13 - Body.

Seems everybody was thinking about sex but me as a teenager. I didn’t know what to think of sex. I didn’t know how to think of sex. The thought of even having to open my legs to anyone made me uncomfortable. I tried to understand why I felt so awkward about being naked with another person and the best I could come up with was that I had body image issues.

Body image issues was very in vogue at my age. That must be it. Everyone talked about it. My body must have been particularly trendy, as it was often talked about. I had to keep an eye on it. Watch my figure. So i did. I was fastidious. I remember every comment. My body was usually a bit bigger than the people around me my age so I was extremely conscious of that. It was another reason why I felt different.

Also I didn’t seem to share the same desire to express my body how women around me did. I wanted to hide mine while others wanted to expose as much as possible. I envied men that could take their shirt off and have nothing to show for it. I admired how their bodies developed, transforming from lanky limbs in loose t-shirts to well built broad shouldered units seemingly overnight. Meanwhile I just got frumpier and lumpier and didn’t look anything like how I wanted to look. Despite Dolly magazine making it clear what I should be aspiring too, it was nothing like that.

What I look like on the outside and what I look like in my head are very different. In my head i’m shapeless. I’m androgynous. My figure is straight up and down. There are no curves or angles. The reality is of course, very different from that. I have unconsciously been avoiding my reflection my whole life. Seeing it jolts me away from the person I am in my head and throws me back into my gendered reality.

Having to share that body then with a person who will only see the outside me, not the inside, was very daunting. By age twenty I had only slept with one woman and even then we didn’t really know if we were “doing it right”. We just touched things until it felt good, but I wasn’t confident that’s what sex was. Because our relationship had been framed as platonic one, it somewhat removed the sexual nature of it. I had no idea how to have sex with strangers.

After we separated she stated she was still interested in men. I thought about it and decided if I was going to do the sex thing, I could only really conceive the idea of doing it with a woman. Eventually I built up enough confidence to be openly queer and started to pursue women.

I would meet them, we’d go on dates, flirt, kiss a little, it was all very fun until we made it to the bedroom. Then I would panic. Fuck what have I done? I knew I had led them on but then instantly regretted my decision. I would freeze up and the mood would go from sexy to strange in a matter of seconds. I still didn’t know what my body wanted, or what it was doing.

Despite my confident swagger and boyish charm, I didn’t know how to handle sex. I felt uncomfortable about people touching me, especially my chest. It feminised me in a way I didn’t enjoy. What was supposed to feel good, felt strange. There are a lot of learned behaviours around sex thanks to mainstream films, porn and literature. I mimicked them, even though they didn’t feel right to me. Even when I discovered lesbian specific media, it still didn’t quite fit right but it was the closest I could get.

Sex felt like some sort of performance and I was just playing a character. The real me was not part of the show. I didn’t know what would feel good for me and I was too embarrassed to explore that, so sex became something I did to others. Sex was not about me at all.