the fucks

What does it mean when someone says, "I don't give a fuck"?

It feels strange to my fucking ears sometimes.

There are a lot of fucks out there, more than anyone could ever count. If you lined up all the fucks that ever were and ever would be, they would create a mathematical impossibility--a limitless and unending line, stretching past the point of visibility in either direction. And some of those fucks are mine.

I have given so many fucks away, often for nearly nothing.

I have given so many fucks for illusions. For the painfully deep dreams of validation, respect, intimacy, admiration, understanding, reverence, admission, safety, protection, acceptance...

I have given almost no fucks--or rather, I have taken almost no fucks, I have claimed very few fucks, I have received a small number of fucks--for authentic, true desire; for intrinsic sexual attraction; for self-aware physical pleasure.

Growing up, my own desire for pleasure and attraction had very little to do with sex with my fucking. Sometimes, they still have very little to do with it. The relationships between my desire, physical pleasure, attraction, intimacy and physical connection/participation between myself and another person are not simple. The relationships between those things are not intuitive, they are not primal, they are not instinctual--not to me. The relationships between those things are complex, and they take work and maintenance and thoughtful exploration. Sex--if understood to be pleasure and desire--does not live in my body, as it seems to for some people. Sex for me is more like a wandering bird that will roost in me sometimes, but not always, and not even in the same way or the same place every time. Sometimes it will nest in one part of my body or another, other times it will perch in my mind; sometimes it will fly away and settle somewhere outside of me altogether. But the sex I have is very different than the fucks I give or take. 

I had very few sexual experiences of any kind before the age of 18, and they were, as I can recall them, limited to: incredibly self-conscious and physically-uncomfortable kissing in movie theaters; being a sweaty and panicked object of concentrated grinding (from both males and females); being quickly engaged in fumbling embraces, constantly afraid of getting "caught", "found-out" and "exposed", while also being sexually active in only the most bizarre and publicly-vulnerable settings (in the front yard of someone's house at night; in a tree in a field near my house; in a school playground; in a parking lot). I can't tell you about the moment that I lost my virginity--I don't know when it was or whom it was with. How was I supposed to know, as a queer person, the first time I'd had sex? If I was a person with a vagina, and I was attracted to and had sexual experience with people who had both penises and vaginas, the old hetero-normative presupposition of "penis + vagina = sex" kind of flew out the window. When did things go from "fooling around" to "having sex"? Was it the first time someone touched my genitals? Was it the first time I touched someone else's genitals? Was it the first time a girl dry-humped my leg and rubbed me over my underwear? Was it the first time a guy fingered me while we made out? Was it the first time something penetrated my vagina, or did it specifically have to be a penis? Was it the first time I enjoyed it, the first time I had an orgasm with someone else involved? I didn't know then, and I don't know now, how to parse the subtle differences of various sexual experiences into bite-sized pieces, easily digestible by the mainstream narrative of "LOSING YOUR VIRGINITY". One thing I do know is that once I was sexually active, I rarely had sex. I fucked. And nearly all of these fucks had almost nothing to do with physical desire or personal pleasure, and almost everything to do with control, validation, emotional bondage and the pale, sickly-beautiful ghost of feigned intimacy.

I would not consider myself to be a part of the BDSM (Bondage/Discipline, Sadism/Masochism) community. I don't talk about it much; I don't seek out people to "play" with; I don't have a decadent, sensual trove of tools and paraphernalia; I rarely engage in BDSM practices with my committed, long-term partner. That being said, there are aspects of the BDSM community and BDSM practices that I admire and enjoy, and I was inclined toward BDSM long before I'd even heard the term (certainly before I'd ever considered the complicated relationships and intertwined dualities of domination and submission, pain and pleasure, aggression and acquiescence). BDSM was definitely an unconscious part of my fucking. The thing is, BDSM functioning in a healthy, mutually-pleasurable way relies on two key components: Communication and consent. Consensual participation is crucial to BDSM play, and that makes clear and explicit communication paramount. Neither of those things had a seat at my fucking table--not because I knowlingly excluded them, but because it never occurred to me to give them a seat at the table in first place. I just didn't think to invite them, not until much later in my life.

Looking back at these fucks, it can be difficult to remain objective. Ironically, objectification was my most frequently experience of fucking--either being objectified, objectifying someone else, internally objectifying myself... Looking back at these fucks, I think I can say: 

They were not all bad, but they were rarely good, and they were always (and this was the most important part) interesting.They were sometimes fun. They were sometimes blank spaces of detachment. They were rarely self-aware or well-considered. They were almost always risky. They left me feeling both full and empty. They were most often an imperative, not a decision. They created tendencies toward future fuckery for fuckery's sake. They were something to do when there was little else to do. They were a tool to get something--usually attention, interest or validation. They gave me someone to (pretend to) be when I had no fucking idea who or what I was.

Fucking gave me a role to play, an identity to slip on like a jacket--it didn't necessarily fit me well, but did fit really matter? Having that jacket--older than time and handed down for generations to many a fucker before me--made me feel special and important, like I was someone real, someone that mattered. It gave me something to fiddle with, pockets to stick my hands in when I was cold.

Someone may read this and think, "What a bunch of nothing this was, what a fucking joke." 

Fuck you? Fuck me? What's the difference? Who cares?