Some Boys Just Wanna Have Fun

David has the perfect glasses. They make him look like the sexy professor I always wanted to do in college, if any of my professors hadn't been old or British. His hair curls just the right amount, and in the right places. His casual button-up smooths over his chest, and I feel like I've met him in a sex dream I had six months ago.

"Nice glasses," I say.

He turns to me and smiles. "Thanks. I actually bought them in Canada."

"Oh really? Where? I went to college in Vancouver- UBC."

"Really? That's a good school. I got my masters at SFU, which, as you may know, sucks." 

His voice is perfect. It's sweet, and soft, but deep; like an ex-wrestler who now plays jazz casually and writes poetry. He could describe how to barbecue a salmon and I'd still want to put my tongue all over him. 

We talk, and keep talking, until we've entirely missed our mutual friend's band, as well as the proceeding bands. We've traveled through the world; sampled varying gradients of ales, and have figured out why we're both neurotic in three hours. As I'm walking with my roommate to my car at the end of the night, I proclaim, "I'm going to end up with that guy."

Our first date a week later mimics our first meeting; evenly weighted conversation and exchange of cute witticisms. We analyze our lives, weigh the pros and cons of America. After closing down three bars, we end up on his living room floor, playing makeshift Scattegories.

"I really don't think 'German bands' counts as a musical group," I say.

"Oh, I think it does. If you can keep "spotato," I can keep my 'German bands.'"

"Yeah, whatever. I'll let it go this time."

I put down my pencil and paper, and run my hand through my hair. "Tonight's been fun," I say.

He smiles. "Yeah."

We look at each other for too long. With a weird abruptness, he starts kissing me. His tongue is more fighting mine than embracing it, and for the first time tonight, I feel like we're not on the same page. But I keep going with it, because I'm finally remembering what it feels like to be painfully attracted to someone.

After a few horizontal minutes of friendly tongue battle, I say I'm tired, and ask if it's okay if I stay the night. "But I'm only staying here because I don't want to walk home at this hour. We're not going to have sex," I remind him. Not yet, anyway.

"Ha, no, I'm totally okay with that. I don't want to, either."

Uh, what? "Oh, okay. Good."

I sleep in his bed that night; wetter than a 30-year-old virgin, wondering what he meant by he didn't want sex. Isn't he a guy? It's great that he's respectful, but why is he SO okay with not putting his D in me? 

We hang out a few more times. Every time we see each other, it's like Annie Hall; long shots and fall days, comforting and familiar. He's told me he's attracted to me, and we clearly get along as well as PB and J. But the motherfucker still won't fuck me.

One morning, we're naked in his bed, making out. He begins to attempt at getting me off for about two minutes, kissing me with more fervor, until suddenly, his kisses slow down and he returns to nuzzling me like a puppy. This has happened the last few times I've stayed at his house. Our sexual encounters feel on par with those of a fifteen-year-old Mormon couple.

After I realize what time it is, we get out of bed and he makes me eggs and espresso. I look at him as I'm about to walk out the door. 

"Well, bye!" I say. I look at him like he's five lines of coke and I'm Charlie Sheen.

"Yeah, see you later!" he says, sort of half-hugging me.

I walk out the door, staring at the ground. What the fuck? If I keep sleeping in his bed, why are we not, at the very least, getting each other off? And why doesn't he seem interested in much beyond making out?

"I don't believe in asexuals," my grumpy coworker tells me one day after I tell her about my dilemma.

It turns out asexuals are really hot right now. In a recent Savage Love column, a man wrote in, saying that he felt pressured by his friends, family, and the media to date and be in relationship. He said that as long as he's "got music and friends, [he's] satisfied." David Jay, founder of "Asexual Visibility and Education Network" has recently gone on numerous talk shows and news stations, advocating for the 1% of the population that identifies as asexual. Whether you believe in the idea or not, asexuals are beginning to make a name for themselves, and beginning to speak out against our rigid ideas of sexuality. 

Whether David sexually desires men, women, nobody, or a pack of Mentos gum, I can't keep pretending that I'm not bothered by his lack of desire. I finally say something to him on his couch the following Sunday night.  

"I love hanging out with you, I'm very attracted to you, but every time I leave your house, I feel confused, slightly hurt, and extremely wet. What's the deal? Are you not attracted to me?"

He smiles. I brace myself. "No, I'm attracted to you. And I'm sorry if I've hurt you in any way, that's not my intention. I just haven't felt that sexual lately. And I don't think I'm that sexual to begin with, to be honest with you. Any time I've dated someone who's been...overtly sexual, it just doesn't seem to work out that well."

I'm having a hard time believing him. Did I fart in his face or something and just not remember it? "Okay. So, what would you like to do at this point? I really do enjoy hanging out with you."

"Yeah, I definitely do, too."

"So...should we just be friends?"

"Yeah, maybe. For now."

For now? What does that mean? Like, for the next hour? Two years? How long do I have to wait until I can fuck this guy?

We decide to watch a movie. It ends with us yawning; I look at the clock, and it's nearly 3am. "Umm...so...would you mind terribly if I crashed here tonight?" I say.

"No, that's totally fine."

"Thanks. Should I...stay on the couch, or...?"

"Yeah, that would probably be for the best."

Really? "Okay. Isn't that kind of weird, though? Last week, I was sleeping in your bed."

"Yeah, but, I think if we're going to do the friend thing, then you should probably not sleep in my bed anymore."

I nod. "Oh-kay. I'm really confused- did you just stop being attracted to me, did I do something...? What changed?"

"No, I'm still attracted to you, I just see this getting messy if sex is a part of it. I think it would just be easier if we did the friend thing. I really wouldn't take this personally."

Uh huh. "Okay. Well, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do the friend thing, because I'm still very attracted to you, and this is just weird."

"Well, okay. I'm sorry to hear that."

I shrug, in the light of his DVD player. 

"Can I get you a blanket? It's really cold out here."

I sleep on the couch that night, sliding around in a sleeping bag, staring at his living room ceiling. As he begins to snore twenty feet away from me, all I want is a nice boy who wants to fuck like a man. But apparently, not all men just want to fuck. 

  

The Big 'O'

The energy is always high; excitement courses through our veins, and booze flows continuously like poll numbers- this is why I turned the last couple elections into date nights. 

The 2008 date was awesome; I was still living in Canada, watching my country elect its first black president, and old Vietnam vets were buying everyone at the bar drinks. Obviously, that shared passion and whiskey translated into sex that only neighbors could get annoyed by. The 2012 date was much like the election; less present, more begrudging, and uninterested.

The voter turnout for this election was 57.5%; the lowest since 2000. Date 2012 was 100% the most bored out of anyone near him watching the election, and easily in the top 10% most bored dates in the country. The most commonly cited speculations for lack of voter turnout in 2012 revolve around the long lines, difficult process, and the oft-subjective mandate of "valid state ID" cards.
Date 2012 and I waited in line for half an hour to get a drink at this election party I invited him to, and only one of us got IDed. But I couldn't blame his lack of interest on the lines, or the packed bar; date 2012 just didn't vote.

"Why not?" I tried to ask as nice as possible, dodging another hoard of excited white people.

He shrugged. "I don't know, I just...don't care, I guess."

I stared at him for a second, then glanced around the room to see if there were any other cute guys in the vicinity. "Why don't you care?"

"Because...it just seems like we're switching hands; like there's no big difference from one politician to the next. It's still basically the same people in power. And it doesn't seem like it'll really affect me one way or the other."

His black v-neck fit wonderfully, and his face was dusted with the perfect amount of facial hair, so I tried to keep my tone sweet. "Okay. Let's say, you get some girl pregnant, and abortion is no longer legal. Don't you think that would affect you?"

He thought about it. "Yeah..." He gets quiet again, while everyone in the room hollered at Wolf Blitzer announcing Obama's victory in Vermont.

I wanted to scream, too, but figured there'd be time for that later. "So if you're not into politics, what are you into? What do you enjoy?" C'mon, give me something.

"I don't know. Like, friends, family...? I like my job. Sports, definitely."

I asked him questions about his friends and family; he talked about doing live comedy as we noshed and drank away from the crowd. We exchanged personal beliefs about the importance of not being a dick to other people. I was actually starting to enjoy him. When we returned to the election, he stopped talking again, and I went back to asking him questions.

While we both gazed at the largest screen in the room, everyone was the loudest they'd been all night, and drinks were more on the floor than in the cups. He looked at his watch and said, "yo, it's ten o'clock, I think I should head out. I don't really stay out late on weeknights."

"Oh, yeah, okay. Well, have a good night." Bull-shit.

What the fuck had just happened? As I asked my friend if I should have been offended, the entire room erupted while the giant check mark landed next to "Obama." Everyone screamed and hugged; all I could think about was the fact that politics may have ruined my date.


As I drove home, I realized that we did it- we were getting four more years.

I screamed the loudest and most high-pitched noise I could've screamed, then wondered if it would be another four years before I got laid.
 

The Roaring Twenties

I thought everything was fine. Monday night was Blazers, beers and boys. Happy hour with flirtatious, cute male friends was Tuesday. Wednesday was always karaoke night for my roommates. I didn’t really want to go; it would’ve been the 5^th night in a row of drinks/going out. But that cute boy I’d been making eye contact with was probably going, and how else was I going to get any closer to TCB*-ing if I stayed in?

*TCB: To “take care of business;” could refer to any necessary ritual, i.e. consumption of food, daily chores, bathroom usage, masturbation, or sexual intercourse. In the aforementioned context, “TCB” refers to “getting some serious bone.”

For origins, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takin%27_Care_of_Business

         

Just when I thought all of my internal organs were going to conspire against me, up came Saturday- ‘90s night at Holocene. As I gazed around from the line at the bar, the room felt more reminiscent of adolescence than our ‘90s childhood; like a drunk(er), (more) coked out high school dance. Girls shook their booties nearly to the beat; boys hovered over the crowd to identify the drunkest prey. Half of me wanted to be the target of their desire; the other half wished I was already listening to Billie Holliday in bed.

          Once I muscled my way to the bar and back, sans conversation with handsome stranger, I found my friends on the dance floor. Two of these friends had been sexy dancing for weeks now, but had yet to surpass the “oh hah we’re just dancing!” façade. A mutual male friend sat with me on the couch, perpendicular to them.

          “When’rr they gonna fuckin’ make out already?” I yelled into my friend’s ear, spilling ice on my skirt.

          “I know, right? They need to get it over with! Hey,” he said, putting his drink down. “What iffwe make out, just to show them it’s okay?”

          I looked at him and smiled. “Okay.”

          After our lips found each other, I couldn’t help but notice our tongues were getting along. The more they touched, the more they synchronized. Somewhere underneath my numb skin, I felt the desire to be everywhere on him.

          We swayed from room to room, making out against walls and on couches until eventually our group of friends ended up back at my house. After going pee, I walked into my living room, now only populated by my friend, dangling over the side of the couch. “Uh, you can sleep in my bed…if you want,” I said.

          “Uhhh….yeah, sure.”

          In my bed, our sexy frenzy had turned into small, tired kisses. After a few minutes of awkward groping and roaming around each other’s bodies, I felt like I could fall asleep.

          He stopped and looked at me. “We should totally do it,” he suggested, sounding like a drunk surfer.

          Several steps away from being sufficiently wet, yet alone awake, I said; “Uh, well, we’re both pretty drunk; I don’t know how good it’s going to be.”

          Silence. “Okay, goodnight.” He then rolled over, facing the wall.

          I stared at my ceiling and tried to figure out what had just happened.

          The next morning, he was gone, and I really had to pee. After stumbling to the bathroom, I couldn’t help but notice that my lower abdomen felt like it was on fire, on top of a bed of needles. Even while I washed my hands and walked out of the bathroom, a dull, uncomfortable ache resonated in my lower half. I made an immediate doctor’s appointment.

          The doctor sat down across from me, looking at her clipboard. “So it looks like you still have a UTI; there are still white blood cells in your urine.”

          I nodded. “Yeah, it feels like it.”

          She looked concerned. “So you’ve been drinking water, and laying off coffee and sugar, right?”

          I nod. “Yeah, I’ve been avoiding coffee.”

          “So…why do you think you seem to be so prone to these infections?” She asked.

          I sighed. “Probably because I drink alcohol. I don’t drink that much,” I hate lying to doctors, “but I have noticed that I’ve gotten the most UTIs I’ve ever had since I’ve started drinking more.” That didn’t sound good.

          “Well, listen to your body. If you know that, you should stick with it. I’d definitely lay off alcohol, coffee, and any sort of sexual activity for the next couple weeks.”

          Cool, all of my favorite things. “Okay.”

I hate Fred Meyer pharmacy. As I waited in line to pay $60 for a new antibiotic, I felt like a total idiot. If I hadn’t been drinking nearly every day of the week, I wouldn’t have been there.

 While I noticed an old woman sitting in the waiting area with fifteen prescriptions, I felt my cell phone vibrate. I opened up a text from my friend: “Hey, I was just talking to Luke, and it looks like all the guys are going to Booty Basement on Saturday. You down?”

I pictured myself watching Freaks and Geeks by myself on the couch. Then I pictured glistening tequila shots, feeling sexy, and making out with my guy friend, slammed against a heavy beat and the wall. I texted back: “Yeah, can’t say no to booties.”

           

Episode 3: The Bong and the Restless

I’m sitting alone at my neighborhood dive bar when I meet my next boyfriend. He plants his Pabst on the bar in front of me, looking away.

            “Is that for me?” I ask.

            He looks down and smiles. “No, but I can get you one.”

I glance at my girlfriend chatting up some fool at the bar, then I look back at Mr. Pabst. While we wait in line at the bar, I ask him his name. He yelps, “Alex!” I smile. He has the same name as my last Portland boyfriend. I’ve been back for four months, and this is my first night of going out since I've returned that I don’t live with my parents. I feel alive; ready for the crab to come out of the shell. I don’t know what the crab or the shell is, but I hope I don’t get crabs. Just some dick. This one will be Alex 2: the sequel.

Alex has a sweet face, which justifies his stained, ‘70’s porn star jacket. After he buys me my own Pabst, we sit outside while he smokes.

            “So what do you do for work?” I ask.

            “Um, well, I used to work at a coffee shop, but then I got laid off, see, and now I’m actually on unemployment. But I’m looking for work and stuff.”

            I nod. Every guy that has hit on me in the past month either didn’t finish college or is on unemployment. Welcome home, Rose.

            “...But I’m in a band,” he adds.

            Okay, I can work with that. “Cool, what do you play?”

            “I play bass. It’s sort of dancey, electronic pop stuff.”

            Fuck. As if I don’t hear enough of that on 94.7 and at lesbian dance parties at Rotture. “That’s cool. How long have you guys been playing?”

            “A while. We haven’t been playing that many shows as much recently. Our lead singer is kind of...well, addicted to drugs.”

            For having had more Pabsts than fingers, he’s surprisingly coherent and conscientious.  This makes me okay with asking him to walk me home when I realize it’s 2 am and I have to be up for work in four hours.

            In front of my house, he asks if it’s okay for him to call me sometime. Though he seems a little, well, Portland (no job, in a band), my criteria for dating someone ‘settled’ (financially independent, emotionally stable) appears to only be leading me to excess masturbation. I give him my number and a kiss. 

            Seven months later, I’ve lent him $100 three times, and more often than not, made or spotted him meals. At times I wonder if we’re still together because I need to escape my roommates and he needs sustenance. Our relationship is feeling like “Survivor,” except I already know who’s getting kicked off the island.

I eat breakfast with my cousin one morning, whose girlfriend has recently left him for grad school. I ask if he misses her. “I don’t know, I’d like her around, but it’s weird; I don’t necessarily miss her, or the company, or even the sex- I miss having someone remind me to do something with myself. Lately I won’t get up before 11, unless I’m working.”

            I nod, thinking about how I snapped at Alex yesterday for not actively seeking employment, or signing up for PCC classes like he said he would way back during date number five. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m the only slap of reality to my boyfriend’s face.

            A month later, my roommate and his girlfriend strike a similar iceberg. My coworker complains she's outgrowing her 5-year boyfriend. My friend goes for coffee with me and says she's supporting her boyfriend, and doesn't know how much longer she can put up with it. Is this a domino effect? Why have hopes and dreams massacred every romantic relationship in my line of vision? And why does the more restless/ambitious party tend to be the woman?

Women have more options now than we’ve ever had. This new sense of freedom isn’t limited to just careers or tampons. We don’t have to put up with misogynistic douchewads anymore, but simultaneously, guys have less incentive to be career-driven, especially when living in a young stoner mecca such as Portland. Women dominate college campuses, and have for the past 25 years. Though women still earn only 75% of what their male counterparts earn, and we no longer have the societal pressure to marry young and live off of our partners.

After nine months with now-semi-employed dude, I start to feel Alex wear on me. He still hasn’t signed up for any PCC classes, and his band has disintegrated. “Are you going to find other people to play with?” I ask him one day.

“Yeah, well I was supposed to start playing with Sean soon, but I can’t get a hold of him.”

“Why’s that?”

He fiddles with his phone. “Probably ‘cause he’s on mushrooms all the time.”

I stare at him.  

At dinner one evening, 9 months after our Pabsts, I analyze his scraggly beard, all the way down to his only pair of jeans and decaying loafers. He is nice sex, sweet words, and has been my anxiety hot-line for most of 2011. But I can’t explain one more time how to make an omelet or set up online banking. “I don’t think we should be together anymore.”

            A month later, I find myself back at the same bar, sitting with a 31-year-old barista. He raves about “Do-It-Yourself culture” in Portland and the spiritual benefits of Brazilian dance. He asks if I want to come back to his place and listen to old hip-hop records.

            “You’ll really like my place,” he says. “I live with some friends and their kid. Did I mention I play in a band?”

At least this guy’s name isn’t Alex.

Episode 2: Black is the new Black

I’m in love. Well, that’s if “love” is watching a painfully handsome black man in high-tops bang out a killer guitar lick with his ten-piece funk band. He towers over the audience, looking invincible, and all I can think is, “Dang.” 

I don’t know how, but I need to talk to this man.

As they round their last number, I’m brainstorming conversation starters: 
Are those glasses real? How’d you get so tall? Are you just black, or am I happy to see you?

I notice their set has ended. A DJ appears onstage, looking like a children’s party clown after the presence of ten instruments. “Dang” is standing a mere few feet away from me- I know this is my only chance. Scanning through all my unusable lines, I spot the hat he was wearing onstage now on the floor, beside him.

I swoop for the hat off the ground and tap him on the shoulder. He swivels his head back. “Don’t you need this?” I ask over the booming bass.

He smiles and I know it’s over for me. “Where did you come from?”

I glance back at where I was standing. “Um, over there?”

His smile is pebbled with disagreeing teeth, but is still endearing. “No, I mean, did you fall from the sky?”

Barf. “Mm, not the last time I checked…”

He stares at me. “Where u from?” He asks.

“Here.”

“What? No!”

I nod.

He smiles and stares at me again. “You are beautiful.”

“Thanks. You, too.”

We chat about what we do, his arm now draped over my shoulder. I know he has probably slept with half of the city's vaginal population, but I don’t care- I’m enjoying the ride. When the next band comes on, he dances with me, feeling me up a little bit, telling me he sees potential for us- it’s starting to feel like what would be a third date with the average Portland male.

A few weeks later, we’re on a second hang out (I’m beginning to hate the word ‘date’), sitting at a bar that thinks it’s in Brooklyn, NY. Our drinks waning, our knees sparking, we discover new ways we can faintly touch each other without disrupting the conversation. This pre-sex dance, I think, must be obvious to the entire bar, until the bartender plants herself in front of us, more breast than tank top.

“You want another one, sweetie?” She asks Dang, batting her Bambi eyes.

He strokes his chin. “I’m thinking about it.”

She grabs a cold glass. “Here, how about I make you something really good? I know what you like.”

I look down; we’re halfway to hug, I’m in a liquid skirt, and his hand is on my thigh. What the hell does this bartender think she’s doing? I’ve never had my date poached before. 
Have I only ever dated fugly men?

For the next few weeks, any time Dang and I go to a bar, I witness the most flagrant eye-batting and giggling from women I’ve ever seen, and it’s all directed towards my date. It appears as though wherever this guy goes, vaginas fly at him left and right. He’s hip, attractive, and clearly a player, but I think it’s something else.

“Duh, it’s because he’s black,” my guy friend says with a mouth wadded with burger. 
“Black men are like a commodity in this city- there aren’t very many of them, and girls are down.”

Urban dictionary defines “white guilt” as: 
“A belief, often subconscious, among white liberals that being white is, in and of itself, a great transgression against the rest of the world for which one must spend their life making atonement.” 
What’s the best way for guilty Caucasian women to band-aid the centuries of mistreatment endured by blacks via whites? By having sex with a black man. It’s not a conscious thought for us college-educated liberal white chicks, undeniably apparent. And Portland is 80% white. Finding black men to date/screw in this city is like trying to find sexy, dark Waldo.

It’s an early Sunday morning on Facebook when I face some of the downsides of this particular man. Curious to see just how many women this guy is boning, I spy on his page; the first pictures that appear are of him and the hot black girl I saw him dancing with at his last gig, where I’d run into him. She commented on all of her photos of the two of them, cracking jokes about being his baby mama and how cute they were together.

I spot one photo of her scowling in the foreground, with him talking to another girl in the background. Next to the photo reads the words, “Caught in action!” The comments underneath the caption say, “All bad,” and “Lol right??” and “Dammmmnnn.”

I look closer- the girl he was talking to was me.

I hang out with him as friends a couple weeks later. I don’t care whether or not he’s seeing this chick, but I’m curious if I had been an unknowing accomplice to his bad habit. I tell him I saw that photo, and what it said.

“Nah, I’m not with her or anything. She’s into me, but we’re just friends,” he claims. “Her and her friend said that shit because they’re not down with me talking to a white girl.”

Um. “So…they’re racist?”

“No, they’re just not down with black dudes talking to white chicks. A lotta black girls are like that.”

I thought racial segregation was reserved for the mouth-breathing states and history books. But apparently, Portland is still part of America. 

Am I Black Enough For You 

Episode one: 24

     My head throbs. I'm tasting whiskey and ash; my head feels full of lead. My alarm is screaming “It’s 6:00 AM, bitch!” and I can’t remember where I’ve left my work clothes. Glancing at the “admitted” stamp on my right wrist, I remember punching my cell number into a Cirque du Soleil acrobat’s phone. Rolling over, my stomach feels like it's at sea and I know I'm not going to get tipped well today. I'm 24, and so far, it sucks.

Today, the diner is empty. Manuel the dishwasher mumbles in my ear while I'm wiping down the counter: "wassup, my nigga?" I shake my head and say, "No digas. Do you want to get beat up?" 
“No me gusta menos que venticinco,” one of the head chefs mumbles to the other in Spanish, while looking at me. I stare at them, and they laugh.

I look down at my stained blouse, covered in our crappy Costco condiments- the blood, sweat and tears of what used to be food. I did not picture that two years after getting my degree, I’d still be shepherding greasy cheeseburgers to unsettled families.I suddenly feel like a bad punch line to a Republican joke (redundant?).

At three, I walk through my front door and smell mold. The living room still looks like shit, and clearly our landlord hasn’t dealt with the flooding in the basement. I go into my room and close the door behind me. I put on "Kind of Blue" again and start to roll a joint on the floor. 

I hate 24 because I’m just that much closer to 25; the year that I really should be paying off my school loan and my own phone bill. The next ten years zip through my head and up my spine; job applications, troubling dates, and never having enough money. All I can do for now is dance, drink, and wait for the acrobat to call.