In case of 2007: Mid-July

Danny to me in the video store: “Why not get this one?”

I paused, biting my lip.

Danny, YOU could be biting my lip right now, I thought. Let’s go. Let’s tuck ourselves into a closet somewhere and you can kiss me as hard as you want.

But maybe it was something in the neon blue lights or the DVD he was holding. He just raised his eyebrows and waved the movie in my face.

“I don’t want to.” I said. “That one’s lame.”

“It’s funny.”

“Who wants funny?” Yes, I said it. Sarcastic and mean, just like that. But, you know, don’t get me wrong. I was in favor of funniness. I’m a funny girl. Danny was just not getting it.

He sighed and put the boring movie down.

The point was: we were young. Do you know how often you get to be young? We were young and on that particular night, we looked amazing. My hair was down, brushing my shoulders. Danny’s collar was open and I could just see his collarbone, curving beneath his skin. But it wasn’t just about making out, either.

I just wanted Danny to realize that we were young. That it was a night in July and there were crickets chirping out there in the darkness.

He was standing there, holding a romantic comedy, and probably not thinking about it. He was probably thinking about popcorn, probably about work in the morning, and, yes, probably about sex – but only in that brief, idiotic way men typically do.

He shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose. I adored those glasses. They were part of his charm.

Somewhere, someplace, there once were two young people. And they went to the beach on a July night and wrestled in the sand. She rubbed sand in his face and when they tried to kiss they knocked their heads together. And the next morning she woke up with her hair in knots and her shoes soaked in seawater. And then he wrote it or she wrote it or they told a friend of theirs who wrote it. And that’s where Danny’s lame movie came from.

Danny wanted to watch something someone else had lived. And while it might make us feel good for a while, really, it would just get lost in translation. Because probably they didn’t even really knock their heads together when they kissed, but the person who wrote it decided that nobody would believe it if they didn’t knock their heads together. Because the truth would actually seem less realistic than the cute quirkiness of people who can’t kiss right. Good kissing is so done. The time has come for bad kissing and knotted hair and shoes that smell of the sea.

To Danny, it didn’t matter what had happened to these people. It only mattered what the writer wrote and what the two beautiful actors did. To Danny, that was all there was.

And he just stood there, lanky, glasses glinting in the fluorescents. For God’s sake, I know why he wanted that movie! Because he was only halfway on the beach, had only one foot in the closet, only one arm draped (very loosely) around my shoulders.

I wanted to know if Danny and I would ever knock heads. I wanted to do something that would make a good movie later.

But, at the end of the night, Danny and I watched his lame DVD. And, five years later, I wrote something I just made up.

And Danny and his tall blonde wife thought it was great.

In case of A COLD UNIVERSE

The older I get the more I wonder if life might really be all about sex.

I’m not sure who said that to me first.  That life is actually all about sex.  I read it somewhere, I think, or heard it in a movie.  Anyway, it’s a catchy idea, you’ve gotta admit.  Life = sex.  It’s got a nice ring to it.

And people certainly do live like that’s true, sometimes.  Let’s take one of my co-workers, for example.  Which one of these, do you think, is his favorite thing to do?

a)      work at the studio

b)      crack

c)      his girlfriend

Well.  Okay, I admit it.

Between B and C, it’s a toss up.

And Oggy?  Well, after trying a long distance relationship for a while, he decided it would be better to date someone locally.  So that’s who he’s sleeping with now.

Not that he bothered to break up with the long distance girlfriend, mind you.

And meanwhile, all I’m doing day after day is researching photographers as potential clients.  And what do you think this research has led me to?

You guessed it.  Lots and lots of pictures of mostly naked people.

Which brings me full circle back to:  life = sex. 

It does, right?  It must!

Sigh.

I have lots of ideas about sex.  What it is, what it isn’t.  What it means, what it doesn’t mean.  I’ve built these ideas from books I’ve read and people I’ve talked to and the handful of things I’ve actually witnessed and experienced.

But what I keep coming back to is that sex, boil it down, probably just satisfies that human desire to be in contact with other humans.  Even if it’s only physical contact. 

And when humans are most open, most intimate, most together…ladies and gentlemen…we call that love.

I’m not naïve enough to believe that sex and love are equitable.  But from where I’m standing, they’re born from the same two things.  Thing one:  the desire not to be alone.

Thing two:  the fear that we might be.

And if you have something to believe in, some reason to believe you’re not alone…then life, for you, is not all about sex.  At least, it doesn’t have to be.

But if you have nothing to believe in, if you’re a man at the mercy of chaos, a figure alone on a distant star in a cold universe…then you will reach out with every part of you to be touched.

And even those of us that do believe in God need that, too, sometimes. 

In case of PROHIBITION

I admit it.  I am a virgin.

I either credit or blame this (depending on the day) on my upbringing.  Thanks to so many years of Sunday School and, later, Youth Group, I fully believed that sex before marriage was WRONG.  And this didn’t cramp my style at all.  I was a “late bloomer.”  Until very recently, sex never even sounded like that great of an idea.  Yes, I am a very successful product of Christian Subcultural Brainwashing. 

But then I met Bobby.  And I discovered kissing.  And the bastion of my sexual prudery began to crumble.

And why not?  We were in love.  Making out with someone you love is GREAT.  We always had so much fun finding new and interesting places to suck face.  We made out in closets, in bathrooms, in cars, on staircases, on rides at Disneyland, on cliff tops, on beaches, in the ocean, in my parents’ house, in his parents’ house, in mission bell towers, in the woods, in the parking lot, in every dark corner of every building we could think of, and a in million other places I’m sure I’m forgetting. 

And when Bobby and I broke up, I was angry and hurt and vulnerable and there was no way I was going to wait too long to see what it was like to kiss someone else. 

Now, that was two years ago.

And I haven’t been all as promiscuous as I could have been.  But I can still count my boyfriends on one hand, and, at this point, I’ve got to take off my shoes to count the number of mouths I’ve stuck my tongue into.  Thank God for toes.

But I miss being in love.

I miss getting to kiss the SAME person every day.  I miss the ease of a relationship, of making out with someone who KNOWS you, who you are, and how to treat you.  I miss getting turned on by my emotions, not just my body.

As Beth says, maybe making out for the sake of making out isn’t WRONG.  Maybe it’s just not as good as it could be.  And even if you’re kissing someone you care about, someone you like, someone you really respect and admire and maybe even love in some way, if you’re not IN love, it’s still not as good as it could be.  It’s not ideal.  Not the way that it should be. 

And why do I want to settle for that?  Loneliness?  Curiosity?  Sexual frustration?  Even to express comfort or affection, is that a good enough reason?  I want to be a part of something as good as it could be!

So this (!) is my official decision.  The next guy that gets to kiss me has to already be dating me.  The next guy is going to be THE guy, for a while.  This virgin is hereby laying off the sex.  I’m getting on the wagon.  I’m quitting, cold turkey. 

Bootleggers be damned.