In my previous post I came up with some overly-florid description of life as an ‘elaborate striptease’, and when you aren’t having sex, it seems like it is. That’s no bad thing, as far as I’m concerned. A lot of people get stressed and bored when they aren’t jumping into the first populated bed they can find (which, by the way, I see as a totally valid course of action), but I’m pretty damn happy with the untouched life. Everything’s rosy and uncomplicated, and there’s no need for awkward trips to the STD clinic, thank fuck, or thank not-fucking (excuse the shitty pun, I couldn’t resist for some reason). Besides, at 18 I’m still young, and the grand peep show of life has a long way to go yet; she’s just about made it down to her négligée.
If life was a stripper, it would obviously be Bettie Page.
Still, part of me wonders if this single-and-happy-with-it attitude is only an attempt to feel ok about my current bachelorhood, and somewhere way down inside I’m preparing to take make that slow, dejected walk to the pet shop to pick up some cats. Maybe I should abandon the ‘bachelor’ label and go for ‘spinster’ instead, which might be more fitting since there isn’t a one night stand blotting my chaste calendar. Well, there was one underwhelming instance a while back, which is what I thought I’d write about tonight.
It was my first and only sexual experience as of yet, and it was with a guy that I met at a party in December (You’re probably wondering what the fuck gives an inexperienced kid like me the right to write about sex so much on my blog, and you’re probably right. But, I won’t make excuses for my precociousness, just try to embrace it). The said guy made it clear that he was into me all night, and I was really flattered if nothing else, and getting progressively more drunk, so I yielded and we stayed together at a friends house. For a while I’d been ready to just get my first time done and over with, so that’s what I did. It was pretty awkward, but fun, though it was absolutely nothing compared to the hype I’ve heard so much of. When I woke up the next morning to the sound of early London traffic, the lingering taste of second-hand cigarette breath on my tongue, I didn’t regret anything. I avoided the guy’s further advances and took a chain of buses out of the city, thinking I was pretty fucking cool. What I didn’t realise was that I was sporting a massive purple love-bite on my neck, and I didn’t find out about it until my mum did (my scarf collection had a busy two weeks covering it up). She spied it straight away and sussed things out before I’d got all the way through the front door, and her first question wasn’t ‘who was he’ or ‘were you safe’ like you might expect, but ‘did anybody see you’.
If in doubt, add a Nan Goldin photo. It makes you look cool.
She thought the bite was absolutely vile, and was terrified at the thought of me and another guy making out in public, in case we got beaten up or killed or something grisly like that. I still don’t know how to feel about this. One side of me thinks that she’s protecting me from homophobia, but on the other hand she’s asking me to hide. The whole thing got me thinking about shame. Without meaning to sound self-pitying, I’m no stranger to it. Growing up and knowing I was different, I felt a lot of shame about things. Being openly homosexual has given me a whole lot of freedom and happiness, but I’ve come to realise that I’ve internalised some of that homophobia that i felt so intensely towards myself as a child. There is still a part of me that sees two men or two women holding hands or kissing and thinks ‘should they really be doing that where everyone can see?’. This is so utterly absurd to me, so intolerant and hypocritical and ridiculous, and sometimes I’m convinced that it makes me the worst kind of person, but it’s real. I’m working at it, I promise, and you’ll just have to trust that I’m a pretty good guy. Without meaning to blame society for my issues, the hetero hegemony which we teach kids from a young age just has to have something to do with it. I plan to explore this subject with a little more intelligence and level-headedness when I’m less tired and I don’t have a job interview to prepare for. For now, take care, and I’d love to hear your thoughts, if you’re there…
I found these on tumblr. where else?
THE ZEMBLAN 