Adishri

For years I found pleasure at the press of a button. A video played and two, sometimes few strangers put on a little skit before peeling each others clothes off. The skits would vary on my taste for the day, maybe even the time and the rush. Wrapped in my duvet in the dark with my active hand bulging out of it every now and then.

Shame would linger on my nose while my eyes soaked the information I needed to feel yet another meaningless orgasm. And when I finished, I’d stare into the ceiling, wishing to experience what I had just watched in reality.

For over a decade I went on a hunt with my long feminine hair down my shoulders, flipping it gracefully to get a man up and bouncing. Or I would tie it up against my subconcious mind, to hide my hair into a ball of confused masculinity for the ladies.

Women look like “women” where I’m from, my father loved my long hair and my mother controlled the length of my strands. I’d wake up to the hypnotic scent of my dad’s aftershave and watched him brush his hair into place in minutes. I’d take a bath, wear my school uniform and be gulping the last spoon of my cereal when my mum would be half ready for work.

And at the end of the day, my dad’s aftershave would be colonised by sweat while my mum looked like a blossomed lotus and was fragrant like potpurri.

The time invested in self-pleasure intrigued me as child as I watched the first male and female representations of my life prepare for the day. My father would be quick and hasty for a monotonous day of struggle while my mum would create her own time for a job she didn’t prioritise over her own needs.

I resided in the middle of these two definitions of man and woman for a long time. Quick and hasty on most days with my hair suffocated into a ball, slow and creative when I had to meet a few friends or go on a date.

These mannerisms were bearable until I started hitting the sheets with new people. Being in the middle turned less fruitful when I had no clue where I’d feel more rewarded. The uncertainty and confusion made me wail in my own sheets, hiding my body under the duvet, hoping it would magically turn into a coffin.

I resorted to what I knew best, to give and give and give. Ironically, being a people pleaser saved me, it gave me a few years of pleasure in the eyes of someone else. With limited resources on sex education, I turned to videos with strangers teaching me the movements.

These educational videos were meant to be DIY projects but the frequent exposure caused an addiction. Not to feel good, but to feel worse about myself which became poisonously sweet over time. The abandonment of my own body lead me to fantasise others bodies, and assume what they must be feeling.

Pushing me to revive my genitals for a brief amount of time to feel something, anything. It felt exquisite and I felt invincible when I traded my hands to serve another and watched a fountain flow out of them as a reward for my labour. Like a twisted plumber celebrating leaks.

It was when I stared into the ceilings of the people I slept with that I realised my wish was decaying my body. I locked my body in a coffin in my own time and feared the eloborate journey of gender identity.

A change in perspective made me see the mannerisms I inherited from my parents were actually gifts to play with. And not trauma to confuse my self-identity with.

Their teachings of gender may have been imposed but my learning of it was self-imposed. I chose a sweeter poison after becoming aware of the tales I told myself, I chose rediscovery.

In my journey of rediscovery today, I am a woman with short faded hair, mistaken for a man at times which makes me laugh with those who misgender me. I am a woman who fashions the men’s and women’s clothing section together. I am a woman who creates time to look the way she wants to in the mirror and wears a perfume that hopefully lasts longer than an aftershave.

And finally, I am a woman ready to receive as much as I give. Flowing out my own fountain, while my new body lies naked on the sheets and moans with joy to the canvas of my imagination, the ceiling.