Last Friday night, my friends and I arrived at a club and headed upstairs. I was barely ten feet in the door when I ran into the previous weekend's hookup. Never one to be taken by surprise, I turned on my smile and accepted his embrace while offering my cheek for him to kiss.
"I've only had one thing on my mind all week," he said. I knew what he was going to say; the same thing they all say when they think there is a possibility of a repeat. So before he could even utter another sentence, I cut him off with, "Listen..." I told him that I had just gotten out of a relationship and I wasn't really looking for anything right now. He nodded and that was that.
I was raised to believe that honesty is the best policy, and I personally believe that one should never be afraid to speak their mind. I rarely string anyone along if I know that it isn't going to work, nor do I deny my enthusiasm for someone I am really interested in. So why do we feel so guilty when we reject someone, and feel pathetic when we want to tell someone we care? Why are our attempts to get rid of someone often what keeps them holding on, while our efforts to bring someone closer sometimes push them away?
One of the only times I did get some in Rome was when a cute American came to visit from Barcelona. He was a friend of a friend, and I was horny as hell. We went out to a club in Testaccio and after an hour I was hailing a cab and we were heading for my apartment. Though he was coughing and sneezing sporadically on the way home, nothing seemed unusual.
We crossed the threshold of my door and I pushed him backward the ten steps to the couch. As we began to go at it, I noticed that he was more vocal than most guys. "Oh yeah, that feels amazing!" he repeated several times. My ego inflated inside of me. "Keep doing that. Oh yeah." I figured hooking up must be like riding a bike, no matter how long it's been you never forget how.
My friend and I went to visit him and his friends in Barcelona about a month later. Since he was busy with his family, we spent the day sightseeing and shopping with his friends. "You know he has Tourettes, right?" they asked me. I stared at them blankly. "What was it like hooking up with him?" I told them that nothing had seemed unusual at all.
That night, I went home with him again. As we started to get back into it, he started up again, as well. After the fifth time I heard, "Don't stop. That feels amazing," I began to get suspicious. "Oh yeah, that's incredible." He was like a broken record!
"YOU HAVE TOURETTES!" I wanted to scream, but alas I soldiered on. I thought I would be angry that his repeated outbursts were due to a disorder rather than my sexual prowess, but I figured that anything he said must have been what he was really feeling and just didn't have the ability to keep in. I appreciated his openness.
Even when your relationship with someone is completely sexual, honest communication is key. So many of us are afraid of vocalizing how we feel because we are afraid of scaring the other person away. A senior from George Washington University told me this weekend that he doesn't know how to tell his special someone that he wants to get more serious, because it's only been a couple weeks and he is afraid that it's too soon. I have to admit that I told him to wait, because I knew the other guy could spook at the first sign of commitment.
That's how the game is played in college, and sometimes I think that's bullshit. We aren't "allowed" to be too interested because then it isn't fun anymore, but if we lose interest too quickly we're players or sluts.
A junior from Georgetown I know told her ex that she was dating someone new so that he would stop calling her. Unfortunately, though predictably, this had the opposite effect. He began calling her non-stop, sending texts and IMs at all hours of the day. She claimed she was no longer interested and suddenly he had to have her.
Words that are meant to unite often divide, while words intended to separate can make the desire for connection even stronger. Communication doesn't have to be this complicated, but problems arise when our hearts get invested. People we don't care about come and go easily, but those that really matter take our words seriously.
Though I would advise a friend to hold back on confessing their love until they are sure that their significant other feels the same way, I would encourage them to let their actions speak louder than their words. If you can get someone to exclaim, "Oh my god, that feels incredible!" repeatedly, you shouldn't have any problem getting him or her to call back. But, then again, it could just be Tourettes.
