quizzical pussy

I’m going to make this really, really clear, just for the record: There’s nothing clever about violating a sex worker’s anonymity. Ever. This isn’t something that’s done for great justice; it’s not a public service, and it doesn’t accomplish anything productive.

Very simply, if I try to fuck with any sex worker’s real life, family, and/or identity, it’s my pathological attempt to punish that person, usually for the crime of representing sex or a related transgression (to me). That, or it’s a childish vendetta against someone who pissed me off in a more concrete way.

In short, there are no non-personal reasons for this phenomenon. I’ll go so far as to say that all anti-sex “crusades” are deeply personal. They’re never really for the social fabric, or for the children. They’re for one (or more) waylaid pervert’s thwarted kink and guilt-soaked lust.

One of the reasons it sucks doing sex work is because you get negative respect. You know why you can’t tell people when you get a job in orgasm assistance? Because it will very often irrevocably damage the way they see and interact with you. It will jeopardize your future career in other industries. It will inevitably break your poor mother’s heart (because if there’s one thing your mom should care about more than the gory details of your sex life, it’s what the neighbors would think about the method you’ve chosen of not being homeless). Even when you’ve got a shitty, thankless job as a fast food worker or in retail, you’re still liable to hear platitudes like “Well at least it’s honest work”. I’m pretty sure honest work is code for “not sex work” in a lot of cases.

So– because I’m clearly missing something here– why isn’t sex work honest? What’s dishonest about it? It isn’t always legal, and I’ll be the first to admit that the illegal forms of sex work especially abound with coercion, abuse, and outright slavery. But the legal, consensual kind? Even the illegal, consensual kind? The I’ll-provide-a-sexual-service-and-you-pay-me-and-we’ll-all-go-home-happy kind? Seems honest to me.

It seemed honest to me when I witnessed it working in the porn industry, it felt honest to me when I was a phone sex operator, and it seems extra super honest to me when I’m watching the obviously unfiltered, unsanitized look at legalized prostitution: HBO’s Cathouse. God, I can’t help loving that show.

Society (the one I’m entrenched in, but also pretty much all of them from where I’m sitting) has serious issues with sex. In fact, if Society were a person I would advise it to seek immediate, five-times-a-week counseling. But we don’t have to buy into all that baggage to the point where it makes us thwarted, guilty waylaid perverts, do we? Especially when there are so many wonderful, rewarding ways to stick to the straight and narrow path of perversion. It feels so good to embrace what Society “knows” is wrong, like slipping into a warm bath of anti-psychotics.

Fucking is older than Society, older than economics, older than humanity. Sex existed long before the first primate wiggled the first thumb, and then proceeded to stick it in an orifice.

Do you think it’s maybe time we relaxed about sex a little?

Because hysteria over sex workers, or gay people, or any normal, healthy aspect of human sexuality is really just an extension of freaking the fuck out about sex. There’s a tendency to deny sex workers personhood, making them either receptacles of our disgust or avatars–even deities– of sexuality. Sometimes both. But, much like Zaphod Beeblebrox, they’re just these guys, you know?

As long as we imbue their jobs with all this emotional, existential and philosophical weight, is it any wonder they want to remain anonymous? Let’s all treat sex work like the honest work it is, and then maybe sex workers will want to disclose their real names. Until then, we deserve to take all the puns and belabored alliteration they want to give us, and like it.

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My sexual stomach is tolerably strong. There’s a lot I want to try, and there’s even more I’m willing to try. And even if it’s not my kink, I try to be accepting. You like to make your partner bleed? If your partner likes to bleed, that’s beautiful, my friend. Want to have sex with your sibling? If you’re both over the age of consent and into it, I’m certainly not going to try to stop you. If you’re into the whole scat thing I really don’t want to know about it, but I wish you joy. From way over here at the other end of the internet, I wish you joy. And I know I’ve made it clear that I’ve had severe aesthetic issues with anthropomorphizing animals, but I’m even working on my furry acceptance. I hugged a high school mascot last week and only had to take one panicked shower afterward.

I believe I’m within limping distance of sex positivity, inching slowly from “I’m scared to put a penis in my mouth” ten years ago toward the Platonic ideal of open, loving acceptance of all safe, sane, and consensual human pleasure.

But for some reason kissing grosses me out.

It’s everywhere: people gently brushing lips, tongues crawling into one another’s mouths like great, glutted worms. It’s disgusting to look at. I know they’re having fun, and it’s just about the most socially acceptable form of romantic/sexual interaction. Still, my entire body revolts just seeing it.

Try finding a movie where they show tits but skip that moment of body horror. It simply doesn’t exist. Every sex scene has a nauseous distraction. To me, PDA at the mall is more obscene than porn. Clearly I missed my calling as an old-school, by-the-rules prostitute. Well, by one of the rules, anyway: No kissing, lots of coming.

The human mouth is a cesspool. Simple fact. We all know this, right? Is it unreasonable to not want to cross-pollinate my filth with yours, no matter how fond of you I might be?

I’ll put my mouth lots of places. Oral sex is fine (it’s amazing how much cleaner genitals are than pie holes), as is mutual kissing from the neck down. Maybe even the cheek if I really, really trust you. But mouth-to-mouth? Save it for when you have to resuscitate me, and then hand me a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

As you might imagine, this quirk isn’t an easy sell for most people. I realize that kissing doesn’t squick most people out; quite the opposite. It’s a lot to ask, wanting someone to forgo their primary avenue for expressing affection in favor of, what? Hugs? Nuzzles? Conversation hearts?

Still. I just can’t. I can be sex positive, but kissing positive? That just isn’t me.

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In one sense, my memory is positively elephantine. I remember conversations I had when I was four years old: not dramatic, important ones, but mundane, forgettable ones. I remember what cigarettes my best friend smoked Sophomore year of High School, and which ones she switched to when we were Juniors. I remember the descant to a choral piece I learned in fourth grade, and all the words to mc chris’s Fett’s Vette.*

I can basically never find my keys. If they aren’t in one of my two I-will-not-lose-them-if-I-consciously-put-them-here-every-time places, one of which is my coat pocket, there’s a lot of frantic searching punctuated by screams of “DEAR GOD MY KEYS HAVE GONE FERAL!” in my future.

This is how I know that there’s more than one kind of memory, and I suck at at least one of them.

So if I’m packing stuff up for a day or two away from home, I’ll inevitably end up forgetting something. Sometimes it’s totally unimportant, like a DVD I promised to lend a friend who’s been super excited to see it and possibly even planning a party around it, and at other times it’s of vital, national security-level importance, like my moisturizer.

A couple months ago, I was visiting my boyfriend for the weekend, and the thing I forgot was my birth control pills (also my thyroid medication, which is less relevant to the story but is not much better an idea).

There are people in the world who’d just turn their cars around, trek back home, get the necessary medications, and return triumphant. Those are exactly the kind of people who forged this great nation and will eventually launch a manned trip to Mars. I’m more the kind of person that drives for an hour to her boyfriend’s house and then majestically proclaims, “I am feeling rather tired. Do you mind if I lie down?”

Once I’d realized my mess up I did feel like a tool, though. Laramy has mentioned several times how nice it is that we’ve gone condom-free with each other, and I didn’t love the idea of him having to use them just based on my defective brain’s fuck-up. That’s when I remembered those little magical sponges.

Several years ago, an ex and I had a ton of condoms break. They probably broke almost half the time; I still can’t quite figure out why. After trying several kinds, we just gave up and started looking for other options. Enter the sponge, a little foam disk filled with spermicide. You added water to get it frothy, shoved it up against your cervix, and could fuck all day!

I decided if I picked up some sponges at the pharmacy the forgotten pills would barely be missed! When Laramy and I went out on errands I asked him if we could swing by Walgreen’s. “Are you sure? We can just use condoms…” Laramy offered. “No,” I insisted, “We should get the sponges.” Condoms are great, but it’s hard to deny the fact that they kill some sensitivity. I was determined that Laramy wouldn’t be punished for my forgetfulness.

We found the sponges on the bottom shelf, below the rubbers. “They want fifteen dollars for three of them? That’s insane!” Laramy opined. I’d remembered what sponges cost, but I forgot to realize that he wouldn’t love the idea of me “wasting” my money just to keep him out of latex. Just then, a box of Encare spermicidal eggs right next to the sponges caught my eye, on sale for about half that much. My ex and I had used those too, and they’d worked just as well, although they were less convenient because you had to use a new one every time and wait a few minutes after insertion before fucking could commence. “I’ll just buy these, okay? Eight bucks. No condoms. Awesome!” and waltzed to the front of the store to pay for them. I had saved the day! Albeit from my stupid memory. Still, I was a hero. Maybe I’d get America to Mars after all!

Later, as we were making dinner, I felt a hard cock press against my ass and a pair of hands on my tits. Moments later Laramy was inside me and I was halfway to coming. Mercy, do I love spontaneous sex.

It wasn’t until he declared “I’m gonna come” that it occurred to me that we’d planned to use backup protection and we kinda, well, hadn’t. “Wait! Wait! Come in my mouth!” I suggested enthusiastically. He enthusiastically complied. Later I learned that guys find this sort of thing hot anyway, in addition to being a practical, last-second measure. Score.

Upstairs, the Encare eggs sat unused in their little, slightly squished box, biding their time…

The next day it was sex o’clock again. We were thinking ahead a little better at this point. “Do you want me to put a condom on?” offered Laramy. “No,” I said, “I can just put in one of those insert thingies, if you don’t mind waiting ten minutes.” He did not. We found other things to do than intercourse for a bit, and then I looked at the clock and it was ten after sex! Oh yay!

He started fucking me. Then he started fucking me harder. Then a look of what I thought might be profound concentration came over his face. “Maybe my vagina just feels too amazing to contemplate, but he’s trying anyway,” I told myself, “Yes. That must be it. How ambitious!” Then he slowed down, paused. “This is really hurting!” he confessed.

Oh my God. My vagina feels too ouchy to contemplate!? An alternative interpretation that hadn’t yet occurred to me.

“Shit! Then stop!” I suggested. He pulled out and ran to the bathroom to wash his dick.

“It must be the spermicide in that stuff! I’m allergic to it or something!”** He called as I followed him. He was sitting in the bathtub,. scrubbing with soap. Truth be told, his cock wasn’t looking a comfortable shade of red. This is when I started apologizing, I think. I felt like a total douche. I’d insisted on the Encare thinking I was being helpful, when all along he hadn’t been quite sure about the plan and was too polite to say anything.***

Sometimes I honestly do not know how he puts up with me. But this is how incredible my boyfriend is: he wanted to keep going! “I’ll just slip on a condom,” he explained. That way he’d avoid the allergens in my pussy. After everything we’d been through to avoid them, the condoms were coming out anyway. Ah, well!

I can honestly say it was good for me. For Laramy, less so. “Condoms really aren’t that bad,” I concluded after my ninth orgasm.

“…I think some of that spermicide must’ve gotten lodged in my urethra…” he replied. Oh, so not that good for him after all. Oh.

“WHY DID YOU KEEP GOING?” I asked, appalled.

“A champion fucks through the pain.”  Indeed.

Laramy says that the events of that weekend had nothing to do with his decision to finally schedule that vasectomy he’d been wanting for years. It’s likely just coincidence that a few weeks later he made the appointment at last.

(image source)

* Not to say that I can perform them all with the correct rhythm in the original tempo…
** Turns out lots of people are. Oops.
*** Never be polite to the detriment of your cocks, lads.

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Reginald Sleeth and I had been dating for all of two weeks. Our dates usually consisted of me driving the half mile to his house and rushing upstairs to his room where we’d make out furiously. That night, though, he handed me a tightly folded piece of college ruled paper first.

I knew it was a poem. He’d given me several already. Reginald liked to write love poems to girls. Years later my friend Miriam, who also dated Reginald for a while, and I would go back and compare and realize that some of the heartfelt verses given us looked shockingly similar. Kid must’ve kept master copies somewhere.

But this was the first poem I ever unfolded to discover blood smeared all over the paper.

Reginald looked rather like a cat who’d dragged his freshly killed bird onto the porch. I reacted rather like that cat’s owner.

“What, I just don’t even… I mean what happened here?” Beat. “…It’s a very nice poem.” Nice save.

Reginald proudly showed me his hand. There was a distinct gouge. Then he produced a blunt decorative knife. “I designed this years ago to one day spill my blood for my love. And now it’s yours; I have no more need of it. It has done its job.”

I’m not even kidding. He seriously talked like that.

I figured that perhaps my sense of the romantic was underdeveloped. I liked Anne Rice as much as the next little demigoth, but I was more creeped out than moved. Of course my (most) fatal flaw kicked in at this point and told me that I must be the one who had it wrong.

It soon became clear to me, though, that Reginald expected me to perform the same gesture. It was supposed to be some kind of sacred lovers’ ritual conceived in Reginald’s head at some point. That was more or less why he gave me the knife.

I just wasn’t going to do it.

Understand, I really thought I loved Reginald at this point. The bloodletting had meant something to him, clearly, and I didn’t want to ignore that. But seriously? No part of me was happy that I had his blood on a piece of notebook paper, and I wasn’t jazzed about the idea of following suit.

And if I ever did, I knew it wouldn’t be with his Renaissance Faire knife. Thing was fucking letter-opener-dull! And coated in his blood.

In retrospect, this should have tipped me off. This wasn’t ever going to be a healthy relationship. Yes, healthy relationships can involve exchanging blood or playing with letter openers, but they’d at least require a little prior communication. And less peer pressure.

As for my dilemma, one morning I nicked my ankle in the shower shaving and I realized I’d solved my own problem. Well, one of my problems. The other one I kept around for a long, long while yet.

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My 2011 resolution to be more confident is progressing horrendously. One month in, and it just feels silly. Childish. Like my new year’s resolution was to pretend to be a princess. Step one: make a cone hat out of poster board and felt.

Confidence is something you earn, right? You can’t decide to become more confident, just out of the blue, because confident people are enviable, now can you? Today it feels like no. You can’t. And neither can I. Not today.

Today I’ll know– not believe, but know– that no one could ever want me, as a friend or a fuck or a lover or even a pizza delivery guy. Any evidence to the contrary will be ignored. Today I’ll spend time rediscovering the fetal position. Today I’ll wish I were someone else: doesn’t even have to be a princess, just anyone else. Today I’ll wish I weren’t so honest on my blog.

Yeah, so.

May subtly revise resolution to refocus on just not being a wreck. Wish me luck.

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The strip club wasn’t what I imagined it would be. I was expecting tacky. I was expecting neon. I was expecting a lingering whisper of sweat and booze. But I was expecting all that to be married to effort: a little velvet, a tassel or two. Some varnish obscuring the grime.

This was a pit.

Actually, more than anything it was like a small community workshop theater. A single room, the club was black painted wood with two pine platforms (also painted black) where the brass poles stood, dull and worn. There was a little neon. And there were men in g-strings.

Between the makeshift stages, a shower was built into the back wall. Wednesday was shower night, but the shower was broken. Of course it was.

I hear that female strip clubs– that is, those where the strippers are women– are more velvety. They try harder. Male strip clubs– specifically gay male strip clubs, I’m told, don’t bother with pretense. I have no idea if this is true in general. To this day, I’ve only been to one, and it was true here.

In we walked, a gaggle of females. The club was dead. We didn’t care. It was Miriam’s birthday, and she wanted to visit this pit on shower night, dammit, shower or not.

There were two guys working that night. Two. A short, wiry guy with a pretty face and a tall, beefier guy with a, well, a face. He had a face.

We chicks danced a little with the newly out dean of a local university. Then we sat down directly adjacent to one of the platforms, ordered drinks, and watched the guys take turns working our pole. It wasn’t until about five minutes into Wiry Guy’s performance that we realized he was wearing an electronic tether over his tube socks.

Classy. Classy is the word for that.

Beefy Guy, not to be outdone but lacking the necessary state-mandated hardware, was at a loss for a moment. Then he wrapped his flaccid shaft clear around the brass pole and seemed to feel better about himself.

Did I mention class?

As the night wore on I got a bit bored. It is a great shortcoming, but I can really only watch people I’m not attracted to writhe around naked for so long before I want to pull out my Nintendo DS. In retrospect, this is probably why Beefy Guy approached me.

“You’re very pretty,” he began.

“Oh. Uh. Thanks,” said my lips. I’m not giving you money, dude, said my brain.

There was some inane small talk on his part and some noncommittal nodding on mine until he saw some bruises on my arms.

“What happened there?” Beefy Guy made his face-which-he-had-yes-indeed look concerned.

“Just some horseplay,” I answered honestly. Clifton and I were hanging out fairly often at the time, and there was a lot of wrassling.

“No one… hurt you, did they?” We were really breaking the stripper fourth wall here.

“Not at all,” I assured him. “I pity the fool.”

“Good. Because I just couldn’t stand that.” Okay, Beefy Guy… oh wait, he wasn’t done… “I could never hurt a woman,” he told me earnestly.

I nodded.

“…except that one time when my girlfriend cheated on me. But she also stole my stereo, you understand.”

“Um. I think my friends are ready to leave. Now.”

I’m very likely never going to that–or possibly any– strip club again. I don’t care if they get the shower fixed.

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Who has two thumbs and accidentally left her headlights on during her boyfriend’s vasectomy? And had to wait two hours for AAA to jump her before taking him home to ice his poor junk?

Who else? In the history of ever? Seriously?

Signed,
Such an asshole

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Okay, so studies have shown that circumcised men may be less vulnerable to several STIs, and less likely to pass them on to a partner. I’m going to go ahead and take the research at face value and say:

Okay, sweet. STIs suck. Let’s stop circumcising little boys.

This might seem counterintuitive, but hear me out. If circumcision is the wise choice, if it’s such a wonderful thing, surely we can leave it to consenting adult males to choose it. Because we’re talking about their bodies here.

Strapping down a baby and performing unnecessary surgery on him without anesthesia is a human rights violation. I honestly can’t see it another way, and just because we’re used to it, just because we expect it, doesn’t make it okay.

If there are health benefits to getting circumcised, great! Let the men who will reap them, and pass them on to their partners, get the surgery. With proper anesthesia and/or pain management. Don’t take the choice away from them. Even if it is in their best interests (which I think is highly debatable) that shouldn’t trump an individual’s right to body autonomy.

You can make all the arguments for circumcision you like. Just make them to, and for, adults.

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A Fuquerton family acquaintance recently gushed to Laramy’s mum about what a very very good person he must be to be with a handicapped girl.*

Behold the lowly cripple: a creature who can only experience human love through the selflessness of others! See her hobble pathetically around, tragically seeking connection, all for naught, until a benevolent man finds it in his heart to condescend to touch her. The saint! The philanthropist! He must be a really, really good person.

Make no mistake, Laramy really is an amazingly good person. He’s sweet and generous and affectionate (to those on his good side). Watching him with his pets would melt you. It’s indisputable that I’m lucky to have him in my life, but anyone would be. Not just cripples.

It’s not surprising, though. Truth is, there are times when I think and sound a lot like that batty broad. I wonder what an able-bodied person is doing with me. I feel guilty that I’m spending yet another hour in bed, flaking on another commitment. How kind of him to keep me around even though I’m not functioning at his level, when we all know he could do so much better.

But isn’t there even the slightest possibility that it’s not all about health, despite what armchair evolutionary psychologists would have us believe? Isn’t it possible that someone might be with me because of my internal encyclopedia of useless knowledge? Because he likes the silly pictures I draw? Because my eyes look like sunflowers? Because I’m a huge dork, or because I once played Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Hell, because I carry the coolest cane ever, when I need it. Plus, I get the absolute best parking spaces.

I don’t know. I’m just throwing things against the wall here. But I have to be open to the idea that maybe I have actual, non good-deeds-deductible selling points. There are a lot of details about me, and the fact that I probably won’t be trying out for a roller derby team any time soon is just one of them. It really doesn’t need to be the most important one all the time.

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*This, to my knowledge, isn’t the opinion of any of the Fuquertons: just one batty broad they happen to know, and don’t particularly like.

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I don’t know exactly how concerned I should be that someone recently tried to access my personal Facebook account from the city where Reginald Sleeth now resides.

I should add the caveat here that it is a large city.

Reginald and I haven’t seen each other in over seven years. At least, I believe this to be true.

I saw him three years ago.

It was Christmas Eve. My grandmother was dying, and my sister and I had been visiting her in the hospital. She hadn’t woken up all night, even to look at us. I’d never seen her megawatt blue eyes dim before that week, and now there was nothing, and the later it got the more nothing eclipsed her. Her time was coming and the thought of it made my solar plexus ache. Eleven thirty we finally left. Eleven thirty and there was nothing at home but ingredients to eat. Eleven thirty, and we were drained and hungry and defeated.

To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t showered in at least two days and my fatigue settled on my face like two black eyes.

There was a single restaurant open that night in our smallish hometown. A greasy spoon that never closes, where kids can go pad their pickled stomachs after last call. We were just glad to find a place to sit down and vacantly watch someone put plates of warm things in front of us.

Right after the waitress, brown ponytailed and shimmery lidded, took our drink orders, the door swung open, briefly staining the air with the outside chill. And in he walked.

I could see him perfectly from the booth where I sat. Reginald Sleeth. His hair was spiked high, garishly, as he used to do it when he was feeling especially self-conscious. And he had gained some weight, perhaps, but he still fit in his old winter coat. His stride was the one I’d memorized, casually hunched but hemorrhaging arrogance. He was distracted by the girl who’d moved in after I’d left our shared apartment four years prior, and another couple. They all sat down at a big corner booth, Reginald in the middle, holding court as he loved to do.

Reginald Sleeth was not even supposed to be in the state. I’d heard he’d moved far away. I’d heard his parents had moved even farther. My stomach recoiled on itself. Suddenly, I’d never been less hungry in my life. Terror had taken over my torso, from tensed shoulders to thumping heart to plummeting guts. I dropped off my seat and hid behind the table.

“Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck!” I hissed to my sister, “Reginald just walked in.” She twisted around to see. “Don’t! Don’t look over there. I don’t think he saw me.”

“Are you okay?” She asked. See, I was crouching in abject horror on the floor at a greasy spoon diner, hiding from the person I feared most in this world. P.S. My grandma, one of my favorite people ever, full stop, was off dying in a hospital room down the road. ‘Okay’ was not a valid guess here. Hurriedly, I told her I was leaving. I was really sorry, but could she explain things to the waitress and follow me as soon as she could? I snuck a couple dollars onto the table and slithered out of there as quickly as my crippled limbs would carry me.

I don’t think he saw me. To this day I choose to believe that.

I choose to believe it partly because those were not the circumstances under which I was supposed to see him after all that time. What was supposed to happen, I’m sure, is something more like this:

I’m on a gorgeous, 16-hand Friesian stallion who is also a cyborg who can fly. Having just published my first international bestselling novel, I am riding through the countryside, looking inexplicably like Twin Peaks-era Sherilyn Fenn and wearing the coolest pair of sneakers in the world (because no fantasy is complete without great sneakers). Reginald is in a ditch, bawling because his life has collapsed like a house of cards. He is wearing flip-flops and has zero cyborg horses. I coolly observe Reginald from my high vantage, “You hurt me,” my eyes tell him. “I am a terrible person and you deserved better,” his say. A single tear rolls down my face and falls to the ground, where it becomes a beautiful blossom that will never fade nor die. That beautiful blossom sprays a toxic mist onto Reginald’s face, disfiguring him for life. Then I turn my flawless, porcelain doll face homeward, where I go have earth-shattering sex with diamond-studded nerdcore rappers who are also professional water polo players.

Is this so much to ask?

The other reason I’m pretty sure he didn’t notice me that Christmas Eve was because he didn’t acknowledge me or try to contact me soon afterward. And Reginald tries to contact me every so often. Sometimes to say he misses me, sometimes to say he’s sorry, and sometimes to be fucking creepy. Once he emailed me (at an address I never gave him) to cryptically tell me that he prays… every day. As far as I know he’s still an atheist, so I don’t even know what that means!

It’s been a while– over a year– since his last try. I hope I’m off his radar. But whenever something weird happens, like when, say, someone tries to hack into my Facebook account, I have a moment of panic. In a twisted, fucked up way, it’ll never be completely over with him, and I will have to live with that even after my cyborg Friesian ship comes in. But every time I don’t respond to whatever shit he’s trying to pull, he doesn’t win, and that’s something.

(image source)

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