What's My Age Again?

As a little girl, my pimp of a mother would arrange bath time playdates between me and almost every little boy on my block. Time that wasn't spent in the tub was still spent nakedly playing "doctor." In short, my naked history with boys goes far back. But some time between kindergarten and first grade, I ditched my pre-med life and stopped playing naked doctor with boys in exchange for injecting cootie-shots with my girl friends. It wasn't until years later upon reaching sexual maturity that my interest in the male anatomy resurfaced, and so the naked playdates recommenced.
Playtime in college is vastly more enjoyable than the playdates of our youth. We're mature young adults now, meaning we're of a, legal or not, drinking age, and the permissible age to sign an apartment lease independent from parental authority. Week in and week out, I find myself playing doctor with young men regardless of if they're on the road to medical school or not. These boys don't need to call their moms for permission to sleep over, and don't refer to their junk as "private parts" or "pee pees." In contrary, private parts have become exceedingly public. However, I should have expected that when things seem too good to be true, they probably are. This past Saturday night, or more accurately Sunday morning, served as a wake up call that I've been taking sexual maturity for granted. I now find myself wondering if we all innately reach sexual maturity through human biology, or if some of us forever remain kids at heart.
The night started out no different from the standard mature young adult night. My friends and I took advantage of the free-for-all-who-have-a-vagina alcohol at our favorite fraternity and danced the fine line between incoherent and fun. Somewhere amidst the dancing on couches and shotgun competitions, I ran into one of my casual guy friends. Let it be said that, in college, when I say "guy friend" I mean an attractive acquaintance with whom I maintain a friendly relationship for the provisional goal of eventually hooking up with them. This guy friend was no exception, so I was down to fool around.
Less than an hour later and without the permission of our parents, my guy friend and I decided to have a sleepover at his apartment which is exactly how I woke up that Sunday morning to his manly arms cuddling me. Sexual maturity rocks.
"Hey," he said in a sleepy voice, then laid an equally sleepy kiss on my lips.
"Mhmm, good morning," the fact that I didn't wake up spewing out a slur of groggy obscenities the way I typically do when being roused from my sleep is a miracle in itself.
"I had a lot of fun hanging out with you last night," he smiled with his cute smile.
"Yeah, I really did too," I couldn't help but smile back. But after a few seconds of us drowsily smiling at each other, I jolted into panic when I realized that my study group of nerds had inconsiderately decided that we meet on a Sunday morning. "Oh shit, what time is it? I have a study group at 9 and need to shower before."
He reached his sculpted, fratty bicep over and checked his phone.
"It's 8," he gave me yet another smile and pulled me on top of him, "still a little time to fool around."
Though I am absolutely not a morning person, and I had a truly exceptional hangover, I was totally into this. So despite my pounding head, I indulged in the sleepy bliss of kissing in the morning. But my bliss was short lived; after a couple of minutes, my guy friend was trying to push my pounding head down to give him head. He wanted to play doctor by giving me an injection in the mouth, and my hangover and I were not down to go down. I resisted his push, but then he started begging.
"Aww, please baby, please! Just go down!" His smile was cute, but not that cute.
"No, I don't want to right now," it was way too early for this shit.
"Please, Taylor!" His incessant begging was quickly getting on my nerves.
"No, stop it," how could I tell him that the only thing I wanted in my mouth was a hot cup of coffee?
"Ughhhh, come on Tay!" he pleaded as he kept pushing me downward. I'd reached my limit.
"Seriously, stop! You're really annoying me!" I felt silly scolding him, but it was necessary.
Just when I thought I'd put up with his worst, he rolled away from me onto his side of the bed and whined under his breath "Well, you're annoying me..."
My jaw dropped; If I hadn't been rendered speechless, I wouldn't have known whether to laugh or get angry at his childish display. One thing was certain, I'd been snapped out of our playtime. I realized I wasn't lying next to a sexy and mature young man, I was lying next to a big baby with a big dick.
I didn't have time to babysit, so I got out of bed and gathered my stuff, "Okay, see you later."
"Wait, stop,"he said as I moved towards the door, "at least let me walk you downstairs."
I wanted to make a snide remark about how his mother had taught him such good manners, but I didn't want to piss him off since I needed him to walk me downstairs and I also needed to borrow his shirt so I wouldn't have to commit the disgraceful crime of wearing sequins in the morning.
Once I was freed from his apartment, I spent my walk home not sprinting in shame, but instead comprehending what had just gone down in result of not going down. I started to think that sexual maturity isn't something everyone arrives at after puberty, but rather something that a small minority arrives at from proper emotional development. Just because someone can get a boner, it doesn't necessarily mean they're qualified to use it. In the short walk from his apartment to my dorm room I'd once again lost all hope in men. I realized that the little boys I used to have bathtimes with had better manners than the college boy whose apartment I'd just slept over at.

One Woman's Trash... Is Trash Until She Sees It's Another Woman's Treasure

Life would be much more convenient if we were dating inside a vacuum. A vacuum where each woman exists in solitude, accompanied only by her personal pool of eligible bachelors. Within this dating vacuum, we'd be able to figure out exactly what we want without having to second guess ourselves or make the same mistake twice. But unfortunately, we do not live in a vacuum. We share a world with three billion other women, creating competition within our gender. From the beginning of time, all the women of a village would fight over the hunter-and-gatherer with the biggest biceps and the loin cloth made of the finest animal skins that their side of the Bering Strait had to offer. Now, it's women from every social circle fighting over the untamable bad boy who juggles women and refuses to be tied down. For some reason, even more attractive than a guy with six pack abs, a sparkling personality, or even a meaty trust account is a guy who has other women interested in him. You don't even have to start out liking this guy, just as soon as you know that other women want him you then suddenly have to have him ("like, you don't understand, it's an emergency, I think I'm in love with him, like, oh my god.")
As easy as it is for me to roll my eyes at this pitiful attribute of womanhood, I myself am not immune to it. As I have learned over the past two weekends, competition is inevitably the ultimate turn-on. The saturday before last I had what I can honestly declare to be the worst sexual encounter of my entire life. This guy was not a good kisser, a terrible conversationalist, he didn't get my jokes, and to top it all off the only time I'd seen a smaller penis was whilst changing diapers (and at that size I think the scientific categorization changes from "penis" to "peepee.") And the worst part about it was that it was supposed to be a great hook up! He was gorgeous (minus points for being blond, though), tall, and we'd gotten along so well during our anthropology class! But the morning after our abominable hook up, I spent my entire hangover mulling over the perturbing event and came to terms with the fact that I was completely and totally over my crush and his peepee. That is, until the next weekend.
That following thursday, my friend Molly and I went out to a pirate themed party at the PeePee's frat where within five seconds of being there we saw the PeePee making out with a petite blonde girl. In shock, we scurried down the hall and ducked into the bathroom to freak out in the privacy of our own stall.
"Oh my god," Molly squealed, "I think that's his girlfriend from home!" My favorite things about Molly are that she went to high school with the PeePee, and that she, like I, enjoys Facebook stalking on-the-go via Blackberry. "Hold on, I'm looking up her profile," she said, fastidiously typing and scrolling, "yep, it's her. Her status says she's visiting for the weekend." And just like that, a switch had been flipped. I went from being beyond turned off to never wanting him more. I was lusting after the PeePee. I hadn't dressed up for the pirate party, but now I was on a mission to get someone else's treasure.
"Should I text him?" Never a good idea.
"Yeah! Do it!" Fuck you, Molly.
"Okay, okay, I'm doing it! I'll just pretend like I didn't see him and ask what he's doing tonight!" As I began typing my pseudo-aloof text, my phone received a text from the PeePee himself! A simple "Hey" that managed to make everything more complicated.
My pulse was racing. I texted back saying "Hey, I'm at your frat". Within the same minute he texted back saying "Where???" Now I was freaking out.
"Molly, he just said 'Where???' with three question marks!!!"
"Oh my god! Tell him you're upstairs!"
I answered with my location and waited for him to text back, but he didn't. Several minutes passed, rendering me debilitatingly anxious.
"Okay, he still hasn't answered, should I text him again like 'Did you want to hang?'" Even in my drunken state I should have known that if you have to double text someone, you shouldn't be texting them at all.
"Yeah, that's good, send that!" I hate you, Molly.
I sent the second text and still no answer. I felt like trash for allowing myself to become so vulnerable so easily, especially over a guy that I'd gotten over the weekend before!
"Let's get out of the bathroom, we've been in here for like, ten minutes. People are gonna think we had either diarrhea or lesbian sex." Still gripping my phone waiting for a text back, we left the safety of our stall. As we walked into the hallway, I didn't get a response text, but I did get a different message. I saw the PeePee walk into the same room that he'd brought me into the weekend before with his petite blonde girlfriend from home and shut the door. The room that I had never wanted to go back into until I saw the petite blonde girl go in there. The petite blonde girl that had transformed my trash into an unattainable treasure.
Molly put her arm over my shoulder, "Let's go get another drink." And so we did.