coming to terms with one’s sexuality

Coming to terms with one’s sexuality is an essential part of a human’s evolution. And it takes decades, even a whole lifetime to acknowledge, accept and finally revel in it.

 My first idea of sexual freedom was dressing up like a boy. At around the age of six years, I took to demanding shorts and t-shirts to wear instead of my normal girly frocks and skirts. My parents indulged me. I strutted around in nylon half-pants feeling free. Soon the charm wore off and I was back to demurely applying kajal and sporting bindis and wearing flowery skirts or at worst donning bell-bottom pants. When I look back upon that period of life I find it almost funny but I know it was only a form of expression for my emerging sexuality. Been friends with a tom-boy ever? A boy’s soul in a girl’s body? Yes, there is a ‘little boy’ in every girl and I sincerely believe that the reverse is also true. We feel compelled to hide our manliness if we are girls and suppress our feminism if we are men but it is there in all of us—the need to connect with it surfaces now and then; it depends entirely on us whether we give it a channel to express itself or ignore it completely. But I must say a perfect Raymond man is one who is in touch with his grace and a femme fatale is one who knows how to handle her aggression effectively.

Throughout our adolescence, teenage years and early adulthood we are either fighting the good fight or wallowing in the muck. It leads to a sexual awakening of sorts. We awaken to new sensations. We discover the pleasures and we face the shame. It is a process of learning the art; it is the urge to express ourselves and what excuses we find to do it is entirely our prerogative –be it for love, marriage or simply adventure.  And the more creative we are, the more inventive are our excuses.

Yes, creativity is at the root of sexual freedom.  Repressed creativity sprouts out into wild shoots demanding sexual freedom. Those of us clamoring for our needs to express ourselves in pot-bellied middle-age are many. We seek release of our pent-up creativity that has been trapped in the mundane chores of our daily life and we find the easy way out, the way that is naturally learnt and never forgotten—that of sexual freedom and expression. It’s easy to judge the neighborhood aunty who seduces a young boy or the lecherous uncle who is an exhibitionist but what they do is what they choose to do with their repressed creativity. It’s about time we accorded high importance for a human being’s need to cater to the seed of creativity that grows within him from his very birth and which if not properly channeled can express itself in pervert and criminal ways.   

I’ll leave you here with a quote by Sigmund Freud who knew what he was saying when he said this and I’ll end my blog by a few questions that arise out of my interpretation of whatever he said. You decide.

“Much of our highly valued cultural heritage has been acquired at the cost of sexuality” by Sigmund Freud.

My question is– does that mean sexuality is at the root of creativity? Which came first—creativity or sexuality? What should we be looking for—sexual freedom or creative liberty? Is that the choice that separates an artist from a common man? Isn’t every man inherently an artist?