a young man's fancy turns

or: gay panic! at the every location (usually the bagel place, though)

This one’s about sex, some of it not super fun. Guard your good heart.

As soon as it’s warm outside, I always wonder what it would feel like to go out and be a little slutty. (“Slutty,” henceforth and forever, and specifically throughout this piece, being a good thing. Get your very safe and fun freak on if it so pleases you. Moving on.)

I was a little slutty Once, but it wasn’t fun. It’s when I thought I was straight and when I thought I wasn’t worth anything, and so I thought I had to patiently exist within uncomfortable, unpleasant situations for any sort of romantic connection or attention. At a certain point, I knew I wasn’t having a good time, but I was beginning to turn my woes into stories for stand up. Well, oh, no. What if something went well for me and I ran out of material?

I have been so very afraid of taking care of all the aspects of myself, because I have assumed somewhere deep down that all paths to my own independence would be lonely ones. If I didn’t put up with the creepy behavior, if I didn’t stay overnight at the gross house, if I didn’t let myself be kissed with no real examination as to whether or not I liked the person on the other side of the smooch… well, I’d probably just never be kissed again. I’d probably have no stories to share onstage. I’d probably be alone and unremarkable. Just let the sad thing happen, Dani! If nothing else, you might get a joke out of it. Five more minutes before someone else’s eyes.

Here’s another thing, and I don’t know where to put it yet: I realized recently that I have never ever allowed myself to take my own desire or attraction seriously. I have shoved anything approaching Genuine Lust/Wanting/Whatever so far deep into the closet (oh, fuck, that’s why it’s called that) that I spent a long time really only entertaining sexual interactions which I could bend into something funny. Or maybe something tragic which would be funny after a certain amount of time.

When I thought I was straight, my sexuality always felt like a tool. Something I wielded, something I utilized. I was purposefully uncurious about what I liked or what I wanted; I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to have to ask someone for something they couldn’t give me. The first time I felt safe in a romantic and sexual relationship, I eventually just… didn’t want to have sex at all. It felt completely disconnected to love for me at that point. It was always something I had done most when I was miserable or when I was desperate to hold someone’s focus. Once I was safe and comfortable and happy, I couldn’t really see a reason to put myself through it anymore. My most cherished, intimate moments in that relationship involved watching YouTube videos in bed together, my head tucked against my partner’s chest and my knees under their knees.

I ran out of ways to explain how I loved them, but sex wasn’t something I wanted very much. My tongue tied itself into knots when I tried to work through how I still thought they were so beautiful, but sex as I had known it so far in my life often made me want to cry and curl in on myself. Our last summer together was also the last time I saw my groomer in person, and too many wires got crossed in my head. I finally knew I was queer, I finally knew there was language for it, I finally knew there might be things I wanted after all, but I didn’t trust anymore that they could give it to me. I don’t know that I would have trusted anyone with it at that point. I panicked. I ran.

(No, I thought about it longer and harder than I’ve ever thought about anything. It’s just easier to say anything else.)

It’s been nearly five years since. I learned how to forgive my younger self for the situations we got into as well as how to forgive my current self for no longer being my younger self. Forgiving and reconnecting with my younger self involved giving back in to things they enjoyed and which I really stopped pursuing at a certain point in my 20s: reading stories about kissing.

This is not a new admittance of mine, but if you see me and I’m on my phone: I’m reading about kissin.’ I’m on blessed Archive of Our Own, and I’m reading about kissing and hand stuff and fucking and aching and tenderness and longing, and all of it is queer, and all of it is some hazy sparkling shade of something I want. I think about things, I imagine things, I yearn for things. A mouth at my neck. (Hell, two mouths at my neck?) Laughter and pleasure and safety, none compromising the others. No one making fun of me. No one humiliating me for not knowing yet. Are you nervous? Great, me too. What if we read an article together first? What if we wrote horny lists and submitted them to each other for copious study beforehand? You could ask to see my AO3 bookmarks, if you like.

I don’t know what I’m doing, and I can’t pretend otherwise. But I won’t be ashamed and small about it anymore. I’ve left that shell behind, I am too big for it now.

It’s warm outside, and my imagination is humid and sweaty. My daydreams are sunshiny, lemonade yellow and cotton candy blue. My feet are bare on the grass and I am reading so many stories about kissing.

I am working to believe I am worthy of a kissing story of lovely it will be barely worth the telling.