They slept with me as a form of self harm.

Some post-hookup messages will forever haunt me.

ME – “Hey, you just popped into my head… hope you’re well. Wanna grab a drink sometime?”

THEM – “It was fairly obvious I slept with you as a form of self harm, so I think I’ll pass.

Oh… okay.

It wasn’t obvious… not to me. 

That was something I never considered.

It never occurred to me that an act of intimacy with *this* could be considered an act of self-imposed punishment, an act of self-destruction. I never imagined that this body could be such a thing for someone to experience. An affliction, a scourge… a misfortune. 

But that’s what I was for them. 

I was an assault they inflicted on themselves. The same way a person will inflict drugs or alcohol on their body, one of those self-imposed buffers on the way down the spiral into self-loathing. That fun-times thing that starts at parties and nights out and eventually becomes the carrying crutch that disgusts you. Turns out that was me… an implement of self-harm.

Like a knife to the soft skin of your thigh. 

Like a cigarette lighter held under your arm.

I know I’ve been “used” before, but not like this. I accept the fact that some of the people I’ve slept with did so as a way to discover their queerness before they “went all the way” with their chosen gender of desire. I’m just masc enough for men too afraid to fuck another man. I’m just femme enough for the women who are too afraid to fuck another woman. Perfect for men who don’t want to feel less like men so they find someone who doesn’t threaten their masculinity, perfect for women who like the idea of sex with a women but can’t really wrap their head around operating genitals other than the ones they’ve been gaslit into thinking are the only way to experience sex. I’m not so femme that a cis woman would feel like they had to “lead” and not so masc that a cis man would feel emasculated by my presence. The whole thing smacks of the ways in which men and women are forced into such tiny roles in sex.

Being the gateway to other people discovering their queerness has a lot of benefits, but far more drawbacks. “No obligation” fucking is great. Being an object of desire is wonderful, but chief among the drawbacks is that really you are just the gateway, never the destination. You are the stepping stone that they will leave behind. Sometimes I hate it, but sometimes you just wanna be held and experience that fleeting reassurance of a stranger treating you like you are worthy of desire.

Turns out I’m the perfect candidate to be used.

But this was different. I wasn’t a stepping stone… I was a calamity.

I’d rather have not known. I would’ve rather been ghosted. That’s certainly something that happens. There’s an extra level of patheticness to a forty-plus year old trans woman, sitting on the couch in a online-store dress marketed to a woman half her age while tears silently ruin her full face of make-up. “Hey, it’s me again. Are we still meeting at 7? Did you manage to pick a bar you want to go to? Text me back.” Those ones sting. Even more so when the person disconnects from you on the app and the algorithm, that oh-so-helpful digital friend-finder, insists on putting them back in front of you. “We think you might like [insert name of person who stood you up]”… Sorry algorithm, I think you’ll find that I probably won’t.

The discourse in the media about transgender people frames us as something detrimental to society. Pundit after pundit claiming this is the fall of the western civilization. That “men in dresses”, these “TIMs” (Trans Identifying Men) are, in their own way, harbingers of “the great collapse”. So why shouldn’t someone think of sex with me as “an act of self-harm”? If the internet has taught us nothing, it’s that there’s always someone out there who wants to fuck the thing you never would have dreamed of… I have no doubt there’s someone out there online who would gladly fuck a hurricane destroying a town if they could figure out the mechanics of it, so why not me too? Why not fuck the coming apocalyptic destruction of the traditional family if you get the chance?

So I guess I’ll just delete that person from my phone?

This is the occasional cost to pay. Sure, I know this pastime is in many ways just a shallow and fruitless exercise; finding strangers on the internet to fuck. It isn’t about love. At best it’s about validation. It’s about having those moments where two human beings share enough trust to disrobe, share enough kindness to not embarrass each other, and find enough compassion to discover pleasure in each other.

Ah, look at me getting all wistful and poetic about sex with random strangers on the internet... Don’t worry, they aren’t all like this one. Mostly they are joyous, life-affirming, hilariously cringy, sexy, embarrassing, shambolic jaunts of lust and sweat and athleticism… the stories I could tell you! God, ask me sometime about when my dog got into the room during a hook up and went after my date’s cock-cage thinking it was a chew toy!

Fucking mortified! Couldn’t stop laughing.

–S