As a child, I found clothes to be restricting and on many occasions, completely unnecessary. The whole childhood nudity part of my development grew from simply being a stage to a hobby, eventually becoming my own form of expression. Shopping malls, doctor’s appointments, family gatherings, it didn’t matter where I was, every outing had a strict dress code: clothing optional.
But my harmless aversion to clothing quickly turned tragic as my hobby found its way into the kindergarten class of the White Marsh Child Center.
My mother arrived in a mix of horror and confusion. Besides my nudist lifestyle, I wasn’t a bad kid – so what could I have possibly done to warrant her being there? She soon discovered that I found a new twist to my streaking sessions: my ability to have an erection.
Apparently, I had become so proud of this feat that I decided to share it with the rest of the class. However, my frail, uptight kindergarten teacher found my “overly sexual nature,” far too graphic for the class. While my mother did not have a problem with my fascination of my body, she realized that the rest of the world did.
That night, my mother sat my brother and I down and explained everything: why my teacher was so upset, why my nudist phase had to end, and what exactly this ability of mine meant. There was no explicit detail or graphic images; she just explained the basics of boys and girls, babies, and sex.
My 4-year-old brother couldn’t have cared less; he was much more concerned with being a power ranger at the time. But I, being the exhibitionist (of both body and knowledge) that I was, was quick to dismiss any ludicrous “stork” story I heard from other children. As you can imagine, most children at this age are very keen to discussing all their newfound knowledge with their parents. The parents, however, were not keen on what exactly this knowledge was.
They were horrified to hear the words, “penis,” “vagina,” and “sex” come out of their children’s mouths and quickly turned on my mother, accusing her of being an unfit, unholy parent. But she was unmoved. She wasn’t going to apologize for teaching her children the truth, instead of some naïve fairytale using terms like “private parts” or some ridiculous, childish slang term to describe genetalia. Although unrepentant about teaching us, she had to sit us down once again and explain that like how my clothes had to stay on my body, this knowledge had to stay in my head.
And so I went on through school, not as an overly sexual child and not even as a sexually empowered child, but as a highly repressed, highly confused child, wondering what was so wrong about this whole “sex” talk. The subject didn’t come up again until fifth grade when the boys and girls were separated, to learn about their own individual “private parts.”
While most of the boys spent the time giggling every time the teacher mentioned the word “penis,” I wondered where all of the other information was. And as soon as I saw my teacher’s eyes widen, I knew my knowledge had once again become a curse and I was quickly excused from the class for asking “inappropriate” questions.
As time went by, I found myself more and more repressed, armed with all of this knowledge, but completely forbidden to use it. The educators and parents that I was surrounded by thought that too much exposure to the subject of sex would cause their children and students to become hypersexual, when in fact for me, it did just the opposite.
From a young age, sex wasn’t confusing to me. It wasn’t something exotic because it was part of the unknown, and so I didn’t actively pursue it. This period of certainty and confidence in my sexuality quickly ended when I discovered the added factor of my confused sexual orientation.
My care-free attitudes about sex rapidly turned to panic and paranoia, as my entire high school career became a canvas for me to paint on every day, writing in big bold letters over and over: I AM STRAIGHT. My sexual identity became consumed with proving not only to the rest of the world, but also to myself that I had absolutely no attraction to other boys. From age 6 to 14, I could’ve cared less about sex, but as soon as I discovered the dichotomy between my own desires and the pressure of the heteronormative world, sex became the only thing I thought about.
My view of sex became completely warped; it was no longer a simple reproductive or pleasurable act, it was a constant worry. Society had found a new way to repress me, not through my knowledge of sex, but how I wanted to have it. Confused, terrified, ashamed, I became a walking time bomb, full of repressed, pent-up desires.
I constantly waited for someone to question my sexuality, ready to jump up onto the nearest table and shout my heterosexuality to the world. If anyone ever second-guessed me, I’d become obnoxious and enraged, like the alpha male in a pack of gorillas, as I reasserted myself as a domineering, masculine, girl-loving man, beating loudly on my chest and spitting my excess testosterone in their face so they’d never doubt me again. Eventually though, I got tired.
Tired of fighting, tired of shouting, tired of pretending to be something that I wasn’t. I remembered what my mother had taught me, that sex and everything that came with it to me were natural; I couldn’t fight it no matter how hard I tried.
Eventually, I stumbled out of both the confusion and depression, but still found the world I lived in to be extremely ignorant of what exactly it meant to be sexual. This society repressed both my knowledge and desires out of some naïve perception that sex is an act of human nature that for some reason needs to be controlled, instead of celebrated and educated on. Society hasn’t helped my understanding and development of my sexuality and sexual identity, it’s hindered it.
Today I use all of my knowledge, all of my experience, all of my passion, to help fight this ignorance, so that those like me don’t have to hide from a sexually repressive society. Whether it’s your abundance of sexual knowledge, your sexual desires, or anything above and beyond, as cliché as it sounds, the revolution has begun. Which side of ignorance do you plan to be on?
