Tag Archives: relationships

January 23, 2012 · 12:00 pm

My first one night stands

I have always been a “good girl”.  Never played hooky, got good grades, generally polite, sweet, innocent … those are the sorts of words that come to mind when I think back to my younger years.  I was also a bit of a “late bloomer”. I wasn’t really interested in boys until about 16, only had my first kiss at 18, got drunk for the first time at 18 and so the list goes on.  When I went to University I carried on along a similar path. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I definitely did things I probably “shouldn’t do”, but *gasp* I never, you know, slept with anyone I shouldn’t have.

I only slept with two guys at University – both my boyfriends, although the first one wasn’t at the time, and I can hardly say that it was memorable (I’m not sure I did actually sleep with him, which may sound weird, but we were both so drunk, I didn’t feel ‘sore’ the following day, and I don’t recall any blood (that may however have been due to my inebriated state)).

Anyway, enter boyfriend number 2.  We slept together (enough in a two year period) but I never actually enjoyed it. It was a chore. How lame is that? I loved him; he loved me, but sexually? I just don’t think we were compatible.  I used to think it was me, that I was just destined to not enjoy sex, and that was that. (This may have also been because when I first went for a pap smear the University doctor mentioned I was ‘built differently’ which I suppose lingered at the back of my mind.) Anyway, in time we broke up (which ironically was not because of the sex, but that’s a story for another day) and I started my life in anew city.

A few months passed and I had to go and see my doctor for my annual pap smear (never fun, but important nonetheless) and while there I got to talking to her and queried whether there was anything, you know, wrong with me. She laughed and told me to stop being silly and that there was nothing wrong with me.  I told her what the other doctor had said. She said that what the other doctor probably meant was that my lady parts are usually found in girls that are very tall (I’m not – I’m about average height). So then I queried, well why hadn’t I enjoyed sex with my long term boyfriend? So she asked a number of questions, one being how often we had had sex. I replied, not often (who wants to have sex often when it’s uncomfortable!?) and she responded and said that that was the problem and that the next boyfriend I found I should lock myself in a bedroom with him for days on end and get used to sex and then I should, in all probability, enjoy it.

Great! Now to just find that elusive boyfriend…  Well two years went by and nothing happened.  In this time I heard my ex had moved on and would be getting married. Great.  I had no inclination to have him as the last guy I had had sex with, but at the same time, no one was presenting themselves as someone I necessarily wanted to date. Just great.

I then went to this party and boy what a party it was. Bright lights, fun clothes, awesome people, too much alcohol.  Well, anyway, as I suppose things happen, I met this guy, partied with him and ended up going home with him.  It was great, he was great, minus the fact he was about 4 years younger than me and we probably shouldn’t have drunk as much as we had. We laughed, talked, had some good sex, laughed some more and he dropped me off at home in the morning.  I knew him through someone else that knew him and we had fun. I had fun. Fun having sex.  Awesome.  Then the doubt started creeping in. I had had sex with someone I didn’t know and didn’t care about. Was this a problem? I did struggle with this for a while, but then got over it.  I had had sex with someone I’d wanted to have sex with, it was good, and I had had fun. Added bonus? My ex wasn’t the last person I had had sex with.

Fast forward 5 months, and it was the same sort of situation. Too much alcohol, love was in the air, very, very sexy man and me.  Suffice to say sex happened and when I say happened, I mean OMG mind blowing, out of this world, crazy, fun, phenomenal sex. Now THIS was a problem … on so many levels. 1. It was great that I found out I was capable of having mind blowing, amazing sex (twice) but 2. I felt like I had done something wrong when I hadn’t, because I had now slept with two men that weren’t my boyfriends.

This I struggle, and continue to struggle with.  I think it also has to do with the fact I do actually want someone in my life, but don’t really have the time to commit and, in all honesty, haven’t really met anyone yet.  What further compounds my problem is that I can’t get this man out of my head. We talk (a little) but don’t stay in the same province (which is probably a good thing) because I worry that I’m probably making out our evening in my head to be far more than it actually was. I know that it was just sex, but it scares me that I can have such amazing sex with someone I don’t know. It also scares me that I can now and seem to “just have sex”. What I do know, and have gotten from these experiences, is that I can’t continue to have sex with “random” guys – the guilt eats me up inside (for no reason – I’m young, single, use protection, and enjoy myself – I can tell myself this, but I still feel dirty). So then I realise, I need to meet someone, to trust them, to date them, to have sex.

New conundrum. When will I meet said person? I’m either destined to be celibate, or hopefully, sometime soon, Mr Right (or even Mr Right Now) will come along and he and I can have mind-blowing, amazing sex, that I now know I’m more than capable of having.

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November 28, 2011 · 2:17 pm

The first time someone else gave me an orgasm

Sex is a concept that I’ve never really been uncomfortable with.  Of course, that does not mean I’ve actually had it.  I have a few rules for myself, but it has always been more of a way for me to feel in control of a seemingly nonexistent part of my life.  My first real kiss was at 14; my second happened when I was 17.  In both of those cases, there was blind groping and I felt out of place.  I’m not going to lie and say some of it didn’t feel good, because there are certain spots that set me off no matter what.  However, these experiences weren’t about me; they were about a guy trying to score with a girl.  It goes without saying that these were incredibly short lived “relationships.”

I’ve always felt that sex should be something intimate and beautiful.  It should happen at a time when both parties are ready and they really feel something.  All I felt before was lonely, so I ended up in the arms of guys who just didn’t want to be virgins anymore. Fortunately, I am independent enough to have stood my ground and said no as soon as I got uncomfortable, so the farthest either of them got was still on top of my clothes.  I never touched them back.

My third kiss, though… that was something else.  Just shy of 18, I found myself out with a guy who I had approached and found he liked me back.  We flirted shyly for a while until the fact that something was going to happen became apparent to both of us.  Out in the park, looking up at the stars, he leaned over and kissed me.  Fireworks literally went off right after it happened, as there were some people celebrating something somewhere in the neighborhood.  After the kiss came smiles and tingly feelings, but what I didn’t let him see was the fear that this would just be another time when a guy tried to take advantage of my feelings.  Instead, we kept talking, cuddled, kissed a little more here and there, and we kept it innocent.

I was absolutely ecstatic to find a guy who was not just using me for my body.  Other guys who showed interest in me tended to do so shortly after seeing me in particular outfits or, more frequently, a bikini.  I may get A’s in all my classes, but my D’s were what really got the attention of others, and I couldn’t stand it.  In this case, though, my new guy genuinely liked me for me.  I’m a conversationalist, and the flow never seems to die down between us.

Like any couple of teenagers, we don’t just talk.  We’ve done a decent job of keeping things slow.  It started out with just massaging one another’s backs while kissing then progressed to kissing around the neck.  Eventually, I allowed him to touch me in ways that drove me wild.  Simply having his hands under my shirt, even if they were still only on my back, was a huge step for me.

Times with him felt wonderful.  My most intimate experience up until that point then occurred in my house late on a Saturday night.  He and I had watched a movie with my mom and her boyfriend, chatted, and simply enjoyed each other’s company.  My mom and her boyfriend went upstairs to give us some privacy.  Not really in the mood for another movie, I turned on some music.  We laid down on the couch and talked for a bit, but it soon progressed to kissing.  He kept his hands to my lower back and hips because that was what I was comfortable with.  Well, being so close with him on top of me, we did start to grind together.  It was at a relatively slow pace and the focus was still on the kissing more than anything else, but I ended up having an orgasm.  I’ve masturbated (many times) in the past and brought myself over the edge that way, but this was the first time someone else had managed to make me feel that kind of pleasure.  The crazy thing is, we were both in jeans!  Right after it happened, we just looked at each other, and he brushed my hair out of my face and said, “so beautiful.”  I smiled and settled myself in his arms.

Anyway, long story short, I’m still a virgin and I’m still with him, in fact we haven’t gotten much farther physically than that experience, but being with him feels intimate and beautiful.  I can see myself with him long term and losing my virginity to him.  I may be young, but I’ve never been happier.  He makes me feel safe, never pushing me beyond what I’m comfortable with, and he cares for me on an emotional and intellectual level, as a lot of what we have done has had little to nothing to do with the physical.  I enjoy being with him in every single way, because I know I’m not just some girl to him.

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November 18, 2011 · 10:20 am

The first time I realised clearly I was asking my partner to absolve me from being white

So I’m a progressive whitie, right. I say all the right things, I’ve spent ages examining my whiteness, feeling guilty, feeling responsible, and at the bottom of that pit, like somehow whiteness is wrong because of everything that’s been accomplished in it’s name. So I’ve done the work right?

I’ve studied it, I’ve lived it, I’ve workshopped it, I stand up often and talk about how white people walk around ignorant of our privilege and how that plays out day by day in small interactions, and the ability to easily access all sorts of things, like constant employment, good service, easy bank loans, unsuspiscious shop clerks, great education, and lots and lots of other things big and small. I’ve examined my own responses to certain situations and realised how deeply ingrained my racism is in how I treat people, my expectations, my language, my practice.

I’ve publicly acknowledged how this shapes my life, how my privilege is only possible as a result of the oppression of black and coloured people. I’ve gotten over naming. I’ve spoken about how race is a social construction (i.e. a story we make up about who someone is based on an arbitrary genetic characteristic), and yet how it is real because of the ongoing impact on people’s lives. I’ve grappled with what to do with my privilege. Should I be ashamed (a la Samantha Vice)? Should I go lie on the beach and enjoy myself and hand over money for printing when asked (a la Andile Mngxitama)?

I rant against the kind of comments that people feel free posting online after articles that touch on race, the ones where white people get defensive, blame others, infer that white people are the only holders of culture and ‘civilisation’ (whatever that means). Who bemoan ‘the country going to the dogs’. I treat everyone with polite respect, and when there is space, with love and friendship doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from. I judge, I examine why I get scared of black people walking down the road, and why I racially profile people based on name / colour / accent…

Hell, I even married a black man! I’m a good whitie, not like those other ones, and I’ll demonstrate it in many ways, taking my partner’s surname rather than keeping my own which gives me a childish thrill when people do double takes. About a year ago, it hit me like a plank over my head that I had assumed that now I was married, I thought my work of dismantling my racism was done. Of course it isn’t, it never is.

And then, in a conversation with my partner in bed one morning, I suddenly saw how what I was doing was asking him to validate my reconstructed ‘good’ whiteness, absolve me of my guilt, shame, grappling, privilege, taking of that privilege. And I have no idea what to do with that. That our relationship can’t just be about the usual man-woman stuff, working things out, the bigger work of being in a relationship, there is no way to escape that race plays a part in that. And I wonder did I marry him cause he’s black, not because of who he is to me? Did he ever have a similar thought? I have some defensive anger about it too, why can’t it just be about two people in love? And then I recognise those white narratives I rant against that try and deny the part that race plays in our lives on a very fundamental level. And then I buy into the race doesn’t matter for a couple of seconds, and then I’m back to of course it does. And then I’m left with but how DOES it matter?

I think perhaps it may be an unsolveable conundrum, another plank come to bash me over the head and demand some further examination, work & thinking. Because truth is, marrying him doesn’t change my skin colour or all the things it delivers and has delivered to me on a silver plate. Absolution doesn’t lie there, and I have no idea where it does, or even if it’s necessary…

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