Just fyi, if you know me in real life, this one is going to acknowledge the concept of me having sex so you might just want to ignore it and come back for another one at a later date.
Unobtainable me/Sexual being, human with feelings
I’ve been trying to change my body and along with it my mind. 15 weeks now of 3x a week workouts and as one person online says I’m “really showing off the muscle progress” or as another says “You’re growing muscle pretty fast.”
I’m not sure what started it, but I have my theories. It might not seem like it if you know me in real life, but I’m actually a sexual person with a healthy sexual appetite. I believe a frank and open attitude about sex is important because sexuality is a critical part of most people’s identities. Intellectually (a phrase I love saying during therapy sessions) I don’t understand the shame around talking about sex as a concept. Intellectually, I think sex should mostly be fun and enjoyable and low stakes. Intellectually, I think it’s okay to openly desire and seek out sex. Still, emotionally (or physically) activating that side of me has always been a struggle.
I suppose that a lot of it is about vulnerability or an inability to let yourself be truly known by other people. I joke about it just being low self esteem, but I think the reality is that I am deeply terrified of anyone actually seeing a true desire from me, least they reject it. Or, least they reject me.
It beats me, but I do not know.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
“Sure. It’s not going to hurt is it?”
“Possibly,” I replied, running my hands across his body and starting my search for his tension. “But not much.”
He chuckled and his muscles tensed. “It helps,” I continued, grabbing his leg, smoothing my hands across his calf and resting it against the soft cushion of the table. “If you have some sense of what you’d like to change. Like, what’s bothering you know?”
“Nothing really,” he shrugged as his calf snapped back to attention. “I can be bad at flirting or dating. I suppose that could be nice to change. Just do your thing. I trust you’ll find something.”
This would be difficult. The body stored things in different areas: childhood trauma in the knee; insecurity in the liver; fear of baldness in the stomach. These were tips that helped guide my search. Without them I was blind, digging through the spiritual piles of a life: happiness nestled next to sadness, intertwined with missed childhood birthday parties and rejections by first loves. Looking down he had closed his eyes, resting his hands behind his head.
Posed like this, he reminded me of the pixelated pinups of men I clicked through as a child. Big muscled men with impossibly smooth bodies that flickered across the slow dial-up, loading each inch of their muscle pixel by pixel, revealing tight fitting underwear or cleverly positioned hands resting atop manicured patches of hair.
I couldn’t find a knot. The threads of his life were curled in places but never tangled. A few of them were darker than the others: thick with contemplation but not yet regret. I could sense their growing desperation. Perhaps in a few years, without the right care, they could be transformed into tangled barbs of resentment but, for now none were dangerous, none need be pruned. I would have to search deeper than normal. Everyone had a thread. Nobody went through life unscathed.
The signified butt-heads with the signifiers
When I write I suppose I write about people who are openly searching for some form of vulnerability or connection. I write a lot about people, connected, but still distant from one another. In my stories each person is nestled in their own head, connected only in brief by the extraordinary occurrences that they are somehow thrust into.
I think a lot about (whether or not you find him problematic) Murakami and how his characters often walk passively into the magical realm, propelled forward through the story but a strong (and sometimes too strong) desire for romance and sex and connection.
If you’re someone with anxiety or a deep people-pleasing desire, the very concept of sex can be a relief. There is a moment (if you’re doing it right I suppose) where the mind empties and another form of pure instinctual desire takes root. The mind, free of conscious choice is free to connect directly with the body. No delay, simple movement: muscle flowing freely towards a shared goal.
