I love sex. My favorite TV show is Sex and the City. I regularly skim through a scanned copy of Madonna’s Sex book for artistic reference. I am a self-proclaimed sex symbol. My finsta username is @extremelysexyandcool (don’t even bother). And I have also been celibate for a year and a half now—voluntarily—if that’s still even worth mentioning. So, yes, I guess I do love sex. I’ve had lots of it. Yet, I refuse to have any. I’ve refused to for a long time now.
This has since become a local mystery. I ran into a male friend the other day. We hadn’t hung out in a couple of months. The last time we did, we had a smoke break, and I briefly mentioned having been celibate for a while. When this friend and I were reconnecting, he brought it up. He asked if I was still doing the whole celibate thing. To which I replied, “Yes.” Last week, I had a photo shoot with some friends modeling for me. One of them was a lesbian, whom I haven’t seen in a while, also asked me about my whole celibate thing. I’m going to start calling it that now: My Whole Celibate Thing. She asked if I was celibate because of religion. To which I replied, “No.”
Each time I get asked about my reason for celibacy, my answer changes ever so slightly. I’m fickle in the sense that I have compulsive lying tendencies. However, I treat it more like a hobby than a compulsion. I rarely do things with hardly any thought, even when I try to make it seem like I am.
Being a virgin is easy. It’s incredible. Everyone tells you sex is this mystifying, intimate, sensual event that’ll change your life. Oftentimes, it’s fifteen minutes long on a twin bed with a terrible playlist droning on in the background. I wish I were given the grace of involuntary celibacy. I like my answers right where I can see them. If this were a matter of physical appearance, then it wouldn’t be such a mystery. However, times are changing. I’ve seen my homegirls have sex with men so hideous that looking at them alone has revived my gag reflex. Not that it’s a problem, anyway; I count oral sex into My Whole Celibacy Thing, so I can gag all I want.
We are living in a climate that is so simultaneously puritan and overtly lustful. Everyone is either celibate or has just wiped their mouths of someone else’s bodily fluids. I feel like a bulimic in a room of anorexics and binge eaters. I’ve had my fill and decided I want no more of it, except my last meal was 18 months ago.
What is scariest to admit about all of this, about My Whole Celibacy Thing, is that I secretly revel in the act of saying I’m celibate alone. Call it what you want, but there is something endearing about a sexy woman who gets absolutely none. Perhaps I’ve just been so deluded into thinking that way when everyone else must think there HAS to be something so wrong with me that I haven’t gotten any in so long.
So, what is it? I give decent head when I want to. Everything inside me is intact. My fake moans are guided by operatic training. I’m definitely not hard to look at. What the fuck is wrong with me? What the fuck is my problem? I haven’t even had sex with women since then either, and there’s less performance involved.
Even my inner-outer monologue is deluded and veiling concern with decrepit humor. Well, here it is: I have actually been voluntarily celibate for a year and a half because I’ve gained 20 pounds, and my body is littered with keloids that disgust me so much that physical intimacy would only host more smoke and mirrors for me to conjure up.
As with many other women, sex can feel like a performance to me. A porn-sick society has driven us to such a point that even the sole act of pleasure has turned into entertainment for someone else, even when they are right inside you. I like to believe that I stopped caring about all that. I hardly get any; why should I give a damn about how I look in my own room by myself? But the sheer thought of going back to worrying about every mole, every fold of skin, and every microexpression terrifies me.
Perhaps I do have compulsions in this aspect. Perhaps the flaw of intimacy nowadays is humanity’s bigger desire for perfection. Perhaps I’ve just had too much sober sex. Perhaps I’ve just had too much bad sex. Whatever it is, I know sex isn’t worth all that trouble. I used to amp up my workouts. I’d wax my pussy raw. I’d save money for birth control. All just to get a third of an orgasm. It was all worth it if I looked perfect. If I felt perfect. That would make up for the two-thirds missing. Even if they didn’t glance at the puckered-up scars on my skin, I knew it was there. It would always matter to me.
It was never about religion. It was never about empowerment. And it was never about self-preservation. I really am just vain. Even in the act of self-mutilation and questioning my personal issues with intimacy, I am vain. I think I can live with that. If you really think about it, vanity falls under all those categories. My body is a temple yada yada yada. I won’t put myself in a situation where I’m not enjoying myself, nor will I undermine my pleasure for another person. It’s just sex, sex, sex with you people, and me, me, me with me.
