But let's talk about monogamy.
I'm serious.
I was conversing with a friend of mine this morning and, for their sake, I'm not going to exploit them or their relationship...but this conversation led to this friend saying that they think they're done with monogamy for good. This is a subject that I feel like I don't talk about at all and perhaps actually bringing up my views might...clue some people in here.
Let's get one thing straight: We are animals. Genus: homo; Species: sapiens. No matter what kind of socio-historical boundaries and labels we try to place on our existence, we are still animals. Most animals do not mate for life and those that do, do not have recreational sex. Humans have sex for fun. So do dolphins. So do makaks and bonobos. Neither of THOSE animals mate for life. Why? Maybe because it's impractical.
For one thing, in most species, the male will galavant around having procreational sex with all the females they can impress so as to pass their genes along. Fortunately humans have invented birth control and not ALL unfortunate male specimens get passed along through the generations. Homo sapiens, for the most part, recognizes the equality between the sexes. So, if males are gallavanting, so are women. Americans, especially, seem to have a grasp on this.
So I guess, in all of this, the question would be this: why shouldn't men and women be polygamous in their sexual behavior? Why constrict sexual practices? Disease, you say. Practice safe sex, says I. Even in the jungle female monkeys will not give in to other monkeys who are ill. Emotional attachment, you say. Ah, here it is. Here is the sticking point, says I. Among other animals, love and emotion are not necessarily correlated with sex. Makaks, for example, exist in family groups and will have sex for every reason possible: settling arguments, discovery of food, absolutely nothing else to do... that's not emotion, that's sex. that's touching, not loving. Lust is not love. Being attracted to someone sexually is, inherently, a drive to be procreational and pass genes on with them. That's not an invite to meet the parents and pick out curtains. It's sex.
Humans make a mess of it, really, because there's this thing called religion--a convention that suppresses many natural and animalistic urges and, unfortunately, drives society to its fundamentalist brink. I was raised Roman Catholic. My parents (as far as I know) have always been monogamous in their relationship... (Mom, I know you read this. If I'm wrong, y'all should just tell me. I'm a big girl.) And I was raised with the idea that there's one person out there yadda yadda yadda where is that kit-kat-bar gimme a break. I can tell you right now: not true. If everyone in the world were condemned to only have sex with one person whom they love more than anyone else, the world would be truly screwed up.
Love is not sex. Sex is not love. People claim that their significant other is their best friend and gooey eyes ladeedah... I manage to love my best friend without wanting to screw her! I love her very much and would do pretty much anything for her. That doesn't mean she and I are gonna go around back and do the nasty. No. Love is honesty. love is being there for one another when they need it. Love is patient, kind, near-eternal. The fact is, we are not just attracted to one person. We are attracted to many people whether we love them or not. Sometimes it's physical, sometimes it's mental, and sometimes it's both. Go watch Possession. Maybe you'll get what I mean. Both Christobel and Ashe love other people to the death but OH how the two of them burn for one another. There will always be someone else.
And if we cut ourselves off from that, we're just stunting our growth. You marry someone you love. Okay. you vow to never have a sexual longing for anyone else ever. Ouch. You're cheating yourself. I know more happy couples in open relationships (that includes marriages) than I do in monogamous ones. I know more enlightened, beautiful, intelligent people who are sexually adventurous than I do who are not. The human experience doesn't last long. The longest you're gonna be here is around 100 years. I've come to terms with the fact that my stay will probably be shorter, given the fact that 3 of my 4 grandparents have passed, and all before age 75. We have so little time to DO something on this earth, let alone do it with rules and regulations.
I've always kind of maintained a closed mouth on this subject...part of that was my need to please other people. In case you've just tuned in, I'm done doing that. You're constantly barraged with the idea of living to be happy, living freely, not forcing your ideals on other people, live like you were dying... Well, here ya go. Here's my living like I was dying. Here's my living to support my own beliefs. Society and religion encroach whole-heartedly on both love and sex. Society and religion both say that love should only be between a man and a woman, and that love should be a requirement of sex and, therefore, sex should only be between a man and a woman. Well hello to a huge problem: the majority of my friends are gay men. I love them. I want them to have their love and their fun as much as I can. I mean, you're not gonna catch me having sex with women (because let's face it, Lauren's just not attracted to girls), but this is so much bigger than that. There's a reason some couples opt to live together and never ever ever get married. The divorce rate is astonishing. And so much of the time the problem was a lack of monogamy. So make monogamy a non-issue.
Be honest. Accept that you may/will be attracted to/potentially sleep with other people. Be good to one another. By not being honest, you're only creating tension and stunting your growth as people. You have so little time to grow and experience and be, why let it be with only one other person? I'm not trying to in any way discount monogamous relationships that work. I'm definitely not saying that love and sex are mutually exclusive. Not at all. Sex and love, while not requirements of one another, are certainly excellent benefits. If it works, it works. If religion is something important to you then, by all means, go. Have your love and your sex all in one bowl. But...and I'll credit my friend here with this one, sex should not be the defining factor in a relationship. There are so many things that are more important than sex. If you haven't figured all of THOSE things out, then it's bound to not work out.
for something more eloquent, read this: NYMag article
9.07.2008
ramblings
Growing up I developed a pretty slick sour face. A sour puss, if you will. The kind of face that invites either sympathetic questioning or a series of about-faces. I learned to use it, to manipulate it, to credit it with both successes and failures. In middle school, it was to get attention, falling short of actually feigning illness. My way was better: look like you’ve got something on your mind. Middle school girls and boys really go for that shit. So do silly Catholic schoolteachers. In high school, it was mostly to avoid actually becoming friends with the shallow (ha), insipid (ha, again) and mortifyingly stupid (grant this one) classmates who filled my every banal day. I’ll grant you, this did not gain me a lot of friends, but it certainly made me feel smart (and I was, but science has yet to find a direct correlation between sour-looking emo teenagers and intelligence). In college it became a mixture of attention seeking and self-protection. It allowed me to feel important as well as garner some attention from my well-meaning classmates. This is not to say that I actually relied on such a face to GAIN friends. I actually discovered that I had other qualities worth being a friend with…the face was just a way to develop certain sympathies, if you will.
To my own massive credit, people usually get the point. The persons from whom I want attention will give it, and the persons whom I wish to forcibly ignore get the picture. This doesn’t make me out to be a very nice person. I’ll tell you right now: I’m not drawing some imaginary picture of a Lauren who has never plotted, never connived, never contrived, never manipulated anyone, or has been completely innocent. I don’t speak in lies, as some might say.
Moving forward, I’m beginning to find more and more people who cannot read the face. People who walk away instead of questioning my silence, and people who question and pester instead of walking away. I’m learning that the face doesn’t always grant interviews with people you like, and it doesn’t always make the people you don’t like go away. Only now, at the age of 23, am I developing communication skills. Only now am I left wondering where my magic wand went off to on its own.
I’m going through a rough spot right now. As a result, I put on the face. People who have known me for a long time get it. They get that this face, at this moment, means leave Lauren the fuck alone. But instead of the solitude, I get noise. I get people who decide that humming directly in my ear or snapping loudly with the rhythm of the song are better ideas than staying out of the way of someone who looks like she could murder you in a second. Why is this? Is my face failing? Am I not sincere in my hatred of mankind? Or am I just repeatedly surrounding myself with idiots? Or, perhaps, is it just that those around me are simply a more positive kind of person?
Ever had a good cry that lasted about 3.8 seconds, took place behind the pages of book, and fell just short of making you want to kill yourself? That’s the kind of cries I have. The kind that happens on the subway platform between trains. The kind that happens between 96th and 110th when you’ve stopped for the 32nd time and the frustration is just too much. The kind that remind you that at this moment you are alone. The face won’t help you here. No one’s going to lean across the car and hand you an embroidered handkerchief and make it better. This is not a movie. And the worst part is that you’ve (I’ve) not only alienated yourself from everyone else in the car, but from everyone else in general.
I know that my cell phone has service underground at our stop. And every time we pull into that stop on the way home from work I half expect my phone to vibrate away in my pocket, alerting me that YES someone was thinking of you in the past 28 minutes. And YES someone thought of you so much that they picked up their phone to call or text you. But it never happens. Not that you can blame them. The people who’ve known you long enough can’t see the face from miles away, and the people who haven’t known you long enough certainly are no more intuitive from that kind of distance. You laugh at how silly you’re being…how you notice that everyone walking up the steps from the subway with you is ALSO wearing all black. How the man who works at this little sidewalk shop during the weekdays has suddenly decided that Sunday was a good day to also be open this week. How children, no matter what race, what color, what religion or what neighborhood…they ALWAYS talk too loud. They always run down the stairs. You notice the silly little things because it’s all you have right then.
There are no pressing engagements. No phone calls to return. No appointments to run to, no friends to cook for…once more you’re just going back alone to your apartment (roommate’s gone out again without you. But you always go out without him, so all is right with the world). No one does ever call. Mom, dad, sister, best friends, college friends, former lovers, friends who’ve lost touch, co-workers, old roommates, current roommates. But you don’t call either. Throw in the fact that it’s a Sunday night and the solitude feels a little better. Even if they did call, you’d probably hurry them off the phone (with a few exceptions). Because that’s the kind of person I am. I don’t like to inconvenience people with the silly ashes of my over-emotiveness.
Makes you wonder a little bit whether no one is calling anyone. If, perhaps, the fretting is for naught. Whatever happened to writing anyway? Why has the music changed so drastically? And then you go home and ignore the banality that is E! News, ignore the trash that’s been dragged through the halls of your not-so-upscale Harlem apartment building, and write.
To my own massive credit, people usually get the point. The persons from whom I want attention will give it, and the persons whom I wish to forcibly ignore get the picture. This doesn’t make me out to be a very nice person. I’ll tell you right now: I’m not drawing some imaginary picture of a Lauren who has never plotted, never connived, never contrived, never manipulated anyone, or has been completely innocent. I don’t speak in lies, as some might say.
Moving forward, I’m beginning to find more and more people who cannot read the face. People who walk away instead of questioning my silence, and people who question and pester instead of walking away. I’m learning that the face doesn’t always grant interviews with people you like, and it doesn’t always make the people you don’t like go away. Only now, at the age of 23, am I developing communication skills. Only now am I left wondering where my magic wand went off to on its own.
I’m going through a rough spot right now. As a result, I put on the face. People who have known me for a long time get it. They get that this face, at this moment, means leave Lauren the fuck alone. But instead of the solitude, I get noise. I get people who decide that humming directly in my ear or snapping loudly with the rhythm of the song are better ideas than staying out of the way of someone who looks like she could murder you in a second. Why is this? Is my face failing? Am I not sincere in my hatred of mankind? Or am I just repeatedly surrounding myself with idiots? Or, perhaps, is it just that those around me are simply a more positive kind of person?
Ever had a good cry that lasted about 3.8 seconds, took place behind the pages of book, and fell just short of making you want to kill yourself? That’s the kind of cries I have. The kind that happens on the subway platform between trains. The kind that happens between 96th and 110th when you’ve stopped for the 32nd time and the frustration is just too much. The kind that remind you that at this moment you are alone. The face won’t help you here. No one’s going to lean across the car and hand you an embroidered handkerchief and make it better. This is not a movie. And the worst part is that you’ve (I’ve) not only alienated yourself from everyone else in the car, but from everyone else in general.
I know that my cell phone has service underground at our stop. And every time we pull into that stop on the way home from work I half expect my phone to vibrate away in my pocket, alerting me that YES someone was thinking of you in the past 28 minutes. And YES someone thought of you so much that they picked up their phone to call or text you. But it never happens. Not that you can blame them. The people who’ve known you long enough can’t see the face from miles away, and the people who haven’t known you long enough certainly are no more intuitive from that kind of distance. You laugh at how silly you’re being…how you notice that everyone walking up the steps from the subway with you is ALSO wearing all black. How the man who works at this little sidewalk shop during the weekdays has suddenly decided that Sunday was a good day to also be open this week. How children, no matter what race, what color, what religion or what neighborhood…they ALWAYS talk too loud. They always run down the stairs. You notice the silly little things because it’s all you have right then.
There are no pressing engagements. No phone calls to return. No appointments to run to, no friends to cook for…once more you’re just going back alone to your apartment (roommate’s gone out again without you. But you always go out without him, so all is right with the world). No one does ever call. Mom, dad, sister, best friends, college friends, former lovers, friends who’ve lost touch, co-workers, old roommates, current roommates. But you don’t call either. Throw in the fact that it’s a Sunday night and the solitude feels a little better. Even if they did call, you’d probably hurry them off the phone (with a few exceptions). Because that’s the kind of person I am. I don’t like to inconvenience people with the silly ashes of my over-emotiveness.
Makes you wonder a little bit whether no one is calling anyone. If, perhaps, the fretting is for naught. Whatever happened to writing anyway? Why has the music changed so drastically? And then you go home and ignore the banality that is E! News, ignore the trash that’s been dragged through the halls of your not-so-upscale Harlem apartment building, and write.
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