The house of those years mentioned in my previous blog, of course was about a lot more than sex, flirting and relationships.  The chaos that results from a bunch of guys forming bonds that are to last a lifetime certainly leads to a number of stories, and I was just a lone girl thrown into the mix.  Two showers clogged after a night of mud wrestling.  Blue stains all over the floor after Jell-o wrestling.   Discovering some amazing artistic talents painted on the walls, and the opposite written in chalk in the downstairs urinal.  And the stories go on and on, but this is after all a relationship blog, so these stories will just have to wait for another time and place. 

Liquid courage allows you to act on the impulses that you many keep hidden.  This was a house that actually had a liquor storage room and a beer machine.  Plus a whole bunch of bedrooms and couches.  It was a recipe for exploration and experimentation.  Hours were spent watching the “free” porn that suddenly appeared on the downstairs TV.  Nothing is quite like sitting in a basement drinking beer surrounded by a bunch of guys watching 70’s bush on roller skates.  It really taught me to be less afraid of nudity and porn.  Here were a bunch of guys watching it, laughing, hanging out and there was no stress.  It was not cheating, or idealizing woman, it was sex on TV, period.  It was actually on 24 hours a day for so long, you almost forgot it was even there.  It became a natural staple of the house, and the boys were pretty upset when one day it just went away.  So the house provided a very good thing, and that was to teach me porn was not evil.  But there were down sides to being surrounded by all these guys too.

I always knew that I wanted outside attention, but the stigma that I would be called a cheating slut, or a tease kept me in line.  But it did not make me happy.  The Bro code was a major factor in keeping those closest to me from making a move.  And when you are young and trying to accept how you look it was a challenge.  I had always heard that girls were objectified, and sexualized, but that just was never the case for me.  It puzzled me that in the eyes of the guys who knew me best I was not somebody they wanted to sleep with.  Instead I played a role where I could speak my mind, have opinions and challenge the best of them, but never be a sexual person.  I felt on some level that once guys got to know me, they would no longer want to sleep with me.  That I was more of a guys guy versus an attractive female.  When I went out into the real world, not surrounded by these men who regarded me as something other than I was, I felt confused.  It was a shock to my system each and every time a guy would hold my glance.  Or stare at me as a walked away, woman too for that matter. 

I often wonder, if I was freer to flirt, or if the guys around me could have flirted with me, how things would have turned out.  Clearly much differently, and I probably would not have such amazing friends from that time in my life.  That house has held many secrets, and very few of them are mine. The amount of Eskimo brothers (another League Reference) that have resulted from those days is quite impressive, and I wonder if the guys even know who they all are.   I watched this all go down around me, and perhaps I thought that I was above it all or not worthy of that kind of attention.  That I would never make those mistakes, and that living vicariously through my peers was enough.  But it turns out, I was naive.  I played the good girl, the innocent one, the spectator who watched almost everything.  And yet here I am realizing that it was all an act, and I could have had so much more fun than I did.  I do not say that with regret, more the knowledge that perhaps I needed the stability of monogamy to help me get through all the challenges and hurdles that life was throwing at me in those days.

I feel a little alone at times without the safety of that house, and I miss all that happened there, the good and the bad.  That group of guys that I saw on an almost daily basis and now I run into by chance alone.  The lessons learned both in the house and when I joined the real world.  I feel like I lost a little of who I was when that house closed it doors.  Now all I can do is look back on lessons learned, but face the future with the knowledge of the past while running towards my new adventures.