Cuddling at 32

So, to catch up, I turned 32 on Saturday. I did not go to a strip club because I've been pretty sick with whatever this thing going around is. I slept most of Saturday and then the very kind Jahfurry invited me out to Planet Thailand with a bunch of people, so I ate steak and scallops and tried to make conversation before going back home and collapsing. Also, um...I'm not dating the SF boy anymore, and I'm kindof seeing someone here in New York. I guess it's not really "kindof" but I keep calling it that. I've now told three people that we're "kindof" dating, then tried to amend that, mostly because I hate that weird labelling that goes on and don't want to jinx anything and just, I don't know, I feel ridiculous for even having to update that here, and yet it's sortof necessary. But anyway...

Sunday I got some work done and then went over to the boy's apartment. I had books to read for review and he had work to do, and I was still kinda not feeling so well. He made dinner and then I washed the dishes, and then I cleaned his oven. I can't really type that phrase without it sounding somewhat dirty, cause that's just how I am. It did actually turn me on somewhat, not like I was panting with lust as I scrubbed the oven, but more like I enjoyed the process of watching it go from grimy to white and sparkly, and moreso, that it felt very girlfriendy to be doing it. I do, in fact, clean the kitchens of people I'm not dating or even interested in like that, but it's more fun when I also get to make out with them. Then I went to his room and he slept and I read and we cuddled.

I would occasionally put my head down and just listen to him snoring in my ear. There's something really intimate to me about that, to be next to someone when they're sleeping, to get to watch them or just hear them when they're pretty much conked out. If I moved a little bit, he'd reach out and grab me and pull me closer, and I was just totally happy to be there like that. It feels a little silly to be all dorky about cuddling. Like, shouldn't 32-year-olds be thinking about more important things, like babies? And oh, I am. I'm reading Knock Yourself Up and eating crackers with my almost 2-year-old cousin Adam and drooling over cute babies online. But I've also chilled out a bit on the baby front, because these days, I can barely take care of myself. I feel like that will happen in good time, and now is a time for, well, me.

A while ago, Andrew Boyd read at In The Flesh from a piece called "How to Cuddle." It wasn't a silly how-to, but a really sweet and sexy piece whose details elude me but that I hope gets published someday. It was, as I recall, about the ways sex and cuddling are alike, and yet are different. I had a lover once say, "Cuddling is the best part of sex," and it was very interesting, because he's not the kind of person you'd ever think would say that.

For me, it's not an either/or thing, but made me realize, yet again, that I really don't want to have sex with anyone I can't also cuddle with and talk to. And by that, I mean really cuddle with and really talk to. I remember an ancient 90210 (I guess they're all ancient now) where I forget if it was Kelly or Andrea or Brenda yelling it, but I think it was Kelly to Brandon, "Sex doesn't bring people together; it just tears them farther apart." (And that may not be the exact quote, but is the gist of it.) At the time, I was probably a virgin, and didn't really know what she was talking about. Now, well, I do. I've had more than enough moments where I thought I was having sex with someone not as a way to be closer, but that that would be a natural byproduct of sex, and it just wasn't. After we started sleeping together, I felt more skittish, nervous, slutty, what have you. There were more things to worry about and question, more potential faux pas, more ways I could somehow manage to fuck things up. There was this huge gap between the supposed intimacy we were sharing and real intimacy. I had an experience like that this summer, where I went to sleep in someone else's bed, by myself (they slept on the couch), and felt more lonely than I could remember being in ages. I hate that feeling, where even when you're as physically close as can be, you know their mind is somewhere so far away from yours.

I like to think that I'm pretty low maintenance relationship-wise, and I think I've written this before, but I'm really not. If I'm going to go there with someone, it seems pointless to do so only halfway, to share their body but not their mind. Sometimes I think maybe that's too much to ask, and yet without it, I feel like I may as well be on my own. I'm not much of a free-for-all cuddler. I've been to two cuddle parties and had a decent time, but that kind of touching isn't something I can relax into easily. That's not to say it takes me forever, but I usually know within minutes of meeting someone whether I'm interested in making out with them or not. Sometimes I change my mind but usually that's how it goes, and these days I don't make out with anyone I can't see myself cuddling with.

Someone recently wrote about me:

"...she writes like sex truly IS the center of her existence -- and yet she's vulnerable-seeming and almost innocent in her lusts." At first I read that and got kindof defensive, because sex isn't really at the center of my existence. It's at the center of my writing, to be sure, and I probably blur the line between my life and my writing way too much, but am I obsessed with sex? I don't tend to think so. There are moments when I am, when, physically, that desire tends to overwhelm all others. Once, I stayed over at S.'s, and we wound up falling asleep and not getting around to the sex. In the morning, on our way in and out of the shower, he apologized about that, and I felt really sad that he would think that's the only reason I wanted to be there. In hindsight, obviously, I can see that that's how he relates to women and that really would be the only reason, in his eyes, I would be there, but it wasn't mine. I'll just leave that there; suffice it to say, in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, in trying to puzzle out what the hell I've done with the last year of my life, I've just had to accept that as much as I am over him, I'm also not in some ways. I still don't just feel neutral or nothing, I still kinda freak out when I hear his name. I feel like people think I'm some kind of bomb waiting to go off around him, and, well, maybe I am. I don't know, though I'm probably much more likely to burst into tears than start screaming and throwing things, that I just do in my head. Actually, the whole thing just makes me sad, and maybe a little nauseous, but what I've tried my best to do is not repeat the same mistakes. Not imbue other people with qualities they may not actually have. Not fall so hard that it's impossible to pick myself back up. That's a tough one for me because I fall pretty hard. Not always, certainly, but often.

So like with a lot of things, and much easier said than done, I'm just taking it one day at a time. I don't want to be the girl with crazy unrealistic expectations, but I also don't want to be so pessimistic I doom any relationships to failure before they start. As I tried to turn the pages of my book as quietly as I could, I was just really conscious of enjoying the moment, the slowness of a Sunday afternoon in someone else's bed, where it wasn't about sex, but wasn't altogether not about it either.