Sleeping with them

I’ve been wanting to write this post, or about these topics & feelings, for several weeks but I wasn’t ready until now — too much going on, maybe still too much to process. Now that these recents events have become self-contained time bubbles in a more clear way, or maybe more deeply integrated, I can write about them. 

In the past month I have experienced some beautiful, lovely intimacy at a physical and sexual level with two friends who are also genderqueer/non-binary/trans. And sleeping — using “sleeping” in all the senses that the English languages has — with them (both of them, both “they”), I have discovered other ways, new ways, lovely ways of exploring gender. 

Gender and sexual orientation are two different things, two distinct aspects of who we are and what we like — and both aspects that can change over time. These two aspects are, however, connected to each other — and maybe here I’m stating the obvious — I definitely know I’m not the first person to say this, but I have been realizing this more and more clearly since my own gender journey has become more clear & self-determined. 

The depth of intimacy and sense of liberation coming from having sex with other genderqueer/non-binary/trans persons is incredible and almost impossible to state, or explain, in words. But I’ll try to do so here because these recent experiences have been so important and wonderful and healing for me. 

When I started considering medical steps in my gender journey, I was almost immediately warned that my “dating pool would shrink” and I was honestly scared or, at least, concerned that my non-binary body would be “less likable”. I am now realizing, in practice, in real-life experiences, how much of that stems from cis-normative standards, toxic prejudices and even internalized transphobia. On my part, for instance, I had a lot of fear around the aspect of “body parts”, as in, “who will like me with no breasts and a masculine upper-body but female genitals?”

These two genderqueer/non-binary/trans friends with whom I have recently, and in separate circumstances, had sex were assigned a different sex at birth than myself and have had different gender journeys from my own as well as from each other, so we span a wide spectrum both physically and emotionally/psychologically around gender while also having a lot of deep and important overlap. 

My intimate, sexual experiences with these two friends have really shown me how relative the aspect of “body parts” truly is. They like me — and I like them — despite our gender-nonconforming bodies and souls, and actually because of our gender-nonconforming bodies and souls. We find our own and each other’s bodies beautiful the way they are, with “mixed body parts”, possibly still shifting along the gender-spectrum. And what is probably even more important, even lovelier, in the physical & sexual intimacy with each other we find new, beautiful ways of relating to our own bodies as well as to each other’s, exploring ways that go beyond the standard, and often toxic, cis-/hetero-normatives. 

And it goes beyond the physical level. The intimate connection, and the “rewriting of the rules”, is also at a deeper level of gender roles. Despite having often had some good, pleasurable sex in my life, I have never before felt so well, so whole, in sexual intimacy as with these two persons. With these two friends the gender roles, and with them all the expectations and/or performing which are so hard to escape, vanish: with them, I am male and female and everything in between and beyond — and I can feel it’s the same for them — and it’s all so fluid, so spontaneously dynamic, so easy, so whole. 

With both of these friends there’s a gender-fluidity or outright gender-bending when we go out together — for instance, with the one AMAB friend who is more trans-fem, we went out for dinner together while I was visiting in California, they dressed in a beautiful girly dress and I in a “poshy” boy outfit. Being able to go out with someone with whom there is mutual sexual attraction, with them performing in a feminine way and myself in a masculine way, and then being able to bring this “into bed”, is just wonderful for me. But it’s even more wonderful that it doesn’t just stop there: it’s not only a “gender-role swap”, it’s much more than that. We’re both playing, we’re both performing fluidly, back and forth and in between and beyond genders: with ourselves, with each other, on the street, in bed, while holding each other or dancing or doing whatever else we might do together. 

I love to go climbing and hang out with my cis-male climbing buddies also because they treat me like one of them, like one of the boys, and that’s so affirming for me. Many of my other friendships, regardless of my friends’ genders, are also incredibly validating to me, as they more and more reflect back to me the boy they see and that I feel in me. 

These intimate experiences with my two genderqueer/non-binary/trans friends have brought this affirmation to another level, maybe a level that I didn’t think possible, and have thus opened up the door to the opportunity for deeper healing and broader exploration — exploring gender, sexual orientation, and who knows what more…!