Sex 2.0 and the City

Sex 2.0

For the last few issues, Sex 2.0 has been exploring some of sex’s metaphysics. For a change, I’d like to, in full tribute to my fictional counterpart Carrie Bradshaw, bring up a real-life example of a full-on sexual conundrum that recently confronted several friends of mine. It goes like this. (To avoid being divorced permanently as a friend, I’m going to change the names of the parties involved. Here we go.) Charles met Esmerelda this past May. The meeting, occurring under such blissful vernal auspices, all but assured a torrid summer fling. Sure enough, a casual friendship quickly blossomed into an explosive sexual relationship. The early days of May gave way to summer; Charles and Esmerelda spent two months banging like bonobos, their fling progressing steadily from friendly and physical to passionate and intimate. All looked good for a long, successful relationship for the happy pair. The one catch? Charles was slated to head west in September, to work in the land without a soul industrial purgatory known as Alberta. And so he did. Here’s where it all went to shit. Charles and Esmerelda set out with the intention of staying together, of weathering the long-distance storm by visiting each other at holidays, until they were re-united once more. In place of their intensely physical relationship, the pair tried to keep things hot over Skype and via text message. And this sufficed for a little while. Esmerelda’s life in St. John’s remained fully booked with school and social engagements, while Charles’ datebook was virtually empty aside from his work. Charles grew lonelier and his need for Esmerelda’s companionship intensified significantly. And then it happened: Esmerelda met Igor, a roguish young man who attended school with her. She tried to remain faithful to her wayward summer romance, but the possibility of a tangible, flesh-and-blood relationship with Igor was too much to pass up. In short, the sparks flew, and they started seeing each other. Nothing about the story up until this point should elicit much surprise from anyone reading this: Practically all of it conforms to one cliché or another. But Igor was a good friend of Charles’, and that’s where shit started to get real. Esmerelda broke it off with Charles and announced that she was beginning a relationship with Igor. And Charles, alone in the frozen wastes of northern Alberta, suffered immense heartbreak. In a grief response typical of males, Charles lost his shit at Esmerelda and Igor, converting heartache into vitriol, which he hurled at his former girl and her new beau, his (former) good friend. (Do you see how this stuff is tangly now?) This heap of drama and broken friendships brings to light a number of questions. Who’s in the wrong, out of these three? Is Esmerelda, because she couldn’t stay faithful to Charles? Is Igor, for violating the “bros before hos” maxim? Is Charles, for failing to understand Esmerelda’s incapacity to provide him with constant emotional support in his loneliness? Are any of them wrong? What should they all do now? The reality is, as much as I style myself a sex columnist, I haven’t got a definitive answer to any of these questions. And perhaps there isn’t one. The specter of sexual attraction is hard to drive out, whether it be thwarted by distance, or geographically possible, but socially reprehensible. The one thing I know is that, since all three of the characters in my story are friends of mine, it grieves me to see them (and by extension, as confidant, myself) involved in this strife. If we were to extract a moral from the story, I think it’d be that, in the words of Pat Benatar, love is indeed a battlefield. And sometimes we can’t choose our opponents or our allies.

Got advice for Esmerelda, Igor, and Charles? Think you know better than me? Email chief@themuse.ca.