Turned Off: Sex, Media, & Being Alone

by Geo Wood

It's been a long day. Or maybe it hasn't. It's nighttime. The day is over. It's time for me to bed rot. I take off my makeup, leaving grotesque colors on an acidic, grainy wipe as my bronzer, foundation, eyeliner and mascara melt together. I tell Alexa to shuffle West End Girl, and “Pussy Palace” comes on.

Perfect.

I do my skincare, maybe put on a pimple patch, and say a prayer. I throw on my Dodgers t-shirt and underwear (pants in bed is a sensory nightmare). And I get in the aforementioned bed. Maybe I check Hinge, see who responded. Check Instagram, see if anyone has fallen into my latest thirst trap. Text a friend. Now the phone time’s over. It’s just me, my vape, and my wax pen. I guess I'm alone. 

Having exhausted my other digital devices, the two options left are my computer and my vibrator. My Rose toy died and my new one is just ok. So let's use the computer. I go to HBO Max. Heated Rivalry.

I haven't seen it. I don't plan to. I've heard the buzz though. My college group chat pings as my roommates text; “HAVE YOU GUYS SEEN HEATED RIVALRY?” They all have. I guess I'm the odd one out. 

Since I have not seen it, I cannot build a sophisticated or even decent argument against it. However, I know my relationship with my gaze and other people's sexual encounters, whether simulated or real, and I know this has been a disconnect for me with partners, friends, and the culture. 

I don’t like sex scenes. I don't like rom coms. I can’t watch Fifty Shades of Grey but I also can't watch Love Actually. I’ve glimpsed porn twice, when it was forced upon me by heterosexual men shocked by my lack of interest in it. But I don't watch porn. I won't. I can't. 

So am I anti-sex? Anti-intimacy? Perhaps a prude? I’d say no. My Instagram is embellished with pictures of me in thong bikinis. My ideal night includes a hot man with no commitment and a big bed. My Notes app bodies list isn't short. I also love love. My life's goal is to be in love—to find the love of my life. I'm a romantic, but not a practicing one. 

Let's go back to the bed. The empty one. I'm sitting alone, no makeup, skin picked. I’m not fitting the male gaze, and through that lens which sometimes becomes my own, I am not feeling confident in myself. And here's the truth: Porn. Romcoms. Sex scenes. They make me feel bad about myself. They make me feel lonely. They make me feel ugly. 

So I’m not anti-sex… maybe just the world's most bitter bitch. I want intimacy, romance, so badly, and watching other people have it is just unbearable. I want my meet cute. I want to have sex and I want to achieve the perfect aesthetic while doing it. I'm happy to watch a show or movie with romance in it. But I don't want to spend two hours watching a couple of the most conventionally attractive people I've ever seen fall in love with each other (and not me.) 

Maybe one day this will change, but I've always been this way. I feel in some ways it contradicts my appearance… image… aesthetic. I want to live my life outside the male gaze, the inherent sexualization, and the hegemonic influences that constantly tell me I am to be watched, seen, and fucked. And if I'm going to be sexual I want it to be on my own terms, through my own gaze, and centered around myself.