Cover Photo: A black-and-white photo of someone holding up a pair of glasses at eye level, facing the street. In the lenses, the world appears in color.
Photograph by Steven Wright/Unsplash

How Queer Sex Liberated Me

Leaving my cishet marriage was hard, but it set us both free to find more satisfying relationships.

My husband and I did not have sex on our wedding night. The bed in the house in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, where we spent our honeymoon was piled high with a white duvet that was puffy like a cumulus cloud. It looked like it belonged in a hotel from a movie scene where two characters check in to spend the night having illicit and passionate sex.

Not now, I’m reading this article.

Not now, can’t you see I’m putting dishes away?

Not now, I’m cooking dinner.

Not now, I’m going to take a shower.

Not now, I’m just so tired.

Not now, not now, not now.

Not now.

after

What’s wrong with me?What if I never want to have sex again? Will I be okay with that? Will be okay with that?

See?It wasn’t that hard. So why can’t I seem to make myself want to do it again?

Otherlegitimatelythinking

wantedknow

thinkinghave

I had come out when I was nineteen, to little fanfare, first as bi, then as queer, but always with cis men as an option. Which is why, reader, I married one.

Isn’t this what I’m supposed to want?

queer masculinity

excludes

something

fineun

In staying, I was not only denying myself the chance at true happiness, but I was keeping him from having it, too.

Britni de la Cretaz is a freelance sports writer and essayist living in Boston. They are formerly the sports columnist for Longreads and their work has been featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Narratively, and many more. Their work on racism in Boston sports media was a notable story in 2018's Best American Sports Writing.