100% Genuine Artificial Vanilla Extract

Rona has an interesting post that discusses the fact that her "primary sexual identity is kinky". It is when I read something like that that I remember why this blog is titled as it is, and why I identify as vanilla. Sure, I can enjoy someone raking me with knives, caning someone, or ordering someone to show up in this dress and opera gloves, with the knowledge her choices are limited to "against the wall or on your knees" the moment she walks in the door, but none of that is essential to my sexual identity. It’s just fun.

I agree with her that it isn’t something you need to reveal on a first date, but of course I "pass", and it "when I come out" isn’t going to haunt me as much. Privilege makes things seem easy, I am aware of that. And, like Rona, I don’t think a shared interest in kink (or poly, or any other single identity) sufficient reason to date someone. But there is a consequence of her sex/kink split.

I can play at the drop of a flogger, but for sex… I’m extraordinarily picky and in non-intuitively obvious ways. (There are, for example, lots of people who I’m madly attracted to and like quite a bit who I would never fuck. Strange but true.) Which sucks for me because DEAR LORD am I horny most of the time. If I had a local partner who I was sleeping with they’d probably have to chain me to my bed and run away to keep me off of them.

…

This is why I can not be allowed to have casual sex. Given permission to jump someone, I will want to do so at every possible opportunity - appropriate or not. And then, underlying every conversation there will be a little argument going on in my head "Can I jump her now?" "Not yet, you’re talking." "Now?" "Shut up, you don’t have to be thinking about sex all the time." "But she’s so pretty and I wanna see her naked." "Would you go take a cold shower already?" "I bet she tastes like cookies." Alternatively, maybe what I need is to date someone who has exactly the same urge to drag me into back alleys for heavy petting just because we’re walking down the street and the wind is blowing past with the scent of cupcakes.

And this is what I talk about concerning my lack of sex drive.  That simply isn’t a problem for me. I can think of one person who if she crossed my line of sight my brain would do nothing but spend time calculating what surfaces in the immediate area I could have sex with her on. I didn’t even really like her very much.  I can think of one other who never failed to give me a thrill of sexual desire every time she brushed against me. In her case, I think that had as much to do as never having her as anything else. (We shared two kisses, one of which I don’t remember and the other which was years later and full of all the unfulfilled potential of what might have been. Bittersweet works better in chocolate than in kisses.)

That kind of constant low-grade buzz of horniness is just something that I don’t have. I get horny, sure, but that kind of intense sexual distraction? Rare, even with the people who I do find sexually desirable.  

Sometimes it is worth remembering that even the shiny ones get insecure.  Calico followed up riffing on maymay’s excellent comment on that first post, reminding us again that "Your sex appeal is not your self worth".

And that is, of course, very true. (really, just go read her post)

 Of course, there are times you just really want to be all twisted steel and sex appeal. Everyone wants to be desirable to those they want to be desired by. And it is insidious sometimes, how our minds will latch onto a certain self image and not budge.

 For instance, not long after this post, I ended up in a long IM conversation with a friend about my sex drive and my insecurities about sex, sexual performance, and my perception of myself as desirable or not. 

I do not think of myself as someone who people just instantly find pretty and hot and desirable. Charming, yes. Fun, yes. Eventually sexy because sex appeal is by no means limited to simple aesthetics, yes. But I tend not (for various reasons) think of myself as "see across the room/dance/fire/what have you and go YUM, must have" hot. It always confuses me some when anything like that happens.

 My friend asked me, "You do know there are people who think you are just pretty and hot, right?"

And yes, I do know that. And no, I do not base my entire self-worth on that. But to show you how insidious these kinds of things can be, even as I acknowledged that as true, and felt somewhat better about it, my brain could not help but notice that she constructed it in passive voice - thus excluding herself. Messed up, I know.

 We are a mass of contradictions, we humans, and we do live in a society that insists being pretty (whatever that might be) is of such importance. As if pretty and desirable were the same thing anyway.

 I have a coffee with my ex to go to, and am feeling introspective.