I Thought Objectification Was Flattery. Self-Pleasure Was My Way Out

This article mentions child sexual and physical abuse.

Last year, I found myself in a pandemic, living in the same apartment as my ex-fiancé who had just broken up with me. What I never expected from this hellish-sounding situation was that it would give me the space to stop objectifying myself as a sex toy and to discover my own pleasure.

Though I was pissed at my former partner for ending things that December, I’d agreed that he could stay until our lease expired because I didn’t feel like finding a new roommate to split the rent on our huge Brooklyn apartment during the winter.

One of the reasons that I’d fallen in love with him was that he celebrated me as much for my intellect as he did my body. I’d failed to fully appreciate this fact, because I was still trapped in a loop of valuing myself based solely upon how chiseled my abs were or how juicy my booty looked in running shorts.

As a gay, Black dancer, my queer identity had revolved around being sexy for most of my life — so much so that I’d disassociated every other aspect of who I was. Around my romantic partners, I was always performing some variation of the lustful tart persona that I grew up idolizing in my favorite film noir movies. Whether they were femme or homme fatales, I longed for their effortless sense of command through their sexuality. Whereas those characters captivated with their wit, I used my physical allure to dominate situations, because I didn’t trust that my personality was enough.

So when engaging with me, you either got “Juan Michael the artiste,” who spent hours at the rehearsal studio killing himself to jump higher and turn faster, or “Juan Michael the fuckboi,” who never caught feelings and left all the other fuckbois begging for more. Sometimes I let the people I slept with catch glimpses of the Juan Michael who cared about creating art, memorizing dialogue from comic books, and hiking mountains all over the world. But usually the voracious slut was all I wanted to offer. Maybe that’s all I thought I had to offer.

I’d learned to lead with that dynamic as a survivor of childhood physical abuse and rape. As a kid, I thought the sex I was having was consensual. And because it usually involved little pain, I told myself that it was better than the hurt I was experiencing at home. With that background, it made perfect sense that I became a dancer who was obsessed with captivating others with my body.

Moving to New York as a teenager in the early aughts, I hoped that things would get better. But instead of meeting guys with substantive personalities, I went through hordes of white men who fetishized my Blackness. “Can I get some hot chocolate?” I remember hearing; others called me a “walking set of cakes” or a “little Black whore.” Though I found their racial objectification hurtful, on a certain level I also felt flattered that they found me attractive. I accepted being the “flavor” that they wanted to consume with no consideration for what I actually wanted.

Eventually, I came up with an unofficial checklist that I ticked off on every date: 1) agreeing that we were both hot enough for each other, 2) acknowledging that we both had access to enough money to be financially independent of one another, 3) determining whether we were both sexually compatible, 4) preparing to fuck repeatedly until we got tired of each other. I soullessly repeated the cycle ad-infinitum.

All of that changed in 2015, after I was diagnosed with HIV. Being open about my seropositive status forced me to interrogate the type of people I’d been fucking up until that point. Many of them were terrible, but because I believed that I was worse, I told myself that we deserved each other — that is, until people tried to weaponize my status against me, telling me I was disgusting but that they’d still fuck me. “Poz pussy is the best because you guys’ll do anything” was a common sentiment.

I’d been willing to play a walking thirst-trap for most of my life, but I was never the guy who’d suffer intentional abuse for the sake of being touched. I wanted to feel like a prized object, not to be disparaged as a desperate lay. Within a few sexually bland post-diagnosis dates, I started to ask myself, “What if you focused less on having hot sex with dudes who fit your snobby needs and more on considering whether or not we can actually stand each other?”

“What if I stopped pimping myself out and accepted that relationships should be about more than going down on each other?” I remember thinking to myself.

Though I’d treasured being with my big-dicked fiancé, I can now see that he was part of the endless cycle that I hadn’t broken yet. Yes, he was brilliant, beautiful, and kind, but living with him after we broke up helped me realize that I would have loved him regardless of who he was, as long as he had been hot and accomplished. And although the sex was good, truthfully, I don’t think either of us really thought about each other while having it.

When the pandemic lockdown began, many of our friends assumed that we were fucking like rabbits and on our way to getting back together. But when the opportunity to fall into that trap arrived, I decided that we both deserved better than Juan Michael the fuckboi. I’d just given him a naked massage, and he was hard as a rock. Instead of swallowing him, though, I walked away and went to finish myself off in the shower.

During that walk of no-shame, my lust roared, “Why aren’t you riding his dick?” The simple answer was that I didn’t want to have meaningless sex with someone I used to love ― and besides, though his body told us what he wanted, he hadn’t tried to stop me.

Masturbating alone in the shower turned into a comically humiliating mess. I dropped the soap, hit my head on the faucet while bending down to retrieve it, nearly slipped and died, and burned myself while using the hot water knob to pull myself to standing.

“Is this an omen of things to come?” I asked myself. I had never enjoyed wanking off because sex by myself seemed like, “What’s the point?” But now that I was single, I was willing to try almost anything. I reflexively reverted to showing off how flexible I was and came close to suffering another near fatal slip.

In a pique of frustration, I began to massage a bruise I’d acquired during my pratfall. While working on my groin, I noticed that my body was responding happily whenever I used a lighter touch.

Before that moment, I’d never thought about what I wanted from sex beyond dominating and fucking the other person stupid. My tried and true kink was knocking “fast and furious” boots until my body was numb. It’s what I’d learned as a child and seen in porn, and though I didn’t exactly enjoy it, everyone else did, so I’d adopted it.

Soon, I was applying lighter touches to other places. As my excitement increased, it dawned on me that this was my first time experiencing softness during sex.

One loud and tear-filled orgasm in my bathtub later, I decided that I was done with performing like a slutty video vixen. Instead of treating myself like an empty wet hole or orgasmic circus trick, I resolved to luxuriate in exploring and loving on myself with inimitable tenderness.

It’s been more than a year since that epiphany and I am now in a loving relationship with the coolest queer I know: moi. So when I go out to pick up dinner or work out at the gym, I give zero fucks about whether or not the next hot man I meet will want to bend me over. Of course, I still enjoy the idea of being attractive to other people — but now I fantasize about meeting someone who is a better conversationalist than they are a sexy lay.

Until I meet that guy who wants to celebrate me as much as I want to celebrate him, I’m enjoying the cancellation of "hot vaxxed summer" by getting rid of all the personas that stopped me from truly loving myself.

I’m no longer “Juan Michael the lustful tart,” “Juan Michael the artiste,” and certainly not “Juan Michael the fuckboi,” of the one-note sexual flavor.

I am Juan Michael, a Black, queer man living in Brooklyn who enjoys dancing naked in his living room while holding a giant disco ball or traveling the world and staging photoshoots of himself jumping along mountain trails.

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