Not a prerequisite but a precursor.

Since I came to Boston, my troubles in life have really shifted from "help, boys don't like me, what do I do?" to "help, boys like me, what do I do?" The second problem is obviously a much better one to have, but also much more complex in its management.

So one of my new rules (extremely breakable, but in effect unless I decide otherwise) is that I will not get sweaty with a guy until we have some sort of intimacy. Now, "intimacy" to me doesn't mean "I wuv u 4eva, u r my cuddlebear." It's more like "you're not a total fucking stranger." It means we've spoken and touched in a nonsexual way first and we feel like we know each other to some degree. Lately I've been really needing my friends-with-benefits to be friends--someone I have at least some enjoyable pants-on interactions with.

From the outside, I think this could be mistaken as trading sex for intimacy. As if I really just wanted guys to take me to dinner and cuddle with me, and I was willing to tolerate the rest of it. It's a well-worn stereotype that us ladypeople just put up with sex because it's sort of like being hugged.

But for me, it's more of a peanut butter and jelly situation. (I have a new favorite metaphor.) I'm not tolerating peanut butter to eat jelly, I'm enjoying the synergy. Sex is better with guys I feel some connection with. But here's the thing: I don't mean fuzzy-wuzzy lovey-dovey better. I mean orgasms better.

If a guy is human to me, if I know about how he broke his leg when he was little and he keeps a cat even though he's allergic, that makes him sexier. It makes me get wetter for him faster, it makes me grind on him harder, it makes me swallow his cock deeper. I want that former broken-legged-kid inside me. Sometimes inside my ass. Telling me that you're from Connecticut originally but you moved up here for college isn't awkward chitchat or time-wasting; it's part of the mysterious alchemy that leads up to "I want you to fuck me until it hurts."

So my problem with anonymous sex, with the supposed eroticism of "I don't even want to know your name, baby," isn't that I'm secretly angling for a white picket fence. It's that I won't come nearly as hard.