The Weekly Mindfuck: Darkness

Sex with the lights off was once synonymous with insecurity, at least in my mind. Early in my sex life, I would get up after a few minutes of heavy groping to fumble for the light switch, my pants still somehow hanging from an ankle, my shirt pulled up around my neck. It was never really my body I felt bashful about—I was always more aware of the faces and the motions and the way my body bounced up and down once we finally stripped every article of clothing off. I get nervous when someone is watching me intently no matter what I'm doing, and I was inclined to feel especially self conscious when that person was watching me ride him, almost making me hold back in my self awareness. Over the years, this changed—now, I generally prefer to leave all the lights on these days, to better see the other person and the way our bodies clash and grind together, the faces my partner when he's close to coming and the beads of sweat that pool on our foreheads and shoulders as the pace becomes more fervent. 

But then one night, somewhere north of 4 a.m., the room so opaque the air seemed thick, I understood that there's another kind of sex in the dark. The kind where you can't see your own hand in front of your face, when you're fumbling to find your partner's face and arms and legs. It was so simple: Sensory deprivation. When you don't have sight on your side during sex, your other senses are heightened. Touch, taste, smell—all of it. Unable to see where my bed ended and floor began, not a sliver of moonlight to help me find a swath of pillow to bury my head, I stopped processing thought entirely and instead experienced each sensation as I felt it.

I'm certainly not opposed to fucking with the lights on now, of course. But the sex you have in the middle of the night, when there's no time to find the light or wake up all the way from a sleepy stupor, is just as gratifying. And it has absolutely nothing to do with holding back.