Being armed with a drawer of condoms doesn’t always guarantee full preparation for hot safe sex. The Sexpert tells her story about the power of lust with Mr. Too Big.
Last year I wrote this.
It is not the most impressive post I have ever crafted – but I would like to offer even further explanation for its inspiration. Yours truly is not always as perfectly behaved as you may think. Based on my values of being a sex-positive feminist who calls herself ‘The Sexpert’ you may imagine my life a polyamorous bisexual multi-orgasmic wonderland. One where consent is always verbally given, I get rapid HIV screenings on a monthly basis, and I have safer sex items in candy dishes in my living room. This is (sadly) not the case.
In the post I wrote about “some naive person somewhere” falling for the line, “I’m too big.” I wrote it with a smile on my face knowing that I was referring to myself having been in that situation only a few months prior. My sarcasm was likely only funny to me, however, and lost on my reader. So much of my motivation for writing The Sexpert comes from the frustration of never having been armed with good information early on. The Sexpert is my contribution to the universe to fix that problem for myself and whoever may stumble across my writing.
So, the story of Mr. Too Big goes like this:
I was out with a group of my girlfriends on a Friday night at a downtown dance club. A couple vodka tonics into the evening I see the most gorgeous man I have ever been in the same room with. What’s more is that he is already engaged in conversation with a friend of mine. I walk over and she is more than happy to introduce me and mentions that they know each other from a previous party they both attended. She excuses herself and I promptly ask him to dance.
To my extreme delight it seems he reciprocates my intense feelings of attraction! We exchange numbers and a few days later we are on a date that ends with him coming home with me. Normally, I am the type of girl who holds to certain ideals of romance. I genuinely try to get to know someone and I am logical about if we make a “good fit.” I will check these two things off my list before the decision to begin a sexual relationship…but this is not a story of when I used my best judgment. He had already tipped me off to some things going on in his life that I felt would get in the way of us having a successful relationship. However, did I mention he was the most attractive man I had ever seen?
I made the decision that I would be having sex with him even if the only outcome of this decision was getting to have sex with someone as attractive as he was. In other words, I was not consulting my brain in this particular decision. I didn’t lose sight of the fact that this was someone I barely knew who I had met in the seedy underbelly of Minneapolis. I insisted he wore a condom and he happily pulled one out. My only thought when I saw his penis for the first time was, “I didn’t know God made them that big.”
I do have the privilege of having sexual partners with whom I have a trusting, honest, and an emotionally stable bond with. I can share the dates and times and results of my last STI testing with them and they with me without any awkward feelings. With Mr. Too Big I was not privileged with that same sense of comfort. So when the first condom was used up and we still wanted to engage in more sexual activity I approached the situation gently. I figured I was most safe as long as I had the assurance that a barrier was in place. I had a stash of condoms in my room – the very same Durex in the purple wrapper that I mention in my blog. I quickly pulled one out but he only laughed. He told me size had always prevented him from wearing certain condoms and my request was simply impossible. I was dumbstruck but I went ahead with the deed despite my discomfort.
Things continued on in this way for a few more days. Finally, I grew tired of his pushiness and the uncomfortable feeling I have when I am not proud of myself. We stopped talking and have not crossed paths since. I was tested for STI’s soon after and was thrilled to find out that I did not catch anything in spite of myself. I am blessed to live in a state with some of the lowest relative rates of STI’s in the nation.
I think oftentimes we have a chance to turn negative events into positive life lessons and in this way earn ourselves some good Karma. My goal in sharing this story with you is to give you a chance to learn the lesson the easy way because I did not. I have since learned that, yes, condoms come in different sizes and being “too big” is not a good enough excuse for me to engage in unprotected sex. We could have stuck with less riskier acts if he really couldn’t fit into any condoms I had, such as manual sex.
I have also learned the importance of staying honest with myself; to be confident with the boundaries I set even at the risk of upsetting him or damping the ardor. Because honestly, what’s more important? I am turned off when someone dismisses efforts I make to keep myself safe. I didn’t like how that felt nor did I ignore the power disparity I attributed to our gender difference. I am someone of very small stature and he was an easy counterpart to Hercules. This taught me a huge lesson in trust and the boundaries I must set and communicate when there is a lack of it. From the moment he refused to wear a condom I had trouble ever feeling safe around him. I can see now that that was due to how reckless I truly found his decision to not go through the trouble of supplying the right size condom for himself! Or use it!
Stay safe,
The Sexpert