Many people would call me a sexually evolved person. In fact, many already do. There are many others who would choose to use a couple different and not-so-nice words to describe me sexually, but all in all, I think I am, in fact, a very sexually enlightened person. It wasn't always this way. When I first started having sex when I was 16, there was always a lot of guilt following the climax. I remember that I would immediately go and get in the pool at the motel that my father owned so that I could rinse away the shame of what I'd just done. I mean, you get told enough times that having sex (let alone gay sex) is dirty, you start to believe it.
Fortunately, I had the benefit of education and experience on my side. As I explained in my very first blog post, I took some very enlightening courses on human sexuality while obtaining a certificate in Women's Studies in college. These classes initially opened me up to the idea that everything I'd ever been taught about sexuality was woefully skewed by Judeo-Christian values and society. Realizing that there was nothing wrong with my attraction toward other men, I decided to start living my life the way I wanted, and I started having sex with anyone I damn well pleased to. However, years of thinking that I was dirty are hard to wash away overnight, and even to this day, I still feel some shame when someone makes an off-color comment about my sex life. Ultimately I don't let it hold me back from doing what (or who) I want to, but I still feel a pang of guilt for doing it, if even just for a moment. I suppose it's natural that human beings care what other people think of us, but I realized a few years back that there is no greater deterrent to happiness than living your life to please others. And I'm washing my hands of it, once and for all.
This weekend I will be attending a sexuality workshop in Orange County. It's being offered by a company that holds several self-empowerment seminars that I had the pleasure of attending two years ago, and I am very psyched to see what they have to offer in the realm of sexuality. My friends keep saying: "Ken, you're already pretty sexually evolved. You don't really need this course." But I think they (like me) have been mistaking sexual risk-taking with being totally OK with sex. And for the most part, I am. (You have to be a pretty liberated person to have sex in public on camera and not really give too much thought to the potential backlash. Or a pretty stupid one. Time will tell, I suppose... ) But I have realized in recent years that my relationship with my sexuality has mostly been either in defense of it or in rebellion to what society says about sex.
In recent years, I've been able to come to a fuller understanding of my sexuality (and thus get closer to personal liberation), but I don't think there has been a consistent period in my life where I've just been at one with my own sexuality. So I'm taking this course as a way to come to a fuller understanding of not only my sexuality, but also my body. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I don't like what I see, and I still wonder what traditionally "hot" guys see in me when they say they find me sexy. And since I'm tired of being at odds with society's teachings about sex -- I want to truly be able to simply not care what people think about me -- I think I'm going to get a lot out of this workshop. I don't think it will curb my appetite for having sex (let's face it, folks: I'm pretty much a hardcore slut, and I'm OK with that), but I am interested in seeing what it may have to offer me as a human being who realizes that, no matter how "evolved" we think we may be, you're never too old or too happy that you can't afford to remain open to other possibilities. So we'll see. I'll keep you updated, so as always, stay tuned...
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