This is a story of color-changing flags. 

Last night, I booty-called someone for the first time. The lucky recipient of this badge of honor was a new guy I’ve just started “dating,” Casey. I wrote about him in my last post, literally last night, before said booty-call.

To review, Casey has basically been a walking green flag since our first interaction. He’s been great to talk to and seems very honest and authentic. Our chemistry has been great over text and in person. I was super into him after our date the other night, and when we both were available last night I decided to just go for it. It was his idea, technically, so I would call it a mutual booty-call. But nothing had changed since our date, and our conversation before our date, in which he let me know very honestly that he doesn’t feel emotionally available right now. I decided to just enjoy whatever happened anyway, and that’s where we were at when he came over last night. 

I don’t know how to really explain what happened, because I don’t fully understand it myself. But for some reason, the chemistry I had felt before was strangely absent. I barely felt any flutters of excitement or arousal, much to my dismay. I still enjoyed being with him, but it wasn’t the fire that I’d felt before and I was unpleasantly surprised by that. 

As our time together progressed, I started to feel like some of the green flags I’d been seeing were changing color. Was he really telling me about his lack of emotional availability out of a desire to be transparent, and concern for my feelings? Or, was he playing some reverse psychology game to earn my trust? Some of his stories from his past in regards to his treatment of women struck me as less than ideal. It would be one thing if he seemed regretful of his mistakes and had learned from them, but the way he explained a lot of things put his respect for women into question, in my mind.

Casey hasn’t done anything egregious, to be clear. I don’t want to put him on blast. I still think he’s a nice guy, and that he does care about my feelings and generally wants to treat people well. So I won’t go into detail about those stories, out of respect of the care I still have for him as a person. 

But the thing that really flipped the dial for me from “awooga” to “thank you, next” was a phenomenon I will hereby designate as the Weak-Ass Bitch Period Crash-Out. You see, there are people who menstruate in this world—quite a few of them in fact. Oftentimes, people who don’t menstruate are sexually interested in people who do, and as such, it seems reasonable for such individuals to develop a healthy respect and level of comfortability with natural bodily processes such as this. It seems pretty damn sensible for people to be comfortable with the bodies of people that they’re fucking, and especially with the specific body parts that they’re enjoying intimate contact with. 

To put it simply, if a guy can’t handle the sight of period blood, then maybe he should stay away from vaginas. I’m not saying I expect guys to be down for eating out a partner during spicy taco week—I’m just saying that if getting blood on your condom-sheathed dick is going to horrify you, then maybe you aren’t mature enough to be having sex. And if getting your hands dirty is beyond your comfort level, then maybe you should be keeping them to yourself. 

A guy definitely shouldn’t decide to be intimate with someone who menstruates, and then be caught off-guard when told that that person is currently menstruating. (Fun fact, people who menstruate on average spend about a quarter of their life bleeding during those years of their lives. That means that there’s basically always a one-in-four chance that a person who menstruates will be bleeding at any given time). 

He definitely definitely shouldn’t warily proceed to have sex with an actively bleeding partner and then, upon discovering that there is in fact blood in evidence, turn sheet white, frantically start cleaning themselves off, and then immediately shut down that sexual encounter. (Oh, and that’s after they already came, but their partner didn’t yet.)

It’s straight up shitty to make a sexual partner feel gross for having a normally functioning human body. And it’s super sketchy to claim that you want to do whatever you can to help your partner orgasm, but then in reality you stop after ten minutes because you’re “too tired,” or worse because you’re disgusted by period blood. 

So uh yeah… I don’t think Casey is a bad person, really. But I do think that this experience wasn’t a good look for him, and unfortunately changed how I feel about him significantly. 

I don’t need anything from him; I never did, as much as I enjoyed that first night. And now, I don’t want anything either. 

Moving. Right. Along. 

(Oh… and by the way. He hasn’t said hello or checked up on me today. That’s part of the basic after-care that I would expect from any partner, casual or not.)