A few weeks ago I went on a date with a cis boy. Or rather, I met him for what I thought was a pre-fuck coffee but it didn’t end with me sucking his dick. While sexting and swapping nudes doesn’t mean that consent is ever a ‘given’, I admit that I was expecting that our first date would end in sex.
Last year I went to a Smut Slam event, expecting to get mildly turned on while listening to people tell sexy stories about first time fucks. I didn’t expect to find myself asking out the cute human who told a story about their first time doing knife play. I didn’t expect to go on a date with them the next day, and I didn’t expect that the date would lead to them blowing the strap-on dick I’d packed in my handbag without any real expectations of using it to fuck your face. I didn’t expect you, and I definitely didn’t expect to fall in love with the constellation of freckles on your back.
In just one week I will see my enboifriend for the first time in six months. We have assessed the risks of travelling to see each other during a global pandemic and decided that after spending half of our whole relationship apart, we’re going to be together on our anniversary. I’m super excited to see them, but I’m not without some anxiety. Mostly because my depression means that my sex drive is low right now, and I’m worried that they might not love me if I’m not such a horny slut.
This isn’t the blog post about the privilege I have as a white, skinny, middle-class, afab trans person. That blog post is coming, but this is another one where I need to acknowledge upfront how much privilege I have because I am thin. The only straight thing about me is my size, and I know I have a lot of work to do to unlearn my internalised fatphobia. Maybe this means I shouldn’t talk about my weight, but every time I sit down to blog all I can think about is that the body I see when I look in the mirror isn’t mine.
This post is inspired by Hannah Witton’s #DearJune challenge, which I fully intended to take part in on Instagram but ended up abandoning after just one day. This was partly because of my mental health, and partly because of the Black Live Matter protests – as a white person I needed to shut up and use my platform to raise up the voices of Black folks rather than promoting my own shit. I don’t feel guilty about abandoning Dear June, but it’s still something I’ve been thinking about. Here is a love letter, of sorts, to the month that reminded me that I am enough.