slut? or redefining the self, again

A friend of mine used a quote of mine on her blog recently to illustrate her affection for the word “slut.” Here’s what she quoted of my thoughts about the word:

I have no desire to redefine [“slut”]. To redefine would divest these terms of their erotic charge for me. I like to be a slut because it transgresses. Because it brings to the forefront of my memory of sucking a hockey player’s cock on the school bus. Because I did and because I did it because I was—and am—a slut.

I’d quite completely forgotten writing this piece, and reading my friend’s quote gave me that vertiginous feeling of automnesia—that nearly Proustian sense wherein the piece of writing is the Madeleine: as you bite into the piece you wrote, you recall the memory of writing it, and you also recall the feeling of when you wrote it.

The day that I wrote this particular piece, I was still adjusting to the concept of being monogamously attached to my X, Donny. I wasn’t doing it particularly well—monogamy was still more of a concept than a reality. Things were in flux, and I was betwixt and between the heady exhilarating freedom of sluttiness and the comforting solidity of commitment. I’d not picked a side, not figured it out, not come to any sense of peace, and I remember writing this post with a raging tumescent double-ended dildo of ambivalence pointing in at least two directions with vengeance.

Of course, one need not be monogamous to be in a committed relationship. There are lots of people who serve as living, breathing illustrations that polyamory works (and many of them seem to keep blogs). I admire these people’s frontier spirit. I don’t know how well I could construct a relationship that flouts so completely so many cultural mandates. I’m not saying that I’d never be open to some flavor of poly; I’m merely saying that it would take a tremendous amount of work on my part. I tend to want to bond heavily and intimately with one person, and so I think I’d have a hard time wrapping my head around the reality of my lover wrapping his arms around another human. But I suppose it’s a possibility.

What all of this speculation, recollection and rumination adds up to is a sense that—once again—things have changed for me. I’m not sure I’m not a slut, but I’m not sure I am one either (I am, however, completely sure I once was one). Today, when I take a cold and appraising look at my emorotic self, I’m not sure I can freely fuck with joy. Granted, I just spent a weekend with a friend in a beige hotel room having caring sex amidst a lot of laughter and conversation, but I’d be hard pressed to recreate that experience any time soon with anyone else. I see discernible limits in my fuckbuddiness right now.

And that’s fine, of course. I’ve always maintained that sexuality is fluid—it’s absolutely a Heraclites-style river, where anytime we step into it, it’s never the same, for both we and the river have changed. But it’s hard because I’d really like to be able to fuck for fun. I think about the abstract concept of having noncommittal sex and it seems awfully fun. I read about other people’s experiences with it—especially my friend Debauchette’s, whose prose is incendiary—and I yearn to recreate their actions with my own flesh. I recall my past and, well, I feel ambivalent. I can remember the giddy high of new lovers, but I also remember how often it just wasn’t all that.

I realize something about myself and that is this: I don’t do casual sex casually. My natural tendency is toward intimacy, not away from it. Sure, there are the exceptions, my recent sunny Californication fling a case in point. But in general, I yearn for emotional passion that is bound up with—and not separated from—physical passion. I can sometimes do the latter without the former, but I prefer the combination so much that I will pound the square physical peg into the round emotional hole just to force the two to mesh, even when they don’t, or won’t, or can’t, or shouldn’t.

Which, at the end of the night, probably makes me a very bad slut. Or perhaps one who is just a little limited, if also one who is a little confused. Or perhaps one who wants to figure out how to draw a new definition without repudiating the old.

Comments

[Paul Davis]

i've always thought of sex as something highly incendiary because of this precise connection: i can neither be that close to some physically without it opening a pandora's box of emotional connectivity, nor can i really imagine getting that close to someone physically about whom i don't at the very least suspect some of the same emotional fireworks. i remember when i met both my first and current wives that my initial response wasn't "wow, i want to fuck this woman", its was something much closer to "this situation is a problem because i know i am going to get rapidly, irrevisibly, and irrevocably emotionally involved with this person". i worry that this is one of the greatest omissions from what we try to pass on to children about sex: not just the physical risks, but the emotional ones ... by being that intimate with that person, you may find that you are opening a box of stuff that you might prefer to remain closed. but then i suspect that there are quite a few people out there who are much, much better at keeping these things separate from each other, and that my experience, if not an exception, may not be the rule.

[Little Jezebel]

Isn't the definition of a slut someone who is slightly confused? You should be paid for what you want to do, or in intimate relations with it/he/she/them.

[southern]

What's the appropriate term for a male slut CG?

[Alexa]

I’m not sure I’m not a slut, but I’m not sure I am one either

When it gets right down to it, does it really matter? You are a sexual being and you enjoy sex the way you enjoy sex. Just like many people prefer not to label their sexual orientation, I don't know that there is a need to characterize your perceived promiscuity.

[Goose]

Paul Davis, I agree with you on many points. We often refer to poly as "playing with live round" but really all sexual and emotional relationships are. Or a house of cards that could easily tumble down without great care.
Poly is hard, and defying cultural mandates is one piece of the hard part of it for me Chelsea, though lately I've been defying lots of them.
I also take casual sex rather seriously. I've tried to take it casually, but it doesn't work.
I don't know if we are making it work or not. All I know is that Gander and I are still in love and maintaining a strong relationship and our other partners still like us and each other.
That's good enough for me right now.

[marianne]

"| don't do casual sex casually". Exactly. When I come across others who seem to manage it so easily, I'm partly in awe and admire them greatly, and I partly doubt whether it's as easy for them as they pretend.

[J.J.]

Can't pass this up without spouting off my own two cents.

Maybe I'm a little naive, but it seems to me that "slut" in the derogatory sense is simply a label affixed to other people's opinions. If part of you is titllated by thinking of yourself as improperly sexual according to social "norms", then all power to you. I've always maintained that however we choose to conduct our physical and emotional lives is purely personal -- whatever anyone else thinks of it is their own problem.

Now as to poly versus mono... I've never been involved in a poly. I'm a definite one-on-one kind of guy. A serial monogamist, as it were. But I can definitely see that a polyamorous relationship can work. After all, we are capable of having multiple relationships of varying kinds simultaneously. Why should this not extend to the emotional and physical plane? I'd wager, though, that it it's much harder work -- to think of the complexity of a single relationship multiplied by x number of partners? "There madness lies" as far as I'm personally concerned. But I admire people who can manage to navigate that fragile path with success...