Sex and Priorities.

I am....not really drunk anymore. Not quite yet hungover. That weird time in between. That terrible anticipation of what is to come and regret for what has passed.

Since the birth of my son, which was more than somewhat traumatic for me, to say the least, I can't really have any amount of physical intimacy without first getting pretty drunk. As such, I have almost no physical intimacy.

I don't, strictly speaking, just mean sex. It's gotten so, most of the time, I don't want to be touched, or, often, even looked at. I'm sure a lot of this has as much to do with my complete lack of sex drive-- brought on at least equally by the birth control implant I had inserted in my arm as it is by the trauma. I find that very ironic. Bitterly ironic, but ironic just the same.

The moral of the story is: I rarely want sex, and when I do want it, I pretty much have to be drunk to have it. And, as often as not, when I manage to arrange things in my life to the point where I am able to get drunk, circumstances still don't lead to sex.

Dan, my current fiancé-of-sorts-person, is much better with this than Zack, my former husband-person. (Today, in the, from the time I woke up to the time I'm going to bed since, would have been our 11th wedding anniversary. October 18th. I realized that very late in the day, having spent the whole day thinking it was the 17th.) Dan is fairly self-sufficient when it comes to satisfaction, and, even when he's feeling "needy", he doesn't equate my lack of interest with rejection or any kind of personal deficiency.

Not so, I think, for Zack. For Zack, rejection was very emotional. That really fucked up our sex life. But then, it clearly wouldn't have been super healthy, anyway. As I, clearly, do not have super healthy feelings about sex.

The thing is, Dan IS better at dealing with my lack of sexual interest than Zack, but I'm not really any better than I was at dealing with the guilt and shame of not providing enough. It's this very real, ever-present artifact of my marriage to Zack, and to a lesser extent perhaps, my Catholic upbringing.

When my sex drive is healthy and working as usual-- typically in the presence of a third party-- I tend to see it as this reprieve from an otherwise bland life. I recall, in one instance, comparing it to that thing in Pleasantville where all that was black and white suddenly became color. (Less creative, perhaps, when I stop to think that Pleasantville was making that exact same comparison. But whatever. An apt metaphor is an apt metaphor, wherever it comes from.)

When my sex drive is as it has been lately, I spend a lot of time thinking that I would be much happier without sex. Not in a sexless relationship: in a world where sex didn't exist. A world without viagra, and billboards in Time Square where 80 foot strangers seduce you with their cold, dead eyes in attempt to get you to buy chewing gum. A world without condoms, birth control, or uncomfortable clothes meant only to entice other people to have sex. A world where, when my best friend is having a good day, I can be happy for her without having to endure a conversation about how she and her girlfriend has sex BEFORE dinner instead of after, and how they're might be lingerie later.

That stuff, needless to say, is totally abhorrent to me right now.

I still find people attractive, in a...visual way. It's weird how that part doesn't go anywhere. I can see a guy-- I did tonight, in fact-- and be very drawn to looking at him, wanting to talk to him, wanting him to want me. But the part where I actually want sex never seems to kick in.

This is all to say...I'm drunk. But not really, anymore. I got drunk in order to have sex, and that didn't happen. If anyone read this, I might care that they knew. Or Dan might. He discovered, tonight, that I'd been updating this. I didn't try particularly hard to hide it. But I suppose that'll effect how I right from now on.

It's a lot of calories to accomplish fucking NOTHING, and I don't look forward to tomorrow morning, either. I also having mediated yet today, and, although I managed to persevere last night, tonight is really not looking good.

I mean it. Don't root for me. My head is spinning like crazy and all I want to do is close my eyes. I read somewhere how achieving a state of flow-- where you're so invested in what you're doing that time flies by without you really noticing that well-- is just as good as mediating or some shit like that.

And, would you look at that! I've written more than a page again! So somewhere in there, I must have achieved "flow" and lost track, right? It's gonna have to be close enough, for tonight.

This. This is what happens when you shift your priorities of one night. I may have the lowest sex drive of anyone on earth who isn't married to Bill O'Reilly, but I decide one night that I want to get laid an all my fucking goals go by the wayside in vain pursuit of that.

Now, apply that same effect to the rest of the normal, fully-functioning people on the planet, and it becomes clear why our whole society is in such a state of utter shit.

Day, whatever the hell it is. What, 5? I think 5. On with it.