Let's Hear It for My Fuckbuddy

I have a fuckbuddy. I have a very precise definition for fuckbuddy: a person whom one sees repeatedly, but only for sex. My fuckbuddy has a cool job, went to a ritzy college, is funny and smart and cute and, as far as I can tell, has lots of attractive characteristics. Most importantly, he is really good in bed. He's never given me flowers or bought me anything other than beers or, once, a lemonade, but it doesn't matter. Neither has any other man. He has, however, given me orgasms more than once, which is also something no other man has done. I think the phone number of the guy who delivers marijuana door to door was a nice gift from him as well, but we've already established I have no class.

My dealings with him are entirely id-centered, with all the accouterments: condoms, beer bottles, rolling papers and requests to rub here and bite there. They contain none of the messiness of emotions other than the sheer, breathless satisfaction at having gotten laid good. I'd recognize his dick in a lineup of other cocks, but I can't tell you his middle name or what his parents do for a living.

He has habits I'd find annoying if I had a real relationship with him. Nothing major, just standard guy things like the compulsion to watch televised sporting events for hours on end instead of engaging in romantic banter. If I were a real girlfriend, I'd insist he cuddle me and tell me how gorgeous he thinks I am, but instead I just leave. I go to his apartment for one thing only, and have no desire to tell him what to do with his free time. I would, after all, be irritated if he commented on my admittedly embarrassing addiction to Felicity, which he knows nothing about. That kind of thing is only endearing to someone who loves you.

My female best friend asks me if I'd rather he took me to dinner or something. My male best friend asks me how I arranged the situation, and says that I am "such a guy." I can buy my own damn dinner and don't want to sit through a polite conversation before sex. Besides, the poor guy always has a hard-on as soon as I arrive, and I, too, would suffer if I tried forcing myself to ignore it for the duration of a meal. I am clearly too self-absorbed to deal with the trappings of a real relationship, so Fuckbuddy and I deserve each other like no other couple I can think of.

It is all too perfect: I get to get action nice and regularly, plus I don't have to change a damn thing about the way I spend the bulk of my free time or cut back on how often I work or see my friends. The expenses of the arrangement are minimal at this point. We don't go on "dates," so the only things to be bought are condoms (him) and a MetroCard to take the subway to his apartment (me, because he suffers from the standard Manhattanite Fear of Travel to the Outer Borough in Which I Live).

The conversation, such as it is, is light?How are you? Good, thanks. Let me pee first. Okay. Go down on me? Sure. Afterward: That was some good sex. Yep. How busy are you this coming week? The only thing heavy is the sex; the only thing deep is the fucking (which is sometimes shallow as well, for variety).

We met on the Internet, which was very postmodern of us. That way of meeting helped facilitate the sense of unreality and lack of integration with day-to-day life that threads through our relationship, such as it is. We have no friends in common, although he once worked with two guys I vaguely knew in college. The lack of context that defined our first "conversation" online is reflected in every sexual encounter. Come here often?

I have no real excuse for not wanting to be treated like a lady other than that it doesn't really bother me. If I insisted on the genteel claptrap of romance, maybe we'd continue to fuck a few more times, but gradually an undercurrent of resentment would emerge. I'd be annoyed by the lack of, I don't know, sufficient candlelight or whatever, and he'd be irritated by my constant demands to bond emotionally. Either way, I'm left looking for someone else who might not be as good in bed, and who probably wouldn't be as smart or funny, either.

I have learned from all this that good sex is extremely important to me?and that this is still rather radical for a young woman to own up to. I admit to wondering who has more power in the relationship. Me, because I'm an attractive young woman who can pretty much find someone to have sex with without much trouble? Or him, because he is, according to the cultural script, withholding a commitment of some sort? Not that I especially care about such a thing, especially not from him. I know that a serious relationship, if it should happen, shouldn't arise out of a sense of obligation on either person's part, but rather out of mutual desire.

Mutual desire: that we certainly have, of a base sort. I must admit that I just love fucking him, and he seems to appreciate fucking me. I can't, however, read his mind, and occasionally I wonder how satisfied he is. Probably very: he, remember, is a guy and his friends would approve and immediately understand. I, however, have to keep my mouth shut. The only women who are allowed even to allude to their sex lives are heterosexual women in committed, monogamous relationships. Well, at least I've got the straight part covered. Yeah, the sexual revolution that is responsible for my very existence brought some changes, but I'm still a rare enough specimen. Or maybe not. Maybe other women in this kind of situation are just too afraid to admit it.

He told me last time that he will always remember my wet pussy. He likes it when I praise his cock. So I tell him I love his cock, often. And I do love it and all the wonderful things it does. In the absence of real love for the person, the genitals themselves become the object of affection, totemized to an exquisite degree. I have never before had such detailed daydreams or sleeping dreams about a man's crotch; it is a nice change from the dreams in which either I've been caught up in the torment of wondering if he loves me back, or swooning at his declarations and ardor. You know, the cheesy ones I started having when I was 12.

What is the point? The point is that there is no higher purpose, that the act of sexual intercourse doesn't have to be symbolic or metaphoric or any other literary term. Both of us make our living using words, and I at least must be professionally caring and engaged while teaching, so I'd be loath to have to be literary and sensitive in bed. Sex, for me, at this point in time, is about play. All day long, I have to explain fine distinctions in meaning to students, and read over manuscripts to check for subtle technical differences wrought by the presence or absence of commas. I don't feel like working while I'm getting off.

And the emotional stuff of relationships is where much of the work is, from what I've seen. All the arguments and discussions about what he meant by that remark and whether or not I listen to him when he talks about work are the emotional equivalent of punctuation. Without them, there is the freedom of letters and words crashing into each other like reckless drivers, giddy from the absence of control. There is no structure, no real foundation of grammatical organization?the rules that say a verb comes after the subject or that sex comes only after, or at least accompanied by, love. It is like a dadaist manifesto, a long string of random words and crass interjections spewed out in a meaningless but provocative rant, expressed in the mindless animal rutting of two people who could write a perfectly elegant sonnet but reject that, in favor of something more expressive of the formless time and place in which we find ourselves. A moment, not a monument.