Dating Confessions by You "We only had one quasi-date, so it's baffling to me how I can feel so flattened by your disappearance. How could I have been so wrong about the chemistry?"
Dating Advice from . . . Animators by Chantal O'Keeffe Q: Is there a way to enjoy the primitive game of cat-and-mouse without crossing any lines? A: Well, if the mouse starts picking up ironing boards and frying pans...
I came to like the fore more than the play. I'd think back wistfully on pre-sex teenaged days spent rolling around naked with my girlfriend with a hard-on that could've drilled through dry-wall, feeling myself throbbing against her stomach as her legs held me like a vice, tasting her ten-dollar M.A.C.-adorned toes for the first time, kissing deeply long after the lipstick and gloss had worn off. Sex, as a destination, was disappointing, and once I'd gotten there, I couldn't remember how to get anywhere else. With so much flesh to be explored (to run your fingertips over, to test the dexterity of your tongue against, to drink the sweat from, to clench between your teeth) what was the rush to hurry up and get off? Why the haste? Why no lingering? I felt like I was touring Willy Wonka's factory on a rollercoaster.
Maybe I came of age with the first generation of girls who don't enjoy foreplay. . . but why not? In my experience, girls just wanted credit for getting between the sheets, without spending too much time there. It's as if sexual empowerment and Gossip Girl and all the rest made the act so symbolic for them, the symbolism itself became the pleasure. What before counted as physical stimulation was less part of the equation — all but forgotten in the availability and hipness of the deed.
I felt like I was touring Willy Wonka's factory on a rollercoaster.
Unfortunately for me, someone who'd grown up in the PC world of upper-middle-class suburbia and spent his formative years learning to embrace his femininity, this just wasn't what I had been prepped for.
It's been more than two years since I've had sex. Looking in the rearview mirror, I miss Sleater-Kinney, cocaine, and the Gossip's original drummer, but I can honestly say that I don't miss sex. I don't miss worrying about "closing the deal" in the amount of time deemed "normal" by a CW teen drama. And I don't miss looking down at a girl after finishing and thinking, "I really meant to spend at least half an hour between your breasts, yet now, oddly enough, all I crave is pizza." For the time being, I'm happier doing the abusing myself. Even Moz's recent admission that maybe intercourse isn't as despicable as the Cure after all hasn't yet brought me around. All I want is someone who doesn't get their power-up points from each new dick that goes into them, and someone who doesn't get their cues on bedroom exploration from Angelina Jolie. And if she happens to be named Snow or Violet, well. . . n°
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Izzy Cihak is a card-carrying member of the most despicable and irritating community in the literary world: "music journalists." As a writer and editor for High Voltage Magazine, he can regularly be heard critically analyzing Belle and Sebastian B-sides and arguing that Psychic TV truly is superior to Throbbing Gristle. Izzy's other interests are equally as pretentious, including downtown burlesque, the eroticism of Weimar Berlin, and the New French Extremity. His writing has appeared in Baltimore City Paper, Burning Angel, OrigiVation, Girl Punk.Net, and Lyke Magazine.
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