Y’know what kind of “older queer person has the Good Sex for the first time” scenario I want for Stede? I say as if I’m not eventually going to write it. Stede experiencing sex as intimacy for the first time in his life.

I feel like the emphasis in these kind of scenes is often on the embodiment aspect of the experience, the “oh so this is what sex feels like when I’m fully aroused/doing it with someone I am actually attracted to/doing the kind of sex acts I enjoy” element. Which...yes. That part can be fucking revelatory. But that’s just one layer of the “OH so THAT’s what it’s supposed to be like” experience and I feel like for Stede there are some other layers that would be equally if not more world-altering.

Stede and Mary presumably had enough sex to produce two living children, and I’d imagine the experience ranged somewhere from “this is fine I guess but I’d rather be reading a book” to skin-crawlingly uncomfortable for both of them. Given what we see of their parents I think it’s very likely they were both raised to think of sex as a marital duty required to produce an heir and nothing more. Either giving or receiving pleasure was certainly not a requirement if it was even an expectation at all. 

And given that Stede’s main coping strategy for his marital unhappiness seems to be avoidance, emotionally withdrawing and self-isolating, I would imagine he was fairly...not present during the act and also, shall we say, not partner-focused. If he’d been willing to meet Mary halfway with trying to at least be friends, they might have gotten to a point where they both acknowledged that they weren’t really attracted to each other, but the social expectations placed on them meant they had to produce children, and maybe they would have been able to approach things with a little more kindness and camaraderie, if not genuine passion. But that’s not Stede’s approach to the situation at all.

So I think he was probably mostly focused on doing what he needed to do to get the job done on a basic physiological level, probably with a lot of bottled-up guilt and shame and self-loathing involved, and in that context I can see him just not really paying attention to Mary at all. Not out of any deliberate cruelty but just because he can be self-centered in his own misery in a way that ends up hurting other people. Or possibly just because, of the two of them, he’s the one who needs to be at least somewhat aroused for this to work, and whatever strategy he had for that required all his concentration. (YMMV but this is one of the reasons I think Stede was at least somewhat aware of his attraction to men before he met Ed; “this baby can fit so many sexual fantasies while never ever ever talking about the state of his actual sex life with his actual wife” seems very on brand for Stede to me.)

So with Ed I’d imagine it’s probably not just Stede’s first time having sex for pleasure, period, but the first time this is any kind of mutually collaborative experience for him. It must be wild, being fully present and realizing for the first time that you want to be, not just for your own sensory experience but because it turns out everything going on with your partner is ungodly hot--what he’s doing to you but also watching him react to what you’re doing to him. (Who knew you had that kind of power?) Not just realizing that this is terribly arousing for you but the realization that this other person (who you consider to be much cooler and hotter and more sexually experienced than you) is just absolutely desperate to fuck you, that you have the ability to turn him on, to drive him wild. The wanting and the delight at being wanted in return. 

The realization that it’s fun to learn what your partner likes, letting him show you or discovering new things together, that talking about what you want and what he wants is sexy, actually, even if admitting desires is scary sometimes. Realizing that this is something that can be playful and joyful and fun and also involve a truly awe-inspiring amount of trust and vulnerability that this other person is offering you and inviting you to share in return. That yes it’s sometimes silly or embarrassing or gross or weird or nerve-wracking but it’s something you’re doing together, not something alienating and uncomfortable that you’re experiencing alone even though your partner is right there. That it’s something that people do to be closer to each other and here is this person who wants to be close to you in that way, that you sort of thought didn’t actually exist, or at least, didn’t exist for people like you. But it does and you get to have it. 

Yeah. That’s the kind of scene I want.