Thursday, April 20, 2006

Chivalry Be Damned, I'm Not Taking This Shit

3/25/06
2:00 PM

I am talking to the other members of my improv comedy troupe about the concept of making implicit promises to an audience. The upshot of the speech is not to establish too many "problems" in a scene or reference too many other events because then the audience wants to see the event or witness the resolution of the problem onstage. If we don't do that, we've broken our implicit promise to the audience. People don't like it when you break promises, implicit or explicit.

Weeks Ago, Late at Night

I'm in bed with a girl, and we’re kissing. Usually it's not like this between us, but sometimes it kinda is. Tonight it definitely is. Things are transitioning somewhere between the "making out" and "foreplay" stages. Certain items of clothing are missing. Breathing is heavy, pulses and blood alcohol levels are high. She looks me in the eyes...

"I want this."

I look back at her with tangible surprise, because it's never like this. By I want "this" she means sex, which has been a much discussed topic between us and has seemed like an inevitability, but which also to this point has proven remarkably evitable indeed.

"Yeah?"

She looks back at me. I can see her start to really think about it.

5 seconds pass.

She shakes her head "no."

Despite the fact that the male in me cannot fathom going from wanting to get laid to not wanting to get laid without an orgasm in between, I react understandingly. I take it lying down...literally. Actually, I'm not surprised. This is not the first time things have gotten sexual between us only to come to a screeching halt. Now she just wants me to hold her. She has no idea how the male brain works, obviously.

I settle in and go to sleep, but somewhere in the back of my mind my inner monologue is absolutely furious at me. I can almost hear it screaming, "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!? WHO DOES THAT?!? WHAT A GIRL THING TO DO!!!! Let me get this straight, she just said she wanted to have sex, and then not 10 seconds later said that she didn't?!? Are you Goddamn kidding me?!? You're a sick fuck, lady. You're a sick fuck and I think that actually you did that just to see if you could get a rise out of me, *pardon the pun*. Fuck this. This is ridiculous. If you don't want to then fine, but don't fucking say you want to then! This is bullshit, do you hear me? You, guy, need to do something about this. I don't know what, but something must be done, do you hear me?!? Don't go to sleep! HEY! YOU FUCKING LISTEN TO ME FOR ONCE!!!!"

I go to sleep, and we cuddle. Just before I drift off my inner monologue says, "You're a shadow of what you used to be. I hope you know that. You're past your peak, buddy, and you're plummeting down the sexual hill. You wouldn't have put up with this at 20."

I get home the next day and the girls are in the kitchen making lunch. I seek out their female opinion on the subject of what happened the night prior. After they get the story, I am informed that this, in fact, is not a "girl thing to do." It's not a thing to do at all, in their opinions. To my surprise, they're more outraged than I am about the whole incident. They tell me that they haven't ever pulled a move like that, and that furthermore they wouldn't. I'm not sure I believe them, but at least they're not mincing words.

This is all news to me, but I don't consider my roommates to be the stereotypical "girly" girls, so I take their opinions with a couple grains of salt and seek out some more opinions from some more girls. To a man, or rather, a woman, they say the same thing: "That's bullshit." One of my friends even tells me she'd have gotten up and left then and there. She says she'd be pissed if a guy did that to her...but no straight guy would ever do that. Not even to an ugly girl. Where was I? Oh yeah, opinions...

I am astounded. Here I'd thought all along that when a girl gets her second X chromosome it comes with the irrevocable right to be completely fickle at all times and in all arenas and get away with it. Turns out I was wrong. The girls have spoken, and they see pretty much eye-to-eye with guys on this one. If you're gonna tell somebody you want some sex, then dammit, you'd better let them give you some sex. If you're not gonna have sex with them, then don't say shit. End of discussion.

I take my newfound surprise and I let it marinate for a couple weeks. The new flavor, I find, is a lot angrier than the original after the couple weeks. I'm not mad at her per se, but more mad at myself for believing that I had to allow this to happen. I had no idea I was allowed to be pissed! I'm pissed that I didn't get pissed before! I didn't know I didn't have to take this shit, and now I've got some catching up to do. Worse yet, she now takes opportunities to take jabs at me under the assumption that I'm just dying to fuck her and she's the powerful gatekeeper who gets to decide whether or not I get let in, if you will.

With each jab, I see less humor, and the more I think about it, I'm generally not in the mood to be some metaphorical puppy jumping and scratching at the door. Fuck that, it's not so bad outside. I may be ridiculous in a lot of respects, but I do hold certain degrees of pride and dignity. Additionally, there are upsides to being unattached. If I sleep alone I can stay up as late as I like, sleep as late as I like and do dumb guy things like play computer games and look at porn. I’ll grant you, my computer isn't much for cuddling, but it always does what it sets out to do and to this day it has never once given me blue balls. I decide not to force the issue, to cut down drastically on my nights spent at her place, and to not let the whole thing get to me. My anger subsides, and eventually I decide I'm over it. This, I'm sure, has been the exception and not the rule of hooking up. Things will go more smoothly in the future, right? Yeah, well, don't count your chickens before they hatch.

3/25
3:00 AM


I've been partying in Omaha with my friends for most of the night. There is more beer than we can possibly drink, there are games, and there is a jolly crew assembled. Notably, one of my best friends is back in town for a week. Hence, this is a party that I'm enjoying and a party that features people I would like to spend time around, all things being equal. That being said, those who know me know that few things are equal to sex (especially good sex) in my book. Also, let the record show that lots of other people share that opinion. Anyhow, also present at this party is a particular girl. This particular girl and I have particularly fucked on several occasions, and it has been particularly good. Beyond that, really. It has been wild, wake-the-neighbors, dude-what-the-hell-were-you-doing-to-her-in-there sex. Let me frame our history for you:

We met very briefly at a frat house in Ames while I was up visiting my friend Darnkness at ISU. She proceeded to get puking drunk and I proceeded to do other things so I did not see her for the rest of the night. Not long after, she came to an apartment party in Lincoln. We were playing strip poker. She ended up naked, and I ended up massaging her shoulders. Through beer, all things are possible. Scant hours later, she ended up in my bed and we both ended up naked. At the time, she did not know my name. For the record, I knew hers.

Spring break shortly followed, and we drank like fish and fucked like bunnies. You might say that we developed a “friends with benefits” relationship. In fact, we never spent the night together and failed to have sex except for two occasions: On the first occasion, she was on her period. On the second occasion, she spent most of the night dry heaving into a bucket, and I had a girlfriend anyhow.

Why do I tell you all this? I tell you all this to illustrate that it was clearly been “like that” between us, and for quite some time. It seems that tonight, it is still “like that”, because she’s letting slip with some fairly suggestive commentary, as well as some pretty suggestive dancing. This is why I have particular expectations when it gets to be about 3:30 in the morning and she makes a point of telling me a couple different times that she's going home. I study her for a moment and say, “You’re going home alone…or you’re telling me because I’m supposed to come with you?” She replies that I am welcome to come home with her…and that's all I need to hear. I bid farewell to my friends at the party and follow her the many miles back to her apartment, even though neither of us really should be driving.

Since I had planned on staying at my friends’ house, I’ve brought a toothbrush, so I brush away my beer breath and go to the bathroom. By the time I finish, she has changed into shorts and a t-shirt. This strikes me as a little odd…but girls often wear uncomfortable things out for the sake of looking “cute”, so I don’t think much of it when they want to change into something else. She gets into bed, and I strip down to boxers and follow suit, because I’ll be damned if I’m dealing with the pretense of getting into bed with jeans and a tight shirt on. Being drunk and horny, I attempt to get things started.

She then tells me she’s tired and she’s going to sleep because she has an interview in the morning. I think she’s joking. I commence with the second effort.

She then tells me she’s seriously tired and she’s seriously going to sleep. I again think she’s joking, and that this is one of those games of “who wants more than whom” that some girls so love to play. Evidently I have to chase a bit. I commence with the third effort, which is much more direct than the previous two.

She then comes back at me with “No, seriously, I’m fucking tired. You’re not getting any tonight. I have an interview in like 5 hours and I'm going to sleep.” I now cannot believe this is seriously happening. Who the hell invites somebody back to their place and then throws years of precedent out the window for the sake of gaining (at most) an extra hour of sleep? Like the difference between 4:00 AM and 5:00 AM is really gonna give you the edge in that interview? Sorry, but if you cared that much about your precious interview you’d have left the party before 3:30 in the first place. I strongly suspect that the real reason she won't lay me is that she has moved in with her sister and they're just not at that stage of closeness yet where it's cool if little sis is awakened just before dawn by the sounds of her champion screamer of a big sister in the throes of multiple orgasms.

Suddenly, here comes all that back-rage that I thought I was over. This is bullshit, and the dam has broken. The waters of anger that have stood placid for so many years as I respected and even defended the actions of so many girls who sent mixed (if not totally backwards) messages are now rushing forth in a torrent of indignation. My conscience attempts to tell me that it’s ok and I could just roll over and go to sleep, but my temper has been sparked, and now it’s clear that this girl going to get to watch me exorcise all the ghosts of teases past.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“What?”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me. You bring me all the fucking way back here and you’re just gonna fucking go to sleep? Go to sleep by yourself! You don’t need me here to sleep!”

I get out of bed and start dressing. I’ve turned the other cheek plenty of times, but if I’m gonna respect myself, I won’t stand for this shit. Not this flagrantly. Not now.

“Oh, what so now you’re seriously gonna get pissed and leave because I won’t give you a piece of ass?” This from the girl who once expressed disappointment in me for not turning around and driving back once I'd reached Gretna because I actually left Omaha without calling her to hook up when she'd been playing the "I don't want you" game all night.

“You’re GOD DAMN right I am! What the hell did you invite me back for if you’re just going to sleep? Who does that?!?”
“I never said I was gonna give you any if you came back here, I just said you could come if you wanted to.” This one kills me. It is much akin to getting arrested for going into a bank with a gun and then telling the cop, "What?!? I never said I was gonna rob the bank..."

“Oh fuck that. Don’t you try to pull that shit with me. Nobody ever says that shit, it's implicit. You know how this works. You’ve had enough hookups to know that is total bullshit. You don’t take somebody home with you for sleep, especially not from a party. When have we ever just slept? Those were my good friends and I could still be there hanging out with them, but I came back here because you talked all that shit all night and then you kept giving me the ‘I’m going home…’ and waiting to see how I was gonna react. If you’re tired then be tired and go home by yourself and go to sleep. I’m leaving.”

As I get dressed, the argument continues, and I use the word “implicit” a lot. She tries to get mad at me for being mad, but I can see in her eyes that she knows she has violated the hookup codes and is only forcing herself to act mad to save face. As soon as I have my shoes tied, I grab my stuff and I leave.

As I drive back to my friends’ house, I wonder why I chose this time to get pissed about the situation and not all the others, and I realize that it was all about expectations. This was not a girl I’d never been with, and it was not a girl who had never been in a situation like this. This particular scenario was absolutely teeming with precedent and implicit promises. Even just going home alone after being so flirtatious might have fallen a little under the “not cool” category, but inviting someone back after all the flirting and then trying to just go to sleep definitely lands in the realm of the unacceptable.

I couldn’t get mad about the time a different girl once replied to my attempt to unbutton her jeans with the words, “No, I’m such a virgin, you don’t understand.” You just can’t get mad at that…I mean, you can, but you shouldn’t. The best you can do in that situation is keep from laughing (which I somehow did) and find a way to tactfully wind things down and go to sleep before you lead her to do something she didn’t really want to do and wind up with a scared, sobbing virgin on your hands. In that case, tactful escaped me and I followed immediately with, “…yeah, maybe we should just go to sleep then” but the end result was the same. The point of the story is that I didn't push her to do something she wasn't ok with. In the new case, though, I’m pretty sure that leaving was the thing to do. It sure as hell felt a lot better than choking back my pride and engaging in grudging cuddling, that’s for sure. As they saying goes, "a leopard doesn't change its spots." In my case perhaps more fittng would be, "if a leopard is going to try to change its spots, it should not do so at 4:00 in the morning after acting like a damn leopard all night, and if it does you're allowed to be pissed off."

I get back to my friends’ house and vent to those present. They unanimously agree that what transpired was utterly ridiculous and while ballsy, leaving was not a bad choice of actions. Eventually I settle down on the couch and let sleep overtake me. As I drift off, my inner monologue starts a slow clap that turns into a round of thunderous applause from all the parts of me that have ever been disappointed when I let a girl walk all over me. There is a clap for every blow-off, brush-off, tease and copped attitude. The ovation makes for a sweet, sweet lulabye, and I sleep the sleep of the just all through the night.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

You know I always had the notion that you were an ass, but now you've expressly made it clear.

The first story you get mad because she thinks with her nether regions says she wants to have sex, without thinking. You're so fucking sex driven that you act all pissy as if she agreed to hand you a million dollars and took it back - wtf? It's just sex. She spoke too soon, you asked if she was sure, (which by the way was the right thing to do) and she this time used her brain.
You don't like to get teased; no one does, but it wasn't blantant teasing. It was thinking it over. So she shouldn't have spoke too soon, but why would you put so much stock in to that?
Why do mostly all your blog entries deal with you getting laid or lack thereof and your self-worth macho-ness revolving around it?
The second story the girl was all wrong. Things should have been implicitly said so no mix ups. But getting as angry as you demonstrated is so fucking stupid. You're so wrapped up in getting laid or not. Empty shit. "not such a bad guy" that was a shock to you?

12:47 PM  

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