This is not my final form.

This is, I guess, a sort of “Part Three” to the series of identity posts I’ve been making this year. 

In January, I wrote these two posts regarding gender identity and personally identifying as multi-gendered.

Two days ago, I wrote this post on being an introvert to a relative chorus of ‘well duh’. 

I wonder as I’m writing this what reaction this post is going to elicit. So far, I’ve quietly told a grand total of four important people in my life. 

I’ve been thinking about making this post, what it’s going to look like and, to be honest, taking a bit of a run up at it. It is entirely due to the amazing @almostincidental‘s recent post on, well… anyway. It is a particular post by them that has given me the courage to post my own. 

This is truly scary.

I’m going to begin with a quote: “It’s not so much about whether it’s ‘okay’, it’s that it’s hard to shake the expectations we’re used to.”

I recently reached a point where having the spoons to deal with the issue of ‘sex’ was sapping the energy I had to see to the emotional needs to my relationships. ‘Sex’ became this larger than life thing, this all consuming ball of gas that was ever increasing with the number of days I wasn’t ‘doing it’, where the only way of releasing this awful tension was to actually ‘do it’. It didn’t matter how amazing I was in all other ways regarding a relationship, because ‘sex’ had become ‘SEX’ and I was a great big disappointment. Absolutely inadequate, in fact, because all I had to do to fix the problem was to do the act. 

And I didn’t. 

More than that, I couldn’t.  

I’m gonna say right here that none of my partners was putting this out there; this was a 100% Nikki special. 

I talk a good talk. I even do relatively good sex, I think, as far as anyone can know, I guess. My reputation seems to get more play than I do. And that’s all fine. I’ll engage in smack talk to do with sex just as easily as I’ll fall into bed with a six person orgy. 

You know what orgys generally have? A lack of sexual intercourse. Or, perhaps I should say, I lack of requirement for everyone in the orgy to have actual sexual intercourse for it to be a success. I’m really good at that. 

I’m good at touching, great at kissing, wonderful at hugging and holding a person in bed from the time we fall asleep to the time alarms go off the next morning. I’m fantastic at holding hands. I’m good at giving massages, better at receiving them. I’m delirious when it comes to sensation play in BDSM. Give me a blindfold and a person who’s willing to touch me when I have no idea whether it’ll be a hard or soft touch, or where, or when??

Hmm, an observant person might say at this point. BDSM and orgys? That sounds like a person who’s very sexually liberated. A person who obviously enjoys sex. 

Hahahaha. Yeah. Well.

Here is where I bury my head in my hands. I’ve conveniently dug myself a hole where it seems inconsistent at best to offer any other argument. 

I’m trying to be really honest with this post, but the more honest I am, the more anxious I’m becoming. Because I’m seeing the words on the page in front of me, and I’m winding towards a big finish that I really don’t think is going to make sense. 

Because there doesn’t seem to be a word for an identity that includes all of that. Or, if there is, I can’t find it. I don’t know what it is. So I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got. And it doesn’t fit, or I feel uncomfortable in it, or other people are readying their fingers to point and say, ‘That’s not what you are!’

Asexual. 

Of all of the identity related mind hacks I’ve been through this year, this one is the one that is the most jarring. My experience of it feels like looking at all the boundaries I’ve set over the years and rethink them. How many of them were put there because that’s what it takes to be a ‘normal’ person in society? No, let’s not go even that broad. How about a normal person in a relationship? How do you approach someone you’re romantically interested in, suggest you’d like a relationship with them, and then say but you’re not interested in having sex with them. *

I have honestly been shocked by how fine each and every one of my partners has been with my revelation. 

But I’m still plagued with questions. At what point do my touches become a ‘tease’ for actions I’ve taken off the table? If I’m pressing against my partner, kissing him, and I feel his hard on, is it giving mixed signals if I move closer rather than away?

I know, I know, I need to define these for myself, and voice these questions on a case by case basis, but it’s fucking hard and I’m sick of My Alternative Life™ not having a clearly established rule book. I just wish sex was a thing that was used for procreation and everyone just touched and cuddled the rest of the time. 

* Note: I know people who have done that, many people, and I have all the respect in the world for them. Especially the ones in their early 20s. Cause, fuck, I’m looking back at that me and I had no idea.