I’ve never been a fan of the quickie. I don’t know that I ever actually had a quickie before this. And I’ve been replaying the whole thing in my head since that fuck.
My usual way may be rough, or fast, or hard. But it’s also varied, and long. My ideal sexual encounter is measured in hours, not minutes. I’m a gourmand (or an addicted rat, repeatedly pressing the bar for more of my drug) when it comes to sexual pleasure: why stop having it when more is available?
But as the quickie has settled a bit in my experience, as I’ve assimilated what it is we did, I’ve come to (begin to) develop an appreciation for the quickie as its own thing, rather than simply as “a quick fuck.”
The encounter I described certainly featured less of the physical pleasure than I typically experience in sex. Though it was quite intense, there is simply no quantification of the pleasure I experienced, or that M experienced, that even begins to compare even to a relatively quick 20-or-30-minute sexual encounter.
And it featured no intimacy, either. Other than structural. The encounter was the fulfillment of something she had said (texted) she wanted, and I gave her what she asked for. (This isn’t to say I didn’t get anything out of it – after all, I’m the only one of us who came.) And our bodies were joined, for a couple of moments. But the intimacy in the act was far less than that to which I’m accustomed, and which, to be honest, I prize – even when fucking a stranger in a sex club.
And/but…. There was a different kind of intimacy, the intimacy of sharing a transgressive, ferocious moment. And of the simple raw energy. A detail I forgot in my post was the most intimate moment of the encounter: as we said goodbye at her door, lingering for a moment, she looked up at me and wiped a few beads of sweat from my forehead.
Why did I omit this detail? Partially it was my lazy rush to hit “publish,” my somewhat disjointed writing process, in which the writing of that post took place over four or five different 5-15-minute sessions of “writing” with my thumb on my phone (thanks, Swype!), and which featured (as is typical of my posts) no single re-read and/or comprehensive edit of all I’ve written. If this blog were a book, if it were my job, I’d be more perfectionist, but because it’s more of a shared journal, a somewhat less robustly constructed communication, I’m a bit lazy. (I might possibly be just as lazy were it actually my job, but still… I value getting more of my thoughts on the blog more highly than I do their perfect presentation to you.)
But there’s more: it’s not just my writing proves that lies behind my failure to carry through on my (several-times-pondered-prior-to-posting-but-still-overlooked) mental note to include that detail. As several of you readers have observed, and commented, at times I maintain a somewhat aloof distance to the emotions that surround sex, to the connections that sex embodies with, between people. I often admire Guy New York’s writing, and one of the things I particularly admire about it is the deft way in which he punctuates his very hot stories with tiny details of emotional intimacy. That’s not how I write. There’s something in the recollection of that intimacy, in the communication of it, from which I recoil, involuntarily.
But back to my main point: in most of my sexual encounters, the pleasure I take is concentrated in the anticipation and the execution. The days, hours, minutes leading up to an encounter are insanely hot to me. And then, of course, there’s the sensual physical and emotional pleasures of a sexual encounter itself. And then there’s the memory. But for me? The memory typically recedes. Though I’m capable of what’s often referred to as “euphoric recall” in 12-step programs, or “reminiscence” in the rest of the world, it’s typically a very minor component of my appreciation of a sexual encounter.
Not so with the quickie. With the quickie, the configuration of my pleasure is the opposite of usual – the bulk of the appreciation seems to be in the aftermath, in the recollection. When I write about sexual encounters for the blog, it’s usually the last chapter in my appreciation of an encounter. In this case, it feels almost as if it was the second or third chapter (after the anticipation and execution).
Clearly, I need to have some more quickies to evaluate this hypothesis.
Perhaps the reason the quickie stays with you is because of your need to understand your own behavior. You seem ahighly intrspoctive individual when it comes to your lust…possibly because of the “addiction” factor, the ned to check and recheck behaviors to make sure you are not headed on that dark path before you realize it. Just a thought.
As for the intimacy of quickies….I don’t know that I agree with you there. I think there’s a great deal of intimacy packed into meeting someones need. If its a mutual need even more so. Its like the difference between a nice smooth milk chocolate bar and a dark chocolate, mousse filled, cocoa covered truffle…..both are sweet and satisfying in their right but not enough of one leaves you flat and too much of the other is total overkill 😉 just my opinion.
I think my introspection and my “addiction” are at best tangentially related. I was prone to deep introspection prior to the onset of sexually compulsive behaviors, for sure. But certainly, part of the reason the quickie has stayed with me is because of my predilection to try to understand that which I don’t understand. I totally understand the extended sexual encounter and my relationship to it; the quickie is all new to me.
Re: intimacy? I see what you’re saying. I guess it’s just that I’m much more accustomed to explicit intimacy rather than “embedded” intimacy.
perhaps the memory of the brand lingers longer than that of the slow burn?
I can see where that might be right, but I’m more inclined toward a more psychological explanation. But worth pondering, for sure….