Sexuality
I smell the judgement
and the disappointment
of my parents as I enter the hall;
it stinks of their silence on my sexuality.
That’s all the big roles and ethics
All there to fulfil.
Another task,
Another box to tick
Another concrete path to rush
Quick, simple and straight.
The simple truth is that my body and I are having an affair. We each obsess about the other, ask questions and desire each other so much, that it often borders on the shameless. My body is more in love with me, I suspect, than the other way around.
For me, pregnancy was a strange state of being so present and so aware of my body, while at the same time being separate from it. This experience really did a number on me during those nine months and during the postpartum period.
Like some perverted Pavlovian desire,
the wafting smell of fresh soap
that fills up the air in the bath
has my pupils dilate when walking out.
Waxing my body for the first time last year to have silky skin like the women on Veet’s box but ended up with rashes instead.
Our bodies become the form and medium through which we present ourselves to the outside world, engage with it, interact with it, perceive it and are perceived by it.
It is unusual to find films that focus on older people, especially women, given our obsession with youth, ‘fit’ bodies and beautiful faces.
Body is born, as a collection of many parts, into the various collections of bodies. Different combinations or collections are projected onto various historical, spatial and temporal dimensions, out of our needs, desires and capabilities.
For transgender persons the body is a very critical juncture where a lot of trans politics happens, given the fact that a lot of our identities in terms of gender do not match how we see our bodies.
Since we get to see hundreds of thousands of faces over the course of our lives, we know that facial features can take all kinds of shapes and colours and textures and combinations. We don’t see people’s genitals nearly as often.
Humour makes us feel good, relaxes us, lubricates social interactions, and often allows us to see things in new ways. Who doesn’t love a good belly laugh? However, what tickles your funny bone may be very different from what tickles mine.
There’s a difference between ‘laughing with’ and ‘laughing at’. The above instance was obviously of the latter kind. Humour has a complex but integral relationship with queer genders and sexualities, and it has been evolving over time.
You don’t even realise what you’ve said until someone in the group, quick as lightning, hits you with the rejoinder, “That’s what she said!” As you’re trying to make sense of what just happened, the group dissolves into giggles.