WRITING: the relationship talk

Some of you may recognize content from my sex blog. This was written in June 2005. It is nonfiction but was composed when I first started having normal attachment and attraction to my fuck buddy. Mainly this was an examination of thought process or linking current feelings to past events and putting them into a distinct voice, a conversation. I think it just sounds like rambling though.

The Relationship Talk

Hey, come here. I need to talk to you. Yeah, I know you’re drunk; I’m drunk too. Aren’t we always drunk? They’ve all gone home now though. Well, our friend is passed out on the couch. Christ, listen to him snore. But it’s just you and me now – the only ones left, like always. I think I really need to finally talk to you. I know we never talk about anything. We pretend nothing is going on, that we don’t care. We wouldn’t want us to feel like a relationship; we wouldn’t want to acknowledge any feelings. But I am so confused. I don’t know what’s going on with us lately.
How the hell did we get here? Maybe you can tell me because I can’t seem to figure it out. How did we go from casual friends who had bad casual sex to this? When did I start feeling something for you? I used to hate you. Our sex used to make my skin crawl, make feel utterly inadequate and unhappy. You made me feel so empty, so worthless with the way you touched me, how you talked to me. You complained during sex, and I would die inside. How could all that develop into this affection, this attachment? You were such an asshole; I was such a bitch. I fucked other guys in front of you; you were right there on the couch. I exposed you to an STD when I came back to you yet again. Did I miss anything? Listen to how bad it all sounds. How are we still speaking? How are we still fucking? After all the damage, how can we manage to care about each other more now than ever before? None of it makes any sense.

I look back over it, and we had the most fucked up non-relationship I’ve ever seen. Granted, I haven’t seen many non-relationships like ours. People usually have brief casual sex – one night stands, maybe a couple months – or they end up in real relationships. Who else just has sex for four years? It’s like we convinced ourselves that if we said we weren’t together and we didn’t care that none of it really mattered; none of it really happened or had an impact. We never talked about any of it – any of the bullshit – until it was over. The vulnerability had to be gone before we acknowledged anything. It caught up to us though, didn’t it? Look at us now. Here we sit, confused, not knowing how the hell we got here.

I guess we were always inevitable though, no matter how we tried to fight it. I was in your lap with my tongue down your throat the first night we met. You were the first I tried to fuck, and even though you didn’t want to pop me, we slept together right after the replacement. We stopped fucking I don’t even know how many times yet always ended up back in bed together. You moved and came back, and we were at it again. I went off and had my ho time to crawl back into your sheets. Always back, always us again. For years. It’s like we couldn’t stay away from each other. It was almost like it was meant to be even though neither of us would imagine or admit it. Both of us were probably completely convinced of the opposite.

We both always fought it, fought any inkling of attachment or commitment or feeling. Maybe we still do. I desperately want to fuck some faceless stranger right now to obliterate these strange and foreign feelings for you. But I can’t. The feelings I want to squelch suddenly reduce me to one dick, your dick.

I’ve never wanted one before. I’ve never been content or satisfied. I’ve never not wanted to explore my other options, be free. I mean one guy would be fun enough. We would play; we would fuck, and I might enjoy it. But I never got that buzz, enough attachment to want just him. I always sought out some fault in him to keep myself at a distance. Plus I always choose assholes.

I do not know how to deal with these feelings because they are not me. I do not do this. I fuck and leave. I have sex and don’t feel. It’s a very simple system, and this breaks it. I mean maybe the system didn’t always work out for me. I always get punished for sex. I have good sex, and then I have a miscarriage or get an STD through a condom or I cringe to think what else. I can’t imagine how much worse it could be with emotions, with relationships. The complications are coming for this; I can feel it.

But I guess you have always been my exception. The only real friend I ever fucked. The only one I actually ever cared about. The only one I kept around, went back to for over two months. The only one I ever was able to sleep with, be physically affectionate with, have aftersex with (and we always had great aftersex). The only one I ever thought about when I had someone else. Hell, I even cared if you enjoyed the sex too. The only many things. Funny how the first guy I started to get entangled with, tried to fuck ultimately ends up being the glaring exception to my pattern of behavior. Chicken or the egg, huh?

Maybe it was that you are exactly like my father. When you were being a dick, you were always him when I hated him; you were him when he was telling me how worthless I was, making me cry as we fought yet another night. But when you and I got along, you were always the him I loved – the man he was when he was a good father in my childhood and after he pulled his head out of his ass when I was in college. Even the similarities in minute mannerisms would terrify me. You both talked shit the same; you both liked the same sports teams; you both swooned over the same celebrity ass. It was practically like seeing the same person, hearing the same words come out of two different mouths. Maybe that was where the attraction started – the attraction I denied all along. They say all girls are ultimately attracted to the traits of their father – their first example for men. I got kind of screwed with that situation. It was easy to reject when you were being such an asshole, to say it was just the sex. Now you’re not that asshole, and I really feel the attraction.

I don’t want to. I don’t want to feel for you. I don’t want to even consider being in love with you. After our past, the twisted and painful path that got us here, I don’t want to consider anything more substantial; I don’t want to risk getting hurt or hurting you again. Could you honestly see us together? Two pathetically independent people in constant emotional denial attempting a relationship. Please, we would kill each other. So why do I feel like this? If I know I don’t want it, why does it pop into my mind? I just want us to stay friends, stay right here. But we just cannot seem to stop fucking.

But what does it matter? I’m leaving, right? Anytime now I’ll have a job, and I’ll be moving. Sure it’s only 45 minutes away, but it’s still away. I need a change, and you have been my only constant with sex, so attempting anything between us would be counterproductive. Right? I refuse to let you be a reason for me to stay. If I didn’t stay for my best friend or family, I stay for nothing. Besides, knowing us, no matter how far I move, no matter how long I stay away, we’ll fall right back into fucking. It will be like no time passed; it will never end.

I don’t know what I want. The smart, logical part of my mind – as small and unconvincing as it is – screams that it is all a bad idea. That we never should have been together. That I need to finally actually end it and start over. But these feelings are foreign and new to me, and I can’t deny that I like parts of them. I feel whole and light and twitchy. I care, and suddenly emotions are awakening my nerves during our sex. Can I ignore all that? Should I?

What do you want? I never can tell. I swear you alternate behavior faster than I do, and I’m the bipolar one. What is your excuse? You seem interested; you seem avoidant. You seem affectionate; you seem distant. One night you’re all over me, and the next I barely exist. I can never tell what you want, but I’m sure it’s not me. I’m sure it was never me. It has always seemed like you settled for me, like you never really wanted to be fucking me. Maybe that’s why I was always so defensive; maybe I was such a bitch because I felt so inadequate and insecure. I wish I could read you. I wish I knew if you felt anything, if you wanted anything with me since I am undeniably reactionary and tend to follow how you act. You alternate; I react. We go back and forth together.

But we don’t talk about anything present. That would be a symptom of a relationship, and we can’t have that.

I just want to know where I am so I can decide what I want, what I’m going to do. Always waiting on you. I can’t be trusted to decide for myself. My opinions, my feelings alternate and fade and shift with my cycles. Depressed I may want you, manic you may not exist. They all seem real, but who knows what one really is? Which mental chemical cocktail is real? No way to tell for me. I ride my mind back and forth and follow how I read you. But I never ask you questions. I keep quiet because I don’t want you to be able to see that I might feel something, that I may care. I can’t show vulnerability. I follow your signals and hope lately that it places me under you at the end of the night. It’s a ridiculous game we play, isn’t it?

They all talk about us, you know. They all have their opinions after all these years. My gay boy doesn’t approve of me fucking you. He doesn’t think you’re hot enough, but he is also completely and utterly shallow. But he’s also convinced we’re going to get married. Every time I mention your name, there’s that dreadful word out of his mouth – marriage. But we both know he’s crazy.

Your friend lectures me about you when he’s drunk. He asks why we don’t just get together, why we don’t just have a relationship. He is baffled by the fact that he’s never seen us kiss. None of them really understand, but then who else have we ever seen who have maintained the fuck buddy situation for so long?

My friends usually either tell me to stop sleeping with you because it’s bad for me or to just get into a relationship with you – either way, what we do is unacceptable.

One friend claims we have relationship, couple behavior but are so completely awkward with it. I don’t know about that. We used to do so well at not showing anything, not seeming affectionate or sexual at all. Maybe that was before things changed. Is it showing now?

I’ve only told two people about my new feelings. It took months to say it out loud; it took that camping trip for me to know for sure enough to utter it. I told one because I needed someone else to know; I needed to be able to talk about it when it was driving me crazy. The other – I told mainly to distract her from the stress of deciding to have an abortion. They both saw it coming, much more than I did at least. Maybe I was in denial from the very beginning.

I never really expected any of it the first night we met. The night of my alcoholic baptism into the circle, my first keg party, the first time I was really, truly shitfaced drunk. The entire environment was new for me. I had been lost in my head, my trauma, my bullshit for so long, and here were these new people who didn’t know me, this beautiful beer that washed away my mind. Instant addiction. The tap flowed; the keg dwindled; everyone started pairing off. My best friend had vanished into the basement to fuck a guy. I remember my other friend asking you why didn’t you kiss me, and your tongue was in my mouth. God, I crawled up in your lap, and we made out for hours. And I left those two hickies on your neck. The hickies I hear about to this day. Two little marks turned into being bruised from your ear to your knee. See, you like to exaggerate too.

My first guy came onto me for the first time that night too. He had been unsuccessful with all the other pussy; you and I had taken a break, and he swooped in, rubbing my leg and beckoning me to the basement. He was definitely, completely my type. But I wasn’t going to make out with two guys in one night.

But then you didn’t want to fuck me. Every time we got drunk together, we made out, we played, but you didn’t want to pop the cherry. You were scared I would fall in love with you. Christ, that’s almost hilarious now. You didn’t want to take my virginity, but I was dying to rid myself of that handicap, so I fucked my first instead.

My first was brief, boring, unimpressive. I liked him enough before sex but after sex not much. We were acquaintances, and I didn’t know any better. He got bored with me and said he was going to stop having sex until he had a girlfriend. Obviously I was not that girlfriend. And I came back to you for the first time.

Whatever it was with us was still there. As we were the last ones up at every party, we played again. Virginity gone, it was only a matter of time before we had sex. God, do you remember our first time? Alcohol, morphine, back pills. Could we have numbed ourselves anymore? I honestly can’t remember too many specifics. My best friend and her boyfriend went out to smoke, and I was up in your lap, sucking your face again. You said we were going to fuck, and I said ok. I don’t think you actually expected me to agree; I don’t think I actually expected you to follow through.

And for a while, it didn’t seem like you wanted to. It was the slowest foreplay ever. Did you really not want to fuck me, or were you just so drunk? Maybe you never really wanted to have sex with me, and the alcohol just got the best of you. We kept making out and playing, and I kept asking if we were actually going to have sex. Then we did – for five hours. My friend walked in on us when I was on top. It was messy and unsuccessful, but we were so drunk.

I didn’t tell you it was only days after I miscarried my first’s child, did I? The blood, the blinding cramping had subsided for only a couple days when we had sex. Probably not the best decision on my part. I was so completely fucked up – the amount of pain killers I was downing, the guilt, the confusion, how much I kept drinking and drinking. Maybe that permanently polluted us from the beginning. How I felt with my dead baby became linked to sex with you, even though it shouldn’t have been. But I needed to be distracted. I needed the thoughts and the guilt fucked out of my mind. Yeah, look how well that worked. It took me almost three years and therapy to let it go.

Somehow I was shocked that we actually had sex though (although I should have always seen it coming), but I was ok with it. You were the one who didn’t seem happy with it. When I saw you after, you didn’t touch me, didn’t show interest. When my best friend asked you if we were going to have sex again, you said you weren’t going to have sex until you had a girlfriend. My firsts’s words coming out of your mouth. Obviously again I was not good enough to be that girlfriend. Even if I never wanted to be that for either of you. Then you moved to Louisiana or wherever.

That was the first time you pissed me off. That was what initially tainted our little situation. You had sex with me once then didn’t want to touch me again. That goddamned girlfriend line. You made me feel inadequate and used, and I had expected more from you than my first – you were a better guy.

Then you would come back to visit. Of course, we always ended up together, messing around, and you expected sex. Were you fucking kidding me? You rejected me and left then came back just expecting me to put out. No, I teased; I played with your head to make myself feel better.
I was resentful, being that I had always been not good enough, worthless to everyone in my life – family, my father, and subsequently any guy who ever touched me. I think that is where it started, that is where our non-relationship went to shit. I was hurt, and then you would hit my buttons, and I would overreact, and you would react to that – and round and round we went, amplifying and distorting the entire way

You truly were an asshole though. Sometimes I couldn’t believe it. I would love to recount details and specifics for you, but you know me; I blur and block the particulars of any hurtful situation. Maybe that’s why you always think I’m lying about it. Your memory is horrible, and mine hazes anything that would prove it actually happened. Our past fades away between the two of us. I just know you made me feel so worthless and inadequate, like you were settling for me and really didn’t want me at all, like I wasn’t good enough in any way with your little comments and talking down to me. Your jokes aren’t always jokes, are they? Half the time they’re the truth you won’t risk saying seriously.

The complaining during sex was the worst though. My self-esteem died right there beneath you. Who bitches during sex, honestly? If I had any doubts about the quality of my sex or if I was good enough, they were definitely resolved as you whined about having to be on top while you laid on me. Hey, it is not my fault your dick was too big and hurt me. I can’t move my cervix for you, and your bullshit really didn’t motivate me to improve the sex for you. God, I hated you because you made me feel so horrible about myself. I was too weak to think for myself on that.

Partly, I blame my insanity and my disorder for it all. My mind was so distorted, so already turned against me that your bullshit was simply fuel for it, justification to hate myself. Maybe if I was sane, I would have never interpreted it that way. Maybe you were just joking. It wasn’t your fault that I was crazy, and it wasn’t your fault that I had a rape and a dead child and destructive trauma still flaring in my head – I know all that now – but you were still a dick.
I swear that phase went on for years – me hating you but still fucking you anyway, hating myself the entire time and swearing I was going to stop. No wonder my friends say it’s a bad situation.

Sex became just another one of my self-destructive behaviors. I had self-mutilation and smoking and drinking and reckless driving; why not self-defeating, degrading sex too? As much as I shudder to say it, I think the majority was my fault – my misinterpretations, my overreactions, my fucking broken mind. If I was normal, you would have just irritated me or pissed me off, and maybe I could have left. But then again, you could have treated me better, not been so determined to make it clear to me that I meant nothing and it was just sex. As if I didn’t know.

We do need to talk about when I fucked the other guys though. We remember it so differently. I know you’ll never believe me or really even listen to me, but I want to say it anyway. Ok, I want to try and say it again. We were drunk before, and I don’t think you were listening.

I think I needed to fuck someone else. I needed to know that I could because you made me feel so inadequate, so unattractive. Well, I twisted your bullshit to justify feeling that way. Whatever. I honestly didn’t mean to do it in front of you though.

The first time, you guys didn’t show up at the bar, and that guy came over. A random guy was actually giving me attention, so I took him home. Then you showed up. I didn’t know what to do.
You and I were actually getting along, but there was that guy. He passed out in my bed; everyone left; your ride was out in the recliner. God, I was torn. Something new, something I really thought I wanted, then you and I right there, actually getting along and flirting. I picked you. I decided that I didn’t care about that guy; I didn’t know him. I came onto you. I crawled up in your lap and kissed you – and nothing. You didn’t react. You just kind of looked at me and told me to go to bed and have fun. You kept telling me to go to bed with that guy. So I did. You claim you tried to keep me on the couch, kept pulling me to you. No. You did nothing. You just fucking looked at me and told me to go.

And when the guy started coming onto me, started kissing me, I still wasn’t comfortable with it. I was angry at your rejection, but I didn’t like that you were right out there. I knew you didn’t sleep. But I was pissed. If you didn’t care, why should I? So I had sex with another guy with you right in the other room because you didn’t want me.

The second time, I don’t know. I didn’t know you were going to come out to the bar. You and I had such a good vibe going on that night. I’m not sure what happened. My best friend brought that guy over, and I alternated attention between the two of you. I touched your leg, and again you told me to go. And again I did. I took him home, and you sent me text messages the whole way. I thought you hated text messages. You had no issues with them that night.

We are so stupid. Can we never just say how we feel? Lies, denial, and fucking text messages.
I bet when you ended up in my bed after that, trying to get anal sex and telling me I had diseases to hurt me, you didn’t expect to be right. It’s like you asked for it as much as I did. I do want you to know how bad I feel about it though. As mad as I’ve ever been at you, as much as I might have hated you, I never intended to expose you to anything.

God, I was terrified to tell you. When I actually started showing symptoms and found out for sure from my doctor, I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to prove you right – that I was just a diseased whore. I didn’t want to lose you because you were my friend and I cared about you. I can’t believe I actually managed to stammer it out on the phone. You reacted so well. When I saw you the next time, it was like nothing ever happened. I loved you for that.

I honestly didn’t expect to have sex with you again after the other guys. But it changed you; me having sex elsewhere made you different. Did you need to see that other guys might want me to actually appreciate me? Suddenly when our sex was over, you became nice and nostalgic, constantly saying how much you liked fucking me. Since when did you enjoy having sex with me? I couldn’t tell with all the bitching.

It’s like we were different people after I had sex with other guys. Things suddenly turned good – you suddenly enjoyed me and seemed interested. You came back after I fucked you over again and again. Why did you come back? Why did you keep dealing with me?

You were in my bed on Christmas; I was in yours on New Year’s. We messed around like we used to. Even though I had sworn against it again, I wanted to sleep with you again. I really wanted to. It was all new. I fought it. I didn’t want things to go back to shit. That was before I found out I had the STD, but part of me was worried that the crazy guy was telling the truth when he said he had HPV after crying to me for three hours and telling me he loved me. I only knew him a week. I didn’t know how much I could trust him, especially when he turned out to be too crazy for me to handle.

But of course, you and I ended up having sex again.

I swear the sex got better. The sex got amazing. The time in my tiny bathroom while my friend’s children were sleeping in my bed – me pinned up against the door with the towel rack in my ribs. The sex just seemed more comfortable, more fluent. We switched positions, spiced it up. There was no bitching. I was able to give you head – for the bet I lost, which by the way, I actually took a dive on – and finally not flip out, not have flashbacks and panic, finally bury what the guy who raped me did to me. It was like a completely different non-relationship with us.

Then there were those flukes. The one morning when we lay in my bed for hours waiting for our friend to wake up. It was the first time I was comfortable naked sober and in the light with you. We spent hours just talking, joking, flirting, cuddling even. We never did that, especially sober the next day. What was that? And camping. Camping was like that morning for a whole weekend. We had good sex the first night, but there was attention and flirting the whole time. We didn’t go through acting like we weren’t having sex and all that when we were sober again the next day. You couldn’t leave the topic of our sex alone. I shudder to say we were like a couple, sharing “road sodas” while we were 4-wheeling, staying up all night together. That’s not us. That’s not how we consistently are with each other. They were just flukes, right?

And here we are. Somewhere I don’t know, a grey area between the messy, unsuccessful sex we started out with and these quasi-relationship, comfortable flukes that keep appearing now. What has changed? I honestly have to think it was the other guys, maybe the HPV too. As pathetic as it sounds, that is when things changed. How the hell did we get all the way here though? Maybe we had to completely fuck it up to start over, to realize how we actually felt. But can something so mangled honestly change and get better? Maybe this is all a bunch of alcohol-induced bullshit too.

But there, I said it. Now you know. Now what? What do we do? What do you think?