A smutty essay about dysphoria, rough sex that heals, and the harness that’s starting a story.

[Content Warnings: Gender dysphoria, rough sex including biting and bruising, erotic framing of ownership-based tropes, mentions of poverty-related suffering.]

–

The setting: last December. Though I’ve spent the last few weeks rationing its use to prevent further damage, my shitty Doc Johnson harness has finally torn beyond functionality. I’m devastated and dysphoric. After so many years of longing for a harness to fuck my partner with, I’d finally been able to do it – and bled for the opportunity – but now that gift is gone. I’m back to feeling the absence.

Then, randomly, an email. An offer to review a harness – and not just any harness. A beautifully hand-crafted leather one; the kind of harness you see tenderly wrapped around the hips of a comfortably confident top, sturdy in construction but breath-taking in execution. I exchange a few emails and text messages with the studio, and then wait.

Just as unexpected as the initial email, the harness appears in our mailbox on a rainy afternoon in a nondescript envelope. It slides out like liquid, pooling softly over my hands and greeting me with the sharp, erotic scent of real leather. The metal buckles and ring are cold from traveling from New Orleans to Orlando in winter.

I don’t use it for three weeks.

–

There are two places my gender dysphoria really likes to flare up: in fitting rooms, and in bed.

Fitting rooms are confined, brightly lit personal hells; faced with full length mirror images of myself, I fixate on all the ways my reflection doesn’t meet expectations. In bed (or wherever sex is occurring) the inherent vulnerability of fucking leaves me open to thoughts I usually paper over with baggy clothes and “you’re valid!” echo chambers.

In these moments, there’s no room to escape. I have to grapple, directly and intimately, with the idea of absence.

–

I try the Ardor Harness on twice without using it. It drapes on my body just as I imagined it (staring so often at the person modeling it on Etsy, with a body so unlike my own.) The softness of the leather renders it gentle despite how tight I fasten it against my skin, shiny buckles not allowing an inch of strangle or slack even as I move around to test its fit. It’s like magic.

I feel two things, simultaneously: powerful and terrified. I want to grab a handful of my partner’s hair and force them to their knees to smell the harness’s smell over mine. I want to kick it off and get into pajama pants and never talk about it again. I want to push my partner back on the bed and grip my dick to drag it over the soft gathering of their labia to make them beg for an actual fuck. I want to go back in time and refuse to review this harness.

I want to be the kind of queer daddy that wields this leather with confidence. I want to feel like the silicone holstered in its thick silver ring is my dick. I want to put it back in its envelope.

–

The roll of my hips is aggressive, moving in a rhythm my body settles into all on its own. Each thrust is fast and hard, jostling my partner and stuttering their moans. My hands move everywhere: gripping Buster’s tits, fisting the sheets, lifting to grab the cabinets above the bed, greedily contouring Buster’s hips and thighs. This is the first and only sex act that I have ever been good at on instinct alone.

“Doesn’t that feel so good?”

I should be asking my partner, but I think I’m just reminding myself.

–

Setting: late summer, at least ten years ago. Minimum wage is like five bucks an hour, and my partner and I eat one meal a day and sleep on clothes we pile on the floor. We go to the tiny, unfriendly sex shop on the outskirts of Wichita to buy a cheap strap-on. The dildos are all translucent pink and purple, and there’s only three spindly harnesses to choose from.

Paying rent on time is a pipe dream, but fucking? Maybe that’s doable.

It takes a long time to figure out how to put it on. The straps are thin and stiff, permanently creased where they were folded in the package, and the front panel looks like crushed velvet but feels scratchy to the touch. I hate how tiny it looks on my fat, starving body, and how the buckles don’t stop the straps from loosening and sliding down.

We only try it once.

I cry myself to sleep.

–

Once you open the door to an identity you’ve kept locked away (out of self-preservation or miserable obliviousness), it becomes impossible to shut. An entire closet of shit comes tumbling out: shit that wounds you, shit that frees you, shit that makes you whole. It demands acknowledgment and space in your life. Try to ignore it, and you’ll find yourself tripping over its presence everywhere you step.

–

I fuck them hard enough that my knees keep slipping on the sheets, forcing me to stop and shift us both back into position. Buster’s legs hover near my leather-strapped hips, the hair on their calves occasionally brushing my naked skin. I can’t feel the silicone that wedges them open and fucks in deep, but I can feel other things that would still be more important anyway: the softness of their stomach, the wet heat of their mouth, the slack rumple of the sheets we’re dragging off the mattress with our writhing.

There is no absence; only euphoria.

–

After having long hair my entire life (save for the baldness of infancy), I finally let myself cut it all off in 2014. The relief I felt was so immense that things started to push through that door all on their own. In the ensuing years, I’ve given the haphazard pile of stuff a name: nonbinary. But just as the parent of any stray-cat-loving child will warn you, if you give it a name, you’ll have to take care of it.

When my hair grows out, the previously shapeless sense of disconnect and distress – gender dysphoria – creeps in. It’s sharper now that I know where the pain is coming from, like finally noticing a bruise on your arm or the scratch on your ankle.

I opened the door and named it, so now I have to take care of it.

–

When I notice my Doc Johnson harness is tearing where the nylon meets neoprene, my heart sinks. “Babe, look at this,” I whine miserably, stepping away from the closet with the harness hanging limply in my hand, “It’s ripping at the seams.”

“That’s bullshit,” Buster says, “That’s definitely going in the review.”

“Yeah,” I say, hyper-aware of the fragility in my hand. It’s not the review I’m worried about.

–

To fend off back aches and tired muscles, I keep changing our positions. I don’t want to stop; I can’t stop, now that I have them beneath me. Beside me. Above me.

I force Buster down on their belly and bite ugly bruises on their shoulders, needing the delicate meat of their skin between my teeth and the fractured moan of their anguish in my ears.

I drag them up on their hands and knees so I can watch my dick pop free – wet with lube-marbled come – and fuck back in so slow I can feel their cunt protest the deeper stretch. There’s so little room to spare inside them, their wetness dribbles free around my dick and drips onto the sheets.

I tell Buster to sit on my lap and ride me, growling as they roll their hips in short little circles because the angle leaves them exquisitely full. I grip their thighs, belly, and tits, my nails and fingertips marking them up as mine.

Mine. They are mine. This is mine.

–

“This leatherwork becomes part of someone’s story,” reads Talisman Leather’s website, reflecting on the importance of creating a quality, long-lasting products, “A piece that they can reliably use and wear along their journey.”

–

As my partner slides into a comfortable sprawl on the bed, I run a hand through my hair to rearrange the short locks. It’s a nervous habit, maybe, but it’s also a grounding reminder that I live in this moment and not the decades spent trapped beneath long, strangling strands. I’ll never make myself live through that again.

I drop my hand and move my palm over the scaled surface of my favorite dildo instead. Buster’s eyes follow my fingers, and they smile, head cocking. “Well? Do you want to fuck me?”

I move my hand again, this time checking the straps that join and buckle on my hips. I tug at them, a needless gesture considering how sturdy the harness is. Another, new nervous habit… but also a reminder.

–

Setting: next month. I’ve written and posted my review of the Ardor Harness, and now I’ve packed it alongside my partner’s collar for our roadtrip back west. We’re visiting relatives in Wichita. We will probably visit the miserable little sex shop where we bought my first harness, and drive by the apartments where poverty robbed me of the ability to pursue better ones to alleviate my then-nameless dysphoria. I might go back to the strip mall where I first cut my hair.

It’s a short trip. A brief visit to the past before getting back to the life we’ve made for ourselves here. A life where I live authentically, even if bright lights still plague me here and there.

My story, joined by this harness – so expertly crafted by the prologue writers of Talisman Leather – is still being written.

–

With naming and care, there is no absence. Only euphoria.

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This post was not sponsored, but I would appreciate if you gave the wonderful folks at Talisman Leather a visit over on Etsy. Their leather goods are gorgeous and unique, and they are committed to offering gear that can be worn by anyone. My review of the Ardor Harness they so graciously sent me will be up soon is out now!

Some affiliate links were used in this post.