Great Sexpectations

In an episode of Sex and the City ™, trisexual Samantha was invited by a gay couple asking her for a sexual favor—i.e., to sleep with them in a threesome. She also asserted this fabulous quote on human love and sexuality:

“Who we are in bed is who we are in life. Wake up, its 2000. The new millennium won’t be about sexual labels, it’ll be about sexual expression. It won’t matter if you’re sleeping with men or women. It’ll be about sleeping with individuals. Soon everyone will be pansexual. It won’t matter if you’re gay or straight, just if you’re good or bad in bed.”

Is Samantha right? Are we secretly being judged and scored by the people whom we had sexual relations with? A+, B-, C, Failed, incomplete, withdrew without permission? Are there standards similar to a Glasgow Coma Scale / APGAR / Baker-Wong Scale (penetrating power, orgasmic intensity, foreplay potential, etc.) to which we are graded from zero to 15? If so, how can we know our sexual ratings from all people we had sexual encounters from all our present and failed relationships?

I have had several sexual encounters from a lot of people of all age, race, class, color and creed. Most of them are superb, while some are mere enjoyable, and a few are just mediocre. In my terms, there are no such things as sexual rating scales, just if I’ve enjoyed it or not (and if my partner had enjoyed the same). If what I’ve experienced meets my expectations, well that’s just fabulous, but if it exceeded, honey, he’s a keeper.

I find it hard to believe that we still haven’t had intense sexual contact with my current significant other. We kissed a lot of times (torrid, in public, and even outside the confines of the face), had some tactile explorations once in a while (from the chest to the torso), and even had a good grasp of each other’s bodies and merchandises. We shared nights together, we slept in the same bed (twice already), and shared the quintessential human passion and intimacies in a lot of non-sexual ways. It’s not the fact that my relationship is motivated by my worldly desires, it’s just that I’ve been waiting for things to happen and I’m still somewhat searching for more. Its not that I’m insatiable. I’m just hard to please.

Yet somehow, I still feel this awesome contentment with where our relationship is going. What we lack in sexual passion, we compromise in intimacy and commitment. I guess I just have to live with the fact that I just can’t have everything I want. Every now and then, relationships involve compromises, you negotiate, and you just have to settle for a decent resolution.

On the latter, I got to thinking that I am happier at present with the reality that I am getting everything I need. Most of the time, people committed in a relationship fail to distinguish what they need from what they want. In my case, I want to have sex but what I really needed was human warmth and love. And in this set of circumstances, I can say that I have received (and currently enjoying) everything I needed. There’s a huge difference. I can live without the “sex” part but without my significant other’s love and understanding, we are reduced to being animals in a process of debauched mating. And I don’t want that to happen.

After my significant other proposed that we must carry on with our relationship (this time it will be a long-distance one), I opened the infinite possibilities of falling in love with somebody else. It’s not that I have commitment issues, I just can’t commit to a relationship with someone who is physically separated from me. Call me selfish, but I am just a person with needs. I did not completely rebutted his proposition nevertheless, I told him that I’m very much willing to give it a try. Why not? I am a man with nothing to lose but my sanity. And there’s always a first time for everything, right?

That’s the thing about love and relationships. Sometimes we are blinded by the superficial, by the obvious, by the observable. Yet it always looks as if things are not always what they seem. What we have to do is to dig deeper, look closer, and try to feel harder. It is in being sensitive that we become more aware of the realities involve in being in a relationship. On the past, I thought that our lack of sexual ardor is a liability but now I know that it is not. Some things are just more important than the others are. It is in looking for the essential that we learn to prioritize things better. It won’t matter if you’re gay or straight, it won’t matter if you’re good or bad in bed, it won’t matter if you need sex or not, because in the end, what matters is that you love. You love wholeheartedly and unconditionally. You love without expecting in return. And in the end, everything will follow.


PS. This Saturday (4th of June), I’ll be spending my final night with my boyfriend Marco. Please pray for things to happen in accord to my plan. I had told you I’m not selfish, I’m just a person with needs. I hope he needed that one too.