Forgive me for this.

For a good part of my 20s, I really wanted to make it with a deaf girl. It’s not so much that I wanted to date or fall in love or marry a deaf girl although I wouldn’t have summarily refused the opportunity; it’s that I wanted to have sex with a deaf girl.

I can’t really say how the idea got in my head nor can I say where the idea has since gotten too. I never did make it with a deaf girl. It’s true that I like quiet sex. I also prefer the lights on. This is not common, I am made to understand. A lot of people prefer music and the dark. I’ve never understood. It’s not very often that I get to have sex or that I get to see someone naked, and so I like to do it in the stunning light.

This also means of course that I don’t like talkative sex. It’s funny. I love language and words. I love poetry. But I don’t like talking and, in particular, I don’t like dirty talking. It makes me giggle. To do it or to hear it. I like my sex on mute. Sex is another language. My hands, my tongue, my body, my alphabet. Our bodies are our dialogue.

So, I suppose it is not surprising I should like to make it, or should have liked to have made it, with a deaf girl. Yes, I know, that’s objectifying. And I know objectifying is wrong. Blah blah blah. I also think that sign language is wonderful and magical and sexy. That you can communicate every idea, every word, every thought with your hands, beautiful. No, I have never learned sign language. It’s on my list of things to do, along with skydiving, learning latin dance and fluent Spanish.

It was during the time of this obsession that I did happen upon a flyer for a sexual education seminar. There were a series of courses. Bondage. Discipline. S&M. And there was, I tell no lies, a course called: “So you want to make it with that really sexy deaf girl/guy?” No. I didn’t go. I was intrigued. But it wasn’t so much like the bee-girl in the Blind Melon video; I wasn’t so very curious about finally belonging, as I was to discover what type of brazen freak would meet in order to seduce that sexy deaf girl/guy? I suppose I was also curious to hear what the speaker had to suggest about this very specific undertaking. But, no, I did not go. I preferred to keep my $120, thank you. I’m sure one of the things the speaker would have suggested was learning sign language.

Although I still imagine the scene of spotting a girl. Of that mutual look. And the seduction, the dance, the ritual, already well under way, before I discover the girl is deaf. Hmm? Soundless. Wordless. Perhaps on some level I might think that words, that dialogue, ruins, ruins something, I don’t know what word goes here, ruins relationships, ruins sex, ruins flirting, ruins intimacy.

Words fail me already. Where sex is the beat and the bass and the lurid rhythm and the old, the very old, dance; words are useless, extraneous, forgettable lyrics. Awkward, unnecessary footnotes. Nevertheless, I never did make it with a deaf girl.

SS