It was a big year for self-reflection and forward motion! Here’s some of the sexual and romantic events of my year, summed up in journal entries…
January 31st, 2015
I have a bad habit of blaming my relative lack of suitors on the way I look, when deeply and truly I know that the main reason for it is that I’m shy and don’t go out very often. I know plenty of women who are chubby or otherwise less than conventionally perfect-looking but who nonetheless capture the attention of men regularly, and without exception these women are outgoing, socially active, warm and friendly. I think in some ways I cling to weight loss as a magic pill for loneliness because I believe it would actually be easier to lose 40 pounds than to ditch my shyness. How silly.
April 8th, 2015
When _______ and I were in Montreal, at one point we talked about how I wish I had a fuckbuddy who I actually trusted and liked, and she asked me if there was anyone in my life who I would want to have sex with. I said ____ and ___. It’s not so much that I’m intensely attracted to either of them but more that I know them, feel safe with them, feel respected by them, and find them cute. It’s weird that when I said it, I thought there was literally zero chance of anything happening with either of them, but now one of them is actively flirting with me. It feels like the universe heard what I said and got the wheels turning for me.
April 20th, 2015
It has been literal YEARS since I have had a CRUSH on someone in the way that I would now consider a baseline prerequisite for entering into a relationship. The kind of crush that hits you without any effort on your part to cultivate it – just, BAM, DAMN, that person is cute, and you get blushy and giggly whenever you see them, and you find yourself going out of your way and making excuses to be around them, and you notice and fixate on all their many good qualities, and you are absolutely lit up by their presence or even the briefest of online correspondence with them.
I haven’t really felt that way about anybody in the past 5 years, and I don’t know why. Am I not getting out enough or meeting enough people? Am I suppressing any romantic feelings out of self-protection, insecurity, or fear of rejection? Have I internalized conventional attractiveness standards to an unhealthy degree? Am I on the asexuality spectrum? Who the hell knows?!
August 31st, 2015
I have been thinking a lot lately about my view of men/boys and how radically it has changed over the past few years. I used to be so distrustful of them, concerned that all they wanted from women was sex, that they were cold and calculating and unemotional and unloving. I was scared of their aggression and forwardness, their ability and willingness to identify a desire and then just pursue it. And penises made me nervous, those hard, unyielding outcroppings of flesh that seemed to demand attention and respect and reverence, wanting just to plough into a vagina with no attention paid to that vagina’s readiness or the feelings of its owner.
Obviously not all of those qualities are forgivable, but certainly not all men behave or think that way, and some of those qualities that scared me are now things I treasure in men. I admire their forwardness, how they’ll often cut straight to the chase when there’s something they want. I love that they’re easier to read than women. I love that they appreciate skills and competence and intelligence and humor; the stereotype that men only care about women’s looks is so not true.
And for all my teenage fretting about how men would be sexually selfish, that hasn’t been my experience AT ALL. ______ and my current trio of beaux have ALL been (or at least claimed to be) very concerned with their partners’ pleasure, to the point that getting a partner off makes up a significant portion of their enjoyment of sex. And I have met many men on the internet who say they feel this way too.
September 21st, 2015
I want to remember always how _____ looked at me and said, “I think you’re nervous, and you have no reason to be,” and I agreed that yeah I was nervous, because he’s cooler and more famous than me (“More famous? Maybe. Cooler? Not so much… You’re way cooler than I was at your age”) and I said, “I’m fond of you,” and he said, “I’m fond of you too!”
I want to remember always that I am worthy of having, and capable of capturing, the attention of men who I not only LIKE but who I initially perceive as being “out of my league” in one way or another: too cute, too cool, too mature, too internet-famous, too conventionally attractive, too sexually experienced to want someone like me.
This year I’ve been pursued by ___, ____, ______ & _____, all of whom are highly “cool” and desirable in their respective social spheres – even though they’re all total fucking nerds. Aww.
November 11th, 2015
If I have sex with one more new person before the year is out – and it seems likely that I will – then I will have tripled my previous number of sexual partners in 2015. It feels a bit like a dam has burst; finally, a torrential downpour of people who want to fuck me. I’m still not having nearly as much sex as a lot of people in my communities seem to be, or as I would like to be, but it feels like a lot. Although, I wish that I had had a repeat encounter with at least one of the people I fucked this year. (____ barely counts; that threesome was, by _______’s own admission, mostly about her and me.) I like when you’ve banged a person a few times and you get to know each other’s bodies and tastes. I like that better than firsts.