Fucking without titles. Oh, the perils of fucking without titles. Over time, I've changed my mind around a thousand times about this issue. Sometimes, it seems that people who fuck around for an extended period of time without a commitment are just biding their time until something better comes along. Other times, it's a valid rebellion against all the responsibility that comes with the title "girlfriend." After all, we all have a little Shane in us. All I know is that fucking without a title this time around left me shunned from the New York dyke scene with all my shit out on the street.


When I'm a girlfriend, I tend to be a girlfriend squared. I mean this both literally and figuratively. In other words, monogamy renders me enveloped in an alternately utopic and suffocating wave of girlfrienddom, to which my family, friends and career take backseat, which is not hot. I am notorious amongst my friends for being guilty of the "hos before bros" charge. If you're my girlfriend, I'll devote myself to you entirely, but not in a creepy way (or so I'd like to think). Like Uma Thurman in My Super Ex-Girlfriend, but the opposite. I'll also spend an unhealthy amount of time on your couch in your t-shirts, watching your cable and eating your cereal, and thus, become square-shaped. Or maybe more round.


Either way, you get the idea. And we're all familiar with the old adage "you can't fit a square peg in a round hole." I become square and want nothing to do with your round hole, if you know what I mean.


Long-term monogamy leaves me bored and lethargic. As sad as this sounds, empirically speaking, it's been my truth. And so recently, when my on-again, off-again girlfriend demanded monogamy for the 90th time, I said no way. Not a chance in hell. "I love you, baby," I said, "but I don't want to be a girlfriend." And I meant it. I think she hoped I was just saying it, that maybe I'd change my mind. But I wasn't, and I wouldn't, so things came to a head. I went out of town for a weekend with another girl, and everything went to hell. I came back to threats, to angry texts, to several tattered garbage bags filled with my stuff laying out on the street. Cool.

My ex and all of her friends either bartend or go-go dance at roughly every dyke party around town. And suddenly I'm satan reincarnate. But I'm not here to throw myself a pity party. You can't have your cake and eat it too, I've come to realize... and by cake I mean your ex-gf's choch and others, too. I'm not trying to make myself out to be some sort of heartbreaker. I've had my heart broken, too; and I should have seen it coming. I had my heart shattered into a million little pieces by a girl who evaded titles for a solid two months. We spent every second together and called each other obsessively, but there was something about the title "girlfriend" that she found to be repellent. We went on to date for close to three years, but her initial hesitance should have foreshadowed our downfall.

I may sound jaded, but after enduring 10 years of the ups and downs that title-free romantic escapades (sporadically interjected betwixt committed relationships) spawn, I can honestly say that I don't believe that slow and steady wins the race. I think it's an initial crazy passion that evolves into something deeper, or an old-fashioned case of "she's just not that into you." Or vice versa.