Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Watershed moment.

When my first serious relationship ended, I thought I would never get laid again. For more than a year, I didn't. I just figured that guys didn't like me, that I would embarrass myself if I approached them, and that sex was for pretty people and lucky people and you just don't get lucky that often. I would have said yes if someone suitable had dropped out of the sky and asked me for a roll in the hay, but I made no effort to drop out of anyone else's sky. From age 17 to 19 I was almost entirely celibate, and not terribly happy about it.

Then at age 19 I was out in the middle of Fuckin' Nowhere, Idaho, living in a shared motel room and working for food and a credit in an indie film, and on a whim I decided to post a craigslist "casual encounters" ad. I posted a very honest picture. I said I didn't care about age or looks or anything. I figured that way maybe I'd get at least one answer.

I was deluged. I didn't know that many people in Fuckin' Nowhere, Idaho even had Internet access, let alone were reading craigslist that night and wanted to fuck me. It was insane. I couldn't just get a man, I could choose a man. (For a night, of course, which changes the math considerably over wanting one to introduce to your friends and help you move furniture. But it was sex, not relationships, that pained me at that point in my life.)

I went to meet a guy who was quite a bit older than me, we had dinner, and then we went back to his place and humped like crazy bunnies. It was a little awkward--I wasn't very experienced at that time and there was more squirming around and humping than actual fucking--but it was also hot as fuck. The guy was entirely respectful and mostly sane and we had a good time and went our ways.

Somehow, that one skeevy encounter with some random middle-aged dude in the middle of nowhere turned my whole sex life around. Since then I haven't gone more than a matter of weeks without sex, but more importantly, since then I have (most of the time) believed I could get sex. That desirability isn't some objective thing I don't have--some people will desire me and some won't. Cock is always out there, and it's my decision whether I want it, not my good fortune to be awarded it.



I've gone back to craigslist a few times since--I've had a surprising number of experiences that were genuinely friendly rather than furtive, but the psycho factor is a little too high--but it wasn't really craigslist that opened my eyes, it was just a vehicle for discovering that men could want me. Maybe some girls know that just walking down the street (although probably not nearly as many as I would guess), but for me, it was a wonderful discovery. Skeezy Internet sex did wonders for my self-esteem and, in some ways, changed my life.



P.S.: I also got a response from one of my coworkers. Despite the fact that my face was completely visible in the photo, he didn't realize it was me. We never spoke of this.


P.P.S. : Okay, come to think of it, I think I actually had a bit of sex during my "almost entirely celibate" phase, like maybe actually a lot of sex considering Keith and CB and Danny and whatisface and that weird closet-case chick and her boyfriend... I was actually maybe not so celibate at all. But I maintain that it was still that craigslist experience that changed my attitude toward my own desirability.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Tactile peek.

One of my favorite things is the feeling of a man getting hard inside his jeans. A guy getting hard not inside his jeans is pretty awesome too, but there's something particularly naughty about the half-concealed boner. I can tell it's there, but he still has some secrets. I can squeeze it, but not stroke it.

I think it's like the difference between a naked breast and a nipple barely peeking through clothing. Being naked, that's utilitarian, that's how sex normally is. Being sexy in your clothing, the clothes trying to hide it but failing, that's a whole lot more interesting.

Plus, it's hard to get a guy's dick all the way out at a movie theater without someone noticing and getting all weird about it.

Monday, December 28, 2009

PT.

Here's a tricky question: in jobs like firefighting, police, and the military, should there be separate PT standards for men and women?

On one hand, it's not fair to ask women to have as much strength as men, we're smaller and don't have the hormones to build muscle easily. On the other hand, the real world isn't fair. Someone may be weaker by no fault of her own, but "fault" doesn't matter in a fire or a fight, a weak person is a liability to the team.

My feeling is that there should be one standard, but the people (okay, the guys) who design PT tests should think about what they're really testing for. Do the standards reflect the actual challenges of the job, or do they reflect a relatively arbitrary desire for people in the top percentiles of physical fitness? In other words, are you rejecting a woman because she can't drag hose upstairs, or because she isn't "generally physically fit"? If it's the latter, then sex-divided PT standards are appropriate. But I've never seen a fire go around poking bellies to see who's generally fit, and really, anyone who can pass performance-based standards can't be exactly Spuddie The Amazing Couch Potato.

So I'd say, yeah, make the women perform like the men, but don't make them perform to a standard that prefers men and barely relates to the job. A female firefighter who can run fast and lift heavy doesn't need to be asked how many pushups she can do, too.

Treading the Twisty line.

My current work partner is, to put it mildly, not from my cultural background. He was raised as a very strict Traditional Values Evangelical Christian complete with weird homeschool co-op, didn't have sex before marriage (which wasn't such a hardship since he married at 17), and he still doesn't know a lot of the important dirty words. I'm teaching him so much. (That's not a joke. He's not a prude, simply sheltered, and although he would never do any of these terrible things himself, he's quite fascinated by what heathens do in bed.) He's sort of in the process of moving into the mainstream; he's not renouncing his faith or anything but he's started swearing and drinking and other things people from his original community would never do.

And he tends to say sexist things without realizing it. Not overt, "git in the kitchen bitch" stuff, nothing that's meant as an offense, but he loves to deride frivolous or wimpy things as "girly." (Or "gay," which is, intriguingly, a synonym. But "lesbian" doesn't connote toughness and strength, so it's not a consistent system.) He's always saying shit like "I drink light beer, I'm such a woman." Or "that guy was acting like a total girl. Man up, pussy!"

I'm never sure how far to go with pointing out that, hello, the person you're talking to is a total girl, cannot man up, and has a pussy. And I love me some Double Chocolate Stout.

On the one hand, he's a decent guy to me and we know each other pretty well by now, so I think he'd at least try to listen. On the other hand, I don't want to be a controlling jerk. There's a line between standing up for your gender and being the Language Police that wants Christmas carols to say "peace on Earth and good will toward multi-gendered inclusive humanity," and I'm not sure which side of the line I would fall on. Or more importantly, which side of the line he would see me on. It's hard to refute negative stereotypes of my gender by acting sensitive and demanding. A real man would laugh it off.

With the beer thing, I did point out that I like dark beer, and he thought it was very funny that a woman liked man beer and vice versa, but I couldn't quite explain why that's not the point. The point isn't "sometimes girls do manly things," the point is that the whole concept of manly and womanly things is 98% a crock of shit. There's no beer that interfaces better with a Y chromosome than another, for god's sake, so declaring a beer manly and seeing women who drink it as exceptions (or more perniciously, "cool girls," not like those lame girls who like girl things) is ridiculous. Some people like some beers and some people like others, and you can leave it at that. It's not important, it's not exactly denying my civil rights, but it's symbolic of a pointlessly gendered worldview. And one that always seems to assign my gender the shittier beers.

Kind of hard to convey all this to a guy who's only spent a couple years out of a culture that really would have me in the kitchen.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Why sex is dirty.

I have a pair of stuffed animals, a little horse and cow, that I've had since I was born and they're extremely special to me; they sleep in my bed every night and ride in my bag everywhere I travel. They're worn threadbare from twenty-four years of hugging and they're filled with as much love as a human can pour into an object.

And long ago I decided that they could never see me have sex. If I have a boy over, or if I'm going to masturbate, Horsie and Cowie have to go under the pillow. Their little eyes have to be shielded. Partly because they represent my childhood, but mostly because they're... special. They're innocent. And much as I protest that sex is innocent and carries no inherent "dirt," in this one area I cannot practice what I preach.

---

The local fetish club (ahem, sex-positive community center, it's a very cool organization but it's a fetish club and doesn't need to kid itself) sends out a weekly mailer with their activities and I was surprised to see they had events on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It seems sad somehow. I know not everyone can or wants to be with family on Christmas, lots of people don't celebrate it at all, but... it's Christmas, man. I'm Jewish and the thought of spending Christmas at a fetish club strikes me as unbearably depressing.

---

There's a deeply ingrained hatred for the simple pleasures of the flesh in our culture. We hate the slut, the glutton, the layabout, the drunk, not just for the consequences of their actions but for the cheap dirty pleasure they're giving themselves. They didn't earn that! The only guiltless joys are hard-won. (Maybe this is why an "easy" woman is looked down on.) Pleasure without accomplishment feels secretly immoral.

It goes against sex-positivity and the general semi-hippie social mores of the Internet, but this anti-pleasure sentiment isn't all bad. The nagging sense that the pleasure of orgasm isn't as "real" as the pleasure of climbing a mountain is what drives people to achieve, rather than simply enjoy. If everything I need to be happy is right between my legs, why bother being human? Why learn, why explore, why create?

I think this is the origin of sex-negativity, of much-maligned concepts like Protestant work ethic and Catholic guilt and Jewish guilt. It's the root of slut-shaming and homophobia and Promise Rings. It's why monks and priests are celibate and why Americans can't go to the beach naked. And it's also, kinda, the basis of humanity.

Pleasure-negativity sucks balls when you're trying to have a fun night out or a funner night in. But pleasure-negativity is also what gets you out of bed in the morning. The ability to think beyond your next fuck or next meal separates humans from animals. It's a shame that we get all down on fucking and eating, since they're fine and joyous pastimes, but I think we have to hold a little prejudice against earthly pleasures to drive us to greater things.

I hate feeling guilty about fucking, but I need to feel guilty about not going to work, and I think the two are inextricably tied.

Promise Rings are still pretty stupid though.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Three strawmen.

I so often hear sex described in terms of genitals. Sex is all about penis and/or vagina, and everything else is trappings. (Especially for men, because lol men only want warm holes lol.) This is, to me, a bit like saying running is something you do with your feet. Feet are important for running, yes, but if you think your arms and hips and lungs and heart just sit there...

The point where this anatomical synecdoche becomes a problem is, often, when people start using it as an excuse to trivialize sex. Sex is frivolous, it's debased, it's something you really shouldn't give too much weight too, because it's just genitals. You shouldn't risk or sacrifice anything just to please your stupid genitals.

That statement becomes somewhat less self-evident if it's rephrased as "you shouldn't risk or sacrifice anything just to please your entire body and mind."

-------

I've said before that I don't think "it isn't a choice!" is a good response to homophobia--it's true, but I'd rather say "even if it was a choice, so what?" Otherwise you frame homosexuality as a disability, something that has to be tolerated because it's inevitable rather than accepted because it's legitimate.

I'm going to extend that to fat. I don't like it when people answer "eww, fatty!" with "some people have hormonal problems or are on meds and can't help it." Although my reasoning is different. In this case, maybe they could help it, maybe they do have the physiology of an average person and simply ate too much... what's it to ya? Maybe it isn't smart or safe to overeat, but there's lots of people who take risks with their own bodies--contact sports players, people who don't wear helmets on motorcycles, people who have terrible diets but are skinny--who don't get the kind of schoolyard shit from grown adults that fatties do.

Maybe a fat person did get that way by stuffing their face full of Cheetos and pork rinds (she typed, miserably sarcastic, as she ate her dinner of skinless chicken breast with side of steamed peas), but that doesn't make them evil or gross or less of a person. And although fatness is unhealthy, I won't argue that, I feel like people who go on about healthcare costs and double plane seats and "the obesity epidemic" are sometimes just trying to justify their visceral reaction to a body shape that doesn't appeal to them.

"Tonight on CBS News: The Ugly Epidemic: new government programs to deal with the rising numbers of tragically unsexy Americans."

-------

On drunken sex: I'm uncomfortable with people stating that drunken sex is rape. But I'm also uncomfortable with people saying that sex with an incoherently drunk person is okay.

I think the important distinction is that there are multiple levels of drunk. There's too drunk to make good decisions, and then there's too drunk to make any decisions. I think someone who has impaired judgement, but still basically has control of themselves and will remember things in the morning-someone who can't drive, but can at least walk home unassisted--is capable of giving consent. If a girl is dizzy and giggly and producing cartoon *hic* noises, but she knows who you are and what's going on and she actively participates, I don't think it's rape to have sex with her. If she's close to passing out and her "consent" is more like "not resisting," that's rape.

It's true that a drunk person might make a decision that they wouldn't make sober, and I think that taking advantage of someone in a state of impaired judgement is a dick move, but I don't think it's on the level of a crime. Saying "yes" when you really shouldn't have is a whole different ballpark from never saying "yes" at all.

I actually don't like participating in the Internet sport of "Is It Rape?" that much, I think it's bad taste for someone who's never been seriously sexually assaulted and isn't in law enforcement to be drawing stupid hypothetical rape/not-rape lines like this, but I'm unsettled by college propaganda posters about how if she's drunk you're a rapist. Because there's drunk, and then there's drunk. They're just not the same thing.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Cleanliness.

I had a one-night-stand a little ways back with a guy who seemed normal enough: cute curly hair, the not-socially-hopeless kind of geek, super cuddly and sweet. And the sex itself was okay if terribly ordinary--if I moan and say "ooh, I like that" after you spank me once, that is not your cue to never spank me again--but afterwards, he immediately ripped the sheets off his bed and stuffed them in the laundry bin. Then jumped in the shower and scrubbed himself down, and asked me "aren't you going to shower now?" and more or less made me shower.

And then bid me good night and was very sweet and cuddly again.

Huh. It's not like we got fluids all over. Maybe I'm gross, but I definitely would rate vanilla sex with no spillage as a Kleenex and shower-in-the-morning situation, not something requiring immediate decontamination. I don't think it was an insult to me, but there was definitely some weird hangup going on there.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

What I'm reading now.

Happyendingz - confessions of an erotic masseuse.

It's a fascinatingly matter-of-fact look into a business I always thought was little more than a cover story--but no, there are erotic massage places that take the "massage" part somewhat seriously and don't have fuckin', and CJ works at one of them. She has great stories and comes off as just an ordinary person with an interesting job.



Now I feel bad about that "just." I hate to be saying "oh, she's like a normal person even though she's a sex worker," because that's awfully condescending. She is normal! I shouldn't even have to say that! She's probably not normal in certain ways because no one is! She doesn't need me to defend her!

...augh, just read her blog, you'll learn fun stuff about handjob massages.

Internet Money.

In the past month I've been doing very well making money off the Internets (via Ebay and Etsy primarily, making jewelry and reselling used books--the per-hour rate is embarrassing considering how much of my "free" time has been spent working, but the total has been getting to over $100 a week), and since it never rains when it could be pouring, yesterday I got an email offering me even more Internet money! Yay!

...And all I would have to do is post reviews of commercial sites and not admit that I was getting paid for it. Nothing in the email actually says "favorable reviews", but c'mon now. If you want to crowdsource your viral 2.0 social buzz, don't just go offering random strangers money to lie for you, that's as clumsy as it is skanky.

Anyway I'm in no rush to monetize this blog. I might sell advertising sometime if it isn't annoying--I'm talking sidebars, not giant page-obscuring abominations-- but content? This thing's nearly as personal as my diary, and I don't write "today I went to McDonald's and enjoyed the all-new delicious Angus Third Pounder" in my diary.

I'm a slut, not a ho. I got my principles.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Links People Sent Me.

Woman's life made 'unbearable' by insatiable libido

To be honest this isn't a sex story so much as a medical story, and if her symptoms keep up long-term I wonder if surgery or some kind of nerve block might be justified. It also sounds like her problem isn't "libido" per se but genital hypersensitivity--closer to priapism than nymphomania.

I've noticed that there are (at least) two different kinds of horny I experience. One is a desire for the full package of sex, for human connection and kinkiness and lots of experimentation and enjoyment. The other is more akin to needing to pee--it's just a physiological desire for orgasm. It's the difference between "let's make love all night, baby" and "oh man, I wanna come so bad right now."

The second kind is not only less noble, it's less fun, and I don't think someone cursed with that kind of horny all day long is in a good situation at all.


Vintage Sex Ed

Thoroughly entertaining, although sadly I haven't had the chance to watch it all yet. I think it would be more instructive to make a gallery of current sex-ed materials; I'm guessing they don't lack for howlers. My sex-ed classes seemed to focus mainly on the idea that if girls had "self-esteem" they wouldn't want to have sex. Which is the complete opposite of my real-life experience, in which sex bolsters my confidence and confidence gets me laid.

But I guess the message of "as a teenage girl, you may feel pressured to have sex by the sexiness of your boyfriend and how good he is with his fingers and the fact that sex feels fucking fantastic and you can come over and over and it's so good oh God" didn't pass the curriculum review board.


Why James Chartrand Wears Women’s Underpants

A well-known blogger "comes out" as female, and tells a heartbreaking and scary story of how taking on a male identity changed her life.

Instantly, jobs became easier to get.
There was no haggling. There were compliments, there was respect. Clients hired me quickly, and when they received their work, they liked it just as quickly. There were fewer requests for revisions — often none at all.
Customer satisfaction shot through the roof. So did my pay rate.
And I was thankful. I finally stopped worrying about how I would feed my girls. We were warm. Well-fed. Safe. No one at school would ever tease my kids about being poor.



It's true: all the taken men are best

Silly "scientific" horseshit. It's (at least as written here) a great example of a study finding results that could mean many things, and then shoehorning them into a form that confirms stereotypes as comfortably as possible. The actual results: women are more attracted to the same man when they hear that he has a partner.

That's sort of interesting, but then the interpretations go all kinds of wacky unsupported places: women are "poachers," women are competitive, women want a man to be "socially desirable." Maybe, but nothing in your actual research tells me any of that. (Here's a thought, I know it's ickily qualitative, but maybe she should've asked her subjects why they found these hypothetical partners attractive or not. Or for all I know she did, but it sure didn't make it into the article.)

My own hypothesis is that a man who's very good-looking but not in a relationship leads to the question "so why not?" and suggests he either doesn't want to be or he comes with some baggage; and a man who's not very good-looking, well, he's not very good-looking. Obviously there are plenty of cute single guys who'd be good boyfriends, but I can see that reasoning. Still, my hypothesis is just that, a hypothesis, and I wouldn't publish it in a big national magazine before I actually tested it.

Finally, I'm always amused that people can get grants and press for "studies" that amount to little more than playing "would you rather" with a bunch of undergrads. I can play this game too! Hey roomie, would you rather fuck Kurt Russell or Shia LaBeouf? Kurt? Awesome, me too.

BREAKING NEWS: WOMEN PREFER OLDER, HARIER MEN:
Possibly a subconscious desire for their own fathers, or for rich men to support them, or to steal the husbands of older women. Women are filthy creatures.

Monday, December 14, 2009

iPorn.

So there I was, searching the iTunes App Store for some mindless fiddly-fiddly games to while away the workday, and what's topping the "most downloaded apps" charts?

iPasties - Women wearing pasties!
Pocket Girlfriend - A woman wearing underwear! (And she says "dream girl lol" snippets about loving shopping for tools and hating foreplay, hurrr. I never got the whole "guys hate foreplay" meme, most guys I've been with seemed to be having a pretty good time, perhaps they were all just great actors. Geez, now I'm going to worry.)
Naughty Hotties - Women basically just standing there!
Beautiful Boobs - According to the reviewers, one single picture of a woman and she has clothes on!
Naughty X-Mas Hotties - Women in Santa suits!

Now I've got no problem with boys liking sexy women, I kind of enjoy it when they include me in that category, but there's something missing here, isn't there? So I searched on "sexy men," and to my surprise, there were a few apps listed. Nothing compared to the giant heap of million-download "sexy women" apps, but a few. To my total non-surprise, more than half of them were tagged "gay."

The explanation I usually hear is "oh, women are horny, but they're just not visual." Frequently followed by bemoaning how women never notice them because they don't look like Hugh Jackman. Also, I haven't noticed any sleazy iPod apps where you simulate a deep emotional connection with a sexy man. (Well, there's some Twilight apps. Eurgh.)

And then again. Much as I want to deride this thole thing as sexist and ridiculous, there's an inconvenient fact here--I found the sexy men apps, I noted them for blogging purposes, and then I didn't buy them. I don't collect pictures of sexy men. I don't Google for them. Looking through my computer and my DVDs, you'll find plenty of porn of couples having sex, but not a lot of standalone men. Most pictures of a guy just standing there posing don't appeal to me that much. The other women that I surveyed in a recent intensive five-minute study of my house (n=2) don't really fixate on man candy either. We like our men to look good, yes, but we don't go nuts about them if that's all they do.

So maybe women aren't visual, at least not in the centerfold-admiring way that a lot of men are. I really hate to admit any kind of psychological gender difference, and I can feel my brain already scanning for ways to blame it all on Society, but this one seems to be staring me in the face. And it's wearing a sexy Santa suit.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Horrifying realization.

Some women wear panty-liners every day. Like, even when they don't have their periods!

...Am I gross because I don't?

...Why has no one marketed absorbent dick-liners for men?

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Cosmocking: January '10!

Bubblegum pink cover! Amanda Bynes! Her outfit is nice except for a weird belt around her belly and no belt in her actual belt loops! I just realized that the women on Cosmo covers never wear bras! Best headline: "Your Hoo-Ha Handbook: Get a Healthy, Sexy Vagina"! Some supermarkets put a black plastic thing in front of the stack of Cosmos for decency's sake and I don't blame them!

Every month Cosmo has a feature called "The Real Story" in which a "body-language expert" analyzes a few photos of a famous couple and tells you whether their relationship is happy or not. Because people's chance expressions in paparazzi snaps give you a pretty good window into their true feelings.
On the surface, they look like one big, happy family, but the couple displays subtle signs the bond may not be strong. There's a gap between them, and while A-rod gazes directly at Kate, she appears distracted and looks in the opposite direction.
She doesn't stare at him constantly! She averted her eyes from him for at least 1/100th of a second! Their relationship must be crumbling!

Show him who's in charge with a flick of your wrist. Instead of just unbuckling his belt, grab the buckle and pull it fiercely from the loops. Then add a little flourish by snapping it like a whip before tossing it aside.
Okay, I'm trying this, and I have a considerable advantage over most Cosmo girls in that I actually know how to crack a whip. Out of ten attempts, I hit myself four times and looked like a complete dork ten times. (And cracked zero times, a belt is too short and heavy and has no popper.) I imagine that an undressed man a few inches away from this dorkery would not have fared well.

Conventional wisdom says that a woman should ask a date questions to draw him out instead of talking about herself. Well, science now says screw that. A recent study shows that guy dig chicks who use the word "I" often. Of course you don't want to monopolize the conversation, but telling personal stories and referring to yourself can go a long way.
Okay, so I can talk about myself, but not too much, and also ask him some questions, but not too many, and use the word "I", but don't monopolize, and for God's sake act natural!

There's a "paper doll" feature with cut-outs of male celebrity faces that you're supposed to stick on top of a picture of a naked model holding a towel over his cock to create a simulated celebrity nude. Huh. I'm really not sure what to make of this. ...Huh.

I dunno, man, I'd rather see the model's own face. Rest of him ain't bad.

The cover hype: 100% Hotter Sex: Thrill Every Inch of His Body Using a Move No Woman Has Dared to Try on Him Before.
The actual article: girl-on-top sex. Wow. That was worth my $4.79.

Lower yourself onto him in a sideways sitting position, and rub your butt back and forth over his abs and thighs like a windshield wiper while he's inside you.
Huh? What? Sideways? Like a windshield wiper? I can't picture this at all. I think I've almost got it visualized, but no, that would break something, that can't be right. Are we talking regular car windshield wipers or those bus ones that have a swivel?

Join a flag-football league, and feel each other up midgame.
This would be 500% more entertaining (and sexier!) with a tackle football league. As it is, you're just going to seriously piss off everyone who came to play football.

"I bought a belly-dancing outfit, turned on some exotic music, and attempted to give my guy a sexy striptease. But all he did was laugh hysterically at the show--for the next 10 minutes. I burst into tears and locked myself in the bathroom until he apologized."--Julie, 29
Maybe it's just me, but I can't imagine locking myself in the bathroom over something like that. I imagine myself, depending on what kind of laughter, either A) laughing along and throwing the outfit aside and falling into his arms naked like God intended, or B) getting right in his fucking face and telling him that if my body is fucking funny to him he doesn't fucking deserve it. Locking yourself in the bathroom is ridiculous teenager shit, and I wouldn't entirely blame him if he just walked away and left you to unlock yourself in your own sweet time.

There's breaking news in "guy world": many committed guys are treating themselves to a little too much one-handed fun, and it could leave both of you feeling less than satisfied in bed. [...] Once you've gotten it out in the open, the best course of action is for him to simply stop cold turkey. [...] If he is resistant, you may need to seek out the help of a therapist.
Oh what the fuck Cosmo. What the fuck. No, Cosmo. NO.

(Among many, many other objections: this is like the exact opposite of "breaking news." I don't think this is "breaking news" among monkeys.)

Q: My boyfriend is extremely possessive. We've dated for a year, and in that time, I've never even thought about cheating on him. But he still gets upset when I as much as talk to other men. I've basically lost all my guy friends, and I'm fed up. How can I get him to understand that I'm not going to cheat on him?
A: [...] try asking him why he's so jealous--like you said, you've never done anything to justify him feeling that way. If he can open up about it, great. You guys may be able to come to an understanding and strengthen your relationship in the process.

Cosmopolitan magazine: getting women beaten since 1965!

There's probably more stupid stuff but I can't read any more after this. This guy is psycho, he's separating her from her friends, this letter has more red flags than a bullfight, and Cosmo's advice is that she should confront him and try to strengthen the relationship. SHE IS GOING TO GET HER ASS BEAT, Cosmo. Oh, probably she doesn't exist or the publication cycle is too slow to be relevant, but maybe she's reading, and certainly other women in her situation will be reading, and maybe your advice could help them protect their emotional and physical safety. If you weren't a bunch of FUCKING ASSHOLE IDIOTS.




This marks the first time I've actually written to Cosmo about their content. You can do it right here and maybe a human might read it? Potentially. (If you do, be a dear and don't mention Cosmocking. Although everything I reprint here is fair use of small excerpts for parody and criticism, I'd rather not risk drawing the heat.)

Makeup.

I don't really "get" makeup. I wear a little bit sometimes, but I don't really understand why, I'm just conforming to expectations. (Or coping with a really horrible zit, but that's not the full makeup monty, it doesn't count.) I guess wearing makeup when I go out represents putting effort into my appearance, but I'm not sure what that effort is for. These are my questions:

1) Is makeup supposed to be sexual? Since it's gender-specific and supposed to enhance "attractiveness," I assume that means sexual attractiveness. But lots of women wear it to work, monogamous women wear it away from their partners, no one's scandalized when teenagers wear it, and some women won't leave the house without it. So I guess it's supposed to be sexy, but not literally advertising for sex--and I don't know what that means. Just a passive expression that one has a feminine sexuality, I guess?

2) Is makeup supposed to be invisible? It's obviously not, in the standard application; no one naturally has red lips or colored eyelids. But when you read articles about makeup, a lot of the emphasis is on concealing or emphasizing your natural features. Blush is intended to simulate a strong cheekbone, not a pink smear on your face. Mascara is an attempt at fooling people into thinking you naturally have really big eyelashes... which is a good thing, I guess? But no one feels cheated to find out that a girl's apparent super-eyelashes were really just makeup. So I don't get it.

3) Does makeup really make that much of a difference? When I put on makeup, I still look exactly like Holly, just slightly palette-swapped. I wouldn't fool ya for younger or thinner or anything. I can't imagine anyone being attracted to makeup-Holly who isn't attracted to me regular.

Unless makeup isn't about the appearance it creates but the signals it sends--"I'm feminine and I put some work into myself." But then the craft of makeup should matter less; there shouldn't be so many concerns about doing it just right, if the presence of makeup matters more than the content. I guess that's where the "work" part comes from, though. Even if it's completely circular work to display the presence of work, you still have to do it right, geez.

This whole subject confuses me.

"The Silent Strike!"

Fabulous video link, courtesy elmo_iscariot:

Cosmo Brainstorming

(NWS dialogue but visually inoffensive.)

Monday, December 7, 2009

My First Porn Site.

When I was thirteen years old, my best friend and I started a porn site.

Well, an erotica site; it didn't have photos, but there was a sizeable selection of written and drawn erotic (or more often "erotic") material. It was hosted on GeoCities, and hamfisted in every way--the layout was a mess of big purple text and teenagerish babble, the pages were random collections of anything we thought would be cool, and the content was an unsorted hodgepodge of things we'd made, things stolen from other amateur sites, and things stolen from the free sections of professional porn sites. We had no concept of copyright and would post anything that CTRL-C could grab.

We did have a PayPal account set up and linked to the site, but (fortunately) the technical intricacies of a password-protected paysite were way beyond us and we charged on a "donation" basis, which of course never made us a red cent.

We were both virgins, and I was about to make fun of how this must've affected our writing, but looking back at the old TXT files, honestly, we were pretty damn good at theorizing. Knowing these files were written by thirteen-year-olds makes me feel all dirty. I didn't realize until just now that at age thirteen I knew exactly how buttsex works. (Also, my spelling and grammar were quite good. I'm so proud of little proto-Holly.)

So as fairly young kids my friend and I were so immersed in porn culture that we were not just avid consumers, we were trying in our puppyish way to join the production side. Three questions that come up in retrospect:

1) Where were our parents? Clueless, of course, not because they were negligent but because we were wily like foxes. We knew when and how to sneak computer time and cover our tracks, and "parental control" filters barely slowed us down. Our parents could have disallowed all unmonitored computer use and probably stopped us, but that would have put a considerable enforcement burden on them, and thirteen is probably too old to be so draconian--we used the Internet for legitimate purposes all the time.

2) Were our views of women or sex skewed? Probably not too badly. We looked at a lot of gay male porn, which was fairly equalizing, but also a lot of Japanese and anime straight porn, which was chockfull of humiliation and rape. I think we took it in fairly good humor--we understood the difference between rape fantasies and real violence, and I don't remember ever thinking that real rape was sexy or that humiliation fantasies were literal. Certainly I don't ever remember feeling or expressing any ill will toward the women in porn--hey, they're just actors.

3) Were we harmed? I don't think so. I'm not really sure what kind of harm to check for, honestly. I don't regret anything other than the copyright infringement and the poor web design. If we'd been a little dumber we might've posted pictures of ourselves, and that might have had consequences legally and socially, but I don't think the act of posting self-kiddy-porn would have done much to us psychologically. Even though it was sexual, we were coming at this from a pretty innocent place--we just wanted to entertain and get a little attention--and there was no sense of exploitation or debasement. We were in control of the whole project, after all.



So when people get all panicky about kids under eighteen being exposed to anything remotely sexual, pardon me if my monocle doesn't exactly fly off. Kids getting into sexual situations with older people is a different matter, but kids experiencing sexual material on their own or with peers is as natural as the morning dew and about as hazardous. Hot Coffee, sexting, racy scenes in library books, Janet Jackson's nipple, gay marriage taught in the schools, putting condoms on bananas? Yeah, whatever, I was younger than that when I ran a goddamned porn site.



In fact, the only thing that did get dangerous was a result of society "protecting" us. We could download pictures and text, but this was dial-up-era, and being under 18 we couldn't buy porn videos on our own. We had a friend who was 18, though, and he would buy porn and invite us over to watch it with him. Now that was some sketchy shit.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Summer loving, winter loving.

Summer sex always seems a little more expansive, exploratory. Let's do it outside! Let's get up early and do it! Let's run all around the house naked!

Winter sex is more comforting, even protective. Let's cuddle up under the covers! Let's hold each other in the dark.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Crazy clingy bitch.

An attitude I am really fucking sick of: "Yeah, this chick I fucked called back and was all like she wanted to see me again, talk about craaaaazy, I sure dodged a bullet, whoo."

Wanting human attachment is not crazy, assholes.

Look, I understand, sometimes sex is just sex. And assuming that a romantic relationship is inevitable or that it already exists after one fuck--that's a bit nutty, yeah. Stalking or harassing a guy and refusing to take "no" for an answer are definitely crazy. But merely wanting a relationship, asking about one, or even just wanting to have sex more than once--these are reasonable. It's unfortunate and awkward when one person wants a relationship and the other doesn't, but it isn't crazy. And it's really assholish to throw that implication on top of rejection. The answer is no... and you were a crazy bitch to even ask!

If a guy doesn't want a sexual relationship to go any farther, that's understandable. He's under no obligation. But have some goddamn grace about it. Acting like romantic interest is synonymous with bunny-boiling obsession is egotistical, hurtful, and really freakin' immature.




The impetus for this post was this article about the "cheetah," which is apparently a completely ordinary woman who "preys" on men by having sex with them. But the part that really touched a nerve was:

Both her Auntie Cougar and Cousin Puma have a certain dignity. They’re out there shakin’ it up, slaying dudes and taking names. Not so the cheetah, who hopes that her victim will find something in her searching eyes when he rolls over the next morning, and will try to subtly guilt him into another round next time they meet: “Hey, where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in so long.”

Because the only thing more pathetic than a woman who picks up men is a woman who picks up men and tries to connect with them afterwards. How dare she? Doesn't she know her place?

Oh no, the "youth" have technology!

One-third of youths have engaged in "sexting."

By "youth" they mean ages 14-24, so I'm included there, despite my increasing lack of resemblance to a wide-eyed apple-cheeked little innocent. It's fun to refocus the entire article with this in mind, and read sentences like "[Women] were more likely to share a naked image of themselves than [men], and those who are already sexually active were much more likely to send an image than those who were not sexually active." Already! At 24! I know, I'm the shame of my family. Hell, this entire blog is a truly malignant example of inappropriate youth behavior. Perhaps I'll kill myself: "About 12 percent of those who engaged in sexting activity have contemplated suicide, though the survey didn’t attempt to deduce if the suicidal thoughts were related to the often negative consequences of sexting."

(Fun fact: According to the World Health Organization, 15.3% of all Americans have contemplated suicide. Clearly sexting has protective effects.)

Beyond the definition of "youth" as an age group that's more than half legal adults, my other beef with this type of teen-sexting-panic article is that it's only describing a natural evolution of behaviors that kids have done since the dawn of time. Post-pubescent humans are horny, stop the presses.

The problem isn't that the kids are getting naked; the problem is that the kids might not be aware how permanent and shareable the record of their nakedness is. Kids (and, um, 24-year-olds) may have played "show me yours I'll show you mine" since genitals were invented, but the ability to then go and show hers to all your buddies has been expanded by technology. This is what kids need to hear: not that sexting is "inappropriate" or it'll make you suicidal but that it makes it easier for the whole school to see your junk.

(Total digression: I always hated it when I was a teenager and adults called sexual or vulgar behavior "inappropriate," without specifying what situation it was inappropriate for. If it's not appropriate when I'm off the clock in my own home, maybe appropriateness isn't your real concern. Jerks.)

In the long run, what's going to happen is saturation. When everything is digitally recorded, everyone will have filthy pictures out there; and when everyone is naked on the Internet, it'll stop being a big deal. I look forward to the day when "she took off her pants on the Internet" is about as exciting a news as "she took off her pants in her bedroom."

I also look forward to the day when people respond to "boyfriend shows whole school his girlfriend's crotch" stories with "that asshole boyfriend" rather than "that sexting slut!"

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Jealousy.

I don't entirely understand women who get jealous when their boyfriends look at porn. I understand strip clubs being more of a problem and hookers more still, but outside the health/ethics issues with a hooker these things really never bother me. They're not competition. A pornstar will never take him home and a stripper will never go hiking with him. They might get his cock, but they're no threat to his heart.

Unless he gets obsessed with them, but then your problem is less "that thieving slut" and more "that psychotic man."

The Two Myths of Desire.

When I started this blog, one of this first myths I wanted to tackle was that women weren't horny. (My counter-evidence consisting largely of "fuck, I'm horny.") Figleaf has a refinement he calls the Two Rules of Desire:

1) It is simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a woman to have sexual desire.
2) It is simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a man to be sexually desired.

I want to be careful how I present these. Obviously they're not true. And they're also not that widely believed; tons of women know they're horny for men and tons of men know that and love it. But they form a sort of infrastructure for a lot of misconceptions about gender and sexuality, from "sluts are psychologically damaged" to "pretty boys are gaaaaay." These two rules are the base myths that lead to Cosmo sex tips and "evolutionary" pop-psych and everything that Maxim has ever printed that wasn't about sports cars.

How they apply to some of my personal bugbears:

Cosmo - It is inconceivable for a woman to have sexual desire, so here's some tips on how to be attractive to him and how to please him in bed. When we do speak about your own sexuality, we'll assume you've barely thought about it so we'll either ignore it, or write "how to have an orgasm" articles that assume you've gone twenty-odd years and never touched your down-theres before.

Radical feminism - It is inconceivable for a man to be sexually desired, so heterosexual sex (or if not sex itself, any deliberate sexiness) must be all about pleasing men out of fearful or brainwashed submission. When a woman insists that no, she really desires guys and kinda likes them as people besides, this only shows the depth of the brainwashing or her lack of commitment to the cause. I've seen radical feminists propose a sort of Lysistrata solution to patriarchy, where we all withhold sex and sexiness until the happy-bunny Revolution comes; it's usually compared to a "strike" but for me it would be a lot more like a hunger strike.

PUA - It is inconceivable for a man to be sexually desired, so here's how to trick the bitch into giving it up. NO HEY REALLY IT'S ALL ABOUT SELF-IMPROVEMENT AND CONFIDENCE SO STOP BEING DIFFICULT BITCH.

Evolutionary psychology (not necessarily as a whole but when used as shorthand for "pop-psych articles about relationships that compare people to elephant seals and/or Neanderthals") - It is inconceivable for a woman to have sexual desire, so here's some misapplied animal analogies and poorly-researched assumptions about "cavemen" that explain that she may think she's horny but she's really just looking for genes for her babies. Ladies love them some babies.



PROGRAMMING NOTE: I know updates have been sparse lately and that's partly because I've been sick with the Lung Crud for the last month. I finally went to see a doctor today and got a bunch of medications and hopefully I'll be feeling sexier soon.

(It's also partly because of Fallout 3. But I didn't tell the doctor about that because I don't have a problem, I can quit whenever I want.)

Monday, November 30, 2009

Cuddle paradox.

On the one hand, I wish there was more nonsexual touch in my life. I wish my friends and I hugged more and that when we shared a sofa there wasn't an Invisible Line of Doom between everyone's personal bubble. I wish there were people who, whether they fucked me or not, would sometimes just cuddle.

On the other hand, I know that self-control has certain limits, and not only would some jackass go and ruin it by getting all humpy and creepy, that jackass would be me.



(I have multiple experiences getting in bed with guys with a stated intention to just cuddle, and in every case things got unintentionally way too sexual, and in every case it was mostly my doing.)

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Accepting pain.

I love pain, but I can be kind of a finicky masochist, because I also hate pain. That is, it turns me on, but it hurts like a motherfucker. And unless I'm very turned on--as in, getting pretty close to coming--it doesn't really cancel out. Getting to the pleasure means either toughing it out, or having a top who understands and is comfortable with the idea that "ow" isn't a safeword. I'm a masochist... but I'm a masochist who has to push herself. I'm okay with that.

So it deeply weirds me out to see someone who doesn't have this same conflict. I was playing with a guy and every time I hurt him he just smiled and got harder. There was no tension in his muscles, no gritted teeth in his smile. He really just liked it. Not "I hate it but I love it" like me--straight up.

It was weird. And amazing. And in a way almost scary because I didn't know how far I could go. I was doing things to his cock that made me wince and he just grinned and urged me on. There was no pain in his pleasure. It was like magic.

I don't know if I'm jealous. I kinda take pride in my ow-mmm-ow brand of masochism, or at least I'm used to it. But I'm awed.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

The Boner Line.

There's a lot of bemoaning the inability of media to include sex without being all weird about it. Books, movies, and TV shows tend to fade to black or to tasteful montage even if it completely clashes with the style. Video games have to be even more circumspect, and even mentioning that sex exists in a game is pretty much a guarantee of scandal or disreputability. For the most part, a creative work is either erotica or totally non-erotic, and there's little integration.

Some of this is societal hangups, there's no question. And some of it is justifiable; a lot of the time, we don't really want to know exactly what fictional characters do in bed, not down to specific body fluids and muscular contractions. But I think some of it is also due to the Boner Line.

Because, I don't know about everyone, but I don't really watch or read porn. I use it. I don't just sit there thinking "yep, that's some sex there all right," I get physically aroused by it and I masturbate. Consequently, about five to ten minutes in I'm not going to want to find out about how the characters' relationship has changed or where their adventures take them next; I'm going to lose all interest and probably want a nap. Or if I'm looking at porn somewhere I can't masturbate, I'm going to feel very awkward about my arousal or have to devote a lot of attention to suppressing it.

There are few questions more awkward than "Should I be masturbating to this?", when I'm watching or reading a work of fiction. It's a significant gearshift. An action scene may feel different than a comic banter scene, but at least neither one physically takes me out of the story.

So I don't think it's sex-negative or buckling under to Moral Guardians to leave sex out of art--while it may be wrong to tap-dance around the very existence of sexuality, if you try to present sex as matter-of-factly as you'd present an intense conversation, you run into the Boner Line. If you don't want to badly distract your audience, you have to do a little tap-dancing. Sex and non-sex can never completely be integrated in art, not while audiences are susceptible to boners.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Distraction.

Not dead, just got Fallout 3. Can't talk. Raiders. AUGH THERE'S ONE BEHIND ME AUUUGH BOOM HEADSHOT what was I saying?

---

Anyway... I'm always sort of weirded out by the social norm of people hating their exes. I can understand if they were abusive or if the breakup was over a really major betrayal, but it seems like I see a lot of people (especially women?) calling their ex a rat bastard kind of just for being their ex. Which bothers me. I still like most of my exes, either as friends or at least as someone who represents a lot of good memories for me. The entire relationship isn't invalidated just because of how it ended.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Short thoughts.

Is it just me, or does it seem like (with the exception of grocery and clothing stores) you see a lot more men than women alone in public? Seems like on the sidewalk, in restaurants, at movies, in parks women are usually with partners or groups, and more men go around by themselves.

---

Vagina Mints! Probably not a good idea. Plus, even if it wasn't ridiculously unhealthy, the whole idea is missing the point. I like my snozzberries to taste like snozzberries, if you know what I'm saying.

---

If there is one thing in life I will never understand, it's men online sending/displaying pictures of their penises to strangers and expecting a positive response. If I already like a guy, it can be a thrill to see his penis, but your generic disembodied penis really doesn't do much for me. It's only arousing if there's some sort of context. (Or if it's like whoa.)

---

I think the idea of consent as The Big Important Concept in sex-positivity is helpful in nonsexual life too. There's a lot of situations where you find yourself "harmlessly" pressuring someone to do something they don't want to--even something innocuous like go out when they're tired or try a food they don't like--and it helps to step back and remember that "I don't want to" is all a competent adult needs to say. You can ask why, you can decide that you don't want to hang out with that person, you can suggest things, but you have no right to demand or pressure a friend into even the most innocent things.

---

Add "witches" to "sci-fi fans" and "Ren Faire folk" on my list of people who always seem to be kinky and/or poly even though there's no obvious connection. Although really, I'm just describing the same twelve people over and over again.

Getting my night's worth.

There have been times that I haven't gotten further than a kiss that I've gone home with my head swimming with satisfaction and warm fuzzies, and times that I've full-on fucked and stayed the night and gone home feeling nothing but alone.

The real question to puzzle out here, though, is how much of each one is my own fault.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Geek boys.

Geek boys are easy pickings, they appreciate it more, and--not to come off completely evil here--afterwards, we'll actually have things to talk about! And we can watch Firefly.

Everyone's a geek these days, too. I remember being a geek when it was still underground. Back in the day it was actually unusual and unpopular to like computers and sci-fi, now everyone's online and every blockbuster has spaceships. And yet geek boys haven't changed much. I think they actually do get laid more, but they still focus on and appreciate sex in a way that mainstream boys often don't. Geeks don't take sex for granted. I love it.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Links Time!

LabRat on masculinity.

For as long as I’ve known him, [Stingray] has always acted as though it were a long-since forgone conclusion that his testicles came factory-equipped and were, are, and ever shall be firmly attached to his body, no matter what happens short of a purely literal castration event.

He doesn’t feel the need to check and see if they are still there, or re-bolt them back on later if he is served an egg pie. The presence of homosexual men within his zip code, or even living room, does not cause him to curl into the fetal position and cradle them lest they scamper off over the horizon. He can wash his face with something gentler and more scented than a bar of lava soap and still rest so secure in the assumption that the testosterone-producing apparatus that will still require him to shave it the next morning is still hanging in there that he needn’t even make a few precautionary laps around the block in a pickup. Likewise he seems entirely capable of trying new and different things without needing to look up their gendered implications in a checklist or guide before deciding whether he enjoyed it or not.


I agree completely. I've always thought it was weird when people feel a need to (or urge others to) "prove" their gender. I'm a woman no matter what I do, aren't I? I think the problem is that "woman" and "man" each have two very different definitions:

1. A person who has [female/male] physical characteristics.
2. A person who is [nurturing/tough] and wears [dresses/pants] and likes [ponies!/muscle cars].

A person who fits only one of these definitions creates a weird dissonance in some people. It's not that simple, though, because it's not just overtly masculine women or feminine men who get shit about this--you can be female, be nurturing, wear dresses, and like muscle cars... and certain people will be unable to accept the muscle car thing, or you will feel like you have to suppress it and try to like ponies. As if a dress-wearing vagina-owning person could become disastrously male by that single drop of impurity.

Stingray's no one's girly-man (that's very clear if you read any of his posts...). He's just not a MANLY MAN MAN MAN in everything he does. Rejecting the full package deal that supposedly comes with your gender doesn't mean you're rejecting your gender. Just that you're, y'know, a normal person.




Secondly, even though it's a little embarrassing, I've found Succeed Socially to be surprisingly useful reading. There's a bunch of articles on social skills, pitched at a borderline-Asperger's audience; a lot of it is the guy saying (in more polite words) "other people don't want to hear a four-hour lecture on your model train collection." But a lot of it is really good, thought-through, well-written advice on how to meet and make friends and treat them well.

It's easy for someone like me, who's somewhat awkward but definitely not at the train-collection level of social disaster, to brush this off as something they don't need. Or even to feel a bit humiliated to be looking at it, an admission of dorkness second only to wearing Pull-Ups to bed. But a lot of it has been very helpful for me. I have a lot of bad social habits--"everyone listen to me!"; "I'm only making cruel fun of you because I like you"; "screw it, I'm going back to my cave"--that this site has helped with.

And more than anything, it has a good attitude. The guy's outlook on life is that most people are worth knowing and that the best thing you can do is genuinely like other people. If you're interested in someone and want to spend time with them, you should basically just say so. The site doesn't directly address dating at all, but I'd say it's the best dating-advice site I've ever seen.

If you're wondering why this post is tagged "PUA," that's a hint. (Well, okay, it's really just a cue for Eurosabra--oh lord, I said his name, he's like Candlejack--to appear and explain why he doesn't find this "treating people decently technique" nearly as effective as the Performatively Masculine Half-Neg Strength Word of +2 CHA.)

END OF LINE.

When I lost my virginity, the movie on in the background was Tron.


Back in the day, Kevin and I almost had to watch a movie to have sex. It was relaxation, it was distraction, and it was almost the only way to make things feel natural. We couldn't just crawl in bed together, that would be like we were having sex on purpose, that's way too intimidating. Instead we had to play the "we'll just lie on the bed to watch a movie and see what happens" game. Usually we didn't get to the opening credits.

(During an awkward reunion several years later, we were watching the Evil Dead trilogy, I started getting all gropey and he uncomfortably told me he didn't want to have sex during a horror movie. With glorious obliviousness, I patiently waited out the first two films, then started arguing that Army of Darkness is really more of an action comedy. See, this is what you get when you make weird excuses instead of just saying you don't want something.)

I still like moviefucking as a way to keep things slow. When you're in bed just to have sex, you tend to cut to the action, and sometimes that's awesome, but it can be hard to pace yourself if you're in a mellower mood. Just lying there groping without getting to the wet bits can be frustrating, even boring--it'll feel like you're drawing things out.. Whereas telling yourselves that you're supposed to just be watching a movie, but if you get a little naughty, no one will know... even as a grownass adult, that's just fun.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Cosmocking: December '09!

White cover! I always like the white covers, they're so much nicer than the ridiculous screaming-neon-colors ones! Fergie! Right after Kim Kardashian, too! Cosmo's really classing it up here! The word "SEX" is in 45-point type, I measured! Fergie is so Photoshopped her neckline appears to be hovering in a totally different plane of reality from her chest!


Also, she is the Joker.

Hm, as long as I've got the scanner out, I think I'm gonna save myself some typing on this one.


This is a common theme in Cosmo "embarrassing stories"--as soon as something goes wrong, no matter how minor, the object of your affection will just fucking vanish. There's no laughing it off and there's not even any words you can say--they just back out in open-mouthed horror like they walked in on you fucking the dog.

I've had guys continue to mack on me after they've watched me vomit (CB, wherever you are, you are a true man's man), so if a little thing like hair extensions takes him from 60 to 0, he has some serious "DOES NOT MEET MAH STANDARDS" issues. It's also pretty harsh to ditch a girl for wearing cosmetics--obviously a girl with no cosmetics isn't appealing to this type, so what the fuck was she supposed to do? I guess she's supposed to create an illusion of natural perfection and seamlessly maintain it.

Meanwhile he's supposed to wash his face and maybe shave.


Gosh, what's in it for me then? Faking arousal for his benefit while I sit there with my pants on sticking my fingers in a jar of grape jelly for the sound effects is something I'd do for $1.99/minute, but it's not something I'd do in a relationship. Partly because, shit, I'll masturbate in front of anyone who won't call the cops about it--but also because being dishonest about something like that would make me feel all hollow and weird. What's the point of having a sexual relationship if it isn't genuinely sexual for both of us?


"Subtly."

"GET A ROOM, HUMPASAURUS REX!"


I'm not sure if this advice is terrible or not, but I do know that it's classy as fuck.


This is so, as Twisty would say, pornulated. And it brings up the "what, am I getting paid?" issue again. If I'm groping my own breasts during sex, it's because they're fucking aching for it and touching them feels so fucking good. Or because he likes seeing me like that, don't you, you naughty boy. But I don't do it to make him think that he's sexy. (Doesn't that imply that he's actually not?)


There's a whole article on the noises men make during sex. The frustrating part is, after every category--the grunter, the moaner, etc., "your move" is how to get him to stop! Why the fuck would I want to do that? It's primal, it's beautiful, and it means he fucking loves it! The article is written as if my partner's ecstasy is some sort of petty annoyance to me.


And they say Cosmo isn't topical.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

First time.

There's nothing quite like the first time you have sex with a new person. There's an element of permission-seeking, of discovery, of tension that will never be there again.

Neither of you knows exactly how far the other is going to go. Oh, it may be damn obvious where you're headed and you may have even said it aloud, but there's still a sense that every touch is a risk. I touched his thigh, and he liked it; dare I go up an inch? Of course I dare, and of course he likes it--now another inch. If I ever fuck him again, I'll know I can go for the goods, and even if I draw it out it won't be the same.

Another silly fear: oh god what if he doesn't have a penis? Or if it's really tiny or weird or something. Of course this is ridiculous, of course he would warn me if he was very physically different, but it's still such a strange sense of relief and joy to clasp your hands around something really nice in his jeans. I love the feeling of a man's cock in his pants, being able to trace the outline but not quite hold it, to make him feel it but not quite stroke him.

Not just the cock. Every inch of his body is a discovery. Where he has hair, where he has muscles, where he's soft and where he's rough are all new and wonderful. Are his nipples sensitive? How does his skin respond here, and here, and here... ah. Finding the right spots to draw those little gasps out of him is a journey that will never be the same again.

First-time foreplay is longer and more amazing than any other kind, which makes it a bit of a letdown that first-time intercourse usually sucks. No two bodies fit together in quite the same way, and an "ow," "oops," or "sorry" is nearly guaranteed. But when it works, even fleetingly, it's just that much more rewarding.

I like coming, but that's nothing new; I know what it's like when I come, fireworks, screaming, clutching, quivering, whole skin on fire, post-ictal phase, yadda yadda. His orgasm is all new to me. Some men scream and moan; some close up their face and body and just grunt; some look almost unmoved; some throw themselves completely into the motion and just rock with me. However he comes, it's animal and beautiful.

Fucking a new guy is like listening to a new band; the instruments are all the same and they may be played much the same ways, but the sound is fresh. Even if it's not good, the sheer newness of it is something the best band in the world can't replace. Can't listen to a different band every night, of course; most of them suck and it's good to be a steady fan when you find someone really talented. But there's just nothing like new.

Spam bleg.

Does anyone know why I'm getting constant spam on just one post?

It's kind of a vitriolic one, so I'm concerned that somehow someone deliberately directed a spambot at me. Although maybe it's just random.

It keeps trying to sell me medication, but not the cool meds like oxycodone or Viagra, just stuff like lisonipril and lansoprazole (isn't that OTC anyway?) and acyclovir. Either our healthcare system is in such sad shape that people are treating their hypertension and shingles with gray-market Chinese meds (actually this sounds plausible), or spambot doesn't know what the fuck.

Anyway, if anyone knows how to close comments or ban anonymous commenting on just one post on Blogger, I'd appreciate advice.



EDIT: Thanks to Sevesteen for Showing Me The Way.

Specificity.

I used to be a lot more... specific... in this blog, didn't I? Used to go through practically every time I had sex in detail. I don't do that as much anymore. There's a few reasons.

First, a lot of people I know read this blog these days. This creates potential awkwardness, from "you wrote about me?" to "you did him?" to "oh God, you were doing that just last night?" Not that I have any really terrible secrets--just a lot of small weirdnesses. This blog has, for good and ill, gone from being My Secret Garden to being practically my social hub, and that affects exactly how much I can talk about my orifices and where they've been.

Secondly, it feels like trodden ground. Every sex act is a unique and transcendent pearl of experience, but it can be hard to convey that in writing after a while. There's only so many ways I can say "yeah, I blew a dude and then he screwed me doggy, it was awesome" before I start repeating myself and sounding jaded.

Third, I don't think a simple accounting of events is valuable, either erotically or intellectually. And if I write about every time I have sex, I'm going to slip into just saying what went where, and lose sight of how it felt or what it meant. Generalizing my experiences sometimes helps me to focus what I want to say about them.

Fourth, shit, I can't be updating this thing twelve times a day.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Historical reenactment.

The Beatles' White Album was on, disco lights were playing off the walls, and I was sitting on a beanbag chair, my clothes sort of pulled out of the way but not entirely off, making out with a guy I'd met a couple hours before.

"Wow," I told him, "this is exactly what I picture the entire Sixties being like."

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Speaking of experimenting...

Also, I can fit four fingers in my butt.


It's weird how quickly an act can go from being something I've only heard of, something that's only in the really extreme and nasty porn, to being part of my own life and as natural as a kiss on the cheek. I'm capable of so much (and I don't just mean physically) more than I ever expected and it's very exciting.

It's also increasingly weird seeing anti-porn advocates cite sex acts that are so horrible they're meant to essentially serve as proof that no woman would freely consent to such things, and realizing that, shit, I do that stuff for fun.

Midday on the sixth day.

I was at church the other Sunday (what can I say, I'm an inveterate experimenter; also, it was a UU church and I don't think you can lose your Jew card for that) and the part of the sermon that grabbed me was about creation. "I was looking out at the mountains, thinking about how I would've liked to be around for the creation of this beautiful landscape... and then I realized I was. The mountains were crumbling in front of me and becoming new mountains, beautiful ones."

In other words, every end is a beginning. The world wasn't created and left to decay; it's still being created. It's probably too naïve to try and claim that it's all equally beautiful, that a burn scar is as beautiful as a forest or a cloud of dust as beautiful as a solar system. But though entropy may win out in the very long term, on a scale as small as my life there is no necessary downward trend.

I have a bad habit of holding on to the past. I want to sleep in the bed I slept in as a child and watch Sesame Street again even though I already know how to count. I want to keep friends forever and have them stay the same forever. I want to have all my old boyfriends back. Maybe take them back to the places where we had really good sex, so we could have that same sex again. I'm twenty-four years old and I'm already obsessed with reclaiming what's gone--heedless of what might be coming.

It can never be the same. The wind has blown, the dust has shuffled, my old life is never coming back. My life as of last week is never coming back. I've known this for a long time, but what I'm only just learning is that "you can't go home again" isn't just true; it's good! Because I have a new home, and the more time I spend pouting around my old stomping grounds, the less I have for living in my life now. Is this the best life I've ever had? That's an utterly academic question. It's the best life I have now and it doesn't suck.

Not that everything old must be thrown away. If an old friend is still my friend, or a friend from the past comes back, thank God for that! But thank God for the friend, not for the oldness.





So yeah, I should probably go on new dates more often.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

The Mile High Ladies' Auxiliary.

So, um... does it still count as the Mile High Club if you only have sex with yourself?

Hmm.

(Warning: annoying porny image host because the non-porny ones keep ganking me. Sorry about the ads.)

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Out of town.

I'm going to Boston tonight and getting back next Tuesday night. Updates will be sporadic (and agonizingly pecked out on a handheld) until then.

Oh, and I'll be 24 when I come back! (As of Sunday.) Very exciting! And sort of horrifying. I worry that might be the cutoff age for excusing all your activities with "I'm just a kid," and at the stroke of midnight I'll develop an irresistible urge to take out a mortgage and eat broccoli, or whatever the hell grownups do.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Lifestyle choice.

Man, not only did I not choose to be attracted to both men and women, I don't even get to choose which ones.

Management has the right to refuse service.

So I was talking to a guy at a kink event about the awkward little dance of kinky pick-ups, and I mentioned that it's extra awkward when you get approached by someone you just know you're not going to play with.

He recoiled like I'd said something horribly racist. "How can you possibly just know that?" And I was too afraid of looking like a bitch to say "well, some of the dudes here are really ugly and are exuding very loud 'hello I am a weirdo' vibes." Because that would be discriminating. (Incidentally, my standard of "ugly" is neither fat nor old--I like big dudes and some guys definitely hit their 50s still going strong. But some people are ugly to me and I know it when I see it.)

I don't think being ugly or even weird is cause to treat a person badly. But refusing to play with or fuck someone isn't an abuse. I'm not an equal opportunity employer, and I don't think I have any ethical obligation to be. I think there's also an implication that since play isn't sex, it shouldn't matter if you're attracted to someone--but c'mon now, this isn't doubles tennis, it's a fetish and even if I leave my panties on I'd still like them to get a bit wet. And tragically, physical appearance and presentation are important fuel for my panty-wetting mechanisms.

Kink communities that are so devoted to "acceptance" that no one stands up to creeps have been a pet peeve of mine for a while. But when you start telling me that I should be "accepting" with my body... fuck that.

Whoo.

R-71 passes. (By a narrow margin with not all votes entered, so I shouldn't count my chickens, but oh my how many chickens I have!) Washington can continue to have gay not-marriage, and The Children will just have to cope somehow.

Yay. I'll commence fornicating in the streets immediately.

Okay, "continue."

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Radio Ad.

Someone is putting way too much money into opposing R-71 (domestic partnerships), and I really wonder what they possibly have to gain by it. "Ewwww, queers" is one thing, but who has thousands of dollars to spend on that sentiment?

Anyway, here's the radio ad that just drove me insane:

*kindergarten class noises*
TEACHER: Okay, kids, put away your instruments. Music time is over and now we're going to hear a story. This is a very special story. Instead of a mommy and a daddy, this story has two daddies.
KIDS: *Gaaaaasp.*

And then the ad just sort of ends and a narrator says "Vote against R-71."

What's supposed to be the problem here? Does it somehow go without saying that this would be a terrible thing? These ads are apparently targeted at people who think "well, if they want to get married that's one thing, but telling kids about it, that's crossing the line." I guess the idea is that being gay is explicitly sexual, and somehow there's no way to say that Billy loves Robbie without bringing buttsex into it? That's my best guess here. Either that or being gay is really shameful and harmful, like being an alcoholic, it's the sort of thing that happens and you don't hate alcoholics, but kids shouldn't be told it's normal to drink Thunderbird at 9 AM.

Shit, there might be a kid in that class who has two daddies. He better not tell anyone, that would be totally inappropriate.

Monday, November 2, 2009

It's rude to say "Well, DUH."

Man, leaving Benny was about the best thing I ever did for myself.

Not just because of the little abuse incident, but because it shook me out of "meh, I have a play partner, sort of" complacency and kicked me back into the kinky world and all its wonders and annoyances. And because it stopped me buying into his ideas that casual sex is always lesser, that if you don't love someone you're supposed to kind of hate them. And because it stopped me thinking that his big dumb ass was the best I could do.

Sure, I don't have a regular Friday-night fuck anymore. What I have instead is freedom. Sometimes it's better to risk sleeping alone than to settle.

Gateway Drug.

My gateway drug was The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I watched it for the first time when I was maybe 13, at home in the middle of the day on a VCR, but with friends there who knew the callback lines. Pretty soon after that we went to see it live and I played the "virgin games," deep-kissing a girl I didn't know and moaning out a fake orgasm in front of a packed theater. Before I was 18 I was on a shadow cast (backup Tranny, whoo) and drunkenly took my clothes off mid-performance and promptly lost them altogether, walking home in sub-freezing temperatures in my underwear. (I'm still not embarrassed of that. I was free dammit.)

Rocky is a terrible movie, but for me it represented a wonderful world. Inside and outside the frame, Rocky is all about fluidity and openness of sex and gender, a polymorphous perversity that says you can play with these things. Men are sexy in garters and the flamboyantly gay and flamboyantly straight can fuck side-by-side and with each other and let's all of us roll around in a pool together for the sake of nothing but pleasure. Sex doesn't have to be defined and controlled, you can be amorphous and promiscuous and that's wonderful. Swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh. Don't dream it, be it.

(Of course this is naïve, and it's true that Rocky--and unfortunately a lot of our cast--didn't give full thought to safety and consent issues. We don't live in a world where everyone can literally roll around with everyone and have it be fine. But it's a beautiful ideal. Just recognizing that ideal existed as opposed to the "meet a nice boy, settle down, do it to seal your love" ideal was a watershed moment for me at 13.)

Even the callback lines, as silly as they were, were part of the personal evolution that led to this blog. Those words you're not supposed to even say? At Rocky you can scream them.

Rocky is also a great way for a geeky young girl to meet kinky people and learn that such things exist outside porn--and that for all the black leather, most of them are surprisingly nice and laid-back about it. That lady with a flogger on her belt isn't a "dominatrix," she's a person and you can go talk to her. Ditto that man in a dress and that girl with a collar and leash on. You might have more than you'd ever expect in common with them. You might realize there's nothing stopping you from being one of them.

And Rocky is a great movie for doing really dirty things in the back aisles and up behind the screen. I'm just saying.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

all i really want

Sometimes I'm embarrassed how little it takes to make me happy. I think I'm supposed to want to change the world somehow, to discover or create something new, to have a big house and a perfect family.

But all it takes is the touch of skin on skin to make me want nothing at all.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

NaNoWriMo!

I'm getting a jump start on my NaNoWriMo project today. It was supposed to be an erotic novel, but four pages in it's turning into a grimdark existentialist erotic novel. "Kae paused and wondered if her real body had been forgotten and was rotting away at that very moment, then took another slurp of pussy."

I think I've expounded upon this idea before, but it's basically the Sex Matrix, which enables a hooker to service clients from all over the world without any risk to her real body, but then things... get weird. (No, she isn't The One. There is no One. There is only an endless procession of the helpless many. Just because there is no spoon doesn't mean you can bend it. Are you turned on yet?)

I can't pretend to be distressed by this. I like being weird! I'm excited to see where this goes!

Small Circles.

Sometimes I feel like half of the population is perverts. It's really amazing how many people, once you get to where they're comfortable talking about it, turn out to be into some form of BDSM.

And sometimes, on the other hand, I feel like there are only about twelve perverts in Seattle.



(Context: last night I went to a party I haven't been to in months. I originally stopped going because it was getting taken over by this weird little clique that would literally try to assign play partners to other people--"Oh, you're new here, you should play with Joe! Go get 'er, Joe!"--and imposed their view of the One True Kink on everyone and generally soured the vibe. But I figured people always come and go from these things, and after six months the population should've cycled some, right? I show up and it's the same damn people. It's deeply weird to be away from a place for six months and still know everyone by name.

But I met a nice new guy anyway, once I extricated myself from the tentacles of the Kink Dictators, and we had fun times, so yay.)

Friday, October 30, 2009

On Stereotypes.

I can always find my jacket really easily when I leave a fetish meetup, because I wear a brown leather jacket.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Keeping it in the bedroom.

I had a Very Bad, No Good, Horrible Terrible day at work today. I don't mean "late on TPS reports" bad, I mean that I was spat on and slapped and punched multiple times. And contrary to unnervingly popular opinion, liking that sort of thing in bed has fucking nothing to do with how I feel about it in the real world. (I feel somewhat negatively about it. Thanks for asking.)

It really bothers me when people draw this kind of connection between the real world and the sex world. I was almost as weirded out when a person at a kink meetup talked about her daughter chasing around and hitting the boys at her daycare, and remarked "she's turning into a little domme!" I know it's a joke, but ew. Ew, and also wrong because that's not what dommes do. Unless they're psychopaths, dommes don't run around hitting boys; they run around asking boys "can I hit you?" Kind of an important distinction.

Even when it's not violent, people saying things like "ooh, you work at a shoe store, you must have a foot fetish" and "ooh, you have a foot fetish, do you work at a shoe store?" ook me out equally. Again, I know, joke, but it's a much creepier joke than intended. Somewhere up there with "oh, you work at a morgue, are you a necrophiliac?"

Of course it's not really sex that draws the hard line between "ha ha, hitting" and "OH FUCK, hitting"; it's consent. If a foot fetishist indulges their fetish at work, it's not cute, because the customer didn't consent to foot-molestation. Seeing sex where there's no sex is déclassé; seeing sex where there's no consent is mega creepy.

Very important tip.

Brush your teeth. Not just right before dates but all the time. And use mouthwash. And mints.

I can't count the number of times I thought I was attracted to a guy, got within the breath radius, and WHOOOF. A whole evening's worth of flirtation undone in a single pungent blast. Now all I can think, no matter how good-looking or charming he is, is "if I had sex with him, I'd have to breathe that for like a half hour."

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Reality.

The other night, I had dinner with witches and goddesses, masters and slaves, 40-year-old little girls and human dogs. It was really just chance that there wasn't a goddamn dragon present.

Of course I didn't. I had dinner with a bunch of middle-aged software developers who own a lot of cats. Why dignify their delusions?

Because they'll dignify mine. My delusions may be modest in scope--I'm pretty sure I'm an ordinary adult human--but I certainly have notions about my place in sex and the world that might not be perfectly objective. Who I am is a mix of what I am, and what I say I am. I was born female, but I'm a woman on my say-so.

Of course it's silly. Of course it's a game, and someone saying they're a dog is probably not as serious, deep down, as someone saying they're a woman. But it's not "wrong" for someone to identify in ways that don't fit physical reality. The only times I've had a right to bristle were when someone tried to impose upon my self-concept--you can be a goddess but you can't make me your worshipper. And honestly, once I get over my Internet-conditioned "ewww a furry" reaction, a dog-dude is a barrelfull more fun than your average dude-dude.

Why does this flexibility of identity seem to cross over with sex so often? You don't run into dog-dudes who just want to play frisbee nearly as often as you run into dudes who want to be dogs during sex or BDSM play. Maybe it's because sex is the only arena where adults really have a license to play. There's rules for frisbee, even when you're just tossing it around, it's not true play the way children play. Even supposed "RPGs" tend to be more about leveling up and phat lewtz than really roleplaying. Whereas "roleplay" in sex is a free-form and accepted thing.

It makes me a little sad sometimes. Not that play has become sexual, but that play so often seems confined to sex. I can get people in bed with me playing like we're the naughty policeman and the seductive suspect, but I can't get them to go play cops and robbers with me in the park. That would be weird. You have to outgrow these things. Life has rules now, so fun has to have rules now. Even when I find someone game to play Calvinball with me, it feels awkward and hollow. I don't know if that's because we can't play anymore or just because we can't stop feeling that we're not supposed to. But I see dog-dudes and guys who call themselves Lord Ravenblood as precious evidence that it's the latter.

So you know what? Fuck you, I'm a dragon.






raaaarrrr

Monday, October 26, 2009

Why I'm not a hooker.

The difference between sex and. prostitution isn't just that money gets exchanged. A prostitute accepts money in lieu of having his/her own desires met in the sex. If your hooker is any good, you're not just paying for consent, you're paying for sex that's all about you. You don't have to go down on a prostitute unless you happen to love going down.

I don't think this is inherently wrong--you don't pay a massage therapist to trade backrubs, after all--but it's an important thing to keep in mind when discussing prostitution. Prostitution isn't some women doing for pay what other women do for free, despite what the Freakonomics guys seem to think when they say things like:

Who poses the greatest competition to a prostitute? Simple: any woman who is willing to have sex with a man for free.

I don't know about you, but I've never had sex with a man for free. I've had sex in exchange for getting my sexual desires--partner choice, specific kinks, sometimes emotional closeness--met. Prostitutes, especially high-class ones, do have some say in which acts and which men they'll do, but not to nearly the degree a woman fucking for "free" does. I'm fairly sure that any prostitute who only slept with men she found panty-soakingly attractive and insisted that they fulfill her fantasies would go broke.

I'm also not a sucker for giving it away for "free" because prostitution in our current society involves a lot of risks unrelated to the sex. I like my day job, but I might do a couple paid fucks on the weekend now and then for extra cash, the way I work on festival event crews now and then--except that if I ever got caught at the fucking I'd lose my day job and a whole lot of possibilities in life. The money may be worth the sex (i.e, the dude-centric sex with ugly dudes), but unless I want to commit myself to the lifestyle it's not worth the sex and the risk.

And I don't want to commit myself to the lifestyle because odds are I can't be a $500 whore. (Also because I don't want to choose between lying to my dad and horrifying him.) I like sex well enough and I've got a decent work ethic, but I'm not conventionally gorgeous, I'm not great at mustering up enthusiasm for sex acts and partners I'm not into, and I'm downright terrible at the whole charming-sexy-manner thing that separates the "courtesans" from the Pac Hiway hookers. (I don't think I'm Pac Hiway material either, by the way, but somewhere on the Craigslist midlist. I could probably get somewhat more than my current salary, but not enough to compensate for the risks and sacrifices.) Just because a woman can get $500 an hour for sex doesn't mean any woman would get that if she played enough pricing games.

Certainly, prostitution isn’t for every woman. You have to like sex enough, and be willing to make some sacrifices, like not having a husband (unless he is very understanding, or very greedy).

Most hookers do have husbands or boyfriends; there are plenty of "very understanding" men out there. But me, I like sex enough to not be a hooker. Because it's sex that I like, not hooking, and no disrespect to hooking but those are two very different things.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

10 tips for having sex with women.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

I started writing a really thoughtful essay, but I got stuck, so.

If you've had sex with everyone your partners have had sex with, I've had sex with a chinchilla.



(Making it even worse: I learned this before I had sex with the guy.

Making it slightly better: The chinchilla wasn't harmed--its soft fur, rather than any orifice, was the object of my lover's ardor--and he characterized its state afterwards as "confused, but not upset.")

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Pervert.

Kinky people habitually refer to themselves as "perverts"; it's sort of a half-joke, a bit of reclaimed persecution, the "queer" or "bitch" of the hittysex crowd. But what does "pervert" really mean?

The dictionary (Merriam-Webster) definition for the noun is "one that has been perverted; specifically : one given to some form of sexual perversion." That's a little circular, so look up "pervert" as a verb and we get "to cause to turn aside or away from what is good or true or morally right." From the Latin pervertere, to corrupt or literally to "thoroughly turn."

My personal morality, and I hope this isn't too idiosyncratic, is that it's bad to hurt people without cause. "An it harm none, do what ye will" comes close but doesn't include the catch that sometimes a small harm prevents larger ones. "An in harm none unless you gotta, do what ye will," anyway.

I don't find anything in there about having weird sex. Not that consenting-adults sex is always harmless--having adulterous sex harms the cuckold, having unsafe sex harms yourself and your partners, and so on. But what you actually do in bed is the least of your worries. The butt is not eviler or falser or wronger than the vagina. Receiving a footjob from a woman wearing a gasmask while you bark like a dog and call her "Mommy" is kinky--but it's not perverted.

Language evolves. Because "cunt" was once a neutral term doesn't mean you should use it in fifth grade sex ed. Maybe I should only worry about what "pervert" means now. Except, as the dictionary entry suggests, the language isn't quite done evolving in this instance. Often it is a straight-up expression of disgust. The usage of "perverted" as "wrong" is very much alive, with "pervert" commonly used as a term for pedophiles and other sexual abusers. If a guy who gropes women on the subway is a "pervert," should I be sharing that label?



Oh shit, I literally forgot the name of my own blog while writing this entry. It's way too late to change it to "The Unusual But Ethical ...ocracy." I guess I'm committed now. I gotta reclaim this thing unless I want to make this into a blog for subway creeps.

So I'll say that "pervert" is one of those words, like "moral", that reflects more on the speaker than on the person described. The difference between "ugh, that's perverted" and "mmm, that's perverted" is what matters, not the difference between "pervert" and "kinkster." Someone who thinks I'm gross can call me "kinky" or "a BDSM enthusiast" and still mean a slur by it.

This particular word may be in an awkward point in its evolution, but that doesn't even matter. It's all in what you mean by it. If by pervert I mean someone neutrally different in their sexuality, and I can make my listener understand that I mean it that way, then yeah, I'm a pervert. What of it?

I'll know that the word has finally changed when I see an internet asshole referring to my kind as "so-called 'perverts'..."

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Blood.

I love seeing my own blood. Not because it's the life being drained out of me, but because it's a tiny fraction of the life that's still in me. Bleeding and still being alive gives me a crazy little thrill of how strong I am, of what my body can withstand without even getting dizzy.

Blood is proof. Feeling a knife is one thing, that's subjective, but if blood comes out, that means that I was really cut, that my pain is real. If I don't have marks I don't have a way to prove to myself that I was touched with anything more than bunnyfur, and a mark that breaks my skin, that's the most serious mark of all. I can't be completely a poser if I'm bleeding.

Blood is drama. Interest in BDSM is partly rooted in the love of drama that elevates sex into something more mysterious and powerful than ordinary life, and what's more dramatic than flowing blood?

Blood is beautiful. To me at least. Even a little smear of it is a thrill, a flowing line of it a frightening rush, a single drop a single of so much power and terror. It's so red.

Blood is me. It's my life flowing through my veins, and it's my life to do what I want with--to throw away if I see fit, to give to those who deserve it, to spend on sex and fun as well as "worthy" pursuits.

I'm not completely crazy. I don't want to bleed a lot, I don't want to risk even a scar, much less real injury. But that single shining red drop of it. That's sexy.