Washing off the grime

[Trigger warning: objectification/sexualization, unwanted sexual attention.]

Yesterday, I went for a swim in the small pool of our apartment complex, then took a shower, and finally took a bath at night. 

I feel terribly about it from the environmental viewpoint but I really needed it for my emotional health. I needed to wash off the grime that I felt from having been so carelessly, selfishly sexualized by my friend Jack. Or ex-friend, at this point. 

In our phone call yesterday afternoon to clarify where our friendship stands now, he did some blatant back-pedaling, a full 180-degree-turn on me. While admitting that his relationship with his girlfriend is “flawed” and that it’s “changing but he doesn’t know what the timelines are”, he said that she’s also being “supportive and compassionate with him” now with his business worries and struggles — once again forgetting all the times he complained to me about her lack of support, lack of compassion, her mean and manipulative behaviors towards him, etc. But he can lie about their relationship as much as we wants to, that’s his problem. What’s worse for me is that his backpedaling and 180-degree-shift were about me, too, about his feelings for me: i.e., he maintained that he’s able to see me “only platonically” with no effort or pain now. 

That’s a complete shift from the last time we talked four weeks ago. 

At the beginning of April, while being in a monogamous relationship with her (& not telling me about it until later) he was telling me in great detail about all his sexual fantasies involving me, with no encouragement from me. And now it’s all gone?!? 

I am disgusted. It makes my stomach revolt. Even if he truly had no more interest beyond platonic for me now, the way he came onto me in March & April, while being in a monogamous relationship with a woman, describing all the details about his sexual fantasies involving me and with no encouragement from me*, is awful. And it didn’t start then. It didn’t even start with his joining me in Chicago and asking me to have sex with him then. Now, in retrospect, I can see all his comments on my body, all his little gestures & touches from last spring & summer as the early symptoms of that objectification/sexualization of my body. 

I’m not prudish. While being aro-ace, I’m sex-positive and I know many climbers tend to be body-positive, making comments on each other’s physical aspect or athletic capacities. So, since Jack & I had started our friendship as climbing buddies, I took his repeated comments about, and looks at, my naked torso, or his light touch on my arms, as a brotherly camaraderie between male athletes & friends. I felt no attraction for him and I assumed that he, as a “straight” man, intended those comments and gestures in a platonic “bro-y” way. But they were always more frequent, more insistent than with any of my other climbing/running buddies. And now, those comments, those looks, those touches from him feel “dirty”, objectifying & sexualizing me without my permission. And without my knowledge even, at least at the beginning.

I trusted him. I trusted him to be a close platonic friend, a “brother”, as we called each other. 

I never talked to him about my sexuality, it wasn’t important — until he asked me about it, saying his girlfriend had asked him about my orientation. I shared with him openly about my “gay-leaning, high-libido asexuality”. I thought I was telling a brother, like any of my other straight climbing or running buddies. And maybe at the time I was… I’ll never know. But then something started shifting for him and instead of either keeping it to himself (for the sake of our friendship & of his monogamous relationship with a woman) or of sharing with me, openly, honestly, with vulnerability, his feelings and thoughts about being attracted to another man for the first time in his life, he treated me like a disposable sexual object. 

Because he couldn’t keep his sexual frustration (with his girlfriend) and his attraction for me under control, he treated my friendship, my trust, my feelings as collateral damage of his boner for me. 

I am not a sexual object and I will not be collateral damage for selfish, careless, and entitled behavior from someone who should have been a friend. Someone I thought I could trust. 

My body (as sexually attractive as it might be) and my sexuality are my own, they belong only to me. And this violation on his part, I know, is what is fueling my anger and disgust today, causing that need for washing off the grime in water yesterday.

*[NOTE: on the contrary, in a moment of great vulnerability & need of brotherly support on my part.]