It's Sad But There You Go...

The great new debate started with the usual suspects.... I was rehashing the couple of a parties, the hook-ups, the dramas and came to the conculsion that 2004 should be the year of the slut... (Or Yos for short...) It came from a mixture of my own behavior as well as several others (guess who) that maybe we should all take a year and be wild. I'm not talking blow jobs in parking lots or any having guy we see but that we should all be open to various relationships and not spend all our time and energy looking for the One...

I have always been a fan of this school of thought--that you should kiss all the boys, dance whenever and with whomever, that there are men and mayhem that need to happen before you find the One... I learned this from my mom. She married young and ended it quickly and threw herself into the paths of unsuitable men to some degree. That I should learn from her mistakes, that happiness and the right One come along after a hell of alot of searching. I'm not talking about one night stands (though they serve a purpose) or hook ups with the wrongs ones cause they're there but that maybe we should all relax and just enjoy the process...

And then I got smacked on my ass... It began with a Christmas present to myself. A movie that I really wanted to own and could buy with a check from the holidays... (Thanks Mom.) The film was "Beautiful Thing"; a great indy movie from the early 90's about a couple of working class gay guys and their relationship... It's funny, sweet, harsh and romantic all at once. One of the few things that can make me cry.

It started me thinking about my own views... I realized that maybe, just maybe, I do want romance. That all my talk is just a game and that maybe I do want flowers and magic and chemistry... That I want someone to light up when I walk in the room. That for all my bravo, I am just a scared person, afraid of love, afraid of the pain that it might bring. That it is ten times more brave to go into the world and believe that you deserve a nice slow dance, that maybe it would be nice to just settle for a kiss. For real dates, not booty calls or boys dropping by cause they are bored.

That I shouldn't settle for men who don't know what they want. That maybe I need to believe that I am first class, worth the effort of wooing, that I shouldn't just hide my emotions or go with the flow because it's easier than saying what I really want... That maybe I can have the wedding on the beach, the feeling of true intimacy and desire, that maybe my walls aren't me being a realist but of me being untrusting or unwilling to bend. I'm not talking about walks on the sand or poetry over a nice bottle of wine...that's something anyone can do. But of the feeling "I want you for you and you want me for me..." Not settling for what I can get but for waiting for what I deserve... Maybe it isn't the year of the slut, maybe it's the year of waiting for more than the same games... Not from them but from myself....