Day 187: New ways of making love with all kinds of fluidity

1 September 2020: Recovering from prostate cancer is nudging me towards greater gender fluidity and  my marriage toward more open-ended sexual experimentation.

Today is the first day of spring. But we woke to a cold, grey morning and snuggled back under the covers. Our cuddles emerge into a lovely gentle sensual pelvic massage for me from my beloved. There is no big sexual energy to it, just loving kindness and a little bit of swelling on my part. Maybe we are finally getting tuned into that non-goal-directed sexuality advocated by my cryptic friend Andrew three months ago.

It feels sumptuous, loving and good. It also helps to be quite confident that in another six months I’ll probably have natural erections again. (Watch out for future posts tracking that prediction/hope.)

Today is called “Spring Day” in Johannesburg and the change of seasons has an ambivalence about it. It speaks to my own confused, stumbling exploration of my new body and the gender identity changes that come with it.

My gender experience is becoming more fluid

Sometimes I feel quite deeply that my body has a female form. This didn’t start with my cancer diagnosis but it has been more frequent since then. Sometimes I am absolutely sure I have breasts and celebrate my own voluptuousness in a way that is very real deep inside me. And yet the mirror shows I still inhabit a very obviously male body. Coming back from a deep gender-fluid realness to the exterior realness of my less curvy tangible body is a bit of shock.

A different but possibly related thread is my increased desire to be penetrated, whether in the places  practically possible in my male body, or in the less tangible ways that my body feels female and hence penetrable.

Having grown up primarily cisgendered and heterosexual, this increasing gender fluidity confuses and excites me.

Solo play beckons

Another change in my body since surgery is that my own arousal seems to need so much more focused attention. This seems to come from a very male part of my being and is easiest to accomplished alone, by masturbating. I consciously welcome this as a way of making love with myself.

Also, like a lot of people, I have been doing some form of solo play since my early teens. So I really know my own body well enough to reach the most stimulating spots. This really helps when one has erectile dysfunction, as my non-erect penis is a lot less sensitive than it was when the tissues were stretched by arousal.

Here’s an extract from a recent journal entry:

“My cock has a mind of its own. Today it wouldn’t stand up, even with the help of my vacuum pump and ring, when Colleen and I both really wanted to make passionate love. But up and hard with two strokes of the pump when I try it on my own a little later. And easily progresses to orgasm while reading a simple erotic story and stroking myself.”

I am afraid that this kind of solo focus could turn me away from partnered love making. I wonder how many others share this fear? And how many actually abandon partnered sex in favour of solo play and fantasy? It can be easier to focus on oneself, and fantasize up idealised sexual encounters with imaginary others. Real live partners are much more complex than these fantasies.

Mixing and matching with my partner

After nearly 40 years together, there is ample evidence that we both prefer to continue with each other as real live sex partners. So I won’t retreat into my imagination. Although that fear still lurks in the background, our creative ventures in sensual lovemaking are hugely reassuring. I am 99% sure that connection with a loving partner won’t ever be eclipsed by solo play for me.

We – and I think it is mostly I – have had to learn more about incorporating self touch into our partnered play. It was always a big turn-on for me when she touched herself during love making. But I have had a lot of emotional edges to cross to bring my own self touch further into our relationship.

I have also been surprised that masturbation shame resurfaces from time to time. At my age I thought I was over that. My conscious self is clear that masturbation is a normal healthy behaviour. Knowing and loving self is a foundation for getting to know and loving others, I would say. Yet this time of bodily change for me has pushed me to greater disclosure of my solo sexuality to my partner and the release of more shame.

Role of erotic stories

Outside of professional reading I usually read a lot of novels – typically about one every week. My Goodreads bookshelf and reviews are a testament to my devouring of novels like the Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny, Carl Hiaasen’s political satire, and Fred Vargas’s Commissaire Adamsberg. But I haven’t posted a single book review since early May this year (2020).

Instead, in the last about four months, the only recreational reading I have been able to engage with is erotica. It is equally light fiction but with a significantly racier touch.

Am I shifting into a sexual fantasy world because there is so much I can’t do any more in practice? I don’t think so, but I am letting this wave of change be part of my exploration. I am enjoying tales of how people engage sexually from light romances to the steamiest of over-the-top behaviour. It’s fun to read about all kinds of people in all shapes and forms of bodies engaging in all kinds of erotic and kinky play with all kinds of selves and others. It supports my own gender fluidity and belief in my erotic potential.

It is deeply reassuring to feel my own arousal growing again, and for the brain-genital pathways to to reopen after the numbness that followed my surgery. I seem to need this stronger form of stimulation that comes from reading these sexy stories. It’s less toxic than watching porn online, I tell myself. I see the risks of over-easy gratification from watching visual porn. And I am ashamed and angry about the underlying abuse behind a lot of porn production. I trust these challenges are mitigated by the role of imagination in reading erotic stories.

What I am really missing is the natural pathway from a cuddle with my partner to tightness in my jeans. These stories keep that possibility alive in my imagination.

Confusion of slow and fast sex

I am learning so much about the joys of slow and sensual lovemaking, both with my partner and alone with myself. This is one of the biggest gifts of my extended period of erectile dysfunction. It is turning me and us towards more fluidity, creativity and patience in our lovemaking.

Yet when the possibility of a fast rush to orgasm presents itself, it is too good for me to pass up. Sometimes the “hot sex” avatar in my life just laughs at the “slow and loving” one.

Gaining empathy for some women’s sexual experiences

Reflecting on the last couple of months of my sexual experience, my wife points out how analogous it has been to many women’s experiences of sexuality:

• There’s little or no sex to be enjoyed without the risk of some pain or discomfort somewhere along the way;
• Each time, it is important to weigh up one’s own energy and how that matches up to our partner’s sexual expectations;
• More than our minds would like, there is an ongoing struggle between the inner voices of shame and the opportunities to fully claim our pleasure.