Juno Roche - Queer Sex: A Trans and Non-Binary Guide to Intimacy, Pleasure and Relationships

INTRODUCTION

T h ere is an intimate, silent conversation which goes on between my brain, my vagina and my nagging self-doubt, which somehow results in me questioning my ability to feel desirable and to view myself as a sexual being. I, for some reason, have placed myself way outside of that particular Venn circle in the hinterlands just beyond sex and desire. I am clearly standing outside looking in, and a few years after vaginal landing I feel that in order to change this particularly arid status quo I have to stand up and admit to all those around that:

I, Juno, am a vaginal-virgin and I dont quite know how to feel about it. Should I twelve-step my vagina and my virginity? Should I seek help?

If a man, or woman gives me the eye, or flirts a little and I have absolutely no idea how I should respond, somehow my trans gets in my way and I experience a series of minor panic attacks rather than feeling a subtle rumbling in my knickers. I panic top down rather than bubble vagina up.

I more often than not turn away and feel desperately annoyed with myself that Im so inept at dipping in and out and playing in the worlds of desire and sex. In the sandpit of sweaty smut.

The narrative which frames the ongoing, often noisy, debate within my brain never seems to find a foothold or obtain purchase in the worlds of the erotic or sexual intimacy. This narrative feels weighty and complex. I further complicate it by second-guessing myself: Am I attractive? Am I young enough? Am I sexy? And then second-guessing what others really mean if they make any advances towards me: Is it pity? Is it a fetish? The amount of times over 50 you are described as a MILF (Mother Id Like to Fuck), or as an older woman the number of times Ive been asked if Im pre- or post-op Is it any wonder that Im full of confusion?

Nothing in sex seems or feels straightforward to me.

Ever since my surgery I have felt that I fail at sex, that I fail at being found attractive, at being sex-ready and at feeling sexy, even if I do presume myself to be ready. I often wonder what I used to imagine my sex life as a trans woman would be like if I had surgery.

Thinking back, I spent hours, days, weeks, months and years fantasising about sex, about having sex with a vagina rather than genitals (a penis) that I never wanted to be touched or to figure in any sex life I may have. I fantasised about lying back, opening my legs and feeling someone enter me, slowly and deeply. Sometimes these fantasies were so realistic, so empathically real that I felt if I closed my eyes and reached down I would feel a vagina there, there between my legs even before it had been fashioned, a beautifully pert and moist vagina fashioned from my unwanted penis and balls. What a wonderful and purposeful existence they ended up having and what an astonishingly complex, emotional and miraculous transformation from shame to adored.

I always love my vagina, even though I havent quite worked out how she might connect me to the world; but I always felt, deep down, that demonising my penis and balls was deeply unhealthy and not accurate as they would go on to change my life as the material for my vagina. I just didnt want them as a penis and ball combination.

In my fantasies, pre-vaginal landing, there was always a common thread, a common feeling; I was always sexually relaxed and open to touch the touch of a snaking finger, or a wet tongue or an arching phallus I never recoiled or froze. In my fantasies I purred like a cat and stretched out across the surface of a queen-sized bed, let my legs fall open onto clean, soft-white, hotel-quality sheets. Obviously its a perfect scene in which I have perfect, honey-coloured, bouncy hair that gathers, ever so loosely, on one side, framing my desire and my desirability. Obviously its a fantasy in which the sheets sparkle ice-white, and my vagina parts, oh so gently, reveal the depth and warmth of my mystical offering.

Reality check: Someone flicks a look of desire at me across the mangoes and oranges in the supermarket and I blush, peach-pink intense; my heartbeat races ridiculously and I want to run away rapidly, but I fear Ill trip so I stand stone-still. In my pre-vaginal fantasies I see future me as sexy and very alluring standing there behind the mangoes, not fluttering, falling and failing like a butterfly entering its last few darkening moments. I see natural me, simple me.

But, back to reality: They look, I quiver, I turn away. Damn it, I turn and walk away.

I always believed that if I had a vulva lodged happily between my legs rather than a misplaced penis, then I would understand sex in a way that felt utterly natural and free.