I feel like I got to the non-heteronormative sex+ party late, and I don’t know what to make of myself in it.
I’ve not given much thought to identity until recently; the truth is I pretty much haven’t had to. As a seemingly straight, white, privileged woman, I’ve taken my own sexual identity somewhat as a given and now I don’t know what to make of myself in that. As I sorted a lot of my unconscious patterns around looking for a man - to fulfil or complete me, marry me or protect me - daddy issues - frankly with limited success, I’m beginning to wonder what all my fuss was about. I look like a blonde feminine woman that traditional men have been attracted to - yet my looks are deceptive. And worse, they've been deceiving me.
Over the last few years in my explorations in sexuality land, I’ve been on Tantra courses where yoni healing and yoni honouring have left me a bit nonplussed, same with being a goddess, womb work never appealed as much as the stuff around agency and power. I’ve had potential clients wanting to ‘worship’ me, which I assume is code for oral sex. Curling my lip - ‘why not just ask?’ - the answer is still no.
Anything expected of me, cliched or dull is perplexing now. The polarities of masculine and feminine are blurring as I enjoy inhabiting both. Yet now, even those terms are feeling unhelpful, vague and open to question. I have no answers, no firm ground to rest on, yet the qualities of either seem to be human in essence.
Back to the identity dilemma. So if the old is no longer appealing and the ageing cis white patriarchy no longer pull me in, what am I curious about, do I want a new label or pronoun? Demi-sexual, pansexual, queer, polyamorous, nonbinary, androgynous, she/they, free dancer, solo poly, am I a gay man in the drag of a female body? I’m poly curious about all of these aspects in me and so far committed to none. The people and encounters that enliven and interest me seem to be so unpatternable now. Owning my love of the new, the artistic, the exotic and the other, recently I’ve had some beautiful sensual dalliances following attractions, once-sublimated preferences and somatic surprises. If I have to see the link, the word I’ve rustled up from the depth of my Spanish is ‘la variedad’.
I talk to queer friends and folx younger than me who so much earlier felt or saw being queer as an option. I come late to most things around sexuality. It's true, it's a time lag in possibilities. I don’t feel like I have to know who and what I want to call myself right now, I can try things on for size, responding to who and what I meet erotically. What I am sure about is that this idea that my sexuality is a given has crumbled. And my lived experience is showing me that I create something different with whoever I meet, my desire in any given moment piqued by something unknown, a desire to explore what might be mutually longed for, to create something between us that is unique in that encounter.
Rather than an identity crisis, it’s an invitation to freedom, to possibility, to fluidity beyond the binary, something that’s always been here, emerging that into being is exciting, wondering who or what will bring out aspects of soul in waiting?