Life is a Mystery

We were playing truth or dare at the St. Patrick's Day Parade the other day, as we are often wont to do, and a friend leveled an impossible question at me: "What's my best sexual experience?" She might as well have asked me what my favorite meal was. Would it be the $125 seven course gourmet meal at Stella in NOLA during one of the best weekends of my life? Would it be the orange-glazed duck with Okinawa sweet potatoes from Central Park in Hot Springs, AR, which cost pennies in comparison but which I've somehow never forgotten? Would it be the chicken and dumplings made by a good friend and passed down from her grandmother, on a cold winter night in my kitchen, when I celebrated Christmas with three people who became pivotal in my life? Would it be one of the hundreds of meals I have cooked for friends? Would it be the 3am pizza from a dirty shop underground on my first trip to New York City? I don't know. How do you compare experiences that have so little in common?

I have been blessed to have so many fantastic sexual experiences. Was it good because of how many times I got off? Was it better because I gave more, received less? Was it the toys that counted or the location? Was sex with a partner I loved better than someone whose company I simply enjoyed? Was it better because multiple people were involved? I don't know. I don't know how to compare these things. And to be honest, these aren't the details that stick with me in my memory. I remember the way she laughed in the dark. I remember the way it felt to look at her in the moonlight, sitting in my lap in the back of the car, naked from the waist up. I remember how it felt to really see her for the first time. I remember how scared he felt underneath me; I remember now that he wasn't ready. I remember the way she kissed me in the front yard. I remember the way he told me I was the 8th person he kissed, and I remember how that scared me.

I take with me the curves of her hips, the tattoo at the base of her neck, the fears she told me in the dark, the questions she asked between kisses. It's not a scale or a competition. I always go into sex looking for something; often I'm not even sure what I'm looking for. It changes. Sometimes I come away with it, and sometimes I come away with something else -- or more questions than answers. If I'm content, it's good. If I feel connected, it's fantastic. If I come away wishing I had done things differently, haunted by the experience, then I find myself trying to understand why.

I don't know what my best sexual experience has been, and even more so, I hope I haven't had it yet. I hope my exploration and experiences continue to expand and deepen, as they have over the past few years. I still have so much to learn.

Ask me a question  it doesn't take a damn blog post to answer. My truth? Nothing is cut-and-dried, nothing is simple.