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gettin' some
Jan. 13th, 2005 07:50 pmI'd never heard the term "booty call" until that movie came out. And as I didn't see the movie, I didn't really get the definition of the word until pretty recently.
When I was in my early twenties, though, I and my peers would have recognized the phenomenon, even if we didn't know the terminology. It was that 3-am phone call, from one empty apartment to another, that bordered on (or thoroughly exceeded) taking someone for granted. Just about everyone I knew had gotten -- or at least claimed to have gotten -- a call much like that, at one time or another. People were less forthcoming about whether they'd initiated one.
Most of the people I knew were touch-hungry most of the time. Most of us knew what it felt like to be alone in the middle of the night and wanting to feel someone else's warmth beside them, but we didn't talk about that. We covered our discomfort with snide jokes about desperation.
Ten years later, when polyamory means more to me than the freedom to fuck people as they take my fancy, things are a little different. While there are plenty of people in my life who might call me at 3am -- some of them lovers -- they'd be calling for a different and more tangible kind of emergency than lonely desire to feel skin on skin. (when cars break down. or people lock themselves out of their homes. or their plumbing has gone haywire and they can't find the shutoff valve.) If for no other reason, we all need more good nights' sleep than one does in college. Many of us live with lovers or spouses and this crowd is much more sexpositive and forthcoming about their appreciation of a good snuggle, which really does seem to reduce the frequency of loneliness-inspired insomnia. Why panic in the middle of the night when I know I'll see six people in the next three days who can hold me just like I like to be held?
I still do, from time to time, get the occasional request for a quickie from an established lover. We've all got such full lives, though, that instead of the old "can you come over?" we now shoehorn things into our busy schedules and pencil each other in on our calendars. It's just like, "Hey, if you're free tomorrow afternoon, wanna go out for coffee?" My booty calls are scheduled twelve hours in advance, these days, and we engage in sometimes-complicated logistics often including the collusion of our primary partners. There's an extra thrill from setting it up the night before so I can walk around the next day looking forward to it, but with my calendar full of appointments scheduled weeks in advance, it still feels spontaneous. And it all feels much less tawdry, and more respectful of each other as lovers rather than as just a way to scratch an itch.
Sometimes growing up is a good thing.
When I was in my early twenties, though, I and my peers would have recognized the phenomenon, even if we didn't know the terminology. It was that 3-am phone call, from one empty apartment to another, that bordered on (or thoroughly exceeded) taking someone for granted. Just about everyone I knew had gotten -- or at least claimed to have gotten -- a call much like that, at one time or another. People were less forthcoming about whether they'd initiated one.
Most of the people I knew were touch-hungry most of the time. Most of us knew what it felt like to be alone in the middle of the night and wanting to feel someone else's warmth beside them, but we didn't talk about that. We covered our discomfort with snide jokes about desperation.
Ten years later, when polyamory means more to me than the freedom to fuck people as they take my fancy, things are a little different. While there are plenty of people in my life who might call me at 3am -- some of them lovers -- they'd be calling for a different and more tangible kind of emergency than lonely desire to feel skin on skin. (when cars break down. or people lock themselves out of their homes. or their plumbing has gone haywire and they can't find the shutoff valve.) If for no other reason, we all need more good nights' sleep than one does in college. Many of us live with lovers or spouses and this crowd is much more sexpositive and forthcoming about their appreciation of a good snuggle, which really does seem to reduce the frequency of loneliness-inspired insomnia. Why panic in the middle of the night when I know I'll see six people in the next three days who can hold me just like I like to be held?
I still do, from time to time, get the occasional request for a quickie from an established lover. We've all got such full lives, though, that instead of the old "can you come over?" we now shoehorn things into our busy schedules and pencil each other in on our calendars. It's just like, "Hey, if you're free tomorrow afternoon, wanna go out for coffee?" My booty calls are scheduled twelve hours in advance, these days, and we engage in sometimes-complicated logistics often including the collusion of our primary partners. There's an extra thrill from setting it up the night before so I can walk around the next day looking forward to it, but with my calendar full of appointments scheduled weeks in advance, it still feels spontaneous. And it all feels much less tawdry, and more respectful of each other as lovers rather than as just a way to scratch an itch.
Sometimes growing up is a good thing.
