Salt-N-Pepa

So as the 80's duo would say,

Let's talk about sex.

Where the hell to start though? Sex before I came out was always so complicated to me, and not much has changed in that regard. Before coming out my sexual activities always were the same, they followed the same pattern. The problem for me was that it's kinda similar to the "typical" pattern for many relationships. The sex would be plentiful and exciting at first, then slowly become less plentiful and exciting. I've only had a handful of one night stands because I've always associated it with emotional connection.

That's something I never fully realized until lately, sex is a personal, emotional thing for me. That is how it all became more complicated for me. True or not I felt like men were expected to not be like that, they are in fact expected to be the opposite. Since I spent so much of my time trying to model myself after a "manly man" I made sex into something I "wanted" but didn't get excited about much. It was "be dominant, take control but don't feel anything.". That was/is a recipe for disaster.

The other problem was it wasn't like I didn't enjoy the exciting times I had sex, it's almost impossible not to when in the middle of the passion only new found lust can create. I would enjoy sex at first, always and intensely. Eventually I would feel like I was being pressured to have sex. I am a pleaser at heart so all the sex I had I would always be focused on making sure who I was with was having a good time. I became so good at it that lovers would think I was being very passionate but what I was actually thinking was..

"36 to the left... 15 to the right... 45 to the left."

I had to "shut down" parts of my own desire too because to me it didn't seem like it fit the "manly man" persona I had made, like being touched. I stopped allowing myself to enjoy being touched. Not touched I guess, but caressed. Literally all I feel now when someone touches me is pressure, I don't feel the warmth, or softness of their hands, or legs, or whatever part is touching me. I know this was my own doing but I feel like I haven't been lovingly caressed since I was a teenager. Now that I'm a woman, or slowly becoming one, people want to touch me often. I've been "lucky" in that it has been mostly only text words and not action. I say "lucky" because the idea of someone running their hands over me terrifies me, but when I feel how badly I want to feel their hands on me, and how little I've been touched like only a lover exploring your body can, it makes me cry, instantly. I've cried three times now just making it down to this part.

That explains where I am since coming out fairly well. I tried at first to be more sexually active, or at least as sexually active. I thought since I had come out, sex would start making more sense now, was I ever wrong. You get told that the testosterone blockers will decrease your libido, so I was expecting that, but what happened was everything got turned upside down.

I would fantasize about being with men before, and that continued, picked up a little even. It didn't take too long though for it to start dawning on me, I have yet to have sex how "I" want to...and how do I do that? That is literally my problem, I don't know what I want, or like. Do I like woman? Men? Being dominate, submissive.. vanilla? Can I just have sex or do I need a relationship, or at least someone I'm close to? I have all the same questions as a virgin teen but I'm thirty five, people expect you to have that figured out by now.

I've gone now about 2 months without any sex, even touching myself. It all seems too complicated to me right now to even try and think about it. So many things that would turn me on before just flat out don't anymore. Not because of the hormones, some of them actually offend me now, a total flip on perception. If I fantasize about women I eventually start feeling like a man again, like the old sexual locksmith I was. If I turn to men I eventually get scared, imagine letting myself let someone else "take control" even in the smallest vanilla sense of "man on top get it over with quick" sex. My fantasies and desires have no solace for me, so I avoid them. Knowing that, watching myself do/be like that is painful but I feel right now that this is the tide I'm currently riding and there's little else to do about it.

It has been somewhat freeing though. I find myself feeling like it's about time that I didn't have sex on my mind 24/7. Instead of wasting so much time with all the considerations of sex I've had that time to do other things. Things I needed to do as well, if not more so. I've spent a lot of that time the last few months learning about me. No, not even learning about me, I've been laying ground work for me to start learning about me.

I have started to tell myself I need to do something about this. There's a quote by Freud something like,

"The only unnatural sexual behaviour is none at all."

I'm not sure if he is correct or not, but it seems to make sense. So this sexual desert I've been in has to change, but I don't know how to do it, physically and emotionally. I usually solve these sort of problems by jumping in feet first but I can't bring myself to do it with this. I convinced myself to go on my first flight ever and down to the US, two days after September 11th, 2001, but yet I can't let a man put his hands on my waist.