hypersexuality: crushes on my friends // fucking my friends
to some people i probably come across as kind of a slut. if you run into me at the local gay bar where i've become a regular, there's a decent chance you'll see me kissing someone, cuddling up to someone, or being very flirty. you might even see me leave with someone and make some assumptions about what we're up to, which may or may not be correct depending on the night.
crushes on my friends
i have crushes on so many of my friends, i'm not sure i could even give you an accurate count. how could i not? my friends are all such wonderful people - people who have been there for me when i was closest to the edge, people who have comforted me in times of despair, people who have given me permission to be myself whether they knew it or not, people who have put their own safety on the line to defend me, and people who have helped me become more myself than i have ever been. when you're surrounded by kindness and love, how can you not fall in love again and again? it certainly doesn't hurt that they're all gorgeous, too.
there's another element to this, though, that i don't really hear other people discuss and that has been bouncing around in my head for a little bit. being a trans woman who didn't grow up in an environment supportive of that, i spent so much of my life bottling up my feelings and cramming them down into the deepest corners i could find. or, if i could, tearing them out at the root before they grew into something dangerous. it feels wrong to keep doing that now.
i want to let my emotions run free and grow and blossom and wither and die and be reborn and on and on forever because i can actually feel these things now and it's beautiful and glorious and i want to relish in every moment of it. that doesn't mean i make them everyone else's problem - those feelings may not come back to me on the same wavelength, and that's ok. and i'll get hurt sometimes. but i'm going to let myself feel, and feel deeply. i can't imagine doing anything else.
fucking my friends
i won't deny there's an element of selfish pleasure-seeking at play when i sleep with someone. obviously there is - fucking feels good if you're doing it right. maybe it's the submissive streak in me, but what is often a stronger motivation for me is making someone else feel good in one of the most intimate ways possible. because i don't have a lot of what i'd call "casual sex", as in sex with people i don't already know, the people i'm fucking are generally people i care about, often deeply. it feels amazing to make someone i care about feel good in way their brain can't twist into something else later, that will remain a moment of exhilaration and desire and pleasure burned into their memory. a moment where they feel not only seen and accepted, but wanted and cared for at their most vulnerable. and i like to think i'm pretty good at providing that, too.
i don't know, that feels like kind of a beautiful thing to me in a world that wants me dead. and it's a shame that the wonderful complexity of this aspect of the queer experience is often reduced to "hypersexuality" and aimed at some trans women in particular as if it's something wrong with us.