The Body Speaks

The past few days I have been sexually aroused, and it’s a weird sensation. I haven’t found myself in an excited state since late 2019 when I last traveled. When the pandemic hit a few months later, my sex drive shut down completely. The thought of being within spitting distance of strangers disgusted me, let alone the act of kissing someone. While some people were dating during quarantine, I wanted nothing to do with any exchange of bodily fluids. Not sure if stress horniness would have made the pandemic easier to endure or just endlessly irritating.

While the pandemic has eased some, I still have had issues getting turned on by anything. Not to say sex hasn’t been on my brain, because it has, but I feel like I almost have to force it. There was a time where I didn’t have to force it. It was just a natural occurrence. I have chalked some of it to age, but I think depression quieted these urges for the longest time.

Imagine my surprise on Sunday evening when I had a physiological response to watching Gaspar Noe’s Love. I have been far more physically active in recent months than I have been in years, it may just be my body getting more blood flow and that blood flow is leading towards my genitals. I haven’t had a depressive episode in a good while, either. My mood has improved substantially since I quit my last job a couple of months ago, and I’m sure that has something to do with it.

Last night I had a dream. It wasn’t a sex dream, but I think at this point I can say this is a recurring dream where I hold hands with the only man I want to be with sexually. As with every dream I have with him in it, it’s tame, sweet, romantic and always ends with us holding hands. This time we were petting a dog, our arms crossed over one another. I made sure to put my head close to his face so he was forced to smell my hair. I had one of those dream/reality moments where I thought, “Oh shit, did I wash my hair recently?” and calmed down when I realized I took a shower before bed and he would have had the sweet, subtle scent of coconut and eucalyptus mint enter his nostrils. I can only assume it intoxicated his senses as he took my hand and we walked off into the distance. I had no idea where we were going but I trusted him to not ask.

I wanted to bask in this feeling for as long as possible when I woke up. Unfortunately I had a lot of work to do today and everyone was either out sick or on PTO so it was one of those days where I couldn’t afford to have my head in the clouds, which eclipsed the lovey-dovey feelings I had. But waking up, I felt…excited.

I’m enjoying the fact that my body still functions. The past couple of years my fears of catching a deadly virus has invaded my brain space, along with staying in one place to keep others safe and feeling my muscles atrophy into nothing. As I get older, I realize just how much I have treated my body like a trash bin. I think a lot of it had to do with the off/on depression I have had over the years, but also laziness. Not taking ergonomics that seriously when I first started doing office work nine years ago—hunched over spreadsheets, too focused on work to pay attention to my terrible posture that has completely fucked my back and hips. As long as the work got finished, it didn’t matter how badly I treated my body. I sacrificed my spine all in the name of Capitalism and look at the world now—it wasn’t even fucking worth it.

For the first time I am learning how to treat my body. It’s not just a vessel for my brain, it’s me. And I need to treat it with the utmost respect.