In How I Have Sex, we bring you candid retellings of people’s sexual lives that explore the multidimensional nature of this human experience. In this installment, 24-year-old C. talks about his fluid play kink, and how the stigma surrounding it has made him question his desires.

I first had sex when I was 18. A lot of reading up was done before it. At the time, I, and all of my peers actually, were also watching porn and wanking off. I remember watching fluid play, which turned me on. It included saliva, arousal fluids, and even urine. I remember this video where a girl was on top, she was spitting on this guy’s face, and for some reason, I found it really hot. Another one I saw was when a guy came into the girl’s mouth, and she was playing around with it. I found that arousing too. That’s when I realized these are the kinds of things I liked to do.

Of course, I didn’t tell my girlfriend at the time that this is what I like. We had a very vanilla kind of idea of sex. There were times when we used to watch porn together, and whenever some kind of fluid play used to be involved, she’d be like “ew, fuck this, it’s not working for me. It’s so dirty, yuck.” I knew that she was skeptical, but you do get comfortable in a relationship — I mean, for some people kissing may be something they’re not comfortable about and it takes a certain level of comfort to be okay with it. So, when I found my comfort zone with her, I told her what I wanted her to do to me. I asked her to spit on my cock. She point-blank stopped, she said it was dirty. But technically, that’s what happens in blow-jobs anyway, right? Why was one okay and not the other?

I think I like fluid play because it’s a form of domination. It’s symbolic of being in control. It depends on my level of comfort — with a girlfriend, for example, I wouldn’t mind being submissive. When I don’t have confidence in somebody, I enjoy being the dominant one. You don’t want to be vulnerable in front of somebody you’re not comfortable with. But with a past relationship, I realized my fetishes weren’t accepted, even ridiculed at times. Over the course of time, she’d say things like — “oh you like this sort of thing? You’re an idiot, you’re a freak.” If we were watching a film about a serial killer, she’d say this is where you might be headed because of the fetishes. What’s the similarity between murder and consensual domination, though?

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Since then, it has been tough. These things take a certain level of comfort. If I’m on a date and it ends up being physical, it’s very rarely I’ll ask someone to indulge me in fluid play. It’s a kind of stigma that’s built up in me that it’s bad, ye sahi cheez nahi hai. It’s like you want it, and somebody’s ready to give it to you, they’re doing you a favor. It is not that you want it and it’s a need, and somebody else is willing, and it’s like a puzzle that fits. It’s never that. It’s always about you wanting something that’s out of the ordinary. That stigma has settled in so deep that I always feel my desires won’t be accepted in a positive light, or that these kinks are okay. It’s always looked down upon, and I see a tinge of fear in the other person when I voice it. Maybe they’ll be perceiving it normally, but I see that fear, perhaps because of the ways in which my fetish has been perceived in the past.

I told another one of my ex-girlfriends that I’m into fluid play. I’ve never had a golden shower yet — a lot of people have reservations about it. But the idea of it sounds good to me. When I told her, she was irked, she asked me to be in an open relationship because she thought I had all these expectations from sex she couldn’t fulfill. Ultimately, she also started seeing other people to feel good about what she wanted in bed, and now that relationship has ended. Because of my fetishes, now we are nowhere. This was still better than my first relationship, when I had mentioned golden showers, and all she said was “ew, what the fuck are you?”

Because it’s an unconvetional fetish, it requires a higher degree of acceptance. When so many people tell you it’s wrong, toh tum khud sochne lagte ho ‘kya ye galat toh nahi hai?’ I still like it, but why do I like it? Is my brain wired wrong? Do I have a problem? And for golden showers yaar. It’s one of the more mainstream categories on Pornhub. It makes you doubt yourself.

At the end of the day, I don’t know why I find it pleasurable. It’s like asking someone who has a foot fetish why they find feet pleasurable. It’s just something you like. There’s not an answer, at least for me. I do think about why others don’t like it, they think it to be dirty. Because it’s supposed to be impure, messy. Essentially, in a non-sexual situation, you wouldn’t want to play around with any other person’s urine, so why do it when having sex?

I believe intercourse is a very very small part of the entire experience of sex. It might be the fruit, but it’s not the tree. There’s a lot we can explore. I wish I could do that without the stigma.