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Let’s Hug It Out, Bitch

May 28, 2009 by Olivia

Little did you know, a teenage hugging epidemic is sweeping the nation.  The New York Times reports:

For Teenagers, Hello Means ‘How About a Hug?’

A few especially touching quotes:

“We’re not afraid, we just get in and hug,” said Danny Schneider, a junior at the school, where hallway hugging began shortly after 7 a.m. on a recent morning as students arrived. “The guy friends, we don’t care. You just get right in there and jump in.”

Hugging appears to be a grass-roots phenomenon.

Some sociologists pointed out that African-American boys and men have been hugging as part of their greeting for decades, using the word “dap” to describe a ritual involving handshakes, slaps on the shoulders and, more recently, a hug, also sometimes called the gangsta hug among urban youth. (Dap? Someone fill me in here).

Noreen Hanjilian, principal of George G. White High School in Dirty Jerz (respect): “It was needless hugging — they are in the hallways before they go to class. It wasn’t a greeting. It was happening all day.”

A measure of how rapidly the ritual is spreading is that some students complain of peer pressure to hug to fit in. I can see that sentence being used to talk about more physical acts, but peer pressure to hug?! In the aftermath of the sexual revolution, who woulda thought that hugging is what we’re worried about?

One mother expressed her distress: “Hugging used to mean something,” she said.  Don’t worry mamma, it still does. As one teacher put it, “It gets to that core that every person wants to feel cared for, regardless of your age or how cool you are or how cool you think you are,” she said.

Right on.  It’s all about the love, go on and spread it. At least hugs don’t spread anything else.

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Dating Advice from…Animators

April 28, 2009 by Olivia

Every Friday, Nerve.com posts an article called “Dating Advice From…”, in which it interviews a group of people of the same profession. Recent articles have been advice from jazz musicians, irish bartenders, ballet dancers, zinesters…even hunters (sweet dude), to name a few. This week is Dating Advice From…Animators, and I’m loving the answer to the first question:


“Have you ever created a character based on someone you dated?
Not yet, but it’s very likely to happen in the future. I can’t wait to get my revenge on those bitches.”

The beauty of being an artist. And having the internet at your disposal. Ohh yeah. But, joking aside, writing a blog about relationships does bring up a few fishy situations. Reviewing articles is one thing, but personal essays? I’ve written a lot of stuff that I haven’t posted because, for one, it’s private. I don’t want people to know about every detail of my romantic life.  But forget rando people, how embarrassing would it be if the person who its about ever came across it? Talk about awkward.  And potentially disrespectful.  What do you guys think?

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I cheated on my wife while sleepwalking. What do I do now?

April 27, 2009 by Olivia

Seriously? Check out this article on Slate.

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Damn Shorty, You Got a Light?

April 21, 2009 by Olivia

penelope-smoking

Smoking: We know it’s wrong – hell, it’s disgusting – and yet why sometimes is it just so damn sexy?

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Sex, That Is.

April 21, 2009 by Olivia

A few days after I processed the beer stealing lunatics case, I was walking along Central Park past the line of horse and buggies on 59th Street. A buggy driver walked up to me and asked if I wanted a ride. I shook my head and kept walking. “For you, it’s free! I’ll take you anywhere you want to go!”

He didn’t call me baby or sweet thing in the usual skeezy fashion. In fact, he seemed strangely genuine. He persisted: “You don’t want a free ride? I’ll pay YOU!” I blushed and smiled, shook my head and kept walking. But he wasn’t giving up – he walked after me, still hopeful. But he must have realized I wasn’t going to come around because he stopped, threw his hands up in the air and shouted, “What do I have to do?! What would it take?!”

His voice reached my ears and my train of thought stopped abruptly – what would it take? What do I feel entitled to?

And then it hit me – I am entitled to good sex. To great sex. I am entitled to all the mind-blowing, toe-curling sex that women’s magazines across America spend their days over-analyzing. I use the word over-analyze because the key to great sex is simple – it’s all in the ability to let go. It’s not about mastering techniques or following a magazine’s instructions, you just have to relax and be in the moment. The fact that it’s not pre-determined or planned out is the beauty of it and when it’s most fun.

The hell with how long you’ve spent getting to know the person and the hell with time lines, it’s about feeling comfortable, not only with the other person but also with yourself. If you can do that – feel comfortable enough with a person to have sex right away and enjoy it – props to you. But, be you self-possessed or not, if you don’t feel you can relax naked in front of a complete stranger, hey, maybe you’re a prude. Or maybe you just refuse to settle for anything less than the best. Sex, that is.

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Every Woman’s Guide To Mind-Blowing, Toe-Curling Sex. Magazine Style.

March 26, 2009 by Olivia

On a muggy night this past summer, I was sitting at a desk in the District Attorney’s Office working as legal intern on a petit larceny of a Heineken turned broomstick attack, when something caught my attention. It wasn’t the fact that after being caught, the defendant chose to throw a chair at the mini-mart owner instead of paying for the one bottle of Heineken he stole. Or that his 62-year-old aunt sprang to his side, knocking out Mr. Mini-Mart’s two front teeth with a broomstick.

No, what caught my eye were words sprawled across the cover of a Glamour magazine someone left on the desk: “Every Woman’s Guide to Mind-Blowing, Toe-Curling Sex.” I promptly forgot about the beer-stealing lunatics and turned to page 248:

“I never really knew what GREAT SEX was until…”

“…I stopped trying to be sexy, I slept with a nerd, I lost the weight, I had sex sober,” yada yada yada…

…I got a little self-RESPECT.”

I glanced both ways to make sure no one was watching me and read on: “I once was a club DJ with nothing but joyless, short-term relationships and shame-filled booty calls to my name. I suffered from the low self-esteem endemic to young women trying to find love in a big city like New York. And then one night, I had wine and good conversation at a café with Jeff, a downtown scenester I knew with beautiful lips. Back at my apartment, I jumped on him, Jeff pushed me away. “Let’s wait,” he said. So we talked and spooned and talked some more until the morning light flooded the room. That’s when Jeff initiated things. I had my first orgasm from intercourse that day, the climax to an entire night of connecting – mind, body, and spirit. That was the end of my random hook-ups. Sex is best when it’s emotionally satisfying. Period.”

Is this what magazines are telling women across America? That taking the time to get to know a person means waiting one night? One night?! Granted, I agree with the overall message, that waiting to have sex until after you actually talk to the person is not a bad idea. But is this what we call having self-respect – waiting ‘til the next morning?!

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The Low Down: More Sex Please, We’re French

February 23, 2009 by Olivia

I was reading an article in Time Magazine today that a friend of mine sent me when I moseyed on over to the related articles section and found this: More Sex Please, We’re French. Granted, it was published almost a year ago, but the subject matter is still both pertinent and interesting. In just five paragraphs, the article summarizes a 600-page study entitled “The Study of Sexuality in France,” which found that French people of both genders are having more varied and frequent sex both earlier and later into life. Furthermore, French women are engaging in sex from a younger age and more frequently than before, while 20% of French men aged 18-24 years say they have no interest in sexual or romantic activity whatever. I’m sorry, what was that last part?

What also surprised me were the numbers for lifetime sexual partners, which were apparently on the rise:

French women between the ages of 30 and 49 report an average 5.1 amants in their lives (compared to 4 in 1992 and 1.5 in 1970). Men of the same age group give considerably higher numbers — 12.9 partners today — but have changed little over those declared in 1992 (12.6) and 1970 (12.8).

Now, forget that that number seems a little low for women. According to demographics, there are almost the same number of men and women in France. [15-64 years: 1.002 male(s)/female; total population: 0.956 male(s)/female] Given the essentially equal numbers of men and women in France, unless the men are hiking up their numbers, or the women are reporting fewer sexual partners than true, or both, how is it possible that men report 12.9 lifetime sexual partners and women report only 5.1? Are French men sleeping with more tourists? Are they traveling and getting laid abroad? What’s going down here? Apparently not the women, or at least not as much as the men are claiming.

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Can I Get a Hallelujah?

February 9, 2009 by Olivia

It looks like Daniel Bergner’s article in the New York Times Magazine, which was the subject of my last post, has incited anger among several NYTimes readers. Check out the letters to the editor here.

The feminist/post-feminist debate is a bit too semantic for my taste, but I did appreciate a few responses, especially one by Jaclyn Friedman of Medford, MA:

Wondering why women gravitate toward sexually passive roles? The answer has far less to do with evolution than with the ways women are shamed for expressing aggressive desire and with the pervasive idea that women who pursue their own satisfaction are asking to be raped.

Amen to that. She goes on:

What this woman wants is an end to tired clichés dressed up as science and the beginning of a world in which women are treated as individuals, each of whom may or may not be turned on by intimacy, back-alley ravishment or any number of things; a world in which anyone wondering what a woman wants knows that the best thing to do is just ask her.

Can I get a Hallelujah?

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The Low Down: What Do Women Want?

February 3, 2009 by Olivia

The cover of the New York Times Magazine was recently adorned with a woman’s orgasmic face breathing out the words, “What is Female Desire?”  The subsequent article by Daniel Bergner, entitled “What Do Women Want?” has drawn much attention.

If you can’t make it through the 7,371 words (it was a struggle for me, I’ll admit it), here’s the low down:

Recent scientific experiments in sexology tested the difference in female and male desire by showing men and women videos of sex between two men, two women, a man and a woman, and, well, two bonobos. The participants were asked to rate how aroused they were by each video, and their answers were compared to test results of their actual physical arousal. The study found that men’s minds and genitals are usually in agreement – what they wrote on paper correlated to their tested physical arousal. Women’s physical and mental arousal, on the other hand, do not line up. Although they did not admit to it, women were turned on by everything from heterosexual sex to a naked woman doing gymnastics to bonobo sex. Straight women rated their arousal higher than it actually was for heterosexual sex, and lower than it actually was for the bonobo sex. Meaning women are less aware of their arousal or are ashamed to admit to it, and whether or not they know it, women’s sexuality is more fluid than that of men. Studies also found that women’s desire is reactive – women are more aroused when they feel desired.

It’s great that scientists are performing experiments to test female desire, but are their findings really so new?

Finding #1: Women’s physical desire doesn’t match up to their mental desire – female arousal does not line up with what they want to admit, to themselves or others. Surprise surprise? They say when you’re drunk, you are less inhibited and therefore you often say things that you wouldn’t if you were sober. Perhaps the same is true of drunken sexual acts – often, at least in college, you hook up with people when you’re drunk that you wouldn’t soberly admit to being attracted to. Beer goggles, anyone? The sober explanation would be that when you’re drunk, your standards are lowered, but I think that’s just a comforting notion we come up with so we don’t have to admit to ourselves or our friends that hey, maybe we think the skinny kid with the glasses is actually kinda hot.

Finding #2: Female sexuality is more fluid than men’s. In the collegiate environment, it’s almost cool for a girl to hook up with another girl – some girls even say they’re bi just to appear more attractive. It’s okay for a girl to experiment with other girls, but if a guy hooks up with a guy, well, he’s not experimenting, he’s labeled.

While I’m all for talking about sex, I don’t understand why science is needed to validate talking about it.

One finding the article discussed which I did find interesting was scientific evidence supporting the fact that women are sometimes aroused by and may even fantasize about rape to the point where occasionally women orgasm during sexual assault. Freaky, I know. But this makes sense with the previous finding – that women’s physical arousal and cognition function separately. Unless from time to time, we secretly want a little more than the usual throw-down.

Here’s what Slate’s William Saletan had to say about it. What do you guys think?

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Get Out While You Can?

January 30, 2009 by Olivia

I sat on the couch with a blanket wrapped around my legs, eating Hershey kisses and watching “Seinfeld.” It was nearly 7:50 PM on a Thursday evening and I was supposed to be at a party in Brooklyn at 8. Yet I sat, with no plans to move anytime soon.

My cell phone sat silently on the table beside the pile of Hershey kiss wrappers. I didn’t feel the need to disturb it from its lonely sleep. I probably should have called someone to say I wasn’t on my way, but I was comfortable just as I was, wearing the soccer jersey that belonged to the boy waiting for me at the party.

I wanted to go and see him, I did. But something held me fast to that couch.

We had been dating for barely two weeks, and a few weeks later the summer would be over and with it, our relationship, if it lasted even that long. It was expiration dating in its most basic form, and I was just trying to play by the rules: Number 1: Don’t get attached, and Number 2: When you inevitably do get attached, spend all your energy acting like you’re not.

I wasn’t attached yet, but I was getting uncomfortably close.

I had realized this the previous night at a bar with several of our coworkers. I spotted him from across the room, talking to a girl from our office whom neither us was crazy about. She wasn’t particularly attractive and had a boyfriend anyway who, moreover, was there.

I knew he wasn’t interested in her. And yet I had wanted nothing more than to walk over and put my arms around him, even grab him and kiss him, proclaiming him as my own.

Maybe it was because he looked so cute. Maybe it was the alcohol in me. Perhaps – dare I even think it – I was falling for him. No, that couldn’t be it. It had to be the cuteness factor.

I looked over at the pile of crumpled Hershey kiss wrappers. If I didn’t move now, the pile would only get bigger as the night went on. But if I did go – my phone was ringing and his name was flashing across the front –

“Hello?”

“Hey.” I heard his voice on the other end. “Are you coming?”

* * * *

Run. Run, I said to myself. Get out while you still can. It was three months later, I was back at school, and the same thing was happening all over again. Different guy, same reaction. I realized the guy I was seeing was close to perfect, felt myself getting attached to him, and freaked.

It was Sunday morning and I had just come from having brunch with him. I had pretended to read the newspaper, but actually couldn’t concentrate at all, even on the comics. I just kept looking up at him across the table, wondering if he was feeling the same way I did, hoping he liked me too. But he just sat, wrapped up in his stir fry creation and small talk, seemingly oblivious to my trembling knees and questioning glances.

Back in my room, I had no better luck concentrating on my work than I did on the Sunday Times. After an hour had gone by and only three pages had been turned in my book, my knees shaking more than my eyes were moving across the page, I decided to go back to the cafeteria and attempt to calm myself with food. I wasn’t particularly hungry, but what the hell. Emotional eating. Always a good idea.

For my first breakfast, I’d had oatmeal with cinnamon and raisons, a healthy choice. Now my tray was filled with pancakes and muffins. They didn’t seem to help. Now not only was I upset, but I had eaten too much. Emotional eating. Never a good idea.

I spotted my ex-boyfriend sitting across the room with a friend of his. We had dated freshman year, and every time I felt myself having serious feelings for him, I doubted the strength of his feelings and tried to call it off. But I always called him back, and he always came. Until finally one time he didn’t. I guess I should have realized he was crazy about me too before it was too late.

His friend got up to get more food and I took the opportunity to go over and steal his seat. My ex-boyfriend looked up from his newspaper to see me sitting across from him, my knee still caught in that nervous bounce. “Hey,” he said, his lips slowly forming that familiar smile.

“Hey,” I responded very matter-of-factly. “Listen, I have to talk to you. I’m freaking out about something and I think you’re the only one who can help me.”

“Me? Why?” he answered.

“Because I’ve done it to you before,” I responded.

He smiled. “I’m not having sex with you right now, Liv. I’m eating.”

My eyebrows furrowed and I got up to leave. “What? No! That wasn’t what I was going to ask you.” I tapped him on the head as if to scold him. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Okay, we’ll talk. But Justin’s coming back now.” I looked up, saw his friend approaching, and disappeared as fast as I’d arrived.

“He would know what to do,” I thought to myself as I walked away. “He has to know.”

But what was I doing? Relying on an ex to figure out how to save a current relationship? Wasn’t that just a little twisted? I didn’t know what else to do. It’s as if a switch in me flips whenever I realize I’m getting close to someone and I freak out: Does he feel the same way? Or have I been reading the signs completely wrong and making a fool of myself?

The same thing that had gone through my head on that summer night was going through my head now. I was asking myself the same questions and having the very same doubts. But this wasn’t a summer fling – it wasn’t expiration dating. I was with someone who could potentially make me truly happy, so why was I worried about getting attached?

* * * *

I sat in my English professor’s office as she searched for a draft of the above writing. My fingers tapped nervously on her desk. “Alright, I can’t find the copy, but I read it,” she said to me as I fidgeted, anxious more about the subject matter than the writing.

“Did you like it?” I asked, eager for an answer.

She leaned back in her chair and thought for a moment before she replied. “Tell me,” she said. “What are you worried about? What is bothering you so much?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know. I’m just…I’m freaking out.” My writing tutorials had become more therapy session than grammatical critique.

“Olivia, listen,” she responded. “You have to calm down. This is crazy. Have some trust in the future! You operate at such a high intensity level that you’re probably freaking the guy out. Just calm down and let it happen!”

But could I? I left my professor’s office that day feeling antsy and frustrated. She was right; I do operate at a ridiculously high intensity level. And not just in relationships, in everything I do. But why should I be the one to change? Then again, why shouldn’t I?

A line from When Harry Met Sally that has always stuck in my head came to mind later that day.

Harry Burns: There are two kinds of women: high maintenance and low maintenance.
Sally Albright: Which one am I?
Harry Burns: You’re the worst kind. You’re high maintenance but you think you’re low maintenance.

Now, perhaps Harry Burns, and even Billy Crystal, believe that there are two kinds of women in this world. Or even three. But let me introduce you to a fourth kind: the high maintenance woman who not only knows she’s high maintenance but is not ashamed of it. Nice to meet you too.

Perhaps I’m crazy. Hell, call me bat-shit crazy. And yes, I freak out about things unnecessarily. But I shouldn’t be led to that point. I shouldn’t have to get to the point in a relationship where I don’t know where the other person stands. I deserve to just fucking know.

People do this all the time. Overanalyze, search for meaning where there probably isn’t any. Wonder what every little interaction signifies. All because we just want to know what the hell is going on. My god, how nice would it be if we were just filled in?

I’m asking this rhetorically because recently I was filled in. In fact, by the same guy I was now freaking out about. He explained everything to me – how he felt, where he stood, what was bothering him. And it was great – I knew what was going on, I didn’t have to wonder what was up when something was up – he just told me. Even if it was stuff I didn’t necessarily want to hear, it was better to know what was going on then to be left wondering. He was straight-forward and honest with me, and it made me feel safe. It made me feel comfortable.

Until he stopped filling me in, stopped telling me what was bothering him. It was clear that there was something bothering him, and not knowing what it was didn’t make me feel safe or comfortable at all. In fact, it made me crazy.

If you analyze the situation mathematically on a communication vs. bat-shit crazy graph, you will see that the levels of bat-shit crazy are kept at bay as long as the communication levels are high. As soon as the communication levels drop, levels of bat-shit crazy soar. We have no idea what’s going on. We start making things up in our heads because we are unsure of the situation. And, undoubtedly, we’re unsure of ourselves. We go, to use another animal adjectival phrase, ape-shit. Therefore, a direct correlation exists between being comfortable in a relationship and being sure of the situation. But are we ever sure?

The truth is, no one ever knows exactly what’s going on. And while some communication is a lot better than none at all, and consistency from someone makes us feel comfortable with them, even a relationship with the most consistent and communicative person can end in a heart beat. Worrying about it only speeds up the process. Trying to be sure of something and letting a situation make us crazy comes through in our actions, body language, and conversation, and ultimately turns off the other person, in effect causing the very thing we were worried about in the first place.

It’s funny that sometimes we need our relationships to go to shit in order to learn anything about ourselves. We learn the best lessons from the relationships we are most invested in, or most hopeful about. And when those fall apart, it’s really not funny at all, it’s just sad. So I think I’ll relax and just let things happen. Not when the next relationship comes around, but right now. I trust in the future. Or, at least, I’m trying to.

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