Alright. A full post. You conned it out of me.

So. Last you guys heard, I had just gotten back from Texas for my brother’s wedding, and I had just survived one month without sex.

Now I’m at two.

Two months. Without any form of intimate physical contact, right? Well, kinda. Let’s go back about 3 and a half weeks, to a party that one of my ASU friends threw.

My friends and I rolled up to the party, dressed according to theme, which was Wear Black and Red Fancy Clothes and Get Super Sloshed or something like that. I wore one of my smallest black dresses (heh-heh) and paired it with red cowboy boots because I am SO TEXAN. The party was kinda insane, lots of people, very little room to breathe, lots of people, oh, and lots of booze. 

So I started drinking. And got appropriately sloshed. And then, I decided to text an old fling-thing-not-really of mine. Let’s call him Muscles. (Because that’s what my best friend Gretchen and I call him behind his back. We have all of the maturity.)

So I invited ol’ Muscles to come over to the party, and (big shocker) he agreed. 

Wait a sec, how about a little back story on Muscles, first. Settle in kids, and grab some popcorn.

Gretchen and I met Muscles - oh, let’s say, two Christmases ago (about a month after my mother passed, if anyone is keeping a timeline) - at the Starbucks we attended regularly. He was everything a girl could want in a barista: tall, dark, handsome, witty, and with plenty of caffeine at his fingertips. When Gretch and I met Muscles, I was dating someone, so I gladly let Gretchen swoop in and do the flirting thing. They texted for a while, and when nothing came of it, we thought nothing of him for the next couple of months other than “Holy crap why is he so hot oh god why.”

Around March, I bumped into Muscles at a party and (since I was single, and, y’know, me) I gave him my number and we started texting. 

Insert here a fight between Gretchen and I that was silly and partly my fault, and definitely not helped by my continuing emotional unavailability. 

So from that point on, Muscles was one of those What Could Have Been Guys. And as someone who generally does and gets what she wants with guys, that irked me for a really long time.

Back to the party. What Could Have Been showed up, and we immediately fell into the old routine of flirting and being attracted to each other. (NOTE: I met another guy whilst hanging with Muscles at the party. His part comes up pretty soon.)

At around 2 am, we left the party. It was loud and crowded, and really just demanding a noise complaint. (I’m underage, btw. Thought I’d mention that. Buahaha.) Instead of breaking up the fun though, we decided to head back to the Domicile for a couple games of King’s Cup. It ended up being Muscles, Shawn (my new roommate!) and I drinking until about 4:30. 

Drunkdrunkdrunkdrunk, we decided to watch a movie. So we - all three of us - laid down in my bed and put something on. Shawn went almost immediately to sleep, but Muscles and I stayed up cuddling and kinda watching the movie.

This kinda put me in a tough situation. When I get drunk, I turn into a creature I like to call the Cuddler. The Cuddler isn’t always satisfied with just cuddling, as you can imagine. No, no, the Cuddler wants to BE ON SOMEONE AT ALL TIMES.

So there I am, cuddling with Muscles, driggity-drunk, and he kisses me. First off, let me say, damn. What a good kisser. You know what sucks about people who are good kissers? One kiss from them is never enough. Because if the first kiss was good, how good could the second kiss be? And the third? And the- I think you get where I’m going with this. Before things could get heated (and this was probably a stupid move on my behalf) I kicked Shawn out of bed and made him go sleep in Mason’s bed. Leaving Muscles and the Cuddler alone in a bed. Drunk.

I know what you’re thinking. “Well, crap, Sarah. Way to flush all your hard work down the drain.” But, if you’ll refer yourselves back to my first post, I distinctly said that I would do nothing more than MAKE OUT with someone for a year. 

And that’s what we did. We just made out. Granted, it was difficult as HELL. Because I am not used to being a Classy Lady, if you will. But I put my foot down, and kicked him out before I could lose my sense of propriety, and made it out of that situation celibacy intact.

I think I should get an award.

In other news, I will be moving this blog. In theory, I will be dual posting for a while, just to keep up appearances, but the new URL will be http://sarahsnobletry.blogspot.com/

So hit me up over there! You should be able to post comments and all that with the new site, so that is nice.

For those of you anxiously awaiting my next blog, I apologize for the delay. I just got a job working close to 40 hours a week, so that has eaten up all of my time. I am still going strong on my sabbatical, and I have a LOT to update on, so hopefully I will snag some time tomorrow to start hacking away at everything that’s happened in the last few weeks.

In the mean time, ask me questions and such to give me something else to do :D

Thanks for hanging in there, folks. 

Well, I am back from Texas. The brother unit’s wedding went swimmingly, I gained more family than I ever really wanted, aaaand now I’m back. 

I left off in the middle of my OH SO TOUCHING tale, didn’t I? Well, a whole-hearted apology for leaving you hanging. Oh how the suspense must be killing all of you. 

So. Back to the list, starting with number 7!

7) (This TECHNICALLY belongs before number 6, but I wanted to kick this blog off with this one.) I lost my mother to ovarian cancer, November 2009, just a few months after I graduated high school. It was a quick battle, lasting just over a couple months, at the end of which, she died.  I was in the middle of rehearsals for a play at my Community College, when I got the call to fly to Texas and say goodbye. I zoomed out there, stayed with her for two weeks in the hospital, went to the memorial, and then came home. A sane person might have taken some time off from school/shows/life in the wake of such a traumatizing event, but (in case you haven’t noticed) I am not particularly sane. 

I got back to Arizona, jumped right back into school and the play, and thought nothing of the fact that my mom died until Christmas Eve.

I cried once.

Then, it was back to the grind in the spring semester, where I took a full round of classes, did three shows at one time, and continued moving as fast as I could away from the terrifying fact that my mother was dead.

In March of 2010, five months after her death, I got cast in a show: To Gillian on her 37th Birthday. The plot follows a sixteen year old girl (played by me) who is dealing with the ramifications and emotional turmoil following the loss of her mother, and the introduction of a new woman into her father’s life.

Sounds familiar, right?

I fell to the show with alacrity, relishing the opportunity to (finally) confront some of my grief, especially in such an artistic outlet. My brother and his then-girlfriend (who is now one of my best friends in the world) flew out from Texas for opening night, and witnessed me baring my soul on stage, and begin to weep for my mother.

SO. One can only imagine how losing the head female figure in one’s life could screw a person up. I distanced myself further from all things emotion, plastering the smile on my face and pushing through the bad days so that no one would look at me and see any semblance of pain. I talked about Mom with an almost clinical air, cracking jokes as I thought I should, and generally laughing whenever the proper response was to fall to my knees and scream my lungs out at the terrors of this world.

8) Going back in time ten years or so…my parents got divorced. Now, I was raised in a beautiful bubble of all things Christian-and-Home-Schooled-and-Rainbows-and-Kittens. So, when they called their marriage off, I was…shocked. Shocked that a marriage so obviously (at least to me) built on God. “Let no man put asunder that which God puts together,” was a verse from the Bible that my father quoted at me, well, religiously. Watching their marriage fell apart cemented in my mind the idea that if their marriage couldn’t last, what marriage could? 

9) Over the two years following my mother’s death in November 2009, I proceeded to date and discard guys with abandon. My number of sexual partners climbed to the double digits - a fate I never thought would fall on my shoulders - and my ability to keep a boyfriend continued to dwindle.

All of that brings me to today.

I welcome any questions or comments. The worst thing that could happen to this blog is if I start talking bullshit, and no one checks me on it.

A phrase that I picked up this week, in Texas.

“Check yourself before you wreck yourself.”

I decided that once a month, toward the end of the month, I will post a retrospective blog about what I’ve (in theory) learned. Being that this is the first month of my sabbatical, I have decided to post my first theory.

List time!

1) When I was fifteen, I lost my virginity to a guy almost 5 years older than me, who I was head over heels for. (I hesitate to even call that real love. I was unaware of the consequences of loving someone.) That guy cheated on me that same week with two different girls. One of them, a friend of mine. 

2) I thereafter went through guys like last week’s laundry, dating and discarding them (in highschool) within the span of two weeks. Tops.

3) I finally found love (disgusting, immature, hormone ridden highschool love, but love nothetheless) and everything went swell for the first three-ish months. A record for me! Then, just past the three month point, we had sex. Then, that’s all we pretty much did. And that was, I’d say, rather destructive.

4) I broke up with him after the 6 month point, by effectively convincing him and myself that we were better off apart. This might be true, I don’t know.

5) After the breakup, I had my first one night stand. He was older than me, kind of a jerk, but he was in a band. I walked right into it, knowing it would be meaningless sex, and when it didn’t even make me blink, I thought to myself, “LOOK HOW MATURE I AM.”

6) Six months after that, I was wheedled into a relationship with a guy from school. (I say wheedled, because at that point, I had sworn off relationships.) And we had sex. And when I told him that I wasn’t emotionally connected to him - he threw the ‘L’ word around - he told me he had never had sex with someone who he wasn’t in love with. It saddened me, but what could I do about it?  I wasn’t in love with him, and I wasn’t going to pretend.)

More later. I’m headed to Texas for my brother’s wedding. I’ll post the rest of this hopefully tomorrow!

Sarah

So, an interesting development, and then an interesting thought.

THE INTERESTING DEVELOPMENT:

There’s this guy who is interested in me. I met him on a trip up to Flagstaff to see an old friend, (let’s call him) James, from highschool, and (let’s call him) Nathan showed immediate interest in me. We talked and joked around for the day that I was up there, but then I went home to Mesa, and thought nothing else of it.

Until the next weekend. James and Nathan embarked on an impromtu trip down to the Valley, and asked if they could stay at my apartment for the night. My roommate Mason, and I, have a very much Open Door Policy at our place (aptly named the Domicile) so we figured it might be fun. And it was. Not a LOT of fun, but an adequate amount of Gee I Sure Am Having A Good Time. Nathan tried his hardest to flirt with someone who is vaguely uninterested in him.

A note about that: Nathan is a sweetheart. He laughs at my jokes, and is a good hearted person, but, as Rachel from Friends once said, “I am more attracted to a gravy boat than to [him].”

This normally would be a HUGE game breaker for me. I mean, if I have no interest in you, sexually, then why the hell would I spend any amount of energy on you in the first place?

That weekend was two weeks ago. And guess who decided to crash at the Domicile again this weekend? Yeah. Nathan and James. And guess who decided to forgo all things sexual and be, y’know, a grown up last week? Yeah. This guy. Er, girl.

Keeping Nathan’s sweetness in mind, I gave them the green light to crash at the Domicile. So they came over last night, and we played a few hours of Nintendo 64. Nathan was delightfully unsubtle with his flirting, playing the Oh, We’re Sitting Next To Each Other On The Couch, And Our Hands Just Totally Accidentally Touched, Now What Are The Odds Of That, game. And I allowed it, because he is such a sweetheart, and even ended up cuddling with him in the living room for a bit.

Note: that is the most action I’ve gotten in two weeks. Go me.

When I finally decided to call it a night, I got up and went into my room. He followed me, a joke on his lips and a smile on his face, and so I gave him a hug. It was a nice, lingering, tired hug, and his hands kinda roamed across my back for a bit. It was nice, until his hands dipped a little too low for comfort, IFYAKNOWWHATIMEAN. It wasn’t an all out Ass-Grab, but it was enough to make someone who has sworn off sex REALLY uncomfortable. So I literally put my hands on his chest, said goodnight, and politely pushed him the hell out of my room.

I made sure he and James had enough bedding and whatnot, and when I asked if they would be comfortable for the night, Nathan replied, “Partially.” Which I think was his attempt to use subtlety to inform me that he wanted to bunk with me for the night. In response, I locked eyes with him, allowed the eye contact to linger for a moment too long, and cheerfully said, “Goodnight!” With that, I went into my room, closed the door, and drowned myself in Harry Potter fan fiction until I fell asleep.

So…I suppose that was a successful encounter with someone who wanted my Metaphorical Nuts, that I somewhat successfully sidestepped.

Also, BUAHAHA. Nathan just walked into Mason’s room, where I am sitting on a bed, typing this blog. He sat just a LITTLE TOO CLOSE to me, and I awkwardly clicked away from Tumblr so he wouldn’t see the blog that I am obviously writing about him.

I think I deserve Kudos for handling a potentially dangerous situation with finesse. I am so tempted to just swear off men for the remainder of the year, as well as sex…but at the same time, I am doing this to cultivate emotional relationships with people, and alienating myself from half of the human race for a year won’t, I think, help a damn thing.

AN INTERESTING THOUGHT:

So, in my last blog, I said I was going to gauge how long it took for sex to come up in a conversation with a friend. I didn’t end up hanging out with THAT particular friend, but I did hang out with some other friends. And here’s what I discovered:

90% of the conversations I have with my friends start at, revolve around, or end up at one thing: sex.

When this realization hit me, it kinda knocked me on my ass. I mean, it makes sense, but I’d never seen it as anything but normal.

Look at it this way: as a society, we are hit with a constant barrage of sexual images. Sex is all over TV, in our music, in the books we read, the magazines we pick-up, everything. We are absolutely flooded with this imagery of what we should be engaging in as nubile 20-Something-Year-Olds.

It’s no wonder that it was incredibly easy for a fifteen year old to lose her virginity and then immediately close off all emotion from sex. We are taught from a very young age that sex is a function. But, at least for me, when sex became just a function, it enabled me to shut off the emotions that should go hand-in-hand with sex.

This is a long shot, but that might be why I am so emotionally stunted.

Maybe.

Thanks, lady! Haha. Your support means a lot! :D

Aw, Kitten. Thank you for being so…adorable and all-knowing. I’m so glad you are going to be here, making my life so much easier!

I love you!

I’m somewhat of an enigma.

Having only recently cut myself off from all physical interaction with people, I decided it would be a BRILLIANT idea to make a visit to Fascinations…a sex shop in Tempe, Arizona. Note: It wasn’t my idea to go to Fascinations. It was a friend’s birthday last night, and as such we did the thing that all twenty year olds do: Get dressed up as princesses, go to a sex shop, and end up at an apartment where much alcohol was imbibed.

So we walk into Fascinations, and immediately put on my game face. Only a few people in that group knew about my sabbatical, so the rest of them naturally assumed that I would do what I do best: Make obnoxious jokes in an awkward situation, thereby annhilating any awkwardness forever. However, being in a sex shop, this meant that all of my jokes pretty much involved lewd humor. (I also beat my best friend, Brendan, with a dildo. That was pretty much worth it.) Above the dildo beating, the entire two hours that we were being shown around the shop by the two AWESOME workers there, I felt compelled to be the first of my friends to volunteer to be shocked, whipped, tied up, etc.

It was all in good fun, mind you, but being surrounded by all of the toys, accessories, and shenanigans involving sex so soon after cutting myself off was difficult.

We left Fascinations after two hours, and went to one of my friend’s apartment. Imagine this: a group of nubile, sexually active, theater students leave a sex shop and then drink large amounts of alcohol. What is the main topic of conversation for the rest of the evening?

Sex.

Now, that is generally our topic of conversation anyhow - being the kind of people we are - but going to Fascinations just opened the proverbial floodgates. We talked about likes, dislikes, fantasies, taboo fantasies, people we’d like to bone, how great it is that the couples of the group have sex rampantly, how we need to get a couple friends laid, people we’d like to bone, toys we’ve used, toys we’d like to purchase, how funny it was that I beat Brendan with a dildo, and people we’d like to bone.

All of this lead up to a very sexually frustrated Sarah. KNOWWHATIMEAN.

I feel like I’m going to get sick of typing that sentence over the course of the next year.

Questions, comments, encouragements, or any other type of snarky addition to my commentary is much welcome.

I gotsta go hang out with another friend who doesn’t know my plan for the next year. Ooooh, here’s what I’ll do. Without bringing it up myself, I’m going to see how long it takes for her to bring up sex. Any guesses as to how long it will take?

Still fascinated,

Sarah

A bit about this blog, and then a bit about me.

This blog is an experiment, solely for my own purposes as a person, and a writer. I plan on putting my heart and soul on the line, crossing lines I have not been willing to cross. I am not planning on getting explicit in this blog, but from the first, you (the invisible reader) must know that there will be much talk about sex, emotional vulnerability, and well, sex.

Now, on to me!

I am twenty years old, an actress, and a writer. I lost my virginity when I was fifteen, then took about a year break from all things sexual before jumping right back in. Two years ago, I lost my mother to ovarian cancer, leading to further emotional damage and whatnot. More on that later, to be sure.

Here’s the why behind this experiment: I have, over the course of the last five years, forced myself to emotionally check out in the presence of a sexual situation. Last week, a friend came over to my apartment, and we were laying on my bed, talking about what friends talk about, when he said something - almost completely in jest - about me acting slutty. He then followed up this comment by saying this: “Sarah, you should really step away from the sexual and reconnect with the spiritual side of who you are.”

What a hokey thing to say.

But that got me thinking. Why do I focus so much on having a date on any given night that will end in a make out session at best - or a one-night stand at worst - instead of focusing on the more important task of creating and crafting emotional connections with the people I am spending time with.

I feel like Joey, from Friends. Meaningless encounter after meaningless encounter, and no emotional connection to contend with. And I realized how exhausting that is.

So this year will - in theory - be my transition from Joey to Chandler…or is it Ross? Let’s go with Ross, sans all the divorces, the illegitimate children, and the obsession with dinosaurs. The point is, I will be forcing myself to stop disconnecting from the people around me and grow up just a little bit.

So, I’m gonna trek on through this next year, and if you are trekking with me, I bid you good luck!

Sarah