On the healing power of fantasy
Hi friends, how was your summer? Mine was a whirlwind. So much so that for a good chunk of it my libido was hibernating. Turns out sexual joy is a luxury that survival mode cannot afford.
So I was pleasantly surprised when I found myself deep in the ravine of desire as my partner’s fingers were deep in the…uhmm…you know.
It seems that sometimes the abundance of blissful genital stimulation kicks my nervous system into interesting realms: I may start hallucinating imaginary worlds, time travel to the past, or manifest fantastical creatures.
This time, I was launched into a memory of sexual harassment from my teenage years.
This is the day that I was propositioned for sex by the groundskeeper of a mall near my highschool. I was there to find a textbook, but had arrived during the ungodly hour of lunch.
Every store was closed and I found myself alone in an empty mall. It was me, and the groundskeeper sweeping the floor in the distance.
I was about to leave when the groundskeeper meekly approached me while talking. I could barely hear him but I caught the very end, “there is a room over there, want to come with me?” as he pointed to the opposite corner of the building.
As sexually inexperienced as I was, I immediately knew what he meant. Here I was, a 16-year-old in school uniform on a hot day looking for a book, and this mild-mannered elderly man finds me alone and figures he’d check to see if I’d be DTF.
To date, the shock and horror of realizing I was the target of a sexual request is etched into my brain. Every time I am returned to this moment, I feel the avalanche of fear and shame that washed over me, as if I were standing alone in that mall again.
The reel runs: after the initial freeze, I turn around and start walking away. He raises his voice, “how about 20 toman1?” I walk faster. “40?”
Two decades later, here I was legs wide open, balls-deep in juicy goodness, and this unwelcome memory had invited itself again. Annoyed, I rolled my eyes, and a question bubbled up: how can I let my imagination radically rewrite this story?
I was expecting to find the courage to say a loud “NO!” or flip him off with a deadly stare instead of walking away in silence.
But, what if I said “yes”?
What if it was normal for me, a younger person, to trust a stranger approaching me that he has no ill intentions? What if in that moment I had the capacity to advocate for exactly what I wanted? What if he was there to give me exactly that without pushing any boundaries or violating my consent?
Heck, what if the power dynamics of age and gender did not exist? What if I lived in a world where everyone was sexually and relationally savvy?
Amused at the unraveling of this thought, in an instance, fantasy weaved into reality. The groundskeeper transformed into a loving person committed to my joy and well-being, and now it was his fingers blasting my…uhmm…you know.
Since then, the memory feels much tamer. Instead of the avalanche of fear and shame, I giggle and remember the metamorphosis of ick into a sweet orgasm.
As much as I can feel infinite resentment around sexual trauma peeking its head into my sex life, I am also amazed by the boundless healing power of fantasy. I may not be able to do anything about past events, but sometimes, I can radically shift my present experience of the past.
1 toman is the currency of Iran, 20 toman at the time was equivalent to 20 USD.