“I do not want a lover who sees through me.”

I Don’t Want Authentic Sex · Words: Monique Johnson

The last thing I want, when someone is unfastening my dress, is to be understood.

The contemporary invitation to have authentic sex sounds generous: remove the mask, bring your whole self, allow yourself to be seen. But I spend enough of my life being seen. I would like, occasionally, to be spectacularly misrepresented.

Why must the woman beneath the lipstick be more real than the woman who applied it? There’s an extraordinary amount of honesty in artifice.

We have confused intimacy with excavation. We believe that loving someone means digging until nothing remains concealed. But perhaps the greater intimacy is being trusted with somebody’s inventions.