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ELIZABETH WEILL-GREENBERG COMMENTS
 
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about dating anyone else,” she wrote. “Sometimes in order to feel
confident I need to feel wanted.”
Rather than falling into black-and-white categories, no one interviewed said
they follow a strictly “cautious” or overtly “cavalier”
code of conduct when it comes to sex.
For Kate, a 24-year-old event coordinator in D.C., dating and sex are not “synonymous.”
“It’s difficult to find a girl you really do just want to date
— minus the sex,” she wrote in the Blade survey. “So many
girls I’ve dated were simply ‘booty calls.’ And that wasn’t
considered a date for me.”
How far a person goes depends on the level of the relationship, as well as
attraction. Kate only gives oral sex to women she is in a relationship with
but will penetrate women she sees more casually.
Mike, a 39-year-old administrative coordinator in D.C., says that he will only
engage in bondage, role-playing and spanking with men he has an emotional connection
with.
At first glance, it may appear that a popular stereotype is true: approaches
to sex are based on gender. But sex is never as simple as that.
Lisa, a 32-year-old bisexual in D.C. who works in advertising, said that she
tries to wait longer to have sex with women than with men.
“The sexual outcome with men is what I crave so I’ll go all the
way as quickly as possible,” she wrote. “With women, I’ll
take my time, remain patient but end up going most of the way.”
Much more than gender, age appears to be one of the biggest determining factors
for people who wait to have sex and people who don’t. Several women said
that they leaned more toward sex for its own sake when they were younger, and
just as many men said they become choosier as the years go by.
Mike said that now relationships take priority over casual sex.
“I have gotten more cautious and less free because a relationship is
more important to me now and sex is less and less satisfying with new people
than when I was younger,” he wrote in the survey.
Experience has taught Dan, a 40-year-old gay D.C. business owner, the art of
patience and caution. In his 20s, he assumed that a sexual attraction meant
happily ever after.
“If you showed any interest in me at all, I had U-haul on the phone and
the monogrammed his and his towels were at the ready,” he wrote. “But
they were the unhealthy, unrequited meanderings of a screwed up kid. I didn’t
date in high school when all the straight kids did, so I never got that skill
when I should have.”
But, for Adena, she tends to wait less now than she did before.
“Right now, I’m in a slightly more open phase. Maybe that’s
just part of growing up, being as I’m now 21 and have had my fair share
of relationships where I waited until the ‘right moment,’ she
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