The Brooklyn Bridge Question

Maybe I should have paid attention in tenth grade health class when Mrs. O’Brady explained sex. Being the mature young woman that I was growing into, I sat in the back, looking uncomfortable and wishing that we were discussing menstruation and talking about how Chlamydia and Gonorrhea are transmitted. Instead of taking on a matter-of-fact discussion on sexual mechanics, we veered from the curriculum a bit.

“I know you say that it can’t happen to you, but believe me when I say that when you introduce sex into a relationship, it changes everything.”

Granted, shortly after her little chat I overheard from a friend that she and her husband were embattled in a bitter divorce.

But despite the fact she was projecting, over ten years later, her point stuck with me; throughout the snickers of “yea right” adolescence, the blind fear of emotional intimacy that plagued me in my college years, and now the begrudging acceptance that yes, fuck, sex does change everything.

Having kept myself shielded in an emotional bubble for a majority of college (ok, fine, I became a fatty in college) and too shell shocked from the reality of the real world to make any meaningful friendships that could involve sex (ok, fine, emotional basketcase that took out her sexuality only when she was drunk), I never understood how surrounding friendships changed with the introduction of sex into your life. We’ve all been exposed to enough Jay-Z to know that it’s “bros before ‘hos”, and the feminist version coined in response to that misogynistic phrase that says “chicks before dicks”. But how many of ourselves have been in a situation where the friend in question did not heed to the gospel preached?

On those boring walks home from the train, work, the gym, we flip through our address books in our cell phones, looking for someone to alleviate our boredom. Each time I flip and scroll, I see names programmed into my phone of people who I haven’t spoken to in months. It’s not that I am in a fight with them or anything, it’s just that they have succumbed to the inevitable—they’ve met their best friend who they can fuck. Or, at the very least someone who is a great fuck.

Until I experienced it myself, I never understood it. I looked at friendship and such things with the naiveté of a child, you were either right or wrong, black and white, only one true answer. And if you ditched me for your boyfriend so you could go home and fuck the loser, yea I am going to be fucking angry! You are choosing something like… sex, over me?!

I guess it shows how lack of good sex can affect anyone’s judgment.

But then I fell off my mighty horse. I started to become a slave to my carnal desires. It happened slowly, at first. Talking obsessively about the intricacies a crush. And then I saw it manifest itself when I canceled brunch plans with my sister or showed up late to work, so I can sit in bed for an extra hour with a boy. I’ve blown vacations because I fell victim to lust, that feeling resulting from the fusion-inspired energy of two people who are lost in sexual tension. I’ve felt how it isn’t enough to be in a person’s presence, how I felt this need to consume every aspect of him—his words, his feelings, all culminating with sex acting as the ultimate claim onto those desires.

And conversely, I’ve watched sexual tension keeping men and women coming back for more, even when both know that the relationship is already defunct. Or in my case, an $800 flight to London to say a hearty, “go fuck yourself,” only to end up in a desolate staircase, with his hands down my pants as I drunkenly begged him to take me back to his place and fuck the shit out of me, each time our lips parted and our tongues slipped back into our mouths.

Sex has a hold over us. It makes us do the stupid and the smart. It causes us to act crazy and quit smoking, to take the advice of someone who we have known for less than three months and ignore the same advice offered by someone who we’ve known for ten years. It seems that the stakes are raised when the other person has seen us naked and invaded us with their touch.

It’s only with the wisdom of accumulated life experience that I am beginning to see that no person is immune to its effects. We will all fall from our protected perches, with some of us falling harder and more often than others. None of us are protected, even traditional shields of experience and reason unable to stave off the inevitable. Even with all of my self-awareness and ability to recognize patterns of behavior and ‘read’ people and their actions like a motherfucker, I am left unarmed and vulnerable when my clitoris is involved.

I see it as a symptom of growing up—doing things and getting into situations that we swore we would never get into. Dating (or engaged) the wrong people, turning a blind eye because we are so deep in a situation--especially in part because of the intimacy that sex brings. We see it manifest itself as a symptom of changing friendship dynamics: well, yes, there is a large part of me that would much rather be riding a some dude’s cock, panting, on the brink of orgasm than to listen to you complain how your boyfriend Charlie treats you badly. Our lustful desires coming before all else.

There comes a point in our lives where the rules that fed our ethics no longer apply. Not because they are antiquated and don’t fit in with the changing times, but that we reach a point in our lives where we feel comfortable acknowledging that we want the fun of being not-so-perfect allows. Our morality evolves into acting like this prop that we can mold with rationalization instead of being this code that we strictly adhere to. It’s just so seductive (and fun!) on the other side, that it’s too hard to resist the temptation, especially when everyone else is doing it.

And you all are making the same mistakes together.