Intimacy with your culture

My time in the many industries I work in has highlighted a common reality for Afro-descendant identities, one in which our cultures often show up as a veneered surface atop an often sinister layer of Whiteness. From food, art, textiles, finance, medicine, ecology, academic research and whatever else you can think of, we are too often tourists in a world that really isn't ours.

The same is true for sex and intimacy but with an added layer of disappointment. Some of our most intimate moments, whether sexual or sensual tend to happen in private with very few witnesses, if any. Often just you and yourself or perhaps with one other companion.

So, while unsurprising, it is devastating to think about how these tender, vulnerable and “free” moments are clearly performance for an absent yet watchful eye. In this quarantined space the Western contagion still finds its way through and we sanitise ourselves so the theatre may remain sterile and clean, absent of our sin and deviancy. 

Consider this! In these intimate moments and spaces, whose dogma, beliefs, culture, tools, traditions, pageantry and language(s) are facilitating your experiences? I would be surprised and prideful if they were predominantly your own or reminiscent of other local or regional practices. With how devoid of our own cultures intimacy often presents, one would be forgiven for thinking sex and pleasure came unto these shores by ship.

Our basic (and inadequate)  definition and perception of sex itself is heavily described through a particular lens, often following the three act structure of storytelling, a staple of Western griotage. A bit of foreplay, the meaty bit and a spectacular third act, with the occasional but not guaranteed encore!

SPEAK ON IT!

I question what it means to have a native tongue when you were raised in a colonial language backdrop. You may have an ancestral language but if your dreams, your conscious thought, your lust, your desire, your sex are all happening in English, or Portuguese or Spanish and such, which is truly native at this point? In some cases it is even your own mother’s tongue that insists you learn and only speak in a colonial dialect so you may have a simpler/easier life through assimilation, proximity to Whiteness and the promise of upward mobility.

Or maybe you grew up off-continent and that's the way the cookie crumbled. For some, we grew up in mixed households that prioritised a more universal imported language over the complexity of trying to blend multiple local languages into one domestic institution. For others still, we cannot trace our identities cleanly to one particular people or place and all that remains is lingua Europa.  In these instances newer languages and dialects such Afrikaapse often emerge and become a mother tongue much like any other, a blend of cultures from interacting groups from far and wide.

However it happens, if you are multilingual in languages beyond your own with a bias towards the non-local other, there are often costs to that bias. You're clumsy in ChiShona or KiSwahili! You're not as poetic in Ewe and Amharic and you don't know how to ask for what you want in Nama! So of course it is awkward to fumble through it while you're naked, trying to avoid rejection and attempting to build trust with someone. What if they laugh at you? What if they get confused? What if you kill the vibe? What if? So understandably we default to the easier choice, silencing ourselves more and more with each passing experience.

It often feels silly and laughable at first but consider the possibilities when you allow your own culture to be present in your most intimate sensual and sexual moments. Not only present but at the forefront driving the festivities! Yes it can be awkward at first but think what that awkwardness represents. Are you embarrassed or ashamed of your own people? Is it because you revere this language too much to sully it with pleasure? Why is it silly or improper to have your identity attached to such pleasure?

And if you speak a different language from your lover’s, teach each other some basics. It's even less awkward because they don't know your language like that and so it's good practice with someone who doesn’t know any better. And it's so sexy and impactful when someone is free and emboldened enough to express themselves in their own tongue. If you have ever been berated by someone in their own language that you don't understand, you'll know what I mean. It transcends coherence. Their face twists and churns. Their eyes widen and their mouth and tongue form shapes absent in European dialects. You will know you're being chewed out and several ancestors have been cursed and still understand nothing. Now imagine that energy transformed and put to use for delicious pursuits. You don't need to comprehend to understand!

We have terms of endearment, for kink and BDSM, toys and positions and most of them are again codified in Eurodescendant speak. How many of our gods go unnamed in moments of passion? What about calling your strapon pfekanhengo? Could your lover be Mogau when playing with power dynamics? How about kusunga mbiradzakondo instead of hogtying? Take a moment right now and try saying “ I'm gonna make you scream with pleasure” in your own local language if you have access to one. Or Google translate that shit into your lover's language? Or for that first Hinge date, Surprise them with a little cultural consideration and witnessing. Create new category names for the implements in your stash. Come up with one word for an act. Practice but also be comfortable with the discomfort. Ndichakusvisvina kusvika wapera muto! Huya pano! Simuka ndikumeme zvakanaka!

As with most unfamiliar things, there's a beginner's stage where you may be clumsy and uncertain and with practice you can get to a much more exciting and interesting place of self acceptance, more nuanced expression and a fuller use of your creativity.

ON MUSIC AND RHYTHM 

As with language, we rarely give much consideration to whose music facilitates our intimacy. Rather, we know whose music is for sex and intimacy but we don’t usually reckon with why it frequently isn’t our local music. Music we otherwise enjoy but do not usually associate with romance, kinky shenanigans and debauchery. YouTube and Spotify are stuffed to the brim with Neosoul, Soul, RNB, Latin music. Sexy playlists that go on for endless hours with occasional nods to African music. In the case you find continental music on the playlist, much of it is in English or French and when it uses local languages it is often still in the flavour of these more Western genres, whether it be composition, musical theory and structure, aesthetics and even accent and tone.

You don't hear mbira, uhadi, kora, djembe, sungura or Ethiopian jazz that often during sex, unless you make a concerted effort to hear it. You either have to make or search for niche playlists because while the music options do exist, they're not at the forefront of what the algorithms spit out or people are curating! This can translate into the rhythm of your sex being set to a particular metronome. Your hips guided by a 4 count structure to the tune of the omnipresent and optimised 2’30” song duration. Or if you're at a kink party then it's some flavour of German or Nordic techno, club music in a space with clade  in black leather , red lighting, spanking benches and Western symbology.

When I think about continental music, ngoma/djembe/udu are at the forefront of that experience. Whether in church, at a funeral, harvest party, initiation rights ngoma feature heavily. Until we return to the bedroom and things get quiet. If you take the time to learn some basic drumming patterns and rhythms you will be greatly rewarded next time you decide to partake in some ass spanking

Hand spanking offers an interesting intersection of musicality and impact play. If you've ever been to a spanking workshop odds are it's been presented by a White person or by someone who learned from a White person whether in person or online. And in that context musicality is starkly absent and the utilised patterns are more focussed on the technicality of counting hits. It reminds me of a time when most of the pole dancing studios in Cape Town had a Eastern-European style to them and you'd see African people learning pole and adjacent dances with moves and rhythm and flares that are so overtly European, that highlight a certain kind of frame paired with long, straight hair. But I digress.

Back to hand spanking! Focus! Imagine the beauty and joy of spanking someone while making cultural music and soundscapes, with the added treat of visual recoil and reverberation that is absent on taught drum skin. You can play your own sound or have a call and response conversation with your digital music playlist. If they can make sex toys and led lights that react to sound, why shouldn't you? 

ON TOYS 

If we are talking about sex and pleasure toys, the odds are that whatever you are picturing or is in your cupboard stash, was bought in a sex shop or online, and was imported from Europe or Asia and has historically been made with certain sensibilities in mind. There has been a sex toy revolution in recent time with people coming up with way more creative concepts and ideas around what a toy can look and feel like, deviations from the typical phallic shapes or antiquated gendered ideas of what kind of toys are for who and whose sexuality is stigmatised ( or not) for relying on or enjoying toys.

It is rare to see sex and pleasure toys that have a more localised nuance, specifically speaking to regional practices around intimacy. An obvious place to consider infusing our own cultural identities into, is external use cases. Take impact play. This is the realm of floggers, paddles, whips, spoons, canes, switches and of course your hands. All things that have African analogues  and still we rarely use them, if at all. 

Think of mugoti, that wooden spoon for cooking sadza/pap/ugali/gari/nshima. How delicious would that flat and even surface feel landing across your cheeks. If you want something more intense with a bit more coverage you can always supersize and go for the wedding feast mugoti that's big enough for those massive cooking drums and thankfully now, for your bums.

Think of the whips you have seen in the village made from tree bark and the personalised nature of such a toy made from a tree in your garden. Something that will eventually decay and return to the earth and not end up as another plastic or silicone offering for landfill alters. What if you saved your long braids and used them as rope to tie someone up, to make a gag or even use as a flogger. Again what is there not to appreciate about the added environmental considerations of multifunctional synthetic hair and the potential for a new toy every time you come back from the salon! Now you have the creative outlet in figuring out the braid colour, type and length pertaining to your head and how it may look and feel as it strikes your lover’s displayed booty in a month or two’s time.

If you've ever had to sweep the yard while bending your back like the most respectful Japanese youth, you should be familiar with mutsvairo and by now I hope you are seeing the developing pattern. Keep the ones for the floor as per SOP and trim a new set to varying heights and girths for use elsewhere, shall we say. Mutsvairo makes a wonderful percussive toy while also great for lightly scratching skin. Great on a bald head, bouncing on the chest, across your back or traced down an inner thigh. Lean a bit of weight into them and they you suddenly have hundreds of little pricks scintillating the erogenous gift that is your skin! Same goes for irukere/orengo/jok/ishoba/mosela that you often see in use during ceremonies! Perfect for a little caress, splashing water or a mildly stingy swat for naughty ones!

FEED ME, FEED ME BABY

Oh my! We haven't even spoken about food! Think of the restaurants you take someone to when you're looking to impress and score gwinya points (get it? It's like brownie points but African. Ok I'll stop). Think about what food you'd cook for a lover for comfort versus for sex and intimacy. Do you and your people show up on any of those menus or is it more of the chocolate, strawberries, cheesecake, pasta and Caesar salads or whatever trendy French or Japanese thing is happening at the time?

Would you crack open matamba/umhlali/massala/umkhemeswane and feed those moist and plump morsels to your lover? Letting them lick the juices off your fingers or collect the freshly cleaned seed out of their mouth with your tongue? Would you slap their tits with a fresh and wet bunch of muriwo/morogo/umfino/sukuma wiki/alefu? Imagine the refreshing cool water beading on their skin, the sound of the leaves bouncing against each other and the texture of the crinkled and full leaves against skin. And you're still in the kitchen at this point, showing off your cooking skills while peppering in some light entertainment. Come dine with me, then cum and dine on me amirite!?

What are we drinking? Kunnun, zobo, dawa, mageu, urwarwa, amasi? If not, why not? Have you tried it and it didn't work? Have you tried making it differently? Try fermenting with a different yeast, maybe a champagne yeast. Filter the mahewu through cheesecloth, season and spice them differently, or make more delicate versions as gentle introductions.

I'm not suggesting all food and drink are intimacy ready just because they're “African”. I'm suggesting there are obvious places to start exploring that could be developed for use-case-specific needs to enhance the occasion. Wine has evolved and been refined over time, with intention and also self assured delusion that it's great and pairs well with sexy times. There's nothing inherently sexy about fermented grapes but we got there still. Because people believed!

CLEAN UP

And what do we do before sex or eating and putting things in our mouths and other moist, tight spaces? We wash our hands, hopefully! Why not make a sexy ritual out of this? Bring out that reed floor mat and lay it down, get some herbs for burning. Buy some traditional or contemporary ceramics. Grab that enamel basin and water jug combo. But use them specifically to connect with yourself and/or your lover. Wash each others' hands, feet or hair. Deliberately, lovingly. And of course remember to moisturise. Grab that shea butter, coconut oil or cuticle cream. And wipe the excess on their thighs or rub it around their lips and their mouth too if you’d like! Same goes for their head, both are options. Get silly and cute with it and whatever you do, don’t get ashy with it. Lube is for life!

GIFT WRAPPING 

One of the most delicious things about sex and intimacy is getting to undress someone. This is something I really enjoy doing with deliberate and calm pace. Sadly I am terrible at making outfit choices for myself and yet in more recent years I am still trying to present myself as a treat to be unwrapped and enjoyed. We can’t be good at everything you know!

If you are going to make the effort to wrap the gift, why not spend a little extra time picking and preparing the wrapping paper? There are obvious staples here. Lace lingerie, corsets, latex and leather, 3 piece suits, edible panties, cock sleeves and hammocks, Venetian masks, garters and anything in the slutty Halloween costume bin! Useful, historical, exciting even but also familiar, predictable, comfortable and potentially uninspired. Goes well with steak and pomme frittes and a pinot noire. Someone said it's good and so it is. But we do not have to stop here. Dare dream a little!

Borrowing from my own reference point I find intrigue in mazambiya, dhuku, thethana, tinguvu and other forms of dress. How do we modify these whether using modern or natural materials to segue them back into the bedroom? Do we even need to make any modifications? For so many of them evolved within local, warmer climates and tend to be more permissive for quick access to hidden, nearby treasures. Exposing bits of flesh and yet still leaving enough hidden to nourish a healthy imagination.

If you feel like covering up a bit more then you can always lean on that blend of traditional/contemporary African textiles with more European cuts and silhouettes. Anything but another pair of charcoal pants or fishnets and nipple pasties. Useful options but those can't be the only options surely?!

HUMOUR IN PLEASURE

Of the many things I really enjoy about being African, it is the sense of humour and playfulness that I can never get enough of. Laughing so hard that Cape Town restauranteurs give you that look, you know the one. Or slapping someone’s hands as you run away as if afraid of the joke. If we are not having that kind of silly fun and laughter while naked, I want no parts of it. Intimacy can be so cold and void of joy and child-like excitement and I definitely want to blame the Victorians for these shenanigans.

Laugh loudly, be inappropriate, be ok with a fart or a queef, grin with silly delight. Be a little messy and accepting of unexpected messes. Nothing a little wash can’t take care of, so clean up and carry on as you were. Be a little less proper, be a little less civilised. Be a little more human! Go on, have fun!