Miss talking about boys…a definition of dating

My friend sent me this email last week. I am in a totally different email on most days, so I ‘m just catching up now.

I called her Saturday.  She’d had an interesting evening–celebrating her singleness. She tells me: “I can’t move. I feel awful.”

And I know the feeling. And I know she must have had fun at the party.

No nookey-fun though. She laughs and tells me: “At one point, there was a hand on my leg, wandering up my thigh. I looked down, quizzically, and removed that hand and put it back in the owner’s lap.” She leaned over and giggled. “Not tonight. I’ve had too much to drink.” Then she stood up. Found the toilet. And tossed her cookies.

At least she tossed her cookies into the toilet. I can remember a time when I was sitting ON THE TOILET and I tossed my cookies into my pants which were in the vicinity of my ankles. Or the time in Mexico when the toilet wasn’t a wide enough receptacle and  I just needed to aim at a larger opening and tossed my cookies, my dinner, my too-many margaritas into the bathtub.

Ugh. Drunk stories. I don’t really need to go there.

Boys. Hmmm…I don’t really need to go there either. But, I will agree with my friend. Sometimes, being single sucks. And at this moment for me, the suckiest thing about being single is the lack of regular, enjoyable, safe nookey.

Regular. Another friend in Ottawa told me once…”They just don’t know how lucky they are. They can just have it when then want it.” (She was–of course–referring to couples.)
Enjoyable. Enjoying yourself. Enjoying the other person.
Safe. Emotionally safe. Physically safe.
Repeat.

Lately, I’ve been sort of wondering what my status is. But, I decided I am definitely single. That is. I don’t have one boyfriend that I specifically hang out with and HERE IS THE KEY THING ABOUT THE SINGLE STATUS…I don’t wake up with another person in my bed. And I’m not waking up in another person’s bed.  So, logically, due to the obvious lack of another person…I am single.

However, I think I am dating. DATING. Isn’t that a weird word. What is dating? I don’t even like that word.  Dating. What does it mean? I used to pshaw dating because in my small world, dating meant more than one person. AND in my relatively sheltered life, I thought if I were dating someone–I would be sleeping with that person. AND THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL that I would be sleeping with more than one person. So…I never dated. Or thought I dated.

Recently though, I refined my definition of dating. Specifically, dating is spending quality time with other people and NOT GETTING ANY NOOKEY. So dating DOES mean more than one person–BECAUSE OF THE LACK OF NOOKEY part.

And I realize I spend my quality time with different people and those different people fill different areas of my life. But in the end, I wake up alone in my bed. And, as I type this, I realize that I’ll have to make different decisions about who I spend time with if I want to address the nookey deficit.

And in the meantime, I’ll join my friend and enjoy the “sight-seeing”.