Book Two, Chapter Five – The Thing(s) About Sex

2.12 am. Sex, the escape I desperately seek:

How do I get the fidgeting to stop? How do I turn off my fucking brain? Why is it, that only when someone is hitting my head against something really hard, that the voices still? Why does it take a hand obstructing my throat, withholding oxygen, for my body to accept the pleasure? Capitalism did its job well, turning us all into robots, incapable of silencing the race. The primordial becomes luxury, a coping mechanism. Oh, wait, don’t stop… here comes the breath of salvation.

Once I became a published author, everything about my book, my ultimate achievement as an artist, became about the sex. The presence of it, the absence of it, the reception or rejection of the topic itself. I did not care whether people thought it was ok to write so crudely. What was interesting was the way people reacted to it — sex showed itself as the common denominator for humankind. Sex is a magnetic power that draws or pushes. No one is ambivalent to it. Whatever someone’s background is, there’s always a tune inside their gut, screaming something aloud (albeit at times incomprehensibly), like music. It is the baseline to which we owe our existence.

***

4.12 pm. Sex, the intimacy I am avoiding:

I haven’t been wanting to have sex with my partner because I’m afraid he will see all of my doubts. I’m afraid that the only person I am truly vulnerable with, the one I don’t want to fake it with, will see through the Fata Morgana that only honest sex reveals. I want to keep our sex divine. I need that kind of sex to exist, but how can it, if we are distorting the truth? He sees them in my eyes when the clothes are on. Somehow that’s ok. Somehow, what scares me, is the revelation that our sacred sex is not powerful enough to take the anxiety away. The ugly truth remains ugly, and no amount of clitoral stimulation will fix that. Maybe sex is a revelation?

***

It became an interesting study: figuring out who would flock to the flame and who would run. It was rarely predictable but always visceral, the reaction to my sexual open book. I was so fascinated by my outward research, that I went further down the rabbit hole of my own delusion. I kept shouting my sex positivity through the megaphone, without confronting my escapist use of it. I kept telling myself that it was all empowerment, that I was exerting my inner goddess power. And I truly was sometimes. I then realised how much of it was distraction and avoidance. How ironic. The lies I had practiced in my single years are what is now brooding my dry spell. I wanted to escape the human condition with meaningless sex, and now the truth confronts me when on the verge of orgasm.

***

10.12am. Sex, the delicate juggle of playing with fire:

If my shirt slides off my shoulder, just a little bit, will she notice? Does she feel the millisecond linger of my fingertips on her arm? Will it wreck everything if I try? Why does it still feel so difficult putting myself out there? Her eyes linger on my lips. They sparkle definitively. Mmm, yes. She might also be picturing me naked, perusing her skin. The electricity spikes my oxytocin. This could set the world on fire. I am the match and she is the flame. Sex is a lot like fire actually. It can be destructive and restorative. The simple potential of its existence changes the course. We must take safety precautions.

***

It’s almost boring now, watching acquaintances’ eyes glisten at the mention of skin and the sight of rope on my Instagram. I went from revelling in the provocation, in the censorship, to being baffled by my own shallowness. I started to reckon with the discovery of communicative and honest sex, while holding this platform for education. I suddenly wished I was not responsible for speaking the facts and fallacies of it all. Yes, kink spaces are safer than cis-het sex. No, it does not take penetration for it to count. Yes, rape culture made the Kobe’s and Aziz’ of the world and no, it has nothing to do with BDSM. “Fucking google it already. Do the work. It’s only your happiness on the line,” I wrote while saying it to myself. Did I ever have sex without ensuring consent? Of course I did. Did I now shudder to memories of the blacked-out sex that had been had with me? Of course I did. I cannot help asking myself, whether the space I am now holding should continue to be so brutally honest. Change is hard. And necessary. But will I burn at the stake when I inevitable learn that I was wrong? Is this the most productive modality when it comes to changing the discourse around sexual (mis)conduct?

***

9.12pm. Sex, the ultimate self-love practice:

Laying down on my stomach, I do my little dance. My fingers mischievously saunter over to the magical drawer. I’ve been waiting for hours. Every time my jeans squeeze my lips in that inadvertently tingly way. Every time I think of hands squeezing me. So I hit the button and hear the buzz. It’s far from the images in the movies. It’s ugly and rumbly and so fucking good. It’s my self-love ritual, my prayer to the shrine of my vulva. My brain doesn’t quite shut off but it doesn’t always bother me. It’s like writing: an exploration of what can be. And sounds, oh the sounds. It’s everything.

***

I keep wishing that sex could be talked about the way food is. Just another need, another chance for gluttony, another part of life. I wonder though, if it would make it mundane. Of course not. It is so much more complicated than that. Sex might potentially be  losing its place as the sole provider of life on earth, thanks to artificial insemination and sex robots. Could sex with another human soul, for pleasure and connection, become a luxury, or worse, a long lost art with questionable value? You see, sex has always been the genesis. It is the maker and shifter, the made and the shifted, all at once. It is by this definition, also the antithesis to binaries. It is all and naught at once. How can we not be obsessed with it?

 

 

 

 

Christine Wild is the author of Just Bad Timing, a memoir about sex, society and the many kinds of love.