For the first part of my life I could hardly talk about sex, even with people I was having sex with. In high school, I even had a huge mental block about swearing, to the point where when I did a report on The Handmaid’s Tale and its internal motto of “don’t let the bastards grind you down” I was unsure whether I would be able to bring myself to say the word ‘bastard’ in front of my class. Likewise, with my high school boyfriend I’m pretty sure I was creepy intense about making out all the time (I was horny as hell) but also completely unable to articulate what I wanted. I’m not sure why any of this self-repression happened–I wasn’t raised religious or anything like that–other than I was brought up to be incredibly polite (a gentleman, as P says) and I think I ran with that farther than my well-meaning mother would have ever anticipated. (She expressed frustration at my inability to say “tampon” to her; I was majorly fucked up, no?) It didn’t help that at the time I full-on hated almost everything about myself. It was a fucked-up time in my life, although at most I would have said it was screwed up and probably I wouldn’t have said anything at all, as I was also even quieter than I am now.
In college I “discovered” feminism and had my first sexual experience with a girl–thanks to that same ex-bf and his realization that I and his current girlfriend both wanted to bang another girl, and that he could facilitate that–both of which opened up whole new worlds. I went through a pretty intense 70’s feminist phase, became a slightly militant vegan, and thought hard about shaving my head. By the time I graduated I had mellowed out a bit, but I learned to swear (although apparently it still often sounds funny, like I’m trying too hard; I try not to worry about that during sex) and I started learning how to talk about sex. Baby steps, baby steps. In grad school I first became obsessed with drag kings and then decided I was asexual, which turned out to be stress-related, thank god. P opened me up even more (ahem, take that as you will), and lately I feel like I’ve crossed into the “all sex, all the time” part of my brain that has been sitting around, dusty and mostly unused, since high school or so.
This synopsis has probably been slightly boring, but I have a small point: this is a new part of my life. I don’t hate myself, I spend a lot of time talking and thinking about sex, and I’m happy happy happy by myself but also wanting to get better at connecting with people socially and sexually. Somebody asked me why I started this, who I wanted to write for, and I’ve been thinking about that a lot. This blog is difficult for me. I get uncomfortable about the fact that I’m writing about masturbation, public sex, whatever, and posting it on the internet where theoretically anybody can see it. But I’m still doing it, in part because I want to push myself and see where I end up and in part because of these words from Pat Califia:
“…being a sex radical means being defiant as well as deviant. It means being aware that there is something unsatisfying and dishonest about the way sex is talked about (or hidden) in daily life.”
“…meaning assigned to an act by the dominant culture is not necessarily the same meaning assigned by those who perform the act; from this insight came the possibility that the dominant culture is not entitled to say which sexuality is healthy or unhealthy, loving or vicious.”
“Battles of freedom of expression thus have implications far beyond the ability of print to circulate without being hampered by agents of the state. The line between word and deed is a thin one. A desire that cannot be named or described is a desire that cannot be valued, acted upon, or used as the basis for an identity.”
I find words problematic, because every word I say or write simultaneously opens and closes channels and arranges definitions into cute little boxes that may or may not be helpful. But words are the way I have to communicate, and so I try hard to write as articulately and truthfully as I can. Right now, that means writing about sex. Because it’s a closed topic, because I want to find out what I want and like and desire, because it feels exciting as well as terrifying to post, because the type of sex I like is becoming increasingly less “mainstream” and I want to be able to talk about it and not feel ashamed. Because I feel like I’m trembling on the edge of some sort of personal discovery and I want to have a place to write about it when the wave breaks over my head. And so, here I am.
