The other day I ran into someone I knew. He asked me what I was doing that night. I told him what I was doing that night. There was nothing special or unique about this conversation yet when I walked away I couldn’t stop myself from chuckling.
Having a basic, polite conversation with someone isn’t particularly funny to me. But what is funny to me is having a basic, polite conversation with someone I had sex with. Yeah! Sex! Can you believe it?! Okay, I know there’s nothing crazy about that and, no, the sex wasn’t bad or weird or whatever. But knowing our time naked together wasn’t something that needed to be factored into our conversation is something I find stinkin’ hysterical.
“Hi person I’ve seen naked and hear moan. Here’s a dumb anecdote about my weekend!”
I never imagined there would be a time when sex became a non-thing. That I would be able to walk by someone I fucked without some sort of intense flashback of our time together.
A friend of mine said, “I think I’d get more nervous about seeing someone I had a crush on that I hadn’t boned yet.” I laughed but I also agreed. How is it that someone I want to be naked with could intimidate me fully clothed?! Are my vulnerabilities fucked? Am I backwards, forwards, right, wrong?
I remember the morning after my first kiss...with tongue. I looked at myself in the mirror. Someone’s saliva was in my mouth. I couldn’t look at the person without thinking of our tongues touching. My god! Who have I become?! I know a 13 year old girl is much different than a 34 year old woman. But if that girl knew one day she’d have sex with someone and then it wouldn’t matter, wouldn’t linger in all her thoughts, wouldn’t be a big deal, I’m certain her mind would be blown.
It hasn’t been until recently that the urge to tell someone, anyone, about a new lover disappeared. It used to be at least 10 text messages to friends (old and new) and maybe even a stranger on the elevator. “Psst. Guess who I did last night?”
But maybe it’s as simple as time. Maybe I’m no longer gobsmacked by tongues and touching simply because I’ve existed longer. If that’s the case, will other things lose their pop as I age? Will something that sends a shiver down my spine now barely send a spark later? Will sex become less of an obsession and more of a fact as German actress Marlene Dietrich put it?
I can’t imagine quite yet. There are still times I get dizzy thinking about the movements, the smells, the positions, the bodies, the vulnerability we give and allow from others. It’s fucking nuts! I guess sex is just one of those things that’s gonna be weird. Leonardo da Vinci called it disgusting. He also drew the anatomy of copulation. There will always be competing dualities.
It’s probably why I’m fascinated by it so much. And why I’m also fascinated by rollercoasters, unsuspecting magic tricks, my Instagram dedicated to finding empty train cars. Any moment that is and then isn’t. High and then low. Fast and then slow. I only know how great an empty train car is because I also know the intensity of a packed one. My highs are pointless without my mundane lows.