Pizza Diavola

Warning: brief mention of sexual assault and lots of mention of my sex life. If the latter is TMI, please stop reading here.

I recently had the pleasure of hooking up with a person that I met at a party. As usual, I didn’t see it coming*: we were chatting, wandered apart, wound up chatting some more, he suggested that we go for coffee sometime and asked for my number, we danced a bit, and then he leaned in slowly, clearly telegraphing his intentions–asking, not demanding–and we kissed. There was some PG-13 necking in the kitchen, which was sweet and nice, and then, since I figured that even I knew where this was going, I felt that I should do a couple things:

1. Establish consent rather than taking it for granted.
2. Inform him that I have an STD.

I didn’t want to fumble our way through assuming consent and him finding out later that I was drunk out of my mind or me finding out later that he was drunk out of his mind and that one of us wasn’t really into the other or didn’t really want to have sex. On a more personal level, I hate taking things for granted and relying on assumptions in these kinds of interpersonal situations, so I’d rather be the person who pulls back, looks the other person in the eye, and bluntly says, “Okay, question – are you drunk?”

In retrospect, there were much better ways to phrase that, such as, “Just to be clear, do you want to have sex?” Now that I’m looking at the words, although what I meant was, “Are you drunk? Because I want to establish that you’re capable of giving meaningful consent,” it could also have come off like a creepy, “Are you drunk? Because I like to rape people too drunk to give consent.” *wince* I think he got the drift, though, and I’ll get better at articulating myself with practice. Open mouth, insert foot–that’s me.

He said that no, he wasn’t drunk, and I said, “Okay, second thing–I have HPV.”

He said, “That’s okay, I wasn’t planning on having sex,” and asked, “are you drunk?”

I said, “No,” then thought about it for a second and said, “Well, yes, a little, but not much–I like this,” and wound my arms around his neck and kissed him.**

Cue slow, comfortable making out.

Until someone wandered into the kitchen looking for a drink, and flipped the lights on.

Oops.

We adjourned to his bedroom, had a good time, and went to sleep. I should note that although I badly wanted to have sex, I didn’t pressure him for it. I didn’t whine, I didn’t plead, I didn’t beg, I didn’t “forget” and grab his penis and sit on it (also known as rape, CA Penal Code 261 (a) (2), 263). He’d expressed his desire in that regard and I respected it.  Doing anything other than respecting his wishes didn’t even occur to me until now, weeks later.

Not. That. Hard.

Fast forward to this week, when we met up, hung out, and he came over to my place. In the middle of rolling around in bed, while I was trying to figure out a smooth way to ask him to please fuck me now, he paused and asked, “Is it ok if we just go to sleep?”

I said, “Yes,” got out the extra pillow for him, and we fell asleep curled around each other. Again, not. That. Hard.

I keep thinking about these hook ups over and over again, and for a while I thought it was just that I was starved for sex and floating along in a delirious “I hooked up with someone! Who is smart and makes me smile and is cute! And we’re seeing each other again! Yay!” haze. After thinking about it some more, though, I’ve realized that it’s not just the physical acts that are wonderful and surprising to me, it’s their mutuality and our consent to them. They weren’t just about his pleasure or just about my pleasure, but about enjoying ourselves together and respecting each other’s desires and boundaries. It’s been a long time since I had a hook up like that, so long that these recent encounters stand out to me.

The last time I had penetrative sex with a man, I made it clear that I would not have sex without a condom. The first round, he wore a condom. The second round, when he was penetrating me from behind and I couldn’t see, he “forgot” and put his penis in me without a condom. I kicked him out of my apartment for that. The last time I let Reis try anal sex, it hurt badly and I told him, “No, stop, it hurts.” He insisted that it would feel better and kept going until I crawled away. They weren’t concerned with my desires or my pleasure, only their own, and they felt entitled to use my body to achieve it, regardless of what I said or wanted.

Now that I’ve been on the opposite side of the situation, namely, being the person that wants to do more and finding that my partner isn’t ready, is tired, doesn’t want to, etc., I would like to reiterate my disgust with the “common knowledge,” patriarchal, and rape-enabling assumption that it’s completely unreasonable to expect straight and bi men to listen to their female partners when they say, “No.” I’ve heard it said so many times that it’s impossible for men to control themselves, that it’s unrealistic and borderline inhuman to expect them to stop in the middle of a hook up or, god forbid, stop and pull out during penetrative sex when their partner asks them to.

It’s not.

Being a decent human being that believes that I have the right to do as I like with my own body but not anyone else’s, I already thought that it was a crock of shit to say that once a man’s stuck his penis into an orifice, he’s helpless to pull it out until he’s had an orgasm. He just can’t help himself. Blue balls. It’s unreasonable to ask him to stop. If she’s already said yes at any point to anything else, she can’t expect him to stop just because it hurts or she changes her mind.

Bullshit. The experience of respecting my partner’s desires when he said, “No, not now,” just reinforces my previously held belief, because, guess what! I really, really, really wanted to have sex. And yet, lust didn’t turn me into a mindless rapist. My clitoris didn’t shrivel up and expire. My night was not ruined. I didn’t think that just because he’d worn a shirt that set off his fabulously blue eyes (she was asking for it, wearing a skirt that short), had a drink with me (what’d she expect, drinking at a bar with a stranger?), kissed me (she danced with him, she led him on and that’s like consenting to anything and everything), and come home with me (she went somewhere with a stranger, what did she think would happen?), I had the right to rape him and ignore his request to stop fooling around.  Fascinating.

Respecting your sex partner is not difficult.  Checking for and obtaining enthusiastic consent, rather than operating on an assumption of consent-until-proven-otherwise is not difficult.  All that’s necessary is thinking of your partner as a human being with the right to decide what to do with their body, not a life-size, breathing, living blow up doll for your pleasure.

Asking for consent was not awkward (aside from my terrible phrasing) and didn’t ruin the moment.  It didn’t break the mood.  What it did was establish that we were both interested in each other and also establish that there was a limit, i.e. he didn’t want to have sex right then.  That was actually helpful for me, because it let me know that I shouldn’t expect it.  In short, asking for consent was not the terrible experience that some people make it out to be (ZOMG! We’ll have to carry around contracts! It’ll kill the romance!).  It was positive, helpful, and made me feel more comfortable and helped me figure out what my partner did and did not want to do.  It clarified the situation and let me focus on having a mutually good time rather than worrying about whether or not I was reading him correctly about his boundaries.  Amazing.

Just to reiterate: asking for consent is easy.  And it’s good and necessary.

[Disclaimer: I'm sure some people will think that I just don't understand, because I'm a woman and women don't have sexual urges and so they can't understand that sometimes, men just have to rape because they can't control themselves when they're aroused, they desperately need sex .  To them, I say, wrong and wrong.  I quite demonstrably have sexual desires and men are capable of controlling theirs, despite a patriarchal, rape-enabling culture that insists that men lose their self-control and turn into ravening rapists when a woman walks by.  "I couldn't help it!" is actually, "I felt entitled to raping my partner!" or "I didn't want to help it!"]

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* Seriously, I am the master of not seeing it coming: I fall for straight women and gay men and think that people are making casual conversation when they are actually saying, “Shall we go back to the hotel and screw like bunnies?” My attractiondar, it is broken.

** My response makes me a little uncomfortable, because it’s my general rule to not sleep with anyone who’s drunk. On the other hand, I think it’s very obvious and easy to tell if the person you’re with is willing, interested, and capable of making decisions, and I was all three of those. I might write on this more later.