Monday, motherhood and men

Last week was a week of many firsts. It was my first week as the editor of a magazine, the first time I felt like a parent and the very first time I’ve looked at sex as something more than the union of two bodies.

Lets start at the start. On Monday, I started my new job as the editor of an upcoming webzine. To say that I had had apprehensions about the job would be an understatement. In a fit of stubbornness, I hadn’t discussed the offer with any of the people I would have normally turned to for advice. So I’m incredibly thankful and relieved that the job is everything I had hoped for after one-and-a-half-years at a boot-camplike job.

Next, the part about feeling like a parent. My office has a little stray kitten who we call Ek, for no reason more intelligent than the fact that he was less than a week old when he was found abandoned in a dumpster. And now he’s part of a loving family of three dogs and two very moody cats. Ek is a little brat, spoilt by the loudmouth Janice and the picky eater Naomi, and watched over by Tyler, the fatty of the house. The kutta-log, as we call the three dogs, are Ek’s protectors and pamperers. Ek scrambles around the house, mewling loudly when he feels ignored, while the three dogs tiptoe around him, careful not to hurt the six-inch-long ball of fur. And every time I look at them, my heart melts. Maybe it’s got something to do with playing the editor of a parenting magazine, or maybe it’s the aunt in me reacting to the separation issues I'm going through at the moment, but my world seems to revolve around babies these days--human or animal. The first time I fed the screaming, kicking Ek, I felt my heart squeeze and morph into a big blob of mush. Yes, me. Imagine that. Suddenly, all I want from life is a baby. A gurgling with laughter, running around the house like a mad puppy kind of little girl or boy. No? Then at least a little puppy or kitten who'll rush excitedly to the door when I come back home.

And last, the part about sex being more than just a physical thing. We’ve already established that in that department, considering what my friends have to say about their sex lives, it would be fair to assume that I’ve been pretty lucky. But even so, sex, although an intensely pleasurable activity, has been just that--an activity. I’ve never been big on all the spirituality and soul mates talk. Turns out, there might be something to it, after all.

Last week, I went for an alternate youth culture party (Make what you will of that!). I met a very interesting person, let’s call him Mr A, there. I don’t know whether he’s single, married or in a relationship, but I can say one thing for sure--if there’s one man who knows how to make a woman happy, it’s him. No, I don’t know this because I tumbled into bed with him, with some people, you just know. The way they look at you, the way they listen to you, simply the way they hold your hand while steering you in a crowd, positively screams eroticism. And not in a trashy, booty call way, but in a way that makes you feel like you’re being wooed, like you’re a treasure that needs to be explored, cherished and only then plundered. A considerable number of drinks later, my brain to mouth filter had all but vanished and I told him how hot I found his attitude. And that’s how we got talking.

And talking to the man was by far the most intensely erotic experience I’ve ever had. Barring nothing. The men has refined the act of sex to an art form. I have never met a man so in tune with a woman’s responses. We’ve all had times when we wanted our men to stop fumbling about, to take us like cavemen, against the door, by the bed, in the kitchen… yes, for the men who didn’t know, sometimes, we couldn’t care less about foreplay. For some of us, tender is highly overrated, altogether dispensable even. But that lends itself to another post altogether.

Anyway, I would be very surprised if any woman with Mr A has ever had that problem. The man seemed to know bloody everything. He even knew what I was imagining doing to him, at one point in the night. Our only real physical contact in all the time we were together when he took my hand while navigating through the crowd, and again, when he hugged me goodbye. I’ve read about exquisite torture, but you don’t really know what that means until you meet a person like Mr A. He’s not the most good-looking of them all, not even the funniest or the most charming, but there’s something about him that will make you look a second time. In my case, it was because he was the only one in the group who understood the reference to what I was saying. (Yes, I‘m deliberately being vague here.) We were going to meet at a party the next night, but as luck would have it, I didn’t end up going. I don’t know what might have happened if I had. And I guess I’ll never know. But that doesn’t bother me much. For a while now I’ve been telling my friends that I’d love to meet someone who taught me something new. Or someone who made me break my rules. Mr A made me do both. Without even touching me, he‘s got me so tightly strung, I could snap any moment. It‘s not a feeling I’m too familiar with. And I’m loving it. If this is foreplay, perhaps it isn’t so bad, after all.