Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Not a Promiscuous Girl
Greeeeetings.
I just remembered a couple of funny things about Hayley's mom which make her totally unlike mine:
1) She spent a good five minutes comparing my breast size to Hayley's. "Yours are bigger," she claimed. I just laughed.
2) She not only let us sleep in the same bed with ZERO controversy, but she even washed sheets and pillow cases for us. Good God. My mother spent her twenties in a communal house with a bunch of hippes who swapped sex partners and ate at a food co-op, and somehow she's a stickler for separate beds. Go fucking figure.
I've discovered that I'm terrible at promiscuity, and I'm more or less okay with this. Sure, I'm occasionally annoyed knowing that the time period following a break-up is just about never accompanied by rebounds, and there have been a few times where I've wondered how on earth people manage to pick each other up at bars, but mainly this is just the way I am, and I'm learning to accept that. Or maybe it will change. I don't know, and I don't particularly care that much. Relationships are what matter to me, and with very few exceptions I don't find a lot of meaning anywhere else.
But it bugs me that everyone assumes either that a) I'm really unhappy with my sex life because of it, or b) that this is something I would force onto them. As if I enjoy being horrible at casual sex! Do I think it's better for people to struggle with monogamy and hurt each other because they don't really want to be exclusive? Hell no.
Hayley said to me the other night at the bar that she had just run into four people she'd already fucked. I shrugged. Did this bother me? Not a bit. Does she believe me? No way. People assume that those who aren't terribly interested in casual relationships must want everyone else to be the same way. Not a chance. You want lots and lots of casual sex?? Power to you. Not interested in monogamy? Go right ahead. As if I would ever attempt to alter someone else's personality and life choices. Not in a million years.
I've been to the airport twice in the past two days. The first time was to pick up Cait, who's back from England finally. YAY! Her mom got her a job already and she started it TODAY, if you can believe it. There's a lot to be said for efficiency, I guess, but you'd have to pay me serious money to make me get right off a transatlantic flight and directly into the mailroom of my mom's office to be a mail clerk in the middle of a heat wave. Ah well. I'll have to kidnap her and we'll rampage all over town while the sun's still hot and the summer's still relatively young.
I'm loving The Slits right now. They're a wicked 70s all-girl punk band from the UK. Their debut album, which I suppose was the most organized one (guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that girly punk bands aren't terribly good at pulling records together), is delightfully dub and reggae happy, which I like.
Yesterday I was seven minutes early for the bus, so I stopped in at Starbucks for an iced coffee. There are two baristas at the Starbucks by my house who I pay attention to. The first is notable only because she's completely hopeless at her job. This woman is middle-aged with frizzy red-haired and a vaguely Eastern European-sounding accent, and she cannot make a drink to save her life. She asks me about ten questions every time and usually even then she fails to get it right. Now don't get me wrong. I am miles and miles from a Starbucks diva. I don't ask for a Venti-extra-hot-sugar-free-soy-latte-extra-dry-with-caramel-on-top, EVER (plus doesn't the caramel kind of defeat the VEGAN SUGARLESS CRUELTY-FREE HEALTHINESS of said drink??). And I am always, always nice to this very clueless woman. She gives me caffeine, albeit in a roundabout way, and thus she is an angel.
But....I vastly prefer to get the hot punky-looking girl with the piercings and the bleached hair who can actually barista her way out of a paper bag. They were both there when I went in before catching the bus, but of course I got stuck with Anastasia the Bad Barista, AND I was in a hurry.
Just as she was making my drink, the bus came. DAMN! I'd already paid, but I desperately needed to catch that bus if I wanted to get home in time for dinner. I made my decision and ran for the bus, put my ticket in the machine, and then stopped. I looked at my watch. The dude was at least two minutes early. I asked him "um....are you going to be here for a couple of minutes?" He looked at his watch. "Exactly three more minutes," he replied. "Okay," I said, "I'll be right back."
I ran back into Starbucks, and grabbed my drink from the cute girl who had ended up making it in the end, probably because the quantum mechanics of it were too complex for the other woman.
Then I ran back onto the bus. The driver didn't even crack a smile, but I felt victorious.
Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too?
I say have it all, baby.
-N
