The Sexcalator.

By the time I was out of my early twenties, I'd done some fairly hardcore BDSM.  I'd been beaten, whipped, cut, bound, shocked, peed on, done most of the above naked in front of strangers, and frequently during sex.  Which raises the question--where do you go from there?  When you're so young, and you've already had such intense experiences, what's left?

Cuddling on the couch, for one.  Or having slow sleepy sex at the end of the day.  Or--not to make this sound like "but then I discovered that sweet gentle love was the most daring of all!"--getting beaten some more, not necessarily in a harder or more shocking way than before.



One of the many, many unspoken assumptions out there about sex is that it's an escalating process.  Think about how kids talk about it when they're starting to experiment--how far did you go?  Did you get to second base?  Third?  Did you go all the way?  It implies a system where oral sex is more sex than a handjob, and should be an experience you have later.

(This ended up being rather hurtful for me when I gave a guy a handjob before ever having a real kiss, and went through quite a bit of "does that mean I'm too dirty and corrupt for anyone to kiss now?" internal strife before discovering that kissing was still available to me and quite nice.)

The assumption doesn't really go away when you grow up.  It just adds on the idea that you have to stop at an appropriate point on the escalator, or you'll end up on a slippery slope.  ...Which sounds like an awesome waterslide to me.  But the point is supposed to be that if you go "past" penis-in-vagina intercourse by too much, you'll have gone "too far" and you might never return.

Then the inclined planes metaphor turns into a drug metaphor, and you get the idea that "overdosing" on sexuality will make you build up a tolerance, and then "normal" sex won't get you high any more.  You'll have to start fucking donkeys or something just to feel anything.  (I think this has some kind of folkloric connection to the frat-boy myth that vaginas are single-use and will always be the size of the largest object that ever penetrated them.) If your sex tolerance gets too high, you'll keep doing more and more depraved things, until kinky has given way to outright evil, your life falls apart completely, and you become a sex addict and maybe a sexual predator.



There's all kinds of micro-fuckups built into this macro-fuckup paradigm.  Like how sex with people of the same gender, people of a different race, trans people, or people with certain disabilities gets moved to the "more depraved" side of the escalator.  Or how activities people didn't consent to are counted as moving them up the escalator; or someone's position on the escalator is used as an excuse to ignore their consent.  Or, of course, how all this is much more intensely and dangerously enforced against women than men.

Or how something's position on the escalator, rather than its potential to harm, is used as a benchmark of "obscenity."  Or how relationships are expected to escalate, and failure to gradually ramp up the escalator to a certain point ("spicy," which is just a couple steps above center) is taken as failure of the relationship.  Or how even individual sex acts are supposed to have their own escalation, and after you've started groping you're not ever supposed to go back to just kissing.

Or how child molestation and rape are sometimes described as the end of the escalator, like they're what happens when kinkiness goes "too far." and oh my god fuck everything about that.  Or how PIV intercourse is positioned at the exact center, the gold standard which no man should fall short of and no woman should exceed.

Or how lost you can get saying "we shouldn't consider X dirtier than Y," when you ought to be setting the entire idea of sex-as-escalation on fire.


(So it's a baseball game, an escalator, a waterslide, a drug, gold, and it's on fire.  Work with me here.  Take some Claritin if you can't handle analogy.)


In the end, sex is like... it's not really like anything.  Freed from analogies and paradigms and fixed linear progression, sex can get amorphous.  There's no order to do things in, no right or wrong (consensual) things to do, no guarantee of how it will or won't change you, no idea how it does or doesn't correlate with romantic attachment, no guide to what will come next.  It's not even entirely clear what sex is.  Sex could be freakin' anything if the people doing it want it to be.

Good.

What do you want?

[Finals are over!  WHEEE!  Big serious essay today!  Cosmocking next!]

I talk a lot on this blog about how sex should be dictated by what the partners want and the most important thing is to communicate and respect everyone's desires.  And I totally stand by that, but I also know that it's not always that simple.  It's not something I do flawlessly in my own life, that's for damn sure.

Because I am not always sure what my desires are.  My sexuality sometimes seems frustratingly opaque to myself.  I want something, I don't just want to kiss my boyfriend good night and go to sleep, but what on Earth is that something?  Why don't I know what I want?



I have been taught not to credit my own desires.  In part that's personal--one of the most insults I've been subjected to was "you're so selfish, all you want is the things you want!"--and in part it's cultural.  The socialization of young women is all about how to not indulge your desires: don't choose food because it tastes good, don't choose clothing because it's comfortable, don't come on too strong to boys, don't be a needy girlfriend, don't say "no" too stridently or "yes" too enthusiastically.  It's not the charitable or ascetic kind of self-denial, but there's a lot of desire-denial, of doing things correctly instead of the way you want.

(I don't think that young men have it so easy either--it's not the same but it's fucked up in different ways--but I don't have much personal experience with being treated like a young man.  My impression is that guys have more permission to express "acceptable" desires, but there's a pretty narrow range of which desires are acceptable.)

And sometimes when you do break through, when you do the things you want, it's impulsive.  It's not gourmet cooking but a binge on raw cookie dough.  It's not an ethical-slut lifestyle but a furtive tryst with a stranger.  It's not truly escaping repression, it's just acting-out.  It lets you indulge some of your more primal desires, but it doesn't let you lucidly understand them.



But now you're done with that crap.  You're not crowd-following or acting-out any more; you're committed to dealing with sex like an adult.  You read feminist sex blogs.  You have self-respect and you're ready to respect your desires. ...Now what?

Simply saying "that was all bullshit! have the sex you want!" isn't going to cut it.  Maybe intellectually, but not emotionally.  Here I am all prepared to acknowledge and communicate my desires, and my desires are... uh... hm.  I'm so used to putting the "no it's bad and selfish to want things" mental block between my desires and myself that I don't even know what's on the other side.

So here are some questions I've started asking myself.

"What do I fantasize about?"
It took years (okay, the years from 12 to 17, but still, those are years!) for me to go from masturbating while fantasizing about scenarios of sexual submission to realizing that I was into sexual submission.  I know it sounds silly, but I hadn't really made the connection between "thing I like to think about" to "thing I want to do."

"What are my best memories?"
Kevin only held me down and spanked me once, ever, in a yearlong relationship.  It still stands out in my mind as the best sex we ever had.

"What am I fascinated with?"
Another thing I did when I was a teenager: I used to read a lot of blogs and websites about kink, thinking that I was merely curious about this strange world I'd discovered, nothing personal, just something I took a detached academic interest in.  (Hi there, by the way, if you're reading this with detached academic interest.)  I had the same experience with healthcare, interestingly--I was reading medical textbooks "just for fun" before I realized it was a field I would actually enjoy working in.

"What am I stopping myself from saying?"
I've had a lot of conversations with partners that started "I... no, never mind, I shouldn't bother you with this, it's silly."  (Sometimes in my head, sometimes out loud, which is my way of forcing myself to continue the thought because very few boyfriends will go "oh, okay then" to an opener like that.)  They usually turned out to be really really important conversations once I broke through that.

The obvious extension of this is "What do I say when I'm drunk?"  Which is not the safest (emotionally as well as physically) way to get your truths out, but it sometimes works.

"What's the bad, obviously incorrect idea I came up with off the top of my head, the one that's weird and gross so I'm trying to revise it so it doesn't sound ridiculous?"
Pretty much always, that's the truth.

"What would I want?"
Imagine you were in Magical Fairy Land where you could have anything you wanted and a genie would give it to you and there would never be any consequences--what would you want then?  Yeah, that's probably what you want now too.

"Let's try this once and see how it goes."
Sometimes you can't learn without experimentation.  So I can't treat everything like a declaration or a commitment.  Sometimes I have to give myself permission to say (and to make sure my partner knows too), "hey, this might not work out, I might need to stop it halfway through, but I won't know until I try it."  It's almost impossible to be right without having a space in your life where it's okay to be wrong.



I'm not promoting selfishness here.  Knowing what you want doesn't mean always doing what you want; if you want polyamory and your partner is monogamous, or if you want to tie up your partner and they're terrified of that, then your job is not done here.  You still have to negotiate and compromise and possibly sacrifice some of your desires. But you can't even start that process until you know exactly what you're negotiating about, and that requires you to know exactly what your own raw, impractical, selfish desires are.



Me, I want four things real bad right now:
1) To have boy clothes and do boy things and sometimes be a boy in sex, but to still be a woman in the end--a really boyish woman.
2) To focus deliberately on reaching altered states through sex and BDSM, rather than having it just accidentally happen to me.
3) To be a primary to my boyfriend.  Which I am, no question, but it's something I want to keep happening and to feel secure in.
4) To get fisted, like, all the time.  Oh man is that just the awesomest thing.

And even after all this preaching I've been doing, typing those out was hard, and pressing "publish" without deleting them was harder.  This "wanting things" business is a tough skill to learn.

Functional.

Rowdy and I came up with another idea for Positive TV.

In the style of Intervention and Hoarders, Positive TV presents: Functional. Our camera crews will go inside the homes of functional families and observe how they treat each other with love and respect. Trained psychologists will interview family members and we will bring you shocking revelations on this little-seen way of life in our midst.

Experience it from the inside:
Resiliency!
Honesty!
Emotional stability!
Forgiveness!
Compromise!
Responsibility!
Unconditional love!

"On the surface, we probably looked like the perfect suburban family. ...That was about right, actually."

"Our family was close-knit and loving until our father, who had been the core of our lives, died suddenly. Then we really came together and learned to be there for each other."

"After some time, our mother remarried.  Her new husband was very different from our father. But he's always been very good to us and really became a part of the family."

"Another shock came when my brother came out as gay. We were shocked that he'd taken so long to tell us, when he should know that he's safe telling us anything that's important to him. Still, we understood it was his decision when to share it with us."

"Growing up, you know, you don't question these things. You think of your family as normal. I just assumed everyone's parents included the kids in major decisions."

"The moment when it really crystallized for me--when I became aware of how we'd been living--was when I looked around the dinner table and realized that I didn't just love my family, I actually liked them."



Don't miss tonight's riveting season premiere, in which the Ramirez family realizes that their teenage daughter's spending is out of control, so they talk to her about it and she agrees to create a budget and stick to it!

Desensitized.

I heard my new roommate (I have a new roommate, by the way) masturbating today. She had a vibrator going and was making surprisingly loud grunts and gasps by masturbation standards. I don't think she meant for me to hear; she just has a not-very-soundproof door and probably didn't even know I was home.

What I felt, hearing this, was absolute neutrality. It was just "Oh hey, masturbation. Fancy that." I wasn't aroused, nor awkward, nor grossed out. It was like noticing that she was brushing her teeth. Look, it's a thing people do, and there's a person, doing it!

I only noticed my lack of reaction because that's a relatively new thing for me. It used to be that other people's sexuality always provoked something in me, whether it was jealousy or lust or head-under-the-pillow "oh god tell me when it's over" avoidance. The further back I go in my memory, the worse it was; when I was past puberty but not yet having sex, it was agonizing sometimes, even when it wasn't actual sex, even when it was just seeing someone wearing a little less clothes than normal. Sometimes that agony was horror and sometimes it was fascination, sometimes it was uncontrollable giggling; but it was always a reaction. It was always emotionally heightening and attention-monopolizing.

I've seen a lot of naked people since then.

And each time, it's dulled my response a little. Each time I'm in a room (or a bed) with people fucking, it's gotten a little less "OH MY GOD SEX" and a little more "oh. sex." Each time I've had a conversation with a buck naked attractive person, it's gotten a little easier to maintain eye contact. The fact that they're attractive registers with me, and it still makes me happy, but it's a level-headed and low-key happiness, the kind of happy you might get from a pleasant cup of tea. The enjoyment is still there, but the excitement is gone.

I think that's a good thing. And I think that it's a good thing even though I've lost something in the process--I've lost a lot of the frisson of sex, the pounding pulse of anticipation, the electric intensity of even the suggestion of sexuality. But what I've gained in exchange is much more important--I've gained the ability to think rationally about sex. Not losing my shit over the mere idea of fucking has made me much better at negotiating sex, at thinking lucidly about sex, at accepting other people's sex lives even when they're not my cup of tea, and... well, at not losing my shit.



I don't think our problem as a society is being oversexed or undersexed, exactly. I think our problem is valuing the frisson over the ability to keep ahold of our shit. We value passion over companionate love, and wonder why relationships always seem to go cold. We value spontaneity over clarity, and wonder why our sexual communication and safety suck. We value innuendo over education, and wonder why kids grow up with completely fucked-all-to-hell ideas of what their sex life as an adult is going to be like. We make sex into a Big Hairy Deal, into practically all the good and bad in the world, and then wonder why it causes Big Hairy Problems.

By a nudity taboo, by a language taboo, by slut shame, and by terrible education, we've created a world where sex keeps its dark, intense mystery--and good fucking luck coherently negotiating what kind of dark, intense mystery you want to experience.

The feeling of still being hyperaroused by sex is delicious (or was), and it's a genuine sacrifice you make when you start thinking and talking lucidly about sex. But I can tell you this: when you're used to seeing naked people and don't make a big deal about it... you get to see a lot more naked people.

The Praises of Phases.

(Programming note: I live, as many of you are aware, in the Boston suburbs. It's starting to get a trifle stormy up here. If my power or cable are knocked out or my home is damaged, there may be some interruption in your Pervocracy service. As opposed to the usual "I slept late and then I totally had to, like, do a thing" interruptions.)

I've been through some goofy phases in my life. Various things I have been, and am not now:
-Animal rights advocate
-Hardcore liberal
-Hardcore libertarian
-Anime fan
-Fanfic reader and writer
-Horror fiction writer
-Indie filmmaking nerd
-Shapeshifter roleplayer (don't judge me!)
-Observant Jew
-Obnoxiously condescending atheist
-Eclectic pagan (okay, still sort of this)
-Definitely gay
-Definitely straight

Sometimes I worry that things I see as fundamental parts of my identity now--kinkiness and masculinity, in particular, but really all of it--are just phases. I was kinkier a year ago, and girlier. (Then again, I can look at this entry from four years ago and see that this isn't my first time feeling uncomfortable with the trappings of girlness.) But sometimes I worry that even thinking about these things is just my youthful exploration. What if all of my current identity--gender and sexuality and beliefs--turns out to be some goofy phase? What if, ten years from now, I've "grown out" of all this and I'm totally "normal"?

Then I will have had a great ten years. And I'll know so much, too! The awesome thing about going through a lot of phases is that even if the convictions don't stick with you, the knowledge does, so I'm a non-fan who can tell you all about OTPs and Mary Sues and plot bunnies, a non-observant Jew who can tell you which bugs are kosher and what the prayer is for going to the bathroom (you thank God that none of your holes are closed up), and a non-filmmaker who knows what to do if the best boy sends you to the grip truck to get a box of F-stops (punch him). If I'd had one cohesive identity from birth to death, I don't think that my knowledge and experience of the world would be as broad as it is right now.

So "just a phase" shouldn't be used to discount things that were genuine parts of your life and self but didn't happen to be permanent. You were real then and you're real now, no matter how different; and you'll be real tomorrow no matter what changes. I'm embarrassed of some of my past identities, but it's an "I was pretty annoying, huh?" embarrassed, not an "I wasn't expressing the real me" embarrassed. It was the real me.

Is all this just a passing phase? Maybe it is. That's okay. It's real right now.

Maker Love.

"I reject your cuddles and substitute my own!"

It's one thing to merely quote Adam Savage, or even the parallel universe Adam Savage who only talks about cuddles. ("Today, on Cuddlebusters--is it possible to cuddle with a cuddler while cuddling? And later: Grant, Tori, and Kari cuddle for science!") It's another, far awesomer thing to do so after playing with sex toys you built yourself.

Wearing a strap-on harness makes me feel all cool and powerful anyway, but wearing a strap-on harness that I built, and therefore is perfectly fitted to my body and adjustable in exactly the ways I want, makes me feel like a goddamn stud.

Gray Rain.

I didn't go back home after work this morning. I clocked out at 7, drove only as far as Concord, and figured that since I had no particular schedule I'd hang out in Minuteman Park until the rush hour traffic lightened up a bit.

I was still in my scrubs and warmup jacket. It was cold out, but not bitter cold, with a light gray rain falling, enough to feel, not enough to soak. The trees were just starting to turn , still green with only shades and flashes of yellow and red. Old stone walls lined empty fields and dirt paths. I walked a little ways into the park, far enough that I couldn't see roads or another person, and sat on a weathered granite bounder. A squirrel perched on a nearby branch, chattering loudly, staring at me with a level fearless gaze and chirping again before running off on important squirrel business.

I sat and thought. Sometimes I didn't think. Sometimes I meant to think but just looked, just took in the chilly air and the wavering leaves of the trees.

I thought about the two halves of my life. ER and BDSM. They're both characterized by secrets, by powerful sensation and emotion, by the human body. When you deal with people's bodies you deal with their whole lives, and what you see is as funny and sad and strange as people are. And yet in another way, people always hold back. Seeing a person in great pain or great pleasure, seeing them naked literally and metaphorically, shows you things you wouldn't otherwise see--but not everything. There are things people know, things people are, that cannot be wrenched out, that sometimes cannot even be given.

There was a tree with big diamond-shaped leaves across the field from me, its leaves yellowing at the edges but still a brilliant green at their core.

I've written about transcendence before. It's understandably hard to put in words. The closest I get is along the lines of "There's something more than... nnnuh. Than, you know. There's more than this." There's something more to people than bodies, and that's why I am so comfortable with and so fascinated by those bodies. Bodies have parts, they have insides, they're possible to take apart just like any other object. People, less so.

Before I had any experience healthcare or BDSM, I loved gory horror movies. My degree is in film, and I wrote my thesis on trashy horror films, then later worked as set decorator and propmaster on one. As far as I know there isn't a tremendous correlation between kinky people and horror fans, which surprises me. Then again, I haven't watched that much horror lately. I still enjoy it, but when I can get myself tied up and tortured and feel my own body being treated like a piece of meat... I don't crave it. There's comparisons to be made between the ER and horror movies too but I feel wrong making them.

A large brown bird swooped between trees, only a few feet away but without a sound. From the silence, I think it was an owl staying up late. I looked for it in the tree but it had disappeared among the branches. High overhead, from a different tree, I heard the cry of a hawk. Little sparrows flitted around close to the ground.

When I have to take care of a dead person, I always find myself talking to them. Not in a big emotional dramatic way, not offering grief or blessings. But not in a cavalier joking way either. I just talk to them the way I talk to patients, calm and nicey-nice and narrating what I'm doing. "'Scuse me ma'am, I gotta reach across you here for a second, thanks." It's just a habit.

I started to walk back to my car. The rain was still falling gently, the air filled with the cool smell of wet grass.

Sex and BDSM are the restorative factors in my own life. They don't take strength; they give me the strength that I can carry out into difficult situations, or the joy that lets me really enjoy the rest of the world. Life is better with a kiss still lingering on your lips, or a bruise just below the neckline of your scrubs. Life is easier.

Sitting on a rock out in the rain doesn't make life easier, but sometimes it makes it make a little more sense.

Girly girl.

I'm not a girl, not yet a woman...

I have a habit of thinking of myself as a "girl," socially. When I'm operating in the grownup world, when I'm speaking as a feminist or an EMT, I'm pretty strict about calling myself and anyone else over 18 a "woman." But when I'm in less uptight contexts... well, for one thing, I tend to refer to "grownups." And I'm not one of those.

In one sense, it's literally true; I'm younger than almost all of my friends. There are some 20- and 21-year-olds in the BDSM scene, but on the whole the crowd skews older than me. It's a combination of people tending to take a while to get comfortable with public kinkiness, and people not being inclined to bow out gracefully when they reach unsexy age. (That's a joke; of course people can be sexy at any age, at least to other gross old people.) I'm also a kid in my life situation: I work an entry-level gofer job, I'm single and playing the field pretty hard, and I live in a big messy shared house in a college area.

But it's also part of my personality. When I'm happy I tend to be very bouncy and silly and a little ditzy, and can have a very "ooh Daddy can I play with the ponies?" demeanor to me. I'm also still a little shy and inexperienced in BDSM--despite being in the scene to some degree for a few years now, I'm still finding my footing in the social and sexual nuances. So I appreciate partners who will take a slightly mentor-ish role and let me be a little bit of a kid in comparison. ("Slightly mentor-ish" does not mean "do my thinking for me"; I do plenty of my own reconnaissance and research and reflection. But it does mean "understand that you're introducing me to some things for the first time and that I appreciate a little bit of education and guidance.") I also have a tendency to be just goofy in bed and love the kind of play where I'm laughing my ass off almost as much the kind where I'm screaming in pain.

I do wonder if I'll ever become a woman. I have a feeling I won't. I can see myself in about twenty years, possibly living in a grown-up house with a grown-up job, and still referring to them in exactly those terms. Is it a submissive thing, or is just a Holly thing? Potato potahto, but I think it's a Holly thing. A certain sense of silliness and wonder is just a part of me, and neither biological age nor sexuality changes anything about that.

Feministically, this is terrible, of course. It makes me undercut my own power and authority constantly, and makes me act like less than a full adult. Infantalizing oneself, even subtly, is no way to gain power and respect in society. But I don't think women are girls. I just think Holly is.

Back to work.

Today was all work--a lot of work, actually, which was kind of good. Much as I bemoan my inability to brag about my butt-sluttery there, I do like the feeling of having some value to mainstream society.

And I had my phlebotomy class today! So now I'm qualified to draw blood! Very cool. The only drawback was that it meant I had to get stuck repeatedly with goddamn needles. (I also did some sticking. But the class seemed to be much more about the rite of passage of getting stuck than about actually learning the techniques.) And it was not socially acceptable to groan and writhe and bellow "OH YOU SICK MOTHERFUCKER" at my fellow students.

What I want in a bra.

38B. Every store seems to go from 36ABCD to 38CD, and it drives me nuts. 36B will strangle me, 38C will not support my boobs, and 36C is just all kinds of wrong.

A color other than white, black, or "nude." I have white and black already (and black is limited in what shirts it will work under), and "nude" just looks so frumpy to me. I want a bra in a color or pattern that I would wear as a shirt.

Super-mega-maximizing. Push-up, gel pads, basically everything short of stuffing a pair of live rabbits in my shirt. I will have cleavage dammit even if 75% of it is not technically part of my body.

Nipple-concealing. I have big and poky-outy nipples, and while I understand that in some circles this is a selling point, I'd like some control over them.

Kind of... skeezy. You know what I mean? Something that doesn't scream "totally utilitarian, totally acceptable in the locker room" but looks all slutty and sexual.



I'm just frustrated because today I went clothing shopping, and I got a nice dress, a lovely belt, a cute top... and I looked and looked and looked for bras and they were all total failures. Of the very very few that fit, they all had "I don't expect anyone to ever see this" styling. Literally every single one was a Bra Of Shame, in colors and styles I associate with medical devices, touting its utility in "gentle support" or in not being seen or felt. I want a Bra of "check out my fucking tits, people!", and I'm having trouble finding it even online.

The Network.

If we take the axiom "when you sleep with someone, you're sleeping with everyone they ever slept with," and disregard time so it becomes "you're sleeping with everyone they ever slept with or ever will sleep with," and extend it to include anyone their partners sleep with and so on--how large does that group become?

This image shows the romantic relationships over 6 months in a high school. A lot of people stayed in pairs, or switched partners only once. Some of them paired up in ways that created "effectively slept with" groups of six or eight. But then there's the structure on the upper left. The kids who dated a lot of people tended to date other kids who dated a lot of people, and this core group of hyper-daters plus all their partners formed one enormous network.

What I wonder is if you could draw a sexual map of America--or hell, of the world--that looks the same way. Obviously there are some people who've only been with one partner and that partner's only been with them, or have otherwise formed insulated groups with their sexual history, so we can't say that everyone sexually active is connected. But what I wonder is: is there a single mega-network? Is there a certain level of sexual activity and social/geographic mobility (and random chance) at which you join a group of hundreds of millions who have all effectively slept with each other?

I would like to believe that there is. I would like to see it as--better not say an honor, but a distinction--to be "on the network." I wonder which partner first put me on the network--and I can think of a few people I almost certainly put on it. I imagine that most of my current friends are on the network. And I imagine the network as global and possibly reaching into the billions.

This is a depressing demonstration, but think of the spread of HIV. It began with a very small group of people--maybe just one originally?--in the 1980s. Currently there are about 35 million people with HIV. Although there are other ways to transmit HIV, I suspect that for the most part this represents a 35-million-person network.

(Does the fact that not everyone has HIV disprove the existence of a truly global network? Given that my network rules ignore chronology of partners and disease transmission obviously does not, and that the majority of sexual encounters with a HIV-positive person do not transmit HIV... it's unclear. HIV proves that a mega-network can exist, but not whether or not there's just one huge one.

Still, I'd guess that any network that gets to 35 million plus would have at least one instance of sex connecting it to any other network, right? It would only take one. So most likely there is only one mega-network in the world, and the only remaining question is how large it is.)

I would love to see a visualization of this network. I can imagine the relatively thinly linked gaps between localities and social classes, the individuals serving as unknowing hubs or key links, the comparative isolation of small towns, the tight little knots representing swingers' clubs and theater tech crews. There would be lines crossing every national border and every political hatred. It would be beautiful, sad, and complicated as all hell.



So... if my theory is correct, I've most likely slept with you. Whoever you are, if you've had more than two or three sexual partners, we're probably meta-partners. We're on the Network. We're connected by pleasure with the entire world. How cool is that?

Quick break for contemplation.

I will hack through the whole Misandry Bubble, it's a personal challenge at this point, but I had a bad day and I need a sanity break.

1) I wonder how much cock there is in the world? Erect, of course. There's 6.7 billion people, so about 3.35 billion dudes. Let's figure an average cock size of 5.8 inches for adults, which gives us a starting number of 19.43 billion inches, but there's about 27% kids in the world, and I don't feel like getting too specific with my calculations there so let's just clip about 10% off the top. This gives us 17.49 billion inches. Or 276,000 miles. That's more than the distance to the moon.

The cocks of the world reach to the moon, dude.

2) Would I fuck myself? I mean, if I were magically duplicated. For a long time I thought I would, but honestly, I don't think it would be all that great. I don't think I could surprise myself, and I'm not sure I have the mojo to dominate myself. I mean, I'd do it, for the novelty value if nothing else, but I think ultimately me and myself would still have to look to the greater world for our needs.

So maybe it's hypocritical that I totally want to watch a dude fuck his own magically replicated self.

3) I'm a total sucker for the ledgey haircut. You know the one I mean? Conservatively medium-short but with a ledge. Like on Adam from Buffy. Only usually without the green stuff. That ledgey haircut looks really good on everybody. And like a third of all the guys in Boston have it, which is awesome. I get to walk down the street and I'm just surrounded by ledgey haircuts. Duuude.

Nice Day.

I have the new Cosmo! But I have no time to Cosmock because I just got home from the [undisclosed location] where I work and now I have to go out of town for a couple days and oh it's all craziness.

I just remembered another reason I stopped doing the Twisty Faster snarks: I just don't have the energy to refight the circular, angry, heels-dug-in patriarchy argument over and over every time I write one. Even when there's some mutual respect between me and the people I'm arguing with, I still feel like we're going back and forth with "is not!" and "is too!" forever. (Is not, by the way.)

Anyway. I'm having a really nice day. I love my new job; I thought it would be just okay, but it's turning out great because everyone there is really nice and--more surprisingly if you've worked in my industry--really focused on Doing Things Right. I've worked in a lot of places where "good enough, no one's looking, you can skip a few steps when you're busy" was a common attitude, but at [undisclosed] I have yet to run into one person who acts like that. You want to know how goody-goody this place is? Non-managers quote the company slogan to each other and mean it. Maybe this is just a honeymoon period, but I'm loving it. (That is not the company slogan.)

Also I have people offering to tie me up. That always improves things.

And Boston is working out really well. I've made friends here, I have a home, I'm starting to learn my way around, the city is beautiful, and life in general has been good. So I'm happy. I guess this isn't much of a sexblog thing to say, but I'm just enjoying life.

Lately I'm starting to feel... like a person. Like an almost normal adult. I go to work, I go to the store, I hang out with people, I have hobbies. (Some stranger than others, but still.) Like this is what life is supposed to be like.

I have a lot of happy in me. All the time, I mean, not just now. Stuff can come between me and my happy, sometimes way between and I don't feel the happy at all, but it's always there. I always have happy. This world is a good place. Boom de yada.