It’s been a while since I wrote something purely fictional. Something for the sake of the fantasy.
The wonderful Hannah wrote a scene this week with a priestly theme and between her writing and the superb talks by Dr Eleanor Janega at this year’s Eroticon I have been thinking about how we think a Christian God thinks about sex and the people who have it. This being controversial, I think when I comes to messages often espoused, to err is human. Too often, we try to make God in our image, to speak for our biases and understanding, captured in our woefully limited language. But then, I don’t pretend to be a theologian.
So, on the basis I have met many ordained ladies and gentlemen, but this is written with non of them in mind…
Kneeling penitent, head
bowed, the velvet-soft hairs at her nape stand tall as her skin stretches. I
stoke her neck and feel the shift of muscle and bone as she nuzzles into my
fingers like a cat.
She has shed her clerical
shirt and collar, but that is all. Waiting for me.
We take a few minutes,
to sink into the humanity of the moment. To connect at the level of touch. For
her to shed the burden of her vocation and come to me, as promised, as wife.
My fingers curl around
the fragile shell of her ear, pulling at the small metal loop piercings, two at
the top one in the lobe. She has so little vanity, but these, she has never put
aside. I love the profanity of the metal piecing her flesh, its rigidity where
her body surrenders.
I don’t ask why she is
kneeling, don’t need her confession. It has been a long week and this moment is
the first for us since Wednesday. We
both need this.
My fingers trace the
straps of her slip and bra. There is something about the simplicity she chooses
that is so perfect on her. The frayed edges of the off-white elastic against
the perfection of her skin. The delicateness of her collar bones. The bumps of
her spine.
Pliant, she lets me
position her, draped over the bed. She’s taken to wearing theses little retro
skirts with boots under her shirts. A bridge to the laity. A flash of colour
and individuality that is just her. A little bit goth meet punk. A little bit
of her she hasn’t promised or given away. I flick the skirt up her back and
pull her tights and knickers to her knees.
Mine. She shifts and
spreads wider. This portion of flesh, this capitulation, is for me. The meat of
her, flushed with blood. Swelling with need. Framed indecently by the clothes
she wears for modesty.
There is no modesty
here. No need. Modesty is a function of shame. My stewardship is sanctified. I
have promised to love, honour and cherish every aspect of her. Why should I
feel shame?
Her body prepared for
me. Mine to love corporeally. I sink my
fingers into the warmth of her cunt and she welcomes me home. Sighs and shifts.
Arching. My fat thumb splitting her lips, slick with cream.
Only my eyes see the gift of her body displayed like this. She has never seen her limbs draped over our sheets. The sheen of sweat across her shoulders catching the golden glow of the bedside lamp, highlighting the sharp contours of her shoulder blades. The lean flanks with milky skin in contrast to the mauve shadows welcoming my hand. Fearfully and wonderfully made, woven together in the depths of the earth. Designed for this.
She undulates against
me, and I want her to come on my cock. To feel her spasm and clutch unconsciously
to my flesh. Pulling away to undress, makes her call for me impatiently, her
hands reaching for me and she rolls, curling her knees to her chest, elastic
and thick black nylon slicing pinkly into her calves. Blunt nailed fingers dig
into the softness of thigh.
I stroke through her slick,
feeling the open ripe kiss of cunt to cock head, before sinking into her
welcoming depths. The breath pushes from her lungs, a cry as primal as the
scream of newborn, as I thrust and fuck with animal instinct driven to spill
inside her.
The savagery. Her boot
clad foot rasping against my shoulder, the leather scent mixed with salt and
sweat and musk. The slap of wet flesh and grunting breaths as we strain together.
Her fingers, grinding flesh against bone in a frantic race I am desperate to lose.
The wonder in her eyes
as the dam breaks and orgasm rushes through her. Heat drowning my cock, rippling
waves gripping me until I explode.
The cradle of her hips
catches me, limbs folded awkwardly, her chest compressed by my weight. Arms
holding me trapped until every last shiver-wracked drop is swallowed into her. Sweat
beads, fills, ‘til it trickles from her face through the silver kissed strands
of hair above her ears. Our breathing steadies and our lips meet. Soft, chaste
kisses.
“I’m sorry.” The words
escape on an exhalation. Sorry for what,
I’m not sure. I don’t care.
“Forgiven,” I reply.
]]>
I am an Autism advocate and mentor. Sticking that flag in the sand feels positive. It has taken a long time to write that sentence today, the rest of the post stretching out below as I tried to explain this part of myself. Explaining how autism can interlock with identity and ideas of gender and sexuality is not something the paediatrician discusses with you (autism primarily being diagnosed in childhood) and is missing from a lot of the early help books you find on raising young people with autism, but it is really important.
Given the rising prevalence of autism, or probably more
accurately, the rising diagnosis levels, there might be a day this post is
useful to you. I write mainly from personal experience, but backed by the
rising amount of intellectual study in this area. And with the proviso that
every person with autism is different.
Autism defines my perception of self.
On some small, closed topics, I can give a nice clear answer of who I am. Where evidence can be examined and weighed I have developed strong views on
- Brexit (who doesn’t?)
- the rights of people to express individuality
- the effects of humans on environments
On other more conceptual things though I have no idea. Despite lots of reading and thinking, I have no internalised idea of gender. I can’t get my head round race. I sort of understand sexuality, but only in so far as some things create a physical reaction that I enjoy and I can understand how for some people that comes from a regular pattern of responses from a narrowed field. Mine don’t. In the last five years I have been so glad to find the idea of pansexuality, so finally I have a word I feel describes me. This is not unusual.
Like lots of people with autism, learning to mask and blend was considered important. That means learning to conform to the generalised concepts of social and herd identity.
Cis female, I was socialised to an idea of female behaviours,
dress and presentation. With a family that was open-minded, employment and
education choices were not limited and I am grateful for that, but I am pretty
sure they had no idea which messages they were using as definition were
limiting and made me change something I might have naturally done or chosen.
Negative and limiting statements are defining, especially if
you have a weak sense of self. “Girls don’t do x.”, “only x people do that,”
become rules.
I am still learning that being an adult means I can make
choices that don’t match social and herd expectations. I think I love the tribe I have met at
Eroticon because they are almost universally accepting of that.
I have three autistic children, and am navigating through this soup of information with my husband, trying to use everything I’ve learnt to make parenting decisions. I try to carry this through into my advocacy and mentoring. Children with autism often learn most strongly from modelled behaviour, so being a walking talking example of someone happy in their gender and sexuality has been an area for which I’ve had to develop language and confidence.
Neither of my elder children have developed gender identities.
As parents, we don’t make limiting statements where we can help it. We ask
others (schools and individuals working with them) to aim to avoid them also. It
is rarely well received. The herd still like binary gender identities.
They will tell you they are boys, but they use it as a
recognition of their body, not a definition of social behaviours. They have a transsexual
grandparent, so they know bodies can be changed. “If I don’t try being female,
how will I know if I like being a boy more?” is perhaps not the musing of a
typical ten year old.
They won’t wear pink. “Boys don’t wear pink,” is a northern
European, twentieth century idea, but they have been socialised to it. The
message is so strong they find it worrying that their heterosexual, comfortably
masculine au pair chooses to wear baby pink. It suits him, and he’s from Spain
where pink is not so heavily stereotyped. The children think it is weird because
he doesn’t fit groups for whom pink is socially allowed (girls, gay men and old
men who talk about antiques, I think?).
Having said that, they do wear shoes that would be marketed exclusively
for women. They wear pyjama’s marketed for women because they like the soft
feel of the fabric. Their beautiful blonde hair is below their shoulders,
despite their schools’ objections.
Their sister, socialised exactly the same, is an explosion
in the pink and fluffy factory, but she is as likely to be playing with lego or
talking about dinosaurs as they are.
They love watching old episodes of Top of the Pops with me, and
my little girl is completely unable to judge the gender of the singers because
of the different fashions. If staples like having a deep voice being masculine
and a high voice feminine don’t hold (think Alison Moyet and Jimmy Sommervile
as very basic examples) she is lost. Make up and clothes are useless in this
context. The boys just shrug and say, “Does it matter?”
When my boys are misgendered, or more accurately, when
someone tries to label them as female, they’re not upset. “Actually, I’m not a
girl,” is often followed by “It’s ok, I don’t socially conform.”
If I’d had that vocabulary, I might present very differently now than I do. Might label myself in a non-binary manner. Might be more comfortable in my skin.
I had years of coaching as to what female in all its forms should
look like on me. Terms like “ladylike” and “feminine”. Learning the social
power of make-up, the social necessity of removing my body hair. Eating and
drinking have sexualised and gendered expectations. I lived through the
confusing period of the “ladette”, where mixing all of this up just left me
without a rule set to cling to and increased social anxiety. I am never going
to totally loose that conditioning and rules give me structure and keep me
feeling safe.
Writing the types of things I do and the circle of people I
communicate with through Twitter and this blog being the tribe they are, I know
I can write about gender like this and feel I am probably not shocking anyone. To
write this same piece on my problems conceptualising race and I would come
across as ignorant and tone-blind. A privilege of being born white. Heritage
and familial history and experience, yes, I understand. The concept of being self-defined
by race (rather than socially defined), I just can’t conceptualise.
Autism is often misunderstood as a learning difficulty and adult autistics can be quite invisible, because either they live very supported lives, or they “pass” for typical. Or they are so socially anxious, they don’t go out. Support is often limited to childhood, and post puberty issues ignored. Grasping the idea that autism is life long and can affect things as intrinsic to your happiness and wellbeing as gender and sexuality, is, I think, the next level of autism awareness that needs to be supported. I believe this community is one that can help spread this message and apply this understanding to individuals as they need it.
]]> 
