Can we ever hope to overcome our own hypocrisy? Letting aspiration take over.

Gosh, has this ever happened to you?  Maybe you set a goal for yourself and then take an almost breezy joy as you deliberately cruise past it?  Maybe it’s an exercise goal, a weight loss goal.  Those kinds of goals I suspect draw this kind of behaviour all the time.  I am guilty.

But that isn’t what I wanted to vent about.  It is something deeper, something more fundamental.  In this case it has to do with women and sex.  [FYI, I do feel guilty for those of you who followed this blog to hear more about food and recipes and diet, or those exercise bunnies who think a little BDSM might add spice, joy, and fun to their workouts—and for both, discipline is definitely a part of it.  I promise I will come back to these topics.  It is just that this is fresh].

As much as I bang on about the “how of life” about just being good, natural, clean of heart and mind, I have failed.  And I write about it here, but I also talk about it in life.  Is it part of the human condition to set goals for ourselves that we simply cannot live up to?

I drew the contrast between earthly goals such as diet and exercise as those are comparatively easy.  I am thinking about our spiritual goals, which seem ever so much harder.  And yes, I include our sexuality in the spiritual.  After all, what can be more spiritual than who you want to sleep with.

A new friend was visiting and staying with me.  A scintillating and energizing individual, I could not help but have the hots for her.  I was terribly attracted to her.  What I don’t know, and likely never will, was whether she ever had the hots for me, whether our dynamic changed before I did anything about it, or whether it was “just friends” from the start.

This is a cosmic replay of my life as a male.  A microcosm of the fear I feel in the anti-trans debate is that somehow because I am gyno-phyllic, and clearly have greater access to the female psyche—never mind female spaces—that this is somehow doubly wrong.  What am I saying?  I don’t know how to be attracted to women anymore.

As a man, it was both easy and difficult, but it was clear.  When a woman says to me now, “I love to fxxk.  I really love to fxxk,” I don’t know if that is an invitation or a warning.  Because, invariably, they must know that I am still a woman-lover, but now no longer capable of fxxking.  At least not in the traditional sense.

Does this mean I am wistful for my manhood?  No, but could you imagine greater terror?

My bestie says to me that there is this window in a new friendship where you either have to go down the erotic route or you will fall into the friend zone.  And once you are in the friend zone, then you can’t get out.  She’s probably right.

The main vestige of my sexuality as a man, was that I would never be the one to make the approach.  I knew this drove a ton of women who might have been interested in me, did actually drive them away.  It was a turnoff.  Many women like men to jump their bones.  I like a woman who jumps mine.

Ugh I can hear some say.  But it is also a screening mechanism.  If I am flirting and coy and she doesn’t at least make advances on me, tease me sexually, touch me, or even kiss me, I kinda know.  What?  One of two things.  She is either not interested, or she is not my type.

And what’s with being attracted to women who are not my type?  I can’t help it.  I find someone’s emotional landscape sometimes really enticing even when they are not sexually compatible with me.  And this is the danger zone.  I made the mistake of marrying someone who is not kinky, who was not at all into any of the fun bedroom things and existential things that I like.  It was doomed from the start.  This is bad news.  And it came to pass.  The personal sacrifice one makes to bury the self is real, it takes its toll, and it is best not done in the first place.

But how many of us do this?  How many choose the wrong partner?  How many of us are attracted to what we shouldn’t be?

I take solace that all these women in my life are becoming dominatrixes, and that I seem to be surrounding myself with those who either already are, or who have the seeds in them which just need a little watering.  And this is very cool.

Where is all of this leading me?

When she was staying with me, she asked me to envisage a perfect life.  And in some ways, at the moment she asked, I was living it.  I described my dream world, my fantasy.  This is it.  “I imagine something not too different than what is happening right now.  To live in a big, beautiful villa with lot’s of sunshine and big open windows and doors with the breeze wafting through.  I have house guests, sometimes many, sometimes a few, and I get to cook for them, and we have many lazy, wonderful meals, and everyone is reading books, sitting in big fat couches, wearing comfy clothes, and just having the most blissed out, and re-energizing time.”

“That sounds like a beautiful dream.”

“It is, and I intend to have it come true.  When are you coming back?”

Of course, part of this dream requires a level of financial stability that I have almost never had, and right now which my lovely soon-to-be-ex-wife is taking a wrecking ball to.  No matter.  I have no doubt that I will land on my feet.  Even though my luncheon companion of the other day reminded me that when I met her and was working for her, I was living in my car, it was just part of my easy, breezy life, and it was really that the trunk was a big portable wardrobe.  That life lasted until someone smashed the driver’s window, opened the trunk (design flaw in Mercedes) and stole my clothes.  Only in Amsterdam.  Indeed, I have been robbed in Amsterdam twice like this…and I know from others that this is common.  That easy-go-easy life image they present rests on a sack full of writhing snakes.

Anyway, why all of this.  Well, I don’t know if this woman I barely knew would have come to me and stayed with me if she knew I was attracted to her.  I don’t know whether she came to me because she knew I was safe.  Of course, I was safe anyway.  As it happened in the end, I did tell her that I had been thinking about wanting to kiss her.  And of course I felt guilty confessing my desire when it was clearly either case 1 or case 2, not interested or not a good fit.

Indeed, she told me later exactly what my bestie said.  “You need a kinky lesbian.”  I guess I do.  I think I know what she looks like and how she acts.  I don’t know if it is a problem to look for a needle in a haystack.  But I also need to follow my New Year’s resolution: to have as much sex as possible.  And that means just being with people and encouraging them to go in a certain direction.  But what of someone who has been in my friend circle forever and who is now becoming an even more important better friend?  What happens when I tell her just how attractive I find her?  Most of the time.  The rest of the time she is bossing me around.

You’d think that might be exciting for me.  Submissive.  Slave.  Getting bossed around.  Am I the only slave who doesn’t like that?  I sure as heck don’t like losing my autonomy.  I find it frustrating.  My new friend at one point said it sounded like I was trying to Domme my Domme.  Ugh.  Unsurprisingly I disagreed with her, but ex-Mistress might have felt the same even though she never said so.  And if they are right, well gosh, that’s exactly what I don’t want.  To be false to my own plan.

It turns out that I am a control freak.  In my professional life I seem to have long since stopped doing this.  I am a master planner, but have learned decades ago that the best results come when you no longer tell people what to do, but inspire them to tell you what they are capable of…to work with a diversity of talent and simply ensure that they have the freedom to express it to the fullest—have achieved and are achieving their full potential, are in the right roles, et cetera.  It works a treat.  But in my kitchen, I am not like this.  

“Can I help you with the cooking,” is a question everyone except my wife seems to ask or have asked me.

“No thank you,” is the invariable refrain.  Cooking is for me a solo pursuit.  I would suck at being a chef in a restaurant.  I know this from parallel experience, having owned one.  Me going into the kitchen to do anything other than say nice things is and was a recipe for trouble.

Where is the agony in all this?  I worry that having desired this woman I was not true to my spiritual goal of being without artifice, of being without ulterior motive.  And ironically, it is this same person who is leading me towards Buddhism.  A guru of sorts.  Is it totally whack to want to jump the bones of your guru?

And I ask this in a not so tongue-in-cheek way because I am aware of just how many gurus out there sleep with their followers.  And if I am a host, and these gorgeous people are in my home, enjoying my hospitality, am I not a total hypocrite for not just letting it be the healing space and place I want it to be?

My bestie advised, “just put your face near their face, close enough so that it is kissing space, and if they kiss you or close their eyes, then you know.”

“But I am way into enthusiastic consent.  I need her to tell me. I need to ask permission.”

“Ugh.  I want a man to jump me.”

She and I both know, having been to that place over the years, that we are both ‘safe’ in each other’s company.  Oh the complicating factors of sexuality…

For Star Child, sex and sexuality is ‘simple’.  I agree that it would be nice if it were so…and she, like me, is a fan of finding our inner animal when in amorous contact with another.  But all of the people advising me are saying to not find another “partner” like my wife.  My bestie thinks I need a kinky partner.  I surely do.  Is that simple?  I guess it becomes so when you meet each other.  The worst is being with someone who isn’t kinky and wanting to play, but feeling that if you encourage it you are pushing them.  There is nothing I like less than the idea of pushing someone towards something they might find in retrospect ‘disgusting’.  Been there, even if we didn’t do that.

And more generally, does wanting a relationship to develop in a sexual way problematic?  What if someone comes to you for friendship and you want sex?  Is it hypocritical?  On the face of it, no.  But is wanting sex a defiance of innocence?  Can I say that I am truly, genuinely without guile, without quid pro quo, without ulterior motive if I want sex?

Star child expressed the idea that a man that wants a woman is being honest…and that even if the expression of that feeling is unwanted at times, it comes from a good, honest place—desire to connect with someone.  There is a lot to unpack in her viewpoint, but I have spent my life thinking that men are skunks for always wanting to get into a woman’s knickers, and here she was saying, ‘no, that’s a good thing’.  I guess it is how you go about it.  I can certainly say that I always went about it in a respectful way.

Why should now be any different?  Maybe it shouldn’t.  I feel, however, that women are being much more open to me, approaching me more openly as I have come out.  And I wonder if that is because they assume that I am either a) safe, as in only a friend, or b) they think it is a bit wild to play with a trans person not realising that the equipment they might normally play with is out of order.  I know that is a bit hetero-normative, but that sort of feels like what is happening.

The interest is there until they discover the out-of-order sign on the equipment.  And that is also why I will continue to learn about physical pleasure, mine and that of a partner.  It may not be fashionable to be attentive, to want to please, to want to learn to touch ‘just so’, but that can be my only way.

The thing that triggered this post was that when I was told that my kiss would not have been welcome (the words were different), I found myself upset.  I shouldn’t.  Two people gently exploring each other should not lead to disappointment.  And I was afraid that I sullied the genuine flow of goodwill from me up to that point, and also was worried that the goodwill would dry up…and to a certain extent, it did.  And that is what felt wrong…felt like a betrayal of my own principles.

After all, if I want a house full of charming people coming and going and all having fun, then being a host and friend will surely come first.  I may fantasise plenty about the time one day in the future when a woman decides to ‘take me’, as the primordial woman who knocks me out and drags me back to her cave by my hair is the right kind of woman for me.

Separately to this, I have a rather bizarre conclusion.  I am going to become a dominatrix.  How does that fit?  Who knows.  But I will just take one step at a time.  I think I’ll rather enjoy it.  And I know just the people to teach me.