Paper Cuts and Plastic

Distractions

2011-09-26T15:45:00.000-04:00

When I was in college, I was extremely active in extracurricular activities. Basically, I had two jobs. The main one was supposed to be getting all my school work done well and on time, but I spent a whole shitload of time leading student groups and writing a column for the school paper and performing in The Vagina Monologues and writing my blog and doing research assistantships and, you know, having a social life. I didn't sleep enough. My grades were pretty good, but they weren't stellar. I don't think I understood at the time what the opportunity costs were of these millions of activities.

Now I work at an awesome sex and BDSM shop. My boss is generous and clearly values me as an employee. My coworkers are great, and I've made lots of good friends here. I get to do buying for the store, and I spend lots of time working to make it better. I have agency and responsibility. As jobs go, it's pretty great.

But it's still retail. It's not my life's passion or magnum opus. It's a high energy service job with random lulls in between activity. While there are no customers in the store I can theoretically work on, say, this blog or my PhD applications or my insurance claims. However, I'll always have to drop whatever it is on a millisecond's notice if a customer walks in. This makes it hard to concentrate on outside projects during my work day, and I'm tired after my week of 40+ hours.

I understand now what it's like to do a job that takes up all your energy, one that distracts from any other job you might want to do. I only do laundry about every 3 or 4 months. My room is often messy. I mostly only read books on the subway, and I've been (very) slow at writing on here. It's been a long time since I performed or did anything which would let me call myself an activist. Do I cook or do the dishes? Nope.

I'm excited now, though, because I'm researching schools where I can get my PhD (in Cultural Studies or American Studies). The prospect of going into a rigorous program and getting to spend the bulk of my attention on something I'm passionate about, something I want to turn into a career, is now very appealing. I'm psyched to take hard classes with lots of reading, and to do big research projects on stuff that fascinates me.

At this point, I don't even want to do any extra curricular stuff. If I get to spend my work time on the work I actually want to do, my free time will actually be free. I'll get to rest, to have fun, and to recharge to keep my main work going. In undergraduate I was really just there to do the next thing and to learn about myself and do a lot of personal growth. The outside activity was good for that, but I wasn't ready for a career or a true work focus. Now I can hardly wait to get to do all those hours of work on something that excites and interests me.

Working full time at regular-joe jobs for a few years has given me that excitement. The relative boredom and energy drain of these jobs has indeed been a distraction, but it's helped me figure out what I want instead. For that, I'm extremely grateful.

That Whole God Thing

2011-09-13T21:22:00.000-04:00

I was raised Catholic, but not in the usual way. We went to a very alternative Catholic church in Massachusetts called Community of God’s Love when I was little. We didn’t use gendered pronouns in referring to God. (“God,” for instance, was “Creator.”) Women sometimes gave the sermons or even led the mass, we had a lot of queer congregation members, and the politics of the church were extremely liberal in general.

When we moved to California we found a slightly less radical church where I served as an altar girl and started studying for my Confirmation. When we got a new, more conservative priest who decided that girls could no longer serve at the altar, it was the last straw for my mother. She already felt that the Catholic church unfairly excluded women. If this church wasn’t going to welcome her daughters as full participants, then she wanted no more to do with it.

My whole family left the church when I was 11, and my mom now says she’s an atheist.

I know that at some point in my life I was enthusiastic about the idea of religion. I did, after all, hold up that Bible every week at Mass and carry the crucifix around the church for the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday.

Since we stopped going to church, though, and through my upbringing in secular coastal cities, I’ve grown very uncomfortable with the idea of the divine.

I don’t regret at all not being Catholic; I think it’s in many ways a screwed up political institution.* My grandfather has been giving me optimistic crucifixes for birthdays and Christmases for years, and I have no compunction in never wearing them. I do miss the presence of some spiritual community, though.

I feel very self conscious about spirituality. I’m drawn to it, particularly to the kinds that embrace women and sex, but I’m also very awkward about the idea of being too New Age or woo-woo or superstitious or whatever. Perhaps I’ve spent a lot of time around people who judged others for believing in much of anything that couldn’t be proven.

I’ve nonetheless had some very powerful experiences which make me believe in some kind of energetic connection that underlies everything and which we as beings can access. I want to write about those in more depth in future entries, but suffice it to say for now that I feel called to explore.

I’m not necessarily excited about the idea of deities, except as metaphors for particular kinds of divine energy, but there’s a lot I can learn. I’d like to consider this post a resolution to give myself permission to go there. I want to not be shy about the pull I feel towards the divine. So I’m coming out as a (novice) spiritual seeker. Here I am, and I’m going somewhere in that direction.

*The Church does a lot of good charitable things, but also a lot of messed up gender and politics things.

Friends Without Benefits

2011-09-10T12:13:00.000-04:00

I have a bad habit.

I find it much easier to meet new people through sex and dating than through friendship. Whenever I'm in a new city, the first people I develop new relationships with are people I bang. Sometimes those relationships turn into friendships later (or are just friends with benefits going forward) and that's great. But I have a much harder time pursuing and maintaining friendships without the hang-out motivator of sex.

This means I don't have all that many friends I don't sleep with. If you narrow it to friends I've never even made out with, not to mention people with whom I feel no sexual tension or chemistry, I'm pretty sure that's a number I can count on just one hand. Maybe two.

I would really like to have some of those friendships that aren't about sex at all. I think it's gotten even harder to find since I've been spending most (read: all) off my time in the kink/polyamorous/sex positive community. Sex is a persistent background, even if it's not something I'm having or planning to have with any given person.

Now, this isn't so bad. I have lots of wonderful friends. I just miss the kind of friendship where I could be really intimate with someone, be physically affectionate with them and spend lots of time with them and talk about everything, without having to constantly enforce a boundary that the friendship won't turn sexual. I’d like that boundary to feel a little more natural.

In a lot of the platonic friendships I have now, I feel like not having sex is a line I'm drawing and not something the other person would necessarily choose if I weren't. They might be okay with not fooling around, but they’d also be happy if we did.

I can't quite explain why that's an icky feeling. It's sort of like I'm constantly having to reject people I care about, like I'm constantly being asked for something I don't want to give. Even if the asking is a subtle or sub-conscious, I'm aware of it. I also sometimes start to feel like I'm not valuable except in my sexual attractiveness and skill, which is obviously not much fun.

I would love to have even just one or two friends who are here, in New York City, who are not attracted to me at all. Not one whit. And to whom I am not attracted in the slightest, either.

Perhaps I need to think of this the same way I’d think of dating. It seems normal to me to go on dates and do things one on one when I’m considering a romantic or sexual relationship with someone. I surely can do the same thing, make a point to spend alone time with someone I think I’d like, when I want a sex-free friendship. And maybe do it with someone outside this sex-focused bubble where I spend my time. I guess that’s a plan.

Coming Out Kinky

2011-09-08T12:29:00.000-04:00

Back in college when I was uber-involved in the queer student group, we used to have educational meetings around National Coming Out Day. One of the things we talked about what the Cass Identity Model of coming out, which described several stages in the process of coming out as gay.

The initial few stages are things like "identity confusion" and "identity tolerance," but what I'm interested in for this post is the second-to-last one, "Identity pride." Cass describes a phase when a gay person feels like they have to tell everybody about their newly realized orientation, where they divide the world into gay and straight people and mostly only feel comfortable with the other gay ones, where they might be a gay activist, where they surround themselves completely with the gay community. This is the last phase before "identity synthesis" in which one's sexual orientation is understood as just one of many aspect of self.

I think I’ve been in that uber-gay phase, except with kink. It’s really a similar process, I think, to come out as kinky as it is to come out as gay. They’re both marginalized sexualities which have potential legal and life-altering consequences. You can lose your job or your children for being kinky. You can be jailed for assault, even if it was consensual. It definitely can have social consequences. You can end up in therapy to “fix” your kinkiness. Parents don’t necessarily want to know about it.*

I’ve been practically cloistered in the kink community for the last year and a half. I work at a kinky sex shop. I live with kinky roommates. My boyfriend is kinky. My friends are kinky. I go to kinky parties and classes. My vacations are at kinky retreats. It’s been a little ridiculously consistent.

I think I’m starting to get over that stage of my coming out process. I did need it. I needed to learn about what I like and to feel okay with it. I needed to explore and I needed help in giving myself permission for that. I needed to meet people with whom I could play in this way and with whom I could talk about my kinks. I’m extremely thankful for the relationships that I’ve made in the kinky community, especially with my boyfriend and my roommates and coworkers.

But I’m ready for a little more variety. I have so many interests. I’m passionate about gender politics. I’m interested in spirituality. I’d like to do yoga, and I’m interested in health. I care about the environment. I love to write, and to read just about everything. I love to learn and study and be intellectual. I like to perform. These are all things I’ve neglected to one degree or another for the last year and a half.

Just sayin’ it’s time to branch out a little, and maybe write about it here!

*There are nuances to this argument and it’s an aside to my main point. There are of course differences between the social and legal impacts of kink and queer sexuality. But there are also lots of similarities.

A Serious Relationship

2011-09-06T12:20:00.000-04:00

I’ve been dating my boyfriend for almost a year now. (It’ll be a year in mid-October.)

If I’m honest, he’s part of the reason I haven’t been writing here. Not because he doesn’t support my blogging or writing in general. One of the things that he did initially that I liked was read what I’d written here and talk to me about it. It means something when a person takes an interest in what you have to say.

I haven’t been writing because I’ve felt weird talking about a budding relationship, especially one that was quickly becoming intimate and seemed like it had the potential to last me for a while. If I’m going to talk about my relationship with him, it’ll be with him and not to the internet.

Of course, this blog has been a lot about my love life. I’ve at least spent a significant portion of time writing about my thoughts on relationships, if not the ones I was actually having.

I still don’t want to write about my primary relationship, except perhaps to report things we’ve decided together or discoveries we’ve made. I can tell stories about what we’re doing, etc. I just don’t want to muse about it here the way I do about other things.

Suffice it to say I’m in a solid primary relationship with a boy who I love and who loves me. We’re polyamorous in the sense that we play with and date other people but do not (so far) have actual relationships other than the primary one. He’s kinky, he’s smart, he takes care of me and I take care of him. He listens when I talk and shares himself with me. We’re in similar life stages, and maybe even have similar goals for the future. (Although part of this stage is not being totally sure of those goals.) Things are good.

Back in November, I referred to him as Roy G. Biv after our pube-dying date. It’s a code name he made up, and I think it’s what I’ll use to refer to him here (if I do refer to him here). But I probably won’t do it that much.

Basix Dildo

2011-05-10T12:26:00.000-04:00

The folks at TheirToys.com were nice enough to ask me to review a product for their site, and sent me the Basix Rubber Works Suction Cup Dong. This cock is big, translucent, and purple. I've had it on my nightstand for a couple of weeks and it rivals the size of my bedside lamp, which is fun when I've got unexpected guests.

This dong, along with the rest of the Basix line, is made of rubber. That's not jelly rubber, so it doesn't have phthalates in it, but it wouldn't be a good pick for those of you with a latex allergy. It's also porous, so if you're going to share this between partners or are just generally concerned with cleanliness, I'd throw a condom on it before use. I personally prefer silicone dildos almost exclusively, but for the size and price of this baby the rubber is a reasonable compromise. It doesn't smell or taste bad, which is a plus.

As for orgasm-producing abilities, this toy is great if you're into size. I like having something to reach for when my Pure Wand isn't enough, so it's good to have around as an option. Because it's thick, it might be the kind of thing you want to work up to. I'll use a few fingers or a different dildo to start with, and definitely use lube.

One major quibble I have with this dildo is that it's not really strap-on harness compatible. My boyfriend can and might like to take something of this size up the butt, but I can't really strap it on because of both the size of the balls (big) and the suction cup at the base. I personally have no use for this suction cup, but if you're into humping the wall or the bathtub then you might like it.

Bottom line: it's a perfectly good dildo with a nice size and shape, but I'd prefer one made of silicone and that was strap-on compatible.

Things Change

2011-03-30T18:26:00.001-04:00

Things can change a lot in a few months.

Maybe it's just because I'm 23 and that's an age where life moves quickly and there's a lot of growth. Maybe I just personally invite that because I'm not satisfied with stagnancy or even really stillness. There will always be more to work on.

Anyway, because I haven't been writing here for all the reasons I mentioned in that last post, this blog no longer really reflects what's going on in my life. That's fine in its own way, since I've been actively deciding not to post, but it's also strange because I still link to it from social networking sites and dating sites and it's still a way I represent myself to the world at large. It's just not accurate anymore.

For instance, in one of the last posts I wrote about my love life, I was dating six people and feeling overwhelmed. The time constraints inhibited me from developing intimacy with any one of them. I was dissatisfied with this.

Now, I'm seeing primarily one man, the sixth one with whom I started going out in October. I called him Roy G. Biv in this entry and that seems as good a blog nickname for him as any. He's awesome and fun and attentive and right along with me on polyamory and I feel very close to and comfortable with him. It's a bit far from that last entry.

I'm still figuring out whether I can change my writing here to adapt to the ways my life and work have changed. There is something appealing about a more narrative structure, to try and tell the stories of what I'm up to. It's some fun, interesting, sexy stuff and might be worth sharing. I just need to check in with my lovers and with myself and figure out more how I feel about that. But there might just be a way.

In Public

2011-02-06T13:15:00.000-05:00

I haven't been writing here. Unlike my usual dry spells, it's not because I've been especially depressed or lacking in words. I've been doing pretty well and thinking and working a lot. It's not for lack of material or desire, I just haven't felt comfortable putting everything online.

I've been pretty personal in this blog, yes, but the things I've been working on lately have felt too private to share here. In the past, a lot of my work was academic and therefore the thoughts I shared were on world problems, feminism, sex work, psychology, relationship theories, etc. I might've had a personal stake in those things, but they were ultimately universal issues. These days it's not really like that.

I've been spending a lot of time delving into deep parts of myself. I'm doing some hard work on finding and loving and healing pieces of me that aren't well-lit or comfortable. Working through family dynamics and habits, figuring out how to form trusting relationships (and why that's hard for me), finding and examining strong fears and insecurities. It's vulnerable stuff, and much harder to write about.

Another reason to hold back is that a bunch of people I know in real life are now reading this blog. I can't just say stuff into the ether; it comes back to me in the flesh. It's easier to be anonymously vulnerable to an audience of strangers than it is to bare my soul to a person who will look me in the eye and ask me about it tomorrow. It also feels passive aggressive to write about things I wouldn't say to someone's face but which I know they'll read. I much prefer direct, conscientious communication.

The thing is, I really want to write. I suppose it doesn't have to be here, but this is the best forum I've got and I want to keep it alive. Writing is good to me, it's therapeutic, it stimulates my mind and emotions. I love to write. I love to be creative. I need that outlet.

I'm not sure exactly what to do about this. Maybe I could take the blog in a different direction. Maybe I just need to write more for myself, audience be damned. Maybe I should screw my courage to the sticking point and do a little soul baring. I've always believed in and talked about the subversive and transformational power of being genuine and sharing vulnerability, but it's different to act on it when I feel genuinely vulnerable. It's scarier.

We'll see. Either there will be a change in the wind here and a lot more writing, or there won't. We'll just see.

D/s

2011-01-04T12:57:00.000-05:00

I've been feeling dissatisfied lately with my play as a bottom. I thought for a while that it was because I keep having these short scenes at play parties that only tease me, getting me into a nice head space only to be over as soon as I arrive there. I still think that's part of it, but I've realized it's not the whole story.

When I was in San Francisco, I visited with the lover I met and spent lots of time with at Dark Odyssey Summer Camp. We spent most of the day just hanging out, and we fooled around for maybe twenty minutes. This was just as brief as the scenes that have been frustrating me so much, but for some reason I found it more satisfying.

The difference, I realized, is that rather than just straight up beatings without frills, the dynamic I have with this lover is much more D/s. The physical things we do together aren't even all that "kinky." It's mostly just sex stuff, with a little hitting here and there or he'll put his hand over my mouth or move me by the hair sometimes. What makes the difference, though, is that he'll talk the whole time and tell me what to do in a calm and expectant way, call me baby girl and get me to call him Sir, and tell me I'm a good girl when I do what he says.

I crave this. Playing with him, however briefly, made me realize that the power exchange is what's really been missing in my recent life. The dynamic I have with this particular guy is nice, but it doesn't have to be exactly that. I'd just like to be submissive in some capacity, rather than just bottoming for pain.

I want that feeling of giving over control. Beatings are good, but the real reason I like them is that they help bring my mind to a submissive place. I'd rather the pain be in a context of D/s than D/s kinda sorta be a part of things because there are beatings happening.

This desire is a little harder to realize than just wanting to be hit with things. So long as I know somebody has the skills and isn't a total creep, there aren't a lot of prerequisites to beat me. I feel pretty casual about it. D/s, on the other hand, requires that I trust someone enough to hand them not just physical but also emotional control. There's a more delicate balance of what excites me and what could trigger me. It requires more specific compatibility, since I like certain kinds of submission and not others. It's more complicated.

I'm going to see what I can do about this by both talking to the people I've been spending more time with, and trying to schedule some time with the play partners who I know can take me there. I'm quite happy with just about everything else going on in my relationships, so if I can get this one desire met then my life will be overall awesome sauce. It just takes some doing.

The Whole Happy New Year Thing

2011-01-03T19:31:00.000-05:00

So, I like holidays. I love winter holidays. I think it is more crucial than can probably be expressed for us all to feel some sense of camaraderie and celebration when it gets cold and the sun is gone. As someone who feels the affects of the season (literally, as in Seasonal Affective Disorder), I very, very much appreciate the winter holidays.

I don't really like that the new year starts in January, though.

Obviously I'm just one human and my opinion on these things isn't going to stop people from calling this the new year. But I can't be the only one who thinks that they had a better idea in the days of yore in some random parts of the globe when they celebrated a new year in April instead of January. You know, when the snow has melted and the sun has come back and animals are being born and plants are starting to spring out of the earth and grow new buds and everyone is cheerful to be outside again? Seems a lot more like a renewal to me.

I don't feel very renewed this week. There's nothing about the procession of days through the winter that makes me want to examine my life and make resolutions about things I'd like to change. It feels to me more like something to get through, a season for storing stuff to deal with once the sun comes out and I've got more energy.

This year, I had a really significant birthday. I even wrote about it here. As holidays go, none are more personal than birthdays, and mine this year was an opportunity to do just what I don't feel like right now: take a look at my life and spur some action towards the things I really wanted and needed.

All of which boils down to: I don't have New Year's resolutions. Maybe you'll see some from me in April, but most likely I'll be making them for myself, on a day that makes sense to me and has very little to do with huge snow storms, heavy clothing, and darkness at 5:00pm.

A Call to Men

2010-12-20T15:59:00.002-05:00

This pretty much speaks for itself. One observation: the audience is almost entirely women because this talk was at the TEDWomen conference. I think this is a vitally, vitally important message, but I do wonder how it's going to get to actual men when gender is so consistently considered only a women's issue.

I don't have a solution for this. I don't know how to get men to pay attention to this stuff because their privilege does allow them to ignore it. It just seems so important to involve them, not just to end violence against women but to free men, as he says, from their own versions of the Man Box.

Tony Porter's website, A Call to Men is very much worth checking out.

Better

2010-12-19T23:21:00.002-05:00

My mother calls me to tell me about the three-inch-wide, deep-to-the-bone gash she got falling down the stairs yesterday and the five staples now holding her arm together.

As the conversations ends she says on the phone “Well, your father…” and then trails off.

She pauses, then says “Well, he’s home, so I have to stop talking now” in the tone of voice that means she needs to go do something so she should get off the phone but what she really means is that she wants to say something about him that’s negative, that might hurt his feelings, that might let him know we all talk about it and it’s actually a problem, that it actually has consequences for the rest of us. She couldn’t do that, though, because he could hear her and he’d be upset. Which is a code word, because everyone gets upset and what he does is more than that.

“Has he been grumpy?” I ask, which is another code word. It’s also a yes or no question. That way she can give me information without tipping him off, clue me in so I know what’s happening, so I’m warned when I come home this week after months away, so I can call my little sister and hear if she’s okay. So I’ll know whether or not to tiptoe when I enter the house.

“Well, he’s got this surgery coming up on Monday, and that’s a nervous thing. And he’s been worrying about that, and then I had to go and have something,” by which she means the gash and the staples, “and it’s a lot of pressure. We have the Christmas tree, and that’s done—thankfully that got done beforehand.”

By all of which she means, “Yes.”

I hear this and I remember being young, maybe seven years old and my sister was four, and we were sitting in the living room of the house in Massachusetts and my parents were putting up a very big Christmas tree. We couldn’t go out of the room because we shouldn’t be unsupervised and more because we didn’t want to miss anything, we wanted to know what was going on, we didn’t want to overhear it from upstairs.

My mother said we could stay there as long as we were quiet as church mice. Every time I had to help Daddy with a Project, I remembered that phrase, and I knew that I should be a church mouse and that Sis was better at it, which was why he always chose her to hand him the screwdriver or hold the flashlight.

And we were very young and we were sitting in little chairs I think, although we could have been on the floor, but we were wedged right next to each other on the right side of the wide doorframe, and I remember being afraid, and I remember Daddy yelling at us if we made any noise at all or if we asked any questions.

He was using a wire to attach the tree to the wall near the ceiling because it was a crooked tree and it wouldn’t stand up otherwise, and this was difficult and it was a Project, and if we interrupted he wouldn’t be able to concentrate and we weren’t going to help only make things worse, so we had to be quiet.

I remember being quiet, that day. And I remember the fear of what would happen if I made a noise and the equal fear of what would happen if I left and couldn’t keep track of what was going on in that room. And I didn’t like the quiet because I wanted to help, to make the Project over, to make it all okay, to contribute what I had to offer, to make it better. But I was quiet, I did it, I stayed quiet.

“So he’s just been worried about this surgery, but he’s being better now. He is doing better now.”

“Okay,” I say, because better is better. I’m thinking about how this all feeds into it, how we don’t name what it is. How instead we say why it is. How we talk about it only in terms of the causes, of him being stressed or angry or anxious, never in terms of what he’s doing, never in details or actions, never in terms of what it all means to us. We never talk about the fear or the sadness or the anger, not directly. We only all know it’s there because we share it. It’s always implied.

“He scared the dog the other day, scared her all the way down into my office,” she says. The office that is four floors down from the dog bowl in their San Francisco hillside town house. “Supposedly he was just trying to give her dinner.”

Tenga Egg Review

2010-11-29T16:37:00.003-05:00

I got a Tenga Egg from Good Vibrations!

You might be asking yourself why I would choose a male masturbator as my first toy to review. You might be thinking that I do not have a bio cock (although I do have a few less-sensate ones in my drawer at home) and therefore might not be able to write a detailed review of this kind of product. You might then conclude that I've used it with one of my male partners, but you'd actually be wrong!

You see, there is an off-label use for this adorable, single-use masturbation sleeve. One that benefits me, and my clitoris, more directly.

I like to use a Hitachi Magic Wand as my go-to toy for masturbation. It stays plugged in and tucked down to the side of my bed at all times. I pull it out pretty much nightly for a little release before I go to sleep. It's good shit.

However, I've got a very (very) sensitive clit and while I like the penetrating vibes of the Hitachi, it's a little too strong to touch directly to my fine skin. I usually use it through a comforter or a folded piece of quilt so as to dull the sensation just a little bit.

This method, however, is a little cumbersome and not particularly sexy to look at. If I'm going to be Skype-sexing with someone, I want to look hot while I'm masturbating and still be able to get off.

Thus, the Egg! While I could take advantage of its super-stretchiness on whoever's whatever-sized dick, I instead tried flipping it inside out and putting it over the head of my Hitachi.

This had a few perks. The Egg was just thick enough that I could indeed use the Hitachi on my clit without any other intervening layers. I also got the "Stepper" version of the Egg, which has triangle-shaped nubbins all over the inside. With the included lube, these added a nice texture to my masturbation session.

Because the Eggs are single use, or at least single-person use without involving a condom, I'm not going to end up trying it with a dude. Maybe I'll get another one someday and give that a go. It did, however, work very well as a Hitachi cover and I'd therefore recommend it as a good accessory for those whose clitorises (clitori?) are sensitive like mine.

I Wanna Do Porn

2010-11-28T19:34:00.000-05:00

I have actually wanted to do porn for a long time.

I'm like a sexual energizer bunny. I like to and can have sex for long periods of time. I'm an exhibitionist. I love, love, love to be watched while I'm naked and especially while I'm having sex. I'm enough of a narcissist that I like to see myself in photos and on film. I've enjoyed the relatively tame but sexy photo shoots I've done so far.

I've considered being in porn, the good kind that I like, for years. Half the people I know from San Francisco when I worked at the peep show and porn-star-owned gallery have been in things like the The Crash Pad Series or NoFauxxx.com or Cocksexual.com or Kink.com or whatever. I know the right people to do it in a way I'd feel good about, and I think it'd be pretty fun.

I know that acting in porn isn't all it might seem. It's kind of athletic work, it's stop and go, you have to cheat out to the camera, etc. I think I might actually like that, though. I enjoy a performance. I like working hard, including working hard with my body and working hard in sex. It's likely enough that I at least want to try it.

But.

The thing about porn is that once you do it, it's out there forever. This is even more true since the dawn of the internet. Once my face and naked, fucking body are recorded in any medium, I can't ever take that back. I would of course use Paradox, my chosen name, but a face is a face. I could be recognized.

With stripping and with domming, I could do the work and then walk away. There wasn't much of a record of what I'd been doing. I wrote about it here, sure, and the barrier between my blog and my real name isn't THAT high. But nobody could take the product of that work home with them, or send it to someone else. There wasn't really proof I'd been doing it, unless somehow a client snuck a photo. (This never happened, to my knowledge.) Nobody would know unless I told them.

This fact has stopped me so far. I may at one point want to work with adolescents. One of the options I might like to pursue in sex education is teaching the teens who need it most how to navigate sexuality and relationships. I want to leave that open for myself. The stigma around porn could really hurt my chances.

On the other hand, when have I ever bowed to a stigma? When have I let other people's false ideas about an activity stop me from doing it in my own way? When, if I feel comfortable and happy about something I want, have I paused in pursuing it just because someone told me I shouldn't? It's rare, and I don't like giving in that way.

It's certainly a dilemma. Any input?

What Antidepressants Have Been Doing for Me

2010-11-26T17:20:00.001-05:00

I wrote a lot about my decision to start taking Wellbutrin in June, about my fears and hopes surrounding the drug and about the experiences that prompted me to finally seek chemical assistance. I haven't, though, followed up to tell you what it's been like for me to take that pill ever day, what kinds of effects it's had on my emotions and my life.

The easy answer is that it's been awesome and very helpful.

In more detail: taking the medication does in fact make it easier not to sink into the moods I used to fall into so quickly. I can still react to things, I'll still get upset if something is upsetting, but it passes much more quickly. I react, I feel, and then I get over it. Before the meds, a relatively small thing could send me into a funk for days. When a few bad things happened in a row, that was a depressive episode waiting to happen. That feeling of looming despair is almost gone.

I've also only had one migraine since starting these pills. That is remarkable. For a while there, I was getting one every month.

My migraines are incredibly debilitating; I get blind spots, flashing lights, numbness in one or more of my limbs and sometimes my face, complete disorientation, inability to come up with words, splitting headache, dizziness, exhaustion, sensitivity to light and sound, and nausea. I can't work or do much of anything for the first four hours of a migraine, and am sometimes slowed down for days afterwards. So yeah, I'm happy to be having fewer of those.

The pills have also definitely been helping my ADHD. I didn't notice this as much through direct ability to focus better, which is sort of hard to track, but I noticed its lack when I missed a few pills the other week. I forgot, like, four things I was supposed to do for my boss and couldn't concentrate for shit. That's been better now that I'm on top of my meds again.

I've also had no side effects, so altogether I'm a happy camper. It's hard to believe it's taken me so long to take the step, but I know I did it at the right time, in my own time. I can't really ask for more than that.

Fun Pubes

2010-11-24T00:18:00.010-05:00

Do I really need to comment much?

I had a really fun evening with a newish boy who happened to have some "Fun Betty" dye and a delightful sense of humor. He also dyed his own hair blue, pink, and green. Our new code names are Roy G. Biv and Cranberry Muffin.

I'm very pleased with my newly matching carpet and drapes. Very.

P. S. The dye includes bleach, and you don't put it anywhere near your labia, just on the upper triangle of hair that shows when your legs are closed. I wouldn't be endorsing a sad-vulva product. Just don't put bleach on your girly bits, okay?

The Privilege of Parental Love

2010-11-16T21:43:00.001-05:00

Allison Moon wrote a great post about a new kind of privilege she realized she carries.

Growing up I never had to wonder if my parents loved me. I never doubted they respected me or my choices. I never felt abandoned or ignored or dismissed. My folks have had to deal with a lot of information in their parenting lives. I’ve come out as bisexual, then lesbian, then queer, then polyamorous, then partnered to a queer, poly, cis-man. I think they stopped paying too much attention after “queer.”

...Listening to the speeches at the [annual LA Gay & Lesbian Center Gala], I became acutely aware of another privilege: parental love. Parental love means that I never had to apologize to my family for who I was and who I wanted to be. Parental love meant that I was only girl in my catholic school to wear pants, with my mom’s enthusiastic blessing. It meant that when I told them I wanted to quit my job to write a novel, they told me what a great writer I was and how proud they were of me. I means that they still send some of my blog posts to their friends to brag about me, even though a lot of my choices aren’t exactly easy for them to read about. It means that no matter where I am in the world, and what kind of life I lead, I can always, always go home to my parents if I need to.

If there's a single kind of privilege that I feel more definitely than any other, it's this. So many people I've known, including some of the closest friends and lovers I've had, did not have any kind of support from their parents. They had to make their way alone, without any kind of financial or emotional safety net from their families of origin. I've always had that net.

I've got a kind of certainty in my actions that I know leads to my success in many ways. I can approach jobs or relationships with the attitude that I will always be okay. I know that my parents will be there to catch me no matter what happens.

This saves me from an air of desperation that I know can undermine people in so many ways. I come off as confident and capable, which I know is attractive. I've been given a lot--jobs, good grades, forgiveness--as a result. Hell, probably the biggest reason I got out of my abusive high school relationship before it turned physical was that he couldn't succeed in undermining my relationship with my parents. They were too loving and accepting and too much a voice of reason against his attempts at control.

I think this privilege of parental love affects me even more meaningfully than the fact that my parents are wealthy. It wouldn't matter much what their net worth was if they didn't use any of it to support me. I've known plenty of people from families richer than mine who enjoyed less of the resulting privilege because their parents were unsupportive assholes.

This kind of privilege is emotionally fraught. It's even more awkward to talk about my supportive parents with folks whose families aren't like that than it is to talk about having money with someone who grew up poor. I guess, ultimately, emotional wealth does carry more weight than monetary wealth. I'm just glad Allison pointed it out, because I think the most important thing with privilege is to be aware of it and to use it for the greater good. Now maybe I can find ways to do that.

Poly Times Six

2010-11-15T19:35:00.000-05:00

Another reason I've been a naughty blogger lately is that I've been going on dates (I could say "dating" but dear god, people read a lot into that) with six people. Yes, six. I see them all regularly. And I like all of them. This doesn't leave me with a lot of free time.

The thing is, see, six really is a lot of people. Even for me. I've been poly and single for years now, but usually I level out around two or three regular lovers. I've been having a great time and enjoying the company and connections, but in the last couple of weeks I've suddenly felt a bit dissatisfied.

The problem with seeing so many people is that it doesn't leave me with a lot of time for any particular one. It's hard to develop deeper intimacy with someone when I only see them at most once a week. And it's hard to see someone more than once a week when I've got five other people I need to keep up with. As fun as my relationships are, and as much as I do really like all the people I'm seeing, my schedule keeps things superficial.

What I didn't realize until a couple of weeks ago was that, as much as I had theoretically been wanting a more serious relationship for a long time, I hadn't really been ready for one. For the last several years, I've been dealing with huge transitions: graduating college, living on my own for the first time, moving across the country, etc. I was also in a very emotionally complicated relationship and I hadn't realized how little energy that left me for anyone else.

For most of the past year, I felt very much in need. I needed physical comfort from sex and beatings and cuddles, a safe place to go that wasn't my apartment, someone to feed and take care of me while I was caring for my roommate, somebody to advise me on how to be an adult, emotional support while I dealt with the stress and changes. I was a big bundle of longing and I didn't have that much to give.

This is not a very good place from which to approach a relationship. Outsourcing those needs to several people, spreading out the load and doing a lot of work on my self by myself, worked really well when I felt this way. It kept me from feeling lonely while giving me the space I needed to figure out my own shit.

Now that I've settled into my adult life, live in a comfortable and safe place, and have "broken up" with my old roommate, I'm suddenly feeling more self-sufficient. I actually feel pretty happy, and like I've got the time and energy to focus on someone else and to take the risk of letting myself truly be seen. I'd like to explore the deeper intimacy that I haven't experienced since I was with my ex two years ago.

Of course, I can't just say "Okay, I'm ready for a relationship now!" and then magically I'm in one. But I am carefully setting a new intention and sharing my new desires with my partners. The time limitations are still tricky, but at least with this new intention I'll be able to base the amount of time I spend with a particular person on the extent to which we're developing deeper intimacy.

This all amounts to another transition, but with this at least I feel prepared and deliberate. And I'm excited about the future and the possibilities.

Autumn, and Changes to go with the Season

2010-11-10T10:43:00.000-05:00

Woo boy, it has been quite a month.

Things for me have been changing so quickly it's a little hard to keep up with myself. I mentioned moving in my last post, but didn't even scratch the surface of what that's meant for me. Being in a new place has given me not only new roommates but also new goals for my immediate future and desires in my relationships.

I moved to New York City just over a year ago to live with one of my best friends, a woman with whom I've had a long and complicated relationship. (I've only alluded to it here). Over the five years we've known each other, we've had sex a couple of times, we've stopped being friends for six months, we've each fallen in love with and then been rejected by the other, I've been more livid with her than I'd been with anyone in years, and we've been at times inseparable. She's someone I deeply care about, but she's also a person who is very hard to love. She invites chaos into her life, and supporting her through that treads dangerously close to enabling.

Finally moving out of our apartment felt like a break up; while our relationship hasn't been sexual since we've lived together, I've realized it was essentially romantic. I was committed to her, and to a degree of taking care of her. In describing the situation to my friends and lovers, I've sounded like a chick lit divorce book. "The reasons we were together just aren't there anymore, and even though we care for each other, we've got too much baggage to work through."

I've made a very serious effort to be compassionate and supportive with her through my departure. I want to stay friends now that we're apart, but it's been a big transition. I suspect it's been hard for both of us.

I'm also miles happier in my new place and with my roommates than I've been at home for a very long time. It was difficult for me to feel safe or serene in the apartment I just left. (Example of why: A friend of my roommate's who was there nearly all the time cut her with broken glass and stole $500 from me.) It's tough for me to feel comfortable in my parents' house. And a college dorm is only partly a home. This, I think, is the first time I've felt truly comfortable in my space, like I belong there and it belongs to me.

It's huge. Without feeling stressed at home and drained by a dysfunctional relationship, I've got so much more emotional energy. Now I can devote myself to my own growth, to deepening my relationships (which I'll write more about in my next post), and to thinking about and planning what I'm doing with this here life of mine. And of course to writing here, which I'm going to try and do more of now that I'm settled.

Moving

2010-10-08T10:02:00.000-04:00

This is a very brief post to note that, in addition to my recently very busy social life, I'm moving across town and therefore spending every waking minute either packing, making a subway run up to the new place with full suitcases, cleaning one or the other of the apartments, or trying to get some sleep.

Which is why I haven't posted here in a bit. I've got lots to write about, many thoughts about things that are happening in my life and the world at large, but hardly a free second in which to actually sit and write them.

When I'm done moving (give it another week, maybe?) expect a couple of fun sex toy review posts, some thoughts on Dark Odyssey, new insights on sacred spirituality, discussions of roommate boundaries and personal responsibility, and maybe an update or two on my kink life.

In other news, my cat is standing on the bit of the toilet seat behind me while I'm peeing. Cats are weird.

Poly and Single

2010-09-23T22:24:00.001-04:00

Tristan Taormino wrote about "solo polyamory" in her book Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships. She describes solo polyamorists as those who are "dedicated to polyamory but...choose not to have a primary partner." She writes that they're a group of people who intentionally deviate from the cultural expectation that "everyone wants to be and should be part of a couple." (Pg. 87)

Looking from the outside at my life and how I spend my time, it could seem like I'm a solo polyamorist. I'm currently dating five people (if we don't count the folks who live far away and who I see when we're in the same time zone) and none of them are primary partners. There are a couple of people I've been seeing for a few months, one who I've known for a bit but just started dating, and a couple who are new. I'm different degrees of serious with all of them, but there's nothing I'd put into the "committed" category. I spend a lot of time on my job and on learning things for myself, experimenting. I live alone. I'm financially independent.

I think, in fact, that when I say I'm polyamorous a lot of people assume that means I'm not looking for a relationship. It's kind of a rare thing to find someone who's polyamorous and single. There are far more halves-of-couples and determined bachelors (of all genders). Not as many folks are single in the "more traditional" sense of not being in a partnership and looking for one.

But that's what I am: poly and single. I'm not in a committed relationship, not in a couple, but I want to be. I want a primary partner. It is, in fact, near the top of my priority list. I came to this polyamory thing on my own, not as part of my journey with anyone specific, and I'm looking for someone to share it with.

That's not to say that I'm trying to force every relationship into a primary space. I strongly believe in letting things develop organically and letting every relationship grow into a place that feels comfortable. That's one of the major benefits of polyamory: I can have different relationships at different levels and it's all okay. I am hoping, though, that one of my relationships turns more serious, and I'm ready to nurture anything that goes in that direction. I want to fall in love.

I think these desires give more depth to my meaning of the word "single." When I have the option of saying I'm a solo polyamorist and instead choose to say I'm single, it's more meaningful. I'm not just saying "I'm not in a relationship with anyone right now," I'm saying "I'm looking for a serious relationship along with the other less serious relationships I already have." Which is different. That's all.

Why I'll Never Be an Adult

2010-09-13T12:09:00.002-04:00

I know this webcomic by blogger Allie has been making the rounds, since it's so applicable to just about everyone I know. (At least those who are nearish to my age or in my generation as a whole.)

But I wanted to mention it again, because it's just so awesome. This graph

largely explains the weird, large gaps in posting here. I mean, it's depression-related. But this cycle is something that I definitely feel. I'd love to post every day. I'd love to do my laundry every week or two weeks so I don't get the bajillion-pound pile that's now sitting in my room and staring at me as it waits to be carried to the laundromat. I'd love to remember to check in with all my close friends who are near and far on a frequent-enough basis. I'd like to clean ALL the things.

I wonder if everybody has some set of basic chores or interesting tasks that are beyond them to do. I know that most people I've talked to seem to. And from the response to the full webcomic, it seems the internet is full of folks who do. What about you?

Play Piercing

2010-09-12T14:26:00.004-04:00

When I was 18, or maybe 19, I went to a house party put on by San Francisco Sex Information. I had just figured out that I wanted to be involved with sex education and I was doing everything I could to meet people who worked with sex in a serious way. When my contact invited me to the party to talk about how I could help at the hotline, it seemed like a perfect opportunity.

Predictably, this party was filled with sex positive, polyamorous-or-close, kinky types. It was a group of people firmly entrenched in the community that today I'm a part of but was then just finding for the first time. I did what I like to do at house parties, flitting from one conversation and new acquaintance to the next. It was so novel to be around people who had a vested interest in sexuality.

Novel, and a little shocking. Someone pulled out an impact toy at one point that was shaped like a metal ruler, but thicker. There were a bunch of people passing it around and trying it out on themselves and each other, talking about how thuddy it was, versus stingy like a regular ruler. That was the first time I encountered those terms. There was a computer in the living room, and the screen saver showed photos of women in various stages of bondage and torture. I was sitting next to a woman and her play partner when they started talking about knife play and prostitution role playing. As cool and collected as I wanted to seem, I'm pretty sure my eyes were as big as saucers.

At that point, I was only theoretically interested in BDSM. I knew I had fantasies of being tied up, and I knew I liked spanking. That was about it. I had an open relationship with my boyfriend, but neither of us had yet dated anyone else. I'd never slept with a woman, though I knew I wanted to. I'd met kinky people, but my impression of them had largely been related to the fact that they were much older men leching in my general direction. I was pretty shy about it all.

I was telling a story to one of my new acquaintances (I don't remember who) about how I'd worked at the Renaissance Faire on my 18th birthday and a friend, to accentuate how popular this made me, gave me a pin to wear that said "Legal" on it. My new, kinky, poly party friend said "I bet you'd look great wearing just that pin and nothing else."

I was taken aback by this. The memory is fuzzy, but I might've had to ask him to explain what he meant, that the pin would be piercing my skin. I'd told him earlier in conversation that I was possibly interested in BDSM but hadn't explored much. I know he was trying to get a rise out of me. I said something along the lines of "Oh, I don't know about that," and tucked the idea away on my list of Really Kinky Shit that was probably only for special, experienced, and rare Heavy Players.

Fast forward to the other night, September in New York City. I did my first play piercing scene in the basement of the local BDSM club, tied topless to a bondage table and ignoring the people standing around to watch. Today I'm feeling the itch as the puncture marks from the needles and staples heal and I'm enjoying the bruises on other parts of my body from the rest of the play that we did.

It's funny how far we can come in the space of five years.

This Week In Priceless Online Dating Messages

2010-08-30T12:58:00.005-04:00

To contextualize this note, you should all know that I'm 6'1 and say so on my OkCupid profile. This provokes, occasionally, some interesting responses. For instance:

so sorry if this question is a little forward and this is totally not a pass at you (though i do find you very attractive) but have you ever had sex with a man who was shorter than you? say my height? (5'8")

My reply?

"no"

Which is actually a lie, but can you blame me? It was just too easy. And it wasn't a pass at me after all, right? *snort*

Self Taught?

2010-08-26T23:26:00.001-04:00

Often the easiest way to figure out what you like sexually is to experiment on your own and figure it out. The first thing I tell anybody to do who's having trouble reaching orgasm or worried about having sex is to masturbate. A lot. That way they'll have some familiarity with their own bodies and know how they like to be touched before they have to interact with a partner. It's hard to tell someone what you want when you don't know yourself.

This is basic advice. It applies to lots of things. Self knowledge is power.

I'm wondering, though, how it applies to kink.

For years one of the things that kept me from dipping my toe into deeper kinky waters was that I didn't know where my pain tolerances where and which activities I would like. It felt weird to explore these things with a stranger, and I wasn't seeing any kinky people regularly enough to know them well. I needed a partner with whom I was comfortable enough to be inexperienced, someone who would help me figure it all out without being judgmental or expecting me to know more than I did.

I've found a few people to play with now, but I still wish I knew more about my personal preferences and what my body can take. I'm discovering with my partners that I like pain a lot more than I anticipated I would. I still haven't figured out, though, which types are my favorite and which body parts can take more and less and there are many things I still haven't tried. I've got lots to learn, basically.

Normally, I'd just try to figure it out on my own. I'd play with myself. But it feels really weird when what I want to explore is pain.

So much of what's appealing to me about BDSM has to do with the DS part. (Dominance and submission.) I like the physical sadomasochism for sure, but it's inextricably tied in my head to a dynamic of domination. Even if there's no real role playing going on in a scene, in my head I'm thinking "I'm taking this pain to please my partner" or I'm simply imagining that they're in control even if that dynamic isn't especially there. It's a huge part of the turn on for me.

I don't think I can get very close to that when I'm by myself. I can of course fantasize, just as I would when masturbating. But it's going to take a good amount of effort and even technique to effectively hurt myself, especially if I'm trying to experiment with something new like caning or I dunno, rubber band torture on my feet or god knows what. That's going to make it hard to concentrate on a fantasy. And I'm not sure I'd have the same reactions to pain when it's just pain than when it's part of a scene and in the context of a certain relationship.

I'll probably still do some experimenting on my own. Hell, I sit at work all day and idly play with the toys we sell. We keep evil sticks on the counter and I'm constantly fiddling with them on my legs. I do enjoy the pain on its own to an extent. I can totally do that kind of thing in private in a more deliberate way.

It is a weird Catch-22, though. I wonder if other people have had this issue. Comments?