bedroom door. This carnal curiousity impacts every member of society (surprise, your blow job is on JumboTron!). However, it is women, the gender not possessed of a chromosome with a delightfully authoritative lower prong, who bear the brunt.
First and foremost, there's the "You Might As Well Suck Off the Washington Monument" conundrum. For many (but no means all) Third Wave women, sex is as rife with sinister implications as the avant-garde play which so often preceeds it (marginally-related note: am I the only person who has ever gotten some immediately following a viewing of "Boys Don't Cry"? "Wow, that was... um... wow." "Oh, yeah. Say, wanna do it?"). As delightful as your partner's penis may be individually, it is a member of a Penile-Industrial Complex which includes date rapists, ass-grabbers, men who've uttered the phrase, "She was asking for it", men who are firmly convinced that a female president would be outmatched, overwhelmed, prone to bawling during State of the Union addresses and, every twenty-eight days, threatening to deploy ICBMs to Switzerland unless they send over some fucking Nutella immediately.
And then, of course, there's Receptacle Theory. Sadly, this belief is not limited to conservative wingnuts who hunt squirrels with shoulder-mounted rocket launchers. It goes a little somethin' like this: One needn't look too closely to see a violent aspect to penetrative sex. Outside of some particularly festive fetishistic circles, the squishy, vulnerable penatradee role is typically filled by a female. Together, these two themes merge, mutate and lead to the notion that a woman's emotional nature is analogous to her physical one. You're a gash, a walking wound, tender and sensitive. You are the bagel, the doughnut, the torus of timidity. You are, and perhaps I should go have a snack before formulating any further metaphors, the slab of prime rib and not the rivet-handled knife. You don't take, you give. You don't invite, you consent. And in matters of power, politics and lustful grappling, you will never, ever have the upper hand.
What sane female, it's implied, would endure all that sticky debasement solely for her own gratification?
At worst you're a whore, lacking the requisite moral fiber to keep your virtue safe from unscrupulous men bearing love, comfort, flattery or high-test Columbian White.
At best you're an overly-indulgent mother, grudgingly allowing her mischievous boy to swipe a cookie from the jar without swatting his hand.
You just can't win.
Unless, of course, you can.
"You like that, you slut?", pants my companion for the evening. "You whore? You... you... fuckin'... prostitute?"
Well, as a matter of fact... yes.
Bemused, I wonder if he's consciously trying to be as misogynistic as possible. Is this a blow job or a piece of performance art? I consider asking if he'd like to pause and retrieve a thesaurus ("Harlot! Libertine! Hold on, gotta turn the page... wench!"). Uttered by the wrong individual, this derisive litany would be more than a bit disturbing. Coming from a slyly funny academic (whom I've personally seen reading "Horton Hears a Who" to a sleepy toddler), it's amusing and, strangely enough, incredibly arousing. If the heart works in mysterious ways, it's only taking cues from its southerly compatriot, the groin, who works in some truly mind-bending ones.
Sometimes, head is just head.
Sometimes, what's IN your head is more or less the only thing that matters.
Afterwards, the car's windows glowed and sparkled white, sodium-arc streetlights illuminating our accumulated frantic breath. I reclined, kicked my foot over the passenger's head rest, smiled, felt utterly, goofily alive.
Talk-show hosts, eyebrows contorted into permanent furrows of concern, love to discuss the myriad of misguided reasons why women sleep around. "Sometimes, it's peer pressure," they intone, "Sometimes, just wanting to be loved, supported, understood." Parents, educators and the federal government all devote an unholy amount of energy to keeping the legs of America's young ladies firmly closed. Casual sex is a dangerous, messy, potentially deadly enterprise; no place, it would seem, for a lady.
It can also be phenomenal. Sweet, sticky, explosive... and a superpower. If done right, flexing one's feminine wiles feels fantastic. It's like a slow, sultry yogic stretch. Education sharpens the mind, exercise sharpens the body, sexuality sharpens the spirit (as well as making one's neurons fizz and crackle like Pop Rocks). It's like being Cleopatra and the Sphinx, simultaneously.
We took a convoluted walk afterwards, traipsing across dew-soaked neighborhood lawns and darkened baseball fields. Plump, brazen mosquitos dive-bombed every inch of my bare skin. I can only be so mad at them, as each and every one of the poor bastards probably expired of alcohol poisoning shortly thereafter. At one point, the conversation turned to science, and when asked for my favorite scientist, I scrunched up my brow, wracked my slightly-pickled brain and finally shrieked, "Richard Feynman! Richard Fuckin' Feynman!"
Particle physics and perversion. Two extremes of the human experience. One muggy, mosquito-filled night.
I liked it. I liked it very much indeed.
Labels: Best Of, Dating/Mating, The Compleat Thumbscrew
