Month: August 2016

Our Successful Casual Sex Transactions

The other day, I executed one of my first succesful booty calls. (I hate the word booty call, I wish there was a better word for it. It feels outdated and the word “booty” has no romantic or sexual rhythm to it. It’s awful. I’m going to try and find another word for it in the course of this post.) I’ve had casual sex before, but I never really considered them much of an emotionless sex-date because there were either some sort of strings attached or because we had to watch movies or eat dinner first in order to cushion what we already knew – that we really just wanted to have sex with one another.

With this, even though the person I decided to sleep with and I were friends (work friends, now I guess we can consider ourselves real life friends), we specifically detailed the emotionless aspects of the sexual transaction that would eventually take place.

I was in a space in which I was excessively emotionally connected to someone else. That person was connected more seriously with another person which left me lingering almost constantly outside. My primary romantic interest had a secret – and that secret was me. I wanted to have sex with someone else because I wanted a second sexual outlet. And I too wanted the power that comes from having a secret.

The decision to sleep with the other person happened in an unorthodox way. The person with whom I had sex and I went on a fifteen minute coffee break together during work and as this person left, they yelled to me that if I ever needed a booty call, they were available.

I always make semi-reckless decisions when I’m trying to overcome my emotions for another person. This could have been one of them. I’ve slept with a few people in an emotionally stunted daze only to drag myself through some sort of bizarre scenario in which the turmoil of the actual act momentarily makes up for the specific breed of sadness that comes with permanently being relegated to the periphery. For some reason, whenever I put myself in a situation where I want little more than casual sex, I get bizarre sex. I get kicked out of bedrooms for demanding condom usage. I take ecstasy and attempt to feign intimacy. I sleep with bridesmaids at the bachelorette party and groomsmen at the wedding. At my worst, I even download Tinder and swipe right for distraction, only to find that I don’t really want to swipe right at all. Each time, I reexamine my entire life and then do it all again.

But, perhaps because of how thoroughly it was planned, this bout of casual sex was effective. If my primary sexual interest had a secret, then I wanted one too. It was as simplistic as that, childish really. So, the two of us discussed why we wanted to sleep with each other: for me, I wanted to reclaim some of the sense of autonomy that is lost when you feel more intensely attached to a person than they are to you. And, as she said, “she wanted to fuck.” But before we could solidify the contract, our fifteen minute coffee break was up.

So, throughout the course of the day, as I was monotonously selling my labor as a keg in the hyper-capitalist machinery that is the United States workplace, I made up my mind that I did want to sleep with someone else because I did want a secret and I did want a second sexual outlet. But I wanted to do it at least semi-correctly this time, so that day at lunch I laid out all my intentions immediately, from the start, while eating a strange concoction of sweet potato and zucchini smothered in enchilada sauce and my new “sometimes sex-person” ate a mustard and tomato sandwich because minimum wage does not pay for lunch meat.

“I do want to sleep with you. But I don’t have a lot of free time, and I don’t have much more in the way of emotional space right now.”

“That’s fine,” she responded, “I just like having sex.”

And so, the transaction established, the negotiations began:

“I have a mattress on the floor right now,” she said, describing the venue. “No air conditioner, but there’s a fan. I’ll get wine, but it will be cheap wine. Is that okay?”

“I’ll pay you for half of it.”

“I’m not using you,” I added, even though I guess I technically was.

“It’s okay if you are,” she abruptly responded.

“How do you feel about quickies?”

“How do you feel about sex-toys?”

“Will this be awkward at work?”

“What’s your address?”

“You’re ten minutes walk from me.”

“Convenient.”

Our verbal contract was sealed and we made up our minds to be secret sex partners for an undetermined amount of time.

So, a few days later, I called her. Showing up at someone’s house when you know you’re only there to have sex with them is awkward. I don’t know how to approach the situation, the pre-coital small talk. I’m not sure how to act while meeting the roommate, who’s cooking pasta on the stove, pulls me in for a hug instead of shaking my hand. I suppose when you know someone is in your apartment because she’s about to have sex with your roommate, one outer layer of formality can be prematurely shed.

I was glad we had wine. We sat in her room, on her mattress on the floor, in front of the broken mirror she found in a trash-bin outside her apartment. Mirrors are a luxury item. I didn’t have one besides the one I used in the bathroom. I didn’t know what my entire body looked like anymore – I only saw myself as a headshot, had only seen the my torso and face for the last couple of months. Minimum wage does not pay for full length mirrors.

It doesn’t pay for much more than a mattress on the floor. But besides the wine, that’s all we needed.

I sat awkwardly on the mattress and thought of something to say. She had a book on the bed – Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I talked about that, talked about her exposed brick. She apologized for the mess. I told her I didn’t care.

I barreled through two glasses of wine before she admitted she didn’t know how to approach initiating sex with me when I wouldn’t stop clutching the glass. She didn’t want to make me spill but she also thought it was time to get things going a bit. So I set the glass down and we did.

Post-coital casual interactions are far less awkward than the pre-coital only if you leave almost immediately after, which I did. There’s no waking up smothered and sober. Only a walk home, alone, happy to have the space in which to reflect on if you want the sex to happen again.

And, because our interactions were honest and rooted in some level of respect for our intentions and the particular spaces in which we found ourselves, it was something I wanted to do again.

No Label Roundtable Podcast Episode 16

Sean, Miranda and Joe

No Label Roundtable is a bi-weekly podcast produced by three close friends: Casper locals Miranda, Sean, and Joe. Join the inquisitive trio as they seek to learn, educate, and foment cultural enthusiasm through roundtable discussions, interviews, and the unrehearsed amusement that is a talk among friends. There are no scripts; there are no labels. Speakers and headphones are chairs at this table.

iTunes link to subscribe to No Label Roundtable: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/no-label-roundtable/id1054466507

Episode 16. In this episode, Joe, Miranda and Sean sat down to see which road a few beers and cocktails would take them down. The ensuing conversation touched on everything from The Battle of Old Wyoming to video games, space travel, social experimentation, and beyond.

Cinema Danger Duo Podcast Episode 13

Raymond and Miranda as the Cinema Danger Duo

Cinema Danger Duo is a bi-weekly podcast with two friends, Ray and Miranda, who have had too much time on their hands and have watched far too many movies. Together they review three different films for each episode covering a wide gamut of genres. Their spoiler-heavy discussion is less of a critique and more of a jumping off point for discussion. *Warning may contain explicit language, content. CINEMA DANGER DUO IS NOW OFFERED ON iTunes! Please use this link to listen and subscribe through iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/cinema-danger-duo/id1048788079?mt=2

Episode 13. In this episode, Ray and Miranda are joined by their forever guest Tim Kupsick to discuss the films Ghostbusters, Green Room and The Lobster.

Our Sexual Coming of Age

The first time I feel like I really had sex was in college. In high school, although I’d had sex, the experience were primarily made up of fruitless backseat blunders, of frustrated attempts at sexual satisfaction through the hands of sexually illiterate teenage boys.

Before college, I assumed sex was supposed to be bad. I assumed it was supposed to be awkward and that I was supposed to be awkward and that I was supposed to awkwardly resign myself to non-rhythmic pelvic thrusts of the worst order. I didn’t bother faking orgasms because that was irrelevant to the people who would have been giving them to me.

So, we’ll say that my sexual coming of age came in college. It started with a man we will call Sven, because that’s originally what I thought his name was. He was in Spanish with me, and I was attracted both to his height and his name (Sven) which was not really his name. The teacher’s accent made it sound like Sven. It was really Van. Well, everyone called him Van. In reality, his name was Marvin. His middle name was Van. I found both of his fake names appealing and pursued a man because of a name that was not really his.

Of course, I also pursued him for other reasons. He was stereotypically attractive – very tall, sort of cocky, athletic. Normally, I don’t date athletes. I especially don’t date cocky athletes. But somehow, on Van, it suited him.

I also never dated him. But I did sleep with him for two years.

Perhaps one of the reasons I didn’t date him was because he was an athlete. And he had a fan base. Women would gather at his games holding signs with his name on it, fawning over him like anything ever done on a court actually mattered. I was generally opposed to athletic based glory, with the entitlement that came from sports notoriety. I only attended his games if they were offering free food.

But, seeing him the first few days of Spanish class getting called a name that wasn’t his opened up a space for me to pursue someone I otherwise never would have.

Actually, I need to emphasize the point that at eighteen I was not interested in the same people I was at 22 or 24 or even earlier – at 21. At 18 I was interested in pursuing people who made me want to actively engage in sex with another person. Something that my high school boyfriends never actually did. I liked Sven’s/Van’s/Marvin’s back. That was enough.

So when I saw Van, who I thought was Sven, who had a muscular back and a persona that was actively sexual – a persona unlike any other eighteen year old I had at that point met, I decided that I was going to have sex with him.

And I did. In the library.

It was the first time I had actively taken control of my own sex life. Before that, I sat passively and allowed occasional penetration more as a formality than as anything even representative of legitimate desire.

I had read somewhere that if you look at somebody’s mouth when they’re talking to you that it will automatically situate you in a sexual context. Ignoring the fact that I have no recollection of where I’d heard this, ignoring the fact that this idea likely resembles much of the overly analytical and entirely inaccurate sexual advice columns a la Cosmo magazine (magazines I grew to detest as my feminist consciousness gradually expanded), it worked.

It worked because it made me look at him and made him know that I was looking at him. It worked because for the first time, perhaps not as subtly as I intended, I intentionally put myself into a situation that I hoped would turn sexual. I didn’t just get put there.

So I stared at his mouth and talked to him and had sex with him in the library. And then again, in his room. And then again and again for the next two years.

But we never dated. We never even verged on serious. I would run into him while he was leaving his dorm with girl after girl, I would sometimes attend his games (like I said, if they offered free food), and we would still get together and talk. And have sex. We talked primarily about sex. He showed me the porn he watched. We talked, conversationally, about what we expected out of someone we were sleeping with. We talked about our evolving sexual selves and solidified that, although we got along well, we would not start dating. For Valentine’s Day, he took me to a sex shop in the basement of a barber shop and allowed me to buy whatever I wanted. It was the least romantic thing that a person could have ever done, but it was entirely appropriate.

It was, really, what our relationship was about. I liked to think that perhaps it was more than an excessively long bout of booty call, that he must have preferred me to the girls who held up signs at his games and flocked to his room in bulk. But ultimately it doesn’t matter. They wanted to have sex with him and did. I wanted to have sex with him and did.

What was important about the relationship, perhaps what gave it its staying power, was that through him I learned that it was appropriate both to have and to articulate sexual desire.

I talked to him briefly, recently. We caught up. He’s playing basketball in Germany and completed his masters and is probably still having a lot of sex. We talked about our lives and our plans and the lapse of time in which we’ve not seen anything of each other.

He took a semester off after our second year of college. We stopped talking during that time. I saw him, upon his return, at a bar near campus. He helped me carry my drunk friend home. As I sat with her, holding her hair back and watching her puke, he sat on a seat in the corner and said, “what’s your sign again?”

I looked at him. I was confused. Although amusing, I never found any real logic in astrology. I never cared for it. But, still holding my friend’s hair, I responded, “Aquarius.”

“I’m Aries” he said, “we’re compatible.”

Despite the illogic of it, we were. Maybe not romantically, but sexually. And really, at that time, that’s the type of compatibility I actually needed.

Don’t C*ck-Block My Food Game

I’m just going to come right out with it; actually, it seems I already did. It’s not as though my current life revolves around clandestine hook-ups at seedy establishments meant to procure drugs and weaponry (albeit the day we as a people recognize food and water as both, and our primary path to freedom, will we truly be). Although that seems to be the response I receive when ASKED, by the dick who deems it necessary to bait me into loaded questions s/he knows are going to be answered honestly, as that is my nature. Additionally, it is in my nature to know what it is I’m talking about. Call me archaic, but I am from the school of either know and control the flow out your mouth, or, shut what they call the fuck up and learn something. I like to read; I know a bit of a misdemeanor anymore, and depending on the content, felonious. And, it is that (the content of what I tend to read) where I see truth is stranger than fiction and so I dance with a lot of non-fiction, and in that realm, anything that may help lead me to, well, understanding. For reasons that we may explore some other time, this has the qualities that tend to put some on the defensive.

So, the catalyst to this diatribe; it wasn’t a person or a group of people, more of a train of thought that should have derailed at the station prior to departure. We live in a reality where food is an integral part of existence. Since we have such an intimate relationship with food, it begs the question of why wouldn’t someone want a positive relationship with that which they sodomize themselves with (mind you I merely mean that anything you put into your mouth should pass some sort of evaluative process prior to entry). I know quite well my place in the universe (roughly) and suffice it to say it is quite a bit lower in perfection than say, God (Allah, The Universe, … I read somewhere that God has all names and no name) and so is that of any mortal. So why would I opt to ingest something created by “Gary” instead of God? Now, I’m no snob, and I’m just starting to play around with that which we were blessed with, before people decide to ‘make nature better’ (If that is not the definition of audacity; better than The Universal Source). Again, that really isn’t even the point. Neither is that the very people who are so vehemently opposed to my lifestyle are the very ones that could use the help that comes from avoiding the industrialized diet. Behavior tantamount to running headlong into brick wall and wondering why you have a headache, then claiming that changing from brick to wood to drywall, to cinder block will lead to less headaches. Now, I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, but if asked, I might recommend that you stop running into the fucking walls all together.

I equated human beings’ relationships with food like that of any other relationship; what you experience in the end is the culmination of the integrity of the micro to that which creates a beautiful macro. Any blissful couple (regardless of gender composition, but definitely dependent on happiness and longevity) will tell you, all the seemingly day-to-day aspects are what make Utopia possible on Earth. And so with food; my experience is very intimate, and I tend to put a lot of care into the “day-to-day” and the functionality of it all. Our medications are primarily derived from food. So why get strung out on medication when I can eat it; and not just eat, create with it, like art, or a dance. I enjoy this relationship, and those whom choose to engage in this relationship with me are happy too. I don’t pretend to be anyone’s counselor and do not impart advice unsolicited, ever. I would never dream of being so intrusive as to dictate how another should live, love, or laugh; so long as you’re not compromising others.

People’s relationships are intimate, and very personal, often extremely self destructive and loathing. Still not my place to call out your actions, no matter how foul; I don’t come through and rattle your bedroom door when you’re defiling yourself and the poor soul you’re about to violate (whether that be a person or the TV-meal resting on your dickie-do). So, please stay out of my relationship, or better yet, don’t cock-block my food game.

No Label Roundtable Podcast Episode 15