(sex)uality: my sluthood, reframed

Recently I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts and articles written by women who are far braver than I am. Of particular note was this one, which I am not going to explain any further than saying that you ought to read it. It linked me to this article, which completely reframed how I thought about a period of my life that I half-jokingly refer to as a time where I wasn’t particularly well-adjusted.

As I mentioned last week, I don’t write about the particulars of my sex life. But for the purposes of this article, I am going to write about the particulars of a very particular time, about two and a half years ago. It was quite soon after I’d broken up with Bono, the person who’s ever had the most debilitating impact on me.

This particular time fit neatly in the space of a mid-semester break. I went to an ill-fated music festival over the Easter long weekend, where I met a friend of a friend. P was sweet and had a beautiful body, and we had some really good conversations either side of the sex we had in the back of his 4WD. But although I certainly didn’t think poorly of him outside of that vehicle, I didn’t want a relationship with him. I added him on facebook, but I don’t think I ever got his number.

A week later, I slept with K at a house party using a promotional Nando’s condom. I’d had a crush on him while I was with Bono, and I suppose he was in my backlog of people that I might’ve pursued had I not been with someone else at the time. At this time, he’d been seeing someone else, but he got drunk enough for this to apparently not be an issue (and it would be two weeks yet before I entirely changed my thinking about being “the other woman”). He texted me a week later to apologise or something, and I thought it was nice but generally unnecessary. I saw him at a party with the girl quite soon afterwards, and I think I was just glad that it hadn’t fucked anything up for him.

A week after that, I was out all night with a workmate, S, and ended up in his bed. We were sleeping off the night before when he said to me, ‘We should have sex’. I said okay, but that I didn’t want to right then. However, I acquiesced quite quickly.

Four days later, I met Jimmy Page.

There is little denying that this was not one of the happiest times on my life. But the sex was not instrumental to that. As silly as it might sound, until I read Jaclyn Friedman’s article, I thought that being emotionally unhealthy and sexually healthy were mutually exclusive, but in truth, these encounters were exactly what I needed.

As shitty as he was, I missed Bono during that time. I missed being with someone during that time. But I needed time to heal, and reading this article put an entirely different spin on what had been happening two and a half years ago. All things considered, these were some of the most functional one night stands I’ve had in my life, but I don’t think it was because I was emotionally detached; I think I was just giving myself the space to understand what I really wanted and needed, which was closeness without the weight that often comes with it, at least until I was ready.

Jimmy Page didn’t “reform” me either. He was supposed to be a stopgap, but ultimately, he was probably the post-gateway drug. I didn’t want to have sex with other people anymore because I liked him and the desire for others was no longer there, even though he didn’t like me back.

These sexual experiences weren’t perfect, and it’s true that I wanted something other than just sex from them (though that certainly played a bit part of it), something that might even be termed a remedy. And I’m sure that if I was in some kind of pseudo-rom com, I’d have realised afterwards that what I really needed was someone who would stroke my hair as I was falling asleep, and who would penetrate my soul during penetration. But fortunately, my life hasn’t been scripted by someone with archaic views about female sexuality.

Looking back, I feel like I could provide a list of everything that I gained from these hook-ups (pleasure, gratification, a bit of validation that dudes would still want me even if my ex did not, etc etc) and that’s not to say that having casual sex was the only or best way I could’ve gone about getting over Bono, or that I would recommend it to anybody else.

But all things considered, it probably wasn’t the least fun way either.

(Image credit: 1.)