With Brutal Honesty, Writer Explains What Repression Of Sexual Urges Does To A Person

By Vikrockzer:

TRIGGER WARNING: Graphic content

The only permanent feeling that has stayed with me over the years is sexual. It’s difficult to recall anything clearer than my first masturbation. Sitting stark-naked in front of the TV, I tried all possible ways in which it can be done. Suddenly, an electric sensation ran from the extreme ends of my body to the pelvic area, and my penis vomited an enormous amount of white liquid all over my legs.

There was a window in one of the rooms from where I could see anyone coming in before they noticed me. It gave me an extra 5 seconds to hide in case of emergencies. Leveraging this, I always masturbated beside that window and came on the wall below it. It gave me a weird sense of pleasure to do it with the thrill of being caught. It’s still a mystery to me what my folks thought when they noticed it.

Soon, I started reading ‘sex stories’. Incest was the only section where ‘losers’ like me felt they had a shot and fantasizing about anything that has the slightest possibility of being real, turns you on really fast. The sexual imagination evolved, and so did the sexual gaze. There was nothing pious left in relationships for me, and I imagined myself with every elder cousin or young bhabis (sisters-in-law). While imagination lingered and engulfed my mind completely with sexual possibilities, the frustration of impossibility failed to find an outlet.

Let’s say you want a dog, you will ask for it; you want your rights, you will scream for it, but God forbid if you want sex, you can’t even acknowledge that desire, let alone asking for it. Stuck with this constant craving in a society which is not ready to acknowledge its existence forces you either to become anti-social or forcefully contain it within you.

Since even paying for it is illegal, a fourfold path was laid open for me — steal, cheat, manipulate or harass. Someone had to be victimised. Why only these four paths? Because the only permanent feeling that has stayed with me over the years is sexual. Not only mine but of others too.

When I was about 8, a man with strong visible cheekbones and gapped teeth, in his mid-40s used to come near our shop. Sitting on the verandah in a comfortable iron chair, he would call me with a few orange candies in his hand. I thought he liked talking to me whenever he told me to sit on his lap. Back then, I didn’t even know about something called an erection. He would tell me to hold it and see whether it was bigger than yesterday. How could it be wrong? It took place in the evening beside the main road, with people in shops all around. He was a man of money, of respect, married, with child, nothing told me that this could be wrong. If it were, at least someone would have said so. Silently, I used to have that orange candy in his lap for a year. He is still alive.

My father was away most of the time. Not far from the town we lived in, but always far from home. My mother had nothing to do in the evenings, and she was beautiful. I saw so many uncles coming by my house that I knew almost all the adults in my neighborhood. There was nothing wrong with her ‘character’ as they say. She was the only woman who would talk to men in the entire locality.

On one festive occasion of Diwali, one of the uncles brought a gift for my mother. Father was upstairs, drinking and playing cards. It was late, and we all slept. In the middle of night, I woke up and found mother sleeping in the same saree that she had worn for the function, and her velvet blouse was raised up as the uncle who had brought the gifts, sucked her breasts.

Dumbstruck, I shouted, “What are you doing?” He was shocked and started telling my mother that her headache will be fine! I shouted again and chased him out. My father was drunk, and I didn’t say anything to him. The next morning, I confronted my mother with the truth, to which she said, “He must have given me something that I went senseless.” She made me promise not to tell my father. I haven’t.

Someone had to be victimised, by means that I knew of. The first victim you find is the one who can’t say anything or wouldn’t be believed when they said. My sister was sleeping. I had a plan in mind — first, I would keep my hands over her chest, and slowly move it to feel her. As I placed one hand, she turned away from me. I tried a few times more but in vain.

Meanwhile, a girl from college started talking to me, and my sister was spared these pangs of lust. The second victim, I realised, would be the one who came to you by choice and because of this, no one will believe her. I manipulated her till I could fulfill my fantasies. I explored her body, mind, and soul and for the first time in a million years (as though) I felt — I wanted nothing more.

The curiosity was satisfied, and I didn’t want sex.

Thinking about raping someone is as sinful as raping that person. Why then, have we made a society where sex has no place to exist other than in the ‘vulgar’ thoughts of someone’s mind? If no one never quenched my thirst, and if I wasn’t afraid of consequences, wouldn’t I inevitably think that it’s sex that I want, by hook or by crook? Wouldn’t that be rape? And then you have the third kind of victims.

Make laws to ensure dreadful consequences, but how can you prevent those million atrocities happening every second to the first and second categories of victims? Is it so difficult to accept sex as a part of life? Why do you need to get behind locked doors to satisfy yourself and pretend as if nothing happened when you come out?

Originally published on Youth Ki Awaaz.