Hate Me, Love Me

Perhaps it’s others’ perception of me as a “coconut” that inspires my whorishness. If I had an orgasm for every time someone said something like “I never think of you as Indian” or “You’re a white girl in a brown body”, I’d never leave my apartment.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m a proponent of a certain amount of self-loathing and self-deprecation. It inspires humor and, often, creativity. And the appropriate amount of self-hate can set you up for some hot sex (when you hate yourself, you tend to go the extra mile for others), and may even allow someone to pull your hair, or pin you down, all in fun.

Raised 97% American and 3% Malayalee, my understanding that “sex sells” trumped any hope of my becoming the God-fearing, church-going, virginal marrying kind (thankfully). But much to my parents’ chagrin. The good Indian boy from a nice family didn’t stand a chance, poor schmuck.

Still, I see Lara Dutta and Aishwarya Rai as beautiful Indian starlets. I don’t view them as sex symbols (maybe I’m in the minority), yet we can just imagine just how many wet dreams they’ve ilicited. Bollywood and our culture insists they remain boxed in as fair-skinned feminine beauties, and not as the carnal goddesses they who probably like it from behind (who doesn’t?).

I’m not talking about objectification and exploitation, rather I’m talking about others dictating our sexuality and how we indulge it. French maids, Japanese school girls, these are fetishes perpetuated at home and abroad. Fetishes can be fun (disclaimer: as long as they’re enacted by consenting adults)!

But we Indian girls must always be above that. Sexual pleasure is so beneath us.

Take all the hoopla about the first on-screen Bollywood kiss?! It’s such nonsense. How long will it be before we are fretting over the first Bollywood blow job?

 

Fantasmagoric

I’ve had varying degrees of fantasies for as long as I can remember. I don’t remember ever feeling ashamed or embarrassed by them either, which always made me feel very alive, healthy, and evolved, especially compared to so many others I’ve known and still know to be repressed.

For this reason, porn is of little interest to me. I can literally dream up more interesting scenarios in my sleep. Role-playing, dirty talk, have a pole installed in one’s bedroom, costumes…yes, yes, it’s all very fun and intriguing.

What may be most invigorating, though, is fantasizing about someone other than your partner (that is if you have a steady). Those who say they don’t are lying, I don’t care who you are, or how committed you are. Commitment has nothing to do with who you’re jerking off to, and that’s how nature intended it, I’m sure.

I remember a conversation with some friends talking about a bachelor party that had occurred over the weekend, and these ladies feeling very proud of the fact that their husband’s found the bachelor party “too wild”, or “weren’t interested” in the stripper, or think porn is “funny”.

I found it hard to keep a straight face, as you can imagine. It should go without saying that indulging our sexual minds in this way is the highest form of commitment there is. Looking, imagining, fantasizing about someone else sexually is and should be completely harmless and widely accepted. If only more people would acknowledge this openly and honestly, ignoring the pitying looks of their friends who think their partners are content with making love to soft music in the background on a bed of roses and a bottle of champagne on the nightstand. There’s a good chance your partner wants to fuck the hottie downstairs in the building stairwell, and that should be ok with you because you want to fuck the hottie too. You know you do.

Mild Imagination

My partner is a chocolate-loving, soft-spoken intellectual whose attention I couldn’t get during the World Series if I rollerbladed naked around the living room covered in cookie dough.

In pursuit of some new fun, only one idea made sense—the baseball jersey. I paired it with red Christian Louboutin pumps. The shoes were expensive, but are too uncomfortable to actually wear outside for long. And I’m not one to let things go to waste.

What occurred to me in hatching this plan is the dichotomy of nudity versus the tease of provocative clothing. I once knew someone who preferred women under sheer clothing, preferably from head to toe (Did this somehow related to his mother’s house dress? I had no desire to “go there”). And certainly plenty of people think there’s nothing sexier than a naked woman in heels.

I personally find lingerie repugnant. I’ve never been one to pull off intricate, frilly, lacy under things. Never had the patience (or grace) for all that.

Scantily clad women cover our city. They own the night. Everyone notices. This is the motivation. Is there a difference among drunk girls in mini’s and plunging necklines, burlesque performers, and those blatantly advertising sex? Does it matter? The modesty movement champions self-restraint and discourages provocation (at least physically) and promotes celebrating one’s ”inner” wildness.

Many might find this limiting (ya think?). I don’t define myself by my sexuality, it’s just one component. But, if I’m feeling less like a mom covered in dog hair and splashed milk, and more like a hot wife on my man’s arm stomping down the street feeling leggy and glorious, you better believe I’m going to revel in it as long as possible.

Yesterday was Halloween, and the scantily clad were in full force. Yet how many outfits were “slutty” or “whorish” or “attention-seeking”. Are we really just “haters” or are we fearful? Fearful that we’re not as attractive as her, not as desired, or pleasing to the eye? Isn’t most judgement mired in insecurity? Is it judgement? Misogyny? Intellectual or religious observation? Why do we make distinctions between “classy” and “trashy” when it comes to celebrating our sexuality via clothing? Amidst the Snookie/Wonder Woman/Playboy Bunny/Lady Gaga look-alikes, how many of those women are actually “sluts”?

The answer? None of our goddamn business. Live and let live. Fully clothed or not.

Random Thoughts of Shamelessness

For as long as I can remember, I desired male touch. Blame puberty, hormones, the rise of sexual culture on television, whatever. I wondered what the weight of a man on top of me would feel like, the swapping of tongues, hands under my blouse or in my jeans. Like many other shameless yonis, I was raised in a sexually repressed household—learning the proverbial “birds and bees” from the Life Cycle books my well-meaning, but embarrassed, mother gave me. When I came up on the word, I asked her what an orgasm was. She responded “It’s a feeling.”

What a sad understatement for such a gorgeous thing!

Up until high school, my sexual nature aired itself in clumsy ways—in freshman biology I said “orgasm” instead of “organism”; I talked about vivid sex scenes in movies (like “Nine and A Half Weeks” and “Damage”) at lunch while my friends inched their chairs away; I danced to “Like a Virgin” in my room until my parents caught me and told me to stop.

Throughout, I remember my parents’ shame as they looked at school and family photos of me, and my large breasts looking even more magnified in every single image. And my own shame over those recurrent slutty thoughts.

Of course, my sexual curiosity only intensified while I attended an all-girls Catholic high school. The setting itself is nothing short of porn. Nubile young women rolling their plaid skirts up as high as they could, or low enough on the waist to expose the top of a g-string. Were they teasing each other? Themselves? The dirty old men who served as teachers? Despite my later obsession with “The L Word” and female folk singers, I was all about the male teachers. I imagined lurid sexual acts on student desks with the teachers I now look back on, and cringe. Hundreds of hormonal girls, and a handful of men—what were those nuns thinking?

Knowing I didn’t want to waste my energies on pathetically awkward high school boys, I waited and relented to my first boyfriend while I was in college. I didn’t care that he didn’t want to be serious, that he was a drop out, or that he was in his late 20’s. That he drank too much and wasn’t much into socializing otherwise. Yeah, mom would’ve been proud.

The way he touched me felt electric (cliché but nonetheless true), and as long as he would have me, I would do whatever he wanted (which wasn’t much). I’d lie there and just let him make me feel ecstatic. I hadn’t yet learned about bikini waxes, thongs, or the nuances of making erotic sounds, and he couldn’t have cared less (which tells you a lot about his enthusiasm level over the sheets).

In retrospect, yes, that first boyfriend was a loser. But as with most first experiences, I learned an inordinate amount about myself. If the man I’m with doesn’t arouse me—make my nipples harden; urge me to get out of those pesky clothes; say the dirtiest things that would make me cover my face the next morning; raise my arms above my head in carnal joy—there is no hope for decent conversation or anything else for that matter. What happens between the sheets directly impacts what happens when we’re across the dinner table from one another.

Monogamous or not, routine is the death of eroticism. More on that next time…