we call it nostalgia to sweeten the blow

Well. I don’t exactly know how one can justify 4 months of absence, but there you have it. University life has changed my timetable and sleep schedule completely, so I went from glorious weekends of 10+ hours of sleep to barely breaking 4. Still, it’s brought on one major improvement: I get a lot more sex than I did in Germany (prior to the Percussionist, anyway). I’m hoping I can keep up with fortnightly updates, because those seem manageable. Well, we’ll see, I’m sure.

Let’s get the run-down, shall we? Percussionist is my boyfriend of nearly 11 months, one in a fairly decent string of men I’ve bedded and dated. Some I just bedded. He lives in Germany and I study in the UK, a fairly strange sort of deal, as we don’t see each other very often. We met because I picked him up in a club and took him back to my apartment on Valentine’s last year (yes, 2009 is legitimately last year now). In the UK, I live with an ex-boyfriend, Crab (in case you suffer from the stupid, these are not their actual names). We dated in my first year of university for about 4 months. We didn’t speak again until last summer, when we decided to move in. It was strange, seeing him after so long and realising that lazy mornings with tea together in the kitchen were much more interesting than our tumultuous relationship had been.

I slept with him the night I moved in. We had wine and pizza and I kissed him. He kissed back. It wasn’t 1st year kissing, either. No shy, awkward bumping of noses. It was furious and heated, almost like the post-break up sex we never had. I remember that for once, I didn’t feel shy about being naked around him, that it felt amazing to have him inside me. That, because of contraception, we didn’t need condoms any more. It’s become a mutual understanding now: we don’t involve feelings of love, because I could love him, but it would be unrequited. So we have sex, once, twice, sometimes three times a day, squeezed in between work and university.

I hardly ever sleep alone now. We curl around each other and wake up with hormones rushing through us. I love him as a friend. As a very close friend. I don’t allow myself to love him romantically, because it would lead to hurt. Some people I know judge me for essentially having a lover. Percussionist knows. He’s known I’m polyamourous, and although sometimes he might not agree with my choices, he loves me enough to accept them. I guess this is more of a setting the scene type of post. I expect no pats on the back. I expect judgemental comments, because this is what everyone thinks. “You whore, you harlot, you have a man, why do you need another?”

I’ll tell you why: because I harm no one. Because, should Crab choose to have a girlfriend, I wouldn’t sleep with him without her informed consent. Because I’m young and I want to have fun. Because my body is mine to do with as I please. Because I love the spontaneous sex we have in the lounge, on the floor, still half-dressed. Because I have found in him a close friend and an even closer bedmate.

ich nicht weiss, wie ich’s beweisen soll*

*I don’t know how to prove it (from: Alles aus Liebe by Die Toten Hosen).

I was 16 when I lost my virginity to my first “real” boyfriend. I’d had a boyfriend in secondary school for a brief period of time, thinking he liked me, only to find out I had been a bet gone wrong. In high school I kissed a boy and denied him any entrance into my underwear because I didn’t like him enough. But of course, Rocker Boy came along.

We did it missionary-style on his bed, in the dark, in the first few days following my period. I was scared, but elated. It was going to be amazing, romantic, everything we’d dreamed of. I was sacrificing my virginity, that most prized of girly possessions, to his Altar of Manhood. It hurt. It bled. He swore at me for damaging his sheets. He grunted and pushed, heedless of anything but himself. I faked my orgasm so he would stop.

I had sex with my Rocker out of a delusion that he would keep on loving me. I had given him the greatest gift of all, why wouldn’t he? He didn’t. He broke up with me, via telephone, telling me he no longer had time for us. It took me nearly 18 months to even think about vaginal sex with another man (I did, however, give a Polish boy a hard on, left him to jerk off and went to have a heavy petting session with his friend). I waited for the call to return to the Rocker, because in my mind, my big sacrifice was worth something more than the cheap affection I’d received.

In time, I learned to embrace my sexuality. If I could go back and talk to my 16-year-old self, I would tell her to stop prizing something so fickle. A hymen is just a piece of skin. It can tear from riding a bike. That afternoon, lying on my back, still as a statue because he’d told me so, I didn’t lose my virginity. I lost my dignity. I allowed someone to treat me as little more than a piece of meat because I’d convinced myself that it would buy me love.

I will try to keep this blog updated once a week at least, with everything from sexual forays to views on modern feminism and the split of the female self. It’s an ambitious idea, but I’m nothing if not ambitious. So, onwards.