I spent many years tangled in sheets with men, wondering what broke inside of me to make me feel… off.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t always feel nothing. There were some boys who made me feel things, but the older I get and the more that I learn about myself, the more that I realize that it is less about the men and more about the circumstances that I found us entwined in. While the men grunted above or below me, their rough hands snagging on the soft edges of my flesh, it was an intrusion. The foreign object inside of me jammed, slammed, jolted me until I felt the gentle waves of motion sickness beginning to swirl in my stomach.
When you’re in bed with someone, especially someone that you’re supposed to love, it’s not motion sickness that you’re supposed to feel coiling and bubbling in your stomach.
Nails, biting, whispered words complete with gentle breath over the shell of my ear, lips ghosting against my collar bones. Hands, soft, then rough, then soft again when my body refused to sway in the way that I needed it to, the way that it was supposed to. Kisses that felt like wet sausages pressed against my lips, a thick appendage stuck into my mouth, licking and plunging against my teeth.
When you grow up with your corner of the world telling you that it’s okay to have a “gay phase” as long as you settle down with the “right” gender at the end of it, tucked neatly behind that white-picket fence, popping babies out like your womb is nothing more than a marshmallow gun, it leaves an imprint. When the men that I brought to my bed left me feeling more hollow than whole, I began to wonder what was wrong with me.
Because it was my fault, right?
That’s what I was told when I tried to explain it.
Explaining it made it worse, somehow. The men took my insecurities as daggers to their already fragile masculinity. It got easier to pretend, to fake it. I began watching porn to see how the men wanted me to act. My voice shifted to fit the squeaky ladies in the film, and I treated it like a performance.
The curtains pull free, exposing my naked body to the piercing lights of the stage. There’s a chorus of polite clapping from the audience, settling in for what the program promises to be a “moving” show of human emotion and anatomy. I mentally recite my lines, my actions, the way that I need to carry myself to the audience. It’s almost like I slip into a separate place, an alternate perception of reality that has the mantra, “Fake it ‘till you make it” echoing around like a siren. Every word that comes out of my mouth is practiced; every noise sung like a well-versed song. Every movement of my hips and my hands has been learned and every rising crescendo has been carefully crafted. When the climax shudders free, it is not over-exaggerated, unless that is what my audience wishes.
The show comes to an end, satiated consumers clapping and whistling, pleased with a show carefully conducted to fit their expectations.
The curtains flutter down, enveloping me in darkness once more. My skin is sticky, my shame dripping from wherever they decided to deposit it. As if in a dream, I remove myself from the stage and into the bathroom, where I wash the mask off and wonder, while the water runs down the drain, why my body is failing me.
The ache that I feel runs deeper than just physical – with every throb and twinge of discomfort from my bruised insides and core, I feel as though the universe is chanting, “Broken, Broken, Broken,” like some hymn meant not to comfort me but ostracize me further.
I didn’t want to allow myself to focus on how, in those brief trysts with women I had in my past, the lips that caressed mine felt warmer than the sun of an Indian summer. I didn’t want to allow myself to think about how those hands could be soft and rough in the right ways, how the breath against my skin brought goosebumps instead of nauseous bubbles. And yet, the more that I tried to sanitize myself from those thoughts, those memories, and the resulting curious desperation broiling like lava within a volcano fit to burst, the more a voice inside of me seemed to wail, “Stop ignoring me, please, stop ignoring me!”
One day, the oppressive stage lights and the suffocating audience expectations got too much for me. I retired from the stage, and I exited a part of the set that I had never explored before. It was dark, covered in old, faded posters of bands and anime that I vaguely remembered from my middle school days. An old school uniform sat, dusty in the corner, left forgotten. Memories of knee-high socks, tentative fingers pushing at the hem of skirts, the taste of pocky, cotton candy, and secrets.
It was a corner of the stage that I had previously said I had never explored, but that isn’t necessarily true. The last time that I ventured back here was in middle school when Terra decided that instead of just sharing candy with me in the smiley face corner of the kindergarten wing, she’d show me something sweeter. It was a corner of the stage that I ignored and left to collect dust because it wasn’t right. I was young, but I wasn’t stupid – I could read the social cues, the subtle sneers and comments here and there when the topic arose. I learned how to fit in, and the “appropriate” ways to stand out. I turned the lights off and left the budding roses to starve and die. The petals lay, crusted and half-blossomed, on the ground. I stepped on them and they turned to dust underneath my feet.
The light, when I turned it on, was pale yellow and flickering, but it was warm. It hung in the middle of the room, illuminating even the furthest corners.
While poking around, deciding that it was high time to clean out the cobwebs and actually explore, I met a woman. She stepped into the room and looked around, wrinkling her nose. She is beautiful. Brown hair, deep brown eyes, and a smile that outshined the light hanging from the ceiling. Her laugh shook the dust and cobwebs free, and I was suddenly standing in a room that looked like it had never been neglected.
She took me to the ocean. We sat and we had breakfast, and we talked. We talked for hours about everything and nothing at the same time. I couldn’t get enough of her – her thoughts, her voice, her laughter. It felt like coming home after a long, grueling trip. When the day ended, I dreamed about her at the seaside, how she smiled at me and how she asked me if she could kiss me.
When I met her by the ocean the next day, she took my hand and pulled me into the water, promising it would be warm.
I’d never felt anything like it before. The waves lapped at my toes, my calves, my thighs. The sun-kissed my skin, and as she pulled me down into the water, I could feel the current underneath me, strong and insistent.
It started slow – waves rocking against my body, hips crashing against hips, nails in soft flesh, the current slowly building the further into the ocean we drifted. I’ll never forget the way she whispered my name over the surface of the water, her fingers in my hair, the way that she laughed against my skin when the current began to pull me under.
When the wave that had been building finally burst free, I couldn’t breathe. The pressure built until I couldn’t take it anymore, and when the waves burst free, all I could do was ride them out. I was drowning in the most incredible way, my very atoms vibrating with the pressure that was relentlessly rippling through me.
And when I surfaced, when I finally broke free from the surface of the water, she was floating beside me, a grin on her face that was reminiscent of Aphrodite herself.
The stage lights have been out for months – there’s no need for them. There are no more performances, no more dark, dank curtains policing my actions. I’ve locked the doors to the theater and thrown them out. I spend my days by the ocean now, basking in the warmth of brown eyes and ocean waves, luxuriating in freedom unlocked.