Now, I will begin this article by saying that I am not separating or segregating or even setting out to define sex or romance. But rather to explain to you, through my experiences, and I swear to use no amount of subterfuge, (though I may now be a bit delirious) what I feel when remembering either.

In my life, sex has been central. Since I was young, the physical has been nothing less than essential.

It began with another young man, and like every good thing can, our little experiment got a bit out of our unskilled hands. Since then, the sex has never left me alone, but when I lay myself in bed… My heart feels quite heavy… Filled with a subtle, lonely dread.

Romance was my escape.

I’ve been a hopeless romantic since I discovered love. Back in the times of high school, when the papers I wrote were all on scraps, I fell so hard into first loves stinging trap.

Like the diamond gates of hell, I stood with precarious balance on the very edge as I strolled so happily down the primrose path of dalliance.

My first love destroyed me, and my wretched heart, retching with pain and sophomoric art was ripped out a newly mauled maw in my chest, to be held with piercing claws against the breast of a wicked girl for five very long years.

My time in captivity can only be measured in fallen tears.

So now I am an artist, scarred by my past, and hoping that the pain that nearly wrecked me in every way back then, was not the last.

But pain, experience, and love all got together and gave me a invaluable gift.

Romance, at it’s best, will always leave a person with many marks.

But romance itself isn’t only pain and suffering…

(Sorry, when I drink too much I tend to get a little Shakespearian-y.)

Romance, to me, is when your heart sinks and sings. It’s what happens to two people when the circumstances and the feelings are just right to make you feel as if nothing else but you and they are all that matters. When you’re horrified of what comes next, but you’re too lost in what’s happening to care much. Romance is what stitches love into people.

Sex, to me, is less personal. It’s something you can even do with friends. I have friends who I can say I could never see myself with, but we’ve had sex. It’s like a really intense hug when you know a person well enough. Just a way to make each other feel good, and to say, ‘I love you.’

Allow me to be a cynic, mostly because you have no other choice: Sex, when you boil it all down, is purely physical. It’s a bio-mechanical reproduction method that is shared by every other mammal on the planet. Most adults know that we’re on the list of very few species of mammal that does it for fun.

And romance is an invention of the mind and soul. Right?

You see, in these little puddles of brain leakage I’ve been leaving all over the internet, I speak only for myself. These words come from the inside of me, therefore they are art, and art should only be made for the artist.

So, romance, to me, is one of the gifts chaos has given the human race. I am so thankful for it too.

Because this whole ‘broken writer’ thing I have going is very physically un-sexy to most. Guys like me can be as good as they want at sex. I have given women upwards of ten orgasms during one (very long) session. But I can’t attract them worth anything, without my pretty words.

(Wakes up later that morning.) Oh jeeze. My head…

Ok, three days and an entire fifth of whiskey later… I need to wrap this up without sounding like more of an idiot.

Alright alright alright. Um….

Sex and romance, porn and relationships.

Sex and romance are both two amazing things, and it’s great to feel one or the other, but it’s ecstatic in a literal sense when you feel both.

In our modern age, however, they don’t have to be hand in hand, and I think that is an important distinction to make. Are you feeling love? Or is your loin pointing the way?

Most people try to shove these very different things together because they’ve been taught that they should be. Like peanut butter and jelly, but unless you have the foreknowledge of your own feelings as well as your partners, you’re making a sandwich without bread.

And almost nobody wants a bowl of pb&j soup…
… (Though it does sound kinda tasty to me.)

Not the point. (Ok, sorry.)

But romance can do fine without sex, and sex is just as independent as romance.

Have you ever had a friend who was so close to you that sometimes you forgot you were different people, or so close you may as well have been dating, but didn’t? Did you have sex? (For the purpose of this rhetoric I am reaching out to the percentage of you that can say:) No?

Looking back, wasn’t that in a way romantic?

Isn’t watching a sunrise alone romantic? Isn’t it romantic when your great grandpa still holds the door for your great granny? (I really hope my great grandparents aren’t still doing it for many reasons including making this point I’m trying to make here valid.)

Haven’t you ever had fun, meaningless, no strings, no hard-feelings sex?

Of course you have, well, I hope you have, ‘cause it’s really fun.

In my meaningless opinion, sex and romance are simply two great tastes that taste great together, and apart.

I’m just happy to get a taste. Aren’t you?

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