“The pleasure of your lover must become your own. But at the same time, you must also remain… selfish, because wanting someone so much that it feels the same as the need… to eat… or to breathe… this is where desire becomes love, I guess.”
Sex is often advertised as a “heavenly” experience, which is undeniably true if you’ve come to think of that one time it happened! You’re thinking about it now, aren’t you? Imagine us all thinking and writing about sex like we do today, but just 20 years ago. Perhaps you feel like things were different then – there was more taboo around conversations about sex. But, in many places you go to even today, it has sustained this taboo-factor.
Sex is a lot more than just two individuals’ organs (or reproduction, as cis-hets will have you believe); it’s a unity, it’s a blissful cycle of exchanging things like pleasure, power, satisfaction, appreciation. If look towards sex for a deeper meaning, it does give you an explanation to multiple powerful things.
Everyone has a starting point and mine was back in school. I was playfully teased with one of my dear friends by all of our class for being”too close”, and honestly, I LOVED IT! I was blushing, dreaming, thinking about him every day. I used to feel hopeless when he was absent at school. We were first acquainted with each other when I was 11 and we were together in the same class over the next 4 years. During these 4 years, I grew fond of him and felt like being physically close to him. Whenever, our hands or legs brushed with one another, unintentionally so, my heart would race for that moment, like there are hundreds of butterflies in my stomach! I think this was when I understood physical closeness and my need for it. I just wanted to be with this boy for as long as I could, lock eyes with him and keep talking, touch him, feel the rush. I did not know what sex was back then, we were just 11, but what I understood is the fundamental of sex- physical intimacy. Oh the thrill of that intimacy, the touch! It was like a lion had just tasted blood.
Once known and acquainted with this thrill, I was eager to find and explore sex and my sexuality. I read up on it too rather than just watching. I read about how the body reacts, how it involuntarily gives away signs of our desires. Through close observation you learn about the other person and learn about which side to turn the key. When you meet, it’s absolutely nothing but you both. The discussions get personal, private; you begin talking intimately, the voices go low as if you do not want anyone else to listen to your talks. In any other context, speaking that slowly might get you a lot of “huhs” and “whats” but in intimate moments like these, even talking breathily is loud and clear. Hugging them as you lay on their lap, every time you breathe deep, your hugs get tighter and you want to move closer to them but in reality, you’re the closest you can get. And they move their fingers, drawing random figures and shapes on your back, running them through your hair, bodies getting too comfortable like they are going to melt into each other.
You signal your partner by meeting their gaze before slipping your eyes down to their lips asking them to kiss you. It is indeed a powerful moment to be understood and be kissed thereafter. You both close your eyes, slide your arms around each other’s waist, then up the back and realise that a person’s body is such a vast expanse to explore and literally celebrate every inch of it. Your bodies trembling with pleasure, the heat emanating, your eyes drowned in intoxication of pleasure, sweat beads rolling down on the back, all of it tells you about the hold you have on each other. The way you pull close, the clenching, the pushing of our bodies onto one another makes it evident that sex is just more than an act of organs; it is an act of ecstasy.
Intimacy is a beautiful, beautiful thing and sex is a physical way to express it. It is a powerful means to speak and to be spoken, to read and to be read, to hear and to be heard through our bodies. The time has come when we grow out of the age-old dogma that sex is not worthy of a discussion. The fact is that the more we talk about something, the less awkward it gets. So let’s just get out there, talk about sex, talk about intimacy, let’s educate ourselves, and let’s make sex healthy!
