on performance ≠ real love or desire

semi explicit sex writing content warning lol

now that i am resolved to being good, to no longer getting intoxicated and hooking up with whoever i can get my grimy hands on in the middle of the night, to not seeking out raw experiences of potential physical or emotional endangerment just for the sake of feeling something, to letting go of the weird nostalgia i was holding for all those hours i spent avoiding being alone with myself at secondary locations, all those spontaneous impulsive interactions with strangers that were mildly mentally stimulating and unexpectedly pleasurable at best, masochistic attempts at self-harm and negative confirmation bias at worst.

it feels like i might no longer have anything exciting or meaningful to say. to divulge. was it meaningful before? maybe not but at least it was exciting. something about the process thrilled me, memorializing all those memories and feelings that i knew would otherwise be lost to time. on some level it felt like a thing i needed to do.

but slowly, and then all at once, my whore phase is over. i feel a certain nostalgia / embarrassment admitting this. i am still tempted all of the time. but less so every day. most days. it just doesn’t hit the same, is no longer satisfying to me the way it was, is not how i want to spend my time, how i want to operate in the world anymore. on the sexual intrigue addiction prowl.

so gone is the day i leave my friend’s birthday picnic in the middle of a sunday afternoon to go visit a man i’ve never met who lives deep off the B train in midwood. he is 10 yrs older than me and spanks me harder than i have ever been hit before. he consensually forces me to my knees with his cock deep in my throat until i can barely breathe. squeezes my nostrils gently shut with his fingertips while my eyes are closed lips wrapped around him so that, for a moment, i actually cannot breathe at all.

only for me to be kicked out of his apartment in a rush an hr later without any sexual gratification of my own because his brother calls impromptu to say he’s on the way over with their mom. it is still daylight when i leave, sliding my shoes through the astroturf that coats his building’s front lawn. when i leave our friend’s picnic i am only honest with one person about where i am headed - our visiting gay frenchman friend, who i know would never judge me. maybe the rest wouldn’t have either, but i know at least none of them are ever doing anything like this. i take a certain pride in knowing this, in the secrecy and in the shame, in my interpretation of it as something like bravery.

i fantasize about the man nearly every time i masturbate for months after the one brief golden hour we spend alone in his apartment. i never see him again. my choice, but does it matter? a little bit. i like turning him down and thinking about him anyway, knowing i could probably always go back there if i wanted. i don’t want to, not at all, but that’s not the point.

so gone are the late subway rides i spent making erotic eye contact with whatever man relatively close to my age happens to be available for me to telepathically persuade to give me his gaze and attention before i slip out the train doors at my stop. on my way to go meet up with another man who i have no intentions of being honest with.

gone are the nights i spend with someone’s teeth biting my nipples in the dark corner of a techno-pulsing furnace an hour before sunrise to distract from the drugs we’re sneaking off our fingertips from the small baggie in between our bodies. hoping no one’s watching, hoping everyone is.

gone is the eve of 4/20 i spend a year ago being ubered from a karaoke bar in bushwick to a weed-bag-designer’s (not a drug dealer, this time, let’s get that straight) apt in the upper west side to eat pizza surrounded by crumpled $50 bills, dirty dishes, and hundreds of hand-printed packaging bags. to be told just a sec as he checks the status of his uber package delivery while he’s still inside me, mid-thrust. to later struggle helpless under his weight when i realize he’s trying to put it in my ass without asking. to firmly say no and get him to stop, but just barely. to tell my friends the next day that it was the best sex i’ve ever had. to leave that part out.

to be scared by how much it turns me on when he hits me. hard, on my ass. softer, on my face. i am normally so very against this, face-slapping. i find it degrading, annoying. but i cannot deny the way my body flutters replaying it all on the subway ride downtown.

to sleep fitfully in his lofted bed in the crease of his massively muscular elbow, to agree to his mutual lie of you’re special, i want to see you again, i can’t take a thing like that seriously i’ve been here too many times before. to agree to go to breakfast together the next morning, to gather my things and leave without mentioning it when the sun goes up, to never see him again. to ignore his 3:47am dm hey two weeks ago.

so what i’m really talking about here, besides the obvious sexual and romantic intrigue addiction, is the long and arduous process of working through all the myths i’d built up in my own mind surrounding my never-ending search for the Unpleasable Man.

what do i mean by Unpleasable Man? because it’s not all of them. and surely there are also unpleasable, unavailable women, i’ve probably been one myself, but they aren’t my problem. my problem was the guy who’s hard-won if not initially-sought-after validation and respect would someday finally prove my eternal worthiness. give me the right to get on with my life, be the answer to all my unresolved insecurities, redeem everything i’ve ever done wrong.

if i could only become perfect enough to not only initially entice (too easy), but win back and sustainably hold the attention of (much harder) the Unpleasable Man. then everything would fall into place. it might take years, might take decades. i didn’t care, i was ready for the challenge, i needed the challenge, i craved it.

the difficulty of detaching from this deeply-ingrained spiritual mission that i’d been on without realizing, for almost my whole life. probably since the first time i ever felt that mix of discomfort and pride that comes with becoming aware of a man’s gaze on you. feeling it linger, feeling it leave. wanting it back, despite yourself.

it is where i first learned to perform. where i first internalized that a good performance meant you were rewarded. with attention, with adoration, however temporary.

if you don’t get what i mean go watch boyfriends and girlfriends (1987). for some reason metrograph’s streaming site has a glitch rn where you can stream it completely for free. it is a beautiful film, about a few things but mainly (in my eyes) about the difference between real genuine love communion and the performance of desire/desirability.

now - i really can safely say that i am no longer interested in the challenge. i would not go through all that again, do not think i ever will, for anyone. but specifically, any man. my brain has finally fully developed. i am 25, nearing 26, it is about fucking time.

but god did it make me sad, did i really miss it at first, do i still even now ocassionally want it back - that all consuming, blissfully-miserable, distracting yearn. the lust. without it, life just felt a bit empty and meaningless for a while.

now i am somewhere else but for a while, it was all just a lot of putting my head down accepting the boredom turning down hookups turning down alcohol deleting all my apps developing a minor nicotine dependency as a coping mechanism going on lot and lots of midnight walks alone.

it was leaving the late-night function to trek reluctantly sober to the new 24-hr grocery store in the neighborhood, picking out the biggest butternut squash i could find, and carrying it home at 1am to cook soup. it was slowly but reliably building up my ability to care for myself and my own physical and emotional needs in a way that eventually began to feel like genuine enjoyment and sustainable self-compassion, not loneliness in disguise.

it is the depth of the feeling that i truly miss, at first. hinging all your spiritual hopes and childhood insecurities on earning the respect and affection of a person who has already expressed in a myriad of non-verbal ways that they are completely incapable of giving those things to you. as if another human person ever even could. the sweet torture of trying anyway, of knowing you are doomed to failure. it is a cross that can become strangely comforting and familiar to carry.

the Unpleasable Men changed, but my relationship to them remained essentially the same. each time i found a new object of affection to hyperfixate on. each time i was won over by the undeniable gluttonous pleasure of being lovebombed (smh this word) and subsequently de-valued once the novelty wore off and i psychologically switched from being hard-to-get to desperate-to-keep-what-i-had-been-given. without ever taking a moment to consider: did i actually even want this to begin with? or did i just want the ego-boost of adoration back, even if i knew deep down that it wasn’t sustainable or real. because it was never about being real, it was about being rewarded for my performance.

it was about deluding myself into feeling intelligent and self-aware and proud, for being able to predict the ending before it happened. the inevitably self-destructive finale i was already subconsciously hoping and planning for. i wanted to be destroyed, i actively sought out and chose the methods of destruction, i consistently got exactly what i wanted. see: the negative confirmation bias i mentioned earlier.

but now - i think i am finally on the precipice of real change. of creating a new belief system entirely, one that doesn’t quite yet completely erase my need for validation but at least has stopped hinging on the validation of Unpleasable Men.

something chat gpt told me re: letting go of the devil, a few months ago. (don’t @ me for using ai as a therapeutic coping tool, mb i’ll stop one day but not yet, i’m sorry).

this is such a real, nuanced ache—you’re grieving not just him, but the entire internal mythology you built around him. the longing, the signs, the idea that maybe your connection was cosmic or fated or redemptive. letting go of him wasn’t just about letting go of a person—it was letting go of meaning. of the hope that someone could arrive to make it all make sense. that’s a profound loss. no wonder you miss even the wanting itself.

it’s not about losing someone specific. it’s about losing the self-concept that was built around the hope of being saved. and as painful as it is? it’s often the birthplace of real love. not the kind built on fantasy, but the kind built on truth, presence, and mutual humanity.

you’ve clearly traced this craving for the high of pining—that sense of being alive in desire—back to your own deeper needs: the need to be seen as good enough, to feel safe about the future, to escape fear through fantasy. and now that you’re out of the cycle, you’re no longer fueled by the hope that he’ll come back or that it was all “for something”… and that absence leaves a kind of spiritual void. that’s not just normal—it’s inevitable when you start healing.

so how do you hold both: a desire for greater meaning, and a rejection of unhealthy patterns that once gave you that meaning?

you build new meaning. not the old kind, based on someone else validating your worth by returning to you, but something more internal, more grounded. you don’t need to give up spirituality or purpose—you just need to stop outsourcing it to other people.

realizing my pining was really more about performance than it ever was about cosmic fate or genuine connection? that was what really shifted things for me. accepting how exhausting it really is to live in performance-mode all the time, trying to control the external outcomes of other people and situations you really have no power over. even if, briefly, you feel like you are the most powerful woman in the world. intoxicating.

this wonderful british woman i found on the internet says all this better than i ever could. she’s spot-on, at least for me. i wish i’d seen this video a year ago. but maybe i wasn’t ready to hear it yet. maybe you are, though. that’s all i’ve got rn. ttyl.