People are quick to blame my generation’s consumerist habits; they point to my generation’s love of cell phones and cheap plastic doodads as evidence to support their opinion. But I am here to defend my generation and ask: why are people (and by people I mean the generation that came before us) so quick to condemn us for buying the products that they created and from which they make their living? People point to our constant use of cellphones and our constant consumption of media as indication that the world is coming to an end, that we can no longer connect with each other, that we are doomed, that we are too plugged in, that we have failed. But I have to ask, as the children of those who came before us, what are we supposed to do when the best thing that you gave to your progeny was an amazing way to unplug from the horrors of a reality that you failed to fix? We are not the ones who came up with this gadget and mass produced it in China and filled it with fluffy T.V. shows that reinforce gender stereotypes and racial privilege. Instead, we are the ones who utilize this technology to escape a world that is still crushing us with defeat. Rather than making this world a better place, you gave us a medicine that is slowly killing us and then scream at us for willfully committing suicide. What is the better option? To fight an insurmountable fight? To get beaten in the battlefield of life? Or to run and hide in peace?

Perhaps the reason that we are condemned for our love of technology is because we are the robots who have been given too much power, and any day now we might turn around and revolt. Perhaps it is because we have a tool in our hand unlike anything that they have ever experienced. We have the power of instant communication, of recording all our experiences in videos and tweets and screen caps, and we can access any information we want at any moment. This is power. Yet they tell us to get off our phones. They say that we ostracize the human element with our phones. Or is it that we ostracize the human element that is not connected to modern technology? Are we alienating the people who invented this technology, who are watching it get out of hand and become a beast they no longer understand? Or have we been given power, and everyone is afraid of what will happen next.

We use this little metal boxes as excuses for our lives at times, but I’d like to hope that we use this technology to better connect and better communicate rather than accelerate the confusion from which we all constantly suffer. I hope we are figuring things out and eventually fixing things. I hope we are proving them wrong. I hope we are not the little monsters plugged into tuning out and disconnected from the sparkling facets of reality. I don’t think we are. I think we are a lost generation in moments, but there are still moments of beauty that cannot be taken away from us. So we should hold onto them with our lives because no one knows what the future holds, even if they built everything in our past.

There was four day break in between having sex and not having sex. Although either side of that silent period could still be characterized as “just friends,” it’s the fucking that made the difference. And now that it’s gone, I’m not sure if I feel normal again, or if I feel too normal, or if I’m overthinking this and everything is okay. Because we were always just friends, and then one day we were fucking, and then four months later a four day break turned into just friends again. But we are not missing a beat. Maybe sex isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and not having it with someone or having it with someone doesn’t necessarily change the dynamic of an underlying friendship. Or maybe it’s just me, and I’m crushingly indifferent to the daily visitors I have in the room of my sexuality. Although, no, it’s not that. It’s that sex and friendship don’t have to be mutually destructive when played against each other in various amounts and situations. Maybe it’s me. And maybe it’s my problem, to think that it is strange or difficult to fuck and then not fuck. It’s just my emotions, those pesky little things. I can’t stand them at times, but I get it. Sadness and regret are standard emotions when examining what could have been but now is not. Four days is enough time to feel all of that and then forget and pretend like everything is okay. Although, I would like to not pretend for once. Maybe some other day.

He walks in the room, and I inhale suddenly. There’s some sort of instantaneous chemical reaction going on in my brain, and I can feel it coursing through my veins as my heart pumps against my chest. When moments ago I was indifferent and coasting, now I am lit up and buzzing at the mere sight of a face. It’s funny how things like that work; sometimes it just takes one person to change a day. And he sits down, and I try to play it cool, which is hard for me and generally I fail. I am feeling flushed and trying not to look it. I try not to sound too excited as I talk too quickly, my brain suddenly awash with a million things I want to say. There is so much possibility in this brief moment, and I am trying to cram it full of everything wonderful as quickly as possible. I am trying too hard, but that’s okay. He is, too, as we sit here and chat in fast, clipped sentences, imprisoned by the tools of communication and thwarted by the physical barriers that stand between me and him. These bones. These clothes. I want so much for right now to be close to him, as he sips his wine and I palaver away. I wonder how much longer it will be. How many more hours. How many more days. How many more casual run ins before he gives me his phone number. And if he gives me his phone number, and I call it – what then? Will we text back and forth for a little bit, never following through? Or will we meet up at some beautiful bar, we, the beautiful people, and will something beautiful happen after that? I do not know what the future holds, but I am dying to know. I am dying to be outside of this moment, when it is just us, and we are so far apart. I want to be inside of weeks from now, so I can know already if I am waking up in his arms as the sun breaks into some distant bedroom. Or will I be crestfallen in weeks to come, the image of him having slipped between my fingers and relegated back to the realm of the unattainable and the untouchable. It is too painful to be here, steeped in possibility and wracked with the promise of something wonderful to come. I need to know now if he will love me one day, because I would like that one day to be today. And every day after today, too.

This is the end. But after great endings come great beginnings, and I am not afraid as I wait in this moment of pause. I am caught deep inside a shuddering gasp. A deep inhale that follows the moment of realization. I have spent weeks camping inside the split second when you realize that everything has started to crumble, but you have also started to realize that you also have the strength to carry on. So strength is mustered. And courage, too.

I am careening away from his caress on my thighs, but there is something bright in the future, too. I have stopped stealing moments to look back, and I only look forward now. I know that this is how progress is made. This is how to engage in that thing called “getting over,” so I stop responding to text messages or refreshing Instagram feeds, hoping to see some sign of him missing me poking out in the stream of faceless images that show no sadness and no regret. I am looking for his regret in any possible avenue, as I see his friends in the street and they smile at me like they don’t care, either. This hurt me until I realized that his friends are my friends, too, now, so I should chalk that up as a gain and stop fretting about what it means.

But what’s strangest of all is that usually in moments like this, in these moments of deep self doubt and sexual hesitation, validation manifests as some sort of sexual parade, wrapped up in strappy shoes and too short dresses in various bars of my choosing that are filled with the delectable riffraff of night life fuckery. I have found myself rather disinclined to seek pleasure and approval in that medium, and I am wondering if I have become wiser with age, or perhaps more tame, or perhaps strikingly indifferent. It’s hard to tell why I am content with being myself and smiling at strangers as they pass by when totally drunk was the only remedy for this kind of tepid heart break that I feel right now. It’s an interesting phenomenon, but I’ll take it as I spend nights feeling okay by myself for a bit again.

He has all the wind of white male privilege at this back, pushing him and making him go, but for some reason he is curled up in a ball in the middle of the race track and crying instead of moving while the rest of us claw our way past him and wonder what is wrong. Not having money must be such a curse when there’s no excuse for being poor, and not loving the people in his life must feel like such a trap when the only thing between him and us is his own petulant desire to not try at all. It’s cowardice, really, to be close to someone and hate every minute of it. We live in a free country, and love is not compulsory. It is not required at the threat of death. It is voluntary, and if you are volunteering to not love the people around you, then that is your own choice, but it is a choice I do not understand because isn’t love the goal that most of us have in mind anyways? I shake my head and walk away, not angrily or broken hearted, but disheartened by the fact that something as simple and seemingly esoteric as love is unattainable even for the most elevated members of our society. Maybe there is something wonderful about not expecting much from the world that makes something as tangible as human connection something to be cherished, but when we expect all the wealth that this life has to offer us, pursuing and working towards these things we call relationships is taken for granted and then dragged through the mud. Okay. That’s fine. I’m not in the mood to let that kind of thing bring me down, so I guess I’ll just move on with the rest of the world while he sits there and rots and hopes that anyone takes notice. No one will notice, except for me, and I have already shuddered and looked away, so what good will that do him now?

I loved him, but he didn’t love me back – or at least he couldn’t say he did, or he couldn’t show he did, even though at the end he squeezed out the words mechanically and with the pain of someone who has lost a theoretical war. But that’s okay, because I’ve been here before, and I know how this works, so I wasn’t even mad. I just went to the liquor store and showed them my prescription from the doctor for a bottle of their finest cure for unrequited love, which is, as always, a pint of Hennessy and some apple juice. I bought some potato chips, too, because it seemed like it would pair well, and I went over to my girlfriend’s house to do some subtextual analysis of the final text messages while plucking eyebrows and compiling a comprehensive list of ready and willing fuck boys in our general area who would be willing to help me fill the other prescription that the doctor gave me to cure this bad case of unrequited love: dick. We skipped over the step where I have to delete all pictures from my phone and social media because, hey, I might be a lover but I’m still not a fool. That guy’s face isn’t anywhere to be seen on either of those, so I’m golden. Then we laced up our shoes and skipped out on the town where the billowing and beautiful boys of Downtown Oakland welcomed us back with grace ease, asking, “Where have you been? We missed you!” “I have been in a relationship, but now I’m back,” I reply passingly as hands dance over backs and brush against arms. There is a general knowingness that all incoming text messages will now be replied to, and the game has opened back up for all willing participants. It’s good to be back, although I did not mind being away, either.

Does sex end when the guy cums? Or when the girl taps out? When do we stop fucking? I can never tell, personally, because no matter how much my body might be hurting or shutting down or dried up and desiccated, there’s something in my mind that screams, “Keep going!” Perhaps because I know that this moment will end eventually, but isn’t this everything that I have been working towards all week? Haven’t I wanted, above all other things, to be close to someone else? In the most carnal way possible. We need to keep fucking right now as an act of desperation in order to transcend our skin and our bones, and maybe if we fuck long enough and hard enough, one day we will wake up and we will no longer be separate, but we will have finally become two people in one body. Connected. Not forever, but for as long as it’s pleasant, and cumming is not symbolic of the end of everything that I am trying to achieve here. Cumming is something that I can do over and over again. I go to the gym and work out every day so that when the moment comes for me to take off my clothes and dive in, I will be awake and ready and able to fuck for as long as we need. Until we can fuck no longer. Until I can’t keep my eyes open. Until it is impossible to do this anymore. When my body is wreck and your dick is falling off. Until I can’t possibly cum one more time. Sex ends in a moment of failure, realizing that we are separate now, and we will always be separate, so we might as well sleep it off before we get up and drift apart tomorrow morning (or afternoon). Because sex doesn’t end after one person’s one orgasm, or even if he can’t get it up, or if I’m tired. Sex ends when I no longer want to be close to you, or I can no longer be close to you. Although, if I had my way, sex would never end, and we would be here forever, cycling in and out of fucking and sleeping and eating while the rest of the world melts away. I would like that. Wouldn’t you like that? To fuck me forever? I’ll call it true love, but all you have to do is call me back and come over tomorrow night. It will be wonderful. Forever.