I regret that I haven’t had the chance to fill in my previous exploits yet, because I feel that background would help you understand the situation I’m in now.  I’ll do my best to cover the important bits here:

I like sex.  While not incredibly adventurous with the scope of my experience, I do consider myself more experienced than the average person (or at least, the average person among my peers).  I’m used to being coy and flirtatious with men, and often being the more worldly in the pair.

I am, however, an incredibly self-conscious person.  There are several things that I haven’t and won’t do with a man that stem from a fear that I won’t be good enough, that I won’t measure up.  This can usually be glossed over, however, with my confident manner and eagerness for other activities.

Recently, I started seeing a man.  Alex.  He and I began hanging out as friends, but it quickly became clear that there was a mutual attraction (or at least a mutual desire for sex).  We started sleeping together, but he made it clear from the beginning that he wasn’t looking for a relationship and didn’t have those feelings for me at all.  I accepted this, knowing that, while what I really wanted was a relationship, I could at least entertain myself with Alex in the meantime.

So we slept together.  Three different occasions, the most recent being the culmination of my latest crisis.

Alex is generally a brusque person, incredibly secure in his own beliefs and opinions about everything.  While he constantly remarked on how sexy he thought I was, how much he liked having sex with me, how good things felt, I often got the impression that, when I talked, he wasn’t really listening.  (This is something that often happens in relationships where sex becomes the assumption—conversation and interactions become strained, with one or both parties wishing they could just skip the bullshit and get to the sex.)  I didn’t care, though.  I had this romanticized image in my head of me having this wild and unrestrained fling with a man, and started ignoring details in the real world that didn’t mesh with my fantasy.

In my head, I was having wild, carefree, passionately vulgar sex with a handsome, strong, mysterious man.  I was being ravaged every time we met, and left exhausted and completely satisfied.

In reality, the sex was mediocre at best.  Alex claimed he was an expert at going down on women, and that girls had told him he was even better than other girls were.  If I had to guess based on my experience, I would not have been sure he had ever gone down on a girl before.  It was like he didn’t even know what a clitoris was; he would often pick what seemed to be a random spot and just rub back and forth energetically with his fingers, apparently under the impression that he was giving me immense pleasure.

More than three quarters of my “orgasms” with him were faked, just to get him to stop.

So: the last time we slept together.

We hung out for a while, watched a movie, had a drink.  Things started heating up, and we went upstairs to go to bed.  We’re kissing, and he starts taking my clothes off, and then asks if I’m going to take his off.  (Confession: I don’t ever undress men.  I just don’t.  Doesn’t really come up.)  I laughed and told him that I don’t normally do that, but humored him and took his pants off.  He laughed at my awkwardness with the act.  For the first time, I felt like I wasn’t good enough for a man.

I let it go and went back to kissing him, but he kept making comments that were just grating on me, hitting sensitive spots of sexual insecurity for me.  I finally stopped, sat up, and asked him if it was going to be a problem.  He rolled his eyes and said “Really?  You’re going to get all serious now?  Wow.”

I was absolutely appalled.  This person, who I was supposed to be comfortable enough around to completely strip naked and allow him free reign over my body, was irritated that I wanted to have a conversation.  I climbed off him and sat on the edge of the bed, trying to clear my head and figure out what I wanted to do.  Part of me felt like leaving, but part of me wanted to stay, wanted sex.  Before I had decided anything, he was rubbing my back and saying “Just come lay down”.  I did, and he slowly started trying to get me back in the mood.

He pulled me on top of him, and kept kissing and caressing me.  I felt numb, and wasn’t really responding to anything he was doing.  My head was buried in his shoulder, and I was still trying to think clearly.  After a minute, he put himself inside me.  I started to cry.  The whole thing just felt horribly, awfully wrong.  I pulled him out and rolled off of him, saying “I can’t, I’m sorry, I can’t”.  I felt violated and conflicted and humiliated and embarrassed and guilty and twenty other things all at the same time.

I took a minute to clear my head.  I was adamant this time, and asked him to not touch me.  He did keep reaching for me several times, and I ended up laying against him with his arm around me.  I didn’t want to be there but I also didn’t want to cause some huge melodramatic scene.  I also still wanted sex, which is crazy because he wasn’t even satisfying me.

I ended up staying, and having sex with him that night.  And again in the morning, and once more that afternoon.  And then I finally left.

I went home and showered, and then showered again.  I felt sick.  I still feel sick.  I can’t eat, I don’t want to see anyone.

I feel almost like I imagine a rape victim might feel, but I also have the knowledge that I chose to sleep with him in spite of all my conflicted feelings.  Or I let him seduce me into sleeping with him, anyway.  So on top of the humiliation and feeling disgusting, I have guilt.  Guilt that I did this to myself.

And I don’t know what to do about that.  But I wish the scratch marks on my back would go away, because I can’t stand him being any part of me.