Cracking eggs over hot pavement

I love sex. I love to orgasm. I hate myself for it. I try not to.

I grew up in the church. That’s not true. I went to church until I was about 8 or 9. We stopped going abruptly one day, and I still haven’t received a straight answer as to why. My parents have told me the choir director was “evil” or turned “evil,” and also there was some kind of sexism with the pastor that divided the congregation, and that they didn’t like the way the church politics were headed. I think a more realistic explanation is that the other church goers found out about my dad having sex with people he’s not married to or my mom liking little girls more than she should. It could have been either. Anyway, I always liked church. I liked singing and wearing my choir robe. It was a heavy deep blue fabric with a wide white collar. We got to wear a black corded necklace with a chunky cross made of smoothly finished wood. I liked the feeling of it between my small fingers. The best song we sang was about Jeremiah, the bullfrog. I liked playing with the other kids. There was a small yard next to the main building with a sidewalk that led back to the rectory. We could play in the patch of grass there while all the grown-ups talked after the services on sunny days. There was another girl my age whose hair was so blonde it was white. I remember running with her through someone’s backyard catching fireflies late one summer evening during a picnic. The grass was so green, and it was speckled with those white thistle flowers. It’s the memory I think of whenever I remember summer. Church was great from the perspective of an eight-year-old.

Anyway, we stopped going. The only additional religious education I had was when I attend a youth group as a teenager, but I don’t remember very much of it. I went because my boyfriend went and that’s the way you act when you’re fourteen. I don’t remember receiving the Word, but I’m sure some of it snuck in there. Obviously. The best part of youth group was talking to the other kids in the parking lot after the meetings while we played basketball and waited for rides. Once I went on a trip to the beach with a big group of largely unsupervised teenagers where I got my cartilage pierced in a questionable boardwalk shop, and nearly died laughing when my friend JP said the elevator was taking so long that his clothes were going out of style. It was the first time I had ever heard that joke. I think he was the one who invented it. Rest in peace, Buddy.

I worry that the kids now are missing that kind of camaraderie. I see teens standing at the bus stop staring down at their phones never interacting with each other. There is so much life juice in mixing kids who aren’t friends and would otherwise have no reason to interact. My best memories from sixth grade were sitting in the back of the bus with all the eighth graders. I could not believe they took an interest in me. Oh my God, he talked to me! I still follow the hot boy on social media and he’s doing pretty well. There was another boy, Nick, who fended off a wild dog with his skateboard as the two of us stood on top of the cable box that was our bus stop. What would have happened if we both had been holding phones instead? But I digress.

I love sex, but I feel like I’m not allowed to. And the reason I think I’m not allowed to is because I feel like someone is judging my goodness by my appetite for sex. I believe there is some mythical being dictating the exact right amount of sexual desire I should have, and if I go over, I lose the game. I also believe that being doesn’t exist, therefore there is no limit on how much desire I’m allowed to have. Then the philosopher in me says why yes, actually, there is a moral optimal, you can’t just have sex wherever and whenever. My next step is to start calculating that optimal, but the criteria is all variable. There’s no place to start. I’m so internally conflicted about the act that even the best sexual encounter is glazed in uncertainty. In doubt. I’m not sure I should like that.

Should.

I watched that doc on the Manosphere and let me tell you my pussy has never been tighter. These men make their living by influencing other men to adopt their philosophies of extreme “masculinity.” They claim the “rules” of society are a complicated matrix designed to keep men psychologically castrated. They push traditional family values to a toxic level and then try to convince other men that if they follow the same path (usually by making the influencer richer in one way or another) they with become equally fulfilled. These men have simple goals. They are about dominating women and making money and by doing these things they say they are saving society from itself. I can’t understand it. One of them said he loved women so much that he understood what was best for them and he thought that him deciding everything for his wife made that list. I’m sorry? You’ve added a middleman. That doesn’t even make sense logically. They accuse women of over-inflating their self-worth and tricking men into treating them… like humans, I guess? Are any women who have resolved their daddy issues into these guys? I know I am not their desired demographic, they are very clear they aren’t after an old gray hairs like me, but I find them fascinating from the anthropological and evolutionary perspectives. Don’t come at me, bro. I’ve already earned all my birthing scars. That’s what they say it comes down to—providing. They aren’t personally interested in the expensive suits and luxury sports cars; it is all for the good of their future children. To get them ahead in life, Daddy has to have sex with lots of women who aren’t Mommy. And I can appreciate that sentiment, I care very much about my children. Speaking of, I need to get new tires on my fifteen-year-old mini van.

What I felt as I was listening to these guys explain their thinking was that they are dangerous and also that that was exactly the impression they hoped to make. They are the young man at the center of the tribal circle desperate to impress the rest of the tribe with his defenses to their attacks, proving to everyone that they are the most fearsome fighter. They live for it. After all, if you’re good at it, you can bring in the dollars to provide the things. What value does he have if he can’t provide a heated pool with a built in waterfall? I suspect the real trouble started when we widened the circle to include the entire internet. Their peacock dances had to compete with a lot of other brightly colored feathers and the same tired tricks didn’t attract as much attention. Their tactics became more extreme and their continual video streams meant they must always be performing. If someone catches them in a weak moment, they have to up their combative games to compensate. (That’s what this whole war is about, btw. Penises.) The influencers’ obsession with views and clicks seemed pathological. One of them claimed he didn’t mean any of the racists or misogynistic things he said, he only said them for the engagement. When you live your entire life online as someone you say you are not, what does that do to your sense of self?

Do they enjoy sex, I wonder? I don’t think they’d like it the way I like it. That’s not fair, maybe they’re sensual lovers—never judge a book by its cover. But do they enjoy it? Or are they battling the same shame? It’s difficult to tell when all their words are platitudes. Do they tire of playing the part of the dominator? Always maintaining absolute control? One of them said the role of men was to invent, build, and maintain society. Seriously? He honestly thought that everything around him was the result of ONLY men. The role for women was to raise men like him so he could make the decisions about everything everywhere. The weight of a responsibility like that could really kill the libido. I’m surprised he has the stamina for more than one woman. I don’t have it some days and I’m only managing my life.

I guess it comes down to how they define good sex. I’m big on things that feel good for the body, and I don’t mean that in a pleasurable way (although that is important), I mean things that feel good in a non-activating way. For me to enjoy sex, I want to know that both participants are relaxed in their bodies. If my lower back tightens when you come near me, I won’t ask you to come closer. How could a middleman pick up on that? Maybe he doesn’t understand as much as he thinks he does and his insistence is problematic. You won’t spot resistance that you don’t know to look for. How could you possibly understand what’s happening in another person’s body without hearing from them? That’s probably why we invented words. I know I prefer to tell someone that my body is one hundred percent ready to be touched. Please understand that that is what’s best for me if you’re a man out there who wants to advise me on it. I’ve given it a lot of thought. If my physical body objects, you aren’t getting the green light. That’s what constitutes good sex by my definition, everybody’s light is green.

It feels like the manosphere guys would go through with it whether I was on board or not. It seems like they’d blow through a red light and then talk their way out of the ticket. Officer, it’s too expensive to replace the brakes on a car this fancy, and short stops are terrible for the engine. C’mon bro, you know what it’s like! If I wait for a green light, I’d never get anywhere! That’s certainly the vibe they emit. These guys believe the rules don’t apply to them. When you think everyone else is part of a matrix, you stop seeing the others as human. I guess that’s why these men feel so dangerous.

I’m hesitant to venture out into the dating world. It feels terrifying that one of these guys might slip past my knowing and I’d find out only after I let him close enough to be intimate. I’m pretty scrappy, I like to think I would fight. But you never know how you’re going to respond in a situation like that. Thankfully, I have a bit of a belly so that probably rules me out of attracting any of the guys in the documentary. But I’m left wondering how prevalent the same thoughts are in the minds of other men. Are most men evolved or do they all think that it has been men alone who have invented, built, and maintained society? It can’t be all men. What’s the percentage? What are my odds of running into one of these guys and then finding out a few dates in that he thinks he’s superior to every woman and he didn’t say anything because he knows it’s a controversial opinion. Also, I’d like to take this opportunity to address that if you have to hide your opinions from a potential partner so that they will like you enough to sleep with you, they do not like you enough to sleep with you.

I know not all men are manosphere men. There are plenty of men who I feel safe with out there in the world. But we did just watch the entire US hockey team laugh at a joke made at the expense of their female counterparts. Doesn’t it cheapen their gold to know that what’s between their legs earned them the call from the president? It’s obviously not the medal he cared about. And they were Olympians! What hope is there that the average man would agree that the contest for best man isn’t decided by the length of your feather.

My point is it’s hard to be a freely sexual woman with all this baggage to worry about. God and man. How did Eve end up with all the damn blame? Given the stage of human consciousness we’ve arrived at, it could be evolutionary. Perhaps the stories I’ve created for myself about being bad for enjoying sex are meant to protect me from falling into bed with someone who doesn’t respect my mind. Up until this point in my life I have only ever blamed myself in those situations. If I felt used afterward, I should have never said yes in the first place. I didn’t object enough. I didn’t send him clear signals. I did something wrong. Maybe the path to feeling good about sex is a matter of rewriting those stories to reflect more of the truth.

For starters, the God I want to believe in didn’t design sex as a means to drown us all in shame. And it’s illogical to feel bad for wanting to feel good.

As for man, I’m less clear. I don’t pretend to understand men like they pretend to understand me. I have no idea what they are after. Is it conquest? The tally mark on the bed frame? Is there any part of them that seeks the same safe, soft, soul connection with another body that I am seeking, or is it all a game? It feels impossible to be certain. All I can do is be honest with myself about what I need and hold my partners accountable. I know that anyone who cannot support me through my emotional states is not strong enough to share my physical one. That rules out the men of the manosphere. And being disrespected does not do it for me either, so I’m unlikely to find my bliss with an Olympian. I want to be with someone who is willing to obey the traffic laws, not because he’s a cog in the machine, but because stopping at red lights prevents accidents. What I am looking for is someone who is curious enough about what’s going on inside my body to ask me. I want someone who’ll listen carefully for all I am unable to say.