Recently, I’ve been struck by an ongoing theme of curiosity which is making itself more and more evident in my life. This is something I truly believe is one of our greatest and most human qualities, and so I’ve spent a while trying to work out exactly what it means to me. To be curious is to make oneself vulnerable, to admit that you do not know everything, that you haven’t experienced all there is of life. Pascal says that “curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it”, but honestly, and with no disrespect to Pascal, I think nothing is further from the truth.
True curiosity, of the type I want to devote myself to, driven by passion and lust and love, is born from the desire to immerse ourselves in newness and novelty; a desire remake ourselves, scraping away the mundane to reveal our truest – and often most vulnerable – self. To be curious is to open yourself up to pain and pleasure and heartache and longing – the full gamut of the human experience. And often these might not be the experiences we can talk about openly, but they’re ones which will shape us, which we can hold close as formative and fascinating.
A friend of mine recently asked me whether I believed in the concept of a soulmate, and I want to think about that within this paradigm of curiosity. In many ways, my obsession with curiosity and the idea of destiny seem at odds with each other – why would we bother to seek out new experiences, to push ourselves to question everything and explore life to the fullest, if we are all already on a set path, destined to exist in a particular framework. But the more I think about it, the more the two seem to fit together; because perhaps in order to discover this path, discover the magic parts of life, we have to be open to curiosity, open to throwing ourselves into each and every opportunity which comes our way.
One of my favourite things about the lifestyle I lead is that it brings me into contact with a unique breadth of humanity; I’ve met people I never thought I would, whose experiences and lives are sometimes so far removed from my own that it might seem impossible to find common ground. But the interesting thing is that this commonality (almost) always exists. The fascinating thing about human beings is that we are always driven to find some way to connect – whether it’s a physical connection – mouths, hands, bodies fitting together in a certain way; or a philosophical one. In the many years of engaging in this unique world, my opinion on men and women hasn’t been raised or lowered, per se, but rather it has been broadened. And to return to this theme of curiosity – within this broadening there is an ongoing desire to seek out these new and unusual forms of connection. I want to meet people with whom, on the surface, it seems we have nothing in common. I want to dig down, to find out where our commonality lies, to find out just how we fit together.
And finally, I think it’s impossible to talk about curiosity without talking about fantasies – in particular, whether these are driven by a person, or an act. My instant response to this question was the latter, because a lot of my sexuality is focused around acts, around scenes, around building new forms of connection and ways of being. But the more I thought about it, I realised that throughout my life, the type of sex I’m having has been very much shaped by the person I’m with. With one lover I want to be pliable and submissive, with another I want to take the lead, to make them desire me above all else. And at the heart of that is a recognition that our sexuality is so often relational, based on our individual connection, rather than a list of ‘acts’ we want to achieve.
It’s also exhilarating to feel a lover’s curiosity focused on me, to be the object of someone’s waking dreams. I’ve always found objectification supremely erotic, it’s such a delicious and multifaceted form of sexual expression. We often assume a negative association, but for me, being objectified isn’t a form of degradation. When my lover tells me to dress a certain way, to stand a certain way, to act a certain way – to be the concrete expression of his abstract lust – I see it as a celebration of his desire.
Objectification takes pleasure in making the abstract a reality, consensually making humans into beautiful objects for our pleasure. We become Pygmalion, making real our wildest desires – and as the subject being objectified, it is so deeply hot to feel trusted enough to hold that desire. For me, it is that mutual trust which makes objectification so hot, as well as the intensity which comes from being the focus of someone’s desire. I often sense that intensity of feeling in the way potential lovers describe their fantasies, the way they’ve imagined I’ll feel, taste, look – it makes me want to take your hand (perhaps metaphorically for now) and lead you further and further down the rabbit hole, entwining ourselves through words to discover that place where we can come together, whatever form it might take.
