Our Bodies, Ourselves (25 page)

Ananda:
My primary partner and I really are co-conspirators as far as what is next in our lives, what would be fun, what would be different. He is much better than I am at coming up with really new and different things. I look at him askance, hesitant, and then jump in. I am rarely disappointed. The open-spiritedness and the sense of togetherness, in terms of both coziness and intrigue, that the word evokes for me, make it a really great expression of what I want to continue to happen with my partner, even as we age and slow down.

Jaime:
When I want to express love to a partner without saying it, I put the tip of my nose up against his and wiggle my nose. It's goofy, but it's an intimate gesture for me because it involves being very close, physically, to the other person, and I don't do it to a lot of people. I also express intimacy by telling people secrets. Like the mean rumor someone made up about me from high school that I'd rather forget. Or the abusive relationship I was in and how I can't decide if I want to call it rape.

Madigan:
I cannot be sexually or emotionally intimate with someone I don't feel safe with. Physical touch and emotional honesty are two major parts of expressing intimacy with anyone I care about (romantic or otherwise).

Danielle:
To truly laugh with someone—not at them or near them, but
with
them—requires a certain amount of intimacy. Because laughter, like any emotional expression, requires the safety to express that joy. The trust that your expression won't be dismissed. The openness and sharing of the moment. It requires an understanding of why the moment is funny, and why the shared experience is important.

Victoria:
I think of intimacy as embodied, though not necessarily sexual: These are the friends I hold hands with, give back rubs to, kiss hello and good-bye. And with my partner, when our rhythm is off, when we're struggling to be open in our conversation or we're just disconnected because of our schedules or our priorities, I have to reestablish that connection and intimacy before I want to have sex (whereas he always wants to reestablish connection by having sex). So it's an ongoing conversation in my relationship.

Kali:
Intimacy is our inside jokes. It's the way we can be ridiculous and unself-conscious with each other. It's being able to sleep soundly when
he's in the same bed with me. It's when a touch can express love, longing, and desire and still be tender. Intimacy is knowing that I can reveal what a geek I am without worrying that he'll be turned off. It's there when we're curled up together in bed, talking.

Nina:
Intimacy is all in the details. It's more than sex, and it's more than knowing how to cuddle. It's being able to read your partner's face and know exactly what they are feeling before they tell you. It's knowing the right combination of words to make everything better when their world is falling apart.

Sophia:
There are times when my husband and I are in a crowded room full of people and we are feeling a little lost in the crowd. All we have to do is look at each other or lightly touch, and any discomfort with being in a crowd of strangers melts away.

As a nuclear family—as in my husband, children, and I—we are constantly in each other's personal space, but we learn how to accept each other as individuals through mutual trust and respect. We know about and have dealt with all sorts of personal details about each other. I think family intimacy is essential to a child's emotional growth and understanding of personal space and boundaries.

Pearl:
Words are difficult to find to describe deep intimacy with a partner. It does involve trust and vulnerability, but those exist within my deep friendships. For me, the intimacy I have with my love/partner is cemented by a knowledge of each other grounded in Spirit. It is that which makes me light up when she comes into the room. It settles me with a connecting look in a large crowd. It is a secret that cannot be known by anyone else. It grows over time, it is still full of surprise, it is not always easy.

Judith:
One of the interesting things about intimacy is that—whether it's built slowly or suddenly—it's almost impossible to unravel (completely) once it's there. The relationship itself may dissolve at some point, but there's still an almost visceral recognition of that person based on an intimacy that existed at one time. I see this with my parents, who divorced in a messy and painful way a few years back, and struggle with the ways they still feel connected, and I see it in my own life as well. There are people I may never be particularly close to again, with whom I nevertheless feel—and expect I will always feel—an intimate bond. That's not always easy, either, but it's important to me. That kind of closeness can transcend a lot.

Cecilia:
Intimacy is having no guile, no boundaries. At sixty-three, it is adoring each other's aging bodies: the too-large stomach, the fallen buttocks, the sagging boobs, the small scrapes that take too long to heal, the urgencies, the aches, the relaxation. It is sharing a bathroom and its functions. It is curling up under your lover's armpit and crying for no identifiable reason. It is that glorious morning at the beginning of the relationship when, after luscious sex, you stay in bed for hours telling each other all about your previous lovers. It is knowing when it's time to leave a party because your partner wants to even if you don't. It is being able to talk about your failures and embarrassments. It is being able to say when you're proud of yourself. It is being able to pack each other's suitcases.

Lydia:
I love the way sexual activity gives us a nonverbal (or at least partially nonverbal) way of expressing and exploring our connection to each other and the dynamics of our interactions. I feel like the bravery it takes to be in that space of sexual pleasure with another human being (a space that, until now, I have only ever experienced on my own, behind closed doors) is a pretty awesome thing.

Mags:
I enjoy making my partner feel things
they may not get from another partner. I think I prefer pleasuring women more than men. I love being able to kiss, touch, lick, and suck on everything that a woman has. I feel like women appreciate the time and effort that the other woman takes in exploring her body and learning different techniques to make her moan.

Heidi:
I used to enjoy the feeling of power that I had when I was in charge of a sexual encounter. Knowing that somebody else wanted me in that kind of a way made me feel as though I were special or beautiful or something, I'm not entirely sure what. Now I don't get that feeling anymore. I'm not sure if it is because I can't be bothered, or maybe I'm just jealous of what they are able to feel and I am not.

I do not miss being sexual. I miss intimacy. I miss cuddling at night when I'm falling asleep. But, for me, there isn't much to enjoy about being sexual right now. Maybe that will change, maybe it won't, but I have to keep working on accepting that this is where I am right now and that it is okay.

Judith:
If sexuality is about developing a positive relationship with my body, I enjoy that. If it's about all of my emotionally intimate relationships, across the platonic/romantic spectrum and regardless of how touch is incorporated, I enjoy that. If it's about politics and feminism, and developing agency at the social level so that I can eventually exercise that same agency in my personal life, then, well, there's a lot I enjoy about being sexual.

© Big Cheese Photo

Danielle:
It's been really wonderful, over the course of my transition, to feel more and more “at home” in my own body. To enjoy my own
breasts (which were a long time coming) or the pleasure of my own smooth skin. I was able to enjoy being sexual before going on hormones or transitioning, but I hadn't realized how
right
things would feel when I felt better about my body, my presentation, and my gender.

Chloe:
Totally, Danielle. Prior to transitioning, I had sex fairly often and would say that I liked it but was sort of indifferent. It was fun, sure, but no big deal. After transitioning, things have changed so much. Besides the physical side of things changing (don't know if you had this experience, but for me and lots of other trans women I know, orgasms get harder to have but longer and more, I don't know, whole-body-melty feeling and my skin becomes much more sensitive), just having someone run their hands over my breasts feels “right” in a way I don't really understand, but I never felt that way when I had a flat chest.

I think being (more) comfortable in my body, thanks to hormones and lots of other things, has made sex better for me, and good sex makes me feel better about my body. So it's a nice combo.

Danielle:
Yes! I did a whole bunch of journaling recently on my changing experiences with sex over the course of transitioning (not that I'd consider myself “done”), and I think that's a big part of it. Definitely harder to get to, but so much more yummy!

Leigh:
Speaking on a raw, visceral level, sex that reaches climax has the incomparable ability to help me focus—to construct, write, create, produce. And I don't mean in a sort of sex-as-muse kind of way, but merely in reference to the clearheaded focus it brings. I masturbated my way through all-nighters reading dense theory and writing papers in grad school. One thing I love about sex with men is how they often fall asleep very quickly after sex and give me space to lie awake mulling over ideas and scheming new projects.

Nina:
I did not even
think
to masturbate while I was in graduate school pulling all-nighters. I could have been even greater than I was!

Lydia:
I totally use masturbation as a way to focus, ground myself physically, and release non-productive tension. I've never mastered the all-nighter thing, but have used it as a way to wake myself up in the morning. I love morning sex :)

EJM:
I think I am the same way. I find my partner always falling asleep quickly, but I find myself being able to focus and my mind becomes more calm, not racing.

Nasir:
LOL. It always used to annoy me when men fell asleep. I like the cuddling and the rehashing of what just went down after sex.

Lydia:
I don't think falling asleep just after sex is exclusively a male-female thing. Sometimes sex/masturbation helps me fall asleep, sometimes my girlfriend is the one who falls asleep. Sometimes we both do. My girlfriend is less inclined to revisit “what just went down” and create a shared narrative than I am (I'm a compulsive chronicler). It can sometimes be a little lonely. But I think it's more a personality thing than a gender thing.

Ananda:
I also masturbated my way through graduate school the second time. I never thought of it as helping me focus but as a way to nurture myself—I was not living with my partner—and to release tension. But, yes, I think you are right, Leigh. Thanks for that thought.

Cody:
This question makes me think about “love” versus “in love” and what kinds of relationships we're talking about. Being in love for me is a helpless, head-rushy feeling and requires a lot of trust and intimacy to let myself fall like that. Being in love also has to do with intention, if not commitment: I want the people I'm in love with to be long-term things, and even if it
doesn't work out that way, the intention of that needs to be mutual and strong for it to be worth the emotional risk.

I've also had lovers who I haven't really loved at all, but who I've been hot for and enjoyed fucking. I don't think love needs to play any role in sex I'm having, and I don't think that not being in love has impacted the pleasure, intimacy, hotness, or connection of sex for me.

Cecilia:
I never could make love with someone I didn't at least think I loved. Note I say “make love.” I guess that's key. I don't know if it's because I remained in a fairly conservative segment of society, or because I was brought up in the '50s, or because I'm not hugely sexual, but whatever it is, I have never had sex just because someone was hot and I wanted it. Some version of love has always had to be there. But I really enjoy reminiscing about the few times the sex drive had more to do with it than the love.

Nina:
Love in my relationships can be described in a single phrase:
Love the hard way
. In my past relationships I've found that I love too hard without the expectation of reciprocity. I think a lot of my partners did love me in their own little ways. It wasn't until much later that I realized that their subtle love was no match for my unabashed expression of love and devotion.