Sex, Drugs & Endometriosis: Final Chapter

THE WORLD ISN'T KIND TO SLUTTY HUMANS

The following chapter contains descriptions that may not be suitable for younger readers, including sexual content. Reader discretion is advised.

Written by: Maia Leggott

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I’ve wanted to shave my head for as long as I can remember.

Ever since I saw Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U music video on Pop-Up Video in the 90s, I knew that’s what I wanted. I never had the guts to go full-bald, but often had some version of a shaved head or undercut or pixie cut. My ex always said I couldn’t shave my head because he was bald, and we couldn’t both be bald.

Earlier this year I finally did it in the throes of an excruciating but cathartic endo flare-up. I sobbed as the weight of the last year, five, ten, twenty fell away and with it the person I always thought I was supposed to be. I felt lighter than I can ever remember and it felt like coming home to myself. It felt like claiming my power.

I don’t really want to have hair again, though people love to tell me, “Just wait until winter!” or “Never say never!” because everyone always seems to know me better than I know myself. Where do humans get that compulsion from? Why are we so desperate to hold on to the versions of people that make us comfortable, even when they’re long gone? People always say, “You’ve changed,” when you’re no longer someone they can control, as though it’s a bad thing to evolve and grow as you experience the world.

Shaving my head made me realize how much of my life I spent trying to make myself palatable for others. Make them like me. Undiagnosed ADHD meant I grew up feeling like no one understood me; like I was different from everyone around me but couldn’t put my finger on ‘why.’ I started masking and mirroring behaviours I saw around me in hopes that it would help me blend in, make friends, be likable.

All I ever wanted was for people to like me.

~

I used to tell people my first kiss was with Anthony Militano the summer after eighth grade in my kitchen in Winnipeg. I stared at the yellow plaid wallpaper beyond his acne-and-freckle-covered cheeks while spit stretched between my lips and his braces. It was thrilling, if slightly underwhelming.

Read chapter 3 of Sex, Drugs & Endometriosis

My first kiss was actually several months earlier at Steph’s 13th birthday party at the Holiday Inn. There were six of us, and only one had actually kissed a boy. After an evening in the pool we all huddled together in the bedroom of the suite playing an obligatory few rounds of truth or dare and it was decided that to be good at kissing boys we’d have to practice on each other.

We took turns going behind the loveseat in pairs to kiss and the room was buzzing with giggles and nervous excitement. The feedback probably sounded like, “too much spit!” “open your mouth a little more,” and “less teeth!”

For so long I’d tell myself that it didn’t count, and that’s why I didn’t talk about it - or joked about it. Besides, I couldn’t be the kid at the Catholic all-girls’ school with short hair who also wanted to kiss my classmates! I’d just left behind the bullies who tormented me growing up and I did not need another reason to be different. I didn’t necessarily think it was wrong, it was just something I learned to treat as a secret sexual kink, which was bolstered by my growing interest in lesbian erotica that I would read online. I was, of course, a childhood sexpert and kissing girls or wanting to explore their bodies was not part of the Fall In Love, Get Married, Have Sex, Make a Baby narrative I grew up surrounded by. The gender binary was strong and I didn’t question it.

So I kept it to myself and started fooling around with boys.

The first time I gave a blow job was in the backseat of a red sedan in a community centre parking lot after teaching Sunday School. He was two years older than me but neither of us knew what was supposed to happen. 

He pushed my head down and I just remember the seat belt buckle digging into my ribs, my glasses bumping against his belt, and my left arm falling asleep from being crunched underneath me. I pushed back against his hand trying to signal that my tender gag reflex wasn’t quite ready right before he finished in my mouth. I didn’t know what else to do, so I swallowed, my eyes watering.

I got a lot better over the years as I became known as The Girl Who’d Suck Your Dick once he told his friends, so I was pretty popular among certain circles. (Less so in others). Being bullied constantly growing up meant I learned to just assimilate, so being popular for something was a huge rush, even if it was for being a slut. It was easier to throw myself into that than admit I’d rather be The Girl Who’d Eat Your Pussy. Boys were easy. They still are.

My high school boyfriend would tie me to the bottom bunk at his grandmother’s cottage and we’d talk dirty to each other between the faded Ninja Turtle sheets. That’s also when I learned I liked a little bit of pain. But I had no idea what I was in for.

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Over the years endometriosis affected my sex life in different ways. Through my teens and twenties I was on birth control because that’s the standard medical treatment for endo. I think I’d just gotten used to the sharp pains I’d often feel when having sex with a guy, and besides I learned it was a real mood-killer to have to stop fucking because you’re in pain. They always let me know.

I used to fantasize about what it would be like to have sex with a penis, and wished that I could be the one penetrating someone else. I wanted to experience that power for myself. 

Sometimes sleeping around was easier than being in a relationship because relationships came with sexpectations. I wasn’t failing at something when there were no expectations. I could inflict all the pain I wanted on myself, rather than someone else, and didn’t have to explain it. As a single person I was more in control of my own decisions than I ever was in a relationship. But still, I threw myself into Serial Monogamy for two decades because I hated the way people treated me when I was single and slutty. There was no manual, no lesbian TikTok or online queer communities to help me understand that what I was feeling was totally normal and not just a kink I needed to pull off the shelf when a man in my life wanted me to.

But the world isn’t comfortable with single people or slutty people unless they’re men. Slut-shaming takes power away from women, nonbinary, trans, and gender diverse people who just want to exist freely in a world that doesn’t want them to. That world is not comfortable with us owning our sexual identity and realizing how powerful that is. Because that’s what sex is all about - power.

It was about power when the (older) manager of the first restaurant I worked at plunged his finger into my butthole after we’d gotten drunk and cabbed out into the country to his house. We were sixy-nining (my least favourite sexual position, hands-down) on his leather couch when it happened, no warning, no questions, no consent, no lube. When everyone at work found out we’d fucked, I was slut-shamed and almost lost my job because they didn’t allow ‘relations’ among the staff. There were no repercussions for him - I was just another notch on his belt to joke about with friends.

It was about power when another (even older) manager and I started sleeping together in secret because I happened to be dating one of his best friends, and I stayed with him for four years to prove that I wasn’t just some young slut like people said I was.

It was about power when I found out one guy was cheating on me with men he met through online personal ads, and after the initial shock when I finally rejoiced in maybe opening the door to a conversation about queer identity he told me to never, ever bring it up again. So I continued to hide mine away, too, believing it was abhorrent.

It was about power the first time I tasted pussy that wasn’t my own and ditched out on a friend’s bachelorette so I could go down on a queer crush on my living room floor while my ex ate ramen at the kitchen table and debated whether or not he should just go about his business, watch, or join in.

It was about power when I ordered the same ex to go up to a friend of ours (who I knew was commando under her sundress) in the bar we were at and tell her I wanted to taste her on his fingers.

Read chapter 1 of Sex, Drugs & Endometriosis

It was about power when my last ex told me he didn’t believe in monogamy either, so I thought I’d finally found someone to share in the kind of life I wanted but it turned out he only didn’t believe in monogamy if he was cheating or wanted a threesome.

It was about power when I’d sob in a cathartic release post-orgasm and instead of taking me in his arms like later lovers would, he would jump back and be afraid to touch me, but later complain about not being able to finish.

It was about power every single time a doctor or medical professional told me to ‘just stop having sex,’ or ‘try getting pregnant!’ without asking me what my situation and life goals were, or considering the fact that sex is for fucking pleasure and not just procreating.

It was about power when I’d make out with other women for the sake of sparking a reaction, and always wish it would go further. I didn’t know the first thing about making that happen. They didn’t talk about that in my Our New Baby book that’s still on a shelf at my parents’ house, and we definitely didn’t learn the nuances of cunnilingus in the bootleg sexual health lesson my grade nine science teacher gave us in a lecture on the reproductive system because my Catholic school only taught abstinence.

It was about power every time I had sex when I didn’t want to, woke up in a bed I didn’t recognize, or gave a part of me to someone before I was ready, because they were.

It was about power when, after an all-night coke binge and threesome, my ex passed out but I stayed up on the couch with her, exploring each other’s bodies. She locked eyes with me from between my legs, nodded to the bedroom and said, “that’s not what you want,” and I knew she was right.

It was about power when I relinquished mine to illness and resigned myself to a sexless life with someone who resented me but who couldn’t see beyond the heteronormative binary that was becoming a cage for me.

It was about power when he told me that I couldn’t shave my head because he couldn’t fuck a bald chick, but wouldn’t go down on me unless my pussy was bald. I learned that my attractiveness correlated with the amount of hair I had in certain places. When I grew out my quarantine armpit hair he asked if it was a Feminist Test, and that was really the beginning of the end.

It was about power when I felt guilty that what was helping me connect to my sexual and gender identity didn’t seem to be coming from someone else, but somewhere inside of me. And it’s not as black and white as I was led to believe.

It was about power when I started reading The Ethical Slut and More than Two, nonmonogamy library necessities and was introduced to a life I’d only ever fantasized about in an alternate timeline.

It’s about power every time I choose myself and my desires instead of what the world tells me to choose.

It’s about power when someone can claim their gender identity for themselves instead of letting the world tell them what it should be and forcing them into a binary.

It’s about power when you realize that keeping head hair long and body hair trim, keeping desire hidden instead of letting it loose, and listening to others instead of yourself is how the world takes ours away.

It was about power when I watched huge chunks of hair fall to the floor, said goodbye to the person I was and found the courage to be my most authentic, bald, queer, nonbinary, nonmonogamous, slutty self.

For the first time in my life I want to keep existing, because I finally like the person I see in the mirror.

And damn, it feels good.