I want an erotic friendship

What do you do when there isn’t a word for what you want? You write a blog about it. 

As A sOcieTy, we have developed a large taxonomy of ways two people can relate to each other, from the more concrete – friendships, acquaintanceships, relationships – to the more ephemeral and hyper-generational – situationships, friends with benefits, queerplatonic partnerships.

I want a friend with whom I have sexual tension, flirting, maybe the occasional teasing touch — but nothing more. I call this an erotic friendship. 

I have this with a former-lover, now-friend named Jen. I’ll throw an occasional come-on at them, but there’s a mutual understanding that the come-on is for the come-on’s sake. No one is actually going to come.

One time they asked if they could spend the weekend at my house after a difficult week. We watched a documentary about Scientology the first night, their head resting on my chest. The weight of their skull on the soft-hard tissue above my breast, their hand dangling on my torso, lulled me to a regulated half-sleep. 

I began gently tracing the back of their neck and shoulders with my nails. I heard small gasps of release and pleasure at the soft touch of my fingertips drawing scattered lines and squiggles along the side of their neck, the collar bone, the top of the spine.

During the commercial breaks I asked them what they thought the difference was between a religion and a cult. 

“I can either think and answer that question, or I can keep getting the scratches from you,” they replied. “But I can’t do both at the same time.”

I kept scratching, knowing the pleasure of a delicate touch. We could talk about what makes a religion different from a cult (Castigation for leaving? Money laundering? Exploitation? Mandated isolation?) later. We continued holding each other, scratching arms and necks and chests.

I could feel my clit tighten as we reached the moment two people in such a physically intimate situation would normally just finally fuck. Only we didn’t, and even though we joked about it — half mockingly, half tantalizingly — we knew we wouldn’t. That’s because we have an erotic friendship, not a friends with benefits. Jen and I have a friendship that is “just” erotically charged.

I had an erotic friendship with a guy this past summer. We dated conventionally, but I cut it off with after four weeks. Then we spent two weeks “trying to be friends.” For a brief week we really made it work – in multiple ways. I’d come to his house, he’d make me a home-cooked meal better than most of the fare I could get in restaurants in LA, we’d mildly flirt before watching a movie in his living room, and this would turn into some more intimate cuddling before going to sleep in separate beds. 

There were playful taps and touches, but every time we hit that moment where we should actually fuck, we’d retreat; like soldiers charging for the frontlines, only to turn around at the last second, indulged in the fantasy of winning. If you never go to battle, you can never kill the fantasy.

It was ideal aside from the fact that he would intentionally make offensive jokes, then blow up at me when I was inevitably a little uncomfortable upon said offensive joke. “You’re so difficult! You’re so hostile!” he’d shout, and I considered holding up a mirror to him as he growled.

I don’t want to sleep with you, but I want to talk about sleeping with you. I want to anticipate it. I want to live in the anticipation. Sometimes the moment before is better than the moment itself. 

Think about a rollercoaster. Isn’t it that drop in your stomach at the top of a big plunge better than the dive itself? What if you could just extend that moment forever – the anxiousness, the excitement, the scream, the silent prayer? 

There’s a reason roller coaster cameras are placed just a moment after the descent begins – this is the most exciting instant of the entire experience. The goal of capturing that face is a means of capturing the affect of a deeply ephemeral moment. The photograph tries to transform an instant, a moment, into a physical archive of that feeling for forever — usually for $18.95-24.95. 

Imagine if you could similarly photograph / expand the moment before sex; the “pregnant pause” we like to call it in English. But it is not just English or American rollercoaster cameras which indulge in the unique pleasure of the pleasure before pleasure. 

Other languages have idioms or words for this pre-kiss tension. In German, the word could be Spannung. My German History professor explained that this word is associated with a literal, physical tension.

“It’s when you create such a high tension, so as to tear apart. It’s used often to describe the the pull of the bow string to make it super tense and full of tension, right before releasing the trigger on the bow and arrow.”

This is exactly what I want, but forever. I want to exist in that pull, that tension. I don’t want to pull the trigger, I just want to hold my finger on it. To feel that pull, that tension, that Spannung.

I once had a truly excellent lover, Italian of course. He wanted to delay actual penetration for as long as possible. He drew out the moment of anticipation with almost an hour of foreplay every time we hooked up. He explained it to me like this: “Once you have sex, then it’s over. Even as you have sex, the sex is over.” 

***

I have made the mistake of converting an erotic friendship into a real relationship. This comes from the lack of words I had for what I want. This is the danger of linguistic lacunae; without a descriptor for the thing you desire, it is easy to fall back to familiar paradigms which offer a vocabulary assigned to experience.

But I was having experiences with no vocabulary for them.

I would have a close friend, and then sense a mutual erotic attraction. I figured: well, we’re good friends, and we have sexual chemistry. Is that not what a relationship is? Why not just consummate this — sexually, romantically, monogamously?

But friendship with sexual attraction does not have to be teleological; friendship with sexual attraction and some erotic expression can be the telos. The erotic friendship can be the endpoint — the goal.

***

I recently went on a date with a guy who I didn’t really feel any romantic or sexual chemistry with, but he was hot and nice. I thought: he’ll be perfect for an erotic friendship. We can hang out and be affectionate and scratch each other’s backs and chat about our week over dinner and a movie at his home.

The issue is I didn’t really communicate that this is what I had in mind for him.

When we sat down in his bed to watch Mean Girls, I hoped for some cuddling, some scratches, some massage, and then to go home. He grabbed my head and neck and tried to kiss me a minute in. We hadn’t even gotten to Tina Fey pulling her undershirt up with her sweater and he was trying to get to first base! When I explained that I didn’t want to have sex, but that I’d like to be physically affectionate and exchange massages, he told me he was a licensed masseuse for two years. Jackpot, I thought. But then he said “But to give you a proper massage, you would need to take your clothes off for the technique, so maybe another time when you’re more comfortable.”

WHY DO MEN DO THIS? WHY DO THEY THINK I AM THIS STUPID? I HAVE BEEN TO MASSAGE PARLORS BEFORE. YOU CAN GIVE ME A PERFECTLY SATISFYING SHOULDER AND BACK MASSAGE WITHOUT SEEING MY ASS.

I more or less told him this, and so he gave me a “shoulder massage.” I put this in air quotes because the massage was so bad I felt it was almost intentional, as a means of getting me to take my clothes off, because apparently the half-centimeter of fabric on my back makes the difference between painful, erratic jabs at my spine or the luxury of a professional massage.

I get it, a lot of guys cannot do the erotic-but-not-sexual thing. They need to consummate. I, on the other hand, explicitly do not need to. Oftentimes, I don’t even want to. 

This is sort of an aside, in case there are any heterosexual men still reading this, but you guys often ruin your chance at going further sexually by pressuring a woman to go further sexually. Give me my agency and I will give you head.  

***

Have you heard the phrase “Life imitates Art”? It comes from an essay by Oscar Wilde, provocatively entitled “The Decay of Lying,” in which he advocates for more lying. He argues that art during his time (late-19th century) had become too realistic. Art was trying to imitate life. In fact, “this is so realistic” or “this is so unrealistic” is still a common litmus test for the quality of a novel, film, or work of art. 

However, is this really the grand purpose of art? To imitate the vulgarity of daily life? Wilde argues the opposite, that art should be as unreal, imaginative, unimitative, pleasurable, and fantastical as possible. And from there, life will imitate art – art which imagines something much more beautiful than whatever society has come up with. It should be that life imitates art. 

I am drawn to this idea that there has been an unfortunate decay of lying in art. I feel this in another art form, a much more ephemeral one: the lost art of seduction. An erotic friendship is built upon an honest lie; when I make a come-on to Jen about fucking them in my car parked around the corner, or tease an ex about maybe taking my pants off when we both know I won’t, we are engaging in a beautiful lie. 

The lie is the fun, the art is the point. Will life imitate it? I don’t know, I haven’t actually had sex or gotten naked with any of my erotic friendships. And the handful of times I’ve had, the reality is disappointing. We don’t work in bed, we don’t fuck well together, we’re not good romantic partners. We create a beautiful work of art, a gorgeous lie – this idea of consummating all the pent-up desire and flirting. But we’re just good in our minds, in our imaginations, in our anticipations, and in our lies. 

And so now I ask: who wants to lie with me?

xoxo,

femcel