Loud moan. 
Heavy breathing. 

I am battling between being awake and asleep. 

A woman’s high-pitched moans. 

I tap the light on my wristwatch. 2.07am.

Being woken up by neighbours' noises has become a regular occurrence in my thin-walled apartment in Brussels. And through this accidentally-lived experience, I have heard and thought a lot about their sexual habits and rituals.

Hearing someone else’s sex has made me think about the sex I’ve had in the past: it was mine but it didn’t feel like mine. Being a chance witness to their sex made me think about the sex I no longer want.

Let me explain.

I've started a new relationship after a long time with someone else. This time, with someone of the same sex. It has been a change in dynamics, breath, and skin. Power equality, questioning everything, and never taking anything for granted. It is queer sex, it is consensual sex, it is conversation sex. It was sex with: “Can I?”, “Tu peux”, “Do you like…?”, “J’aime bien quand…”, “That’s how I feel”. It was sex with new sounds.

But while new sounds whispered close to my ear, the backstories of my unsorted, untangled past echoed in my neighbour’s moan. The contrast between these two experiences have made me unpack my present alongside the forgotten fragments of my past.

A male grunt. 
The woman’s moans stop. 
2.13am.

Ok, it’s over. I lie in bed, trying to fall asleep again. 

The past year I thought a lot about sex that wasn’t mine, in a body that was. It made me think about all the gendered parts we assume we need to play; the rituals we won't question; the inherited dynamics we don’t challenge, and the traumatic experiences we also accept as a given. The neighbours’ sounds have poked at my memories. 

The clap clap of my neighbour’s penetration reminded me of the times I deprioritised my pleasure until I disappeared. 

The exaggerated moans reminded me of all the voices I used, all the clothes I wore, all the expressions I borrowed, to play the part of the woman I was told to be.  

The silence between them made me think of all the silence I didn't speak for myself, of all the “NO”s my body tried to speak but weren’t listened to.  

It’s been a few years since I began rewriting my own rules of performing femininity. But even when I thought I had unpacked all my rituals, sexuality kept knocking at my door, or, in this case, at my walls.

While the clap clap of my neighbour’s skin played in the background, I found myself reflecting on the concept of ‘sortir de l’hétérosexualité’ which translates to  ‘getting out of heterosexuality’. It encapsulates more than a change of sexual orientation, it views heterosexuality as a structure of binary concepts: male/ female and dominant/ submissive. It encourages us to sift through what society has taught us about heterosexuality and about what we were taught to want. 

Neither English or French is my first language, so I've reflected on the words as much as the concept. In English, to sort means to separate, to arrange, to make sense of what’s tangled. 

In French, sortir means to go out and sortie means exit. This adds another layer: a stepping outside; a departure. 

I made this concept my own, as a way to sit and rearrange what was left in me: the habits, the scripts, the small obediences of the body. It was not about erasing memories, but about looking closely, analysing each piece, asking where it came from, deciding what still felt true. It was a slow sorting, a disentangling, a way of walking away with only the sorted things I needed. 

I turn to my side, tuck in under the duvet. I fall asleep again.

This past year I thought a lot about the sex that was but never really felt like it belonged to me. I realised what I wanted to leave behind. The lingerie I no longer used, the questions I started to ask, the answers I dared to give myself. Maybe the work of becoming is less about inventing something new, and more about sorting through what never truly felt mine to begin with. 

This next year, I want to think a lot about the sex that is mine.