confessional
I jokingly suggested to my mother today that I’m gay. She looked me straight in the eyes, and said very quietly and very deliberately “Don’t ever do that to me.” I had a perversely amusing thought about what it means that my sex life could be about doing something to my mother. Ok, maybe not so funny. Still, if you can’t laugh at a moment like that, you cry. And I’m not in the mood to cry.
For the first time in my life, I feel like the pressure is off. I don’t have to find a husband. Does that mean that my foibles into love up to this point have all been about proving to myself that I’m not gay?
My first sexual encounter was with my best girlfriend when I was 14 and she was 17. It was incredibly sensual, and delightfully innocent, and in the long run, exceedingly frustrating. I stuffed it up by being excessively demanding, emotionally and practically, and she ran as soon as she realized it was heading somewhere less innocent. She has been living with her boyfriend in London for the past three years. I burned all the photographs I had of her when I got engaged. And by the time I had detangled myself from that disaster, I had no photographs of him left. Now, when I open the “my pictures” folder on my computer, two pictures stare out at me with disquieting intensity. The first is of the heterosexual woman I love, and the second is of the inspiringly unselfconscious gay woman who is becoming my mentor. My closest gay male friend is probably the only living man, other than my father, who I can say, with any dignity, that I love. He, too, is rapidly becoming a mentor.
I feel so confidant, and so attractive. And my mother doesn’t want to know about it. I talk about everything, all the time. I wonder, frequently, whether she knows, and is just very deliberately ignoring it. Everyone else seemed to know, even before I did. She has never asked me directly, and she knows that that will reveal all. If I wasn’t, I would have no hesitation answering a direct question. Because she has demanded not to know, I will not tell her, even if that ultimately reveals the truth. I want to ask what will happen when I am in a committed relationship, but the logical part of me knows not to ask for trouble before it presents itself.
How ironic, to be thinking of the relationship for which I long, as trouble.
I didn’t lose my virginity to another human being. I was so afraid of what that would feel like that I broke my hymen myself to avoid the pain later on. I used a cylindrical tube that had once contained tablets. It hurt. It still hurts to have anything bigger than a couple of fingers inside me.
I am so body shy, that I have tensed up every time my breasts have been touched. I felt violated when I realized that the first boy who kissed me was pressing himself against me for his own pleasure, and not mine. But the delightful thing about making love to a woman is that she does what she does to you for your pleasure, and you do what you do to her for hers. No one is using the other for their own pleasure, as a man so easily can. He really can do everything he does purely for his own pleasure. The woman in question need be nothing more than an object for his use. Sure, it need not always be so. It just has been too frequently.
For the first time in my life, I feel like the pressure is off. I don’t have to find a husband. Does that mean that my foibles into love up to this point have all been about proving to myself that I’m not gay?
My first sexual encounter was with my best girlfriend when I was 14 and she was 17. It was incredibly sensual, and delightfully innocent, and in the long run, exceedingly frustrating. I stuffed it up by being excessively demanding, emotionally and practically, and she ran as soon as she realized it was heading somewhere less innocent. She has been living with her boyfriend in London for the past three years. I burned all the photographs I had of her when I got engaged. And by the time I had detangled myself from that disaster, I had no photographs of him left. Now, when I open the “my pictures” folder on my computer, two pictures stare out at me with disquieting intensity. The first is of the heterosexual woman I love, and the second is of the inspiringly unselfconscious gay woman who is becoming my mentor. My closest gay male friend is probably the only living man, other than my father, who I can say, with any dignity, that I love. He, too, is rapidly becoming a mentor.
I feel so confidant, and so attractive. And my mother doesn’t want to know about it. I talk about everything, all the time. I wonder, frequently, whether she knows, and is just very deliberately ignoring it. Everyone else seemed to know, even before I did. She has never asked me directly, and she knows that that will reveal all. If I wasn’t, I would have no hesitation answering a direct question. Because she has demanded not to know, I will not tell her, even if that ultimately reveals the truth. I want to ask what will happen when I am in a committed relationship, but the logical part of me knows not to ask for trouble before it presents itself.
How ironic, to be thinking of the relationship for which I long, as trouble.
I didn’t lose my virginity to another human being. I was so afraid of what that would feel like that I broke my hymen myself to avoid the pain later on. I used a cylindrical tube that had once contained tablets. It hurt. It still hurts to have anything bigger than a couple of fingers inside me.
I am so body shy, that I have tensed up every time my breasts have been touched. I felt violated when I realized that the first boy who kissed me was pressing himself against me for his own pleasure, and not mine. But the delightful thing about making love to a woman is that she does what she does to you for your pleasure, and you do what you do to her for hers. No one is using the other for their own pleasure, as a man so easily can. He really can do everything he does purely for his own pleasure. The woman in question need be nothing more than an object for his use. Sure, it need not always be so. It just has been too frequently.
posted by choirgirl at 6:31 AM
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