Sometimes I wish I could let go of sex, maybe desire would become something else like lying in the grass and holding the sky. I've been trying to regain a sense of liberation in my own sexuality, but I find myself trapped by the usual unsatisfying options and the lack of space to create what I really want.
For weeks now I've been trying to think of this particular phrase, something like it's over but grander and more eloquent like the love is gone but it never was love so I just get stuck trying to figure out how to say that I don't know if there's any hope for me in public sex anymore. I mean beyond the possibility for the moment to transcend, even that is rarer and rarer now and maybe that's what I mean by the love is gone. I think I did use to love it, now all I can feel is the lack and I do think things have changed, especially the way guys walk around with a shopping list like they're checking off boxes and that's the internet overwhelming public space but also maybe I've changed. And I need something else.
I understand why so many fags give up on sex, or give up hoping that sex will become anything other than something lost, over and over again this loss or maybe I mean lack, this sense that something is lacking and some people go to great lengths to keep it that way. Others just follow the rules, and the rest of us slowly lose our sense that sex will ever illuminate anything else.
I understand why people hold onto relationships that aren't working -- at least there's something to hold onto. Something grounding in the gestures of the familiar, even when the familiar keeps you still when you want to keep moving, and moving when you want to keep still. I hold onto my relationship to public sex, and I'm unwilling to let go of the dream that it can become more, more of what I'm dreaming. I've been holding onto that dream for almost 20 years now, really 20 years I just realized it's been 20 years that's a long time. Starting somewhere in those first bathrooms when I was 14 I always hoped that somehow I'd meet someone like me, I mean I was there so what about someone else? I'm not sure that's ever happened, and I'm not sure it ever will. The culture is only changing for the worse, I mean the culture of public sex and the way its limitations become strictures.
I don't want to let go of the way sex in public is what sex means to me, more than the gestures it's the possibility of a shift in the texture of the air. I don't want to give up. But sometimes I can feel the air changing anyway, this air inside me and sometimes that means my desire feels empty and pointless, a rush that only leads me to walls. I'm so sick of walls. But sometimes I can sense something else, a difference in the way that I hold desire and maybe that means eventually it will hold me.
Mattilda blogs at nobodypasses.blogspot.com
Comment on this entry
Mattilda,
You and I need to talk sometime. What it appears to me is that you are experiencing the advent of life moving ever forward. What thrilled us in the early days of yesteryear loses its luster as we get older. We cannot stop what Time does to us, nor should worry over it.
As far as sex goes, there can be other, more exciting things for you in the future, and you won't even have to leave your bedroom. You'll have the feeling of another person in your arms. The soft touch of their lips to yours. The beautiful smell of their body. The sounds of whispering in your ears. Your low level moaning, as your lover explores every exciting part of your body.
It is what you are destined for. Embrace the new changes in your life and take love (and sex) to the next level. You will be better for it.
MonicaHelms | June 3, 2008 2:29 PM
Yeah, I can see what you're talking about here. You've written a lot about how the internet is such a cold place for meeting guys, but as someone with a foot in both worlds (internet in the US, bathhouse in France, but now it's relationship-ville), I can't really say that I notice much difference. I'm pretty objectified anywhere I go in gay male spaces in pretty horrible ways. The absolute worst, for me, are the bars.
Maybe you just need to get married, Mattilda. Settle down, picket fence, 2.3 kids, a dog, and a ring on that finger. I'll head up the committee to find you the right man. :)
Alex Blaze | June 3, 2008 7:33 PM
I'm confused by some of this.
Why the correlation between not having public sex and giving up on sex altogether or a relationship that isn't working? What do those things have in common? I've had plenty of non-public sex that was absolutely spectacular. I've had non-relationship sex that was out of this world too. Having that sex in a public park or sex club wasn't necessary.
Is this more of a fetish thing? Or are you seriously advocating that public sex will change the world?
Bil Browning | June 3, 2008 9:26 PM
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