Art by Austin Bernales // Daily Nexus

It was midnight on an intimately sober Saturday-turned-Sunday when we got back to my place. We could still hear the ballistic frat boy rants and skinny dip squeals vibrating the small college town of Isla Vista, California, making me feel that much more pleased that I was with him instead of them this young night. I looked at his face without touching, and I was bewildered. Bewildered that we hadn’t kissed yet, as this was exactly the kind of patient romance I had been yearning for, even though he was going back to the Bay tomorrow. I sighed. I swooned. We talked about life and art, and god knows I get consensually weak with that. We heard the ocean crash the way our energies were uniting and so he proposed that we go to the beach and just be. Classic. But WAIT. I heard a piercing siren go off in my dreamy mind. WAIT. BEEP BEEP. Was the sex about to happen? Cum on. You know what I’m talking about, baby. It’s “the” sex that is inevitable if a good conversation leads to a walk on the beach and Freebirds would probably close soon anyway, right? Nothing left to do but to be bare. WAIT.

Is the fucking going to happen so fast again? It’s damn over at that point. What a shame. He probably will never talk to me again or see me the same because of sexist bullshit. Fuck. But I actually like him and I think he actually likes me.

I hesitated for a breath before my sexual and spiritual attraction got up and left with him.  

But the curveball was that I actually loved going to the beach with him. This time, the beach and a boy didn’t feel like a situation of objectification. There wasn’t that tense air of expectation I had so easily pleased in the past just to make things more comfortable. NO. There was no having sex just because I felt responsible for giving it or kissing because it’s what people do in the dark. I enjoyed other things. I was mystified over holding hands because it felt organic, just like the dialogue dripping from our tongues in spaces that would otherwise be spent interlocking our predestined-to-be-nude bodies on a mossy rock way more uncomfortable than either of us would have admitted later on. I knew our lips were about to spark with that last stormy wave caressing the sand, and so they did with giggles plucking harp strings of the wind mixed with an original song in my head shrieking This is different. Maybe this is real.

Different. It’s a word overused with love stories, and no longer can I feel why this situation was different in comparison to others that might have been overlooked or silenced. Why? Because I am numb to all of my sexual fantasies at this point, where the fantasy part to my longings was having sex with someone I liked who also liked me back. The fantasy was having an experience where sex was a manifestation of developed respect between him and myself and an attraction expressing itself in another way, not needing sex as the only way.

I wanted lust and freedom intertwined with intimacy and learning. Being together just because we are human and that’s what humans enjoy. I didn’t stop having sex that night, even though this guy and I didn’t have sex. I liked him too much for that. I stopped having sex when I realized that I stopped having sex with people I liked because I liked them, and they may have liked me too, which meant that I was having sex with people that I didn’t truly enjoy and who didn’t know me or care to either. DONE. Muthafuckin’ GAME OVER for me to have casual sex when the casualness of it made me forget what pleasure sex brought to my lovely vagina in the first place. I think I got confused. I love sex. I love having sex. I started casual sex because it’s fun and it feels good. But I kept up casual sex because I wanted it to turn into a deep connection with someone, and casual sex is one of the only opportunities I saw to get to know a being (through as the side effect of spillover time, like whispering things before bed or sharing your class schedule with them the next day).

So, I don’t remember this situation being that different, because at the end of it, he still asked for sex, and even though I said no, I couldn’t help but think that all of the fluff was fluff to lead up to fucking, like foreplay to the foreplay. He left the next day and has barely contacted me since, and it’s quite all right. But I also couldn’t help but think of how many times things felt “different” like that, and I did, in fact, like that person, and they may or may not have liked me, but either having sex even though I didn’t want to yet or not having sex because I LIKED THEM AND DID WANT IT kept me from experiencing this true difference to its most bloomed form. I also thought about all those moments lost in the limbo toxic hole of being NUMB after hurting through sex, like when I was not acknowledged by them again afterward or when I forced myself not to have sex even though it was probably a beautiful time to do it with someone or when I just laid there and forgot that sex was happening to me.

I felt used, nothing, everything, scared, deprived, restless, horny, asexual, invaded and bored that I stopped having sex actively for six months last year. It was at the peak of my wild feelings and out-of-control substance use and emotions that couldn’t be contained. But I let it go because I knew what it felt like and it didn’t feel like what I needed and wanted to be healthy. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted from sexuality, but I knew what I did not want from it and life. So, I cut those ties and I did not have sex even when I liked others, because, this time, it wasn’t because I liked them that I didn’t want to get hurt or move “too quickly,” it was because I actually had nothing to give and nothing I wanted to take. I was floating on in life and finding happiness in crevices that surprised me. I was reigniting my senses to feel and be awake to life all around where I once was taken from and not replenished. I was replenishing myself and understanding what I need from sex and what I can give. I also understood my selfish reasons for having sex before and the ways in which I put myself in situations continuously that were not in synch with my soul’s true nature. I became me and I understood and respected what makes me most vibrant. I tried then to get to know other people, and for the first time, to get to know everyone as just a friend without the prospects of sex or love. I let go of using them to project my own fantasies onto and I tried to be less self-centered. They are all people. Beautiful, wondrous people, and I wanted to know who they were outside of sex or a buildup to it.

They were quite astonishing. They were wonderful. I fell in love with people again, and I fell in love with myself. I traveled and laughed. I ate and let go. I got full again, and I was ready to give when time allowed it. Since then I have had sex with one person and it was all very natural. I am living open to sexuality, but open to a redefined, reclaimed version of sexuality that includes so much nurturance, reciprocity, consent, respect, amusement, safety, excitement, fun and love that it will not be everywhere at any time. It’s a sexuality that is me and it is back and better than ever, even if it’s not always active in sex. It is always active inside of me.