The other day, I was at a party talking to a very respectable fellow: cute, well-versed and utterly filthy when drunk. Every conversation would quickly devolve into a deluge of extended metaphors about his monstrous appendage (or so he said).
After a while, this well-endowed raconteur dissolved entirely into giggles. Tears in his eyes, he apologized to me, the only woman in his audience: “Sorry, I think about sex all the time!”
I snorted, “It’s okay, I do too!” then plied my face into fake seriousness.
No laughs.
The drunken bard shifted his eyes, muttered something under his breath and turned to talk to his bros, who in turn glared at me and clutched their jungle juice a little tighter.
“Hey!” I wailed. “Why is it okay for a man to think about sex constantly but not for a woman?”
But my indignant roars fell upon deaf ears.
Fact 1: your ears rarely function properly when you are the human embodiment of a dick.
Fact 2: trying to be a feminist out loud often comes with a side of embarrassment. Thanks, society.
Announcing that my mind was a filthy dungeon had essentially ostracized me from the rest of my delicate vagina-wielding cohorts. I had become a slut. Clearly I had been trying to make this guy think of me sexually.
But then I realized that no, I didn’t say it because I wanted to bang this self-proclaimed bedroom god.
I said it because I was bonding with the guy! It was a human connection based on something that we all shared—or at least I thought we all shared.
Turns out, while men are allowed to turn any mentioned orifice into a long-winded vaginal metaphor, the most I can do is giggle along like the delicate flower that I am.
Screw that, man. I want to think about sex. All day, every day. Well, save for family functions.
This is one of the reasons Suzy and I write “The Happy Trail.” We want female sexuality to be loud and proud. We don’t want it to be hiding behind the occasional mildly lewd double-entendre, or the suppressed guffaw at some guy’s nasty euphemism.
I want us to make our own jokes. I want us to talk about getting off on a mutual level, not as though my mentioning, say, my vibrator, is a desperate attempt to get you in my pants. I want us to bond over sexuality rather than having to toe the virgin/whore line.
Thanks for reading this semester, you sexy things. You’re encouraging Suzy and I to disseminate our filthy minds—and we’re going to go ahead and say that’s a good thing.
Have a good winter break, and happy trails to you all!