I’ll admit it: I know how to use my sexuality to my advantage.
Smile, nod, a touch on the arm. A few questions, laughter, “OMG that’s so great! You rock!”
It doesn’t take a lot to win a boy’s affection. As my mom tells me (her only bit of boy advice that ever worked), “Just ask a lot of questions and pretend they are the center of the world. All they want to do is talk about themselves.”
But what happens when you meet the boy who wants to talk about you? Who sees through your flirtatious comments and glances. Who stays inches away from you when you meet. Who doesn’t grab your ass on the dance floor, doesn’t buy you $10 vodka-tonics and won’t take you home that night to see if he can get some.
I hate these boys, because I hate them for making me vulunerable, and for giving me no heart.
In our experience as women exploring our sexuality, we reach a point when we just don’t care. When we can meet up, drink up and hook up without feelings of guilt or remorse. When our expectations become mute.
So I slept with him, therefore he won’t call. It’s a set in stone if-then statement that has desensitized our expectations for relationships, and our expectations of ourselves, too.
After a year of meaningless encounters my sophomore year of college, I slammed on the brakes and promised not to wake up in my same clothes as the night before.
As a result, I became a maneater. I respond to the affections, but I don’t have sex. I reply to the text messages, but I never follow through on dates. You can tell me you love me and I’ll just laugh it off.
But it’s in being a maneater that I’ve lost my confidence. That when I meet a nice boy, he bores me. Because being a maneater means seeking a chase, feeling on top and then, pulling away to shield yourself of real emotion.
And when the emotion has any chance of reciprocation, we pull away too. Because we’ve become so used to our maneating habits, and because we’re scared to let someone know us beyond the dark lights of a lounge or communicate more meaning than a five-line text message.
Nelly Furtado was wrong about maneaters. It’s the maneaters who wish they never met their men, at all— never met their men, at all.
*Posted by Sammy D
