By Alice Creighton, Special to the Journal, with additional commentary by Cordia Paxson
*Trigger Warning: This story includes aspects of sexual assault and grooming of a minor.
I knew that I would have sex before marriage. My mother is a traditional Mexican woman with true Catholic beliefs. I think she knew this too. I had my first boyfriend when I was fourteen. It was what people call “puppy love.” I loved him because he loved me, and vice versa. We knew everything about each other — all the important stuff, such as our favorite colors, our favorite foods (and least favorite, though he was pickier, so it was harder to keep track), etc. All the less important stuff, like our values, goals, thoughts, feelings, and so on, was not important to us. How could they have been? We loved each other because we were each other’s best friends. We eventually grew apart, dated other people, and all went well. Life moved on.
However, it’s harder with situationships. Situationships are the downfall of my generation; it’s when two people are texting, going on dates, and having sex, but not technically in a relationship. Despite the lack of an actual relationship, having to be loyal is key, or they’ll resent you for cheating on them. In reality, you couldn’t have cheated because you were never truly together in the first place. It’s complicated, tiring, and emotionally exhausting.
I was in a situationship for nearly a year with my brother’s best friend. His name is Tod. He was half-Greek, an introvert, emo, and 100% out of my league. I met him in the summer when I was going into the sixth grade, and he was going into the eighth. It was a summer afternoon, and he came to knock on my kitchen door. Technically, I wasn’t allowed to open the door to strangers, but he seemed young enough not to be considered a danger. I opened the door and asked, “Who are you?” He stared at me for what felt like hours but only responded by saying, “Let me talk to Ritchie.” Stern, confident, and extremely rude. The audacity of this kid. So there I went to fetch my older brother and tried listening to their conversation, but Tod had walked further away from the door because he saw me peeking through the window. Turns out he just wanted Ritchie to play basketball with him.
Years went by, and I reached out to him by saying happy birthday, the most foolproof plan ever. We started texting, calling, and getting to know each other; all the non-important things. The biggest red flag I ignored was that he only wanted to see me at nighttime, because he had school and a job. So the only time we ever saw each other was at night. The first time we hung out was in a park around 10 p.m. (I had snuck out), talking for three hours on the swings, lying down on the slides, and eventually, I was so tired I went back home. This continued for a couple of weeks, until he invited me to his house.
Now I had visited Tod’s house thousands of times because of Ritchie, but not once had my foot stepped inside his room… until now. When I entered his room, all I could think about was my mom praising me for being such a great daughter. All the adrenaline I had at that moment was the guilt of being at a place where I shouldn’t be. His room was perfect in the most imperfect way. He had a wall full of legendary albums such as Kanye West’s Graduation (his favorite) or Joey Bada$$’s 1999, along with Sonic the Hedgehog sitting on his bed. All his little knick-knacks were arranged in chronological order in which he received and/or bought them. He had the infamous LED strip lights hanging along his ceiling. His sheets were black, his second-favorite color, and his bathroom was shockingly clean fora guy. Tod is an only child who lived with his Greek single dad, Ron, who was just as handsome as Tod was. I was never properly introduced to his dad, thankfully, but I had one solid conversation with him while working at Home Depot that went along the lines of “Do you have a ProXtra account with us?” followed by “Your total is $53.66” and ending with “Have a nice day.” Extremely heartfelt, one could say.
Tod is a man of few words, so one thing led to another, and I was on his bed at 2 a.m. on a Thursday night. In Sharon Olds’s Sex without Love, she creates the perfect image when she says “…Beautiful as dancers, /gliding over each other like ice-skaters/over the ice.” I remember coming home that night and realizing that he was the first person I had truly been vulnerable with. I hadn’t lied my way through our conversations as I often did with others and, most importantly, I had felt seen and heard; something a teenager can only yearn for when their mom won’t let them go to their friend’s house on a school night. It was interesting. For the longest time, I thought that he held me because he was intrigued by who I was, not what I was. Olds captures the feeling of being used in lines 1-2 when saying, “How do they do it, the ones who make love/without love?” Tod knew that I was so captivated by him, and he played that to his advantage.
I never realized that Tod never saw me the way I saw him, not until I brought up the idea of becoming “official.” Officially, my boyfriend and his girlfriend. He worked tirelessly to come up with reasons why we would not be good together. Yet I still stayed. And he kept asking to see me. After that discussion, sex wasn’t the same. It was empty like a vase without flowers. As cold as a January morning walk. Distant, like trying to touch the moon. There was no positive outcome, and I knew that — still, I had hope and gripped on to it for as long as possible. In lines 16-17, Olds says “…They do not/ mistake the lover for their own pleasure…” describing people who can have casual sex and have no emotional attachment, like Tod. I truly never understood how he was able to participate in something so intimate with another person and feel absolutely nothing except for temporary pleasure.
I resent Tod in a way I don’t even resent my father. He was able to top the one other person in my life that I thought deserved the worst at the time. I was nothing but another task in his life. A box next to my name waiting to be checked, like in lines 21-25, Olds says “…just factors, like the partner/ in the bed, and not the truth, which is the/ single body alone in the universe/ against its own best time.” Olds compares the person in the poem to an athlete, where the only thing they worry about is their own performance and pleasure, ignoring what matters the most.
Thankfully, I have learned. It has not happened to me again, and I pray that it won’t. It’s hard to tell these days. I just hope that one day, I don’t have sex without love.
Alice Creighton is a pseudonym for a Pellissippi State student.
Alice, thank you for your honest vulnerability. I know, as most do, that speaking from the heart on things that have hurt us is not an easy thing. Especially when talking about sex and love the way you so beautifully did. Truthfully, this has been on my mind a lot recently. Like most students here, I am at that crucial age where relationships become a huge part of my life; navigating my wants and needs is a constant struggle. That is why I think it is so important to share our experiences, and it is the ultimate reason I wanted to start Dear Cordia. Thank you again for being brave.
Love,
Cordia Paxson
Disclaimer: Getting support from friends, family, or a counselor when navigating relationships is vital. This article is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional counseling or crisis support. If you are experiencing a personal crisis, emotional distress, or feel you may need counseling, please reach out to the Pellissippi State Counseling Services at counseling@pstcc.edu or call 865.694.6480 for support. If you are in immediate crisis, please call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 to connect with help right away. Additionally, if you are in an unsafe situation, please call the Pellissippi State Campus Police at 865.694.6649, available 24/7. As a reminder, campus police encourage students to add this number to phone contacts in the case of an emergency. You can also text “PSCCTIPS” to 67283 for an Anonymous Safety Tip.
