Jumping Into Bed With Strangers

I’ll probably take some heat for this but I don’t care. My observations are that more than ever, people are lonely, horny, touch-starved, community-starved and trauma-riddled. Covid did a number on everyone and we have not even begun to address our collective trauma there, let alone our own personal messes. We are lonely and horny and wanting to soothe those feelings. But jumping into bed with someone you’ve only just met is a fucking terrible idea, especially if you are looking for more than a one-night stand.

I have hot fantasies of meeting with a complete stranger and fucking him. I’m waiting in a hotel room in my lingerie and stockings, I’m blindfolded and the cuffs are beside me on the bed, where I am waiting for stranger cock, ass up, face down. The anticipation is delicious.

I have another fantasy of coordinating with a man on the internet and meeting him to fuck with not a word spoken between us. Of course we can read each others’ minds in my fantasy.

Yet another fantasy is taking home Joe Blow from a bar, few words, just fucking. And of course, he is amazing in bed and I am completely safe from violence. There are no condoms either because in Fantasyland, there are no STI’s to worry about.
But you know what folks? That’s what makes fantasy so fucking HOT! Anything goes! It’s not REAL!

But real life people have been living on planet earth and everyone has some childhood trauma, mostly undealt with. The way we interact with other humans, especially those we are attracted to and want to be close with is predicated on the neuropathways we built as children. The things we are familiar with and expect. The way we interacted with our primary caregivers.

It takes time and work to discern our patterns and undo them. That recognition generally comes from experience on some poor sod or sods that have been the recipient of our baggage. Recognizing the patterns takes time and deciding to do something about it takes courage and generally, resources like therapy or group work.

I came of age in the 80’s and 90’s after the sexual revolution, the first generation of girls to be told we could ‘be anything we want to be’ in our careers and our sex lives. We were encouraged to explore this brand-new sexy space. Thing was, the social systems lagged FAR behind us. The labels did not go away, the social repercussions did not go away. We did the casual sex thing and sometimes enjoyed it but let’s face it, great sex is generally with people we feel safe enough to have genuine conversations with about our desires, fears, wants and needs. With someone we are willing to put the work/play in with. And very few of us were even aware of those things until later in life.

Younger generations seem to be getting on this awareness train at an earlier stage of life which I find hopeful, but the hookup culture messes with that personal growth in that it generally negates our partners. So more of us are free to fuck than ever before but we haven’t brought the personal work into that part of our lives enough. We are all fucked up in our own ways and while awareness of this can only be a good thing, it means doing that work.

We are animals with cognition. We are needy, horny, lonely animals who long for community, safety, love and appreciation. It’s our history as humans. We lived in community for much of our existence. But here we are stuck in North America and the ‘west’ completely worshipping individualism and systems that exploit and divide us. Getting the opposite of what we need. Our media feeds us romantic comedy bullshit and porn bullshit and as much as we know it’s garbage, we have internalized much of that trash and have ridiculous expectations of each other. We put a LOT of expectations on potential partners. Make me whole, fuck me, love me. Repeat. AND GIVE IT TO ME NOW CAUSE I NEED IT NOW.

I do need it now. I need a day (or maybe a lifetime if we’re dreaming here) of someone who cares if I live or die cuddling me. Touching my skin. Massaging my rock hard tense fucking muscles. Feeding me nourishing food. Talking to me, listening to me, giving me space to wail or cry or laugh. Sharing their body with me. Bestowing exquisite pleasure on me. I NEED THIS NOW. I’ll bet a lot of us do.

But that person has needs too. What are they? If I’ve just met them, it’s impossible to know what they are. They can tell me but really we need time to see patterns, and to communicate with each other. We need time to discern if this person is in a place to really WANT to exchange energy with us in a mature way. And we need to know if WE are in a place to exchange energy in a mature way.

You meet someone you are attracted to. You go out and get along famously. You’re laughing, vibing, “holy fuck, you love (insert obscure thing here) too????” Oh my god, are they the one??? (where did THIS ‘the one’ narrative come from? MEDIA!) You want each other. You kiss. Mmmmmmm. Good fucking kissing. More. More please. Fill that fucking hole please. Oh no, not that one, the one in my heart. They’re attached to each other. And JUMP RIGHT INTO BED. And try and figure it out as you go. Complete strangers with needs and expectations and NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT THEY ARE BECAUSE YOU’RE STRANGERS. This is a recipe for fucking DISASTER. I’m not saying this never works but really? REALLY????

We need to slow the fuck down people. Find out who we are. Find out who THEY are. Do the work. And here’s another myth I’m ready to dispel- if you really love each other it shouldn’t be effortless- who came up with THAT garbage? (MEDIA!) There should always be effort because dealing with ANY human requires effort. Finding out if that person is someone you want to make the effort with will take TIME.

In many ways, the human race has learned SO much about ourselves over the past century. Psychology, sexology, all the ologies that have helped us discover more about ourselves. And we’ve also lost a great deal of valuable teachings (mainly from collective groups that have been decimated over this time) about community. We want to be with each other. We want to love each other. We want to fuck each other! Do we want to fuck each other over? I think that’s mostly a collective NO. So what do we do about it?

We have to do the work. The long slow work of knowing one another, whether romantic, platonic or collective relationships. Love is a verb. It’s a thing that you DO. The feeling is lovely, but it’s just your brain and your crotch on fire. Pay no attention to the pussy/cock behind the curtain! We have to verb our way out of this lonely, horny mess. We have to care for ourselves by choosing people who uplift us. We have to care for ourselves by first uplifting ourselves. Finding out WHO AM I? What’s important to me and why? And what do I do with it? And who do I want to do it WITH?

I have a shit metric tonne of work still to do. I don’t feel emotionally mature enough for a committed, let’s go all the way to the Emerald City relationship. I am still lonely and horny though. Still crave the touch of a human man. It is a loss to my life that I don’t have this. But I’ve discovered that jumping into bed too quickly has never served me. Not once. It may have served me in the short term but never the long. Your experience may be different. But there is so much lonely and horny out there that I’m guessing it’s not the norm.

This might be the entirely worst time to write this because SEX SEX SEX FUCK ME FUCK ME FUCK ME NOW. But everyone, even online, is a human being with wants, needs and desires. For connection and appreciation. For community. For sex. For love. Our experiences may be different but we all share the same needs and emotions. Let’s try to take better care of ourselves and each other and at the very least wait a while before jumping into bed with each other shall we?

Let me know how it goes.