I feel it is my duty to warn you beforehand that this post is going to be very…well…sexually frank, and quite possibly Not Safe For Work.

(Well, depending on where you work. Feel free to pass this around the water cooler if you work at a brothel of something)

Two years ago, when I was still freshly transplanted to Philadelphia and coming out of a long-term relationship that had ended all sorts of badly, I did the one thing a lot of people do when they’re feeling too emotionally vulnerable to pursue a new relationship, and yet crave familiar sexual contact that’s a little more substantial than a drunken one night stand.

I took on a…beneficial friend.

(Ok, let me just go ahead and live up to my warning: I took on a Fuck Buddy.)

He was pretty nice. Penn guy studying to get his PhD. Tall, lean, overwhelmingly intelligent, and with just enough eccentricity to keep me intrigued. We had run into each other in the Gayborhood one evening and struck up a nice enough conversation, and he was clearly interested from the onset. But I wasn’t.

(You read that correctly? I wasn’t interested. Contrary to my moods as of late, when I first moved to Philadelphia the last thing I wanted was a date. Funny, I had to beat them off with a stick back then.)

Nonetheless, we exchanged numbers and kept in contact. Texted each other frequently, talked online, “accidentally” ran into each other at various bars. He clearly wanted what I had thought wasn’t for sell, and was persistent enough that eventually, I began to give in. The texting turned to sexting, and my interest in his future career goals waned in favor of curiosity in just how his five-o-clock shadow would feel against my skin.

And, after over a month of playing hard-to-get, I lost the battle one evening when, while AIM chatting and wine drinking, he threw caution to the wind and sent me this one line:

“From the moment I first saw you, I knew that I wanted to fuck you.”

(Ok, I know what you’re thinking! But let me tell you something: if used sparingly, a well-timed, sexually-blunt come-on can be the hottest thing on the PLANET. And anyone who says otherwise is a charlatan. It also didn’t help that, with my imagination, I could hear his husky voice purring those words clearer than if we had been face to face.)

Sparing you the gory details, let me just say that, that very evening, I would find out exactly how his five-o-clock shadow felt caressing up and down the length of my body. That night, I had the best sex of my life.

And it was more than good sex. I cannot describe how powerful I felt afterward. Granted, I had done the one-night stand before. Ok, I was well-versed in the one-night stand. But this was different. Off the heels of a bad break-up, it was indescribably liberating to be with this one guy on my terms. He was smart and gorgeous and he wanted me; and he wanted me badly enough to take whatever I gave him whenever I felt like giving it. My way or the highway. I felt powerful. I felt sexy and so sure of myself.

If I were a girl, this would have been the time I bought my first Chanel pencil skirt.

I felt like I had taken the first real step towards getting over my previous relationship. And I don’t say “previous” as a means to indicate that I was thinking of a present and future with Mr. Penn Boy. After our first sexual encounter, it became pretty obvious where our minds were. I wasn’t looking for a relationship and neither was he — not a traditional one, anyway. We both had lives that we were more than happy to keep to ourselves.  Our subsequent encounters would lose that fervor that came from weeks of teasing, and after a while we fell into a grove. He would come over late at night. We’d talk about whatever came to mind (usually involving whatever was on the tv at the time). Eventually, he would reach out to kiss me. I’d let him.  After several minutes of dueling with our tongues, I’d let a hand slip under his shirt and up his chest, a sign to him that I was throwing in the towel…so to speak.

Things would always get a little hazy after that.

(Right about now, I bet you think you know where this story is headed. Poor, impressionable Brando, thinking he was in control of the situation, starts to want more than just a casual romp from Penn Boy, only to get his heart broken in the end.)

To which I say – hell to the no! Does this look like an episode of Gilmore Girls to you?

Penn Boy and I kept comfortable with our arrangement for a while. It wasn’t until I had a rather unpleasant conversation with my ex-boyfriend one evening that things had gotten a little shaken up.

You see, the unpleasant conversation with my boyfriend had left me drained of both my life-energy and any confidence I had built up by that point, as those conversations often did. In my moment of weakness, I turned to Penn Boy, who was usually more than willing to boost my self-esteem in his own special way.

Or he would have been, if I hadn’t let my moment of weakness slip me up enough to start this unfortunate dialogue:

“[Penn Boy], I have a question for you.”

“Yes, Brandon?”

“Would you ever date me?”

Yep, obvious bad move, right?

“No, I wouldn’t.”

Nor was he ever the type to mince words.

“Ouch…”

“I don’t mean it that way.”

“Well then, exactly how do you mean it?” I can’t remember who I was more pissed at: him for being a jerk, or myself for starting this dialogue and getting upset over a mutual arrangement that didn’t involve emotions. Which, I had to remind myself, still didn’t involve emotions.

“Well, it’s not that you aren’t pretty.” Yes, he really did call me pretty. Still not sure how I felt about that. “And I can talk to you. And you really turn me on, but…”

“Yeah, but…?”

“But we’ve had too much no-strings-attached sex for me to start attaching some strings.”

“But, if you’re attracted to me, and you know I’m attracted to you, and we’ve been in each other’s company long enough to know that there’s some common ground here, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to pursue something…simply because we’ve already had sex.”

“Well, I guess at this point I just couldn’t think of you as anything more than this hot guy that I have good sex with. It’s just where you are in my head.”

It’s just where I was in his head. I was suddenly drained of all that power I’d had. I began ranting like a mad-(wo)man. I mean, what was the point of the sexual revolution brought on by the 60’s and all this new-age liberal belief that we were in control of our sexual identities and that we should own our desires if, at the end of the day, we had to go slinking back into our Victorian igloos, maintaining a false sense of propriety and blue-balling ourselves mercilessly just to seem pure enough to pull in a man?

I was reminded of the first episode of Sex and The City, where Carrie runs into a former lover who jilted her one too many times. Instead of giving romance another chance, she conducts an experiment with him to see what it would be like if “women dated like men do.” She makes him her fuck buddy. She has sex with him when she wants and doesn’t call back. Doesn’t make any sort of commitment with him unless it’s for the fulfillment of her desires. In the scene following their first encounter, Carrie describes feeling powerful and liberated much in the same way that I did after my first encounter with Penn Boy. She had taken her sexuality into her own hands and played the game by her own rules.

But she ended up losing.

How? Because as it turned out, she was never really in control. Playing the game by her rules was ultimately futile. Her flirtation with promiscuity and “selfish-sex” at the expense of any guy was pointless because, as she saw it, as long as she was putting out, the relationship-phobic man was getting exactly what he wanted, regardless.

Had Carrie’s actions mirrored my own? In my own need to feel desired and in control of my own sexuality, had I unknowingly lost myself to it? I wondered if things would have been any different between myself and Penn Boy had I not given into to his oh-so-blunt penis come-on penis. If I had maintained my modesty, if I had played the game and hid my desires the way legions of women and men had before me, would I have eventually grown fond of him? Liked him? Wanted a place in his life instead of just underneath him? And, in turn, would he have eventually grown to be more than physically compelled by me? Would I occupy a different slot in his mind than just “hot guy that I have good sex with”?

Would I be blogging now as a happily partnered man?

Of course, I was secure in the certainty that I didn’t want a relationship with Penn Boy as much as he didn’t want a relationship with me. He’d only triggered a rant that had been buried inside me for a while.  But, looking back, I must let my overactive mind apply this line of questioning to my interactions with other men in general. Had I done myself a disservice by subscribing to the uber-liberal college mindset when it came to expressing my sexuality? Granted, I have always been more reserved around guys I had more than a physical attraction to, but as I’ve admitted before, I have always followed a belief that as long as the air is clear and you’re being safe, there’s nothing wrong with entertaining your sexual desires.

But now I can’t help but wonder how many men I might have turned off by refusing to play the game and jumping in the sack to soon. If I had just held off on my own desires, maybe it would have been easier for potential guys to see something in me that was more than sexual and fun.

And I bitterly wish that none of this mattered. In 2010, why must we continue to live our lives with our minds closed and compartmentalized? I see no reason why I had I to be permanently trapped in the label of “hot guy I have good sex with” when just even the tiniest bit of effort would have unearthed so much more about me. Thinking outside of myself, I realize this happens all the time. The studious girl often gets stuck in the “shrill harpy who’ll never put out” mental slot, the daring spitfire within her doomed to never come out and play with someone willing to see more than just what’s immediately on the surface. The muscle jock can be doomed to be labeled as “the sexy douche who uses what few brain cells he has to be a beast in bed,” despite his 4.0 and obsession with theater.  Oh, how liberated we think we are.

Penn Boy and I didn’t end up hooking up that night. Or ever again.

Of course, we still talk. Ironically, he’s been in a relationship for almost a year now. I wish him all the best.

Tagged as: 21 Day Brainstorm Blogging Project, men, Sex