Skip to main content

Solo For Fifteen

This Salon article about one woman's unplanned celibacy for fifteen years drew a rash of comments from readers. I think it is impossible not to react to something that is so devoid of adornment or attempt to hide what is obviously not a pleasant subject to discuss. The author's candor alone makes this piece of writing hard to ignore. Then there is her take on sex without love. Kit Naylor says :

I know I could walk into any bar in town and leave with some guy willing to come home with me for a one-night stand -- but that feels so sordid and ugly to me. I have known what it is to enjoy sex with love, in the context of a committed relationship -- comfortable, familiar, married sex, if you will -- and anything less than that feels sad to me. I would rather sleep alone than give myself away.

I have often compared random sex outside a single permanent relationship (which may or may not mean marriage to everyone) to diving into the different dumpster each night to forage food when you have the option of cooking a nice dinner in your own kitchen. Why anyone would choose such a thing is obviously very baffling.

Comments

Priyamvada_K said…
HC,
I understand the sentiment and empathize with it.

The comparison to kitchen meal vs dumpster diving tempts me to tease you though :D. In response to your last question, answer is "because your kitchen equipment's dishes have broken. New dishes are hard to come by coz the make and model of equipment is not the flashy and current state-of-the-art, though equipment is still in good working condition. Any dishes compatible to this make and model are already taken."

:))

The choice is the same one I mentioned in my blog, "Of men and faludas".

Priya.
Heartcrossings said…
Hey Priya - Good points about the kitchen :) How about a re-modeling job to fix what's broken and improve what's barely functioning. I guess that still beats the dumpster. Even if you come by the left-overs of a gourmet dinner, its still trash.
Priyamvada_K said…
Re-modeling job is a good idea :). But there is nothing wrong with equipment - in looks or functioning. Just that the dishes compatible to it are all taken. Few dishes remain of that vintage, and even those favor the brand new equipment (which seems compatible to the old dishes and the new).

All jest aside, I hear you on the trash - people with any sense of self-worth will not go for that (gourmet or otherwise).

I guess the suddenly singles have the following choices:

a) wait for the full 5-course meal (a.k.a marriage).
b) grab stuff off the vending machine (chemistry and goodwill but few or nil long-term prospects).
c) dumpster diving.

I guess we need to live like a karma yogi if exercising choice a). By the time it materializes (if it does), maybe even the desire for it would have evaporated :)

Priya.
Heartcrossings said…
Priya - Love the analogy to the different kinds of meals - specially the vending machine. "chemistry and goodwill but few or nil long-term prospects" - its priceless.

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques