Under my skin
Come, let me tell you a story, my dear friend. Creative essay, for the 'As I Please' series.
“The artist arouses desire, plays with desire, while at the same time, keeping it at a safe distance, rendering it palpable.”
- Slavoj Zizek
I had just watched my sixth video exploring ‘performative bisexuality’, and it was just 7:55 a.m. The term had not existed in my consciousness till an hour ago, but as I devoured video after another, the questions they posed rankled my understanding of my own uncloseted sexuality, and whether I’d subconsciously been serving the male gaze. You see, I’d been with girls for as long as I’d been with guys, but there definitely had been something subversive about my tryst with the female sex, at least till a couple of years ago. While the escapades with the men had stayed private, the ones with women inevitably became notoriously public. I quickly learnt that men loved to hear stories about women’s experiences with women. With a market for sexual spectacle as ready as that, I attracted female friends seeking to star in these stories. I had discovered fairly young that my brand of sexuality came with power: it tantalised the men and provoked the women. Who was I to refrain?
The women I’ve had my little sexual encounters with more often than not, to my exasperation, have been petite. Like phantoms, really. When you kiss them, you’re almost afraid of breaking them. I assume that’s why a lot of men are attracted to these girls, they can have an intoxicating effect of making you experience your power. Once in a while, I’d find a small girl that would kiss me with an intensity worth writing of. Fearless. Challenging even. When I say once in a while, I mean one. Beyond her, my sexual encounters have been flaccid games that I engage in out of boredom. I pretend to be seduced by Tinker Bells who use my sexuality to bestow the spotlight of male attention on themselves, watching them use it as a drinking game story later, to enter the fantasies of the men around them. I let them do it, it’s my secret way of experiencing how unattractive they really are.
You may be wondering what it is about me that would get such attention. I’ll solve the puzzle for you. I am attractive, with striking eyes and full brows. My gaze is piercingly direct, so much so, that it makes people either uncomfortable or entranced. I am tall, athletic and full-bodied, with a formidable, though not overpowering presence. My voice is raspy and distinctive: it evokes the image of a femme fatale, instead of the dream girl trope that Hollywood is fond of. Through my physicality, and of course my outspoken and expressive personality, I’ve occupied spaces. I’ve been told I’m quietly intimidating in equal measure by both strangers and lovers alike, and secretly love being described so. Over time, I have chiselled the intimidation to perfection - enough to daunt, not so much as to provoke. I dare say I’m the most interesting of my friends - I took to heart the saying “It’s always better to go to bed with a mystery”, and few know the real voice in my head. Of course you’re thinking I’m boasting. I won’t deny it although I’m not proud of it, for I’m merely boasting of what is true.
Speaking of uninteresting friends, I have many. For instance, I have this friend… Well, dear reader, she’s a friend of yours too and in fact, to whom is she not a friend? I mention this uninteresting friend not because of who she is (one couldn’t keep up their interest in her beyond cursory exchanges), but because of her terrible disease. Her desire to be spoken about made her diagnose herself with an obscure mental disorder, for which she medicates herself religiously. They say there’s a stigma to mental health, but not so in my woke world, oh no. The sympathy it evokes makes it well worth her while, for she releases her grievances like handfuls of birdseed: they are handed out into the night without discernment, accessorised with an elaborate, solemn air of self-important resignation. I am compelled to participate in this solemn ritual - out of our deep friendship, as you will well understand, dear reader - and I have practised the perfect sympathetic look over our countless social affairs through the years. You see, I am a good friend, for I am insincere. I excuse my friends the pain of knowing the passion with which I dislike them.
At one of these many social engagements, I slithered away from my friend’s grasp, only to have my eyes meet another’s - into an unapologetic and unswerving gaze. It lasted beyond what’s considered civil in these matters, without a doubt. I’d wager, you, whoever you are, would call it impertinent. Me? I saw honesty in it. I felt in myself a sprouting germ of wondrous admiration, the kind I experience rarely. You see, dear reader, I’m no deer in the headlights - I revel in a head on challenge, give me a brutal truth and my weary curiosity jolts out of a stupor. It was clear that she didn’t seek to feign an interest in me to whet a male gaze, and so, in the way that only strangers can communicate across a crowded room, I gave her consent, the kind one only gives to strangers. I imagine she unclothed me, as her eyes wandered down my body, lingering over the curve of my hips. I watched her eyes and went over to her. She wore a black shirt with a printed white silhouette of antelopes, unbuttoned at the base of her neck, with grey trousers. Somehow, the manly attire fit her better than it would my male friends. She was an artist from London. We chatted, my charm offensive turned up to the hilt. She described herself as a ‘soft-butch’ and unsurprisingly, a dom. Her words hid what her eyes said aloud - she desired for me to be submissive, but already saw that wasn’t likely to be the case. Amidst all our flirtation, she saw my confidence as a threat, an intimidation. She asked me about my ‘coming out’ experience, and I had to break her illusion and share that I was bisexual, running into sudden derision.
“So, you’ve been with men? Ah… Not me, I’m a gold star lesbian.”
An image of the purity of her lesbianism being rewarded with a badge for good performance popped up in my mind and almost made me laugh out loud, my dear reader! I looked at her again, inclined to tell her that her pride sounded like the queers’ own way of certifying ‘Purebloods’, but decided better than to push her. She was just a cornered cat, threatened, and throwing a couple of punches. People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves. I expressed admiration for her purity and let her take charge thereon. Without deeply stirring me, she had attracted me by her fierce refusal to please, and we went to her place that night. By not being immediately submissive, I gave her something to work on. Just like Bonaparte (and also the female sex), she thought she could succeed where everyone else has failed.
It was a shabby experience, as I should have expected. Her masculine ego must have prevented her from texting me, and I forgot about her soon after. I met the friend with the condition a month later, and she related to me her meeting with the ‘lesbian’ friend a week ago. I anticipated she’d have mentioned me, but she hadn’t: my friend didn’t know about our encounter!
Now as you’d understand, my dear reader, this perplexed me deeply. I felt at once as if I’d been deceived - it didn’t seem natural that the incident was unimportant. Shouldn’t sex be the ultimate equaliser, after the games have been played and the matter is closed? But no, in our age, the foreplay comes after the act: the actors play a duplicitous game by feigning disinterest after the activity is done: the courtesy makes way for a cold battle, the unaddressed desires lead to chaos. Where I had earlier ceased thinking about her, over the next few days I couldn’t give my attention to anything else - she became an obsession with me. Eventually, through my friend, I met her again, drumming up an excuse to make it look like a chance run-in. I charmed her more thoroughly and we went to bed again, I bent over her and dominated her with a power I’d curbed for her pleasure the last time. We continued our interplay for a few weeks hence, post which she asked me to move in with her. That very day I began to sidle away, and in two weeks’ time, I forgot about her.
Do I see you shaking your head? Ah, I see, you’re surprised at my insolence and you wonder why am I telling you all of this. It takes a man of great courage to stare truth in the eye and see it for what it is. The philosopher Heine says that true autobiographies are almost impossible to write and man will certainly lie about himself. You see, my friend, most writers offer their readers skittish stories that promise to soothe their sensitive sensibilities. These authors are cowards, and patronisingly so, as they hide the truth, they lie, and they blame you: beloved reader, for their own lack of audacity to confront who they really are. Under all the pretensions and under all the coquettish games, under all the bravado and under all the anger, there lies the naked truth. But the truth only reveals itself to those who are not under the oppression of optics, imprisoned under a panopticon gaze.
Did I inadvertently fan your inflamed morality? You pretend to be shocked, but deep inside you, you’re merely afraid to accept what you’re enraptured to read, what you bury deep and refuse to recognise, what you think but are afraid to say, let alone write in pen and paper! You see, my beloved reader, I see the world for what it is, I wear no spectacle, but watch the spectacle unfold. I understand humanity’s true, rapacious self just as deeply as I know mine. The gaze that sees is the gaze that dominates. I am the truly unoppressed, for I see you.
Come to think of it, I am a hero, and I’ve come to rescue you from your stupor. Do you, beloved reader, my dear friend, find the courage to puncture your veneer, drain your ego and open your eyes?
Did you enjoy that? What did you think of the narrator? What was the biggest theme that emerged from this piece for you? I’ll be sharing a breakdown of this article and the main themes I’ve tried to use here, in the next post, in a few days. Do stay tuned for that!
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~ Ego is the enemy