I scare myself sometimes. We can talk all we want on papers, write about sexuality about gender as a ambigious, and permeable category that sometimes bleed into each other, and unlike night and day, black and white, there are those grey zones, areas in between. But in reality, when we find out how easy it really is to cross boundaries, it becomes scary. It is as if everything which has protected me and gave society meaning is suddenly fluid, I can break rules if I want. I can betray fixed notions, I can turn against myself, I can transcend expectations. I can feel attracted to all kinds of people, all kinds of gender. When your sexuality becomes a question, it is deeply unsettling. Sexual awakening comes all of a sudden, it is like menstration. An ambush. You know it is coming soon and your body gives out little signs and signals you pick up but want desperately to ignore until red visits and stains everything from your underwear to your bedsheet, and you feel afraid, as if the self, the body you have been so sure of has suddenly become a stranger. It rebelled.
And sexual awakening is not the sexual act itself, but the potential of it. Knowing that you are a sexual being. There is that suspense, that waiting. The secret knowing that your body is a sexual instrument, and that desires bubbles up often at the strangest moment. A glance, a touch, a graze. But often it can be even more subtle than that. It is a sound, a scent, a flashlight, a bicycle, a fabric. It becomes frightening because it is illogical and your rational mind tries to take control like it has always done, only the desires, the feelings escape it. Eludes it like shadowy creatures which escape once in a while to brush against your ears, whispering words, sculpting ideas.
I think that that gay man is attractive, that lesbian girl excites me sometimes, that straight man makes me tingle. Then you realize how superficial even terms like gay, lesbian, homosexual, bisexual becomes, because really none of it really quite captures the elusiveness of it all. That erotic sensations can arise from anything, human, plants, inanimate objects. I can feel attracted to all labels, and yet I transcend all these categories, but not the cage of sexual desires. Nor the knowledge that everything is potential. It is the potential which is erotic. Trying to find the right category to fit yourself in is the unsettling and strage part of the epxerience, because the name, the lable you are trying to find narrows that range of possibilities and it feels wrong, too small to explain the sensations.
So what am I? A homosexual, a heterosexual, a bisexual, a lesbian, a gay, a straight, a woman, a man, a girl, a boy, a HUMAN? Why must the list of question accompany this sudden emergence of sexual awareness. As if you can only be one and that will put the uneasiness of possibilities of anyone being able to remake themselves and experience anything away. It is disturbing because you know that none of these words can explain you, that the complexity of it all, of being both a man and a woman, both a homosexual and a heterosexual, that these are skin shallow when you are all along a body of possibility. And stepping out to explore you want to cling to guidelines, even if some of these are supposed controversial, they are still that--limitations. Suddenly, the penis, the breasts, the virgina all these become too conrete. Sex is not eroticism. Freud never did understand what eroticism is. No, we do not have penis envy, it is not a lack. We are all lacks, we all are holes from which little blossoms can spring up.
Loudly triumphant, gays, lesbians differentiate themselves, they want their unique literature, their rights, but really these are all bubbles. And I feel them constantly bursting around me. I get butterflies in my stomache everytime they burst, I feel excited. Men and women, cars, trees, the wind, the cold, words, poetry, music. These are all erotic elements, and to think that only humans, partners, lovers can be stand in for sexual experience is perhaps shallow.
Log hair or short, skirt or pants, it is not that. Perhaps it is an understanding that we are all deeper than that, that we can never fully grasp someone no matter how close their skin is, that we cannot break through. That we can never truly merge, it is always that little distance which separates. It is not a membrane which separates, it is not the labels alone and names we learnt form young which distance. But the explosive knowledge that we as being are fluid and we can never be captured, that inside, we are all dark matter, potential. We are all buds waiting to blossom every moment. I can become a man, a lesbian, a song next. How then are you going to contain me? But only dip yourself in this flowing stream and learn that we are all liquid.
And sexual awakening is not the sexual act itself, but the potential of it. Knowing that you are a sexual being. There is that suspense, that waiting. The secret knowing that your body is a sexual instrument, and that desires bubbles up often at the strangest moment. A glance, a touch, a graze. But often it can be even more subtle than that. It is a sound, a scent, a flashlight, a bicycle, a fabric. It becomes frightening because it is illogical and your rational mind tries to take control like it has always done, only the desires, the feelings escape it. Eludes it like shadowy creatures which escape once in a while to brush against your ears, whispering words, sculpting ideas.
I think that that gay man is attractive, that lesbian girl excites me sometimes, that straight man makes me tingle. Then you realize how superficial even terms like gay, lesbian, homosexual, bisexual becomes, because really none of it really quite captures the elusiveness of it all. That erotic sensations can arise from anything, human, plants, inanimate objects. I can feel attracted to all labels, and yet I transcend all these categories, but not the cage of sexual desires. Nor the knowledge that everything is potential. It is the potential which is erotic. Trying to find the right category to fit yourself in is the unsettling and strage part of the epxerience, because the name, the lable you are trying to find narrows that range of possibilities and it feels wrong, too small to explain the sensations.
So what am I? A homosexual, a heterosexual, a bisexual, a lesbian, a gay, a straight, a woman, a man, a girl, a boy, a HUMAN? Why must the list of question accompany this sudden emergence of sexual awareness. As if you can only be one and that will put the uneasiness of possibilities of anyone being able to remake themselves and experience anything away. It is disturbing because you know that none of these words can explain you, that the complexity of it all, of being both a man and a woman, both a homosexual and a heterosexual, that these are skin shallow when you are all along a body of possibility. And stepping out to explore you want to cling to guidelines, even if some of these are supposed controversial, they are still that--limitations. Suddenly, the penis, the breasts, the virgina all these become too conrete. Sex is not eroticism. Freud never did understand what eroticism is. No, we do not have penis envy, it is not a lack. We are all lacks, we all are holes from which little blossoms can spring up.
Loudly triumphant, gays, lesbians differentiate themselves, they want their unique literature, their rights, but really these are all bubbles. And I feel them constantly bursting around me. I get butterflies in my stomache everytime they burst, I feel excited. Men and women, cars, trees, the wind, the cold, words, poetry, music. These are all erotic elements, and to think that only humans, partners, lovers can be stand in for sexual experience is perhaps shallow.
Log hair or short, skirt or pants, it is not that. Perhaps it is an understanding that we are all deeper than that, that we can never fully grasp someone no matter how close their skin is, that we cannot break through. That we can never truly merge, it is always that little distance which separates. It is not a membrane which separates, it is not the labels alone and names we learnt form young which distance. But the explosive knowledge that we as being are fluid and we can never be captured, that inside, we are all dark matter, potential. We are all buds waiting to blossom every moment. I can become a man, a lesbian, a song next. How then are you going to contain me? But only dip yourself in this flowing stream and learn that we are all liquid.
posted by Nippy at 10:14 PM
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