I noticed it first with the table, the place where the wood has split just slightly and I felt the urge to sink my teeth into the weak points, the feel the wood splinter and crack in my mouth, shards like toothpicks. Rolling my jaw, my eyes wander. Clean, smooth edges of glass. The firm crinkle of cellophane. The rough textile of the carpet. Everything I see, I can feel the texture pressing up against my tongue, rolling around inside my mouth. Open wide; there is nothing there, and yet I am seeing the world in tactile sensations, textures competing against my tongue.
Pressure points against the hinges of my jaw help. I sit there, mouth open, until I am almost drooling, close, do it again. Drooling. I wonder…
Scan through the images on my phone until I find one of that pretty, pretty boy in those terrible underwear that I have threatened to destroy if he ever wears them in my presence. I am breathing more shallowly now, feel the warmth of my breath against the fabric as my lips part slightly, feel the shape of his cock just underneath, small shifts, I want to take him in, and…
Oh.
This isn’t real, just because my eyes have closed and my mouth believes that he is sitting here, directly in front of me, like I am about to blow him on my couch while we watch a movie.
If you told me this was real, I would believe you.
Sensation play is an interesting thing with me. Sometimes, wires get crossed in my brain and I feel a little like I am exploring the world through oral tactile sensation; I can feel the textures of everything I see as though I am experiencing it through my mouth. It’s hard to describe; I once told my partner to imagine they were licking everything they saw and absorbing the world, not through taste, but through texture. That’s not quite right (because sometimes I feel it inside my cheeks, or in my gums, or shooting through the nerves in my teeth), but it’s as close as I can get.
There are things that I always do this with. Certain stones always have an oral association. Often times, my memories will have some kind of somatic recollection, a bodily sensation that always includes something in my mouth. Certain kinds of leather. Knit gloves. Words, especially when they are written down. It’s not often with everything I see, but sometimes- and I have no idea why- I look around the world and feel it viscerally in my mouth, every surface, every edge, every texture. It can last anywhere from hours to days; I don’t know what brings it on and I don’t know what makes it fade.
These oral associations make certain kinds of play really interesting. It’s part of why I absolutely love going down on people (hi, queer with an oral fixation) and why those are the easiest memories to access. If I close my eyes and focus with any miniscule effort, I can convince myself pretty easily that I am actively going down on someone right now (even though I know, logically, that’s not at all what is happening; I’m sitting here writing on a computer and there isn’t another body anywhere near me). It’s part of what makes language so powerful for me: the right hint, the smallest suggestion, the well-placed insinuation, and my brain goes into overdrive and does most of the work for you (cause let’s be real, when all you have to do is send someone a picture of you in your underwear to convince them that your cock is in their mouth…man, my body makes this too damn easy).
It’s also immensely frustrating. I had to do some cooking and needed to use mayonnaise for a recipe and damn, that is an atrocious sensation, even without the taste (btw, I hate mayo). I kept gagging (and not in fun ways) while trying to measure and mix everything together. At the same time, there is a giant map hanging in my kitchen and, every time I looked at it, it gave me the sensation of papercuts right along the corners of my mouth. Not painful, but extremely uncomfortable. I had no idea where to look, and I had to focus on what I was doing.
I don’t know why the knives helped. I was chopping vegetables, and for whatever reason, the knives felt soothing, almost like a palette cleanser, but…for texture? I don’t know. It’s really, really weird and hard to explain but focusing on the knives slicing through cucumber and pepper was the least overstimulated I had felt in a couple hours. It has faded significantly now, although the world still seems more tactile than usual; I am aware of shapes and shifts and edges more than I usually am.
Knives almost always feel soothing against my skin. Almost. Knives are calming and arousing simultaneously. Touch me with a knife and, most likely, I’m going to calm down, breathe and relax into you while simultaneously wanting to jump you. That same sensation isn’t exactly what happened tonight, but it helped.
I don’t really know how to explain to someone how to play with these things, but I know I want to play with them more. Sensation and sensory experiences are integral to how I interact with the world, and, while I hesitate to call this synesthesia, this way of processing the world through oral association can be kind of awesome (when it’s not being overwhelming and obnoxious). I am so drawn, I think, to concepts of sensory deprivation and sensory experimentation because I want to know what happens when I lose one sense, or have certain senses overwhelmed, or play with the ways my body translates and processes these “phantom” oral sensations.
This doesn’t really have a point, except to just talk about it because it’s a weird thing that happens, it hasn’t happened to this magnitude in quite some time, and it might be something to come back to someday. Sensory perception and deprivation are things I don’t consciously play with as much as I want to- probably because they factor into my life in some capacity nearly all the time. But I think playing around with them consciously- losing my sight, in particular, as well as deliberately fucking with things that have oral associations- is something I want to do more of. It’s not always “fun,” per se, but it’s definitely an interesting way to experience and explore sensations in a new way.
Monomaniacism 