“I love you more today than I ever have.”

“If I were making choices based on who makes me happiest or who I love more, I would stay with you.”

“I believe you may be the greatest love of my life and I don’t think I’ll ever get over you.”

“I cannot be with you anymore.”

The last one seems like a bit of a contradiction and it was. I thrashed around in supreme pain for a few weeks. I was bitter, angry, and crying at the drop of the hat. Each beautiful memory felt like being punched in the stomach. Each interaction with him represented the pain of being re-rejected over and over again.

Just when I found some peace and was putting things back together, he hit a snag and reached out to me for the emotional support that his partner wasn’t providing him. No phone call has ever made me feel more used and degraded than this one did.

I’ve slowly worked my way back from that. I’m working back to forgiving him again, wanting to find a place to be kind to him. My love remains unconditional but my ability to care, nurture, and support is seriously strained. The reality is that Michael chose to leave me in order to put all of his effort into another relationship. He made the choice purely on his own and against the wishes of his parter, but it was still his choice to make. As that other relationship continues to flounder, I don’t know if he harbors any regrets. It isn’t for me to know.

***

But, the point of the post isn’t what happened. It is what is happening.

Yesterday I celebrated the holiday with many of my dearest friends. We grilled out, drank fantastic amounts of beer, played board games, and churned our own ice cream.

As it got late (and tipsy), I declared that I could go for a swim. Noah (who has remained a dear friend) got behind this idea wholeheartedly and we quickly organized a late-night march down to the river.

When we arrived near the water it was still and black. Most of my friends were too hesitant to scramble down the steep bank in the dark but Noah forged ahead and I managed to follow. We slipped out of our clothes and into the water. It was perfect. Not too cold and smelling green. We floated out past the rocks and stared up at the moon and an abandoned train trestle and listened to firecrackers exploding in the distance.

We just leaned against a downed tree trunk and lived in that lovely warm, wet, firecrackers moment. We talked about the moon and the train trestle and turtles. I realized that I felt fundamentally right in that water. The world was in place and my sorrow had subsided. Instead of feeling incomplete and broken, I actually had some peace. One of my best friends was near my side and there to observe my independence and tranquility. I felt beautiful, happy, and safe.

you told me that it was the best day of your life. i could see that in your eyes all day. the chronology fails me, the events are already slipping away. i just remember how it felt. the uncontrollable smiles. the calm, peaceful serenity of it. i remember memorizing your face over and over again. and i remember the music. singing snippets of lyrics to you. knowing that every love song ever written was about us. because we were loving each other not as the center of our individual universes but as the center of the entire universe. so, how could a musician write about any love other than ours? what could be more pure or intense or real? these are the ridiculous narcissistic thoughts that clouded my thoughts and utterances. this is why i looked in your eyes and earnestly said that one of the upsides of being codependent was sharing just as much in the other’s joy as in the sadness. i suggested at one point that we had spent the day doing nothing. you were firm and insistent that this wasn’t nothing. i see now that it was the biggest something i have ever done. but just like the way i love you, i can’t put a label on it.

***

We sang together. Our voices cracking under the stress of the moment. The fear weaves through the melody. But there is a commitment in that lyric. By the end of the song, all I could do was whisper the words. But I kept at it. The final lines didn’t choke me up so much because of the weight of the ones that had come before. That was bearable. What was unbearable was seeing the end of the song and knowing that this moment was about to end. I nearly panicked. I wanted to stop time. Perhaps if I could stop the song from ending, I could stop you from sliding away from me.

***

We stood naked together, smelling of sweat and tears and a day of anguish. You pulled me to you in the water and whispered dreams of a future in my ear. A home and cats and growing old together. Growing together. You wish for it. For a moment, I don’t hear the conflict in your voice anymore. You sound resolved. But it flits away quickly. It gets loaded down with caveats, maybes, and what-ifs. I’ve stepped closer to this dream but only for an instant. It is a dream that is more yours than mine. It sounds lovely, it sounds satisfying, but mostly it sounds like a way to have you near my always.

***

you asked me something unfair. to make love to you like it would keep you alive. i knew that is how i did it every time but i was still afraid that i could fail. and if i failed would it mean that you would die? so i plead for your life and made a million promises that would be impossible to keep if you would just stay on the earth.

***

I want to be strong for you. I want to be strong in your eyes. I want you to see the woman that, at the age of 9, picked the outfit her mother would be buried in. I want you to see the 18-year-old that moved across the country by herself to embark on a new education and a new life. You are so strong and I feel dwarfed by it on most days.

***

I remember holding you. Scooping you up in my arms like you were a child. Looking down on you and seeing your frailty and vulnerability and marveling at the strength that lived within it. I remember my shock at realizing that my body knew what to do at those moments. Even with no idea what to say, you fit in the space of my lap, I was built to shelter you and protect you in those moments. The same as you can provide me casual but total safety by welcoming me to rest my head on your chest. It occurred to me that my only purpose on earth in that moment, my only reason to take another breath, was to love you and keep loving you and being loved by you. Intensely. So you could feel it through the pain. And I believe that you could if only in small moments.

***

You told me that it was the best day of your life.  I know that you might be approaching one of the worst. I feel so powerless to crack through that pain. I’m resisting the urge to believe that being unable to help is a reflection on the intensity or tenacity of our love. I pray for the chance to grow with you.

after you hung up

I wrote you a poem

hoping it might change your heart.

This morning I tell myself:

Get serious, man.

Someone once compared

writing a poem

and hoping it will

change the world

to dropping rose petals

down a deep well

waiting for the splash.

- Ralph Fletcher

At the same time, it has seemed disengenious to segment my sexuality out from my loving relationships and chatter idly about funny news stories, sex toys, or jerk-off fantasies. I’m hoping to find the courage soon to break my silence through some vignettes of particularly poignant moments that have transpired in the last few months. It might not be particularly sexy (unless you get off on emotional masochism) but I’ll be as honest as a can.

So, bear with me as this blog transitions into something that is, at once, a protest song and a love letter to the fears, insecurities, and joys in my life.

Warning Signs of Emotional Abuse

Verbal Abuse Assessment

Examples of Abusive Behavior

A study proving that emotional abuse can be even more harmful than physical violence

• The gorgeous and sexy Thursday wrote this really pretty water sex post and dedicated it to me. Swoon.
• I avoided a total fangirl moment and played it cool when Jayme Waxman asked to interview me for a piece on phone sex at YourTango.
• Apparently, I am one of the best sex toy reviewers of 2008. I do know that my boyfriend loves listening to me snark on all the crap toys available in the average porn store.
• March 26th was the four year anniversary of this blog. I missed that fucker again. How frustrating. Maybe I’ll make it up to you with a new episode of Bedroom Radio. But, if you’ve never listened before, the old ones are new to you.
• Next week our entire quad is packing off to Frolicon. I’ve never attended before but I’m pretty excited. Turns out some people that I really admire and enjoy will be there: Lolita Wolf, Sharrin Spector, and Nina (my preferred leather pusher.) If you are going to be there and have been ignoring my queries on Twitter, please speak up!
• Sex 2.0 is coming up again next month and we’re 95% sure that we’re attending. Assuming nothing goes ridiculously wrong financially, I’m so excited to get to go again. I’m not sure if I’ll be leading a session or just actively participating but I can’t wait to see all of my friends again. Too many to mention here easily but if you look at my blogroll, it gives you a pretty good idea.

In the past, Jay and I have told Michael and Ariel that if their primary relationship wasn’t strong and solid, that we couldn’t be with them. We’ve told them that we would all have to take a break while they worked things out to whatever conclusion they needed to reach. That system has never been engaged before, we’ve always been convinced to stick around. Sometimes we’ve helped, sometimes I think we’ve hurt things. I always feel like a bandaid.

This time around, I don’t think I can bear to pull the bandaid off. Michael and I are clinging to our relationship desperately. Jay and Ariel seem to be doing the same thing. For the first time today I felt like I might lose Jay if this all breaks. What is worse, he refuses to talk about it any further as of this moment. I’m looking down the track and I’m seeing the obstacles instead of the destinations.

Lately, I’ve been hungering to show off the bad with the good. The petty feelings and fears and nasty fights. When this all started we were tripping through daisies and in many ways we still are. I thrill at memories of snuggling Jay in another couple’s bed and sliding Ariel’s hand up my thigh at the dinner table and shivering in an abandoned park with Michael while recreating his first kiss. But I also know that the other moments are what make those so beautiful. Jay calling me an insensitive bitch at 5am and Ariel clattering across my living room floor telling me in stark detail the ways I had hurt her and Michael coldly acusing me of devaluing his love.

There are times when the four of us tear ourselves apart and I think that we won’t make it. That something fundamental will break and we will drift, cut lose from our cores. There are other times when I think that we grow stronger each time we bleed out pain in this way. More honest, more real, more committed. That perhaps scar tissue is stronger than baby soft flesh and our battle scars are really growing pains. Hard fought and hard won. It knocks the idealism and fairy tale ending further out of my reach every time but I suspect that a dream more permanent may grow in its place.

I’m also anxious about it. Jay will go on dates while I am gone. Everyone will likely fret about this. I’m going to miss him and feel a bit untethered on my own. I’m going to worry about him and if he is lonely or hungry or bored. Nonetheless, I think this will be a positive experience and I won’t be far away from the arms of people that I love and who love me.

This is a confession of sorts but also a cry for help. I think about myself in reference to kink and sex and realize that I associate submission and service with being feminine. I associate beauty, weakness, and delicacy with being feminine. And I also realize that I am so terrified of being seen as anything other than feminine that I put up some strange defenses against this.

Case study A: Ariel

Ariel is my gorgeous girlfriend. She is beautiful and petite and has long flowing hair. She moves gracefully on high heels. She also has a powerful job in a male-dominated industry and changes car batteries and asserts herself aggressively in conversations. She looks high femme but has always thought of herself as butch. Still, when I touch her I sometimes feel huge, ham-fisted, rough, and all-together ugly. I know she longs for me and I fail her because I don’t know how to be. On the one hand, strapping on a pretty dildo and fucking her for hours sounds like pure bliss but I know that getting to that point will be full of second-guessing myself and my desires and my actions.

Am I being entirely heterosexist in my view of this sexual relationship? Abso-fucking-lutely! Because she is feminine, I feel masculine. (We won’t even get into the terrible fact that I associate masculinity [on myself!] with ugliness) I don’t want to feel this way. It isn’t enlightened, it isn’t sex positive. I wouldn’t teach it to my students. But it infects my reality and I don’t know how to deprogram it.

Case study B: Michael

[Note: This section has been edited for nuance. The lack it previously exhibited, though, is likely symptomatic of my issues with binary thinking.]

Michael is a petite man. We are the same height and I outweigh him significantly. When we first met I didn’t think the relationship would work because of this. I thought I would feel huge and be self-conscious and afraid. So I submitted myself to him. He felt like he was capable of being in charge and I let him be. Even if I couldn’t be delicate and small by comparison physically, I knew I could shrink myself mentally. It works out well that he has discovered enjoyment of beating me until I cry, pulling my hair, grabbing my throat. (Again we won’t get into how fucked up it is that my way of feeling feminine involves simulated victimization) Even when I am initiating sex with him, it feels like an act of service and devotion. He often gives me feedback on how to touch and where and when. I siddle up to him and slither a limb around his body. I kiss gently. The touches are a seduction and they are a worship and only in my most wanton and least self-conscious moments do I allow myself to be aggressive and take up space.

Taking up space

I haven’t really defined what this means to me just yet. You may have guessed some of it by now, though. I think of it in terms of physical space - my body is larger and I attempt to diminish that regularly. I also think of it terms of political space - my voice should be smaller, my needs should be less important, my desires should be locked away.

This might seem ridiculous to some of you that have met me or read this blog. Of course I take up space in terms of talking about sex. Here I am now with this presence on the internet. Blabbing, opining, discussing in detail, issuing edicts and judgments and ideas. But some of that strength leaves me when I’m making love to some of the people I adore most in the world.

I know that every relationship goes through growing pains and these are no exception, but this issue feels bigger and scarier and more about me being fucked in the head than any I have run into before. So, dear reader, tell me what you think. How do I get my theory to line up with my practice? How do I deschool myself of gender? How do I embrace femininity in a way that doesn’t make me need to masculinize others? How have you done it or how do you wish you could?

February 6, 2009

February 6, 2009

February 2, 2009

February 3, 2009

February 3, 2009

January 28, 2009

January 28, 2009

January 28, 2009

January 26, 2009

January 27, 2009

January 26, 2009

January 28, 2009

January 27, 2009

January 27, 2009

January 27, 2009

January 27, 2009

January 26, 2009

January 26, 2009

January 26, 2009

January 26, 2009

January 23, 2009

Tom: so tell me about the new relationship!

Ellie: I have a spare boyfriend and a girlfriend now.

Tom: what is a spare boyfriend

Ellie: just like a regular one but additional

Sleek, cold, heavy stainless steel. I had been lusting after this toy by Njoy for a long time. So, when Pink Cherry offered me the chance to try out a Pure Wand, I was thrilled.

Like many high-end toy manufacturers, Njoy has put a lot of thought into attractive product and package design. The Pure Wand is gorgeous, shiny, and just a bit intimidating.  It comes in Njoy’s signature black box nestled in a bed of red satin. The box isn’t just pretty, it doubles as a very practical display and storage case.

Of course, the real question is always about the sensation and experience of using the toy. The Pure Wand gives you options. Either end can be inserted and enjoyed. It can also be used anally. The experience reminded me of my first time using a glass toy. Every sensayion was heightened. The cold was colder and the hard was much harder. I was stunned by just how much the Pure Wand was doing. It is designed as a G-spot toy and either end provides for great stimulation. I especially enjoyed the larger side for the fact that it gives a feeling of fullness but not a pokey sensation on the G-spot.

Because it is made of stainless steel, like all Njoy toys, it is completely sterilizeable and can be shared between partners with the proper cleaning. Overall, the Pure Wand is a work of art that can open up new types of pleasure in a variety of fascinating ways.

[FYI: You can get 20% off your order at PinkCherry right now by using discount code LOVE2009.]