This is the story I read at BedPost Confessions tonight. It was well received, so I thought I’d post it here~
Photo by Steve Rogers
I hadn’t planned on fucking the fisherman… at least, I don’t think I did.
It’s all sort of a vague and hazy blur of stale Camel lights and an abundance of Belvedere Vodka. My friend Gen and I had been at a birthday party, it was one of those nightclub parties where the bottle service doesn’t ever stop and lots of the patrons are distorted caricatures – like reality television stars and Republican politicians – you know, where the bartenders and bouncers hate their jobs and everyone in there believes that just being hot transcends everything wrong with the world.
Then … at some point Gen and I were stumbling back to the hotel, drunk and wobbly. We were in Santa Barbara – beautiful, quaint Santa Barbara with its cobblestone streets and its gorgeous coastline and its research University, and its Spanish Missions and … Oprah.
And then, at some point on the walk we met a cute, 20-something fisherman who asked if he could bum a smoke. I said, drunkenly, Sure, and why don’t you walk with us down the road with us… to our hotel … you know, while you smoke with us?
The next thing I remember I was opening my eyes.
It was the following morning.
The room mimicked the haze that was the night before, and my eyes had trouble focusing through it. I’d smoked in the room even though I wasn’t supposed to, but I didn’t have an actual memory of that. It was my nose that narrated that part of the story for me – picked up a dry, pungent refrain from the thick re-circulated air while the scent of the sheets hummed a sultry, smoky back up. I rolled over onto my side and stretched a little and the covers shifted loosely over my totally bare skin. I yawned and blinked. And then … I saw it – a square, torn, gold foil wrapper staring at me like my cat does when it knows I’m awake and it wants its breakfast. I recognized the golden square because it had once been in my purse, but back when it was in my purse, it had a condom inside of it.
It appeared that the condom had found its way inside of something else.
I was perplexed. Okay, actually? I was freaked. I rolled over in the bed and squinted toward a sleeping Gen. My heart raced and my head swirled ‘round with thoughts of what she and I might have done with and to the guy who had reason to open up that condom wrapper. It seemed the guy was gone but that wrapper was still looking at me from the bedside table. I would have laughed if my head didn’t hurt so badly from the vodka and if my throat didn’t feel like I’d just blown a major league baseball team (from the cigarettes). I might have mustered a slight giggle if I could’ve just remembered one small piece of the previous night’s puzzle from the walk home onward…but I couldn’t. I was going to need Gen’s help in solving this one.
And then I noticed that she was wearing her pajamas. I was the only naked person in that bed.
I shook her awake. What the fuck happened last night? And a groggy Gen rolled over while peering at me through one eye, and after a moment she heaved a frustrated, disconcerted sigh, a sigh that was a lot like the sigh my mom sighed at me back when I was 14 and she’d found out that I’d been sneaking her car out in the middle of the night while she was asleep… and driving around the neighborhood with my little sister in the back seat, a bottle of Boone’s Farm rolling around on the floorboard and the emergency brake on.
sigh
Sadie, you don’t remember? You fucked the fisherman while I waited in the bathroom…. It was not a huge deal, although I felt a little weird.
Umm….A little weird? Gen?
Okay, a lot weird. Yeah, it was a lot weird.
And yeah, it was weird. Now… it wasn’t all that weird that I might have had sex with someone I’d just met. Unfortunately. My then-husband and I had recently opened our marriage, and so having sex with someone else fell inside the boundaries of what I could do when I was drunk and in Santa Barbara. But what was weird was that I would banish my friend to the bathroom so that I could have sex with that stranger. And that I had gotten so drunk that I didn’t even REMEMBER any of it. Not a single piece of it. Nothing. Not even when Gen elaborated for me. None of it rang a bell.
As Gen was telling me how it all shook down, I got out of the bed and shuffled through the trashcan, in search of the condom. I had to know conclusively that we’d been “safe”. As “safe” as we could have been in that scenario. I found it wrapped in toilet paper – enshrouded evidence of our mysterious debauchery. It was then my turn to sigh. This sigh was definitely one of relief but it was also tinged with a deep, internal remorse – a nebulous, shame-filled vapor of regret.
After I got home, I quit drinking for exactly 3 months.
In the 3 months that I was alcohol-free, I didn’t have a whole lot of sex. I had sex with my husband, yes, but I was feeling sort of twitchy during that time… like I had lost my edge – and I guess in a way I had. I didn’t have alcohol to prop me up, so I didn’t go out much at all. But what I did do during that short stint of sobriety was use that time to reflect on my drinking and what its role was in my sex life. I discovered that it lived pretty front and center.
Since alcohol un-inhibits us, it increases the likelihood that we will do things we wouldn’t normally do. Add sex to the equation and it can get messy. And I mean literally… messy – how many stories have you heard of people puking during a sexual encounter? Right. Those people were not sober. But, hey! Booze loosens us up! Makes us feel sexay!
And yes, booze can also encourage us, give us just the nudge we need to be open to trying those things we might really want to try but are maybe a little afraid to. Like wear a crotchless rubber chicken suit and roll around in baby oil, or penetrate a consenting partner with an umbrella handle…. or something.
For me, enough drinks in my system and I was totally cool with the idea of having a threesome with my husband and my next door neighbor’s daughter (she was 24!). Booze helped me say to my good friend, Sure, I’ll swap husbands with you for the night while all of our kids are sleeping downstairs…. Why not? Booze accompanied me to swingers clubs and sex parties and made sure that I was totally comfortable and at ease in those situations. At least mostly. I knew I was using it as a tool. And it worked well as a sexual assistant. But eventually, it became more than just a tool; it became a crutch. A problem.
You know that switch in the brain that says, Okay, you’ve had enough. It’s time to stop drinking now! The one that sometimes you listen to and a whole lot of other times you don’t? Maybe you ignore, say to it, “fuck off, I’m gonna do what I want, and what I want to do… is a shot of Jagermeister with this super cute Sign Language Interpreter that’s been flirting with me.”
You know that switch?
I don’t have one.
Nope. This particular model, the Sadie Smythe1.9.6.8 did not come with a switch!
I got fucking ripped off.
But, that’s just how I was designed, and so this meant that developing a problem with booze was bound to happen. I never really knew when I was going too far and drinking too much, since there was no switch for me to ignore and therefore no frame of reference. And so I went too far …most of the time.
And blacking out became a regular occurrence for me. So if I had a sexual experience with, say, the super cute Sign Language Interpreter, I wouldn’t always know whether it was awesome or not because the chances of it becoming a big, boozey blur were very high.
Even so, after my 3 months of sobriety, I easily convinced myself that I could start drinking again. In moderation. I decided that since I didn’t have a switch, maybe I could install one myself.
I envisioned a plugin like the ones I download for increased functionality on my website, but this one was for my brain – it was a Sadie will stop drinking after 2 drinks plugin. But, of course, what would happen was, I’d finish my 2 drinks and I’d manually override my well-intentioned psychological software with – I am fine! I’ll just push it to over to 3 drinks… okay 4. I could totally do 5 and be fine… and then all of a sudden I’ve forgotten how to count and the plugin short circuits and I am totally fucked up….
And naked.
This happened A LOT.
And when this didn’t happen, the perhaps 5% of the time when I actually managed to keep it to two or three drinks (which, incidentally, always coincided with evenings that I was already very tired or there was not much going on) on these nights I was sooo proud of myself. I’d be like, Yay, Sadie! Nice job tonight. You didn’t get too drunk and try to make out with your co-worker’s wife, and, lookie here…. You kept your panties on ALL night long!
And I’d hold on tightly to the success of that… like a throbbing cock.
I didn’t want to let it go.
And sometimes it was fun being the party girl, truly. But often it was rather pointless. Like the time I was in the middle of this orgiastic scene – there were 5 of us naked and splayed out on my living room floor and I realized I would probably not be in this position, my legs spread and some chick’s face that I don’t even recognize right there, looking up at me to see how I’m doing. And while she’s down there, there’s this guy who is sucking at my eyelids and pawing at my breasts and I’ve got his cock in my hand– and I realize that I would not have been there if I hadn’t begun the night with a vodka tonic … that had somehow turned into 12 vodka tonics. I looked around and I started thinking, I don’t even know if I like these people… and I’m looking at all of their faces and they, like me, are so drunk that none of us can even feel anything, we’re just pushing ourselves into each other like a pack of wasted wolves in heat.
Yes, I had started to take note of my behavior and was beginning to see that while I certainly felt more free-spirited, less self-conscious, and more courageous, that it was really only an illusion.
Because when I drank, I wasn’t in control any longer, it was. And maybe it seemed like it was confidence that put me in an interesting and perhaps notable sexual situation, it wasn’t really. Because ultimately, if it wasn’t a situation that I would have chosen to explore while I was sober, then it wasn’t courage that opened that door for me, it was exactly the opposite. It was actually cowardly because I wasn’t being true to who I was. I was trying to be someone else.
And, luckily, I know that now.
But, that’s what we do. We figure out who we are along the way, and some of us do that by fucking up and actin’ all crazy. And I did. I acted all kinds of crazy for a couple more years even. I kept on drinking and finding myself in sexual situations where I would be blacked out but still functioning, just not aware of it, and then I’d wake up, come to, in the middle of it … of having sex with someone … and not know where I was or how I got there.
Hey, dude… whatever your name is again, Henry? Oh… it’s Bert? You put a condom on, right? Show me? Okay cool. Thanks… proceed.
Yeah. Can you say hot mess? Yes. I was a hot mess. It was not pretty.
But eventually I had one of those aha moments; the kind that those of us who are lucky might have after we’ve stepped just a smidgen out the safety and warmth of our comfortable denial. And I figured out that I couldn’t be that person any longer. And I eventually I was able to access some real, confidence and courage … and I quit drinking. For more than three months this time.
In fact, as of TODAY…. it’s been three years.
Now when I have sex, I do so on my terms! And it is lovely. Gone are the days where I am driven by my blood alcohol levels to create manufactured, booze-driven, unconscious interludes. These days I am completely aware of what I am doing and who I am doing it with, and I can always recall the details the next day. And I enjoy it! And that’s because I can feel it. And you know what I discovered? Because I can feel it, and because it feels so fucking good that I want more and more and more and more…. I become totally uninhibited. Naturally.
Sober sex has, for me, been the most authentic, erotic, exhilarating and most importantly, liberating, experience of my life.
And my orgasms are INSANE.
And while I didn’t plan on fucking the fisherman, the fact is that I did fuck the fisherman. I still have absolutely no memory of it, but that doesn’t concern me much any longer. I now view that particular event as a gift – a symbolic souvenir that will forever serve as a purposeful reminder. Because if I ever think to myself – God, I wish I’d been made with one of those switches in my brain so that I could have a couple of drinks. Just a couple.
All I have to do is remember Santa Barbara.
