twenty-four: the girlfriend experience vs. the girl friend experience

a Tulum tale told twice

I recently had a very unique experience of reuniting with friends and revisiting Tulum, a place that I’m sure many would describe as enlightening, where they’ve “found” themselves, learn to manifest their own journeys or some bullshit. Tulum does indeed hold a special place in my heart, for a much different reason: it’s where I’ve completely unravelled in the most chaotic of ways.

The side-effects seem to have nudged me (realistically it’s felt more like a forcefully shove) towards a direction of growth, a kick in the pants I didn’t know I needed. Overall, the repercussions largely outweighed the immense discomfort I felt during my time spent there. If only I could’ve known that in the peak of those challenging moments.

The most recent experience, started out pretty characteristic for me in Tulum. A delayed flight resulting in a 2am arrival to a barren airport after an already long day of travel, the scheduled and prepaid shuttle never arrived, we were hustled at the airport for what we thought was a direct drive to Tulum, but were instead unceremoniously dropped off at the Cancun bus station. After finding out the next bus out was a mere two hours away, my travel partner succumbed and paid an exorbitant amount for a two hour cab ride to the Airbnb, only to discover we were given the wrong access code to get in. Starving, exhausted and at our wit’s end we took refuge on the rooftop couches, that were only mildly moist from the jungle rain, backdropped by the rising sun, a plethora of Tchernobyl-sized moths, and a cacophony of coyotes cackling as they do, but goddamn did it sure feel personal.

I figured, well we got that out of the way — the Mayan gods have done their usual graceful initiation and we can continue this journey of healing that this month in Mexico has been. My naïveté knows no bounds.

After having to say a teary and hungover goodbye to my partner-in-healing, another friend came to join me. As in we were friends, but in truth, he was a former lover — a former lover that once met me in Tulum for a romantic getaway. I truly didn’t think this would be anything other than a nostalgic but platonic reunion.

Let’s just rewind real quick, and let me tell you about my first time in Tulum.

Twenty-four and I met in first year of University. He was a friend of a friend, and we mostly just hung out and got stoned in our residence courtyard. Second year, we’d meet up at bars to drink and dance and there was definitely some chemistry there but I was too young and unsure how to handle it, not to mention in love with someone else, and he was too much of a nice guy to make the first move. At some point we lost touch, he moved to California I heard, and I figured I’d never see him again.

Enter Instagram and the dm slide.

He began following me, we stirred up conversation to what I only imagined would eventually end cordially after the typical “hey long time, how’ve you been, what are you up to, where do you live, yada yada…”. To my surprise, it did not. We continued chatting, and I was increasingly getting excited to receive his responses. Ruh-roh. Fast forward a couple of months to flirting and some light sexting, he suggests we meet in Mexico. I’d heard a lot about Tulum and desperately wanted to avoid an all-inclusive type of experience and so we booked a flight and a shared accommodation. The owner of our Airbnb had possibly some of the worst taste I’ve ever seen, and opted to decorate it with obscene amounts of glittery hearts and candy-apple red accents, marketing it as a “Intimate Romantic Studio for two…”

In retrospect, I think a little bit of me gets off on these potentially disastrous situations: meeting a near stranger, after 10 years, in a tropical getaway stuck together in a one-room-one-bed-cheesy-as-tits accommodation. What could possibly go wrong? Maybe because I don’t watch reality tv shows, I tend to throw myself into them IRL.

I thought out a million possible versions of us meeting up like a seventh grade girl. I fantasized about this unlikely but romantic story making it to NYT’s Modern Love column, written by yours truly of course. I was as excited as I was nervous. I could handle it if he didn’t have feelings for me, we would still bang most likely and go our own ways with an interesting story. I was mostly anxious about not liking him, and it’s very much one of those things that I have no control over or determine unless I’m with them in the flesh. Could the brief chemistry we had a decade prior carry forward?And if it didn’t, how would I nicely convey that I’m just not feeling it after everything leading up to it, getting on flights to see each other, and committing to a week-long first date.

March 16th 2018 journal entry

I’m meeting an old friend. A very old friend. Arguably so old, I don’t remember much about him. Or, at least every time I try the vague memories become more and more unclear, and slip away.

Which makes this whole thing even crazier. It’s not rooted on a close friendship with someone I had and lost touch with, although the latter part is certainly true. It’s rooted in a fleeting flirtation ten years ago. That’s the Cole’s notes version of it anyway. The part of our story that we both know and can agree on.

The unabridged version is that, this fleeting flirtation occurred in the worst three months of my life. My second year of University, first semester. [to be continued in another article.]

Why am I on this trip?

Could it be a subconscious desire to relive everything, the way I felt I deserved before my entire life was shattered as I knew it? Could it be I was feeling relatively uninspired in my romantic life that I had to do something so terrifying to really mix it up? Could it be my loud mouth, or texting-hands got myself into a situation so tempting, even I couldn’t resist? Maybe I just missed the 3-day dates I’m (historically) so fond of.

Perhaps yet, I just wanted to go on a 7-day sexcation.

WHO THE FUCK KNOWS.

It’s been a really really long time since I’ve pulled a stunt like this, of throwing myself into something so uncomfortable, I have no choice but to just roll with it.

It feels nice.

The week went by as smoothly as I could’ve hoped for, a little awkward in the beginning as trying to assess how I felt about it led me to be more in my head than my body. He was relaxed, eager to engage in activities, and got along with my friends, that also happen to be in town, and unintentionally were my safety net if I needed one.

And thankfully, I was into him - making the whole situation a lot less uncomfortable for me. It was nice waking up with someone, of starting your day together as a team and factoring in someone else into your decisions. It was new to me, and hadn’t yet become taxing. Perhaps because I braced myself for the worst and had little to no expectations, that I chose to ignore the little things. How I wish he’d hold my hand, or sit closer, initiate intimacy or prioritize my pleasure as I remember clearly a time he had finished, and asked if I was going to join him in the shower. I wish I had had the courage then to tell him, “once I finish making myself cum I guess” but didn’t want to risk hurting his ego by highlighting his sexual inadequacies. In truth, it wasn’t an inadequacy at all but a blatant lack of reciprocity and as I lay there naked, sticky, and infuriated, I recognized the mark of a man who hasn’t been in a long term relationship.

I have never, and will never underestimate the work of another woman having to educate a man on how to pleasure a woman and how it is absolutely mandatory for you to make a damn effort to make her cum. It is all part of the emotional and sexual labour that doesn’t get enough praise but I see you ladies, and me and my vagina thank you.

We parted ways amicably, and developed a genre of relationship of convenience- if we were both in the same city, single and interested we’d reconvene our arrangement, but otherwise maintained a friendly but flirty report. Since our initial time in Tulum, he had stayed over in Toronto, I had gone to visit him in Sacramento, and driven down hwy. 1 along the coast, camped in Big Sur, and met my friends in LA.

Regardless, I had zero concerns about anything being weird this time, despite everyone asking me if it was going to be “weird”. I had no interest in pursuing anything romantic and that’s all that I was concerned with.

It became shockingly clear to me how much I had come into my own in the years that have gone by. I was no longer willing to make space for a man’s anxieties, second guesses, insecurities or other. That was girlfriend territory — and I was no girlfriend to him. That space was reserved for my travel-wife and her alone at this point.

That growth, and consequentially the tension it created, was palpable. My inability to feign interest, laugh at the right times, or pander to someone else’s desires on my trip seemed to surprise him, and slightly irk him.

Granted, perhaps he’d never seen me this way. By the tail end of this trip I had healed some deep wounds from my family, relationships and depression from the everlasting pandemic. I was and am feeling more like myself, and a better version of myself than I had in a very very long time. I was absolutely, in no way going to let a boy come into my space and fuck it all up.

When it dawned that I was not bending to Twenty-four’s will, he retreated, and sought the attention of another young traveller. That’s putting it mildly, he disengaged entirely from our group and focused his attention on her and was, dare I say, flirting. Must’ve been some conversation because if he has looked at me at any moment, the fury conveyed in my eyes was enough to make his dick shrivel and fall off in fear.

I was equally appalled at the audacity and impressed at such risky maneuver. Didn’t think you had it in you, Twenty-four. As any adult woman can attest to, this is the grown man’s equivalent of a temper tantrum.

It wasn’t just the sheer ignorance of why blatantly hitting on another girl in front of me might be a bad idea, nor the fact that I had to further explain to him the following day why that was inappropriate, whilst simultaneously having to convince him, “no I actually don’t have feelings for you get over yourself”. It was just the cherry, topped onto a mille-feuille of smaller annoyances: of expecting me to accommodate him, pay for us when he didn’t come prepared with cash (a burden required of a girlfriend- and yet once again, I was not) smothering me in bed the night before when I didn’t feel like being touched, and dismissing my experience and knowledge of the city (and my friends’ who were current residents in Tulum and hosting both of us) when it didn’t line up with his own vision of what he expected from this trip.

It was this level of chaos, man-childness, and lack of self-awareness that I was evading from the Toronto dating scene, not to mention wanting to distance myself of that itching feeling of lusting for a party.

If I had to experience one very baffling night that I truly will never make sense of (nor have any desire to if I’m going to be frank), for me to realize my own capacity to create space and to accommodate for someone I care about, how much patience I can exhibit, and conversely my resolve to maintain my boundaries when the realization that I’ve outgrown someone inevitably sinks in- well, I wouldn’t necessarily consider that a loss.

This month in Mexico has been in large about reopening old wounds, and healing these smaller fragmented parts of myself and the last few days only reaffirmed that. Three very emotionally charged periods of my life occurred there, and I feel proud that I’ve chosen my own well-being above all, executed agency in how I spend my energy and with who; an empowering way to close out this chapter.