Embodied Desire: An Operator's Manual

Last week, as I lay on my back in savasana, chest upturned toward the eclipsing moon, I had a surprising revelation about my own sexuality. My eyes closed, I felt a sphere of energy growing steadily between my hips — active, passionate and alive — a feeling I remembered, from a time before I stopped listening. In that moment I realized that, for most of my adult life, I had been passively navigating my own sexual desires. To look at me from the outside — proud Queer, “they” pronoun-using, burlesque-dancing, bodyworker — it might not occur to most people that someone so comfortable with the identities they hold might be so disconnected from the desires of the body that holds them. 

I leaned in to the feeling and watched a metaphor unfold from within. I imagined my sexual expression like a car and I — my sense of self and desire — the driver. I traced through my body’s memory the different ways I had tried over time to navigate the balance of freedom and responsibility that comes with piloting such a vehicle.