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on the brain
Jul. 5th, 2005 01:50 pmLots of sex type stuff on my brain lately (and apparently not just mine).
Though I had forgotten about it for years, I used to positively agonize over who I should be attracted to, and what that might mean to me, about me. I remember seriously considering dating someone that, to the extent of my knowledge, was a "boy", but decided against it because that would make me "gay" (specifically, a "gay" "man"), and that would be unbearable. That feeling of unsupportable social cost to self stayed with me for about half my life, and though I'd occasionally complain at feeling guilty for not liking "boys", I couldn't, or wouldn't, remember it was a decision I made.
But somewhere along the line to trying to figure myself out, that all just went away. Attraction was, for me, one of the lines of my Gordian knot of identity/selfhood/me-ness, and once I worked on that directly, attraction just sort of... fell into place. Probably by accident, I stumbled onto the simplest, most elegant condensation of the issue for me: pretty is pretty. Externally oriented attraction/sexuality is, at least in comparison, easy now.
Internally oriented, well, that's a whole different mess. I know what I like (in specific, I know who I like), and I'm absolutely OK with all of that, but... something about not being able to just be keeps fucking me up. I suspect there's something here about the question I asked myself late Saturday night that also ties in to being able to see myself as just a person, just a me, even if through an external filter, a trick of perspective. That seems... cautiously promising, but I'm trying not to doom anything by overassigning.
There's also something I want to say about a sense of self as decentered, or maybe unmoored; I envision it as a mobile circle set, moving over different allegedly fixed terrain, carrying some, dropping others, but being defined as the circle, not what it contains. This probably ties in to my door/gateway/window thing, too. Be careful how you mark yourself, kids; it goes deeper than words or skin.
I had more to say, but it's evaporated. Maybe this is an outline for later expansion.
Though I had forgotten about it for years, I used to positively agonize over who I should be attracted to, and what that might mean to me, about me. I remember seriously considering dating someone that, to the extent of my knowledge, was a "boy", but decided against it because that would make me "gay" (specifically, a "gay" "man"), and that would be unbearable. That feeling of unsupportable social cost to self stayed with me for about half my life, and though I'd occasionally complain at feeling guilty for not liking "boys", I couldn't, or wouldn't, remember it was a decision I made.
But somewhere along the line to trying to figure myself out, that all just went away. Attraction was, for me, one of the lines of my Gordian knot of identity/selfhood/me-ness, and once I worked on that directly, attraction just sort of... fell into place. Probably by accident, I stumbled onto the simplest, most elegant condensation of the issue for me: pretty is pretty. Externally oriented attraction/sexuality is, at least in comparison, easy now.
Internally oriented, well, that's a whole different mess. I know what I like (in specific, I know who I like), and I'm absolutely OK with all of that, but... something about not being able to just be keeps fucking me up. I suspect there's something here about the question I asked myself late Saturday night that also ties in to being able to see myself as just a person, just a me, even if through an external filter, a trick of perspective. That seems... cautiously promising, but I'm trying not to doom anything by overassigning.
There's also something I want to say about a sense of self as decentered, or maybe unmoored; I envision it as a mobile circle set, moving over different allegedly fixed terrain, carrying some, dropping others, but being defined as the circle, not what it contains. This probably ties in to my door/gateway/window thing, too. Be careful how you mark yourself, kids; it goes deeper than words or skin.
I had more to say, but it's evaporated. Maybe this is an outline for later expansion.
