Women.
Hell hath no fury like.
Sort of.
I’m bisexual, if you’d like to pin me with a broad label for a complex identity. I find women attractive. I have lustful urges toward them, which I have upon occasion satisfied. If I were one of those ungodly annoying people who makes the dipshit claim that I can’t be bisexual until I’ve done x amount of sexual activities with women then I might not be, but I’m not one of those ungodly annoying people, so I am. Bisexual, that is. God, did that sentence commit grammatical suicide or what?
The thing is, I suck at women.
Why am I never fast on my feet with women? Where does this attitude adjustment come from, that makes me unsure of myself so pointedly? I don’t like feeling on my guard all the time, feeling like I might be laughed at, like I might be fooled or embarrassed or exposed. I don’t read women well. I don’t find them straightforward. I have communication issues with women, like there are crossed wires in the air around our conversations.
Men are established territory for me. I have straight up honest talks with the men in my life, the kind where you sit for hours, you talk about everything, you connect, you ask the blunt questions and the stupid questions and you pass your rudeness off with the immunity of affection. Do I need that sort of connection with everyone I date? Everyone I play with? Everyone I fuck? I think that I might. The potential needs to be there, and it is so, so achingly rare for me to find that potential in another woman.
There is a societal idea that women can never ease up around men. That we can’t relax truly in a masculine presence, let our hair down and our stomachs hang out, so to speak. But it’s women I don’t relax around. Girl talks, sleep overs, and painting other people’s fingernails are relics of my long-gone middle school past.
I can relax around men, because being “one of the guys” crossed with occasionally pretty and occasionally coarse, and wise sometimes and wry and bitter often is an easy game to play, a game I feel comfortable playing. A skin that fits. But that’s not where I get with women. I can’t even begin to define the space I’m in around women, but it’s more than a little prickly, and I don’t like that. I don’t know how to sit easy, how to sprawl. With men I can sprawl with immunity, taking up space and air and sound and still feeling like I’m normal sized in comparison. With women it’s like I take up too much of the world, like instead of being right-sized I’m oversized, instead of being funny I’m loud. It makes me feel clumsy and inarticulate, and above all things I hate feeling clumsy and inarticulate. I’m 5′9″ in flats. My hips are twice as big around as most girls, and I can lift most of my guy friends off the floor. I wear bright colors and I laugh long, loud and often. I feel like with women I have to reign myself in. Like it’s rude to exist so insistently.
And then also, because I’m so much bigger than most women I feel like I’m going to break them. I don’t feel like I can rip reactions out of women. Maymay is smaller than me, thinner and lighter, and yet somehow he’s still strong enough to have submission ripped bodily from him. It’s clearly a mental issue, but on my side or theirs? I’m falling victim as I write to the stereotype that women are weak, and I hate hate hate that stereotype because I am not it.
It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that as much as that stereotype turns my stomach, I appear to be an exception, not the rule. I’ve never felt I could rip what i wanted from any woman I met; she would have to match me first, and I would have to relax my guard long enough for us to measure up against each other, which I never do because inevitably she doesn’t match up, and do you see the destructive self perpetuating cycle here? I’m attracted to women who are soft spoken, sweet, pretty, femme, but I’m comfortable with women who are loud and brassy and raucous.
I see women who are unconsciously submissive and simultaneously think to myself “Hey, that’s sexy,” and “Dear god will you stand up for yourself for fucks sake? Are you even thinking?” I want consciousness in my bottoms, and self awareness, and power. I want people who submit from a place of strength, or certainty. I want people who will stand up and fight like hell for their right to be submissive.
I know there are women out there who do this. I’ve met a few, three actually. Two are taken, and the other’s now a boy.
I hate that this entire post is based on stereotypes. However, I am trying my danmdest to remain aware that stereotypes, like labels, exist for a reason, are not generally entirely false, and can, like labels, serve as the tools we use to communicate with people before we have the advantage of building mutual vocabularies.
It drives me crazy when women play games with me, when they don’t communicate straightforwardly. When they say one thing and mean another. When this particular friend I have smiles in this particular way that is supposed to be flirtatious but is actually a smirk. Maybe I read her too well, but I see her flirt with me, with other women, with men, and all I can see is the incredible overlay of scorn that she seems to hide from everyone, but not from me. I hate that she says one thing and means another. I hate that women in general do this, although I am not innocent of it, nor are men. But then, I feel like I can call men on their bullshit like I can call myself, and when women bullshit I don’t know whether to shrug it off or take offense.
Maybe this is the sex thing coming back up, but maybe I don’t know where I stand with women because I don’t know, exactly, what I want from women. It’s hard to be a predator with unspecific prey. With men, in the scene or out of it, I know what I want. Precisely, specifically, gleefully. I don’t know enough to know what women who are not like me can give. The encounters I’ve had with women have been overwhelmingly tender, only occasionally passionate, only occasionally truly comfortable.
I know what I want from men, and tenderness isn’t necessarily a part of it. Oh, it has its place, alongside the moans and the screams and pain and control and pleasure. But tenderness is something I only bring out with men I care about. I can mimic tenderness, and I do sometimes in scenes, because sometimes that’s what the bottom needs. This is a skill, something I learned the way I learned knife play, how to run my hands over a person’s back, how to gentle people down from scary places, how to pet someone’s head and smooth their hair. If you know me very well, and you watch me very closely, I suspect you can see the moment when I cross the line from skill to caring. I don’t go there very often.
My instincts and wants with women are much more tender in nature. This makes them so much more vulnerable, so much harder to express, initiate, and carry through without feeling the fool. They can’t be laughed off or beaten out. This tenderness is difficult to balance in the scene, difficult to express in an atmosphere of precision or lust. It’s also difficult to manage in a world where my character and actions, rather that being balanced and fitting, make me feel uncomfortable. Not at all conducive to making myself vulnerable. Constantly, consistently, just a little bit alien.
