Cosmocking: September '10!

I'm baaaack! And Cosmo, well, Cosmo never left us! Blue cover! Jessica Alba! "Untamed Va-jay-jays" in very large font, I seriously can't believe they sell this thing at supermarkets! Also "GUY SEX," although technically they are only referring to guy-girl sex! Because Cosmo wants to be shocking and modern and stuff, but only for, you know, normal people!

A moment to talk about Spanx. Every issue of Cosmo mentions this stuff. In this one, they're taking the unbelievably depressing step of revealing that Jessica Alba wears Spanx, because just because you're Jessica Fucking Alba doesn't mean your body's good enough. What are Spanx? They're body shapers: hideous underwear designed to compress and conceal your problem areas. And Cosmo would like us to believe that we all should (actually, they usually talk with the assumption that we all do) wear Spanx at all times. Because we are all broken and we must all be fixed. Because sexy is something that you are, not something you do. Because wearing clothes that you can't fuck in--sometimes that you can't even go potty in--is necessary to be fuckable. Because you are sexiest when you look least like yourself. Because the idea that your raw glistening lusty humanity is the sexiest fucking thing about you would seriously endanger the hundred-dollar-hideous-underwear industry.

Even if you feel like you're not ready for marriage this minute, it's crucial at least to discuss the prospect of exchanging rings by the 18-month mark of a relationship [...] and then follow it up with a check-in every year to make sure that you both still see it happening.
Even if you don't want to get married, make sure he wants to get married. Because, really, you want to get married. Cosmo knows. Cosmo even has a timeline all planned out for you. Come on already and give Cosmo some grandchildren.

[on TV shows you should or shouldn't watch with him]
Man vs. Wild - Seeing the host gut a camel is badass, but hearing a girl whine about how disgusting it is ruins it.
It's not disgusting. It's fascinating, and ultimately this kind of carnage is where all meat comes from. I eat meat, so naturally I don't really mind... OH GOD WHERE DID MY VAGINA GO.

Mythbusters
Oh you did not just tell me not to watch "Mythbusters." We aren't friends anymore, Cosmo. (Actually, last time Rowdy was over, we watched "Mythbusters." The conclusion we reached: Kari yes, Grant probably, Tori yes, Adam yes, Jamie no. Not because Jamie isn't sexy, but because he has such hardcore kinks that he can't even play with anyone who isn't super experienced and battle-hardened. He'd completely use me up in thirty seconds.)

A Stanford University study revealed that the area of the brain associated with reward and addiction is more active in men than in women when playing video games. Dud. But what's surprising is that games that involve defending a place, like Halo, had the most powerful effect. Since men are instinctively territorial, fending off invaders is like crack for their inner Neanderthal.
I'd go "people aren't descended from Neanderthals!", but apparently people of Eurasian descent kind of are, so never mind. (I'd go "people aren't currently Neanderthals!", but ugh, we could be here all day.) Instead I'll just point out that Halo isn't a "defending a place" game; it's mostly about advancing through enemy territory. Maybe they were playing Capture The Flag instead of campaign mode. Neanderthals do love Capture The Flag.

Oh never fucking mind, they didn't actually play Halo at all. Although the researchers did themselves declare that "It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who historically are the conquerors and tyrants of our species—they’re the males.", so, you know, that's the only logical conclusion from determining who likes to play little clicky Flash games more.

They didn't compare a non-territory-control game like a platform puzzle or whatever, and they don't mention controlling for how much previous gaming experience the subjects had, and they don't seem to consider that men might feel more rewarded because they're better at the game rather than vice versa. But hey, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that 22 subjects and one clicky Flash game proves that the reason men were historically dominant is that they naturally deserved it, case closed.

[A guy goes on a three-day "juice cleanse" fast to empathize with the way his girlfriend diets.]
That's really the worst part of the cleanse. It's not the absence of food--though that part is fucking terrible--it's the interruption it causes in every aspect of your life. Anytime someone said something to me, I found myself taking a long-ass time to process it and respond.
[...]I lost 8 pounds in three days. But as soon as I finished, I pigged out and gained it all back.
I won't be trying another detox but I am glad I did it. It's taught me to appreciate what my girlfriend goes through. And from now on, I won't just tell her she's pretty. I'll tell her she's damn hot, because she is, and the stuff she goes through to feel good and healthy is hard.
You won't tell her, hey, don't go on diets so extreme you can't think normally, because that shit clearly isn't good for your health? "Oh honey, I found out that your behavior is really hurting you, and that makes me appreciate it so much more!"

(Hey! Cosmo printed "fuck"! Usually they're squeamish about that one.)

Now comes the fashion section, which I generally skim, but I couldn't help noticing that they're pushing $28 pantyhose. Am I the only one who finds pantyhose to be basically a single-use item? I get $5 hose because I just destroy it. I dunno, maybe the $28 variety is more durable, but I'd be really annoyed if I paid that and then it ripped in five minutes like they always do.

Aw man, the first sex article is just reprints from one of their sex-position books given different names. The same positions that they also repeated unaltered for their iPhone app. Cosmo's gotten a whole lotta mileage out of "The Stairway Sizzler."

When he's angry and you need to defuse a fight: place your hand on top of his shoulder, keeping your elbow straight.
Maybe this is paranoia, and I know they're talking about people who are intimate and who are just having a regular argument, but I wouldn't touch someone who was revving up to a fight. Laying hands on is an excellent way to set off a brewing explosion, or to escalate someone from verbal to physical. (Hopefully not abusively physical, but at least shoving your hand away and taking on a threatening stance while making the argument much more intense and emotional.) It's condescending to touch someone who's reasonably upset, and it's dangerous to touch someone who's unreasonably upset.

"It may make things hotter for her when she breaks out a bunch of devices or other sex toys, but if a girl does it too often, it makes me look down and think there's something wrong with my own equipment."
I'm sorry, honey, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings by implying that your penis doesn't vibrate. There, there. And I definitely didn't mean to put my sexual pleasure over your delicate, nay, diaphanous little ego.

Q: I've never been that turned on by breast stimulation. How can I get more pleasure?
Touch the places that do turn you on. (Needless to say, Cosmo just goes through a bunch of different ways she could stimulate her breasts, because accepting your body as it is--that way lies madness.)

[pickup line for women] "My bracelet fell off. Can you clasp it for me?"
"Why sure... hey... how exactly did you put this on at home?"

Make eye contact with a hot guy--it activates the brain's reward center. [...] Gazing at a photo of your significant other activates the part of your brain associated with intense reward.
Anything that feels good "activates the brain's reward center." In fact, activation of the brain's reward center is the experience of feeling good. It's a complete truism. I ate some chicken soup today and activated my brain's reward center, then scratched an itch and activated my brain's reward center, then watched this video (NWS) and activated my brain's reward center.

Your pain threshold is at its highest from 3 to 5 p.m., so it's an ideal time for an overdue pedicure.
A) Are pedicures supposed to hurt? I've never had one, but I thought they just prettied up your toenails and stuff. I didn't realize they required pain tolerance.

B) Whoever made that determination clearly didn't take 3 AM into account.

[On fixes for minor medical problems] Your heels hurt from wearing flats.
Whoa. I never even considered this possibility. I guess the Cosmo Girl is supposed to be so acclimated to heels that her tendons have actually shortened and she can no longer comfortably walk like a normal person? Whoa. That certainly brings harsh new meaning to the phrase "living Barbie."

Our walk tends to be stiffest when we ovulate. Fisher theorizes that our predecessors wanted to avoid continual pregnancy, so they would intuitively rein in their hips in an attempt to discourage advances.
Yeah, we wouldn't experience a dip in actual sex drive that would cause us to decide not to have sex, we just would make ourselves very subtly less sexy. Because, see above digression on Spanx, sex isn't a thing women do, it's a thing women look like. You wiggle your hips or not and the rest is all out of your hands.

Anyway, "continual" pregnancy is avoided mostly through lactational amenorrhea in societies without birth control.

I never planned to marry my stepbrother. Who does? But I couldn't imagine wanting anyone but Sam.
Oh no, Cosmo... oh no no no no.

Also, the "I couldn't imagine wanting anyone but you," rhetoric, while possibly true here because she doesn't have any other siblings, strikes me as sort of creepy. I'd say something more like "I want you a whole lot," because even if I were monogamous, I can still imagine being monogamous with someone else. I mean, there's a lot of dudes out there and some of them are really awesome, you know? Doesn't mean I'd necessarily cheat, just that I'm... realistic.

A Softer World is realistic too, and on some level I find that more romantic, not less.

KEYBOARD!

I have a keyboard I have a keyboard I have a keyboard. Oh QWERTY you feel so good under my fingers. Home row, I'm home. After more than a month of blogging on an iPod, I cracked and got a cheapie netbook, and now I'm typing in blazing Actual-Typing-O-Vision instead of painfully picking out each letter like a butterfly in some kind of goddamn diving bell.

Unfortunately, I also have to work a double-back shift in the Emergency Pit in less than an hour, so I don't have time to really explore what's possible with a blog when you can fucking type, but I'm looking forward to getting around to everything I'd backlogged, from two full Cosmockings to some more serious essay-style posts and probably some good dirty stories too.

For the moment, I leave you with this vignette:

Rowdy and Sprite are fucking while I'm ordering dinner from Foodler.
Me: Do you guys want Thai food?
Rowdy: [thrust, thrust] Yeah, get me some phad thai.
Me: With the shrimp?
Rowdy: [thrust, thrust] Uh huh.
Me: Sprite, do you want anything?
Sprite: No thanks, I'm full.
Rowdy and me: [helpless laughter]

Sleeping Alone.

I slept alone last night. I didn't have to.

Rowdy came over and we hung out and cuddled and did the monkey thing and watched "Mythbusters" and did some things monkeys never even thought of. Then he headed back to his place to meet Sprite, and invited me along. I said no. I stayed home and read "Into the Wild" (conclusion: Chris McCandless was crazypants, but I really want to go hiking) and sprawled out over the whole bed and slept well and late.

I like sleeping with people, in both senses, but I also like having my own space. I've been booking myself densely recently, with almost every night either work or a social/sexual commitment, and just quietly sitting at home feels like a luxury. Not one I'd want all the time (I've had enough of that), but one I sometimes need. Sleeping with Rowdy and Sprite is wonderful and sexy and warmfuzzy, but sleeping alone makes me feel like I've really rested.

It's possible that my philosophical solitude could be replicated via a king size bed. Three people in a full is cute and cuddly and all, but it does kinda mean you've got someone's elbow in your face all night.

Good clean fun.

When guys picture sex with two women, they probably imagine a lot of what happened last night:

-Sprite and me, lying side by side on the bed masturbating as Rowdy watched and took pictures. (You can't see, sorry. Sprite and Rowdy are not quite as freely exhibitionistic as I am.)

-Rowdy fucking Sprite while fingering me, and fucking me while fingering her, and her fingering him while he fucked me, and vice versa, and every conceivable other confguration. Including him fingering me while fucking me. That was new and sort of amazing.

-Rowdy and I making an, er, Eiffel tower over Sprite, and Spirte and me making a slightly diffrent one over him.

-Me working all five fingers into Sprite--an experience that left me amazed at the sheer strength of her vagina, which seemed more likely to hurt my hand than vice versa. Vaginas are awesome.

But I don't know if they picture all the three-way cuddling and talking and joking that goes on. Things that might not be on your Threesome Bucket List:

-An a capella rendition of Green Day's "Time Of Your Life.

-Pillsbury Doughboy impressions.

-Me, just after fucking Sprite and bending down to kiss her: "That was amazing, baby. No homo."

-Just as we were drifting of to sleep in a big pile and a warm fuzzy haze, a wayyyyy too extensive discussion of everyone's pooping habits.

-Me in the bed with Rowdy and Sprite as they fucked, about 98% asleep and feeling... okay with it. I was neither impelled to engage with them nor ignore them, but just to let it happen and feel happy and calm about it. It's a wonderful and funny thing to be 6 inches away while two people you're attracted to are having sex, and feel neither awkward nor jealous nor really aroused, but cosy.

Ultimate Pleasure.

Last night I masturbated to orgasm while receiving a backrub.

I have the best possible life.

The power of "Don't Like."

I don't like being touched on the clitoris. I don't like being spanked hard. I don't like being blindfolded. And my attitudes toward anal play and heavy bondage are guarded and tentative. (Hole-y is really just a vagina slut.)

I've always been a bit ashamed of these liabilities, feeling that along with my limited pain tolerance and tendency to fatigue, they make me a suboptimal fuck. A real sex kitten would like everything, right? No holes barred. And if she doesn't precisely like an act, she should at least be "good, giving, and game" enough to do it anyway. (I like a lot of what Dan Savage writes, but "GGG" annoys the piss out of me with its new-age-frat-boy "if you were really sex-positive you wouldn't have all these pesky limits!" logic.") So I've tried, on some unfortunate occasions, to downplay my limits and do it all anyway.

The result was some really shitty sex. My partners weren't idiots or rapists; when I was doing something I didn't like they picked up on it and they didn't enjoy it. When you get down to it, not many guys want to touch a girl's clit just because it's there; they want to touch it to give her pleasure and experience her reaction. So letting a guy touch my clit because I didn't want to be difficult, then gritting my teeth at the discomfort, wasn't really doing either of us any favors.

Food analogy time: telling someone you'd like to have "sex" is about as helpful as asking them to cook you "food." And then getting angry--or worse, choking it down in visible misery--when they serve you a steak and you're a vegetarian. No, a vegetarian isn't the optimal trouble-free diner, but you could have had a delicious tofusteak or whatever the hell vegetarians eat if you'd gone ahead and presented your "trouble" upfront.

Sharing your limits may feel like a buzzkill, but not sharing your limits is a recipe for disaster. Limits can actually make for great sex--this may sound like low standards, but just knowing that a guy won't do anything I dislike is a surprisingly good and powerful feeling. It's all dessert and no veggies. Sex without doing X really means that you'll be doing Y and Z all night, and OH FUCK are Y and Z so fucking good.



(Note: I can't count the number of times I've had the following conversation with a guy:
"So, what are your limits? Anything I should steer clear of?"
"Nope, I'm not real complicated, I just like everything."
"So can I put my finger in your ass?"
"NOOOOO!")

Cramp.

I'm on my hands and knees, getting fucked. It's going great, even by my exacting standards--I've spent probably the last fifteen minutes riding between plateaus of "this is so good I don't even want to spoil it by coming" and peaks of "wait, yes I do." My friend is fucking me hard and deep and a little rough--earlier in the night we did some really sick nasty play and even though now we're just fucking regular, some of the erotic charge of the play is still with us.

Right now I'm at one of those peaks, or maybe a plateau of peaks. I'm just coming and coming. I'm screaming, moaning, sobbing, making these deep guttural noises that are probably intensely embarassing but I'm miles past caring. I don't even feel the fucking in my pussy anymore-it's my whole body that's getting fucked, his cock setting off decious little explosions way deep in my guts. I just keep coming and it's better than anything.

Then my right calf muscle cramps. Not mildly. It spasms into a rock-hard locked-shut knot and I can't move my leg and it's call-an-ambulance painful. Since I'm already in a mindset of enthusiastically verbalizing sensations, I outright scream in pain. Sex is done for the night. I massage out the lump and take Motrin and go home.

Balls.

Hard on the butt.

I finally feel secure enough in my kinky cred to admit this: I don't like being hit hard on the butt. It's like the quintessential kinky activity, and it's not that fun for me. I like getting hit softly on the butt. I like gettimg hit hard on the upper back and shoulders. And I like gettimg tied up or ordered around and scratched and bitten and cut and clamped and tweaked and humiliated and sexually used in just any way you can imagine. But I do not like to be hit hard on the butt.

In kink circles, this is a bit like being a sushi enthusiast who doesn't like fish. Sure there are other things on the menu and you can make a full meal out of them, but when someone hears you like sushi they think "fish," and if you just ask them for "a sushi pllatter," there's going to be fish on it. And not liking fish can make you (and sometimes others, unfortunately) question whether you're really a real sushi fan. Certainly if the first sushi they serve you is fish and you turn up your nose, they're liable to believe you're a poser.

I am not a poser. Kink is what you want it to be, and while we might (probably obnoxiously) sniff at people saying "we did it with the lights on once, that's pretty kinky," that sure as hell isn't my problem. I am a submissive, masochistic, thoroughly perverse little whore. I just don't happen to like getting hit hard on the butt.

Practicalities.

I'm as guilty of this as anyone (hello Cosmocking), but I think there's a tendency in Feminism to go after pop culture too much and the harsh practicalities of life not enough. There's no question, culture matters, the weight of a million beer ads and Disney princesses does change us--but so do the job market and the people on our street and the way our own friends treat us.

The biggest challenge facing women today, I think, is not PUAs and it's not Cosmo and it's not evolutionary psychology. It's babies. I feel like in our current society, a woman can live almost as well as a man--as long as she never, ever has any children. The instant sperm meets egg, bang, it's like everything since 1959 never even happened. A woman can sometimes get taken seriously at work and in media and politics, but a mother? She'd better be able to afford some serious nannies and even then it's an uphill battle to make people believe you have any non-child priorities for the next eighteen years.

I don't know exactly what it's like, being barren ground myself. (Which will come to carry its own stigma if I'm still babyless in ten years, but in some ways it's a "well, here's someone who'll take a lot fewer sick days" stigma.) But it seems like all notions of equality hit a brick wall at "well, my husband makes more anyway, so it just makes sense for me to stay home" and "well, it's nothing against her, but I can't promote her when the kids are such a big priority in her life right now."

Well, kids do take a lot of work, and someone has to do it. You can't ask a family to go broke just for the sake of feminist principles, so in a world where a large majority of husbands earn more than their wives and childcare costs more than most women even earn, it really does make sense for the woman to be the one to give up some of her outside life. It just sucks. And it feeds into an ugly cycle where women earn less because we're liable to quit when we get pregnant, and we quit when we get pregnant because we earn less.

I don't have an awesome solution here. But I do have an inkling of why birth control and abortion are such key feminist issues. ...Maybe daycare co-ops? Right now organizing babysitting rings seems to me the most bra-burningly feminist step we could take.

Lubrication, lubrication, lubrication.

I've always thought of lube as something for handjobs or anal, or for if your vagina isn't wet enough--as a way to compensate for dryness, in one way or another. I figured, my pussy gets plenty wet, so for regular PIV sex or fingering, there's no need for lube.

Well, there's no need, but boy does it make a difference. Lube doesn't just bridge the gap between "ow" and "yum," but between "yum" and "OH YES OH GOD OH FUCK." You can think your sex is totally soaking wet and working fine, then add some lube and realize what you've been missing. I don't even fully understand it, but I'm coming to accept that it's true. Wet sex is good, but lubey wet sex is GREAT.

About last night.

Last night was a five-way cuddle pile that turned into a three-way fuck pile. It was awesome. I'm going to call my partners Rowdy and Sprite, for entirely idiosyncratic reasons. I don't think I can get things in chronological order, but the pieces are delicious.

-My clothing is gone. I think someone else took my clothing (a blue cotton dress, if "someone else" is reading; my email is in the upper right so please let me know) and now I have no clothing to go home in. Fortunately I can borrow some.

-There are seriously twelve kinky people in Boston, tops. I can't take my pants off in this town without seeing someone I already know from a totally different venue. Which is sometimes disconcerting but mostly great, because when it's cool people who keep popping up, it's nice to be part of a community like that.

-You know what's awesome? Tying Sprite down, teasing her, and then fucking her boyfriend on top of her--that's kind of awesome. Then Rowdy and I both fucked her. Because we aren't inconsiderate.

-More for the "I never" list: fucking a guy while a girl fingers his ass--wow did that get a delightful reaction out of him--and fucking him while she fingered me. Like, both in my pussy at once. Like wow.

I have been writing about sex for four years. "Like wow." That's all I've got. Like WOW, y'all. But Rowdy was the guy with the Coke-can cock, so like being stretched as far as I possibly could and then being stretched that little bit and with the exquisite dexterity of a finger. Like wow.

-To be honest--maybe brutally so--this is the first time a threesome has really worked for me. I've had ones before that were fun, but this was no-reservations awesome happy fun. I think it was because it was the first time I've had good chemistry with the girl as well as the guy. Because I like Sprite, like like her, pretty much as much as I like Rowdy. When you're fucking the girl to please the guy, it's just not the same as when you're fucking them both. A triangle is so much more comfortable than a V.

And every time we had sex, it really was three ways. It wasn't "me now her" (although at one point we did rock-paper-scissors for firsties), it was "me and her and him and us in a big happy sexy tangle."

-At one point we were flipping through Cosmopolitan's list of sexual positions and reenacting them in giggling naked but non-penetrative fashion. Cosmo doesn't do threesome positions, though. There's exponentially more. At one point Sprite was in my lap getting fucked, at another I was rubbing her clit from the front while she got fucked from behind, at another I was sucking Rowdy's cock while I fingered Sprite, and all through the night we were just rolling around over each other and kissing and cuddle and oh it was awesome.

-I'm loud when I come. Like real loud and real enthusiastic and kind of... intense, so I've been told. And the amazing thing was that while I was fucking Rowdy and coming my brains out and thus moaning and screaming all over, Sprite started getting into it. Really into it. Like masturbating just watching us and talking dirty to me and moaning just about as hard as I was. It was hot as fuck.

-Total number of empty condom wrappers in the pile at the end of the night: ten. That's accounted for by just one guy. One very impressive guy. Rowdy's got some stamina. The way the ocean's got some water.

-Alright, I have clothes! They're not entirely appropriate to my gender or size, but I am not naked! Alright!

Thrust.

Funny thing: thrusting doesn't do that much for me. Oh, it's not bad, I wouldn't kick thrusting out of bed for eating crackers, but it's not my preferred penetrative movement. When I masturbate there really isn't any in-out, just in-deep-and-grind. The feeling of something sliding around inside me does a lot more than the feeling of something sliding in and out of me. Sometimes, if a guy is well hung or using a big toy or lot of fingers, I don't even really need him to move.

I get the impression, though, that the in-out is pretty central to male pleasure (a lot of guys won't even stay hard for long without it), so I don't expect sex to be nothing but grinding. Which is fine, and even gets me off--both physically and in the feeling of being used. There's a certain brutal cachet to being pounded that nothing else can match, but on the level of pure sensation, I don't want a cock pounding me. I want it way in there massaging me.

Mini-Cosmocking: Readers want to know!

I am now two Cosmockings behind, owing to my continued lack of a keyboard. Writing this blog and answering all my email on a horrid little non-tactile phone keyboard is... an adventure. The amount of typing a full Cosmocking requires is prohibitive.

But for your entertainment, I submit without commentary a few of the questions from this month's "100 Crazy, Dirty Sex Questions." Part of that headline is very accurate.

If you're pregnant, can the man's penis hit the baby during sex?

Do guy's balls really turn blue if they don't orgasm?

Is it possible to have too much sperm in my vagina?

My guy has low-hanging balls that get in the way during sex. What are the best positions for us?

If a guy has a big penis, is he more likely to get you pregnant?

I've heard it's unsafe to do it on a trampoline. Why?

My guy has a third nipple. Is it as sensitive as the other two?

Motivational Mismatch.

I guess I should be defending/clarifying myself on the bisexuality post--I'm not criticizing actual bisexuality, I'm not literally saying guys should be pressured into party-bi behaviors either, I'm just a bit annoyed by the social pressure and "everyone thinks like a heterosexual man, right?" assumptions that can sometimes put women in situations where they're uncomfortably going against their sexual orientation--but eh. I'd rather think about last night.

It wasn't anything super kinky. We fucked and slept and fucked some more. We went through, I think, about eighty-three positions--not in the "okay, now I want to try The Naughty Folded Elm Tree" way, but in the organic "hey, why don't you try putting your legs over here... ooh, like that" way. It was by turns cuddly and athletic, and always... happy. I love happy sex. There was something so delightfully straightforward about it. Also he had a cock like a goddamn Coke can.



"In sex ed, they told us that sex could lead to herpes, AIDS, babies,low self-esteem... but they didn't mention backrubs."
"Oh yes. Sometimes there are backrubs."
"They should mention that in class. Teach the controversy."

"Walk of shame?" Hah. Walk of PRIDE.

What gross old people and Cosmopolian magazine have made complicated, happy slutty Davis Square sex can render simple again. There's something to be said for "we're all kinky poly geeky sex-positive feminists here" social circles. I'm with my people. Fucking them.

When a guy has TWO copies of "The Ethical Slut" next to his bed, well... I guess he likes to read them both and let other people read them too.

Sex is good. People are good. Life is good.

Grouchy Post, back by popular demand.

(I always forget about those sneaky bastards with RSS readers whenever I try to un-say something. Oh well. Cats and bags.)




Sometimes I wish I lived in the alternate universe where men were "socially bi," in the sense that any guy who could possibly stand to choke down a cock was pressured to do so to be sexy. And not with guys he was attracted to, but with the ones his female friends shoved him at. Don't worry, he loves it, it's a total party atmosphere and dudes kissing dudes is just good clean fun. I think dudes naturally tend to be more bisexual anyway. And naturally more inclined to put on little shows for women's entertainment with no thought of reciprocation. Anyway no one's being forced into it, it's just something guys have to do to get female attention and fit in as a sexual outlaw and not be treated a Little Mister Buzzkill.

I want to go to more parties where someone yells "hey, there's two dudes makin' out in the kitchen!" and everyone comes running to gawk and hoot and whoop like they're at a football game. Then the guys don't have to worry about getting female attention for the rest if the night, although depending on the party they might end up in a threesome and the girl is probably gonna want to see some buttfucking at that point. You're not comfortable with that? Well, you really ought to TRY it, or just let him do you at least. I'm sure we can get you used to it.

The funny thing is that I do like chicks sometimes. But when I'm actually attracted to a woman, I want to impress and get attention from HER, you know? (Making out with a dude in front of her never seems to do the trick.) My first sexual urge with her is definitely not going to be "we should totally do some dude together!", either.

Less Grouchy Post.

-I think whenever I eat meat my vagina tastes like that meat afterward. I get beef vagina or bacon vagina. I've never had another person actually confirm this, but I firmly believe it.

-One good thing to come out of last night (other than a very fun dinner with friends, the kind where people are asking the hostess not to be seated near us): I can now cross "sexually strangulated with my own stethescope" off the ol' Bucket List.

Gross Old People Sex Party Failure.

So I didn't have sex with anyone tonight. I went home early, and in a crappy mood.

The problem wasn't sexual, but social. The party basically consisted of about a hundred people in a big hall with very loud bad music. It was too loud to have a conversation, so I couldn't meet new people and I couldn't say much to my friends. My friends had all come with one or more partners and I was ranked at about ninth wheel. I'm not good at dancing and I'm not entertained by drinking. I never even made it to the part of the night with sex; after two and a half hours of reliving my middle-school dances I was too bored and lonely to stick it out any longer.

(I had an epically bad night at work the night before, too. Sometimes going straight from a bloodbath to play can be cathartic, but when the play situation ends up being itself stressful, I just melt down. Handling mutilated corpses and getting 3 hours of sleep is rather poor preparation for taking this shit gracefully.)

Ultimately it was really a hearing problem. I'm very bad at understanding conversation where there's loud music. My problem really isn't with swinging or my friends or any such drama; my problem was just that I couldn't communicate, and it left me feeling profoundly lonely. Maybe someday I'll try going again and bring a TTY machine.

Gross Old People Sex Party.

So in the near future I'm invited to a swingers' party, which I have taken to referring to as a "gross old people sex party" just to be annoying. Because ain't no one gonna accuse me of being too mature. For the most part I'm looking forward too it--in a worst case scenario it'll be an interesting observational experience, and in a "99.9% probability" scenario I'll have sex with 500 people.

But the one thing that sorta weirds me out (well, the second thing, after "the possibility of encountering greasy gold-chainy chest-hairy swinger types and having one of them touch me") is that these things have a "no single men" policy. Now, I understand the necessity, on one level, of not letting in a pack of ravening wolves whose only knowledge of the lifestyle is that this is where the totally slutty easy chicks are at. I do see the potential there for turning a clusterfuck into a metaphorical clusterfuck. But allowing no single men is kind of creepy, because I feel like I'm being stocked. Like a sport fish. The woman supply is being artificially inflated, and even though I'm sure I'll have plenty of selection if I want it, it still sort of weirds me out to be used as a supply.

Although, to be fair to the ravening wolves, all I really know about swingers is that they fuck around a lot and stuff. It's a different culture and mindset than the sex communities I've been involved in before, and I have learning to do at this party.

It's been like a year since I had sex with no hitting, too. I wonder what that's even like.



EDIT: I forgot to mention that I'm going with a group of pervert friends, so I won't be entirely adrift in the sea of gross old people. That makes a big difference in these kinds of adventures.

Brutal lessons from the ER.

1) When a woman comes in to the ER at 3AM requesting an STD exam and/or a preganancy test, she may be an idiot, or she may be nerving herself up to tell you she's been raped.

2) When one partner comes in with "slipped in the shower" injuries, and the other partner is hyper-protective and demanding in a "why aren't you making my precious baby all better and fixing all her pain RIGHT NOW" way, this is a very good indicator that they did not slip in the shower. (Even moreso when the injured person herself is all "no, really I'm okay and it doesn't hurt that bad, I'm sorry he's bothering you" about it.)

3) When I know he hit you, and the nurses all know it, and the doctor knows it, and the cops know it, and the janitor knows it... isn't a damn thing we can do to help if you stick to your story about that dang slippery shower. I understand why victims cover for their abusers, the myriad of both psychological and practical reasons. I understand that you may feel that telling this lie is necessary for your survival--and I even understand that you may be right. But it still drives me INSANE.

Soundtrack.

Embarassing discovery: making full-on sex noises during masturbation feels really good. I don't get to full-on screams by myself, but letting myself let out little whimpers and moans is so freeing and goofy and oh god sexy.

Now I kind of want people to watch me masturbate. Maybe even have someone holding me, cuddled up against my back while my front gets all busy. The stuff I do to myself isn't just an efficient pressure release; it can be languid or animalistic or gleefully perverse, and contains as much drama and eros as any other sex act.

Transgressing.

Sometimes I want to do thing that aren't safely psuedo-wrong, but WRONG wrong. Things that aren't just shocking to the squares but are actually kind of stupid. I want to fuck in public and it's somewhere we really could get caught. I want to get play-raped and it isn't so finely negotiated that I secretly know I'll be okay with everything he does. I want to get tied up and there aren't trauma shears in the room.

It's a fine line, because I genuinely DON'T want to be arrested or genuinely damaged or strangle in the ropes. I don't want to fall... but I do want to climb without a harness. Usually I err on the "harness" side of things, then, because in practical terms I value my quality of life more than I value having mega super fantastic sexual thrills. I'm not saying I plan to be genuinely unsafe. Only that it's hot.

When I posted the hatchet photo, some people pointed out that it's not a safe insertion toy. I defended it some, but you know what? It's not. It's not a rusty sawblade, but sticking a hatchet up your cooter really is stupider than using a freshly sterilized soft silicone toy intended for sex. It did hurt a bit, and I really could have damaged or infected my vagina. The wrongness-- the REAL wrongness, the part that wasn't 100% simulated and pre-negotiated--is what made it hot and memorable.

There's a delicate balance here, a middle point between playing like an insurance company representative and playing like a reckless idiot. But that's not unique to sex. I went bouldering yesterday. I climbed quite a bit more than my height up a big chunk of granite without any ropes, and if I'd slipped I had decent odds of breaking my ankle and nonzero odds of breaking my spine. Now, I wouldn't do this on Half Dome. I like my spine. But being up on that granite wall made me feel alive.

Sometimes kink really isn't Nerf, and that's okay. Or rather, it isn't okay, and God that's so hot.

Penis proportions.

In my experience, guys almost always have penises that fit them. It's not that I can look at a guy and guess what his penis looks like, but once I see it, I can go "oh, that makes sense." Just as most people tend to have the right nose for their face, most guys have the right cock for their body.

Then again, the older I get, the less I care about anatomy at all. It's nice when it works well for me, certainly I do enjoy the PIV just a tiny bit, but a guy's ability to whisper really horrible things in my ear or find just that spot inside me matters so much more. As so often happens in my life, I knew the cliche but it took me years to really get it: it's the motion of the ocean, baby.

Even to the extent anatomy matters, I find that sheer bigness isn't it; I used to sleep with a guy of whom I always thought "gee, he has a really comfortable cock," and if this sounds like sort of a backhanded compliment, trust me, there are entire non-stop weekends that say it's not.

Micro.

I saw a man with a micropenis a ways back. At first I thought he'd had it amputated or something (he had normal testicles), but no, it was there, just... not large. It wasn't the size of my pinky--it was the size of my pinky knuckle. He was married.

And I realized, when I thought about it, that their sex life is probably amazing. Something like that forces you to think and talk about sex. When your penis is half an inch long you just can't coast by on "I get on top and stick it in her and that's sex, right?"; you have to get good with your hands and mouth, with being open to using toys, and with communicating what gives you pleasure. It's possible that he has a really intense denial thing going on, or the just have a (happily or not) sexless marriage, but I'd lay better than even odds that having a half-inch penis makes a man great in bed.

Rip.

It's one of those moments that's just sticking in my head. I was face down and my friend was working over my back with my knife. The knife was just a little dinged up, not perfectly sharp,, and there was a little catch in the blade, almost imperceptible to the eye, and yet when it slid over my skin that little catch was the absolute center of my attention.

Then he took the knife and cut a line at the very base of my neck. It wasn't a quick slice but a rough, scraping, almost sawing dig into my flesh.

And the memory that comes back to me in odd moments: we could both hear my skin rip. Little fibers of flesh were tearing through with a sound like a piece of beef jerky being pulled apart.

What in my life or genetics or what book I read or traumatic event or societal pressure or random neurological misfiring makes that the sexiest fucking thing ever? Why does it get a little gasp and an uncomfortably aroused squirm out of me just to think about it? It's not just the pain but the sheer fucked-uppedness of the moment that makes me insanely wet.

The cut wasn't even big or bloody at all. It was really a nothing, when it was done. But oh God, I could hear myself ripping.

Bibimbap.

Have you ever eaten bibimbap? It's a Korean food created by mixing a whole bunch of ingredients and meat and rice and sauce, and it looks like a complete mess. If there's any presentation factor to it to begin with--and there usually isn't--the moment you start stirring it up and take a few bites it's going to look like the stuff you find when the garbage disposal jams up. It's just not pretty food. But it's delicious.

A little while back, I was messing around with a friend in bed. He's a big chunky dude and was mostly dressed except for his cock sticking out of his fly; I had a skirt rolled up to my waist and a shirt rolled up to my neck. And we were just rolling around and groping and almost idly humping. It wasn't the kind of hump where you go for the gold but the kind where you cuddle a bit, hump a bit, cuddle some more, tell some dumb jokes, hump a bit. And at some point we got in a position where he was on top of me, but not "missionary position" on top, more like "mattress" on top. He was just sprawled over me and I was sprawled and we were both alternatingly moaning and giggling from all the groping and grinding.

"This must look ridiculous," he said. And I realized he was right. From the outside, we didn't look like anything pornographic or erotic but just an ungainly pile of disarrayed flesh and hair and clothing. We were a mess.

"And yet... ahhhh," he added. Because we might not have been good to look at but looking wasn't the point anyway. It was a delicious mess. Bibimbap.

Desired/Desirer.

I got an email the other day offering me "tribute" for my "time" as a dominatrix. A little annoyed and a little amused, I shared this with a male friend. "It must be interesting being a woman," he said.

In other words, to be the desired instead of the desirer. Because he actually is a top, and although he's young and good-looking and lots of fun, ain't no one paying him. There aren't a lot of men who get paid for sexual acts with women, and guys don't spend a lot of time fending off unsolicited offers to get paid for fucking women. (If they did, they'd swiftly realize that "I'm not someone you'd actually like, and I'm not interested in making this good for you, so would it help if I asked you to break the law for me?" is not all that that awesome a proposition.)

I try to not be too sexist in my relationships with boys, but I have to admit, I sometimes fall into the "desired" mode, just because it's available to me and it's so easy. I let myself be picked up more often than I attempt to pick up, I receive more date-requesting emails and phone calls than I send, and although I sometimes go halves on dates and sometimes let the guy pay if he insists, I never insist on paying for him. I should, because in the long run it would help combat the highly damaging "woman has something man wants" sexual paradigm, but I never feel that I have to, and hey, food's not cheap. Taking the pursuer role would even the Great Balance Of Gender Roles, but it just wouldn't make my life any easier.

It's unfortunate, though, because guys do have something I want, something I would pursue and possibly even pay for if I had to. Society just doesn't force me to prove that. I accept the attention of pursuer-mode guys because free food and free sex is too good a deal to pass up, not because the food compensates me for the sex--but it looks the same from the outside.