In This Body: Titleless Sexuality
“I think he’s a she and think she’s so pretty”
Our monthly column "In This Body" is comprised of true stories about sex, gender, the body, and love, written by Fiona George, for NAILED.
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When I was fifteen on the orange wrap around couch in the TV room at my parents’ house. I was trying to show my girlfriend a movie I loved but instead I’m on top of her and her hands are down my pajama shorts and underwear.
I’m wearing the most awful underwear: a neon green and yellow striped thong with hot pink and orange elastic around the edges. I can feel how wet I am in the way her fingers slip around beneath the tacky striped panties.
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When I’m sixteen, I don’t think I like boys anymore. Girls are more comfortable, easy to talk to. Bodies I know. At the Rocky Horror Picture show, I see a boy dressed in drag. Long skinny limbs and long hair. Right up until I talk to him, hear his voice and see his Adam’s apple bob in his throat, I think he’s a she and think she’s so pretty.
Right around then, I think I’m in love with a straight girl. She’s one of my best friends, but she was never going to fall for me. I’m kind of her puppy dog, and that still makes me happy.
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When I’m seventeen, I’m getting off with a man thirteen years older than me. I wear girly, lacy g-strings under my punk-rock ripped jeans, and beneath all my fuck the patriarchy noise, I kind of want to fall in love and be taken care of. And I kind of want that from him.
But I don’t question my sexuality over him. He was just a friend that I trusted enough to let him get me off. And if he didn’t use his cock, it was just like sleeping with a girl, right?
That summer in a hotel room on a trip to San Francisco with my family, I’m lulling myself to sleep with fantasies. First I imagine a woman, then a man dressed as a woman. I imagine a cock and it sends a tingle all from the tips of my limbs to the center.
After that, I shut off my thoughts and go to sleep.
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When I was eighteen I assumed I was bisexual. I was head over heels for the man thirteen years older than me. Four months later, he bought me a bong for my birthday. Iridescent pink and white.
We said things like forever and talked about marriage.
I told him that year that I’d like to try sleeping with another man. That it was a condition of forever.
That’s where it began.
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When I was nineteen, the breakup beat me up and left me bleeding. I broke up with him because I wanted to have sex with other people. Even though I was the one to end it, it wasn’t easy. I let him shame me for hurting him, and I let him call me a slut.
The guilt of the broken promise forever.
Mostly, I slept with men. Women, too, but I wanted to explore men. Mostly, I was drunk when I did it. I’d never fucked a man I wasn’t in love with before that; I didn’t know how.
Two weeks after the breakup, I broke the bong he got me for my birthday. It seemed like it meant so much.
Heavy sobs, drunk sobs; my vision already blurred when I started to cry.
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When I’m twenty, I start to stop worrying about what I’m going to label my sexuality. I’m a little less hung up on the symbolism of a broken fucking bong.
When I’m twenty I go on a date with a man I met when I was a sixteen-year-old lesbian and he was in drag.
I put on heels and a slim fitting dress, I do my hair and makeup and I feel like I’m a little bit in drag. Under the dress I wear no underwear or bra, and the sleeves are short enough to show off my armpit hair. Because I’m still all about fucking the patriarchy, even when I’m all dolled up.
We go to a head shop right by Saturday Market downtown. He’s looking to buy a bong and well, I wasn’t planning on it, but I had a week of tips in my wallet and had never replaced the one I broke.
I got one mostly clear so I could see it fill with smoke and white out.
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When I’m twenty-one I break the new bong. Not drunk or high or anything, just set it someplace not-stable and it fell right over and shattered.
It’s not till I’m picking up glass shards that I think of when I got the bong, that symbolism, the meaning it would carry if I let it.
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Read the previous "In This Body" column: here.
Header image courtesy of Kaethe Butcher. To view a gallery of her art on NAILED, go here.