Young, Muslim and Wanting Sex.
He was the first one to ever look at my face fully and call me pretty. We were in the back seat of my car fumbling around in a post office parking lot at seven in the morning. I reached over for his warmth and he tried to reach mine. But it wasn’t all that pleasant. I remember one specific moment when he leaned over to kiss me, that I kept my eyes open and counted how many seconds until he stopped pressing his lips against mine. Seven. He seemed to enjoy it all too much and me not at all, but he never noticed. In spite of all of this, I wanted more.
Since I was about the age of eight, I have wanted to have sex. Reading the word alone made my skin feel warm. I opened websites I shouldn’t have; I saw women with glazed eyes put on acts for men who seemed to have more power than I was comfortable with. No one was there to tell me that sex didn’t have to be like that if I did not want it to be.
I heard someone use the word ‘sexy’ at school for the first time when I was nine. I didn’t know what it meant, but I had a feeling of needing to use the word. I came home that day, seeing my mom open the door in a beautiful dress. I told her she looked sexy and her eyes got the widest I had ever seen them. They stretched and bore holes into my face and they warned me to never say the word again. When I was thirteen, I went to my mother and told her I knew about sex. She nodded and changed the subject.
When people decide that discussions around sex are forbidden for fear of sinning, nothing constructive can happen. Sex does not stop happening when conversations around them stop being had. The curiosity does not go away, it only manifests itself in the pockets of the world that turn sex into a violent unfulfilling act.
In high school I met a boy I did not like all that much, but he seemed to like me enough so I said okay to experimenting with him. I took it upon myself to go behind my parents backs three times a week, sometimes more, to meet him in remote places and sigh heavily together. I was constantly worried about my family finding out, of their shame and their hatred for women who openly spoke of love and sex. I was risking everything for a few minutes of your heart racing so loud that you think you could hear it beat against your eardrums. For that feeling when your stomach rumbles from nerves in the best way. During our meetings, I felt so alive seeing someone want me so much, as if each part of my body became physical proof of the divine. After it was done, all I had felt was shame.
When I lived alone and far from him, I would feel a shiver when I smelled a scent that was close to his breath. It was a smell that I associated with warmth and desire, but also uneasiness.
Every message sent and every meeting we had was covert and quick. I carried the fear with me everywhere I went, while he walked lightly, without fear. I wanted him to understand that my desire for him could cost me everything. If my mother were to ever find out, it would have ruined my connection to the one woman on this Earth for whom I would die.
I wondered all the time if there were other Muslim women out there, who would risk everything for a touch that made them feel full if only for a second. I felt alone and ashamed at my want for something I was told was forbidden. I kept secrets that made my insides feel runny, my brain constantly thinking up worst-case scenarios and escape plans for each. In my mind, the worst could only happen if it was unexpected. If I anticipated the worst, I believed it would never become real. So I spent the majority of my waking hours daydreaming nightmares.
Eventually it ended, the relationship I mean. I felt a relief in freeing myself from my lying. Instead, I turned to my friends. There was a unique joy that I got from hearing the ones close to me talk about sex. I heard about their parents giving them talks about how to wait, but their understanding if they didn’t want to. I listened in on the squeals the girls let out when they laughed about softness, hardness, and messiness. I wanted to be one of the ones to tell a story of the same sort. I wanted to be able to talk about love, the depths of the body, and falling for a so-called sin. I wanted to tell everyone about how the closest I ever felt towards understanding what Paradise was when I was was in another’s arms.
I thought about my life in the future, how this one act (or one act, many times) could alter everything. It was a little excessive, but when you are consistently told your purity and modesty is entirely reliant upon your sexual decisions, you start to believe it. I do not know if sex for the sake of sex is against Islam. I am still trying to figure it out. All I know is that my God is merciful. My God created my body with all of its wants and intensity. My God understands what is in my heart. I just wanted a chance to understand what mine was saying.
