Mating Rituals

I'll never get used to them. Even when I am only one of many in a seething, desperate, drunken mass, I feel myself inside this hamster wheel of skepticism and alienation. It's not always a bad thing, but drinking at least made the plastic more transparent. I know, what an idiotic metaphor.

Why sex? Well, it feels good if you do it the right way(s) with the right person(s), sure. But beneath that, we're fundamentally--I don't care whether or not you "believe in" marriage or kids, or even want either of them--geared to pair off, find a cave, and squeeze out another little monkey or six.

That said, (very reductive, I know), what purpose do relationships serve, when you do not--as I don't--have any intention of reproducing?

There are plenty of happy, childless, long-term couples out there, right? Do they still fuck? What happens to their sex drive once makin' babies becomes obsolete? It's like Jackie Treehorn says, "The brain is the greatest erogenous zone in the body." That's where my sex drive derives, anyway. First thought, then action. And are men and women so fundamentally different in this respect?

I know this makes me sound very ignorant, but the thing is that, for someone who has actively pursued sexual...(I refuse to say "liberation") awareness for most of her pubescent life, I feel like I suddenly know nothing about it.

That brings me back to the question of what a relationship--homo or hetero, open or closed, long-term or short-term, but romantic regardless--is FOR, if not for reproducing. Body heat. It's true. Also, instinctively, let's go back to the jungle or the open plain, the mountains, or whatever. Let's go all the way back to spears. Back-to-back, you're better off, regardless of your gender. That expression--for someone to "have your back," really gets at the heart of what I'm trying to understand. Yes, I have an agenda here. I want to know:

What is it about a relationship that has been so important to me, over the course of the last year, that I let Liam put me through the ringer without just walking away? Why did I let myself, and him, become so unhappy that I felt more like his enemy than his partner or lover? I know where it began, but that doesn't mean that I can just blame him and move on. It began with a lie. It always does. And not just any lie, but a lie that put me at personal risk. I'm talking STDs here. That's something I take very. Fucking. Seriously. Condom or no, viruses are getting cleverer and cleverer, and their consequences are dire.

Oral sex is awesome, on either end, if it's done well. I'm not going to put in a fucking dental dam, or suck on a big rubber tube. That would take all of the enjoyment out of it for me. Does that put me at a higher health risk for stuff like HPV, AIDS, etc? You're goddamned right it does. I have no delusions about that. So, when Liam was cheating on me, lying to me about it to the point that I didn't know who he had done or what, I had to assume for the sake of my own safety that he was having unprotected sex (oral or otherwise) with women I did not know. And I have to say--nothing personal here, but a couple of them were really nasty. Like, really got around. And I never found out about it until AFTER the fact. AFTER I'd had unprotected sex with him.

My rage about that only increased with each time he did it. I lost track of how many, but who's counting now?

The point is, my "partner" risked my safety and my longterm health for the sake of getting his fucking dick wet. That was not a gesture of love, devotion, or even friendship. It was very nearly the most careless, selfish thing that anyone has ever done to me. And he did it a lot.

He seems to feel pretty sorry for himself, with his busted tooth and his dental bills, about the raging, abusive alcoholic he escaped from. I can't pay his dental bill, so he came in and pretty much said that I should "give" him the scooter I have been needing to sell to support myself.

I wonder how much antibiotics for chlamydia come out to, after all the treatment? The immunization shot against HPV? Anything else that might turn up in my system long after he's scot-free on his scooter? He loved to preach about his privacy, but the wall we kept coming up against was that his "privacy" could have cost my private-parts a whole lot of trouble. Somehow, that never seemed to sink in with him. We were doomed, and have been, for a very long time.

And yeah, I'm feeling pretty resentful about the old issues. The breakup is going fine, it's just that now I can really look back and see it for what it was: a fucking train wreck for the last year. Before that, it was beautiful. Blame aside, that's all I know. But clearly, I have been feeling this way for a long, long time. Resentful doesn't even begin to cover it. Try furious. Wounded. Betrayed. Scared enough to strike.

Sex doesn't mean what it used to mean. Diseases are very, very real, and I don't want a goddamned one of them. I wouldn't wish them on anyone, but the conclusion I keep arriving at concerning my conflict over monogamy is this:

It's not just monogamy. It's statistics. It's trust. It's knowing how many invisible enemies are out there, waiting to feed on my pleasure parts, and having trusted someone else with my long-term health.

I don't think that he ever understood how serious it was--not just the cheating, not the jealousy, but the lying about it.

Goddamn it, I want to see a pedigree before I fuck anybody ever again. I'm gonna go get myself tested for everything under the sun, and I'm going to present any future partner with some fucking papers. And I'm gonna keep 'em updated in cycles of six months!

Well, anyway, I don't know about that, but I sure as shit am going to make a mofo wrap his shit up. Twice.