In another life, I would have been a concubine who had nothing to do but think of ways to sexually satisfy her master. In another life, I would have been a geisha, taught seventy-six ways to please a man without even touching him. In another life, I would have been the last wife, the one who was strictly there for pleasuring her husband in his dotage. In another life, I would have been a courtesan who had all the time in the world to be witty, sexy, scintillating, and above all, nurturing.
See, in this life, I have had the equivalent training, and, quite frankly, I’m damn good at it. I am witty and charming and sexual, and I know how to focus my attention on someone to make him feel like he’s the only person in the world. I am a good listener, and I like listening to people–which is an added bonus.
I’ve always been the anomaly–the freak. I’m the girl you don’t take home to mother. And, quite frankly, I can understand why. Let’s face it–I’m not really ‘meet the mother’ material. I’m the good-time girl, not the ‘until death or divorce do we part’ kind of gal.
I have only broken up with one partner in my life–the first one. After that, I got dumped by every person I dated–and even some I was just fucking. Now, to be fair, I was pretty messed up in my twenties, so I only went for people who wouldn’t commit to me. I thought I didn’t deserve to be in a relationship, so I picked people who only reinforced my negative belief. Then, once I got dumped, I could nod my head grimly and say, “See, I was right. I am unlovable.”
Of course, much of this was because I had my own ambivalence about whether or not I wanted to be in a committed relationship. Over the years, my ideas about monogamy, nonmonogamy, sex as love, sex as sex, morality and lack thereof have fluctuated wildly. The idea of being with one person and only one person for the rest of my life felt uncomfortably restrictive to me. Plus, given what I’ve seen of my mother’s relationship with my father, it’s no wonder that I thought marriage was a crock of shit. No way I was gonna be a doormat the way my mom was. Better not to be in a relationship at all than to be that.