Hedonism, Hipsters, and Holes: Submission Turned (Slight) Rebellion
Inspired by the opening scene in Fleabag, "And then you get to it immediately. After some pretty standard bouncing, you realize: he's edging towards your.."
The first time it happened, I was caught off guard; though in hindsight, I was the only one. That much should have been clear from the quiet chuckle that slipped from his throat, amused by the shift in pressure, and the unfamiliar contours of new territory.
But I was [an age I’ll choose to censor, but feel free to reference a heroine from your favorite coming-of-age film], on the cusp of discovering who I was, or who I thought I wanted to be. And since those two things had yet to draw any distinction, I did what others wanted.
You see, I liked the way the mirror looked back at me. But I’m a romantic, and a hedonist at heart. Everything I see is beautiful. So expecting someone else to think the same seemed almost too much to ask.
To soothe this, my naive mind took to people-pleasing as a mechanism to blind others to my undeveloped sense of self. In that, I became the mirror everyone liked to see themselves in. I reflected. Especially the self-proclaimed “hipsters,” who were their own version of unmoored and liminal, but to the tune of baggy thrifted sweaters, disheveled hair, and cuffed jeans bought a few sizes too small, stretched to fit with constant wear.
They were just the baby-faced form of the fully evolved, pretentious, and artsy men they are today (who, I confess, are still my type, but for different reasons now).
Moments after that “surprise,” I turned around and uttered something I didn’t even think twice about. Words that, over a decade later, he’d tell me were the sexiest thing he’d ever heard:
“You better put that back where it belongs.”
Had my people-pleasing skills reached such a high level of performance that, even in an utterly intimate and mortifying moment, I was able to put him back in his place? Or was that a glimpse into the person I embody now, saying, fuck the people-pleasing and fuck me how I please.
The answer to that probably lies somewhere near the very faint line between sexy and shitty; a place where the act of people-pleasing frequents.