Sex

One of my temporary roommates said she'd feel uncomfortable if a guy stayed in the room available on the other side of our apartment for the summer.  Okay, I understood (kinda, for someone almost 30 years old I figured her to be a bit more...accommodating) and I didn't argue that the poor guy needed a place to stay.

Now her boyfriend comes over a lot and guess what I get to listen to in the middle of the night even when I am fast asleep in deep dream?  Yep.  Sex.  Hard, gasping, sweaty sex.  I applaud his vigor and stamina, but good grief, people!  I'm right here!  I'm totally okay if a guy lives in the room across the way, what I'm not okay with is all this huffing and puffing and other very distinctive sounds carrying out of the room right next to mine!  It's just awkward when he's still here in the morning because yes I do know what they've been up to and being an untried virgin, it's just...idk.  Weird.

Aforementioned roommate's view on relationships puzzles me.  She doesn't want to get married or have children, and she very easily breaks up with whoever she's dating at the time if, to put it bluntly, he displeases her.  She even broke up with her amazing boyfriend she's currently with because he wasn't smart enough; I was so inwardly pissed off at the pretentiousness, I politely said if she didn't want him, I'll take him, since she's putting a perfectly good dream-man to waste.  The next day they were back together, going at it in her bedroom next to mine.  Later on she told me she blames me for making her rethink her decision.  I just smiled, maybe a little too proudly, and shrugged.

What I don't understand is how someone can be so intimate with another a not feel a bond at all, and even without the bond, continue to repeat the process over and over again.  Doesn't it feel depressing at all?  I know what it's like to just kiss someone with whom there is zero intimate connection, and I did find the absence of a spark depressing.  It was empty.  How the heck can anyone have sex with the emptiness?

My views on intimacy are, for a virgin, quite vivid and intense.  I refuse to "sleep with" anyone outside of marriage, despite the frequent hunger pains for passion, because I know that whoever gets to know me THAT intimately will be bound to me and I to him for all eternity.  I won't just have sex.  I will make love, and quite vigorously.  To me, the whole act is an art form, and you can't honestly slap paint on a wall and call it art; it takes time and effort and a certain finesse.  Sex is an art for private commission only, and hell yes am I a firm believer in performing for one's mate often, if not every day/night.  Too often I hear complaints about how couples only get to be with each other 3 nights a week, or how the woman is frigid, or the man is too demanding.... That is also depressing.  But then again, understandable, if we assume the factors behind the ailments have anything to do with having sex without the bond.

I've considered becoming a sex therapist.  Honestly, though, I just can't do it, mainly because if word got out I'm a virgin, I would lose all credibility.  As if I could speak from experience!

Sometimes, when people learn that I am a virgin and almost 22 years old, they wonder what's wrong with me, like I'm some sort of defective good.  Oftentimes, to my great relief, I get congratulated, my hand shaken with honor, and told repeatedly to keep on going with my vows so I can avoid the torments that come with impatience.  Even my sister Kami made me promise to "do things right".  Mom has asked me to, should I ever find myself unable to withstand the insatiable hunger for passion, to at least be married, formal ceremony or no.

The closest I've ever come to recanting my vows was with Tristan, and purely for the sake of having a child to love, raise, and inherit the throne of Gora.  Well, come to think of it, I'm not sure what one would consider "close".  Discussing the options and determining a set date?  Tristan.  Laughing and giggling, kissing, playfully flipping up skirts and unbuttoning shirts only to put them back in place to start the game all over again, dancing on the edge of propriety and desire?  Jake.  Most definitely Jake.  We never talked as thoroughly about the subject, but the prospect was there, hanging in the air between us like invisible and magnetic mistletoe.  One night, when he was staying over at my place (I lived in a hotel that summer), I'd slipped into bed while he was in the shower.  When he was ready for bed as well and yanked the covers off to tease me, his eyes went wide and the biggest grin/gasp spread on his face at the sight of my bare legs.  I honestly don't remember what happened after that.  Damn.

I've thought long and hard about my regrets, and one big one that stands out in my mind is that I never experienced the intense intimacy of making love with Jake.  Not that it wasn't on the table.  Oh yes, we had many a conversation debating whether we should just go at it or not.  He wanted to, oh so very much so, and I wanted to stick to my vows of waiting until marriage.  During one such conversation, he "married" us over the phone, being certified to perform marriage ceremonies thanks to some program on the internet, and I couldn't help but blush and laugh.  And I honestly asked myself if I should just do it.

Damn my stubbornness.

For a while I was grateful, seeing as there is more than one "Tristan Keller" and I'm meant to be with one of them, but now I'm just banging my head into the wall.  Duh.  Duh, duh, duh.  When Tristan himself said Jake loved me, I inwardly screamed at myself.  How could I have been so dense?  Of course I was cautious in believing this "news", but Tristan had a valid argument.  And he knew the behind-the-scenes persona of Jake, who he really was to an extent greater than my own knowledge.  Even now, and for the past year, Tristan has repeatedly told me he's certain I will be with Jake again.  When the Goran Prince makes even the most offhand observation of what may yet to come, he is very, very rarely wrong.  In fact, I can't think of a time when he WAS wrong.

My mind and heart are haunted with memories, and the only way to put them to rest is to get closure of any kind, the best being Jake's return.  I'm just terrified I will see him again, only to discover everything WAS just an act and my love is only for someone who truly does not exist.  But I have to believe Tristan, and Raine, and the aching feeling deep in my soul that this was and is all very real.