Identity
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.
I think part of what’s behind this is a general perception of kink and vanilla being … well, oil and water. Because this person doesn’t regularly throw his bedmates around, he may not like me if he knows I want to be thrown around.
At any rate, I have a strong separation like that, although it’s more that there are places where kink and sex don’t belong, and people I associate that way, I tend to keep the kink away from.
Remembering that they are not as oil and water is useful; a sheltered “vanilla” boy can still be trained to bite, even if he won’t hit, and that doesn’t mean he’s broken some grand barrier or that I’ve become somehow dilute.
I might also imagine, however, that there are people who have an easier time separating it. For as long as I am wired the way I am, slightly backwards and a little twisted on a level completely beyond my control, I will never have the option of separating them.
I worry a lot about the … intense sexual distraction thing; I’m often afraid that people perceive me as being more primarily sexual than I really am because of how often I bust out utterances that betray where my sidetrack goes.
This is particularly frustrating when I become afraid that the person I desire thinks I am immoral, immodest, or even a bit slatternly beyond what they find is preferable.
Comment by Demonezade — January 19, 2008 @ 1:08 am