For queer kids, the simple delight of sharing touch with another boy may be replaced by taunts and name-calling. Our bodies and our sexuality become problems for us and we learn to dissociate ourselves from our sexuality. Some of us disdain our bodies or turn our physical selves or those of others into mere objects. Many of us enter adulthood with a high degree of ambivalence about our bodies and our sexuality. Joys of earlier years are replaced by disconnection between our spirit and our physical self.
Sex becomes a performance or a test of our manhood.
Any sense of the sacred is fleeting or gone completely. When erotic joy is gone, we wither and fragment. The alternative is to seek pleasure in our own selves as a way of reconnecting with the mystery of our bodies, the mystery of Creation. Similarly, deepening our capacity for lasting physical intimacy with others requires us to look to our relationship with our selves first. Consider making a date with yourself.