Sunday, November 16, 2008

more on sex and love

Friday night I kind of went on autopilot and decided to go out with B, even though I am thick into Soberland and I think it's been three years since I had sex sober, with possibly the exception of Love Affair. I met up with B and was intensely bored. We went to two bars in the West Village that provided good fodder for some serious crowd-bashing, which was only mildly entertaining for a little while. I was frustrated at not being intoxicated. Then we took a long, awkward subway ride back to my apartment to have sex, which I desperately needed. In the absence of drugs and alcohol, I thought at least sex would fill some kind of void. But the void I wanted filled had more to do with feeling loved, I think, and B did a very bad job of feigning interest in me. I tried to recapture the drunken feeling of being infatuated with just about everyone, but it wasn't working, and I just felt bored. Secretly I think I just wanted him to fawn over me, but I think he was feeling self-conscious because I was so sober and antagonistic. I accused him several times in the evening of having no soul, and I wasn't really kidding. It came to a hilt when he told me he wasn't really into music.

I've never heard anyone say that before.

Flash back to earlier that evening, about an hour before B texted me, and you'll find me outside a cafe on the Lower East Side, answering a phone call from the Ex, who just broke up with the girl he's been dating ever since we broke up, almost three years ago. I'd called him last week just to see how he was doing, and wasn't planning on discussing anything farther, but then I found myself plunged deep into a conversation with him about how I felt I had failed him as a girlfriend, and how my inability to have a relationship since him is just emblematic of my fear that I can't be trusted with anyone's heart anymore. I told him that all of the short-lived relationships I've engaged in over the past few years only remind me of how mistrustful I've become of my own judgment, but also that I truly feel like I don't deserve love anymore because I had it once, and I just let it go. The other part is that it's a bad feeling to chase love all your life, only to find out that it's just not enough.

It was a great conversation. It's not like we've never talked about our breakup before, but I guess I just felt it was more permissible to speak frankly with him now that he's single. He told me that he felt the same way, that now after two failed three-year relationships, he's really certain that he's totally fucked up, and questioning when to compromise, when to accept, when to commit, when to quit. We both had the same questions but no answers.

Actually, my answer to all of this confusion was to go out and get laid, and I think his response was probably the same. And that's why the sex was so unsatifsying--not because of the sobriety, but because of the lack of love. But...I think they are related.

No comments: