I was recently having a drink with a male friend whose single status has of late been causing him much grief. He is now going through the "I'd just like to get laid" stage.
"It's so much easier for women," he whined. "You can just pick whoever you want." Yeah, just like picking out a nice head of lettuce or your favourite ice-cream flavour, right? Besides the common knowledge that all the good ones are taken or gay, I pointed out that most often, you only ever meet people you immediately want to sleep with when you're out with a date or having a really bad hair day.
But it's not just timing. Guys get suspicious if it's just sex we're after. First of all, women never really just want sex, right? We may be after your package but the package we're really after is follow-up, commitment, or, if applicable, your money. If we really just want sex, we're teases, easy, used goods, or desperate. Mind you, same goes for us. If a guy seems too eager to get it on, it's a big turn-off. "What's wrong with him?" we wonder. Or if that's all he wants, we wonder, "What's wrong with me?"
When you think about it, casual sex is really anything but. In fact, there are plenty of very un-casual things about casual sex. There are, of course, the more superficial aspects. Like waking up after a one-night stand. This can often be far from casual, especially if the one-night stand involved alcohol, which it often does in our sexually dysfunctional society. Nothing like a few drinks to loosen up the old hormones. It's amazing how that "Oh, my head... where am I... oh yeah... grooooan," feeling can make you suddenly remember a pressing early Sunday morning appointment.
Then there's the post one-night stand. Depending on the success of the original event, you may suddenly be overcome by the urge to tie your shoe or to slip your grocery bag over your head if you suddenly find yourself walking towards each other on the sidewalk a week later.
There are some great things about one-night stands. They can be a nice pick-me-up between relationships or during dry spells. This is identified by the "one-night stand glow," when you show up for work the next day with a slightly too-wide grin on your face and colour in your cheeks, or hair like Geena Davis' in Thelma and Louise after she spent the night in a hotel room with Brad Pitt. I still love that movie.
Sometimes, the best approach to casual sex is to avoid the sex part of the equation. This is known as the have-I-still-got-it test. These encounters don't necessarily have to culminate in sex, merely in the undeniable possibility of it. Then you go home alone, get a good night's rest, and achieve the glow without having to deal with all that other crap. Of course, not all casual sex is about satisfying purely physical needs or boosting egos. There are some one-night stands that you want to turn into a series of one-night stands, then a relationship.
Some even argue that no one really wants casual sex, that it's merely a convenient term to describe that awkward indefinable period before either party feels secure enough to call it a relationship. Or to call it off. I guess that's how you end up with "casual" ties.
60 Comments
LEAVE YOUR COMMENT
You must sign in to leave a commentcharacter(s) remaining