Sometimes I wonder if my fanatical devotion to this word springs in part from my former therapist, Traci.  She was probably the most queer person I talked to about myself.  That sounds weird.  She was visibly part of queer culture in a way I have never been.  I’m cis-gendered and I primarily partner with men.  I pass.  I loathe the word bisexual because of the gender binary it mandates.  Early on in my dating I met someone who was transitioning.  If I’m honest it was always something I felt in the pit of my stomach that she was different from the other girls I dated.  She was not less than, just other.  A whole different kind of person.  She told me that fucking her made me queer.

Traci told me that it doesn’t matter who I fuck.  It matters how I see the world.  How I love people.  She said I was queer and laughed.  She thought it was funny that I treated queer like a merit badge to be won and I hadn’t worked hard enough yet. I feel like marrying a man forever revokes any authenticity I have in using that word.

Just like I don’t say I’m a dancer any more.  I love to dance.  But I’m not a dancer.

I’m thinking back over my laundry list of lovers.  I’m naming a lot of them and making references to the people I can’t name any more.  I’m thinking a lot about why I engaged in this sexual behavior.  Did I want it?  Do I want it now?  It’s hard to say.  I did and I didn’t.  I do and I don’t.  I was conditioned.  I am supposed to behave this way.  I don’t know any other way to be.

What way?  Promiscuity is never as easy as it looks on first blush.  People have sex for so many reasons and if you want to have sex with a lot of people you have to accept that there will be a lot of reasons.  I don’t always get to decide what kind of sex I am going to have if I am going to have it at all.  I think the sex I enjoy the most is when I know that someone is getting off in my presence because I am so hot.  I have a hard time with partners who don’t orgasm.  It’s part of the reason I don’t go after women any more.  They are so hard.  I have a lot of gratitude that guys are continually willing to put up with women despite the fact that we are such a pain in the ass.  It’s hard getting women off.  It takes commitment.  It takes not just finding out what scares them, but finding out what makes them feel safe.

I can deal with the scary stuff, I’m not so good at safe during sex.  Safe during sex means that it’s glorified cuddling, not sex.  There isn’t much to get me off.  I have to have that edge of fear, pain, despair, objectification…  I have not run into a woman who wants to treat me that way.  Thus, I haven’t had sex with a woman in a while.  When I have had sex with women in the past few years it has been very safe friends who feel like they are there for a game of racquet ball.  Sex is awesome, but it’s better with friends.  I don’t know if I got them off, I think so?  I hope so?  I tried?  But I wasn’t able to get that emotionally invested in the outcome because we were in a party situation and I wasn’t going to be able to pay that much attention to them anyway.

This leaves me with men.  Or folks somewhere off the gender binary.  I don’t even know how to meet them.  I don’t know how to find people who want what I want.  If I knew what I wanted it would help.

I want to be special.  I want to be important.  I want to be worth winning.  I want to feel like the prize.