The problem with fuck buddies

What I was going to write in response to Miriam's column is that my problem with fuck buddies and why I can't really have them is that I care too much. When I sleep with you, or even way before that, when I meet you and you make me laugh, say things to me that nobody else ever has, are unique in a city full of posers, I want to know more, I want to know everything. I want to know what your tattoos mean, I want to know what you look like when you eat your favorite food, I want to know what brought you to New York, I want to know dorky little things, like what toothpaste you use and what makes you cry and your musical guilty pleasures. I want to know all the little, silly things, like what vitamins you take and how often you talk to your parents. I want to know so many things and I guess I do this thing where I think I can find out some of that through sex, not the details, but something deeper, something that only comes out when we’re at our most passionate and vulnerable. I’m always fascinated by the sides of myself that come out during sex, the things I can’t afford to have emblazoned on my sleeve every day or I’d never survive. I really don’t have much of a poker face, I pretty much lack the ability to act any way other than how I feel, but at the same time, I can be a little reserved, a little waiting to see what the other person wants me to be. But there usually reaches a point where I let all that fall away and am just myself, and when I can transcend the everyday world with someone else, even if it’s just for a little while, I grab that chance without usually thinking twice. I grab it because I need it, because I can’t live in my everyday world all the freaking time. And this time, well, it was in part the 8 long months, but I’m not really a numbers girl. I can’t blame it on alcohol or anything else. I wanted it, I wanted him, I wanted something that you can’t get from witty email banter or drunken groping. I wanted, and I guess I got, something realer, fiercer, rawer. I went somewhere that made it okay to go with my instincts and fuck adulthood and just be a little bit not 30 for a little while.

I can’t regret that. Sometimes it comes out in the words. It’s not verbatim, it’s not a fucking transcript, but in my dreams or right afterward, these images pop into my head, and I try to capture the mood, the sense of what happened, the things that haunt me for days and weeks and months. The way a certain word or touch or look emblazons itself onto me and affixes itself to my brain, the way a few hours seem to stretch out into so much more.

I go back and forth between wishing I were more chill, wishing I could swoop in and out and not go that deep, wishing I didn’t remember as much or feel as much. I wish I could really feel that sense of nonchalance all the way inside, not just in the look I plaster on my face while trying to keep it together at the bar. But whether I like it or not, that’s not me. I wish I were, for once, the one someone wanted, instead of, oh, the lying sociopath or the married woman in another state or nobody at all. It's hard to feel like you'll ever measure up if that's the standard, and yet I'm trying. I'm trying so hard to improve myself, and sometimes I feel like it's all for naught. I'll never be whoever it is, the kind of girl who someone actually picks as their first choice.

But, in happy news, I am moving on. I’m really sick right now so my head is cloudy and foggy, and my heart’s a little erratic as well. I’ve been thinking about all the people I love, the ones who make me happy in little ways, the ones I want to impress, though impress isn’t really the right word. I want them to be proud of me, to know who I really am and like me anyway.

I’m not gonna dwell on the Tuesday drama anymore, because it’s over and done with. I made a decision and whether it was right or wrong, it happened and everything can be a learning experience. I can’t fault my judgment or regret going with my instincts because that’s all I have to go on. I can hope that I find people I connect with in the ways I want to connect with them. I will just say that at one point, he was asking me what I need. That wasn’t the time to share, because he clearly didn’t really want to take more than a cursory moment to find out who I am. At the bar, though, I came up with air, diet coke, bags and hoodies. All of which are essential, yes, but even more (well, than air), I need people who open up my head, who open up my world. People who are unique, who say things to me that nobody else does. People who are alive, who are not just going through the motions. People who are so themselves they infect everyone around them with their presence, who make me want to know everything about them. People who bring something to my life, as individuals, that nobody else can. That’s a really tricky thing, to be irreplaceable, but I could tell you off the top of my head so many gorgeous, amazing people who I have such a powerful connection with. Sometimes it’s silly and so personal that it wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. It’s a nickname or a private joke or a memory of a trip or a special word. It’s the way their smile lights up a room, it’s the way we read the same books or laugh at the same comedians or roll our eyes at the same annoying social antics. That’s what I need, yes, even more than my beloved diet coke.

It’s why there are still things, like Tasti Di Lite and Zagats and In-N-Out that just belong to K. They’re ours, and I always get a little bittersweet pang when I see them. It’s hard because I realized that despite thinking I can be all Bridget Harrison nonchalance, that’s not really who I am. I care, and it doesn’t take me long. It doesn’t take me long to want to send you cards and care packages, to want to do your dishes and cuddle and tell everyone about your band or whatever. I’m like that with everyone, and I know I sometimes come on too strong, but I believe in people so much, I want everyone to know how brilliant and amazing they are, and thankfully, most people can deal with my overzealous fandom. I know some people can’t; it confuses them and freaks them out, and that’s okay. But the ones who get it, who let me dote on them in my dorky little way, they make me happy.

And that need, that he so clearly misread, is probably the one that’s most vital. I need people to need me, to want me around, and sometimes I take it to a maybe too intense level. I want them to like me so much that I think the only way that can happen is if I give and give and give. But I also like it, I like bringing food, bringing presents, I like being full of stuff. I feel naked and empty with just a tiny bag, with nothing to offer but me. Sex may exacerbate this, but it’s not a sex thing. I’m not presumptuous to think that in a city like New York anyone needs me for sex but I always think that maybe they need, or at least, want me for something else, for my own unique personality thing that I bring.

Where I seem to go wrong is misreading that connection, in thinking something has transpired when it’s really all in my head. I really don’t know, I don’t have some grand conclusion or lesson. I’m not angry, well, maybe a little, I’m more sad because while I love meeting new people, I am not out to collect millions of new lovers or friends. I just want to find people who have something worthy to say, who make the world a better place just by existing, and maybe, maybe, find a way to have something personal and special with someone that isn’t just one-sided, that doesn’t end with me in that same really lost space trying to figure out what’s wrong with me. I know, believe me, I KNOW, “it’s not me,” blah blah, but there’s only so many times I can face the exact same situation and not figure out that I’m doing something wrong. It’s sortof ironic that in the midst of my Rachel makeover campaign I feel so miserable, but I think the one way being totally sick and also totally mentally blah is good is that I remember that I’ve been sick before, and I’ll get over it. That makes me feel a tiny bit better, but doesn’t really solve all that much. I still feel really, well, rejected, for lack of any other better word. What to do with that feeling, how to move forward, is what I’m trying to figure out. What I’d like to do: spend a week in bed eating peanut butter chocolate Soy Dream and sleeping. What I will do: keep getting up every day, keeping being open to the future, to new possibilities, to liking myself a little better, to knowing I can at least control my own actions. And maniacally working my ass off and plan my beachy vacation.

When I read this originally, I was all fired up and thought she was totally wrong, but now I’m like, “oh, me too.” Lisa Dierbeck wrote in O magazine last year:

Sex strikes me as too intense a venture to be taken lightly. Thrilling and uncertain, it involves baring your soul, not just tearing off your clothes. Because sexuality is a powerful, anarchic force over which we have little control, it's soothing to pretend it's not big deal. I used to be blase about it. I treated sex like a swimming pool. Instead of hesitating, I always plunged right in. Now, as a reformed tramp at 40, I look back at my wild ways and wonder what planet I was on. I have more respect for sex, its hazards and surprises. Watch out for that sweet dark-eyed hunk at the watercooler; he may turn out to be a mean, manipulative jerk. And if you're hell-bent on a casual liaison, you might miss that shy, bespectacled geek at your local library who could set your heart aflame and worship you. Either way, a sexual experience is unpredictable. Offering a rare chance to feel transcendence-an ecstatic state that transports people outside themselves-the sexual embrace has a strong spiritual side. Whatever happens, having sex with someone changes you.