Unarchiving Desire

Flirting terrifies me. 

It used to be fun, a way to seem charming and alluring, coy and interesting–sexy, even. It was a pathway towards a dream, a roadmap of desires, a portal for teenage fantasy. It was the reason I spent hours at my living room computer writing slash fan fiction, crafting love stories of boys I wanted, and boys I wanted to be; of finding ways to rewrite my sexuality and bring queer worlds into being. 

I used to flirt with fire, 
with the desire to love,  
and be loved differently. 
But that was before. 

Before the assaults. Before the cat calls and the crushing weight of puberty. Before I could translate my  childhood trauma into anxiety and self loathing. Before the depression; the dissociation; the  psychotherapy. Before a brown bottle made me feel giddy and I had trouble sleeping. Before I  understood why movies about tortured children resonated with me. Before I learned about what rape  actually means and that friend zoning isn’t a real cartography but a tool of white supremacy.  

It was before my body stopped knowing me; 
before it was deprived of oxygen and robbed of gasoline.  
Flirting used to be a wish, 
Before it became a promise, 
Before it became a threat.  
Now I don’t flirt at all. 
Or if I do, it’s with trepidation. 
The last time it happened it was on accident, 
and I’m not even sure it was flirting. 

A friend of mine asked to “top me.” Not sexually. Not physically. But metaphorically. We were working  on a project together and they were asking to take charge. It was usually me who did that.

I blushed. I don’t know why. 
But I do know why. 

For hadn’t I always wanted to be topped? 

Not dominated. Not raped. Not obliterated. Not taken down a peg. But taken care of. Guided.  Mentored. Made someone else’s responsibility. Let my desire become their sole priority.  

“You’re blushing,” they gushed. I blushed harder. 

I mentioned it to them later, casually, under the guise of reconceptualizing flirting and polygamy, pondering out loud what love and friendship would look like if we shifted them beyond that bounds of  sexuality; beyond the relationship norms of cis-heteropatriarchy; beyond material definitions of wanting. 

My friend recalled the memory sweetly, agreeing that friends can be lovers, because what does “lovers”  actually mean? Why is everything mediated through sex and cuddling? (My words, not theirs).  

I do that a lot. Couch my feelings in theory. I’m doing it right now. Unironically.  

I wonder, maybe, if what I was trying to express was the feeling of flirting with fire, and if that was what my friend and I had been doing the day they’d asked to top me. It felt like it. I was hot and bothered. Literally. My face was red, my body concerned, utterly unstilled by the moment. But not in a bad way. I felt scared but safe. I trusted my friend, and it felt good to be noticed; to be seen as someone with a body and awkward feelings; to make clear my naked vulnerability. My oxygen and gasoline.  

Maybe it felt like flirting because they didn’t want anything from me. 
Maybe it felt like flirting because I didn’t want anything from me.  

And maybe that was the fire. 
Not the promise of something to come, but the remembering of something lost; the embrace of a forgotten wish, the allure of a nostalgic dream. 
Another queer world in the making.