Sex and Intimacy Project — Part 12

By Thursday | Published: January 6, 2009
Orchid - closeup

As I’ve said before, this inter­view is loosely con­nected to the last one. If you fol­low Ellie Lumpesse, you may have read about her girl­friend, Ariel, a 32 year old female who describes her­self as “Pan­sex­ual, but I want a bet­ter word than that. Polyamorous, and I want a bet­ter word than that, too.” She is cur­rently “one side of a cou­ple that is one side of a quad.”

What does inti­macy mean to you? How do you define intimacy?

  • Inti­macy is a still­ness.  The feel­ing that the spaces between us that need to be filled are filled, that there is no need to come crash­ing into the spaces that remain.  Inti­macy is an invest­ment into learn­ing the geog­ra­phy of those spaces and map­ping the sker­ries that remain just out of reach.

Do you think that all acts of sex are nec­es­sar­ily intimate?

  • No.
What about sex makes it inti­mate? Not intimate?
  • One night stands in hotels have never felt inti­mate to me.  Even when the sex was great.  Sex with some­one I have strug­gled to under­stand always is.  Even when the sex sucked.
When is sex intimate?
  • Sex is inti­mate when it lets me push out the bound­aries of my self out­ward to min­gle with yours.  Sex is at its most inti­mate when I learn some­thing — some­thing about you, some­thing about my nature, some­thing about the great mys­ter­ies, some­thing, anything.
Are some sex­ual acts more inti­mate than others?
  • Yes.
Is the act of sex an inti­mate act for you? Why or why not? Does it change depend­ing on who your part­ners are?
  • It can be, I like it to be, it doesn’t have to be, and it isn’t always.  For me, receiv­ing oral sex is the most inti­mate sex­ual act.  Receiv­ing oral sex is my “home run” and I am very selec­tive about who gets to score.  I’ve had part­ners who I have not allowed to give me oral sex.  I’ve had friends who I have allowed, even in the absence of an oth­er­wise sex­ual rela­tion­ship.  In my expe­ri­ence, peo­ple who have wanted only to hurt me aren’t much inter­ested in it.  It’s taken an ele­vated place in my sex­ual pan­theon as a result.  This sex is depen­dent upon exist­ing inti­macy, but it can also enhance my sense of shared intimacy.
How do you per­ceive the dif­fer­ing lev­els of inti­macy when mul­ti­ple part­ners are involved?
  • I feel equally inti­mate with all the sex part­ners I cur­rently have.  Each of the rela­tion­ships are at dif­fer­ent stages, dif­fer­ent lev­els of com­fort and close­ness, but I still feel this.  Inti­macy is a process, tak­ing the time and inter­est to find that per­son in their secret home and to be found in my own.  That’s where I feel that the inti­macy lev­els aren’t really dif­fer­ing at all.  There will always be places where the map is not the ter­ri­tory, places where the inti­macy is incom­plete, but I am invested in the process.
What about sex with­out inti­macy, like sex between strangers? Can there still be a level of inti­macy that builds between two peo­ple because of the act of sex itself?
  • I sup­pose there can be.  I’m not used to feel­ing that way, per­son­ally.  If I feel a con­nec­tion, espe­cially with a close friend, then sex together can help me get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of who they really are.  But, when I’ve had sex just to have sex, I’ve never felt any closer or more inti­mate after.  I’ve heard rumours that many peo­ple feel the oppo­site for this topic.
What about inti­macy in vir­tual rela­tion­ships, like online where the sex itself may be virtual?
  • I have devel­oped inti­mate friend­ships online.  In sev­eral instances, inti­mate friend­ships became rela­tion­ships after meet­ing the friend and spend­ing time together offline.  I have never devel­oped an online friend­ship into a vir­tual rela­tion­ship.  I’m not much for vir­tual sex.
Please tell me a lit­tle bit about sex and inti­macy in your own life.
  • It is tremen­dously dif­fi­cult to forge and main­tain rela­tion­ships when part­ners whose views on sex, inti­macy, and their inter­sec­tion dif­fer sub­stan­tially.  On both sides, what feels nat­ural to one feels like a betrayal for the other.  I per­son­ally strug­gle con­stantly to hew a line between my own sense of what this inter­sec­tion feels like, should feel like for me, and the needs of part­ners who have diverg­ing views.  Find­ing and keep­ing that line is a path of inti­macy as well.
Learn more about the Sex and Inti­macy Project here.
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