FRAY MAGAZINE - Intimacy Edition

issue 8

magazine

FRAY

fall 2024

edition

Photographed by Billi Newmyer

Table of Contents

Emblems – Lillian Hoefflin Friends and Lovers: Modern Paper Moon Portraits – Mae Cohen Retreat – Miles Urban Eye Contact – Mo Hagenbuch Live Laugh Love Friends – Angelica Mock Undressed – Gaile Ng Honest Intimates – Lauren Horowitz

Carnality – Erick Buendia Wearing Sex: The Subtle Artistry of Intimate Mark-Making – River Isleib Intimacy in Unlikely Spaces – Kerri Belguendouz and Kyra Fox Spotted – Lucia Glatz Tied Down – Liam Dorrien Camouflaged Connection – Zeke Reiss

Friends & Lovers: M od er

rtraits o P n o o M r pe a nP

Director: Mae Cohen Photographer: Norman Slate

Caroline Johnson Zion Alexis Noel Gonzalez Luna Hyesang Kwon Zaynah Almasri Zoe Todd Suz Blattner Kat Basilio Olivia Snow Emma Somol Abigail Grauer Angelina Reddy Harmony Hoogs Alesandra Ozbek Mina Tschape

written by: angelica mock collaborators: mia foster caroline johnson chloe andersen dianne cernal

Looking in the shopping cart at Goodwill, I recognized all of the differences in the clothing that I chose, realizing I wouldn’t have even looked at some of the pieces a year ago. A shirt that was 3 sizes smaller than my usual oversized shirts, a skirt (I never wore skirts), a tank top that wasn’t just for layering, leaving only one usual pick– an oversized men’s button up. The only thing that saved it during my friend’s lookover before checkout was its deep burnt orange color and the stitching on the collar. I never really thought about how much my friends had impacted my style until I realized I was wearing colors other than black, and would wonder before getting dressed every morning: “Would they think it’s cool?” Many badly lit mirror selfies, haphazard videos filmed by propping my phone against a wall, or even just the lingering question of what they were wearing for class the next day were indicators of my changing style. All that change was the culmination of an awkward, yet well-meaning, conversation and a year which resulted in an intimate friendship that boosted my confidence and my personal style.

Finding friends can be hard for some, and easy for others. It might look like interrupting the conversation from the table across from you to exclaim, “I love David Bowie too!” It also might mean suggesting a sleepover with both of them under the assumption that you were already close friends. Chloe Andersen (‘26) stated that she “infiltrated [her friend group] in high school,” and since then, have been a close and intimate group. Whatever the attempt made, or action taken, it’s a stressful situation that already results in a big jump in confidence.

Intimacy is one of the many transformative outcomes of friendship, and even if it primarily holds a romantic connotation.

Still, no matter the setting, it is an essential part of holding longlasting bonds. Intimacy is the knowing—knowing what makes the others tick. It’s the shared moments, the hugs, the smiles, the shared look, and everything else that makes each moment special.

It can even be as simple as getting a ride home when your bus is nowhere to be found and the sun had set half an hour ago.

Intimacy takes time to develop, so don’t worry if it’s not there yet! It will soon enough, and it might even mean saying unprompted, “I have to go poop right now!” Very imaginative, and very intimate.

Not at all too much information.

For instance, Mia Foster (‘25) stated that her friend group’s intimacy is shown in acts of service, and words of affirmation. “A big one is someone putting all the dishes away, or bringing extra stuff from Weshop like dessert.” Along with these altruistic acts, swapping clothes is a form of intimacy for them. “If I’ve borrowed a top I'll leave it with like a cute little note in their room,” Foster added.

It also can be in the smaller actions of jokes layering on top of each other “until it was absolute nonsense that no one would understand,” like it was for Andersen. Or even joking about making out when faced with the question “What are you guys doing?” Nothing is off the table when it comes to shared intimacy—absolutely nothing! Even when jokingly suggesting something more scandalous is happening.

Amid that intimacy, courage in self-expression is intertwined.

Maybe it’s sprinkled among the compliments and the motivational comments, or maybe it’s just simply wanting to be a better person for your friends. For Andersen, watching her friend grow in life was encouragement enough. “[My friend] was the boy version of me and we had the same passions and watching him grow and develop and pursue those made me excited to grow up.”

Just like finding friends, it takes time to build your confidence. It’s definitely not an overnight thing. It builds in little by little until one day you’re wearing something reminiscent of Bjork-meetsZooey-Deschanel-meets-an-editorial-shoot and saying the word that rhymes with “runt” to describe every outfit and action.

For sophomore Caroline Johnson it “wasn’t a light switch, it was a process.” She described how she became close friends with her roommate freshman year (by way of DM’s on Instagram), then became friends with another through joining Eclectic, one of the societies on campus, so that the duo became a loving trio.

There wasn’t a single “aha” moment where it occurred to Johnson what actually changed over the course of their friendship, but rather it was “little moments where I would wear something that I wasn’t necessarily comfortable and confident in, but then I would grow more confident as I wore it longer.”

For Foster it wasn’t just expression through clothes that changed, but confidence with artistic expression. She described how because of her friends, she participated in writing a literary magazine and performed a poetry reading. It doesn’t have to be just fashion, but anything that shapes who you are as a person. That influence is special and something that can’t be replicated. It’s carrying that friend around, and appreciating what they do for you.

Support from the right people can change everything and will change everything. Foster exclaimed, “For me, I feel so strongly that intimate friendships have the most power ever.” They may even have more power than romantic relationships, and even family. Friendships, uniquely, give you a relaxed space to explore yourself and be inspired from those around you. Johnson stated, “A lot of people think that confidence in yourself comes out of a relationship rather than friendships, but I argue that it comes from friendship. [They] are more about finding yourself and feeling comfortable and playing around.”

Whether playing around means wearing that chunky heeled boot to class and not being embarrassed, feeling comfortable enough to explore with more masculine clothing, fully adopting the crunchy Patagonia vibes, or even just exploring with something simple like blue eyeshadow, it transforms you for the better. Friendships have a profound impact on your confidence which has a lasting impact on your personal expression.

Photographer: Erick Buendia

Wearing Sex:

The Subtle Artistry of Intimate Mark-Making (or not so subtle)

Written By: River Isleib I’ve always been a biter. I never thought much about it. Just the same way people don’t think much about why they enjoy anything That in itself seems to be a perfectly valid reason to like anything. Thanks to the dopamine-draining collegiate world we live and work in, enjoyment can be few and far between. Makes sense as to why so many people are clawing and gnawing for it.

Hickeys are a staple on Wesleyan's semi-sexpositive campus. You see them occasionally. You generally know what they mean and get a sense of their origins. Maybe you wonder about the social implications of sexual activity. Who was it? Are they dating? Did they enjoy it? Was it worth it?

It’s a small campus. A mark can tell many stories.

And we’re a naturally curious bunch.

I thought it would be interesting to poke at the bruise, so to speak.

Wearing Sex: What is it?

I mean to focus on a specific subsection of human sexual behavior, mark-making. In this context I’m calling it wearing sex:

The act of wearing a mark created during an intimate moment with one (or more) other person(s).

A lot goes into receiving/giving a mark, deciding where that mark will live, communicating the process of making the mark, the physical changes occurring to one's body during mark making, and, of course, the choice to wear it. Physical marks can include hickeys, bites, bruising from other impact play, written or drawn marks, or articles worn that are derived from or are participatory in one’s sexually intimate experiences.

The choice to receive a mark is to have your physical person changed. In the act of mark making one is leaving another with a visible object of their presence. The consequences of making, having, and wearing that mark, or marks, extend the breadth of the human experience.

What one wants, shares, or believes can go into a mark. It is a means of communication between partners and the world. I don’t know that we’ve given that truth the air time it deserves.

Even this piece will only scratch the surface of the breadth of this subject. No pun intended.

Methods: Consent and Anonymity Consent is a critical part of the processes of intimacy and mark-making. I cannot overstress the importance of consent when it comes to intimacy. There is an intense vulnerability shared when choosing to change or be changed by someone. Just like in any intimate act trust is shared and held between people, It’s a conversation, a mutual consensus. One that is often as hard as it is enticing.

I wanted to center myself in consent throughout the process of forming this collection of writing, art, and photos.

I conducted informal research as part of my writing process for this article. I collected experiences from students on and around campus, in and outside of my social world. I used some external outlooks from more reputable sources than myself and a Google form. I’m using those findings to note some experiences relevant to our collegiate world.

To Wear or Not to Wear So many factors go into deciding whether or not to wear sex. It can be emotionally uncomfortable or even physically endangering to wear a mark that denotes intimate activity. The choice to be branded with a bruise or a scratch is an exceptionally personal choice. It requires one's body to be physically changed by another person's actions. Even if temporary, the gravity of that change can trigger a multitude of reactions relating to the ownership of one's body. The relations between marker and marked become physicalized on the body of the marked. Hickeys can last for a little longer than two weeks, or as short as a few days. The scale and obviousness of marks are as obvious or as secretive as the marker and the marked choose.

Statement Pieces: Bodily Control There's something to say about the empowering feelings associated with wearing sex. There is not an insignificant number of individuals who reflect this idea. A common feeling written about was the “pride” individuals had towards their marks.

Wearing a visible mark communicates desirability. Someone had the desire to leave the mark. The mark alludes to the process of its making. The wearer desired to share that with a community outside of the maker and the marked.

We often don’t recognize just how hard it is to find mutual desirability. It requires so much confidence and the potential for rejection. Just to talk to someone you're interested in can be extremely difficult.

Navigating personal boundaries, interests, and fears is difficult enough on its own. Trying to balance for another whole person multiplies the complexities. Of course, it gets easier with time and exposure. Still, so many are exploring their sexualities for the first time in college. Internal and external pressures to be fully taking advantage of the “best years of our lives”

also play a huge role in building these anxieties around desirability.

I wonder if this pride is connected to the relief that we feel for having jumped the social hoop of sexuality. A relief that we fell into the expectation of normalcy in some way. When there is so much uncertainty of self that defines our day-to-day life a physical reminder of desirability is an affirmation.

To unapologetically claim wantedness by flaunting marks is a method of reclaiming the self.

Wearing hickeys is a bold statement. One which is deeply connected, for many individuals, to reclaiming the body. A few individuals wrote about wearing sex as a means to make choices about their body when they otherwise feel unable to. Any number of reasons could contribute to this feeling of disembodiment. What spoke most to my experience were feelings of trans disembodiment and reclamation.

The physical body is often a place of mixed emotions, especially for queer and trans people.

When policy, institutions, and our peers tell or show us how undervalued our bodies are, joy and autonomy are actions of reclamation. In my own experience, I have felt a lack of control over the perception of my body. I have had moments in which It has felt as though it never really belonged to me. Wearing sex has surfaced itself as a means to recenter myself in my own form. It is a space where I have full control. The marks made and worn are of my own autonomous choice.

Professionalism Hates Fun: “Conceal Them! Grow Up Baby” Even in the safety of a left-leaning university, there is so much stigma around sex. Most folks echoed the idea that sexual perception isnt sustainable in every environment. It leaves a ton of room for misconceptions and judgment.

Individuals wrote about how wearing sex marks opened them up to unwanted comments about their sex life. No one wants their parents to perceive or comment on their sexual personhood.

If you do, you may want to take that up with Freud. One individual even wrote in detail about how their parent’s comment on sex marks made them associate negative feelings with having them or receiving them.

Hickeys are often written off as unprofessional, juvenile and, whoreish. To wear your status as

sexually active is repulsive to the workplace, and alongside it, your authority, integrity, and cleanliness. It’s a direct reflection of purity culture. But, acknowledging those facts doesn’t make them go away. The choice of whether to wear or not to wear carries baggage rooted in structural control.

There’s no shortage of data on how stigmas around sex only make society's sexual problems worse. Yet, American culture still trends towards devaluing sex and intimacy. If sexuality isnt directly beneficial to the production or distribution of capital why even value it at all? Sex lives are better not seen or heard. Purity culture and professionalism set social standards of sexual repression. It is the fact of the culture we live in, even though Wesleyan leans sex-positive.

Regardless of how normal sex is to the human experience, it’s not something easy to share openly without some vulnerability. Amid the barrage of social pressures around sex, it's no surprise, that not everyone is extremely comfortable wearing sex proudly.

But there is nothing inherently wrong about the sexual practice of mark making, nor wearing them. The concept that wearing sex is unprofessional is rooted in socialization under a thick film of cisgender heteronormative misogyny.

Structures that deem right and wrong based on power precedences and social control mechanisms. Nothing about a bruise on my neck or a bite mark on my shoulder is at all related to my ability to do my job. Except maybe, I’ll be a bit more motivated and a bit less stressed that next day.

Concluding (Re)Marks Every day we are pulled further and further away from ourselves as we navigate classes, jobs, relationships, etc.

If you're lucky enough to have it, intimacy thrusts you back into your flesh. You become awakened by the pain of a bite, a nip, a scratch, or the pleasure of a kiss. Through the mutual act of escaping oneself into another, sensations reset us and center us in ourselves.

It's beautiful to see the biological process ravage our bodies as endorphins push us closer and drive us to lick, nip, chew, suck, and scratch the skin of a partner. To see the capillaries burst under one's skin and the red-purple shades develop. We’re magical, aren't we? So quickly responding to the most minor mechanical damage. The body is a world of its own, a canvas of living, breathing cells, bacteria, critters, and creatures that keep us alive. All of the curves and planes and dips and bends that make up our forms, and the ecosystem living within it.

A bruise, a scratch, a mark holds so many worlds. The connection between the mark and the body, the marker and the marked, the marked and observers of the mark all meld together to create the imperfect rhetoric of sex.

There's no one correct way to exist in the world.

Sex, fashion, and life are all a subjective collection of interactions, good and bad, with everyone around us and the institutions that uphold norms.

If anything, breaking the normative culture of sexual repression that capitalistically holds up to convention and professionalism does some good.

Our autonomy is our own, and the choice to use it or not reinforces that with every moment.

Ode to Hickeys A collection of quotes from Anonymous Wesleyan Students.

“Who’s on her neck”

“Have you been playing paintball?”

“As a trans-masc person, it actually gives me confidence in my body. Also, since me and my partner are both busy people (as many Wes people are lol), it’s a nice reminder.”

“It makes me feel proud and like I’m in control of my body. It makes me feel like am doing something my parents wouldn’t be proud of and I like that feeling.”

“ It makes me feel loved and cherished. It is also a reminder that I had a great time last night. I like seeing them on her for the same reason…”

“Fucking mark me up.”

“ I’ve always enjoyed the kinkier side of marking, like sharpied words under my clothes and bruises from impact play… She says she likes showing the world that I belong to her. ”

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the form.

Your candidness and vulnerability helped me so much in the development of this piece.

Intimacy in Unlikely Spaces

Photographer: Kyra Fox Models: Lauren Horowitz , Lola Maby Editor: Kerri Belguendouz

33

SPOTTED.

Created by

Lucia Glatz Theo Baldwin Edwards

Models:

Mae Cohen

Caroline Johnson

Photographer:

Eden Bloom

Director/Layout:

Liam Dorrien

GAILE NG MIA FOSTER VICTORIA CORNEJO SIGGY SORIANO JENNY ONGELE CAROLINE JOHNSON

COLLABORATORS

Liam Dorrien Eden Bloom Mae Cohen Caroline Johnson Victoria Cornejo Zachary Berkenkotter and Co Ella Matthews Matar Rocker Paige Merril, Maisie Wrubel Nia Chetkovich Genna Olavarri Tess Usher Kelsey Onyia Leo Ferry Tyler Asher Zoe Ferguson Ibby Newland Asher Harris Sade Goldstein-Poku Jesse Geoghan Olivia Berger Mo Hagenbuch Sage Saling Zeke Reiss Abigail Grauer Lola Jones Angelina Reddy Oana Chèvre Cole Pepin Madeline Mahoney Leonardo Dougherty Liv Rubenstein George Manes Lena Weiman Eva Gamboa Lexi Radziner Miles Urban Tracy Wu Rex Hechter Nessa Schmitt Lily Turner Jess Huang Dinah Landsman Lucas Buelow-Melendez 82 Lawn Ave

Zev Brown Tanner Mahon Oliver Dmochowski Chloe Anderson Dianne Cernal Olivia Snow Zaynah Almasri Emma Somol Maisy Lewis Amah Assoumou Keren Mikanda Inga Dovre Kyra Fox Lola Maby Lauren Horowitz Kerri Belguendouz Margo Morris Amelie Boose Tess MacFarlane Chloe Schaeffer Ava Carbonara Tati Wolkowitz Stanley Ackerman

Peter Mullen Lila King Lucia Glatz Theo Baldwin Edwards Nell Brayton Luca D’Agruma Maya Yanowitch Olivier Hart-Vilain Nola Busansky Lola Murnighan Erick Buendia Isha Bah Harmony Hoogs Dikshya Kuikel Norman Slate Suz Blattner Zoe Todd Kat Basilio Alesandra Ozbek Mina Tschape Zion Alexis Noel Gonzalez Luna Hyesang Kwon