I’ll Be Your Santa Baby - Rufus Thomas (mp3)

This is sort of a genderflipped Santa Baby, though arguably it’s more of a gender vector projection of Santa Baby, remapping its suggestiveness from feminine to masculine. Not I’ve been an awful good boy, but I'll be your Santa baby, playing lots and lots of games / when I've toyed with you baby, things won't be the same.

One of the first things I read about gender/sexuality on my own, rather than in school or via my parents, was the opening section of a Kate Bornstein book. I’ve mostly forgotten the book, which was about suicide prevention for teenagers, but the first chapter is vivid in my mind. Bornstein writes: 

Imagine the world as a place where anyone can safely and even joyfully express themselves the way they’ve always wanted to… Envision yourself as the kind of person who lives happily and contentedly in that world. What gives you pleasure? What components of your identity allow for that pleasure? How many components of that envisioned identity can you put in place in your real life in order to achieve real pleasure?

A few months ago, I volunteered at an event called Slutcon, which was sort of billed as a women-led bootcamp in which men would learn how to seduce women. One of my friends was helping to run the security team, and I love event operations, but I worried I wouldn’t have a good time at an event described as “shamelessly heteronormative”. In the end, the event was extremely shameless ― the opening talk involved the whole audience shouting “SEX IS GOOD” together ― and very heterosexual ― though I talked to at least one man who discovered his bisexuality over the weekend ― but it was a decidedly non-normative social environment. People offered frank reflections (and rejections) that would be socially unacceptable in almost all contexts. (Example: “I feel uncomfortable right now because you’re wearing a semi-transparent top and I don’t know whether it’s rude for me to look at your breasts.” / “Can you sit farther away from me? I don’t want us to touch.”) The event brimmed with sincerity in pursuit of pleasure, which I appreciated despite occasionally chafing at the gender of it all. It was a social experience sufficiently out of the norm that I expect it will still be vivid in my mind a decade from now.

I feel like I could perform I’ll Be Your Santa, Baby more convincingly than Santa Baby, even though my face and voice go better with the latter. If you could be either Santa or baby, who would you be? What pleasures do you wish to pursue?

It ain’t just a toy,
Tessa