Yesterday eve I shared a glass of champagne with a wealthy gentleman at a classy establishment down the road from my castle (warning: I’m in a fancy/lying mood). But really, I did get a beer with a dude at a bar near my house, and while inside said familiar bar I tried to recall the last time I had sipped beverages there. When I located that memory, I began to search for all of the previous times I had been in that location. I scrolled through my cerebral cortex and each experience I conjured up was relatively pleasant, that is until I hit one unfavourable moment of the past that I would prefer to permanently forget: The moment when I realized I couldn’t make simple conversation with the man I had been in love with for a year.

We’ve all been there, am I right, sad, horny, confused humans? If you haven’t been there, you might be wondering how one gets there. How does one convince themselves that they’re in love with someone who they can’t converse with as effortlessly as they can with a random barista or a conservative uncle or an angry pigeon. (Anyone else gab about gender politics with pigeons?)

Answer: “Just good sex” is how it happens. Those are dangerous words in tandem. “Good” is good and “sex” is good and normally “good sex” is great but add a “just” into that equation and you’ve got trouble. The “love” between the above mentioned man and myself was fast and fierce and infrequent. He lived in another city and we only saw each other when we happened to be in the same location at the same time, which made bonding a tad tricky and made sex highly titillating. We’re both comedians so we did have a good number of run-ins around the country, and with every single run-in my affections/libido for him grew.

Our fornication was instantly fantastic. My vulva could not deny our powerful sexual chemistry. He was all about going down on me. I was all about him going down on me. We had a good rhythm of motion. We gave each other the perfect amount of notes. Our genitals were big fans of each other, which meant that the sexy chemicals within our brains were going to be big fans of each other too.

The problem with those damn sexy chemicals is that they insist on maintaining a super primal perspective on romance. They come into contact with another animal you enjoy mating with and they’re all like, “YOU WILL NOW HOLD ONTO THAT ONE UNTIL YOU DIE. WHY DIDN’T THEY TEXT YOU BACK YET? WE’RE FREAKING OUT!” And even when you say to them, “No, stupid pheromones, I barely know this guy and he’s kind of a piece of shit and he doesn’t even like Roseanne so it’s definitely over between us,” the pheromones respond, “GO FUCK HIM NOW. YOU WILL NOW FUCK HIM,” and then you do, and more tragically than the fucking (which is guaranteed excellent in this scenario), you convince yourself that this one IS the one. Sure, you don’t feel at ease in their presence, and they don’t make you laugh really all that much, and they don’t inquire about your life more than they inquire about what kind of alcohol you have in your house, but hey, your body wants it, so you…must want it…too?

The only reprieve you get from your delusional self is in public, when the pheromones take five and cease and desist with seducing you into seduction. This is when the rest of your mind is able to think logically and have terrifying realizations that maybe this ONE is more of a NONE.

I remember sitting in the bar near my house with a delicious cocktail in hand, staring directly into my then paramour’s eyes, smiling at his symmetrical face illuminated by candlelight, hearing the sound of jazz in the distance, and gently whispering to him, “So…have you seen any good movies lately? Or…TV?” Let me repeat that: “Have you seen any good movies lately or TV?” I actually said this. For real. I had become my own worst enemy: a person who makes small talk. My hell on earth would be discussing what I’ve been up to lately with dull bros until the end of time. Yet, there I was, investigating my so-called Romeo’s interest in popular entertainment like I was at an office holiday party and had nothing else to work with. I didn’t recognize myself.

The scariest part about it was that we did have a ton in common. We’re both comedians, for goodness sake, and it’s not like he’s a total doofus or anything. His head possesses a large quantity of information that he could have dispelled. Our similar interests and identical professions and massive list of mutual friends made the lack of dialogue between us (and more evidently our lack of an emotional/intellectual connection) even more troublesome. However, regardless of my many worries, I brushed this panic aside because we seemed to consistently have a lot of fun together…when we were in bed. It seemed that the majority of the time we spent together was in a bedroom (where sex was the top priority), in a big group (where mingling with others was a top priority), or in comedy venues (where performing is the top priority); a very bad sign to say the least.

Another bad sign was learning that he had lied to me a whole bunch and that he had been seriously dating someone else while we were together and that the feelings he had proclaimed were clearly not genuine. After he broke my heart and I deleted his phone number, I began to reflect on our “relationship.” I not only remembered the brief realization I had in the bar that night (which I definitely chose to ignore), but I also remembered the first time I noticed that I wasn’t acting like myself around him. It was the second week we were sleeping together and we went for brunch one morning after a long cunnilingus session. Once we jabbered on about the cool restaurant we were in and examined the neat booth we were sitting on and officially ordered our egg meals, there was a long pause in discussion that neither of us could escape. To remedy the pause, he went on his phone and proceeded to stay there for five minutes. I sat in silence, watching him watch his twitter feed in awe that he was totally fine with ignoring my existence. Eventually, he put the phone down and we gossiped about comedians (something I don’t do regularly) until the food arrived. Then we ate, paid, and left, awkwardly.

As we walked away from the restaurant I had flashbacks of lying in bed with him only an hour prior to that breakfast. It was post-coitus and I remember rambling on and on about my intense feelings, pouring my heart out to his listening ears, and providing endless details about my childhood. But as soon as we exited the bedroom and sex was no longer an option, something shifted. We really didn’t have anything to work with. Our social interactions were empty and surface level and painful. But, I chose to ignore it, over and over and over again. I ignored it even though I knew that how we behaved wasn’t how people in love behaved. I felt like I was forcing words out of my mouth when I spent time alone with him not in bed. I only made lifeless words with my mouth to fill the uncomfortable quiet between us that revealed more about our non-relationship than good cunnilingus ever could.

I know now that the uncomfortable quiet was due to the fact that we weren’t friends, which I think is a pretty key part of love. But I wouldn’t say we were lovers either. That word does not describe what we did. I guess that means we were…fuck buddies, minus the buddy part. We fucked and occasionally got boring brunch together and talked about blockbusters over alcohol until it finally ended and I had my third big realization: no amount of amazing sex is worth having to make small talk.