Moved.

This site is no longer actively maintained, but will remain up as an archive for as long as Alphabet allows it. For my more recent writing, go to Pervocracy.com.

Acting out.

In retrospect, there were some unhealthy things that drove me to have sex, often violent and risky, with several dozen people and post all about it on the public Internet.

Also in retrospect, this turned out to be a really good plan that vastly improved my life.

I don't think that's how this story is supposed to go.  I'm supposed to say something like "I now realize I did these things because as a person who struggled with self-esteem and body image, I wanted to feel desirable," but my feeling is more along the lines of "I wanted to feel desirable, and fuck, it worked."  It worked great.  Made me feel like the sexiest fat little weirdo on Earth.  100% recommended.  Just use a condom.

I wanted to silence some inner pain by blotting it out with physical sensation, and... that was a fine decision.  It was a Band-Aid on the problem, which is a great metaphor because Band-Aids make you feel better and help you heal.  Kink helped me wean off self-harm and it put me in touch with people who were knowledgeable about gender, sexuality, and mental health.

It was also a really fuckin' fantastic physical sensation.  That's not a minor detail.  Sex and kink are emotionally validating, sure, but I wasn't moaning and quivering with emotional validation.

I put it all online because I wanted attention, and again, that worked out fantastically.  It turns out that the attention of random Internet strangers is actually really powerful and good for your self-esteem, and can open so many doors and lead to long-term friendships.  Everywhere I've traveled, I've met fascinating people who knew me because of my decision to describe all the ins and outs (and ins and outs) of my sex life on the Internet, and it's led to all kinds of great experiences.

I've got regrets, but only the regular kind.  I trusted some creeps, and alienated some actually-okay people.  I said and wrote some stuff I shouldn't have.  I got overly passionate about some teapot tempests.  I didn't always take the best care of my body, but in a "that'll be sore" way, not a "ruined forever" way.  I turned in some really mediocre articles and presentations because I'm terrible at working on a deadline.  You know, the wages of sin.

There's no question that I got lucky on certain things, and I have to shy clear of outright advising people to follow this life path.  (Mostly because it has to find you, maaan.  Also, I dunno, liability?)  But if you're looking for a story of contrition, you're not going to find it here.  I'm all grown up and looking back on my promiscuous past, and my main reflection was "fuck, that was so much fun."

(I said "was," and this is all written in past tense because it's kind of a retrospective four years after I last wrote on this blog, but I'm not done with kink or sexuality or general exploration, God no.  I'm just in more of a middle-aged pervert stage now.)

I went through a wild-child phase, and man, it sure beat the hell out of being a domesticated child.

Hello again.

Well, hi.  I guess it's been a while.

A lot's happened.  Three jobs.  (Four if you count getting laid off, then rehired two weeks later.)  I turned thirty.  I came out as trans and started taking hormones.  Rowdy and I moved in together, then two years later moved out again, but we still see each other and still consider each other family.  I had cancer, but I got better.  (Melanoma, successfully removed surgically.)  I live in an old barn out in the woods now, which is kind of nice.

I've been plenty active on my Tumblr, so if you want more moment-to-moment updates on what I've been up to, albeit mixed in with random arguments and shitposting in a format that's frustratingly difficult to search or sort, that might give you an idea.

I'd like to say "I've just been so busy," as an excuse for neglecting this blog, but the truth is probably somewhere between "I've been drastically underestimating how bad my mental health issues really were" and "I've been ashamed that I don't have as much weird sex as I used to, and am not as confident speaking about sex from the perspective of someone who is no longer a cute slutty girl."

Well, I mean, let's be clear here, I'm still fucking cute.

Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter 25.

Hi!  I still exist!  I got a new job as a nurse and I was very busy for a while.  I'm still busy, but I have some actual free time now.

And I spent that free time reading Fifty Shades of Grey, because dammit, there's only two chapters left now and I've already left you hanging for like four months.

When we last saw our heroes, they were in Georgia, because Ana went there to get away from this confusing relationship and clear her head and talk things through with her mother--and Punch ThunderMeat stalked her there and totally prevented any head-clearing by taking her away from her mother and monopolizing her time.  ROMANCE.

Content warnings for this chapter: Stalking, gaslighting/mindfuckery, graphic sex and BDSM, and do I even have to mention emotional abuse.

Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter 24.

First order of business: is anyone going to the Geeky Kink Event this weekend?   Rowdy and I will be there and would love to meet people in person.  We will also be hosting a Pervocracy room party Saturday evening--I'll post about this when I know specifically when and where. (UPDATE: 7-11pm, 5th floor. Look for the room with "PERVOCRACY FIELD HQ" sign on the door.)

Also, I'm officially an RN now, so that's cool.

Onto the book.  When we last left our heroes, they were... you know what, I could write one of these that would work for literally every chapter.  When we last left our heroes, Ana was all "I want you, but I don't enjoy anything about your actual personality or sexuality," which was understandable because Ralph ChunderStorm's personality was mostly obsession and manipulation, and his sexuality was mostly violent coercion.

But in this chapter... well, all that is still happening, but in Georgia!

Content warnings for this chapter: Physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, of course.  Forced eating.  Murder reference.  Child molestation.  Dog bites.  Another long-ass chapter.

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter 23!

The trailer for the FSoG movie is out, and here's my mini-review.  (And one more thought on it.)  I have a weird mix of glee and sorrow that they're making a movie out of this.  I am looking forward to it being so-bad-it's-good, a Showgirls for our time--but I'm also terrified that it's going to give millions of people the idea that BDSM is "abuse but they're perverts so it's okay."  I don't want that.

Based on the trailer, it seems like it will be very faithful to the book, which might work in my favor.  The audience consensus might end up being "wow, when you see this stuff actually acted out it's miserable," and then the whole thing will sink beneath the murky waves from which it arose.  I can hope.

Anyway, we still have four chapters left in this book.  Let's get slogging.  As a reminder, when we left off, THE EMAIL WAS COMING FROM INSIDE THE BAR!!!

Content warnings for this chapter:  Emotional abuse, do I even have to say it?  Stalking, bigtime. Weirdness around drinking.  Child molestation, molestation apologism, and implied (?) physical child abuse.  Period sex.

Also, this is another long-ass entry.

30 Days of Kink: Days 18 & 19!

Day 18: Any kinky/BDSM pet peeves?  If so, what are they?

Most of the things I dislike about kink rise above the level of "pet peeves," like the fact that we as a community still lack a workable consensus action plan for what we do when we find out that one of our buddies might have committed physical and/or sexual assault.  That's not really an "aw man, this has anchovies on it"-level complaint.

But for a pettier peeve--you know what, I'm going to say the color black.  Like, there's nothing wrong with black clothing or black toys or black dungeon walls or black website backgrounds.  But goodness there are a lot of them.  It gets monotonous, and sometimes has a really cheesy "kink is spooky like Halloween, boo!" feeling to it.  I own green and blue rope, a gray flogger, and wear various colors to parties, because sometimes I'm not Halloween, dammit.

(I also own a shit-ton of black stuff, for reasons ranging from "that was the only color I could get it in" to "I'm not actually that much of a brave iconoclast and sometimes I kind of like being Halloween.")

Day 19: Any unexpected ways kink has improved your life?  If so, what are they?

It's inspired me to do a lot of writing which has, in turn, vastly improved my life. I also met Rowdy at a kink event, and knowing him has improved my life tremendously, because he's a wonderful partner and I completely love him and he has cute freckles.

But honestly, the main way kink has improved my life is... that I get to do kink.  I enjoy it so much more than I first thought I would, and in so many different ways.  It's an integral part of my romantic and sexual life. Which makes this question a little like asking "how has chocolate cake improved your life?"  Oh, I can think of stuff like "it looks nice on my table, I hear it has antioxidants or something" if I have to, but the real answer is because it's chocolate cake.

Maybe the biggest unexpected way kink has improved my life is that I've learned different and much better ways of looking at consent.  Because while kink definitely isn't a magical consent haven, the kink community has popularized some pretty cool concepts around negotiation, safewords, limits, the idea that agreeing to one thing is not agreeing to everything, and the idea that who you are does not imply what you're willing to do.  Even when I'm not doing kink, these are useful.  It's helped me to structure my statements about what I want based on what I want, not on what I think I'm allowed to ask for.  It's helped me put trust in my own limits.

I have not purchased an extended warranty since I started doing kink.

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter 22!

Home stretch, you guys.  And a tough stretch it is.  This chapter is almost entirely composed of emails.  Here's that bug-eyed guy graphic again.

It's originally meant to illustrate "how can I ever live up to this sexy, sexy book?"  I have to assume he'd opened it to a section that wasn't forty pages of grouchy emails.

Content warnings for this chapter: Do I have to say emotional abuse?  You know there's emotional abuse.  Jealousy.  Stalking, SO MUCH STALKING.  Homophobia.  Physical abuse.  Kidnapping.  Slut-shaming.  Child molestation.  Excessive drinking.  And other sexy romantic things.

Also, this chapter (and hence this entry) is loooong.  FYI.

30 Days of Kink: Day 17!

Day 17: What misconception about kinky people would you most like to clear up?

I have to pick just one?

I think what I'd most like to clear up is the single image I feel like most people have of kink.  I think there's an idea that all kink is super-serious, heavily sexual, involves both dominance and SM, involves a lot of trappings and props, and is between a man and a woman.  And everyone's got a collar on.  Even the doms.

When... there is no one image of kink.  But here's a couple images I'd like to mix in with the black leather:

- Me, fully clothed, cheerfully folding and sorting Rowdy's laundry.  He hits me afterwards, not as a punishment, but as a reward.

- At a party, a woman demonstrates how she uses a urethral sound on her partner.  She's wearing gloves and using surgical lube.  She's joking around a lot and everyone is laughing, including the guy with the sound in his dick.

- Cuddling with Rowdy, I ask him to bite me, and he does, still cuddling me.

- Kinky people gathering in a mall food court, not to do anything kinky, just to socialize and connect in an atmosphere where they don't have to hide who they are.

- A bondage workshop held in someone's living room.  Some people are clothed and others are in underwear, mostly just for freedom of movement.  People are passing around books with bondage diagrams and instructions and trying them out.  Other people are in the kitchen nibbling on the cookies someone brought.

- A different party.  I went with Rowdy planning to play, but the energy just sort of feels off to us, and we're more tired than we expected, so we just cuddle and watch people play.

- A friend playing as a puppy.  He's not doing anything kinky or sexual, he's just going up to people who pet him and fawn over him, as you do with puppies.

I could go on forever.  I'm still missing lots of stuff here--my experiences are really just one little corner of Kinkland.  But you get the idea.  There's a lot in kink that you don't see in images like this.  I don't want to say "it's not black leather, it's t-shirts," because that's just reductionism in another direction.  It's not black leather; it's black leather and t-shirts and pink latex and nice button-down shirts and people running around with no shirts at all going "wheeeeeeee."

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter 21!

There's only 25 chapters in this book.  We're gonna make it.

I have to admit, it's all starting to blur together for me.  In the first part of the book, things were already horrible, but at least they moved a little.  Ana worked, went out with friends, graduated school, moved to a new city.  Now we've entered this vague Timeless Zone where the pacing becomes an undifferentiated dribble of "we had really icky un-fun coercive sex... and then later we had some more."  I don't know the month, much less the day of the week, and the relationship isn't developing one inch past the "I want you to submit to me but I don't actually like you" point we were at a hundred pages ago.  Trying to enjoy this book as a piece of fiction is like trying to paddle a canoe through gravel.

Content warnings for this chapter: Emotional abuse and manipulation, bigtime.  Workplace sexual harassment.  Trying to help an abused friend.  Sparkly GIF.

30 Not Even Slightly Consecutive Days of Kink: Days 15-16!

First of all: there is fanart for day 12!

Credit to sbloyd.  Rawr.

Day 15: Post a BDSM/kink activity you’re curious about and would like to try.

One I've wanted for a long time is sensory deprivation.  I have a fidgety mind; it's hard for me to sit quietly for more than a few minutes without reading or doodling or pacing or reciting facts about sharks.

("We now rise for a moment of silent prayer."  "......"  "......MALE SHARKS HAVE TWO PENISES.")

I already use physically intense play to shut that down in one way, by overwhelming myself with so much sensation that my mind is absolutely swamped with it and doesn't have any processing power left for fidgetyness.  But I'd like to address it another way through BDSM, the opposite way, by giving myself absolutely no opportunity to avoid my own mind.

So I'd like to be locked in a closet for as long as I can stand.  Preferably a whole weekend, but honestly I think I'd probably only last a couple hours.  I would like to be stuck in there with my thoughts and absolutely no way to shut them down.  I'm not even sure what that would be like.  My fantasy is that being forced to face my own mind would lead to some breakthrough that made me permanently less inclined to avoid my own thoughts, but even if that doesn't happen--I still want to know what it's like.


On the more sexy-fun side of BDSM, I would love to bottom in an interrogation scene.  I'm fascinated by the two kinds of power I'd have in that scene--both the power to spill the beans and stop the torment, and the power to not spill the beans and endure.  The push-pull between "I'm so tough and stubborn" and "I can stop this at any time" feels fascinating.  Plus I just want to be tied to a chair by someone in a uniform.


Speaking of uniforms... another thing I haven't tried but have been contemplating is topping in medical play.  I have all these skills from my nursing education, and a powerful desire to misuse them.  Although I wouldn't want to be a Naughty Nurse.  Maybe an extremely authoritative and straight-laced nurse in scrubs and a labcoat.  Or an EMT!  I would be a Naughty EMT and wear a crisp white shirt with shoulder straps and combat boots and tie people to my backboard!  YES.

Day 16: What are the most difficult aspects of having a sexuality that involves kink or BDSM for you personally?

(note: little bit of sexual assault talk)

The secrecy.  It's gotten to be much less of an issue as I get older, but it still bites at me sometimes how much conscious effort I have to put into "who can be trusted with what?" about things as basic as "how was your weekend?" or "so I hear you're a writer."

It hurts when I'm hurting and can't seek help.  A big part of the reason I told almost no one (and still haven't told my parents and a lot of my friends) about being sexually assaulted is that it took place in a scene.  I don't want to change that story to make it more acceptable, but I also don't want to have to preface it with an hour of BDSM 101 where I explain what a "scene" is and how "tie me up" doesn't mean "do anything you want to me," really it doesn't.  So silence becomes the path of least resistance.

And it hurts when I'm proud.  I mean, I've been published in some cool places, I've flown across the country to speak at colleges, I've been cited in academic papers for chrissakes... and there's so many people I can't tell.  I just submitted a story for publication in an erotica anthology and if it gets accepted I can't make the "omg guess what" phone call home.  Boo hoo, I know, but it does hurt (especially in a family that values academic success very highly) that I've done all this cool stuff and there's so many settings where I can't tell anyone about it.


The "your world is now the same twelve people and no matter what happens you'll keep running into them" factor in the BDSM community can get a bit trying at times, too.  It can be charming and comforting sometimes, but if there's someone who's very active in the scene who you don't like (or who's seriously hurt you, for that matter), you're going to spend a whole lot of time awkwardly avoiding eye contact.

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter 20!

Call Mara Wilson a "sad fuck", will you, E.L. James?  Well, I've got some news for you: all of the fucks in your book are sad.

In fact, we're heading into a particularly sad one right now, as when we last left our heroes, Gaston Von RockThrust was angrily dragging Ana into a boathouse in his parents' backyard to punish her for offenses consisting of:

A) Making plans to go visit her mother.

B) Having drinks with a male friend.

and

C) Not letting him finger under the table during dinner with his parents.

And don't worry, she's genuinely terrified and trying to deflect or escape him the whole time.  Now that's how you make a fuck sad.

Note: all Christian Grey names in this entry are automatically generated by the Manly Name Generator, courtesy of Spencer Dub.

Content warnings for this chapter: More or less outright rape.  More detailed emotional abuse than usual, including some real-life stories.

30 Days of Kink: Day 14.

Day 14: How would you say real life BDSM/kink varies from fantasy BDSM/kink?  If you haven’t experienced real life BDSM/kink how do you think it might differ?

There's three main differences: consent, commitment, and clumsiness.

Which are all part of one main difference: in fantasy everything works out.  That's what fantasy means.  It may not work out for the best necessarily, but it works out in a way that's satisfying somehow to the fantasizer.  Real life is full of randomness and accidents and disappointments and plot threads that never properly resolve.  Fantasy is the realm where man plans and for once God plays along.

So in fantasy, it's okay to do things without consent, because you can be assured that either the person secretly likes it, they secretly like not liking it, or they don't like it but the author of the fantasy likes it just fine.  Any time you assume consent in fantasy is fine, because you wouldn't be assuming it if the author didn't want you to.  In reality, trying to guess which of someone's "no"s are secretly "yes"s is an excellent way to become a sex offender.

In fantasy, it's easy to make big commitments at the drop of a hat.  Become someones 24/7 live-in servant who never wears clothes and is so high-protocol they can actually pronounce the capital letter in "Master"?  Heck yeah!  Never goes wrong!  In reality... I don't want to say "it always goes wrong," but it requires a lot more thought about financial arrangements and family relationships and what if the servant needs a day off.  And--importantly--how are you going to handle it if either partner decides they don't want to be in this arrangement anymore?  It is possible to do BDSM full-time in real life, but you still have to deal with real life.

In fantasy, nobody ever falls on their ass, slips out of their ropes, or farts at a truly inopportune moment.  In reality, oops.

Finally, one more difference that I didn't list above because it doesn't start with a "C": art design.  Fantasy BDSM often comes with a lot of trappings, a lot of black leather or latex outfits and custom-built toys and lavishly equipped, literally underground dungeons.  And everyone around is either a slinky sex kitten or a muscular sex... lion?  Not sure how that works.  Sex tiger, maybe.  In reality, leather shit is expensive, lots of kinks can be done without any toys, and kinksters have roughly the same distribution of body types you'd see at your local bank office.  We're a motley bunch of scruffy sex alley cats.

30 Days of Kink: Day 13.

Day 13: Explain as best you can what the appeal of kink/BDSM is to you?  Why are you drawn to what you’re drawn to?

I went swimming in the lake today.  The water was cool and clear and I floated away from the children splashing by the shore, away from the noise of the road, drifting alone with the trees and the sky.  Out in the deep water, I swam laps for a good hour before paddling back to shore.  I found a comfortable sitting log among the shade trees by the lake and sat with my toes dangling in the water, resting and communing with nature.  (Nature was mostly spiders.)

My muscles were sore from the effort of swimming.  It was a little achy, but overwhelmingly it was a feeling of comfort, like my muscles were better settled on my bones than usual, better able to relax.  In a way they almost felt virtuous, like they had earned this comfort.

Sometimes being hurt in kink gives me this same feeling.  It's the good hurt, the hurt of strong muscles and days in the sun, a hurt that brings pride as well as comfort.  It's a little pain mixed with a lot of endorphins.

Of course that's all well and good, but there's a whole lot of stuff that "oh yes, endorphins, just like a good hearty workout, totally understandable" doesn't actually explain.  My interests cluster around humiliation and control as much as they do around endorphins, and that's harder to explain with wholesome workout metaphors.

The appeal of those things is... complicated.  But for me, it's often about freedom.  Submission frees me from guilt and uncertainty about how to please others--I just have to do what I'm told, and I will be pleasing.  Humiliation frees me from impossible expectations--nothing is expected of me but to have receptive flesh.  Roleplay frees me from being myself at all.  And a violent scene frees me from thinking about anything but here and now and ow.

When I say "when I'm bound, I feel free" I'm not speaking in baffling contradictions or engaging in willful denial.  I mean it takes a huge freakin' load off my mind.

30 Not Necessarily Consecutive Days of Kink: Day 11 & 12.

Day 11: What are your views on the ethics of kink?

The long answer would require reposting about 75% of everything I've ever written.

The short answer: the ethics of kink are the same as any other ethics.  If something is okay in other contexts (example: hitting someone who's agreed in martial arts practice), then it's okay in kink.  If it's not okay in other contexts (example: hitting someone who didn't agree because you hear that they do martial arts sometimes), then it's not okay in kink.

Kink doesn't happen separately from "real life."  It's not a special case.  There's some kink etiquette that differs from other areas of life, but the fundamental ethics are the same.  The presence or absence of consent can change whether something is ethical, but not the presence or absence of kink.

Day 12: Tell us about a humorous BDSM/kink experience you’ve had.  If you haven’t had one, talk about aspects of kink/BDSM you find funny.

I once had a play partner tie my arms up to my chest with my elbows bent and set me free to wander around the party with my hands stuck up near my chin.  I think he meant it as a "you can walk but you can't use your arms" bondage thing.

I made my hands into two-fingered claws and stomped around making tyrannosaurus noises.

30 Days of Kink: Day 10.

[Note: due to the nature of the question, this one briefly visits a wide variety of unsettling places.]

Day 10: What are your hard limits?

Not many.

I've got loads and loads of things that don't turn me on, things I don't want to do right now, or things I don't want to do in certain ways, but as far as things that I categorically don't want to do at all, ever?

It mostly comes down to stuff I think is unethical.  I'm not doing anything with animals or with people who don't or can't give informed consent.  I'm not doing stuff with someone behind their (or my) partner's back.  I'm not doing anything where real-life sexism/racism/etc. is part of the play.  Basically, if I don't find something ethically acceptable outside of kink, I'm not going to make an exception for kink.

Other than that, there's not much I find "ethical but too icky to ever consider." I'm an almost-nurse and roadkill-pokingly unsqueamish, so things involving bodily fluids and functions fascinate me more than they disgust me.  Permanent marking doesn't necessarily bother me either--I don't want obscenities tattooed on my face or anything like that, but the idea of picking up some incidental scars suits me fine.

Oh!  Gunplay!  Gunplay is a hard as hell limit, at least in any form that violates the "all guns are loaded, all guns are real, do not point a gun at anything you are not willing to destroy" rules.  Although knifeplay is fine with me--I've had a genuinely sharp knife right up against my neck--so I'm not consistent or anything.

And of course there's a whole pile of things I won't do that don't come up very often in kink, so I'd feel silly enumerating them one-by-one.  I mean, I won't eat a brick?  If anyone ever asks me to erotically eat a brick, I will not do that.



Maybe the ultimate hard limit for me is emotional pain.  I don't ever want play to hurt my heart.  I don't want a scene to ever intentionally make me feel worthless or abandoned or repellent.  I want my play to hurt, but I don't ever want it to truly hurt me.

Let's Read Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter 19!

Last chapter Our Heroes had an ooky gynecologist appointment and a bunch of sex, and that was about it.  I always feel so indifferent and unaroused by the sex in this book.  It's like trying to read a sex scene starring Ted Bundy--even if the scene itself were great, the outside knowledge I have about these characters spoils any chance of it being erotic.

Content warnings for this chapter: Physical and emotional abuse, as always.  Child molestation, and Ana being a shit about it.  Eating disorders, somehow.  Horror movies, if that's a thing I need to warn for?

30 Days of Kink: Day 9.

Day 9: Post a kink related song or music video you enjoy.

I'm gonna have to go with this one (NSFW, obviously):

I like it because it's so goofy and unpolished and real.  The people and setting are what a lot of BDSM really looks like--a bunch of geeks in a building that looks more like a black box theater than a scary dungeon, mixing a lot of laughter and fun in with what they do.

30 Days of Kink: Day 8.

Day 8: Post a kinky image you find erotic.

I didn't want to just grab some porn image, so instead I went for the Overachiever Olympics and did an entire photoshoot of self-bondage.  Honestly, it didn't come out all that sexy-hot (to my tastes), but I'm still pleased with the results.

NSFW below.

30 Days of Kink: Day 7.

Day 7: What's your favorite toy?

Is that cheating?  I feel like I'm trying to out-clever all these questions.  If it asked me my name I'd probably start into "does naming things give us the illusion we understand them?  is a name a real part of a thing?  if I have more than one name, am I still one person?" instead of saying my goddamn name.

A hand really is my favorite toy, though.  There's other toys I like, but this one is an impact toy, a sensation toy, and an insertable.  It's very easy to carry for travel and always ready to use.

I have a pretty formidable collection of floggers and restraints and dildos and evil sticks and whatnot.  They're lovely.  There's a lot of craftsmanship in them, the underground artistry of leather and steel and silicone.  These toys are beautiful and carry a lot of personal meaning and I'm very proud of them.  But when I feel a hand on me, I know it can feel me too.