And It All Comes Tumbling Out

A lot has happened since the last post, and I credit the gap to laziness and sickness (something my doctor referred to as “possible walking pneumonia” – uh, awesome?). Anyway, here’s a recap of some of the Big Events:

The Fourth of July was shaping up exactly like I’d wanted it to. Nothing spectacular- just a chill evening with friends and cold beer. After cooking veggie burgers on the small $18 grill we’d purchased at CVS (and propped up on a mini-fridge), we sat around in our patchy backyard, lounging on various pieces of furniture we’d dragged down from the apartment.

As the night wore on, the music got louder and more anti-imperialistic. Pretty soon we were all tipsy, singng along to Vietnam protest songs, and generally acting like a bunch of lefty college students. I lit up my third cigarette, only to catch Andy looking at me with a disappointed furrow in his brow.

“What?” I said, blowing a cloud of smoke into the air.

“Nothing,” said Andy. “I just thought you said you’d  cut down.”

“Well, I’m drunk. Cut me some slack.”

He nodded and I could tell he felt bad for mentioning it. I knew that he used to be a heavy smoker and that on more than one occasion, he’d had to deal with girlfriends nagging him about tobacco use. Still, I resented be patrolled and took another deep drag off my Parliament in revenge.

“America, FUCK YEAH!”

Our friends had found a “Team America” clip on YouTube, and now all bets were off. As they chanted its chorus, I made my way over to the fire pit, where Andy was sprinkling grass on the dying embers. He looked really sweet, with his boyish face all lit up, and my resentment started to melt.

Eventually, things started to wind down, and Andy and I dragged the rest of the beer into the kitchen. Since we were both completely shit-faced, this took way longer than necessary, and by the time we got everything inside, I was ready to explode.

“I have to pee,” I said. 

“Me too,” he slurred.

We slogged our way to the upstairs bathroom, where we immediately collapsed, our faces pressed to the cold tile floor.

“God, I like you,” he said, shaking his head.

“Ooooh. I like you, too.”

I’d been distant all day, so this small confession felt good. Really good. I squeezed him close to my body.

“I’m just so glad I found you,” I said.

Andy said nothing. Then he pushed himself up and looked at me, his face contorted with emotion.

“That’s exactly what I wanted to say all night,” he said. “Except I didn’t, because I thought it would sound too serious. I’m so glad I found you, too.”

An hour long sob session followed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the downstairs neighbors had to put buckets out to catch the water dripping from their ceiling.

The A Word

“Arrrrgh. Clipboards! Clipboards, whhhhyyy??”

An avalanche of political pamphlets cascades across Andy’s backseat, and he groans as he dives after them. I stand in the driveway, watching his shaggy blonde head pop up and down, wondering whether I should help him. In one hand I’ve got a thousand flyers, each stamped an image of the sweet, scruffy Democrat Andy’s campaigning for. And in the other, I’m clutching a half-eaten banana; a little too sweet for my liking but a foodstuff nonetheless. Mmm, foodstuffs.

“Whatever,” says Andy, kicking back a few rogue clipboards as they make a dive for the pavement. “Sam won’t care if we use creased pamphlets. Let’s get this show on the road.”

I smile and peck him on the cheek (mine are still stuffed with fruit… I look like a hamster with a thyroid problem), and we pile into the car.

Such are the perils of dating an activist. One minute you’re reclining on the couch, reading Diablo Cody’s column in Entertainment Weekly and trying to decide, for the hundredth time, whether you love or hate her. And the the next minute you’ve been roped into going door to door, bugging old people for signatures to get your boyfriend’s roommate on the election ballot. Ugh.

Well, not ‘ugh’ exactly. Andy’s activism is obviously a good thing. It’s part of the reason I like him, and is an inevitable offshoot of his good heart, his concern for the less fortunate, his love of justice – etc etc. But goddamn, does it make me feel guilty. While I’m stuck in some crappy office, he’s off protesting the war in front of the State House or strategizing with unions about how to increase wages. And he has this tick, this compulsion, to get everyone he knows involved in what he’s doing, which I inevitably cave into. Because how can you say something like “No, Andy. I don’t care about the working conditions of poor immigrant mothers. Leave me alone so I can finish this article about the New Kids on the Block reunion”? It’s impossible. So this is what happens. I end up doorknocking on a Wednesday night, partly to make myself feel better and partly to make him think that I’m a decent person.

Oh, and to help people. Right.

This is always going to be an issue, I think as we drive to the coffee shop where the volunteers are gathering. Meetings, protests, doorknocking, organizing. I’m always going to have to choose whether to go to them or not. If I don’t go, I feel like a complacent asshole, possibly even a racist one since most of these protests have to do with helping Latinos. And if I DO go, I’m compromising my (possibly flawed) identity. I’m reshaping who I am in order to please my guy. Ah fuck. I’m fucked.

Andy and I have had this conversation before, of course, and it usually ends with me in tears and him bowing his head like a puppy dog. He tells me that he didn’t mean to make me feel bad, that he doesn’t expect me to become him…that he likes me for who I am, and all that. On the whole, I believe him. Why else would we be together? There are plenty of semi-attractive female unionizers who he could date. But no. He’s with me, so there must be something to that.

Still though, the activism stuff occasionally creates a weird divide. He’s the Involved, I’m the Uninvolved, and between our areas of interest lies a polluted lake of guilt and shame. We don’t have fights, we have long, tense moments (ok, hours), born from inadvertent comments he makes about my apathy (“oh sure, move to brooklyn. there’s not enough gentrification there as it is. push out a few more working class families, why don’t you” …strained silence…CUE THE WATERWORKS).

And so these thoughts scroll through my head as I stuff yet another flyer into a constituent’s ratty-looking front door. Sam’s face stares back at me, so eager and well-meaning. He’s a good guy, a decent progressive politician if there ever was one, and it really didn’t take much to convince me to campaign on his behalf. Just a few tears, a few forced breaths through my nose. Andy made the mistake of asking me to do this the night he also announced that he wouldn’t be paying rent this summer. It’s a long story, and it essentially means we’ll be living together since he spends so much time at my place. The fatal combination of Activism + Living Together through me into another stupid identity fit (I’ve never lived with someone before, so it’s kind of a big deal). But upon further reflection, I’ve calmed down. Or at least decided not to reflect on it so much.

Anyway, doorknocking ends, we chill with friends, and then decide to go home and order pizza. By my second slice and third beer, I’m a horny butterball and I can’t keep my hands off the kid. We start messing around on my bed, at which point I bring up the fact that I’ve never used food during sex, at which point he says there’s still a pudding cup left in the fridge. End story: we slather ourselves in viscous chocolate and I give one of the most delicious blowjobs of my life. Though rest assured there will be some serious payback tonight on his behalf.

The moral, I suppose, is that despite all the angst I’m still having fun. I wonder constantly about how long this will last-  if the Jane and Andy story will conclude when the weather starts to get cold, or if it it’s destined to linger on a little longer. I doubt I’ll stay here after graduation, and I doubt he’ll move away, so that throws a wrench into things. But as for the meantime, I guess I should just lighten up and enjoy the ride. Maybe learn something from it.

Lesson Number One: Cocks should dipped in pudding whenever possible. Seriously.

Starting off with getting off

With my arms pinned above my head and a sweaty boy arched over me, a few questions sprout up in my brain.

Should I struggle? Should I not? What would be hotter? Part of me wants to just lay back and take it, but I feel like I should make some sort of effort since Andy went through the trouble of constructing this game. Shouldn’t I reward his initiative with a little performance of my own?

I push back a bit, feigning resistance and feeling self-concious about the rape fantasy implications of this scenario. If I were ever to star in a Lifetime movie, the title would read “When Feminism and Kinkiness Collide: the Jane Crosely story.” My muscles begin to contract, and I try to ignore the sound of all those the First Wave women rolling in their graves. Instead, I focus exclusively on the sentiments of my favorite Third Wave writers (“It’s ok to have rape fantasies” cry the bloggers at Jezebel. “After all, it’s just a fantasy. You’re entitled to what you want!”) Too bad Andy started this and my wants are catching up. As my head fills with the voices of three bickering generations of feminists, Andy tightens his grip and I’m brought back to Earth. Oh yeah, I’m having sex.

“What do you want?” he whispers.

“Mmmm.”

“What was that? I didn’t hear you. Tell me what you want. Say it.”

I moan again, hoping that my tortured chipmunk noises will appease him. He’s always been more into dirty talk than me, which I readily blame on social conditioning. Still, this is part of the game.

“I want your cock,” I say.

“Where?”

The words stick in my throat. He likes to hear me beg, really beg, and getting started is always a challenge. Yeah, eventually moaning these words makes sex more interesting, but the first few sentences are always hard for me. I squirm and twitch, enjoying the sensation of being pinned down (he has both of my wrists in his right hand). Dear God, I think, if begging will get him to keep doing this, then I’m game.

I flip into porn star mode.

“Fuck my cunt. Put your hard cock in my tight little cunt. Oh fuck, I’m so wet.”

A grin spreads across his face and he spanks me with his free hand. Then suddenly the smile is gone, replaced by a serious, eyebrow-furrowed look of determination. This is a prime example of Andy’s sex schizophrenia; his ability to ricochet from sweet and tender to aggressive fuck animal. I kind of like it, actually. It throws me off my guard, which ultimately makes it easier for me to come.

We go at it with him on top for awhile and then move on to doggy style. Since we’re still new to this relationship – and are somewhat shy about fully expressing our desires (we’re still in our early twenties- too young to be selfish and jaded) – we haven’t fucked in this position very often. My stomach churns at the thought of Andy staring at my acne-speckled back and less-than-toned ass, but horniness wins out and I bury my face in the sheets. If I tilt up, his cock hits where it needs to, right against my newly discovered g-spot. I moan and squeal, hoping to bait him into fucking me like this until he comes.

No such luck. Like so many other boning sessions, this one ends with me on top, doing my best cowgirl and trying to control the ripples cascading down my stomach (there’s not a lot of fat, but I have a pouch. Seriously though, who doesn’t? Certainly not girls who eat peanut butter straight from the jar). After a few minutes, his mouth turns downward and he blows his load, leaving me dripping and slightly frustrated.

Unfortunately, this is par for the course. I’ve only officially had one vaginal orgasm in my life, with Andy, and that had followed a rub-athon with my vibrator. To be sure, it WAS a vaginal orgasm, not a clitoral spasm in disguise, since the sensation was way more internal than normal. Truthfully, I’m afraid to ask him to use it again because I know he feels insecure about my lack of coming without mechanical help. Poor kid, it’s not his fault. The guy is really, really good about going down on me and fingering my cunt before we get to fucking, but for some reason, it just never clicks when push comes to shove (heh). Maybe it’s his stamina, or my own psychological barriers. Or maybe I just need a LOT of stimulation before my g-spot delivers. By now I’m kind of at a loss about the whole thing. The only solution I can think of is to keep fucking until we get it right again.

Oh, Andy. I like you. I do. I’ll write more about him later, but I felt it was appropriate to start the blog off this way, since this is more or less how our whole relationship began.