Beyond Orgasm

I remember finding out that I was different quite clearly. I’d mentioned how I felt when I orgasmed on a comment on someone else’s blog. I described seeing colours, well feeling colours and the blog’s author was the first to use the term synaesthesia to describe it.

I looked up synaesthesia on the Internet and was astonished to find out that I was a classic synaesthete. Over the next couple of days I talked with Suze and discovered that the strange looks she sometimes gave me when I was describing sensations (both in and out of the bedroom) were because she simply hadn’t understood the chromatic elements of my sensory experience.

As I was unaware until that point that I was different from the majority of people in my perception of the world this came as a shocking revelation. I can’t imagine the world without the colour that my synaesthesia brings to it. Well, more accurately I can. It would be terribly dull in comparison and more importantly I wouldn’t be me.

How we perceive the world is part of who we are. Our whole personality, the way we interact with others, communicate and learn are all shaped by our perception of the reality around us. I for example always displayed a classic synaesthetic trait; That of being obsessed by describing colours in minute detail. That and my brain’s way of blending tactile sensations with colour shapes how I think about things and how I write.

When I touch something, experience pain, feel the touch of a feather or the thrill of an orgasm they all generate a variety of colours. They occasionally appeared in my writing, maybe confusing some people. Now I’m aware of them as being outside most people’s experience I’m careful how I describe them. But without them I would be a different person, write in a different way, see the world from a different angle. I wouldn’t be Alex.

Having become aware of what I perceive our lovemaking is different too. Afterwards Suze always asks about the colours I experienced. Sometimes I’m, able to describe them in terms she can understand, a swirling blue, a deep purple perhaps, all depending on the intensity and type of orgasm I have. Yet there are other times when words fail me. I’m a reasonably eloquent bloke but there are some colours that I experience that are so alive and so indescribably beautiful that … well I can’t describe them. LOL

I have tried to draw them in the past, with varying degrees of success. Suze is pestering me to try to draw them again, but I’m not an artist and what I see moves and changes with each moment that passes so capturing on a page is simply taking a snapshot of one beautiful moment in time. I’ll see what I can do.

Tags: Synaesthesia, synesthesia