Hi! Sorry about the title, I just wanted to make clear that the topic of sex does show up later on in this one. It’s got nothing to do with my personal life, so don’t worry about that, but if you’re feeling particularly prudish at the moment I’d maybe stop scrolling.
I hope you’re having/have had a lovely day. If frequently poring over the statistics of these blogs has taught me anything, it’s that there seems to be a core group of like 15 people who read these at the same time every day, with occasional big spikes if I ever bother to share certain days’ blogs to social media. It’s a very nice feeling to know that you’re a part of someone’s routine, so cheers for that. I always used to get really cynical and judge-y when I saw someone (usually a friend on Facebook) behave like they were some kind of self-important superstar because they had a YouTube channel with 100 subscribers or they’d recorded an E.P. which a few dozen people had downloaded, but through writing these I’m understanding why people treat their respective small projects in their lives as big deals. Celebrities might make it seem that you’re useless if you aren’t getting millions of engagements with the stuff you make, but it’s clear now that things can be impactful irrespective of whether they reach 10 people or 10 million. This is what I usually try to remind myself of to stave off the embarrassment of sharing my silly little articles onto Facebook every few days.
I was teaching a one-to-one English conversation class with a student in the school where I’m working last week. He’s almost 20 and lives in the ‘boarding school’ Monday through Friday, since his father lives too far away to justifiably ferry him to and from class every day. He’d been held back a couple of years due to misbehaviour in the past but seems like a pretty alright fella nowadays. When he finishes the French baccalaureate he wants to move from sleepy Normandy to Paris to become an actor, so he’d specifically asked the principal if I could come and visit him in the optimistically-named Games Room (one broken foosball table, one dart board without darts) of the boarding school building once a week to improve his English. He’ll need it for the big bad world of Hollywood eventually. Good luck to him.
Since it was the first time for months that I’d had a face-to-face conversation with someone who was neither over 40 nor a child, I found our discussion naturally gravitating a bit towards the day-to-day concerns of young men entering adulthood. It made a nice change. I asked him if he finds it a bit weird and socially debilitating to be finishing up with puberty and at least 2 years older than the other students at the boarding school who he lives with 5/7ths of the time. He told me it’s not so bad. He’s got some friends in their 20s who he sees on the weekends in his village, and besides — he gets “lots and lots of girlfriends”. Lots and lots of girlfriends? How’s that work?
“I use Tinder. I adore Tinder. I find it very amusing.”
At this point it became apparent, dear reader, that I was having an English lesson with a fuck boy.
Now, to echo the favourite phrase of lying Tory politicians, Let Me Be Absolutely Clear About This: in the right context, there’s nothing wrong whatsoever with behaving in this way. As long as the person you’re with understands that there’s nothing ‘romantic’ going on and both parties are happy, it’s grand. Some people are at a certain stage of their dating life where they’re not after anything serious. I’ve been ‘some people’ a few times. No problem at all. However, I’m not totally convinced that you can fully pull off this lifestyle, guilt-free, for years at a time unless you’re at least a little bit psychopathic. I didn’t think it was worthwhile to explain this thought to our almost-20-year-old friend in beginner-friendly English last week, so I want to try to briefly do so here.
The first reason is that humans just aren’t wired to have unemotional, unattached sex and move on. We produce oxytocin when we’re going at it, a chemical better known in the agony aunt columns of entertainment magazines as the ‘Cuddle Hormone’. Oxytocin is key in the development of feelings of trust, attachment and bonding, which also happen to be the three corners of the fuck boy Bermuda Triangle. In other words: by sleeping with someone, your body is bound to create a sense of connection towards them, whether the people involved want to acknowledge it or not, and that can kind of mess up your plans of keeping things light. Of course casual sex can still go perfectly well, but for it to be properly casual it means both parties have to basically ignore what their bodies are telling them afterwards. For what it’s worth, though, our almost-20-year-old friend didn’t strike me as much of a cuddler.
The second reason isn’t really a point with scientific evidence, but more of an observation: have you ever met anyone who’s had a casual relationship that hasn’t eventually either gone wrong or turned romantic? The campuses of the University of Oxford are a lot like how I’d imagine the Olympic Village to be: a hotbed of young people under a ton of pressure who, generally speaking, often seek to ease that pressure through having sex. In an ESPN interview before London 2012, US swimmer Ryan Lochte estimated that roughly 75% of the athletes who convened in the Olympic Village were shagging throughout the 16-day event, then adding: “My last Olympics, I had a girlfriend — big mistake. Now I’m single, so London should be really good. I’m excited.” Well, at least he’s honest. If you swap out the words ‘Olympics’ and ‘London’ for ‘term of uni’ and ‘clubbing’, Lochte’s quote suddenly turns into a phrase I’ve heard uttered by more than a few friends over the past few years. Here’s the thing, though: I don’t know how the hookups usually end up for the gold medallists, but the casual sexual relationships most of my mates get into never seem to stay that way. One night stands usually seem to go alright, but if things develop after that either one person Catches Feelings and the other gets weirded out, or they both get attached and end up dropping the ‘casual’ from ‘casual relationship’.
I deleted the dating apps off my phone a couple of months ago after I realised I’d been swiping more for the fun of the game than with any actual intention of meeting up with people or, God forbid, having a relationship with one of them. Intimacy in the time of Corona isn’t easy, but the last handful of months have at least shown me that continually trying to keep things light and casual catches up with you eventually. I feel ready to start taking things seriously again. Maybe our almost-20-year-old fuck boy friend will start seeing things that way too in due course.
