Archive for June, 2010
Singapore sex
Two thoughts.
The first is that I’ve realised I pull my punches in Singapore. In London if I got to a point in a conversation that referenced my relationship I just said it. Open. Poly. Any questions? I didn’t always expect people to understand, but I always gave them a chance.
Here I back away from those moments, leave things unsaid. I guess I’ve done that since I arrived, but lately it’s bothering me. For a start, it isn’t fair to assume I know how somebody else will react – if it’s something I would normally talk about I ought to give people the opportunity to decide for themselves how they feel about it.
Cybersex redux
Many things to write. Let’s start here because I promised part two a while back.
Last summer (a whole year ago, gosh) I had IM sex. I thought at the time I was chatting with a friend, but she told me later her boyfriend (a stranger to me) had used her laptop without her knowledge. More details here.
When sharing this story I hear an incredulous, oft-repeated question: Was the guy so good at faking it that I really, honestly thought he was my friend?
It’s a reasonable thing to ask, and I’ve wondered it myself. I had no doubt at the time and no reason to think a stranger would be lying to me – I was sure it was my friend. It was only when she told me, horrified and upset, what her boyfriend had done that I started remembering things that didn’t add up. The idea of an impostor slowly seemed to fit.
Then my friend moved abroad, leaving the nefarious boyfriend behind thousands of miles of ocean.
The filthy messages didn’t stop.
I think the realisation came with a flash and a crackle. Lies had been told but only when an ostensibly straight, ostensibly religious young lady woke up with a hangover, felt embarrassed or ashamed and made something up to assuage herself.
All the pieces I’d been trying to poke into place slid together seamlessly. The new messages read exactly the same as the first ones, at a time when the girl was alone in a new city. They were surprisingly explicit each time, which is maybe why she lied in the first place and why I accepted her lie – there was certainly an element to the language she didn’t use in person.
Needless to say, I’m over that shit. I asked her not to message me about sex any more. She ignored me. I told her next time she sent those messages I would log out of chat. She ignored me. I logged out. I stuck to my guns and eventually she stopped. *shrugs*
I rarely feel like my boundaries are threatened but this girl, thousands of miles away, managed to do so. I was pleased to find how easily and calmly I could defend them.
Still beating this drum
(And the drum should understand that we’re done when I say we’re done, not before.)
Thinking about sex work from a different point of view: There are women who pay men to fuck them. Probably not many, but certainly some.
There are more sex workers’ stories here.
Cheese sammiches and sex 