Pleasure and shame

I have a complicated relationship with sex and physical pleasure. Most likely because I have a complicated relationship with myself.

I’ve read/listened to Lexie Kite and Lindsay Kite’s book, More Than a Body, twice now—and have just started reading Sonya Renee Taylor’s The Body is Not an Apology. I cognitively understand the things all three of these amazing women tell me. That my body is inherently good. That its worth is not derived from its appearance. That I owe nothing to anyone except myself. That the commercialized standards of beauty are only meant to oppress women, especially those of black or brown skin, those who are differently-abled, or those who may not conform to outdated notions of “gender norms.” In that sense I even carry some privilege. My cis-gendered, able-bodied whiteness means I’m already halfway socially acceptable.

I know that all the fucked-up systems and cultural standards were designed to mess with my head. But even after all of the work I’ve done in the last 10 months to overcome my disordered eating habits and orthorexia, intellectually knowing “my body is good” just the way it is doesn’t always mean I actually believe it.

For me, the way I feel about my body and the way I experience any kind of sexual or physical pleasure are as close as fraternal twins. They’re not 100% mirror images of each other, but they’re pretty damn close in all the DNA that comprises them.

As a kid, I was always ahead of my friends academically and behind them physically. I skipped a grade, so in addition to being on the small side thanks to genetics, I was also a year younger than everyone else in my class. I remember being curious about sex at a young age…maybe 10 or 11. I didn’t get my period until I was 14, which for me, was in10th grade. By then, many of my high school friends had boyfriends and girlfriends. I had hockey. I was never asked out, never even catcalled by boys in the hallways (which I shouldn’t have wanted, but nonetheless). No one invited me to the senior prom. My friends bought me a ticket anyway and begged me to go, so I did, but I spent half the night crying in a bathroom stall.

Traveling 2000 miles away to college was an awakening. I turned 17 three weeks into my freshman year, and it was like I’d opened the door to an entirely new world. I experimented with makeup. I bought short(er) skirts. I went out on Thursday and Friday nights, had older men (when I say older, I mean like 21) hit on me, and goddamn it felt food. But it also led to some really stupid choices.

I started going out with a classmate who seemed to like me, although I wasn’t sure I liked him. It didn’t matter though, because being wanted was enough. One night in his dorm, we were laying down in his bed, watching the Princess Bride. He had lifted up my shirt, at first touching my chest, which admittedly felt nice. He started moving his hands down my stomach, and I told myself this is what I’d been waiting for. But when his fingers reached my waist it was like a trigger flipped. I recoiled and sat up. God love me for speaking up despite the fucked-up mess that was swirling in my head and body, but I couldn’t do whatever he wanted to do next. He was a little startled but fine with me wanting to stop. He tried to get me to relax, said we could just lay back down and watch the movie together, but I was so busy catching my breath that I don’t exactly remember what happened next. I don’t remember what I said to him, what excuse I gave for needing to leave. What I do remember is walking back to my own dorm, all the way across campus, in the pouring rain, crying. He didn’t hurt me. Nothing happened. But I felt a deep sense of shame on that long walk home.

Later that semester, on a trip to Israel over winter break, I met a boy from another school who seemed to like me. I let my longing to be wanted, to feel attractive, take over again. We held hands on excursions, sat down at a piano in one of the hotel lobbies to pretend to play together (neither of us knew how), and I spent several nights in his room, despite strict trip rules against cohabitation. On one of those nights, we were laying in his bed, listening to Pink Floyd on his Sony Discman, one earbud in each of our ears. I was resting my head on his chest, just content to have someone want my skin so close to theirs. He wanted more, though. He took my hand and moved it to his crotch, and I felt how hard he was. It was the first time I had touched a boy…a man…like that. I didn’t know what to do, but I also didn’t want to seem naive. He must have sensed something because he moved my hand for me, up and down himself, stroking, and then backed away so I could do it on my own. (As I write this my heart is beating fast, my stomach is turning…this is a core memory I wish I could forget). I watched myself do this over and over. Faster and harder. My hand and arm felt like they were someone else’s, disconnected from the rest of my body. I felt his body tense, and when he came all over my hand, I froze. I wanted to throw up. But I just turned over and reached for a tissue to wipe myself off. He turned over and fell asleep. I can’t remember whether I stayed the rest of the night in his bed or went back to my own room, but I do remember feeling like there was something wrong with me for both letting that happen, and for not liking it.

Six months after that night in Israel, I met the man who would become my husband seven years later. Things were immediately different with him. I wanted everything we did together. There were no expectations, no pretenses, we moved at the same speed. We talked about having sex for weeks before we did, and while I can’t say it was the mind-blowing stuff of movies, it was soft, and it was loving. I couldn’t bring myself to touch him with my hands, the way the boy in Israel had made me move for him, but this magical human didn’t seem to mind. We did other things together, and fell asleep in each others’ arms, and that was enough.

This man, my husband, is still the only person I’ve ever had sex with. I’m ashamed to admit that I want to know what it’s like with someone else. After being together for 22 years, everything is just…familiar. There’s a level of intimacy in that kind of closeness, in knowing how the other one moves, in being able to trace each other’s skin with our eyes closed. But there’s also a dissolution of boundaries that I’m not entirely comfortable with. Maybe it’s because of those first few encounters my freshman year in college, but being touched without being asked instantly tenses every muscle in my body. Just like the night in Israel, though, I very rarely say no.

Somewhere inside, even after being with my husband for 22 years, I think I still believe I should be grateful for being wanted at all. That being touched is a gift I need to accept without conditions. That my body isn’t an apology, necessarily, but it is an offering. I’ve struggled with body image on-and-off for my whole life, with the latest bout coming after I gained 20 pounds following my dad’s death in 2019. That’s when the disordered eating and orthorexia started (or maybe it was always there, but kicked itself into high-gear as a coping mechanism). I lost the 20 pounds quickly thanks to eating less than 1100 calories and working out for 45-minutes a day, but then inexplicably gained them all back a few months later. I felt like a failure. Walking past the full-length mirror in my bedroom without those 20 extra pounds was like a victory strut. Proof that I was “good enough” to be disciplined and achieve my goals. I reveled in feeling and looking “like myself” again. But once the weight came back, despite not changing my unhealthy eating and exercise routines, walking past my mirror became a sulk of self-loathing punctuated by low grunts of disgust.

When you feel ashamed and repulsed by your own body, that’s the only thing you can feel when someone else looks at you, too. Even if their eyes see beautiful curves and soft skin, you believe they see bulges and rolls, grossly taking over the places that used to be firm and flat. Even if they say they love the way you feel when they touch you or taste you, you still detach from your body because you can’t believe it’s anything but wrong. But you want to know what gets me even more than that? That makes me feel even more broken? That when I try to love myself, I’m still detached. I can’t even find my own pleasure, alone, without anyone else’s eyes or hands, because I am still experiencing my body through the lens of something being broken. I never finish. It’s like a subconscious punishment for some unspoken crime, and I don’t know how to make it right.

There’s a lot confounded in here. Self-esteem, self-worth, body image, probably some sexual trauma. All of the strands get tangled together and I don’t really know what’s causing what, or how to trace any one of them back to a single source. I do know that I want to feel pleasure. I want to be able to say no to my husband when I don’t want something, and say yes—or better even, initiate things—when I do. I want to be able to look in the mirror and appreciate my body for what it is, for what it does, for the two kids it has given life to, for the multiple surgeries (both necessary and narcissistic) it’s endured. I want to know what other sensations are available to me. I want to explore fantasies that I’m too scared to speak out loud. But my wanting isn’t enough.

I don’t have an answer to any of this, just a little pit of emptiness in my stomach that comes and goes each time I think about what I’m doing to myself. I like to think I’m in recovery from the eating disorder and orthorexia—it’s been 10 months since I restricted my diet or got on the bike. I still check calorie counts on occasion, and I will get competitive with myself about needing to beat yesterday’s step count on my Fitbit. But it’s progress, and I can celebrate that. Making progress on the pleasure front hasn’t gone as well.

We’ll see if reading Taylor’s book unlocks anything new for me. I’d love to KNOW that my body is good, in all capital letters that can withstand the force of a hurricane, instead of just knowing it in small lowercase type that can be easily deleted by a hand or a mirror.

We’ll see. Till then…lowercase typing it is.