I was at a backyard bonfire party many years ago when I saw a friend vigorously fellate a hot dog. I know. No big deal, right? You might be wondering why I remember something so mundane.
The trouble was that my friend was asexual to the point of being sex negative and despised giving head.
And out of the blue, she gave this wild performance. I remember it was early in the evening; no one was drunk. The males in attendance fawned as she rarely came out of her shell, and later in the evening, she cozied up to one of them.
So began their courtship, a drawn-out game of cat and mouse over the ensuing months, where she’d get him all fired up, play hard to get, egg him on. It was pretty epic. Friends with both of them, I was privy to juicy details from both vantage points. It put me in a tight spot as I could see what was going to happen but had no way to intervene without betraying one or both of them.
One day, he figured it out, that there wasn’t any pot of gold at the end of the rainbow sexually – but by that point, they were married with a baby on the way.
*
The trouble wasn’t that my friend had a low sex drive. Honestly, lots of people do. It’s that she misrepresented herself, tried to construe herself into what she thought her partner wanted her to be rather than what she was.
I’ve done it myself – in that I toned down my libido for many years, didn’t speak about my most pressing desires when they were judged “weird” or “creepy.” Afraid of rejection, I repressed a lot of who I was and am just now really beginning the process of embracing who I am.
I’ve also been assured by romantic interests that they were kinky or libidinous, only to find out that it was PR, that they were telling me what they thought I wanted to hear of simply didn’t understand themselves. If I’d been told they were learning, exploring themselves, unsure, it would have been one matter – the trouble was that they spoke with such certitude about things that were theoretical in their mind or, in some cases, patently untrue, and this lead to grave disappointment on both sides.
*
It is difficult enough in this world to meet compatible partners due to matters of circumstance. When we are not honest with ourselves or the ones we love, it becomes exponentially more so.
It is terrifying to be honest with one’s self, especially with an area so sensitive, misunderstood, and culturally taboo as sexuality. But I’m discovering for me that it’s an important key to fulfillment.
*
In bed last night, I tried something new. I kissed him all over his body with my mouth slightly open, not huge wet sloppy kisses, but slightly moist and sensual ones using my tongue just a bit. I had ventured this before with other partners in the past, who’d withdrawn finding it too stimulating, ticklish, odd, or gross. But it is a natural part of my sexual blueprint, a thing I’m naturally wired to do and have to actively resist. Before I’d only been allowed to kiss genitalia or a nipple in such a manner, and because of being limited to these locations, my desire to put my mouth on my lover had often forced me to rush through foreplay to indulge these feelings in a way that was “appropriate,” robbing myself (and possibly my partner) of much of the satisfaction of the build-up.
It went well. He returned the favor, and we melted together.