sexual personhood
I wish my sex was separate from my person.
But it’s not. It’s hopelessly intertwined, and this is constantly frustrating. My physical cravings are so overpowering that they usurp my ‘presence’ in the world. And by presence I mean what I consider to be my identity, my projection, my reflection – how I have learned to perceive and present myself to others. Unfortunately, this has very little to do with my sexuality.
I am extremely sexual – as I am extremely sensual my consciousness is tactile. I am tactile. I like to touch, to get up close and explore to know something completely. It was difficult for me to learn not to touch people, to smear myself all over them and taste their essence. Not everyone is comfortable with this intrusion into their private world. And so I restrain myself, but I feel uneasy, like I cannot really communicate. I feel like everything I want to express, and sense, depends on that touch, but that touch is taboo because you can’t just reach out and stroke the stranger next to you. so I restrain myself and I feel like itching and crawling and bursting inside because I don’t want to speak, speaking is never anything more than a hollow echo of the message! So much of what I want to communicate exists only as physical resonance of being. I cannot translate this.
I like sex. At least I like the idea of sex. I find so many things erotic and a great deal of the time I am semi-aroused just by the experience of being present, physical, the feel of clothes, the breath of wind on me. When I am attracted to a person it is almost unbearable. It consumes me and I am lost and distracted by the driving desire to know this person’s full being. I want to experience them, touch them, drink them, feel them on the deepest level. I’ve been told that I have problems with boundaries. I’m sure I do.
I am attracted. The power of attraction flattens whatever ideas I may have about reality, obligation and expectation. My ‘person’ (that constructed idea of what I ‘am’, in relation to you) is flattened by my attraction. ‘Identity’ is paltry in comparison to the driving force of sensuality, and here lies the crux.
What attracts me is intangible, illogical, capricious and absolute. I can’t justify it or explain it. I can only burn with the power of it. Everyday, as I move through the social rituals of our world, I feel these tugs at my being. A constant flow of forces exerting pressure on my awareness. Sometimes I can ignore this, pass by, or through it, with minimal scorching. Other times it knocks me down and takes the wind from my lungs, the way oxygen rushes into an explosion of flame. I am left gasping, disoriented, completely unbalanced by the weight of it. “I must.” “I need.” The holding back destroys me one straight, composed face at a time.
In face to face normality I can’t navigate this desire. It doesn’t translate or it is lost in the translation. It becomes something else, something sacrilegious, stupid. The necessary labels anger and insult me. This raging consumption obliterates words, attitudes, definitions. This fire of death, of destruction, is so great, so undeniably beautiful, so complete I cannot tolerate resistance, and yet, I resist. I resist because I do not know how to communicate this feeling. To me, feeling is everything and identity is nothing and yet, “I am ‘______’ and you are ‘_______’, I ‘_________’ you.” obstructs the path of this divine burning.
The social world is so superficial to me, so alien to the feeling of my truth, but no amount of fire-breathing rage can deconstruct the boundaries of “who” we are. You are *over there*, and I am *over here*. And I want to be inside of you, exploding your light into a million blinding shards, until we are collapsed in the vastness of nothing, but how do I say “let me burn you with my fire, let yourself die in me so that we can pass through death together and emerge as careening spirits free of the earth”. How can I say that? It can’t be said to a stranger, a man, a woman, a teacher, a peer. It can’t be said across the roles that define our expression of being in this world. I am too afraid of what I have learned; that I am my role and this is how I will be measured. I can’t face exposing my beautiful soul aflame to those judgments.
I want to rebel against the denial. I want the roles fall away, slip down to our feet like silk, like gossamer, like so much imagination until we stand face to face, truthful, exposed, defiant, and glorious. I want to say, “This is Me. I am a volcano, I am a torrent, I am a drop of water, I am the space between breath. Consume me and let us die together, so that we may be reborn as the vastness of eternity, ego-less and without identity.”
