It’s been many, many moons since my last blog post and the fans have been begging for an update. So, today I’m coming in strong with a steamy, scandalous, explicit blog post! Okay, I’m mostly kidding, but we are gonna talk about voyeurism and sexual experiences with friends.
I have a friend, let’s call her Nova, and she gets around a lot. She has the beautiful bisexual experience of hooking up with people of all genders and I have the privilege of hearing the juicy details of these hookups. She occasionally sees this girl, who we’ll call Violet, and has nothing but good things to say about her. A few months ago, Nova was telling me about her most recent rendezvous with Violet, and I thought to myself, “I want to be there.”
Now, apparently that’s not a typical response to hearing about your friend’s sexual excursions, but that’s what I thought. And I’ll explain it to you because you’re probably wondering “Jadey, you pervert, what on earth do you mean?”
So here’s the thing. The obvious thing. I’m asexual. This whole sex thing isn’t something I have ever participated in. However, it is fascinating to me. The taboo of it all, the shame that surrounds it, the things we get told are “good” and “bad” expressions of sexuality. Kink and fetish, the multifaceted layers of sexuality. I love it. I love hearing about it, I love talking about it, and I love writing about it.
But, it can be challenging to get authentic information about the nitty gritty of it all. Porn is unethical, and ethical porn costs money, and that amount of money isn’t worth my lack of interest to view it. There are novels and short stories, but it’s difficult to find the line between smut and erotica, and literature that comments on sex and sexuality. So, the best option to see how it all works, to ask questions, to be in the experience without actually having sex myself, is to watch it. And Nova is the most open, trusting friend whom I am very close with, so I posed the question: can my partner and I come over and watch you have sex with Violet?
Nova was beyond thrilled. So we began planning a day we could all get together, and obviously talking about boundaries and what we expected during this voyeurism experience. To sum it up, we decided on going with the flow. Maybe we show up and it’s just hang out time. Nothing sexual happens and we all get to know each other as friends. Maybe it’s just a make out session, my partner and I watching or doing our own thing, or Nova and Violet do have sex and all my voyeurism fantasies come true.
Let’s talk about friendship for a second. Because I need to make a very strong point of how incredibly grateful I am to my friend for having this experience. The fact that Nova and I are so close, that we have such a trusting, open friendship, where I could even bring this up to her, let alone have it actually happen, means so much to me. Additionally, this was planned on the basis of me wanting to explore my sexuality, test out a fantasy, and having someone say yes to that, to be so willing to be vulnerable and share such an intimate moment with me, actually makes me kind of emotional. Plus, up until this point, I had never met Violet, but she was so willing to do this for a stranger, which I think just shows how kind and awesome of a person she is.
I do think queer friendship is inherently different from straight friendships. I’m not saying it’s better, just different. There’s an openness to go beyond traditional “rules” of friendship. There’s an openness to talk about sexuality, to touch each other, and in some queer friendships, sleep with each other. Plenty of queer friendships involve sexuality that remains platonic. Just look at boygenius!
There are a lot of things that you’re not “supposed” to do with your friends. You’re not supposed to be physically intimate with your friends. Kiss them, have sex with them. And god forbid you’re not supposed to want to do those things when you’re in a relationship. And I think that’s weird. I think that limiting expressions of intimacy to just a romantic and/or sexual partner is weird and problematic.
Obviously, there are limits and boundaries set between partners in a romantic/sexual relationship. However, the implication that being in any way intimate with your friends because you’re in a relationship is bad, is toxic. It suggests you don’t trust your partner and you want to control how they behave around others. I don’t like that. My partner and I are very open to the idea that we could want to have sexual experiences the other wouldn’t be comfortable with. That could happen in any relationship. I never want to stop my partner from learning about themselves and having a new experience. It is inevitable that there are things, sexual or not, I will not be able to give my partner. And that’s normal. That’s okay. I don’t want to be everything to my partner. That’s impossible, and not healthy. And I wouldn’t want the pressure of that, and vice versa for my partner. You can’t be everything for everyone. So that’s all to say, that’s where my head is at in being open and excited to do something “unconventional” with my friend and partner.
Alright. That’s a lot of chit chat. Let’s get into the nitty gritty.
Funny enough, this voyeurism adventure was happening the same weekend my partner and I celebrated our one year anniversary. So after a romantic sushi dinner at the restaurant where we had our first date, we headed over to Nova’s house. Nova had placed a mattress in the middle of the living room where she and Violet sat, and my partner and I perched on the couch as we all began to get to know each other. We talked books, majors, music, even which websites are the best for pirating movies. We established boundaries in person, had a couple drinks, and things started to pick up. While I’ve alluded to what kind of physical intimacy my partner and I have as an asexual couple, I’ve never explicitly said it on my blog. But since we’re here, I might as well not hold back (and also it’s really not that scandalous). We refer to physical intimacy as “asexual make out” which basically sounds like what it is. It has aspects of a “traditional” make out that are adjusted to fit our comfort level as asexual people, and doesn’t necessarily lead to sex or anything of that nature. For example, I don’t love being kissed on the mouth, so asexual make out might involve less kissing on the mouth, and more kissing on the cheek or neck. That’s all to say, while things heated up from Violet and Nova, things heated up between my partner and I as we watched. And, being the writer and poet I am, I obviously brought a note pad and pen to take notes and write down important quotes.
Then the evening went down as you’d expect, but also not. Yeah, Violet and Nova had sex, but also, we all just became friends and hung out. In the middle of things Violet and Nova left to play dress up. Violet showed us a YouTube video about My Little Pony. We stood in the kitchen mostly unclothed to get another drink and talk about Brandi Carlile, which record should be put on next, and the politics of Zohran Mamdani. Basically, I was doing my favorite things: hanging with my friends and being gay.
And then, after a couple hours we got tired and went home. The funny thing about this experience is how normal it all felt. It really was me just hanging with my friends, and some of them just happened to be naked. A lot of cool things happened; I made a new friend, I had my first kinky experience, I got content to write about, and I formed closer bonds with my friend and partner. So basically the night was incredibly successful and awesome.
Now. One last note before I end things. You might be reading this and thinking the same thing a friend of mine asked me when I updated him on this experience; “Does this mean you’re not asexual?” I’m still very asexual. Just because I participated in a sexual experience doesn’t mean I feel sexual attraction. You can eat when you’re not hungry. However, this experience did open up a new way for me to look at my asexuality. While before I defined my asexuality by the things I was not comfortable with doing, now I’m defining it as simply a lack of sexual attraction. I think I was unintentionally boxing myself in and now I’m expanding definitions of my sexuality. I’m reminding myself that it’s okay to experiment. That the asexual experience is vastly different and not a monolith. Some asexual people might not like physical touch and never have sex. Some might be super kinky and have sex. That doesn’t make them not asexual. There isn’t a right way to experience sexuality. The spectrum is vast and different and that makes it cool and interesting. There are a variety of reasons why I, or another asexual person might want to engage in sexual activities or sex. And as long as it’s consensual, that’s awesome.
Alright. I hope this makes up for my lack of posts and now I’m thought of as a super cool, mysterious, kinky asexual on the internet.
Average Asexual 