I made it to South Dakota for a few days of a solo trip to camp, hike, and trail run in the Black Hills & Mt. Rushmore area.
Funny the things one thinks about while driving alone for hundreds of miles.
Towards the end of my drive today, I found myself counting the number of people with whom I’ve had physical and/or sexual intimacy in the past few years (I guess I’m fully into my “horny teenage boy” phase!). And I suddenly realized that I’ve had much more physical and/or sexual intimacy since moving to Colorado, three & a half years ago, and since coming more explicitly/openly into (& out as) my nonbinary transmasc self than I had during the six years in California.
It’s interesting how relative things are, how tricky feelings and perceptions can be.
For a while now, I’ve been feeling like “nobody likes me physically or sexually”, that “I am unable to find people with whom to connect on a physical and/or sexual level”, etc. But in reality, I’ve had different forms of physical and/or sexual intimacy with half a dozen people in just over three years here in Colorado, whereas in California I had only two friends with benefits during my 5-6 years there. In California, it was with two cis-men: one straight and pretty normative in his approach to relationships; the other queer (bisexual and polyamorous). In Colorado, where my gender-journey really began to flourish, including the medicalization part and the masculinization of my looks, I have had physical and/or sexual intimacy with seven people spanning almost the whole gender-spectrum: a queer cis-woman; a nonbinary transfem friend; a nonbinary, queer AMAB person who was slowly leaning more and more feminine in their spirit/identity (even if not physically); a transgirl; a queer/pansexual cis-man; a gay cis-man; and a gender-expansive/nonbinary gay cis-man. Some of these interactions were brief — a kiss, a couple of hookups, some handsy snuggles. Others lasted a few months. Most were “superficial” or just “experimental” or casual. A couple really took my heart. But in all of them there was for me the element of exploration, discovery, experimentation.
I went through a similar phase between the ages of 15 – 19. So when I feel — and say — that I’m like a teenager all over again, it’s true: I am, once again, discovering what physical and/or sexual intimacy mean to me, what I like, what/who attracts me, who likes/is attracted to me.
I need to keep this in mind, to remember this in the dark moments of loneliness when I feel like nobody is physically or sexually attracted to me, or when I feel that I’m not physically or sexually attracted to anyone. It’s true that I rarely feel physical or sexual attraction towards anyone, especially if I know nothing about them. And it’s true that I have a very hard time understanding when other people are interested in/attracted to me physically or sexually (as the case with the guy who hit on me after the race last Saturday proves!). And it’s especially true that most of the situations of physical or sexual intimacy that I’ve had since moving out to Colorado & since being openly nonbinary/transmasc have been fleeting experiments that didn’t work out. But it hasn’t been a barren desert. People have been interested in/attracted to me physically or sexually, and they have made their interest/attraction clear and known to me, despite my “weird body” and/or awkwardness.
So maybe there is hope for me. Maybe, just like those years between high school & the beginning of college when I was trying to figure out who/what I liked and who liked me, I’m slowly figuring things out again, in this second puberty. As I blundered back then, in my teens, and kissed or snuggled or hooked up with many people who ended up being the “wrong fit”, I’m blundering now: experimenting, trying to understand by trial and error.
And hopefully, sooner rather than later I’ll zoom into the “right persons”. Hopefully, sooner rather than later, the “right fits” & I will find each other…
The Little Prince and the Fox 