usesoftheerotic

[usesoftheerotic]

Q. What’s your name, country of origin, ethnicity, pronouns, how do you identify in terms of your queer identity?

Jill. they/them she/her. USA. Mexican and half white. Queer, less of an identity and more of a position or a mode of being. It is an identity, but a mode of being. A way of being radical. A way of questioning things and destabilizing structures.

Q. How would you define the erotic?

I try to think that it's connected to, but not the same, as sex, sexuality and sexual expression. Also, different from love. I think about it like an energy that drives people, but I think more of something that's unconscious but you can consciously start to grasp, use or direct. Personally, it probably lies like sleeping somewhere under many many layers. it's probably running in the background somewhere, but it's not something I always actively have access to or something I don't think I have access to.

That disembodied feeling is something I've been dealing with forever and it's just in the recent last year that I'm starting to be interested in more embodied experiences. My erotism was something in there, but I actively have not wanted to seek it out because it felt tied to an embodiment. Something that I haven't been open to because of the experiences of sexual violence. Those were embodied experiences that I had to take myself away from because it was painful. In order to get through everyday life, I had to compartmentalize my thinking brain and what I read to be like my “vulnerable body” and not have them connect. Once they're connected, then I would feel that pain and have to work through it. That is not something I've been open to at all because it was too painful. It's like I would fall apart if I did that. The erotic feels tied to that embodiment. if I tried to access the erotic, then all of that pain and violence will come with it too. if I open the door, then all of it will come seeping out. Not just the erotic.

Q. How do you recognize the erotic within your life and how does the erotic manifest in your life?

I write but I have to write pen to paper. if I type it doesn't do the same work and I've been avoiding it. So, I ran out of space in my bag when I came to New Jersey and I didn't bring my journal and I could just buy one and I haven't done it. So, I've been actively avoiding it. I've been actively avoiding getting in touch with myself, but I know historically the ways that I do that is through pen to paper. To write it all out.

Also, riding my bike is the only safe embodied experience that I enjoy. so I do that especially when I'm in like a funk. You know when you're in a funk? And, you're just like "I'm not happy I'm not sad I'm bored, Ah!”. There's no way to fix it, and then I would just go on a bike ride with no direction, no path and I'll just ride. It's the only safe embodied experience I enjoy. I don't like yoga and i don't like deep breathing. None of that. It's probably because I'm avoiding it but biking feels safe and enjoyable.

[usesoftheerotic]

Q. What’s your name, country of origin, ethnicity, pronouns, how do you identify in terms of your queer identity?

Camila or Mila, because my grandmother was called Mila and I’d like to recover my feminine ancestry. My country of origin has always been on the border. I’m originally from the Dominican Republic (DR), but my family actually comes from a little town that’s on the border between DR and Haiti. So, I always felt like in the border between Dominican and Haitian identities. I feel a very deep connection of these two nationalities that have been fighting a long time. and For me, they represent the ridiculousness and the violence of the nation-state. 

I was very aware of this since I was very little and my other part of my origins come from Chile, but my mother's family left Chile during the dictatorship of Pinochet. My mother left Chile when she was 5 years with all of her sisters and my grandfather. Now, they all live DR. So, I kind of have a Diasporic Latinx Caribbean identity traveling between this South American thing to this Caribbean and Black Afro-Caribbean thing. I struggled with these identities and then I kind of came to a more intentional racialized decision of being more close to my Afro-Caribbean roots than my Chilean ones. This is something I’ve always felt and never felt comfortable with. I never liked it not because of chile itself, but because whiteness dominates Chile so much more than it does in the DR. Because of that, I reclaim more of my Dominican origins. As you see, my answer for my origin is kind of complex, but I would say I’m Afro-Caribbean and I define my queer identity as a queer femme caramel cinnamon person.

Q. How would you define the erotic?

I always felt like a very sexual person. I’m a Scorpio! Since I was very little, in my very own basic ways of understanding the erotic, I always felt that this is a pulsation of life and it’s like a fire that’s so much more than just having sex with someone or having sex with you. For me, it’s life. 

In tarot, we have these cards that are represented by fire and wood sticks and they represent the power of creativity. In my path as a witch, the same power in sexuality and sexual desire is the power that allows you to create and that you can channel that creative power not only in sexuality but also to create anything in your life. To create your work. To create a garden. To create a house. And even to create a baby. In this heterosexual society that we live in, we are taught that the only way that we create with this sexual energy is to create a new human being, but before the process of  colonization, patriarchy and the heterosexual world that we live in other cultures and societies have this wisdom that sexual power, the erotic, is a place where you can create anything. For me, the erotic is this place of fire and energy that kind of lives near your hips. Where you can expand and create with yourself with others.

Q. How do you recognize the erotic within your life and how does the erotic manifest in your life?

For me, It’s very easy to feel when I’m not connected to my eroticness. When I feel disconnected from my erotic power and my erotic self, it’s like I feel really down and depressed. First of all, one of the more simple places where I think you can feel the erotic is often seen and thought off as superficial, is in your aesthetics. How do you dress, how do you feel every day you want to feel, like with a lot of glitter or you want to feel, like with a lot of color. For me, how I dress and how “mezcalo”, a word in Spanish “mezclarse” it means making yourself shine literally, and if the eros is fire, shining means your eros is on. for me, having my nails like this all of these things are ways to remind myself every day that my erotic energy is important to me and I want other people to see it. Eros can also be a place of joy. Caribbean aesthetics are very erotic and I feel as a critic about the system, the system has used this shit to just put in the mainstream and with that they have taken it (the erotic) out of us, something that is powerful. Often, intellectual political groups of people, having your nails done, if you’re waxing your body, or if you’re worried about how you dress, means you’re being oppressed “That’s like superficial, you’re being dominated by the system.” 

As I was studying and living in Chile, I have to become very gray, everyone dressed in gray and black, and the best is when you get unnoticed. I feel like often, there are things that we find in the oppression that were original things that are empowering or good but the system has put them in a mainstream place that actually finds to dominate us. You feel obligated to look nice, but for me my aesthetic, when you’re feeling good, that’s important. 

My main place for the erotic is in dancing. When I don’t dance for a week, even to play some music in my bedroom for like half an hour, I feel that. I feel like I don’t have more fire in me. I feel decompartmentalize. I feel like something is not making sense inside of me. I’d also define as the erotic as not only a place of fire that creates, but also something that makes us one with ourselves. When you have sex, you feel connected when you get to the orgasm right. When you’re connected to your eroticness , I also feel like that it is something keeps you feeling connected to yourself. Dancing for me is really important. It shows that we’re not just the mind. I’m not gonna just rationalize how I feel the erotic. It’s something that has to pass through your body. For me, dancing is really important, just move your butt and your hips. I think that’s where the erotic kind of lives. It’s also the way I relate to people. I’ve never been a formal person, I like to just be informal and be flirty in the way I talk. I don’t care if I’m being sensual. Sometimes people think I’m flirting with them and I’m not. It’s just the way I like to act. I don’t buy into this formal square cold way of relating with people. I think that the way you relate to others, how you communicate, the way you move, how you speak, these are also things to me that are part of the erotic.