Snark and Sex

Here’s the thing,

I don’t know much about love. My love-life is probably nonexistent. But in the past few weeks, I’ve found myself in a lot of different situations (some sexual, most uncomfortable, all of them disappointing), and these situations have shown me a couple of things. I want to record them here, where I can always return to them because, inevitably, I’ll forget all of this.

1. You have to be okay with rejection. I know what you’re saying. Obviously we have to be okay with rejection. It’s something we have always been told and we’ve like, totally integrated into our psyche. Right? Okay.

2. But no, you have to really be okay with rejection. And not just when it comes to someone loving you or not. It’s about sex too. If you show up at a party and exclusively talk to one guy and wind up sitting on his bed at the of the night and he doesn’t leap right out of his skin to jump your bones, chances are he doesn’t want to. Why? Who knows? Stop asking yourself that. Stop sitting on this dude’s bed and leave. He doesn’t want to kiss you or he would have already and you need to get yourself out of there as fast as you can.

3. Love makes you a bad judge of character. It’s been scientifically proven. When you’re in love, the part of your brain that critically judges others isn’t as active as when you’re, say, listening to a lecture or perusing the cereal aisle. You suppress negative thoughts about said apple of your eye. We are wired as human beings to behave this way and we’re not going to change anytime soon. That’s why you have to be aware of this. When your friends tell you the guy you like looks like he hasn’t showered in a month and you can’t see it, it’s totally possible that you’re ignoring a million other things that are wrong with him. Like the fact he picked a 3 a.m. sandwich run over hooking up with you. Idiot.

4. Don’t make excuses for people. Seriously, don’t do it. This goes hand in hand with lesson 3. If someone systematically never texts you back, they aren’t making enough of an effort to talk to you or spend time with you. They are, in fact, not not texting you back because they’re too busy or in a windowless hallway or something. They have bad manners, not bad service. Give them the benefit of the doubt the first time, but if they’re repeat offenders, don’t put up with it.

5. Stop putting yourself up for validation. This is so important, so blatantly and glaringly true that I’m mad I didn’t see it before. I willingly subject myself to other people’s shit, I put up with shitty texters and bad hook-ups-turned-friends and shady friends-wishing-they-were-hook-ups, and I walk into these situations because I want someone to like me. There, I said it. I want to believe people can be mature because I want them to prove that they are and that they think I am too. I want to believe in people because some of these people, some of the time might believe in me. I think that if I stick it out, I can find the real thing, and that the little things that didn’t add up will disappear, that those aren’t the real thing. I tell myself this on a daily basis. I lead my life under the impression that if I force myself to see the good in someone, they will see the same in me.

I’ll be the first to admit: I am looking for love. But looking for love isn’t the same as looking for validation, and I am done doing the former. I get it now. There’s a lot of angst in this post but it’s angst as it exits my body. Hopefully, this helps you too.

Well,

this sort of died. In the three-way venn diagram that is college, snark and sex are only two of the rings. The other is work. Which I’ve been doing a lot of.

Break is coming up and I’ll soon have more time to share my stories. Stay on the look out. Stay snarky. Stay sexy.

On being a girl. (And not a little bitch)

I pride myself on having my shit together. For the most part. While like many other undergrads, I have my occasional anxiety attacks and stress-induced breakdowns, Monday through Friday from at least 9 am to 4 pm I am a collected, hard-working college student with grand ambitions and goals for myself and my career. I try to work hard, party harder, and keep my head above water.

I saw many of my friends throughout this school year get hung up on boys and relationships. They let their feelings get far too involved and before they knew it, they were elbows deep in unhealthy relationships that left them teary-eyed piles of sadness afterwards. That is not me. Or at least it wasn’t. I didn’t do that shit, because I was smarter than that. I treated men like objects for a solid chunk of a year and avoided developing any unwarranted feelings because I was above the burden of getting emotionally involved. I don’t analyze crushes or boys’ motives or text messages because I simply don’t give a fuck. It doesn’t matter in the end.

Well I think it’s high time for me to do a service for myself and every other red-blooded woman and step off my fucking high horse. As a woman, I know I am genetically programmed to develop these attachments and feelings. Look, this summer, I developed a crush on a boy. A real big-time crush where I think about him all the time and blare Best Coast in my car while I ponder on our missed opportunities to bone and I reread our texting conversations, and I wonder if we’ll ever get our timing right or if maybe it’s time to let this all go. I’ve spent so much of my time being better than this, being too strong to get hung up over a boy, being totally over emotions and feelings that I forgot completely what it was like to feel this way. Truth be told, it sucks so much fucking cock but I know in order to live like, a full and happy life or whatever, I need to let these feelings happen.

So yeah, I’m a strong and independent woman but I can have a heart too. And I’m gonna overanalyze texts and mixed signals and be sad that a certain boy is leaving for the opposite coast today and I’m gonna be okay with it. I’m not going to get angry at myself for not getting over him in a day, but instead I’m going to stop berating myself for having too many feelings and embrace it. 

*Writers note: This is not to say that wallowing in sadness is an acceptable way to deal with emotions. This is about accepting that you have emotions that need to be dealt with. Wallowing = little bitch move.

How to: Get Over that Guy You Were Hooking up With // PART 1

This is it. The definitive list of things to do get over your summer fling. If you follow these steps, you will have no choice but to forget about that hunnie you were lovin’ on and become a cooler, independent female. I can’t promise any miracles, but I’m sort of an expert on leaving home nursing a wounded heart and it sucks. I have faith in this list because it’s everything I don’t want to do in these situations because I like suffering.

And be honest, you do too. That’s why you’re here. Shhh, it’s okay. Momma’s got you.

#1. Don’t listen to the mix CDs he made you. Look, I’m not saying every guy does this for his lady. But music has been scientifically proven to make you fall in love (well, not exactly). If you and your boy were romantically involved, you probably did more than casually exchange fluids, you probably swapped some good tunes too. Even if y’all never said “This is our song” a la Ryan Gosling in Blue Valentine, you have to be careful how you treat your broken heart.

If your dude made you a CD, don’t listen to them when he’s gone. It’s tempting to play those hand-picked gems on repeat. It’s like, you’re driving in your car and you think to yourself, hey, the radio really sucks. I’ve heard “Party Rockers Anthem” about 7 times in the past twelve minutes. Lemme just play one of these burned CDs I have littering my car. No harm, right? Right? WRONG. When “Sweet Disposition” comes on, you’re gonna be one hot mess. Don’t do it!

In fact, let’s place a ban on all sad music. Don’t listen to Bob Dylan. Don’t listen to Bon Iver. Don’t listen to Regina Spektor unless it’s “Folding Chair”. Ditch the old mixes, shelf your sadness, and starting finding new music. Check out music blogs like Pretty Much Amazing, The Kollection, Said the Gramophone, etc. Download Blalock’s Indie Music Playlist of the Month. Cultivate your own taste. Sooner rather than later, you’re gonna find there’s some really great stuff out there, the kind you can rock out to without wanting to cry a little bit. The key is to discover stuff that makes you feel alive, not reduce you to a pitiful mass of tears.

Reasons I’m Single: I don’t have Lana Del Rey’s voice.

It’s easy to see why guys aren’t flocking to me and offering to father my children when Lana Del Rey’s song come on. Seriously, have you heard this bitch sing? Girl’s got pipes. But not in an over-the-top, Christina Aguilera kind of way. No, her voice is like fairy dust and sex. It sounds like she’s made of marshmallow fluff and tears (my freshman year is a testament to how well those two compliment each other). When she sings, it’s like the heavens open up and you see all the sadness in the world and want to fix every broken heart. I’d imagine that if a male ever took a second to listen to “Video Games” (and what male wouldn’t, with such an enticing song title?), the guy equivalent of ‘panties coming off’ would happen.

In the words of Jay-Z and the only man I’d ever consider a threesome with, “Love, I don’t get enough of it.”

Well said, Jay, well said.

It seems that, since we first hit puberty and learned what our bodies are capable of doing, we’ve been on the search for love. As a female, I feel as if I’m hardwired to look for love, or companionship, or any sort of meaningful relationship that won’t end in me getting blue balls. Emotional blue balls. Movies and pop songs have convinced me I’m practically entitled to it. They promised me someone would love me, love me, say that they love me, need me, need me, etc etc.

The truth is, I’m surrounded by love. I have a wonderful, caring nuclear family and some very loyal people in my life that I’m lucky enough to call friends. I probably don’t deserve them, and it’s a miracle they stick around. I’m a lucky girl. And yet, I’m unsatisfied.

I’m unsatisfied because I’m a 19-going-on-20 year old who’s never been in love. Despite what some may say, I know love is more than a perpetual case of the butterflies, holding hands for hours, and feeling like you might as well explode while you wait for someone to text you back. I’ve felt all that. Up until recently, I sort of lived off that. Those fleeting feelings of elation sustained me through romantic dry spells. They were moments of magic and wonder—but they are not indicative of love.

So, what is? How do you know when you know? Well, I could be a little bitch and tell you it’s when “you just know”, but that shit’s for pussies. Love, to me, means complete selflessness. It’s relinquishing your ego and caring almost exclusively for that magical creature you were lucky enough to find. It’s letting yourself come second to another human being. More importantly, love involves vulnerability. You open up and offer some integral part of yourself, but gain so much more in the process.

There are a million footnotes to this elementary definition of love, and that’s what this blog is about. As I say goodbye to summer and freshman year and return to school with a new head on my shoulders, I’m on the prowl. Not for love, necessarily, but for a real connection with someone who will compliment all my strengths and weaknesses and make me laugh when the world feels heavy. Along the way, my heart will be fair game to those few vicious predators who will fight their way past my stone-cold façade. My definition of love and fun and romance will get dropped on its head and rattled and shaken like a baby.

And that’s okay. I’m here to record any addendums I might have to make to my notions of love. I’m here to learn. I’m down to love.

Why do we have to make this hard when it doesn’t have to be?

So far, my knowledge of love has come in phases. Slow phases. Waves of realization that wash over me and then leave me soaked in my ignorance and balking at the sheer obviousness of all. They say hindsight is 20/20, but in the present, you’re just lost in a haze of confusion, misinterpreting mixed signals, lust after that first or second or third kiss, butterflies when you get a phone call.

In my early teen years, I thought love was perfection between two people. A fairytale that I longed to experience and feel the true euphoria of, I gobbled down Sarah Dessen novels and dreamt of the day that I would play the protagonist of my own. A likely result of my imbalanced hormones and low self-esteem, I believed that a relationship with a boy would be the key to my adolescent happiness. There could absolutely be no downside, no fall, no pain in a relationship and I skipped to imagining six months into our relationship with every cute boy that spoke to me.

In high school, I learned more. I felt my first pang of heartbreak from a boy that would never give me my teen romance, no matter how badly I wanted it. I felt my first stirrings of sexual desire with this same boy that taught me how to kiss on playground constructs in a park in my neighborhood. My friends entered relationships and I consoled them during their breakups, and I began to realize that these things can be complicated, messy, and hurtful. But it had to be worth it, right? I started to realize that relationships are an investment, and should be treated as such. Instead of launching into one after a few messages exchanged via AIM (yo, if you went to middle school in the early 2000s, you know what I’m talking about), a relationship should grow slowly, fostered by communication and some kind of mutual acknowledgement of exclusivity or commitment or something. In high school, that meant go on a couple dates and spend a few weeks giddily texting each other. I remained on the lookout for my future boyfriend.

My next “relationship” of sorts began during the summer before college. I eyed him from afar throughout my senior year, noted our subtle flirtations but thought nothing more of it. I chanced upon him at a party and before I knew it, we had a movie date. My mind was reeling, my heart was pounding, my palms were sweaty. I thought this, fleeting though it would be, would be something real. We’d have a hot, steamy summer romance that Meg Cabot couldn’t even write and then part ways happily. However, it was from this that I learned lust can be absent from love. I tried to fool myself into thinking there was something there, but instead all I got was late-night calls a couple times a week. I learned the fun of casual, and I started to believe something else. All boys are the same.

As I began college, I also began my serial hook-up career—I partied hard and made out with enough dudes to comprise a football team with a few benchers. These were a slew of non-committal sexual relationships that lasted anywhere between 5 minutes to 2 hours and resulted in anything from a drunken make out session to more serious physicality. Ironically enough, this is what taught me the most about love. I always believed that exclusivity was a right, not a privilege. Instead, I learned that exclusivity at this age is the greatest commitment you can give. College co-eds, we’re all the same. Despite moving past puberty, we are still teenagers with raging hormones and an even more-raging sexual curiosity. I stopped expecting more, and then I stopped wanting more altogether.

I find my slow education of love ironic as it parallels my actual education. When I was younger, I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. I wasn’t ready for any of it, though I was dying to dive into the experience. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned the art of patience, the importance of commitment, the real meaning behind these words. But after all these lessons, it looks like this is where it all stops. Relationships have become rarer and rarer and instead it seems like the term “hook up buddy” has replaced “boyfriend” or “girlfriend”. 

I think that as we discover the true meaning of love and relationships and the burden they bring, so few of us are willing to give ourselves to it. It seems that as the weight of the meaning has attached itself to words like “relationships” and “exclusivity”, we’ve become too frightened to face it. I find that as much as I long and desire for love, at this age, and perhaps from here on forth, very little are capable of giving it.

So everyone, read forth as I try to figure out what love really is, and if I’m capable of giving it myself. 

Introductions

Who are we?

We’re two different girls at two different colleges united by one best friendship and a shared history of craziness for boys.

We’re just trying to figure it all out. We’re snarky, we’re sexy, we’re sharing entirely too many personal stories online. Read along as we navigate love, disappointment, and perfecting the list of blowjob-worthy boys.

Enjoy, bitches.