Column

As far as I have seen the only truly casual ‘casual sex’ happens in British pubs, where it’s perfectly normal (and even preferred) to pick someone up for a night of beer-haze pleasures and bid a civil “alrighty then” the morning after.

Otherwise there’s absolutely nothing casual about ‘casual sex’.

And I don’t say that with any moral righteousness, mind you. A little envy if anything at all. I mean I wish there was! I mean wouldn’t it be great just once to have amazing sex with a guy you reasonably like as a person and find irresistibly hot in bed without having any morning-after syndromes, a.k.a guilt, second-guessing, mindgames, and the worst of all, feelings?

However hackneyed and sexist this sounds, I do believe that barring a few (fictitious dare I say?) women like Samantha Jones who are able to look at a guy and just see five orgasms, attraction for women is slightly more complex. It’s rarely just a body thing for us girls. Women fall for personality, attitude, power, bartending skills, French-Japanese accent, and what-have-you and only then do they want to act upon the sexual attraction. And after that, who are we kidding? If we like the guy as a person and have great sexual chemistry, it’s not rocket science to think of taking this equation to another level i.e. relationship. And that where trouble starts, because I suspect men don’t quite mix up sex and love. Sex is about sex, while love is about . . . .well, sex! And then begins questions, delayed phone calls, hidden tears, self-doubt, fear, confusion and basically curtains down on Casual Sex . . .which wasn’t really there to begin with!

I think the problem lies with the terminology as well. For instance in sartorial matters, ‘casual’ to me means skinny jeans and an old tee. For my über-classy Mango-Esprit-Guess gal pal, it means a Zara linen suit and Aldo sling-backs. Similarly in matters of the heart (and the area slightly lower) definitions are blurring by the day. The complexities of modern living and loving have made many emotionally reprehensible things permissible (like breaking up over the phone) and many simple things hideously difficult (like falling in love and staying there). And in the grey area between I-don’t-know-your-name-lets-**** and I-love-you-till-death-do-us-part-lets-****, enters casual sex.

Thus it’s not really casual at all. It’s just a cover-up for “I don’t know what is happening but I wish I did”. And therefore what’s casual for one may not be casual for another. for instance: Sex with someone you’ve liked for ages but can’t have./ Sex with a friend/colleague born out of incidental proximity/ Sex outside of a marriage or committed relationship.

Hell, which of these are really casual... even though most of them might have been an outcome of too much wine or tequila? We just call it casual because we’re too scared to think of it as anything else, for fear that it might be something good and we might be pushing it away by being too emotional or needy. We try to act like the guys to get the guys.

So does that mean we women want to marry every guy we sleep with? Hardly. But if we were to stop kidding ourselves that we can do it like the boys then we’d be able to save ourselves a lot of latent heartache and even enjoy some of the men that come between Mr Right Now and Mr Forever.
deblina@dnaindia.net