"I Feel Like Making Love.." "Oh. Ew. I Have To Go."

Much like my last entry where I attempted to decode the 3 different types of relationships, this week I'll once again pretend to know what I'm talking about and discuss the 3 different kinds of getting it on. Cause everyone loves a good analytical look into P's in V's.

Ok, so we have- from softest to roughest (is roughest a word? most rough?)- making love, having sex, and fucking. In other words, your appetizer, dinner, and dessert.

Making love is a term that a lot of people feel uncomfortable with. I mean, you really have to be in l-o-v-e with someone to be able to look into their eyes and whisper, "Darling, let's make love tonight". Try doing that without laughing. Seriously, I dare you. Making love is the thing you see in movies where the music comes on in the background (depending on the decade you were born, you have your pick of Barry White, Maxwell, or Robin Thicke) and everything is slow motion and kisses and quick little gasps of breaths when the dude slides in for the first time like it's the most euphoric fuckin feeling the chick has ever felt in her life. Just wait till the end sweetheart, it gets better.

There's a thin line between making love and just having slow, gentle sex. The key word? Love. You really can't "make love" unless you're in love (yikes, I've never typed the word love so much in my life. This is depressing). All of us have had sweet sex with someone, but it doesn't mean that we're expecting a diamond ring afterwards. It's usually just happens when A) the girl is tired of getting rammed against a wall, B) someone has a cramp, or C) the guy is trying to hold in his man juices cause if he gets off one more time without letting the girl get off she's going to punch him in the fuckin nuts.

On that note, there's sex, the most generic type of, well, sex. There's really not a whole lot to be said about it. It's the middle of the road, can do it with anybody regardless of relationship status, putting together of the two puzzle pieces. It feels good, no one gets extraordinarily sore afterwards, and you don't run the risk of feeling either too emotionally mushy or like you have just been used like a human chunk of meat (Mmm, tasty).

Now the grand finale, the don't-try-this-at-home-kids, the 'send in the lube and the handcuffs'. Fucking. One of my favorite words when used as an adjective.

Fucking is something you can do with a one night stand or a long term partner every once in awhile when your Robin Thicke CD starts skipping. It's rough and dirty and sweaty and fast and you feel like you've run a marathon afterwards. Unlike making love which is usually confined to a bed, or having sex which can be on a bed, sofa, shower- all the usual places- fucking can be anywhere. A wall, a floor, a counter, a bed, inside, outside, upside down, right side up, diagonally, top, bottom, side to side, dry, wet, rain, sun, snow, leaves, etc etc etc. It's what you do when you're drunk and it's what you do after you've just had a huge fight and you cannot stand the other person. It's what you see in porns and on Sex & the City whenever Samantha has a scene. It's also a bit of an acquired taste. For the most part, you either like it or you don't.

So that's my take on things. I know my personal favorite of the 3 choices, but a good sex columnist doesn't screw and tell :)

...Was anyone convinced by that? No? Didn't think so.

Sound It Out Now- D-Da-Daaaaaaate.

Remember dating? Yeah, me neither.

Now, as a girl who doesn't really like going to restaurants and can't sit still for the life of me in a movie theater, I'm not crushed that the whole "dinner and a movie" thing isn't standard protocol anymore. However, I do miss the whole concept of being taken out somewhere by someone you just met, resulting in a few hours of nervous conversation and flirtatious looks and shaky, clammy hand holding. It's nice to realize you like someone and not kiss and rub all up on each other right away. It's nice to feel that the object of your affection is actually working towards impressing you and proving that they're a nice guy/girl. I don't want to say this proves that a person is respectful, because I know plenty of great guys who turned into great boyfriends even though they didn't do the whole date thing right away. Maybe what I miss most about literally going out to a physical date-like location with someone is the fact that it helps put a label of sorts on "what you are".

I've had this talk with a friend of mine numerous times; the difference between hooking up, dating/seeing someone, and being boyfriend/girlfriend or boyfriend/boyfriend or girlfriend/girlfriend (I guess the easiest way to categorize that last one would just be to say "relationship". Ooooh, scary word).

Here's my personal description of each different phase of, let's say, togetherness:

Hooking up is pretty self explanatory. You meet someone and there's an attraction there so you guys make out and touch each others' naughty bits and have sex and all that kind of stuff. Sometimes that's the only thing you do when you see each other, and sometimes you can actually build a friendship too where the two of you hang out and have sleepovers and meet each others' friends and all that stuff. However, since the actual act of going on dates has disappeared into the dark abyss that I can only assume Pluto went on permanent vacation to when they kicked it out of the solar system, when you're just hooking up with someone it is hard to tell if it can actually result in an eventual relationship or not. Because what if the other person just wants to hook up and nothing else? When one of their friends asks you if you and his buddy are dating and you say "No, we're just hooking up", does that mean there is no chance of you two ever changing the dreaded relationship status on Facebook? (Which is a curse, by the way. The second you change it to "In A Relationship With.." and have your friends start friending your significant other, you might as well kiss the whole thing goodbye). Also, if you're just hooking up with someone, it most likely is no strings attached so you both can be hooking up with other people at the same time. Usually this isn't a big deal but we all know that girls are crazy and and hypocritical so even though we may be kissing someone on the side, if we find out you are too, well...we're gonna cry. Cause we're nuts.

I guess dating/seeing each other is kinda just a hop, skip, and a jump away from hooking up. Once you're dating it doesn't mean you're in an exclusive relationship. But it sure as hell means that the chance for one is that much stronger. Just like hooking up, you can date multiple people at one time, unless you make it an exclusive dating type deal. In that case, you're both just basically scared of putting the boyfriend/girlfriend title on it which is understandable. That shit is stressful. But if you're dating and someone's birthday rolls around or Christmas pops up on you like an obnoxiously cheery yuletide bandit, you better get each other a gift. Even if it's just taking the other person out for drinks and sliding a card across the table, it has to be recognized somehow.

This brings us to the big guns, the playoffs, the how-the-hell-did-I-get-myself-roped-into-this-one. The Relationship. Bah Bah Baaaaaaah. (I hope those bah's sounded to you guys the same way they did in my head. You know, less-sheeplike and more dooming). Sure, being in a relationship is great and realizing that the person you love is also your best friend is great and being able to walk around saying "I'm just so glad I'm out of the dating scene and found me a real man" is great as long as you're not saying it to a single gal cause we WILL hit you in the back of the knees with a 2x4. But it's also scary. You're in a committed relationship. You're locked in. You're either going to get married or suffer months of depression and self-deprecation after you guys break up because one of you fucked up. And as a girl, it's tough because we often feel that you're just being our boyfriend because we want you to be. It's that whole stereotype of guys being commitment-phobes and never really wanting to be serious. Or there are the guys that are so sickly sweet and in loooooove with you that you just want to punch them in the face and tell them to grow some balls and take their pants off cause momma's feeling frisky.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is this: In getting back to my initial point of "the date" being roadkill, I think that it should pry itself off the asphalt and make a comeback. Dates make people feel special. They're also fun, let's not forget that. And if they're not fun, they make great stories to tell your friends when you're all sitting around drunk and eternally single. Plus, dates force you to actually talk to each other which is the only way you're going to be able to tell if you're better off just as friends or if you should go back to being complete strangers. But speaking from a technical view, dates also help you realize if you're just a booty call, or a potential for something more. You know, like a future baby momma. Cause I don't know about you guys, but I have Maury on speed dial. It's a little something I like to call planning for the future.

And Which Head Will You Be Thinking With Today, Sir?

I recently read something that shook me to my very core, something that made every hair on my body stand up in protest; something that made me want to believe in god just so I could then question those very beliefs. I read something that created a terrible trifecta of a mental hurricane, an emotional tsunami, and a physical earthquake within my poor little body. Something that made me, as a sex writer, want to stand atop a soap box and yell "WHAT HAS THIS ALL BEEN FOR?!"

It started innocently enough. One morning I came downstairs and saw one of my mom's magazines on the couch. You know, the kind where women write article after article in hopes that they can join forces to convince themselves that turning 50 is the best thing to ever happen to them. One of my favorite actresses was on the front so I poured my coffee and settled in for the stereotypical cover story where the author starts off by saying how normal the celebrity is, showing up for the interview in just yoga pants and a sweater. Yeah lady, ask your "normal celebrity" how much those yoga pants of hers cost and then try and make me relate to her.

Anyway, I was flipping through the pages when I caught a headline about sex, so of course I stopped. You know, research purposes and such. So I'm reading through this article about how to get yourself in the mood and blah blah blah, and then all of a sudden, I had to stop. There it was, this blasphemous paragraph, leaping out from the page, flushing everything anyone has ever thought about sex down the drain. According to this article (and this particular paragraph was not strictly about sex in your 50's, it was presented as a general fact), there is a much bigger disconnect between mind and body in women than there is in men. In other words, women can get physically aroused without any mental or emotional stimulation, while men apparently need us to HOLD THEIR FRICKEN HAND FOR THEM TO GET A HARD ON. What kind of hysterical post-menopausal bullshit artist wrote this??? Has a hot flash completely wiped all common sense from her supposedly wise and experienced brain? IS EVERYTHING I EVER THOUGHT WRONG???

I set down my coffee and frantically began skimming the rest of the article for some further explanation, some rebuttal or footnote that stated "Haha, just kidding." There was none to be found. Afraid that I would have a complete nervous breakdown if I invested any more time in this debacle, I threw the magazine down and began racking my mental rolodex of sex facts, myths, and assumptions. While everything can be left up to circumstance, I pretty sure everyone- EVER- can agree that 99.99999% of the time, women need to feel some sort of emotional connection with someone in order to have really great, mind-blowing sex or other sexual activity, resulting in an equally eye-popping orgasm. Meanwhile, men are the first to admit that mushy feelings make their sail go down and all a girl really needs to be eligible for sex is a vagina and the ability to never, ever give a rake job.

I'm not crazy for thinking this article is bullhonky, right? I've talked about it with a few people since reading it, and they all seem to agree with me. I mean, this is like saying that the graham cracker is the best part of a s'more, or that the second Becky on Roseanne was far superior to the original. Lies and fabrications!

All I know is this: the day that I turn 50- in 25 years, 1 month, and 8 days- I am submitting my own article to this very magazine. An article about how since the moment I kissed my very first boy, my brain, heart, and cooch have been linking arms and crossing that finish line together.