3 Reasons I’m Okay With Being A Failed Slut
I’m so old, I remember when “hook ups” were called “one night stands.”
I was born in the 1960s and grew up in the 1970s. That’s when Baby Boomers were hurriedly trying to flush what was left of “old fashioned” moral values (and even plain common sense) down the toilet.
Gen-Xers like me were stuck with the damp, dirty job of mopping up the resulting overflowing blackwater.
But not before we tried – like the kids in any dysfunctional family – to pretend the whole shitty, shambolic swamp the Boomers left us with was perfectly fine, even superior to boring old “normal.”
The sexual revolution is a great example of such–if you’ll pardon the pun–“human waste.”
Virtually from birth–the year was 1964–I was assured by everyone from Erica “Fear of Flying” Jong to the chicks on Sex in the City that women could fuck like men: casually and consequence free. Thanks to The Pill, sex was now just another recreational activity, like riding a roller coaster (but naked.)
When my time came, I dutifully tried to get with the “free love” program, the one blaring in almost totalitarian fashion from pretty much every movie, TV show and glossy Cosmopolitan cover.
Yet today, at age 50, my “number” (as the kids call it these days) is still so low that in certain Australian provinces, I would still be considered technically a virgin.
The “whys” are numerous and mostly less than high-minded.
In the first place, I look like Hillary Clinton was raped by a Hobbit and had a near-sighted, bitch-faced baby. I was mostly chaste because I was so rarely chased.
Also, I went to Catholic school where, even in the post-Vatican II era – with its felt applique banners and folk masses and habit-free nuns and Godspell sing-alongs – you were still taught (albeit gently) that sex was “a very special thing” and not a toy.
Finally, being a temperamental, introspective contrarian kept me from fully embracing (as it were) the ubiquitous “fuck like a man” ethos. Eventually, I couldn’t ignore my “morning after” feelings of regret and emptiness, the more-than-vague sensation that I’d allowed myself to be used like a human Kleenex, and had treated someone else in like fashion.
Also, I met my husband, so there’s that.
In fact, being a “failed slut” has its advantages:
1. STDs
I’ve never had a sexually transmitted disease, for one thing.
Yes, I know it would “only have taken one time.” But I never experienced that “one time” in part because infrequency reduced the likelihood of exposure. That’s just Probability 101. (See “common sense,” above.)
Ironically, I’ve never wanted children, so I was spared the increasingly commonplace problem of sexually active women who did get STDs, which reduced their fertility down the line.
2. REVENGE PORN
OK, so the technology didn’t exist in my day, and nobody ever begged to take my picture anyhow, and I would have said no regardless.
Maybe we didn’t have revenge porn back then, but we had the analog equivalents, believe me.
Then and now, sex without love can create a vacuum that gets filled, not surprisingly, with hate.
3. RESPECT
I don’t just mean the self-respect you lose every time you take that “walk of shame.”
As I write this, young, naïve and already bitter women’s studies types are probably trying to rename this particular action, to make it sound cool and empowering; something like “promenade of pride” or “march of honor.”
Feminists can gerrymander the language all they want (and irritate the living hell out of the rest of us in the process) but they can’t change human nature. Even in our supposedly hyper-advanced and enlightened century, women who sleep around are judged differently than men are.
When I still went to AA meetings, “old timer” broads like me would counsel female newcomers not to imitate male members whose drunkalogues often featured colorful accounts of what the late John Callaghan called “ill advised sexual encounters.”
Men could get away with it, we explained. Women couldn’t. Period. If you wanted to be taken seriously – and didn’t want to be viewed by half the guys in the room as a potential “Thirteenth Step” – you’d best censor your “story.”
Come to think of it, there’s a fourth bonus reason I’m glad to be a failed slut:
I got a book out of it. When you’re a writer, that’s always the main thing.