autosexuality

I remember when it started: March 26, 2021, in the afternoon. Odette—one of my favorite cats in my unofficial (official) cat-care network—was just casually walking around the apartment that I was sitting at the time. I had been in front of my computer all day, then suddenly, out of nowhere, I could feel my tits. Like, I just became cognizant of my tits. It’s almost as if they were glowing from the inside. I was just aware of them and their weight. I was literally just sitting there at the kitchen table.

I look down at them. From my angle they’re round and hairy. I look at my nipple. I just wanna lick it. I wish I could step outside of my body and suck on my titties and lick my own nipples so sweetly, and bite them, and just ravish the fuck out of them, and squeeze them closer to my body. It’s like they’re ringing or something. And I feel a connection between that buzzing, ever-so-slight vibration reverberating in my center, between my legs. Not my dick, necessarily, but at the base of the shaft, or under my balls. Around my balls? Writing this part, my dick got hard. And then soft again. But I still feel this connective vibration between my groin and my two tits individually, and together. It makes me wanna flex them. It’s kind of like how, when you work out your pecs, and you can kind of feel them isolated from the rest of your body. But I haven’t worked out in over a month. At least not like that, at the gym.

I’m bouncing my upper body up and down on the chair as I type this now. Budding with autosexuality. Autosexuali-tay. It’s glowing from inside my body. I can’t wait to start taking estrogen. Maybe this is a sign. My tits said, “We’re ready, boo, you’re ready.” Ugh, I love squeezing them so much. And I have the most luxuriously sensitive nipples, too. They’re a huge part of my self-love routine. Cumming by rubbing my bundle of cock and balls through a layer of clothing—preferably silk or soft cotton—feels so much fucking better, and all-body consuming, than pulling out my dick to stroke it. That feels good, too, but the sensation seems pretty isolated from the rest of my body. Centralized. Farther away from me. It’s funny that this is how I always used to cum growing up, out of necessity for stealth.

I just came. I couldn’t stop myself—no, I wasn’t trying to stop myself. I was fully indulging and picking up the call; I wasn’t gonna leave this body vibrating, on Read. I came thinking about how my ex used to fucking suck the light out of my nipples and bite them and squeeze them, and I remember this one specific time, I was tryna cum, and you know how you search your brain for that trigger to take you over the edge? When stroking alone just doesn’t cut it? My head has to be in it, and then once my brain tunes in with my body, then I feel it coming! And the thing that pushed me over the edge that time was when he grabbed a whole tit with both hands and squeezed it, so the nipple was front and center, and sucked on it. Damn, that was it. I was thinking about that moment that drove me to the edge then, that’s driving me to the edge now as I’m rubbing my whole dick into my balls through my floor-length Fenty robe, which one of my best friends, who no longer responds to my texts to hang out, gave me for my birthday last year, and which has helped form so much of my identity.

Wow, this robe has played such an integral role in helping guide me to where I am today, with myself. It has been a shield and a mood board. Or, how do I say … it was both affirming by its feel and by the way that it covered my body, but also in the way it revealed my body, covering it in a fluid silhouette that I could cinch here and pull open at the leg there, making a long slit all the way up to my thigh. It was a framing device, a window I could move around and choose which parts to highlight and look at, while blacking out the rest. Not out of hate, just as a focusing tool. It was, and continues to be, my skin for the past year. I can feel like myself without having to do anything to my body, except think about my face.

The way it drapes. The way I’m literally naked underneath it all the time. The way I sleep in it, and wake up in it. The way I combine it as a layer underneath my trench, underneath my leather coat, and it gives me a beautiful, black, silky tail fluttering behind me as I walk. Walk, bitch. You better walk. It’s all in the walk. Enforcing my gait. Affirming my cunt. I came shouting out, “Ugh, yes! Squeeze my tits!” And I squeezed my tits, first the left one, and then the right one, and I came into the middle of my thighs, still held together, legs closed, almost crossed. It shook my whole body and I started laughing out loud, uncontrollably, but I wasn’t trying to control it. I laughed, and immediately my arms found their way around my torso and hugged me, and I smiled even more and leaned into the hug and squeezed tighter and kissed my wrist and the inside of my hand, and breathed in the center of my palm, and I’m still vibrating.

***

This glossary originally appeared in ART PAPERS Summer 2021 // Speculative Masculinities. 

Shehab Awad is an independent curator and writer from Cairo, Egypt, currently based in New York City. He/she is founding director of Executive Care, an all-encompassing agency at the service of artists.