Chapter 10
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From a SistahFor sure, there is a difference for us.
Sex? It’s just plain and simple, straight-up bonin’. It’s the only way, really, to describe it. There is no emotional attachment, there are no feelings invested, no promises being made, let alone kept, no reassurances that this is going to lead to anything other than, possibly, another night of straight up bonin’.
And most of us have had it. More than likely with the guy to whom we were sexually attracted -- perhaps a co-worker or the waiter at that funky restaurant we went to with our girls, or even a guy who started out as a (kinda) friend but was just, plain fine and needed to be done -- but who shoulda just kept his mouth shut because the mere sound of his voice made us want to deep dive off the Empire State. He may not have started out as one, but he quickly gets filed under the bone buddy category. His purpose in the sack is equal to the duty he performs when he agrees to go to the movies with us when everybody else we know had something to do that night, or when he agrees to go to our girlfriend’s wedding or to a company dinner because we just couldn’t find anyone else to go with. We make it clear to everyone that he is not our boyfriend. He is introduced as "a friend," but, to ourselves and our girls, he is better identified as, well, a convenience -- a stand-in until The Man comes along.
Now, The Man? We make love to and with him. It’s never, ever, just plain bonin’, just straight-up sex with him; it’s a rollercoaster ride of ecstacy that we don’t ever want to get off. He comes equipped with all the things that we’ve ever wanted from a man -- love, stability, emotions, honesty, trust, compassion, commitment -- and all of that seeps from his body and ours everytime we make love. We love being with him -- look forward to seeing him when we know he’s on his way, enjoy every minute when he’s with us, miss him every moment he’s away. He brings out the best in us and doesn’t mind when the worst rears its ugly head, because he’s confident that he can make it go away -- make us feel better. And we appreciate him for that.
As a result, our sex is uninhibited, free, passionate, unbounded. It’s never a routine with him, a snack to hold us over until the meal comes walking in. He is the first, second, third, fourth and fifth course -- dessert, coffee and an after-dinner mint too. We want him constantly -- and not just to have sex.
He is our boo.
Thing is, too often, we think we’re making love with The Man, and we find out -- most of the time too late -- that he considers us to be bone buddies. We thought we had it going on, that everything was going a smooth as smooth could be -- that he really cared about us the way that we cared for him -- and we find out that he was just sexing us up.
And it’s hard on us, because we thought The Man was the one.
Perhaps the reason why we get the two confused is because we don’t understand how men distinguish between having sex and making love. If we could crawl into his mind and read it, then maybe we could spare the anger and the hurt feelings that come along when the phone calls dry up, he stops coming over and he is no longer available to carry on what we thought was a committed relationship.
So tell us: When is what you’re doing with a woman just sex -- as opposed to making love? How do you all distinguish between the two?
Are we talking just semantics here? Otherwise, the difference seems pretty plain--you make love when you’re in love. We’re no different than women in that respect. Now, if you happen to be one of those people who calls virtually everything that happens in bed between two people "making love," no matter what their feelings are toward each other, than we’re just playing words games-- "making love" is the same as "having sex" is the same as "knocking boots" is the same as "getting your swerve on." But for argument’s sake, let’s assume that they mean two different things.
The question then becomes: does the sex feel any different when we’re in love? The answer to that is an unequivocal yes. It feels so different that if the relationship ends, it’s hard to go back to just having sex. Once we get used to lobster, frozen fish sticks just don’t cut it anymore. They may be filling, but we feel no passion about eating them, no glow from knowing it’s a special meal. When we’re having sex, our focus is generally on one body part only: our penis. Our mind is minimally involved; friction is the name of this game. When enough is applied to the penis to achieve orgasm, the whole show is over. We might as well pack up the tent and go home because the acrobatics and the lion taming are done. Of course it is ideal if the friction is provided by a woman, but if necessary our hand can also get the job done. In fact, we have grown quite accustomed to the work of our hand over the years. A woman might scoff at the challenge of surpassing our hand, but she shouldn’t take it too lightly. More than a few women have suffered shameful defeat and been sent on their way.
We might go through our adult lives having sex with different women and occasionally even suspecting we might be making love--on those occasions when we don’t mind cuddling afterward--then we get zapped. We meet HER. Everything about her takes our breath away; she’s a living embodiment of an angel (before her head gets too big, I should say she’s not perfect--just as close as we’ve ever gotten). We want to spend every waking moment in her presence; when we’re sitting at our desks, we’re wondering where she is, what she’s doing, who she’s talking to--we especially wonder about that one. She becomes an occupying force in our brains, seizing control of our villages, putting us on a strict curfew, severely limiting the people who can come and go, ruling with an iron hand. And we relish every minute of it. Just her scent sets us off; we sniff the pillows when she’s gone, put her clothes to our face and drink in her essence. And when we hit the bedroom--Oh Lawdy have mercy! It’s unlike anything we’ve ever experienced--dripping (sometimes literally) with passion and sensitivity, each time surpassing the last in exploring the upper reaches of dramatic, intense and heart-stopping intimacy. As we come down from our high, we ask each other if it could ever possibly get better than that--and, amazingly, the next time it does.
Once we’ve had that, it’s real hard to go back to "banging"-- one of the many inelegant terms that we so inelegantly apply to having sex. Back to a focus on the penis, rather than involving the full range of senses and emotions; back to the quest for friction (remember that Rae Dawn Chong movie "Quest For Fire" about those barely evolved prehistoric humans? Well, that’s us, desperate for friction), rather than seeking our most intensely sensual experience. For awhile, we may be sated by the wonders of difference--the fun of tasting, smelling, encountering as many different women as possible. I’m not going to lie--difference can be quite exciting and satisfying at first. It’s like a sexual smorgasbord, delighting in the fact that there are so many different flavors out there, so many different personalities, different sensations. But what usually happens at a smorgasbord? After the first time around the circuit, two things occur: we get overstuffed and we grow less impressed by the variety of the selections. We discover that many of the dishes don’t agree with us--in fact a few of them we find quite nasty and vow never to try them again. By day two or three on the cruise or at the Caribbean resort, we narrow our picks to the things that we really like. And when we go back for seconds, we go straight to what has emerged as our favorite. So despite the fact that there are perhaps a dozen or more dishes to choose from, we have eyes for only a couple. Vive le difference and all that, but pretty soon difference for the sake of difference gets stale. We want to settle down with what we like, the taste we prefer.
When we’re in love, we also don’t mind appearing weak or vulnerable in front of our love. Weak and vulnerable is a state that most men would cut off a limb to avoid under most circumstances, but suddenly we’re letting down all our guards and protections and allowing her inside. It’s a scary position for us, to be that open and exposed. But we have trust; we know she will take care, she’ll be gentle and considerate. (The second she betrays us and uses her access to hurt or insult, we might as well turn on the hazard lights because she’s driven the relationship into the breakdown lane.) That openness and trust is a perfect state to be in for some fantastic love-making: uninhibited, unguarded, open to possibilities. No fear.
Are you more open to experimentation when you’re in love with the man--or are you still afraid of what he’ll think?
What did Phyllis Hyman say in that song? "What you won’t do, you do for love."
There isn’t a woman on this earth who won’t find herself compromising herself, her principles, her beliefs, her customs -- and, in some cases, her morals -- to please someone with whom she’s found herself head-over-heels in love.
I have a co-worker, for instance, who told me the nastiest mess I’d ever heard in my life. A single mom, she recently had a beautiful baby boy whom she found out was born with asthma and a few other respiratory problems. The boy turned into a human snot machine pretty quickly -- and for those of you who’ve been around a baby with a cold for more than two minutes, you know that means mom is getting her fair share of nastiness. Problem is that babies don’t know how to blow their noses. You have to do it for them. They have those cute little nose aspirator things -- the ones with the plastic piece that fits into the baby’s nose, and the blue bubble on the end that, if you squeeze and release it, will pull the mucous out of the baby’s nose.
Well, my girl claimed that she just couldn’t get her son to sit still for one of those nose aspiration sessions; he would wiggle and cry and scream and wimper, but he would not let her get the snot out of his nose. So what did she do? "What every mother would do in this situation," she said. "I use my mouth." As I struggled not to throw up over my computer, she just kept talking and justifying. "You’ll see when you have yours. There is no greater love than a mother for her child. You’d be surprised what you would do for her baby."
Now, I know my child would just have to sit still for the blue bubble, because ain’t no way in hell my mouth is going anywhere near the snot in her nose. It’s not happening.
Of course, I can say this without having yet had the child who’s currently squirming around in my belly.
And a woman who hasn’t truly been in love can easily say what she wouldn’t do for -- or with -- a man.
But then, let her look into his eyes as he says, "I love you,"and watch her melt like putty in the hands of a hot-headed, bad-ass child.
She’ll find herself watching him while he’s sleep.
She’ll find herself staring through the hazy glass where he’s showering.
Damn, she’ll find herself planting herself in the middle of the floor while he’s taking a dunk.
You think she won’t find herself doing a few other things she swore to herself, her mama and every last one of her girlfriends she wouldn’t dare do?
There are, of course, a few things that she wouldn’t compromise on -- a few deal-breakers. Physical abuse. Drug abuse. Verbal abuse. Cheating. But there are even some women who would go for some of that, if they fell hard enough. Most of the time, though, a smart, intelligent sistah knows that she doesn’t have to put up with it. Besides, she would have to think about how she would look if someone found out she let some man beat her butt, or talk to her inappropriately, or sleep with another woman in her bed. A sistah’s got pride, and there’s only so much she’s going to let a man get away with before she recognizes that her reputation is at stake, too.
But when it comes to sex, she will certainly find herself doing a few things with the man that she loves that she wouldn’t have dreamed of doing with one of the knuckleheads she was messing around with before she found The One.
The reasons are simple.
When it comes to sex, the knucklehead is just plain laying the pipe; The One is, well, making love. When it comes to doing sexually what she thought was weird, the knucklehead is just plain nasty; The One is simply creative. When it comes to keeping all your freaky secrets on the hush-hush, the knucklehead can’t keep his mouth shut; The One wouldn’t dare tell anyone his sexual business, because guys don’t run around telling other men -- not even their boys -- what they do in the bed with their woman. They might tell what they did with that freak they don’t care anything about, but not their wife, or their girlfriend.
And sistahs know this.
Of course, there might be some exceptions to this rule -- not every woman is going to be down with every sexual fantasy you’ve ever concocted in your freaky little mind. But she will, certainly, be more open to it, now that you’ve earned her affection and, above all else, trust.
Because she’ll do for love, what she would not do -- only with you.
If our relationship starts out as just sex, does that mean that you’ll never make love to me?
There are two categories here: the no-way-in-hells and the it-could-happens. The category in which a woman falls is determined by what happens in bed and also what happens when we’re not in bed. If we’re not in bed and I sometimes find myself wishing that I were somewhere else, and then when we are in bed I never feel a special spark, an extra intensity that tells me this is different, then you’re probably a no-way-in-hell. I never will make love to you. What I’m doing with you is getting that friction.
But then there are the it-could-happens. I like being around you. If I’m not in love with you the first time we have sex, that doesn’t mean necessarily mean I can’t fall in love with you in the near future. The thing has potential. Love could happen.
I’m not really a believer in love at first sight--I think two people can be physically drawn to each other at first sight and then that after they get to know each other that physical attraction could eventually transform into love. But how can that happen before you ever exchange words with the other person, before you even find out whether the person is two cards short of a full deck or a psychopath in disguise? People who say they fell in love with somebody at first sight probably fell in love at first sight with the person’s appearance, which prompted them to pursue a relationship that eventually turned into true love. For them, looking back at the turn of events, they’ll describe what happened as "love at first sight" when that’s not what happened at all. My point is love may not have blossomed yet between us before we slide into bed for the first time. We might be working at a relationship that looks promising and has potential, but we wouldn’t yet describe it as love. The sex may even be awkward and not-so-wonderful at first because we haven’t had a chance to adjust to each other’s rhythms. With the passage of time, as our feelings for each other deepen and intensify, we start realizing that we’re in love. We wake up one day and find that we can’t live without each other; this may be the real thing. And by now we’re more familiar with each other’s bodies and the sex improves to the point where it’s truly fantastic. Now we’re making love.
One thing I’ve realized as I’ve gotten a little older is that the sex act is almost like a dance. In order for it to reach its zenith, the two partners must understand each other well enough to know which buttons to push and how hard to push them. They must be able to anticipate each other’s needs and reactions. Until this happens, they will stumble, trip over each other and sometimes fall on their ass. If he’s performing oral sex, he needs to know how hard he can nibble without hurting her, whether she likes for him to use fingers in addition to lips and tongue, when she’d probably want him to move up and slide inside of her. He can’t know these things the first few times they do it. Truth be told, it may even take some time for him to get used to her taste--he may not be crazy about it in the beginning. It often takes trial and error to find these things out because most women aren’t going to tell us right away--some women never tell us at all. We make our discoveries through experimentation, like the chemist who tries different chemicals in different combinations until he finds the magical formula. It takes some couples longer than others to find their rhythm--but if six or seven months have passed and you’re still bumping heads and doing things that cause your partner to yell out in pain ("Owww!" is not the most pleasant sound to hear in the throes of passion), you should be worried.
Returning to your question, if the woman has been assigned to the Booty Call category, there’s little chance that we’re going to fall in love with her, as I’ve said before. She’s a no-way-in-hell. For whatever reason, we’ve determined that she doesn’t have the qualities we’re looking for in a partner. So when we come over to see her, what we’re doing is having sex. We will always be having sex--no matter how badly she wants it to change. If we don’t want to be seen in public with her, the odds are fairly undeniable that we won’t be falling in love.
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