You may have already figured out that I am single now. You’re smart like that; smarter than I am subtle. But it’s high time I explicitly stated it here, it being an important part of the narrative and all.

Laramy and I aren’t together anymore.

No, it wasn’t my idea, and yeah, of course I was crushed. I’m still kind of crushed. If you’ve been reading this blog you may have noticed how smitten I was with him; that doesn’t fade overnight. But I’m not asking anyone to feel sorry for me or take sides. Fundamentally, we had a good thing together, I’m grateful for what time we had, and I respect his choice even if it’s hard for me to understand.

So that’s the official update and declaration of QP’s singlehood with special bonus resolution to stop moping about it.

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When you read discussions about evolutionary psychology, debates about weight, or even conversations on general attractiveness, someone will always raise the point that human beings are fundamentally attracted to health. This probably seems like a diplomatic, benign way to speak about physical beauty: Can’t we all just agree that we’re programmed to read signs of health as beauty? Isn’t health really the most important factor in choosing a mate?

Every time I hear that, read that, I flinch just a little. It’s such a casual way to tell someone that no matter how she actually looks,  she doesn’t count as pretty.

I am not healthy. My body has not been healthy for several years. I am disabled; I am sick. I have debilitating fatigue, chronic pain, a compromised immune system, and a low tolerance for activity.  I wouldn’t have a breath of a prayer of surviving in the wild. Despite the fact that even I get mesmerized by my ass sometimes, in one sense I’m unattractive on the most basic level. And even ignoring bullshit theories and pseudoscience, being in a relationship with me day-to-day must be frustrating.

Want to do a fun activity together? Depending what it is, I might be able to do it if I have a week’s notice so I can rest. And a free week after, so I can rest. Want to do a fun, spontaneous activity together? Haha fuck you no.

Feel like grabbing a bite to eat together? Okay, but right now I’m off gluten, dairy, sugar, and fifteen other things just in case it helps my illness. So far it hasn’t helped much, but it means we definitely can’t order that pizza. Also, I bring my own sugar-free ketchup or wheat-free soy sauce along, which I acknowledge might be weird.

Do you want a partner who can be your workout buddy? Who’ll go dancing with you every weekend? Who lives a normal, productive, active life? Who can work a normal full-time job? I’ll say it now: you can’t rely on me. I may never be this for you no matter how much I try.

Add to this the fact that even if I were perfectly healthy I’d still have my emotional issues and my weaknesses, just like anyone else, and most people would run away, sweating from the adrenaline rush of having just dodged a bullet. Wouldn’t they?

But I know something they don’t: I’m worth it. Not to everyone, maybe, but to the few, I’m so entirely worth it. I will love them so fiercely and sweetly, we’ll laugh together so joyously, and those things I do offer will bewitch them so thoroughly that my health will be a detail, trivia, like the maze of color in my eyes. Like the ridiculous songs I make up. Like the brownies I bake that I can’t even eat myself, but I know you like them. Like my insatiable lust for the people I love.

I’m no one’s textbook ideal mate. No one describes their perfect woman as always sick. But I make up for it. I try to. I have to believe I do.

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I am all searing thorax. The rest of me is numb.

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We were probably both new-ish-ly single. Or possibly I wasn’t; I’ve spent more of my adulthood in relationships than out, but I haven’t always given a fraction of a shit about sentimental days where I’m supposed to buy candy.

Still, I made Eloise a mix CD of various slightly-fractured love songs because I make excellent mix CDs and getting them is often one of the perks of being my friend and driving me places. (Erasure’s “Waiting For Sex” was on it, as was mc chris’s “nerd grrrl” and Liz Phair’s “Flower”. Look me in the fucking face and tell me that mix wasn’t inspired.) We hopped in her car and on the other end of the drive we found a magical land of drag shows and women making out.

It felt like home. Wait, no, it felt like fun.

For some reason that’s the exact kind of New Year’s Eve I’d like to have. Maybe because Laramy’s working tonight so I can’t kiss my man and that reminds me of a Valentine’s day alone. Or maybe just because it would be intensely awesome. I can’t unravel the psychology of it all right now. I just want to see drag, dance with chicks, and ideally drink brightly colored, deceptively intoxicating sugar water.

Eloise has moved away, though, and I’m too tired to dance. Boo. Maybe I’ll have a night home alone dressed in drag. That would definitely be zero units of pathetic, right?

Oh yeah and HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!

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I realize we’ve been through this before. I realize that I want a terrible lot of novelty dildos, some of which even exist. But I swear, this time it’s serious.

I want a unicorn horn dildo. I want to strap it on and have a majestic unicorn horn cock. I want to strut around with it, admiring myself, horned creature. I want to fuck a woman with it and give her the most obscene orgasms: orgasms that are truly, offensively beautiful.

I want to lock our fingers together as I plunge my majestic cock into her and tell her with my eyes that this thing we’re doing, which has the impossible nestled right there in the middle of it all, is absolutely true. There is nothing truer or more honest than the moment when I make her come.

We are an improbable creature together, more beautiful than sense.

Or, failing that, I want to own a unicorn horn dildo because fuck you, I have a unicorn horn dildo. And it can double as a narwhal tusk. Holy shit why am I not ordering this right now?

Oh, cause I’m broke? Okay, I guess that’s valid.

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Okay, wait. Yes I do. It’s because of how often many of us have been ridiculed and shamed and accused of lying/deluding ourselves about squirting. Sometimes that sort of thing makes you want to scream “FUCK YOU DO YOU REALIZE THIS MAKES ME AWESOME!?!?” It’s a defense mechanism, and it makes perfect sense. But I hate how it creates a culture where someone might feel like they’re falling short if they happen to not be an ejaculator.

Really, we’re just talking about an orgasm with some extra liquid added. It doesn’t make you automatically awesome. It doesn’t make you sexier¹ or healthier or smarter or more financially solvent. You will probably not even get a sticker.²

It might, however, be an especially intense orgasm, and it is an interesting thing to experience. For many people, that alone makes it worth looking in to. That’s why I’m offering some squirting tips for those who want to squirt and those who want to assist others in their quest to do so. If you succeed at this, try not to brag too much. I will see what I can do about stickers.

You don’t need to know the basics of the physiology of female ejaculation to squirt, but they can help. I am equipped to give you only the very basics.

The g-spot exists. It’s actually the underside of the urethral sponge, which swells with fluid when arousal happens. It’s usually found a couple inches above the vaginal opening on the clitular facing side of the vaginal wall. Its texture is usually different from the surrounding tissue, making it fairly easy to find. Sometimes there will be gasps or squeals or other sound effects that help further clarify its location. Keep in mind, though, that every body is different.

Sometimes the urethral sponge releases this fluid through the urethra during orgasm. The orgasms that bring this about often come from g-spot stimulation, but not always. Clitoral stimulation alone can do it for some people. The release can be like a spray, a gush, or a trickle: they all qualify as squirting. The fluid isn’t pee, it’s most often clear, and it is harmless.

Whether squirting orgasms actually feel better than any other kind very much depends on the person. And in fact, from here on out I’m really just going to talk about personal experiences and observations.

1. The first rule of squirting is: squirting is really, honestly no big deal. If you do it, it’s nothing to be self-conscious or worried about. If you don’t do it, you’re in the majority, and this in no way constitutes failure. My point here is that stressing out never helped anyone’s sex life.³ And it especially never helped anyone ejaculate. Relaxing is going to help you here with one tiny exception that we’ll cover later.
2. The actual first rule of squirting probably should have been put down a towel. If not several. Do not forget the towels. You can skip this step if and only if you have rubber sheets or are doing this on a hard surface like a bathtub or an inspiring marble fountain.
3. Start doing kegels now. Right now. Really. I’ll wait. Mighty PC muscles are only going to help your cause here. Apparently, when they’re toned your g-spot is more accessible, and has more sensitivity because of better blood flow. All I know is that I’ve been doing kegels since I was ten and I am a squirter, so that’s n=1. Science!⁴
4. Get an njoy pure wand. If there is one toy in all the world that is responsible for more female ejaculation than all the others combined, it’s probably this one. Or, at very least, I cannot use it without squirting. I can practically not look at it without squirting. Both ends feel incredible: the knob (I usually prefer the smaller side, but both work) lands right on my g-spot perfectly, whether I’m thrusting with it or rocking the toy back and forth from its center. This is quite literally the best sex toy investment I’ve made. And, did I mention? Splashy.
5. If you’re not ready to embrace the feat of engineering that is the pure wand, your best bet is a toy with a curved end that will easily reach your g-spot.
6. When playing with a partner, I’ve found that simultaneous focused clit and g-spot stimulation tend to make me squirt. For instance, sucking on my clit while fingering me with those come-hither crooked fingers for a bit works like a charm. It also puts me in a pretty chipper mood.
7. Sometimes a lot of orgasms have to happen before the squirting starts. Be patient and persevere. Could there really be a less tedious thing to practice?
8. If you have enough muscle control that you’re able to tense just the area around your urethral sponge/g-spot during stimulation, that can be a helpful way to put yourself over the top.

Experiment. A lot. Alone, with a partner, with several different partners. If it doesn’t happen right away try doing kegels regularly for a month and then trying again. Try a new toy. If it’s important to you, keep at it. Keep calm and carry on.

But seriously? The pure wand. I’m telling you.

1. Unless the beholder in question is someone with a thing for squirters, I suppose.
2. Note: I really should make stickers.
3. Unless, of course, we consider the case of Hippolyta Craig of Lubbock, Texas, but that is another story entirely.
4. Disclaimer: This is not science.

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That’s why I prefer celebrate Wanksgiving instead. Orgasms for everyone and fuck those pilgrims. But since I skipped the family festivities last year I have to suck it up and go to the thing and get asked why I’m still sick and when I’ll be a real person again.

Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of things I’m thankful for. Mostly the many awesome people in my life, but also the awesome animals in my life, the fact that my alleged car is still running, and my not-homeless status. I’m actually pretty damn lucky, really, and I should remember that.

I’m still so horribly envious of healthy people that I sometimes feel I could bite them and chew, but I consider that a personal failing.

Hope everyone has a wonderful day! And wonderful pie!

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I wish I could be a better girlfriend. The kind who takes you on magical adventures and gets you adrenaline drunk hours after last call. The kind who spends energy like tap water, who doesn’t ration out every movement, moment, drive, and task. The kind you can take rock climbing. Not that Laramy climbs all that many rocks, but that’s not the point. The point is, if he wanted to I probably couldn’t go with him.

But today I just wanted to accompany him to the grocery store, and even that wasn’t looking good. “I’m sorry you’re feeling so bad,” Laramy nestled in beside me after refilling my water bottle. What I didn’t tell him is how normal this is. How often I spend all day in bed. How I have to save up energy to come see him and function at not-even-half his level. I don’t have to. He’s seen me much worse. Instead, we cuddle.

“Were you reading TV Tropes?” he asks me. For someone who ends up reading over my shoulder so often, he maintains that he doesn’t see what’s so interesting about it. But I like it. It’s a glorious waste of time when you’re too tired to do anything useful.

I shake my head and grimace in mock guilt. “No. Not at all. I would never! In a million” kiss “billion” kiss “years!” At least half of our dialog is pure nonsense. Always. But we laugh a lot.

But then his hands were on me. My laptop closed. Our kisses deepened. My hands were on him, stroking his belly, grabbing his ready cock. His fingers found my clit, lingering there and making me wriggle until they slammed into me. For a moment I considered how much energy an orgasm or six would cost me, and then he growled “Come for me,” in my ear. When he does that I always seem to drop everything and comply.

What we had likely approached the most incredibly stupendous sex possible considering one of us could barely move.

I wish I could be a better lay sometimes. The athletic, high-energy kind. The Cirque du Soleil kind who makes you wish you’d set up the camcorder beforehand because no one is ever going to believe this shit. But Laramy still grinned his sleepy grin at me and told me I’m amazing anyway. And I couldn’t not believe him because I was there and he was right: we have amazing sex and dammit, I’m half of it. Or at very least one-third. In your healthy fucking faces, circus folk.

“I’m feeling much better,” I informed him a few minutes after we’d untangled from each other. I got up and started putting on clothes. “Still want to go grocery shopping?”

“Wow, you really are feeling better.”

“I just needed a good rogering all along!” It was a couple hours before I had to tuck myself in again. You can’t possibly know what 120 minutes of functioning is worth to me, unless you are me, but suffice to say it’s not nothing.

Have I mentioned? My boyfriend is my favorite. Endorphins are my second favorite.

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1. Warning: All links in this entry will take you directly to an online time-sucking device. QP Corp is not responsible for any lost productivity. In fact, QP Corp is not responsible for anything. Ever.

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I miss her.

We were roommates for one year in college. I always wished we’d stayed in touch, even though things were a little strained by the end of that year living together. She would get angry at me, she said, because I didn’t put as much work into my academics and writing as I did my part-time jobs and maintaining my long-distance relationship with Reginald. Even then I had to admit she was right, but I also felt like my priorities were my business. I also suspected she resented how effortlessly my good grades came to me. She was gifted, but also a very hard worker. Reginald also moved back in-state at the end of that school year, and he didn’t much like me having friends separate from him. Also, sometimes I’m just shitty when it comes to keeping my friendships together. There were lots of factors, I guess, but one way or another she and I talked a few times over the summer and then passively let our friendship lapse. When we met each other on campus during Junior and Senior year we smiled and were cordial, but we weren’t even a shadow of what we’d been.

What we had been was pretty awesome. She was the only real friend I made in college, considering Reginald’s gentle suggestions that I never talk to anyone but him. She and I, we challenged each other and bickered and then made up and had serious discussions and laugh-until-you-very-nearly-pee discussions. We shared almost everything. We danced together to Leonard Cohen. We competed and supported and comforted by turns. And no matter what, every night we’d read to each other before bed. Both of us being technical virgins, of course we usually read books about sex. Our favorite was (if memory serves) the hilarious¹ Reclaiming Goddess Sexuality, which followed a fictional young woman through what was probably a very historically inaccurate sexual initiation in an ancient matriarchal culture that I have never found any indication existed. It suggested that for first-time intercourse we be positioned side-by-side with our partners². Man-on-top sex is not very empowering, apparently. We sternly reminded each other when our attitudes weren’t goddess-like enough.

At times it was almost like we were having a romantic relationship, except the entire physical/sexual facet was trapped in books and we read it aloud instead of acting on it. Also, we both had boyfriends. But still, I sometimes wondered what it would be like to leave mine and have a girlfriend instead. A girlfriend with perfect lips and big eyes and a mop of short, wavy hair like hers.

And then, a couple years ago, she died.

I don’t know what happened. I was searching for her online one day, thinking I’d email her to see how she was doing, and I found her obituary. She was an award-winning poet. She’d been living twenty minutes from me. She was deeply loved and dearly missed. She was gone. I dreamed about her last night and I woke up and she’s still gone. And I miss her. That’s all I can really say about it. That’s the entire story.

She’d have written it better.

1. Just to be clear before I go into details: we knew it was hilarious. We were naive, maybe, but not stupid.
2. I’m guessing this meant spooning, but I will likely never know for sure

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Mascara bruises that stain the eyes after a howling, squinting, weeping orgasm. Savage eyes. Painless tears. Gasps for more than air.

A sharp prickle on skin as clothing drops.

Unmarked flesh aching for teeth. Tongue questing for salt and shudders.

The base notes of own breath weaving with the delicious heart notes of another’s. A volatile elixir that will never exist anywhere else, will never be known outside the space between you.

I do not know how to separate these things from joy.

There’s a reason one of the most popular books on the subject is called The Joy of Sex. The title is so right it’s actually redundant. Sex is joy. It is the perfect word. Delight is another that works, but joy sounds right, a song and a crest and a sigh.

In fact, when people describe sex as sacred I agree with them. I just don’t know that we have the same idea of what that means, exactly.

Not that I expect everyone to feel the way I do about it. You can find sex utterly joyless, and that’s okay¹. But for me, sex is a kind of joy. Like dancing to intoxicating music and feeling completely alive. Like gripping hands with your lover at the top of a hill on a roller coaster. Indeed, there are lots of kinds. Sex just happens to be one of my very favorites.

But I think it could be helpful if more people bought into my sex-equals-joy paradigm because it instantly makes so many of the problems surrounding sex seem so silly. “How dare you find joy with someone I don’t want you to be finding joy with!?” “You pursue joy more than I find appropriate and that makes you disgusting and dirty.” “You owe me joy.” These statements sound absurd to me when I say them out loud.

Joy is unbound. Forced joy is by its nature counterfeit.  So guilt tripping or coercing or subduing someone into a true expression of joy is impossible. Why would you even try? Making claims about how one expression of joy is better than any other is meaningless. Joy being both universal and deeply personal, no one is qualified to decide such things.

I don’t suggest that sex cannot be risky: emotionally, physically, reproductively, or socially. In fact, it is always risky, even if the risk is only that you might pull a muscle. But risk is never an acceptable reason to control people. Educating people about the dangers that might arise while they pursue joy makes sense; redefining joy as danger, not so much.

And being ashamed of joy? That basically makes no sense at all.

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1. Unless we’re having sex together, in which case I want to reevaluate why we’re not playing Clue or something instead.

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