“Your body is like two different bodies put onto one,” he said. At that time, he was the hottest guy I’d ever dated. Tall, blonde, bright blue eyes. I was 27 and my family loved him. 

“Your upper body is so tiny, bony even, and your lower body is like kinda big,” he innocently reiterated his observation. He said it one day as we were talking about attraction, worthiness, and lovability. I’m kidding, I don’t remember what we were talking about. He was my boyfriend back when I thought I could just decide “straight” “woman,” and was trying earnestly to be her. I’d been ashamed about my curves since they’d showed up and his pointing them out confirmed to me that my mismatched body was as shameful as I’d always suspected. 

Throughout my youth, I danced ballet next to lithe ballerinas with no curves. I was five foot seven and fourteen percent body fat, too large for any kind of serious dancing career. I didn’t know then that there were styles of dance where my shape would’ve been welcome. Instead my ballet teacher urged me to take up running to “slim down” for the upcoming performances, something I could never do because I hated running. And did I mention I had fourteen percent body fat? 

My next boyfriend was super into my round thighs and ass, tiny waist, and small tits. It was also about this time that the desirable body shape changed and curves, in mainstream culture anyway, became the fashion. I’ve been told that curves in other communities weren’t a fashion, but rather adored the whole time, and I feel jealous of that for my younger and current selves. How would my life have been different if I’d grown up loving my body exactly as it was? I played catch up to try to shift my feelings about my shape. “Oh yeah, we love curves now, remember,” I reminded myself constantly. And it worked okay. But I was still doing so much pretending that it didn’t work great. 

I read the above paragraphs and feel that these past selves reflect someone who was an object of male desire without much of a sense of her own desires. I learned from no one in particular to play this role. If you’re willing to perform like this, you can accomplish a lot for yourself without having to lift a finger. A flirt and the suggestion of a possibility will move mountains and all you have to do is act a little bit dumb. And bury your own desires until you forget about them. And sure, none of it is real and you don’t get to be a person with your own inclinations or positive self image, but you never have to touch door handles. 

Though the male-gaze-appropriate fem washes out of me a bit more each day, when I look in the mirror I can still see her. I had tried to become what cis men wanted to fuck and eventually marry and I couldn’t love my body until I stopped doing that. As I stopped denying the me that was wanting to emerge, the “straight woman” character faltered. And the more I allowed her to die, the more I could connect with and organically begin to love my body. And I began to enjoy my physical form, curves and all, and to listen to its needs and desires. 

Being someone who’s natural state is somewhere in-between in a world that asks us to choose a side created a separation of selves where there shouldn’t have been separation. Those in-between selves were there all along loving the body they had and they emerged once I could stop lying to myself about who I was. These selves knew they were attracted to girls who looked like boys and boys who looked like girls. This was how I described my “type” once I discovered I had a type because I didn’t have other language then. 

Claiming myself was difficult against the backdrop of the binary agenda and cis male bodies being the base model for sexuality. I was brought up to be a girl but it turns out I’m a boygirl or something like that. I don’t feel the need for so many exacting definitions around my own gender or sexuality because for me these things are themselves a bit shifty. In admitting to myself that I’m a boygirl who is attracted to and wants to be sleeping with others who fall somewhere between easily checkable boxes, my orgasms have become fucking awesome. Once I started having the kind of sex I wanted to be having with the people I wanted to be having it with, trying to eek out a single orgasm during straight partner sex became a distant memory. I know that scenario isn’t the case for all straight-people-sex but my lying and pretending to be straight didn’t let me experience that lifestyle another way. Sex exploded for me as a queer and I like having a bunch of orgasms. I’ve also learned to relish the experience of a whole sexual encounter rather than an orgasm as the main goal of sex. I know this too isn’t limited to the queer experience but I’d been hiding remember, and I never experienced straight sex that wasn’t rushing towards orgasm, specifically the male orgasm. I am no longer in situations where a cis guy looks up from between my legs and sighs, 

“Are you done yet? It’s been like fifteen minutes.” 

I later learned that bodies with vulvas need time to warm up and this is true for me. I like to take maybe an hour if the day allows, and once I’m there my desire and orgasms are delicious and plentiful. 

I had a little bit of time before work and in honor of Betty’s life and legacy on this 3rd anniversary of her death, I massaged my entire body with rose petal-infused almond oil I made this last summer and pulled out my wand and barbel from their drawer. We climbed in bed together, me, the wand, and the barbel, and I let a recent scene become bright in my mind. 

“Fuck, you’re so hot,” they say to me. They grab my thighs as they come again and moan my name. I’m sitting on their leg, stroking myself, my favorite dildo deep inside of me. We breathe together and become more tangled, limbs winding around limbs. They pull me beneath them and straddle my legs, working the cock inside me. At some angles they look masculine and just when I think I’m in bed with a guy they turn their head and a more feminine beauty shines through their features. Their shapeshiftiness makes my body ache with desire. We spend the afternoon entwined in each other, fucking until we can’t remember our names or the difference between us and the trees outside. 

I love my body and I love my orgasms.