why i stopped having sex with men i did not know

my earliest memory of romantic love (in relation to me) is this vivid dream i used to have - a man was on the brink of death, an apparition appears illuminated by my night light, she tells me that this man will die unless i love him, i agree to love him immediately, to save him. why do i agree to marry and love him so easily? why was my first conception of romantic love so linked with death?

if this is indicative of how i first became acquainted with love, then what was my first perception of sex?

when i was 13/14, i accidentally sexted a boy i met from this religious thing i used to go to. i was in my living room, sleeping on the couch (even though i had a perfectly good bed a few steps away), on my little Nokia phone, a luxury i was still getting used to, i was engaging in one of my first real "sms conversations". me and A were secret friends. at the religious place, we barely spoke, but for some reason, we texted a lot. it was odd. i didnt like being associated with him in real life. but the secrecy, the clandestine texts, reeled me in. A wanted to be a fashion designer. i knew he had to be gay. but he here he was texting me about some other girl he liked. we started playing an sms-text game of would you rather - we slowly transitioned from "would you rather nipples on your eyelashes or eyelashes on your nipple?", to "would you rather big boobs or small boobs?"

we both started feeling tingly - for me it was a tingly characterised by wetness, for him it was a tingly characterised by hardness.

my first brush with sex. post would-you-rather-sexting, my proverbial dry spell would go on to last about 5 years. until i actively sought it out.

it'd be reductive to say it was peer pressure. on C's bed, during one of our many sleepovers, she was telling me about the recent sex she had with her then boyfriend when i suddenly blurted out, "it feels like you've all been invited to a party and im the only one who hasnt been invited". (i always did like a party heheh). but it wasnt the act of "sex" that i felt like i was missing out on, it was the act of "feeling sexually desired".

ive always a sort of disjuncture between thinking i was pretty but realising that other people didnt think the same way. i used to think i had an actual shot with my childhood crush J, until i dug up an old photo of us in kindergarten and realised i was thrice his size. maybe not so much pretty, but attractive - i've always thought i was attractive because attraction (in my head) takes into account the person's personality. i think i have a nice personality. but, bit by bit, little me realised people werent always going to see it. what did they see was an obese little girl, red from running (mostly walking) around the netball court in TAF club. boys did not give me the time of day. i thought my neighbourhood-pal was cute but when i tried playing badminton, i distinctly remember him laughing at me and calling me some sort of fat-related insult. i think i skipped ahead to sex to compensate for all the years of feeling undesired - to me, sex was the most powerful indication of attraction, an attraction so alluring that it coerced someone into action, to act on it. having sex was a big fuck you to the boys i used to play with on the playground. 

i can separate the physical act from emotion, yes. but what i didnt foresee was that it'd be disappointing to skip ahead to attraction-affirming-sex. because it skipped past a part of myself that i love: my personality. my approach was disaggregated - i tried to neatly segregate parts of myself and affirm what i thought i lacked affirmation in. i'm not gonna lie, it did work. knowing and experiencing that there were people in the world who were attracted to me and wanted to have sex with me did have a profound impact on how i saw myself. to an extent, it un-did the years of feeling undesired, feeling neglected or looked pass, but i would be constantly disappointed (to different extents) when these men didnt fall in love with who i was. a weirdly inflated ego i have. i'd unconsciously make myself extra charming, extra understanding, extra funny, extra articulate, and yet, all these men wanted to do was to spank my ass. my new conundrum: why were they not falling in love with me? is my personality not as amazing as i thought? do i have to fix this now?

so i lost myself a little bit. it's not that i didnt know who i was. i did, i really did and do. i just struggle to show it on dates(?) and ambiguous interactions with men(?). i could easily be a body to them but i didnt know how to be a person. D kind of shared this sentiment, she wrote a poem about how out of body it felt to have sex. not because the sex was gREAT. out of body in the literal sense, like we literally felt like we were outside of our body, riding a random bearded indian fella we met online a few hours ago. subconsciously, i yearned for them to know me.

i only became cognisant of this when i had a brief encounter with someone who somewhat married "knowing me" and "fucking me". it gave me soOoo much satisfaction that he could say things like he liked that i was independent, out-going, confident, and not just that he liked my ass, breasts, soft hands. i became even more cognisant of it when this was abruptly taken away from me. this man became a ghost (geddit, cos he ghosted me) but more importantly, this unity of my physical attraction and personality, ghosted off with him. my tiny brush with a more holistic sense of affirmation.

ok this is why i stopped having (a lot) of sex with (strangers). for one, i didnt want this to happen to me again because it was so hard to recover from. my friends and i almost got in am accident and my first thought was that my last thought was being sad over a man i barely truly knew and who barely truly knew me. for awhile i didnt trust myself to make correct decisions about boys.

"youre going to get yourself into this situation again, because you've programmed yourself to expect the bare minimum and be happy with the bare minimum. so you're going to do this again because you cant fathom how to expect more".

okay something about that little sentence makes my uncomfortable but i wont delete it. its not that these men were monsters, they entered into something purely physical, its just that they werent the nicest about it + i had some weird expectation that they would be so enamoured by me. so its not their faults, no.

my little break has served me well. in this time ive voiced out when i wanted to stop having sex with a man because i realised i wasnt attracted to him, had sex with a complete stranger and left immediately after because i realised i didnt particularly enjoy it or his company and had actual good sex where i had the space to voice out what i wanted.

baby steps.

i still like having sex and i dont think i can get used to a life where i go cold-turkey. but im appreciating it now for other reasons: no more rhetoric about affirmation - the only thing these men need to give me are orgasms and some kindness. they dont need to be fixing my years of insecurities.

now in my second attempt, i want to have sex with people that i attempt to get to know first. i want us both to make an earnest attempt at getting to know each other so the sex feel fuller, more whole. im still not out there tryna look for loVe or a reLationship. its taken me awhile but i truly dont want those things anymore. i like being a little free. ok some people have laughed and said that sex + vibing is basically a relationship with no commitment. but i think its different. (ok i could be wrong, like ive said before, i am not to be trusted). but it feels different??

who knows honestly. maybe the true secret to my happiness is celibacy.

thank you for reading this incoherent blabber. i will revisit this in my dark times, when i forget who i am. (or maybe when im in bed once more with a stranger)

Playing Boyfriend with my Boy Friends

I'm not sure how this started, but somewhere along the way, I started confiding in boys who were virtually strangers. Every time I started a "texting relationship" with a guy I matched with, it didn't take much for me to start pouring out my deepest secrets and feelings. I think, in my innocent young mind, I thought that the more open I was with them, the higher the likelihood that they'd fall in love with me. Maybe, if I try to psychoanalyse myself, this is a result of all the media that I consumed as an impressionable girl that fed me the narrative (that I consumed without resistance): pretty girls get the guys, fat girls were fun sidekicks at best.

I sincerely thought, I needed to lose weight in order for anyone to fall in love with me.

Something else has been happening these days. It's a bit more ambiguous, a bit more insidious, I'm not sure if its as "bad". I've gotten into the habit of assessing my male friends, assessing whether they can be something more, more than friendship. Friendship and more-than-friendship suddenly become permeable spaces. Maybe this only happens with a few guys right? That wouldn't be so bad? Not like EVERY male friend. Whatever it is, it's fucking irritating!

The last time this happened, I acted on the instinct that the boy must like me (he said my earrings were nice, he said he can see why guys would like me more when they're older, he said its unusual that he talks so much around me because he usually doesn't). Why do I value these comments more when I interpret them as romantic statements? What does it mean to receive validation, care or support from a platonic male friend? I don't know A evaded this process - I guess because he was attached when we met or because there was just an instant sibling-like connection.

Getting closer to R happened in admittedly romantic settings - long walks at night, swinging in a park. The setting doesn't help. At first I was just happy I had a neighbourhood pal to walk with. Now I'm looking at his tagged photos going, "aww he looks so cute", thinking about him before I go to sleep sometimes, itching to text him.

What is the value of a platonic male friend to me? Do men just have a romantic expiry date for me? Am I in a bit to prove to my young self that I am worthy of love? Does that discount the love that R had for me? Is it reciprocal love I'm looking for?

I'm afraid that I'm getting in the way of organic things - of the natural growth and decay. I disrupt these processes with my questions, asked in earnest, in search of clarification. Maybe it's not always good to be clear. When you ask someone to be clear, you put the pressure on them to have an answer, to wade amongst the weeds of uncertainty and emerge with a substantial answer. It could be a premature no, or a premature yes. I have to learn to bite my tongue, especially on the words, "are you attracted to me?".

This used to be my favourite question. If I were.a character in a video game, the answer "yeah I'm attracted to you" was what made my life bar full, filled to the brim.

When did I make these synaptic connections?

Boy nice to me = Boy like me
Boy say nice thing to me = Boy want to have sex with me
Boy nice to me = I want to have sex with Boy
Boy and I vibe = Boy and I should have sex

Who snuck into my brain and embedded this into it? Un-embed it please, I am tired of wondering, I am tired of shooting myself down, I am tired of having mind sex with these boys. These nice boys, who just want to be my friend. For reasons. These nice boys who make the effort to get to know me, something my 15-year old self thought was impossible. Boys who laugh at my jokes. Boys whose jokes I laugh at. To whom I can admit openly when I don't understand an economics terms, or with whom I can candidly admit I know jack shit about stocks.

Now when one of these boys gets in a relationship, I develop a relationship too, with a pit in my stomach. But they were never mine to begin with. And they aren't mine to end with.

The Long Line Of Men Who Have Treated Me Badly And Why I Had Let Them (or maybe I'll just talk about the one that hurt me the most)

There comes a time during your (somewhat) dating life, that you start to discover a pattern. The pattern being that every male encounter that you've had has ended badly. I need to clarify that badly does not equate heartbreak. There are times where I yearn for the simplicity and beauty of heartbreak. No. This "badly" is a combination of a lot of emotional labour on your part and a lack on theirs, it is a disjunct in expectations, it is a sudden cold response - simply put, it is the beginning of the end that you are not ready to face. The last straw for me was my most recent bad ending.

I was bored one night and he messaged. His bio was kinda funny - something about shuffling between the courts of law and basketball. I think he suggested coming over after barely a few days. I remember being super hesitant. I didn't want another situation where I meet with someone with the intention of hooking up, but then simply changed my mind or realised I wasn't attracted to them. So I made it clear: can we walk around and talk a bit first before we decide? And he was completely amenable and said something to the effect of, "I wouldn't wanna do anything you wouldn't wanna do."

It's a bit of a blur now, but it was such a nice night. He tried to act cool and aloof at first, but somewhere along the way we broke the ice. I brought him to the Berlin Wall with the intention of him making a move on me (I came to learn that he hated PDA). I made a shoddy excuse about being too tired to climb all the way, and sat (seductively) on a bench. He said ok I'm gonna go see the wall, and left me. Which I find/found hilarious. Eventually we found ourselves in my room. I let my candle burn the whole night, while we caressed each other in its warm light. I felt like he was touching every part of me at the same time, tenderly. I remember laughing. It was purely sexual. It was purely hot and heavy. It was funny. It was fumble-y. I honestly don't even remember if we had sex. I just remember waking up in the morning and both of us not wanting to part. We got Starbucks and talked a little bit more about our lives, near the Utown bus stop, in broad daylight. Usually I never wanna be seen in public with any of my "conquests". He showed me his ID and sometimes I wonder if I should've memorised his address so I could've mailed him a letter when things went to shit - a letter he wouldn't have been able to ignore.

We had 3 months of bliss. Of seeing each other 3, 4, 5 times a week. Having sex. Eating breakfast. Making chai. Cleaning. Packing. Watching old British comedies. Watching some trashy Youtube comedy. Watching Brad Pitt scale mountains. Almost watching a Hindi movie (thank god it was buffering too much). Watching a film about basketball.

I still think about one night in particular.

He had just come for my theatre show the evening before. I was out with C and A. I was going on and on about missing him. Suddenly, we see him. I remember being so happy in that moment, my heart was floating. We gave him a ride back (he was drunk and made some weird Indian humour jokes, telling A to go "left-uh, left-uh"). I cringed, apologised for his behaviour and went upstairs with him. Bear in mind I was wearing a leotard and fuzzy sleep shorts. We were both so tired. He just finished a game and I just ended a show. He sat on the big armchair, I sat on top of him straddling him, my head buried in his neck and chest.

"I'm so happy I bumped into you tonight."

"Me too."

Then we talked about death. I talked about how I was sad that G couldn't watch me. He talked about someone he knew who died at a college party, I think he fell off the building.

This was our most tender moment. It was pieta-like. Frozen and slumped into each others' bodies. I'm almost tempted to end here, on this tender moment. But that wouldn't be representative of what followed, it wouldn't be an accurate story.

Contrary to the title of this post, this was the only time I felt that I hadn't done anything wrong. I was on the right page this time. I don't know where he was, or where he went.

Maybe I should sidetrack and talk about my past encounters.

We love a good listicle right, so here's a list of the mistakes I'd made in the past:

- rushed to try and define what the relationship was
- hyped the relationship up in my head during the texting phase
- settled because he loved me
- ignored the fact that we didn't vibe
- hoped that he was in love with me (even though I wasn't in love with him)
- passive aggressively texted
- ignored the fact that they were in love with someone else
- continued having sex even though there was a lack of chemistry
- travelled all the way to his house on his birthday, only for him to ignore me and play LoL
- didn't say "no" convincingly enough
- settled for less, while expecting more
- tried to find reason or rationale where it didn't exist

With V, I did what I wanted and received the respect and attention I've always wanted to expect so easily. If I ignore how things ended, this was the most healing relationship I've had with a man. It was the one that matched my mind and expectations the most. I finally let myself get comfortable. Because this man wasn't hurting me and so in my eyes, he wasn't capable of hurting me.

Okay but, the reality is that, he did hurt me. And because I didn't see it coming, this one hurt the most, it hurt the most deeply.

He brought the blissful 3 months to an end. Out of all things, he ghosted me. Something you expect from a tinder chat. Something you don't expect from someone you have been intimate and vulnerable with for 3 months. He finally did some half-assed explaining when I couldn't take it one night, and told him he was affecting my mental health. He was stressed out, having panic attacks about his masters program. I needed more of an explanation. Icing me out couldn't just be a result of academic pressure and stress. I couldn't just be reduced to a factor. But I never got an explanation beyond something to the effect of, "it's not you, it's me".

I begged for closure. I begged him for an explanation. I didn't even care what it was, I just wanted to know. In that moment, I understood fully and empathetically why people do crazy things - why they wait beneath houses, why they reach out to someone's siblings, why they want to pin someone down, why they want to scream at someone.

When someone denies you hope of closure by denying you an explanation, denying you the simple favour of explaining their feelings, it's enough to make someone simultaneously depressed and furious.

So ironically, the only man who treated me with respect, hurt me by not honouring that expectation of respect that I had come to associate with him.

Nothing I write about/to him does justice to the intensity of what I felt. The intense security and happiness I felt with him, and the intense depression and pit in my stomach that I felt at the end.

I, equal parts, am grateful for meeting him and also wish I never had. 

I Wanna Know What Love Is, I Want Me To Show Me

I'm probably not the first one to ask this, but really, what the fuck is love?

We all want it? Teenage fantasy? Maybe Jorja Smith was right.

I used to have DREAMS about love. I had this recurring dream of a man who would DIE unless I promised to marry him. I don't doubt it exists, love and all. I'm just doubting its quality. Maybe I've experienced too much second-hand romantic love already and I'm burnt out? My best friends have been in loving relationships, and I've been at the front lines. I don't say this with jealousy, once upon a time I'd have said it with jealousy, but now I say it from a comfortably numb distance.

Maybe I've also second-experienced too many breakups to actually believe that love is amazing?

I'm "seeing" this guy right now. A more accurate term would be, I am hooking up/hanging out with this guy right now. Sometimes while I'm laying next to him or staring into his eyes as we're having sex, I wonder, so how would "love" make this arrangement different?

People who engage in hook up culture are all too familiar with the performance - the heart and mind tricking performance of a relationship without the substance. Here's where I go on a tangent to elaborate on the performance - what my friend aptly terms "body canvas friction".

Today I spent almost the whole day at his place, longer than I usually stay with someone. Usually I wouldn't even be acquaintances with the men I have sex with. Here are generalised reductive one-word descriptions of the men I've hooked up with in the past (I'm actually referring to a list of their names and giving each a descriptor): confusing/mean, strange/odd, VERY odd/immoral, loving (anomaly), paranoid, odd, aggressive, inconsiderate, inexperienced, unassuming, emotionally-unavailable, confusing, nice, empty, poser-y, inexperienced.

That was actually quite fun hahah. Don't get me wrong, I'm not shitting on any of them, I was (almost) fully aware of what I was getting myself into. I had set my expectations extremely low because I realised we don't get what we imagine, even when we try to settled for second best.

Time spent with these men exists in another dimension. They are not productive hours, they are not accountable hours, they are (arguably) not meaningful hours. For some reason, memory fails you. What was the colour of the pillow you were lying down on as you so "lovingly" caressed unfamiliar nooks and bends of skin as if they were your own. Hooking up is not as wham-bam-thank you-ma'am as it is purported to be. It can be so tender and it can be so loving. But you must remind yourself that it is not real - which is often very easy to do, because once they open their mouths, the illusion is usually shattered.

What I have now is definitely an anomaly. A glitch in my sex matrix.

A man who's company I enjoy, with and without sex. An example: today I pretended to be a chaiwala with him. Not trying to immortalise this as some tender, perfect moment. Just elaborating on the glitchiness.

So how would love make this any different? How would love make this feel better? Would it offer me some unshakeable security and comfort? I can't fathom it.

For now, at this point of my life, I am content. It's like going over to a friend's house and playing with their pet, but never actually buying your own pet. You don't have to deal with cleaning shit and pee (except for the occasional accidents - yeah that's right, this analogy is getting even more real). I get to play relationship and then I get my alone time - time that I use to figure myself out, chat up other random fellas, hang out with pals, or make things.

It's so weird. I feel like I spent too much time at his place. As if there is a precise amount of time I can spend there before things start to get murky, confusing - I start to question an apathetic touch or a disinterested stare.

So yeah, what is love? Is it better than oscillating between single and performative sex/relationship?

Or am I just getting too used to this.

On Disappointing Your Friends (and Family), Amongst Other Things

This is a public declaration that I have not been a good friend (and arguably, person) this 2019. In a mere month, I have hurt (or at least pissed off/annoyed/irritated) 4 people who are close to me. If there are more, please don't come forward, I don't think I can handle it.

I don't hold myself to impossible standards. Bad grades are reasoned away with the logic that the module was bad or the professor was terrible or I wasn't in the right headspace. If I'm in a rush, you will catch me in a substandard outfit. I don't pride myself on being the most eloquent person in the room. We are all supposed to be our own worst critics. I've never entirely related to that saying. I give myself a lot of leeway and let myself make mistakes - mostly the administrative kind. Recently a friend of mine pointed out that I wasn't as caught up in the "rat race" as everyone else is in school.

But if there is one aspect in which I do conform to this saying, it is in my relationships.

I first discovered the power of friendship when I met my best friend at 14. Up till then, I always assumed family came first and then friends were temporary guests in the living room of my life. But this friend taught me that friends can be family, and that relationships can be so fulfilling. I haven't looked back since. I subtly inspect other people's friendships - I sit on my high horse of healthy relationships and superb open communication, and dispense unsolicited advice.

But when that bedrock is gone, when my relationships develop friction, I feel like I lose all legitimacy. Worse than that, I feel like I've lost myself.

My first instinct is always to get defensive. "I didn't mean it that way", "You're reading too much into it", "That wasn't my intention" but all these attempts at defending myself are instantly negated, instantly undermined, when I realise I've hurt someone I love. Nothing is more depressing.

Kinda hard to think of a silver lining, happy ending. Even as I write this in retrospect, it makes me sad. Seeing a counsellor in a few weeks, let's see if that helps. 

An Open Letter To My Beautiful Best Friend

Can I just point out that as I was writing this post, I clicked on a random playlist on Spotify and halfway through writing, I realised it was my best friend's current boyfriend's playlist. The irony am I right. 

It was a regular afternoon at the cafe I was working at. The initial anxiety that I felt at the beginning of each shift had subsided and I was looking forward to my best friend dropping - having a friendly face in a (mildly) hostile workplace.

As soon as she walked into the cafe with her boyfriend and exchanged excited smiles with me, my mildly inappropriate manager asked, as he usually did when my friends popped by, "is that your friend?".

"Yes", proud that I could show the people I worked with that I had a lot of friends and wasn't just the submissive, subservient, apologetic waitress that the FnB industry had demanded I be.

"She's beautiful."

And my heart sank.

I always knew she was beautiful. People in school who didn't really know her but were friends with me never failed to go on (to me or otherwise) about her "hot body", "great hair" and whatever other synonym for beautiful that you could think of.

In school it didn't really bother me. The multiple boys that were interested in her were never my type, and we were clad in unflattering combinations of our school uniform, so I knew my true potential wasn't being unleashed.

Okay I am literally lying to you guys. It fucking bothered me. And made me feel invisible on multiple occasions.

We are/were so close, I knew people associated us with each other and because of that, I felt like everyone was constantly drawing comparisons between our beauty (her abundance and my lack thereof).

There were times I thought it was just in my head, that people weren't that superficial, but then there was, let's call him, T.

This was maybe the first of many instances that I would later use in my head as empirical evidence that the world favoured the beautiful.

T was a cool dude - sporty, good looking, aloof enough that you'd feel honoured that he paid you any attention. We were in the same class and I guess he realised that I was pretty funny and smart. He started picking on the small things I said in class, and making fun of me - the kind of thing that makes you feel noticed. Don't get me wrong, I was very noticed in school, but male attention (I think you'll start to notice a pattern here) was different. It was a whole new level of empowering. I could get good grades, I could be the funniest person in class, occupy several leadership positions, but the one thing that always gets me is attention from the male species.

And I wasn't the only one who noticed this budding, unlikely friendship. People I barely knew would come up to me and ask my about my friendship with him, I could feel my social capital increasing.

But this wasn't just a shiny friendship that I could show off to people. This was the first time I had made a close, heterosexual male friend. A substantial friendship. I remember that this was around the time that my family was starting to become dysfunctional. One day, I was clearing our class recycling bin, trying to occupy and distract myself during a free period. I think he sensed that I was troubled, so he ran up behind me as I went downstairs to the recycling bin. I was 15 then but I can honestly say that it was one of the first genuine conversations I had had with a guy. I told him about my problems and he was sufficiently reassuring and nice.

It's possible that I'm looking at this with severely rose-tinted glasses but this is what my adolescent self felt.

Before this friendship could flourish into something more, things got complicated.

Me, T and my best friend started hanging out together. I realised that he was gradually paying more attention to her. Suddenly she was not just prettier than me but also funnier, more engaging, more interesting, more fun. Soon, they were hanging out without me. I'd like to emphasise that she is in no way evil. He was the one who was instigating everything and she was just reciprocating. But in my fragile state, I blamed her. I remember thinking, "If you care about me so much, why would you do this? Why can't you just not hang out with him?"

These are feelings from almost half a decade ago, but as much as I hate to admit it, I think I still carry a semblance of it with me. For a long time I couldn't shake the thought that guys only wanted to be friends with girls that they were attracted to. I only learnt otherwise in my first year of University where I met my now closest male friend who I love so so much.

My best friend and I got over the incident with T. One morning, when I sad in bed, she and another friend came over to my house with packets of Nasi Lemak and talked things out. We had honest and difficult conversations. I forgot why but her friendship with T fizzled out - partly due to me and partly due to the fact that he wasn't actually that great.

I know this whole post feels like I'm victimising myself. I can't apologise for that because this is how I earnestly felt.

If I'm being honest (trick statement, I'm always honest y'all), I don't think I can ever get rid of the feeling. Being jealous that every dude she comes into contact with ends up liking her to some extent, comparing my experiences against hers, trivialising her issues just a little bit because at the end of the day, hey at least you're pretty. I acknowledge that this is terrible with a capital T (pun not intended... or was it?).

At my worst, I shouted at her "what is it like to be so beautiful?" - an honest plea, genuinely wanting to know how it felt, but also wanting her to feel bad about it.

It sounds cliched but it is so easy to focus on the bad things. To let these feelings of inadequacy eclipse everything else, to let it gnaw at you, to let it corrode a wonderful friendship that has shaped me into the person that I am.

This poetically structured conclusion may sound cursory in comparison to the detailed anecdote I've penned above, but I think it captures how simple things really are when your vision is less myopic and you do not fixate on beauty:

My best friend is beautiful. She is objectively more beautiful than me. This is a fact. 

My best friend is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I cannot live without her. This is a fact.

My best friend is my family. I would not be the person I am today without her. This is a fact. 

My best friend is incredibly kind and generous to me. We will continue to be best friends until death do us part. This is a fact. 

My best friend is beautiful. I am beautiful. This is a fact. 

An Open Letter To The First Boy I (properly) Sexted

This is something I wrote about the first boy that I properly matched with on Tinder, sexted and met up to fool around on a roof with. He would also be the one to teach me that you can't always get what you want and that sometimes, people can be absolutely terrible to you, while loving the way your ass looked.

He was my first encounter with anything sexual. What started out as an innuendo-ladened chat exchange turned into my first ever steamy, sexy, sext session.

I learnt what angles made my breasts look bigger, my stomach smaller; I learnt that some men absolutely loved pubic hair and I learnt that I could derive pleasure from someone else's pleasure.

I learnt that I could be desired, sexually desired.

Me. The goofy, chubby, loud, self-deprecating, constantly red from the slightest physical exhaustion, un-lady-like, jokester. 

Then we met in real life and the sexy fantasy that we had created with our phones came to an abrupt holt.

Before that, post sexual revelation and newfound confidence in my body, I was excited to meet you. But I was also terrified that in the real world, with lighting and angles that I had no control over me, your attraction to me would disappear like every nude we had exchanged (or so we think...)

Was I attracted to him? Well, that didn't really matter did it. Because he was attracted to me, and he made it very known to me that my body made him feel things.

Problematic, twisted, indicative of some latent self-esteem issues - probably, yes. But I didn't have time to think about that, I was still trying to decide what I should wear. He lived all the way in the -insert a location in Singapore- and it just so happened that I was going to be in that area to visit my best friend in the hospital. She had just gotten out of life threatening surgery (destiny? fate? serendipity?). She fought for her life and I was picking out a thong.

I made up a half-ass excuse and left my dear, almost-dying friend to meet this lanky Indian man at -insert name of mall in Singapore-. We very covertly took the lift up to the rooftop, because apparently, living in that area meant that everyone in said area knew who he was and would tell all his friends that they saw him with a beautiful (ok, ethnically ambiguous) girl.

I later told said dying friend about this incident and we had a laugh because you could see the rooftop from her hospital room.

So, finally some alone time with my sext buddy. My tinder match. Some random dude who liked my ass. Where do we start? I'm assuming he has more experience (because... he told me he did). We have some casual but stranger banter, he proceeds to address and poke my vaginal area (boy does this guy have moves or what?). We begin kissing, or what I can only assume is kissing, and doing some of that heavy petting that they warn us about in primary school Sex Education.

I didn't feel much. I didn't feel anything. I had much more fun sexting. All those times I had wished that I had someone there to curb my sexual frustration with a cup of the breast, caress of the thigh, finger in the vagina, but no, nothing. It wasn't at all what I had built up in my head.

I would later realise that this would be somewhat recurring theme in my sexual and dating life: disappointment.

It was all (somewhat) fun and game until I realised that he was literally in love with someone. Information that I became privy to after following him on his private Instagram, something that he had insisted that I do. I had zero feelings for this man (man-boy may be a more accurate term). Okay fine, yes, I had entertained the thought of being something more for like 5 minutes, but I thought it'd be better for him, and better for me in the long run, if he just sticked to courting this girl he was so absolutely in love with. I didn't want to be forced into the undesirable position as "the other girl".

Not the girl he was in love with, but the girl whose ass he liked.