Dry Humping

Both an activity and title to love and cherish

As there is not a cloud in the sky, it’s a good day to spread a sheet out on the sand and listen to the waves. I am a slave to the coastal weather patterns since the fog rolls in and out throughout the summer. It is now that I live and die by the words, ‘Sun’s out, buns out.’ It’s a Saturday, so the strip of Solimar beach is heavy with families, dogs and even a badminton net. I lay on my zebra print towel to read

Tawny Lara

’s Dry Humping in between cooling dips in the Pacific. I remind myself that I’m a woman almost halfway to a hundred so I can read about any kind of humping I want on this beach or any beach on Saturday or Wednesday or even the lord’s day.

The book reads as though Tawny were an older sister who’s been through it and wants you to know that dating, sex, romance, friendships, missionary with deep eye-contact, or being contentedly asexual without liquid courage is going to be okay, and heck, it’s actually going to be even better. So many of us started our sex and dating journeys while under the influence of booze. This is one of the more instructional books, like This Naked Mind even though it’s peppered with colorful personal stories, and I’m impressed and jealous that she has so many friends to write about. It holds your hand through all the magic of dating and romance, and I am delighted that her first order is for me to date myself since that is the least likely to end in the never-ending hell of limerence.

The favorite sober sexpert doesn’t bring up pegging until page 80, and though that might be scary for some she is inclusive enough to acknowledge that missionary enthusiasts are just as deserving and capable of love as everyone else. I always imagine sexperts prescribing whips and chains and sex swings, but that’s not what this is (even though kinks are welcome). This is about embracing and respecting yourself where you are and coming to terms with what you and your partner want in the bedroom. She highlights that the only thing about alcohol that makes it aphrodisiac is that it inhibits our instincts to protect ourselves, by reducing inhibitions but also our senses and increases sexual dysfunction.

One of the best messages of Dry Humping is the importance of intrinsic confidence and the way a life of sobriety fortifies this for us.

“The outsourcing of our confidence to alcohol does a disservice to our psyche, as it continuously reinforces the idea the alcohol is a viable shortcut to confidence. Not only are you missing out on countless ways to build self-confidence, but you’re also hindering your ability to grow. You grow by doing challenging things, not by being drunk or buzzed to get through the tough stuff.” page 23

I just had the craziest thought about this book. Imagine someone writes its opposite. How to use alcohol to find sex, love, and lasting relationships. That’s basically the accepted script and a big reason why so many people are messed up. I’ve been on dates where the guy pushes more and more drinks on me and seen it happen at the restaurants where I work as well. It’s gross and bad. My favorite part of this book was Tawny’s ideas for sober dates. There is something about sober dating that is so wholesome I want to cry. Her tips make me think about the times before “adulthood,” when dating was more than just going out to eat and drink, when you would meet up at the roller rink or the miniature golf course to share time together. Alcohol is such a cheater code to connection that people so often find themselves bound to people that they like to party with but don’t actually like. 

Three quarters of the way through the book, I get to a mic drop passage, the kind that simultaneously makes me feel called out on my shit while pointing out that it’s not original. She writes, “Getting alcohol out of your conflicts may also help you decide when to stop fighting and walk away. When I was drinking I saw romantic partners as projects. Sobriety, therapy, and learning about codependence taught me that these ‘fixer-upper’ opportunities were really red flags. I had so little self-esteem that I thought I needed liquid courage to feel confident, yet I also put myself on such a pedestal that I thought it was my job to fix other people. Perhaps having a relationship project was a coping skill, a way to deflect my issues.” p.165

Sobriety magnified this issue for me because it pulled back the curtain on what I was actually feeling in any given moment. The constant numbing when my ex and I were drinking could dull our perception enough so that the problems in the relationship weren’t that big of a deal, but once whiskey and beer were out of the picture, it was like the fog had dissipated and the spotlight on all the mess put a real burn on it, and us.

There was an unintended consequence of reading this book. I revisitied the fantasy I’ve been having about release day. Like romantic love and dating and everything that society sells as normal, I saw what book release day looks like as this one accepted script. I realize the way I want to celebrate the publication of my memoir. Tawny’s descriptions of different ideas for first and subsequent dates as something other than just sitting across a table with drinks got me thinking that I don’t want to sit inside on book release day. I don’t even want to go to a bookstore and read in front of a bunch of people sitting in chairs. For now, the thought of anything like that  gives me anxiety, and feels very deeply like something I don’t want to do. I have this idea to have a book release walk. There’s a stroll I take in my story, that is my favorite to do when I have a long stretch of time ahead of me. There’s a park with an ocean view where we can stop and have a picnic and a reading. People can come and go as they like. Even if it just ends up being me and my sisters and moms, especially if those are the only people, that’s going to be exactly what I want. That’s another one of those unintended and unexpected things that arrives like a gift with sobriety. It becomes almost impossible to settle for anything less than exactly what you want.