quizzical pussy

I did not expect the air hunger to come back.

A few years ago when I was first started getting my stupid fucked-up illness I had this weird, deceptive shortness of breath. I knew I was taking air in because I made a point to draw ponderous diaphragm breaths all the way down, pushing my stomach out with each inhalation. Also, I demonstrably wasn’t dying. But it didn’t feel like my breaths were working. It felt like I was suffocating.

This is the kind of thing that seems like it would accompany a panic attack or something, but anxiety was never a factor… except, you know, the what-the-fuck-is-happening-why-am-I-not-breathing-right? thing that kept coming up somewhere in the middle of feeling like I wanted to tear my lungs out to expose them to open air directly. It’s something neurological, and it’s really disturbing. Fortunately I haven’t had to deal with this air hunger in a while. It went away for a few years as my back-stabbing body moved on to focus on other symptoms.

It came back tonight out of nowhere. While I was masturbating, actually. So here are my thoughts on this situation:

1. It kind of ruined my jack-off session and I’m pissed.
2. It is incredibly hard to sleep through these respiratory shenanigans.
3. (a corollary to #2) It is so terribly late that it is in fact early, but not that early.
4. I want to tear my lungs out and expose them to open air. Good idea?
5. I’m worried that this is not going to be an isolated, aberrant setback.
6. I’m so sleepy. And my hands and lips are tingly.
7. I hope this doesn’t happen next time I’m sleeping over at Laramy’s. That could be super annoying for everyone.
8. I had more orgasms in me, dammit.
9. I would like a trade-in body that works, and preferably has a really nice ass.
10. There should be ten things, since I was already up to nine.

Don't make this weird.

Happy International Women’s Day, everybody!

In honor of this highest and holiest of high holy days, I’m going to reveal something that may shock some people, and here it is: We’re really actually not living in a post-sexist age. Your mind’s blown, isn’t it?

I’m not here to tell you it necessarily sucks to be female, although concerning some parts of the world we can certainly make that argument. For me, though, in all my incredible comparative privilege, I more or less like being a chick and I’m not ready to turn in my pussy card just yet.

But even nestled in the bosom of Western culture we haven’t attained the basic equality that women set out to achieve generations ago. We’re closer, but we’re so not there. Equal pay for equal work is still a goal rather than a reality. Our culture produces children who believe that violence against women is easily justified. One in six women is sexually assaulted in her lifetime, and all too often it’s perfectly acceptable to blame her.

Women are still sexual objects, not just to some people, but to society as a whole. I know 20-year-old women who have anxiety over being “too old”. Too old to have a kick-ass career? Too old to make a difference politically or socially? Nope. Too old to be a doe-eyed ingenue; too old to be Miley Cyrus. Apparently legal is the new expired. And realizing that being pretty gets us more appreciation and success than any other positive trait, way too many of us have a near-religious conviction that we’re ugly: too fat, too tall, too short, too flat-chested, too pimpled, too muscular, too pale, too dark, too scrawny, too imperfect. We think that our toes are weird or that our stretch marks mean that no one will ever love us. And if no one is going to love us, we are somehow worthless.

If we mention that these things are unfair, we’ll often get called unbalanced, emotional, or irrational. There are still so many things to tackle, but as a small nerdy she-fish in an ocean of crap I wish women didn’t have to deal with, I’m starting tiny.

I’m starting with sexual harassment at the Sci Fi Conventions I go to.

Here’s an imagination exercise: Take a bunch of people who likely faced romantic rejection and isolation growing up, making sure that a healthy percentage of these are shitty at recognizing social cues. Add a common interest they may not get to talk to real people about all that often, and all the excitement and adjacent libido that would naturally result. Put some of these people in costumes designed to make the wearers look (with varying success) like cartoon and video game characters, and put others in corsets. There will also be people inexplicably wandering around wearing cat ears.

Hi there. It looks like you have a Fan Convention on your hands. You realize, of course, that with all those roiling factors in play, someone is going to try to fuck up this nerdy utopia by being super creepy, right? Some guy will inevitably think that the hot costumes exist only for his personal enjoyment and that any woman who likes the same TV shows he does must be praying nightly for someone just like him to appear and grope her tits.

Which is why I’ve taken on the daunting task of organizing an anti-harassment project at my local con. The convention has a sexual harassment policy in place already, but it hasn’t been implemented all that well, and some creeptastic geek-on-geek crimes have been perpetrated.

Creeps have been routinely grabbing or hugging people without permission or warning, commenting on their bodies uninvited, flirting aggressively… you know, the things that you might have heard about cons that make you reluctant to ever go to one, but that shouldn’t be tolerated. Worse, the injured parties have been afraid to report these incidents to con staff because they’re worried about seeming hypersensitive, or like trouble-makers.

But how fucked up does a culture (or subculture) have to be to alienate the victim and make the offender feel justified? Just because men tend to outnumber women at these things doesn’t mean they get to make it a boys’ club where the women attending are just so many sacrifices to the communal hard-on. And neither do women get to harass men, nor men men, nor women women. Let’s just be universally uncreepy.

Of course, nerds flirt at conventions. They get laid at conventions and have glorious, debaucherous times in an environment where free love and free energy drinks reign. I don’t want to put a damper on that, but seriously, the creepy people need to back the fuck off, practice common respect, and only put their hands where they’re expressly invited.

So I’m going to work to make sure the harassment policies are accessible to everyone, to educate the con staff and the con guests how to deal with creepy person encounters, witnessed or experienced, and to open a dialogue about this stuff. I’m going to try to make my little corner of fandom safer for catgirls and cosplayers.

In reality, though, there’s a good chance I’ll set a terrible example for everyone by shouting off-color jokes all over the place. But at least my horrible behavior will be a good talking point for whichever brave warrior takes over my post after I’m escorted off the premises.

I would like to think that emotions can usually be controlled. That’s not to say it’s easy. And maybe we can’t always keep them in check… not like actions, but often we can. Emotions follow thoughts, thoughts acquire speed, lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. Or something like that.

But I also can’t get past the fact that it’s all biology. Hormones and neurotransmitters and shit. It’s kind of humbling how little control we have over these impulses that can blindside us. A chemical imbalance can compel you to injure yourself; a surge of dopamine can make you instantly giddy… or it is giddiness, I’m not even sure. I was a liberal arts major.

Even when we want to think that we have control, a chemical signal can fuck that right up. Sex is a perfect example: Penises wax rampant at awkward times, or you suddenly feel inconveniently bonded to that person you were just using for sex.  The honeymoon phase of a relationship often wears off predictably at the precise moment that the natural swoon stimulants runs dry. And (I love this one) you can take a tiny little pill to trick your body into thinking it’s already got a little zygote passenger on board so you can have crazy monkey sex with reproductive impunity.

I started a new birth control pill last month. I liked my old one just fine, but my insurance dropped it and not getting knocked up is pretty expensive when it’s not subsidized, although it’s nothing compared to getting knocked up.

So I switched to something that was still in my formulary. When I say “new pill”, that’s a little misleading because it’s actually the same one (Ortho Tri Cyclen) I started on when I was 19, until I was put on a lower hormone dose (Ortho Tri Cyclen Lo) a couple years later because the lady at Planned Parenthood said it was better.

I was more nervous than I would’ve been with an untried oral contraceptive, though, because I couldn’t help but remember being miserable for nearly every single day that I was on regular Ortho Tri Cyclen. The only exceptions were the bright patches that coincided with the months when I was off-again with my abusive boyfriend. Oh, also, I was miserable for roughly a year before I started taking any contraceptive pill, which eerily began a few months after we started dating, when I found out he was OMFGcrazy. But despite all this, I asked myself: what if the misery was all down to the hormones making me crazy? What if I’ve vilified him in my memory to rationalize that crazy? What if my female hysterics made him hit me and do other not-so-nice stuff? Or what if the hormones contributed even just a little to the whole accursed business? I didn’t want to go back to any part of that.

I knew these questions weren’t rational (I was irrationally afraid of becoming irrational! Can you stand it!?). The difference is literally 0.01 mg of fake estrogen a day. That might make a subtle difference, but it’s probably not going to make someone’s emotional well-being unravel entirely. But however absurd, I was trepidatious about going back to the higher dose. My Ortho Tri Cyclen Lo had been like a grisgris, a talisman protecting me from the dark, ominous mysteries of female hormones and their mind-bending wiles.

It is profoundly sexist that I was swallowing any form of “estrogen makes you crazy” line. I realize that. I don’t think that estrogen makes people crazy, irrational, or emotionally fragile. I don’t even think that fake estrogen does. I was just a little worried, in the back of my mind. Because of internalized sexism, obviously. And beaten girl syndrome. Thanks, patriarchy.

However, I certainly wasn’t going to let all this stop me from taking an oral contraceptive that I could actually afford, so of course I sucked it up, filled the new  prescription and started taking it. I enlisted Laramy to alert me to any strange, “crazier than usual” behavior. He agreed to tell me the absolute, brutal truth, as long as I wasn’t holding anything sharp at the time.

A month in, no perceptible emotional changes have surfaced. I feel vindicated. I was never hormone crazy. I was just abused, and that probably made me depressed, but that’s a fairly natural and sane reaction. I have noticed some physical changes. I was a bit nauseated for most of the first month, which seems to be abating, and my boobs hurt more than usual before my last period started, but that’s fake-out pregnancy for you.

On another hormone tip, I recently adjusted my thyroid medication and I’ve been masturbating like crazy all week and humping the furniture and shit. Which I guess we should call “back to normal” for me. I love science.

Sometimes when I didn’t want to do the things that Clifton Overmangle wanted me to (e.g. meet him for a quick blowjob when I was tired, let him give me hickeys, send him naked photos) he’d pull out the squirting card. “Well,” he’d say, “my intention to bring you pleasure overcomes my preference to not have you pee all over my sheets. You should be more giving and generous, more like me, and do whatever I want.” I can’t remember this rhetoric ever working, but it did make me feel self-conscious, so I guess no one won. Of course my solution that I’d tell him if I felt I was in danger of ejaculating and he could back off was completely missing the point, as he saw it. We should be making sacrifices for each other or something.

Two things:

1. IT’S NOT PEE!
2. This is not a good method of getting a chick to accommodate you in bed; it’s an excellent way of making sure she becomes determined never to ejaculate around you again.

I have a friend who squirted the first time she masturbated. She also freaked out, of course, because what the fuck just happened? When you’re not prepared for it, squirting/gushing/female ejaculation can be a slight shock.

I can safely say I had thousands of orgasms not realizing that there was such a thing in the world as a Skene’s gland. I was visiting my boyfriend Reginald in Los Angeles, and one afternoon he fingered me for what felt like hours, he rode through every orgasm as I bucked and bleated. I was in such a delirium of pleasure I fell off his futon, and he followed me down to the floor, his fingers still pounding and flickering, not missing a beat. He was concentrating mostly on the strange rough patch near the front on my vaginal wall, which I knew was the G-spot, although I didn’t know what was about to happen. I don’t know how long it took, but eventually something sprayed out of me in the middle of a searing climax. And I was absolutely mortified. I hadn’t even felt like I’d had to pee, but I was sure that somehow I’d just wet myself.

Reginald, who’d been researching a thing or two, looked very proud. “Do you know what just happened?” he quizzed me. I shook my head, miserable. My skin felt hot as the blood bloomed red in my cheeks. “You just had your first complete orgasm.”

Reginald was wrong about that. Squirting orgasms are definitely intense, but they’re just another type of orgasm. They’re not any more “real” or “complete” than a clitoral, vaginal, anal, or any other type of orgasm: believe me, I’ve had enough different kinds to know this. People can and do have favorites, but that doesn’t make those favorites any better or more orgasmy than any other type.

I don’t squirt with every orgasm, every time I have sex, or even every time someone stimulates my G-spot and clitoris together, which is normally how it ends up happening, although it can certainly result from attending to one or the other location with especially dogged resolve. Are the best orgasms always like majestic geysers? Not even always.

I think Reginald’s misapprehension about this, and any feminist distrust of squirting you might run into, is due to how damn analogous it is to male ejaculation. Sometimes a woman’s orgasm (not mine, but a woman’s) is a maddeningly subtle thing. A partner– hell, even the woman herself– can be left wondering if she actually got off. Guys are easier: semen comes out. Mystery solved. If women start doing that too, illumination! She definitely just came, and the wet spot just got a whole lot fucking wetter. Enjoy.

It’s messy. It can be inconvenient. It feels awesome. I’m not sure what’s in it for the person not impersonating a fountain. I guess it’s got to be the novelty and the extra emphatic proof of a job well done that accounts for the fact that very few guys have complained about it. Clifton was the exception, and I half think he griped about it only as a bargaining chip, considering that the first time it happened he was gleeful but a bit disappointed I hadn’t warned him so he could catch it in his mouth. Most guys are fascinated by it, and feel pretty cool when they pull it off.

Of course, I’m terrible about warning them. Squirting isn’t something that I expect or plan; it just happens sometimes. Plus, it happens more often during oral/digital sex than the actual penis-in-vagina playtime, so this is probably early in the saga of sexual exploration when “foreplay” takes longer, and I’m not totally comfortable yet talking about what fluids might come out of me. But I seldom account for the enthusiasm people can have for a new toy, and too often I’ve squirted with a new partner before I gave myself a chance to bring it up. This, as you might well imagine, is embarrassing. “It’s not pee…” I usually end up saying apologetically. I swear it isn’t.

I was born into an attractive family. My parents had about a million kids, and in the looks department they mostly range from “pretty cute” to “damn, girl!”. But I’ve always felt like a spectator in this particular sport. Early on, a family friend informed me that I was not the best looking of the litter, and that’s been reinforced in countless ways over the years. I’ve been described as “the smart one”, “the funny one”, and occasionally “the talented one”, which are honestly pretty awesome titles, maybe even preferable to just looking hot. But it still rankles that I was never, even if everyone else was knee-deep in an awkward phase, “the pretty one”.

I’ve always felt like I have to rely on my personality to attract people. I can (hopefully) get you to forget the bump in my nose or my too-round face by being charming and making you laugh. If I can rope you into a real conversation, I may have a chance at intriguing you, winning you over, and then maybe you’ll consider boning me. I do not feel confident that I can do this on looks alone. Without the personality factor, I’d probably still be waiting to go on my first date.

I’m not saying that everyone is going to like me for what’s inside: some people think I’m annoying, don’t find me funny, and wish I would shut up so much. But I have a fairly distinct personality that some people are drawn to, and I think that’s been responsible for whatever social and romantic success I’ve had.

Maybe that’s why I find humor, kindness, and intellect so central to what I find attractive in others. I actually find that these affect my evaluation of physical merits. This sort of thing probably happens to most people: you meet someone who seems sort of so-so at first glance, but as you get to know this person’s mind-blowingly cool personality, he seems to get better looking each time you see him. Or, conversely, your first impression of someone might be “Wow, she’s stunning,” but you learn that she’s hideous inside and it’s not just that you’re turned off by her personality, she actually seems to get uglier right before your eyes.

The latter is what happened with my first boyfriend, Reginald Sleeth. When we started seeing each other I thought he was beautiful. It wasn’t just me. I had a picture of him up in my dorm room at university, and girls would sometimes pass through, stare at it, and gush about how gorgeous he was. But by then he’d already flashed his true nature as controlling, abusive, and venomously angry down to his bones. Those girls could say what they wanted; I didn’t see it anymore. Sometimes I could barely even bring myself to touch him, he’d become so unattractive to me.

A less traumatic example occurred in the elevator at a recent Sci Fi convention I attended. Laramy and I stepped on from the twelfth floor, and we both noticed a chick with great tits and a cute face wearing a corset, flying cleavage like a banner from the back corner of the elevator. We both smiled appreciatively to each other; we generally check out the same women, and it’s wonderfully bonding. But within seconds she opened her mouth and started loudly complaining that no one was complimenting her boobs, and she wasn’t getting enough attention. Her aggressive griping continued through three stops on the way down and all the way to the first floor. By the time Laramy and I had reached the lobby we were completely irritated and turned off. She actually went from fetching to repulsive inside of five minutes.

So while looks matter, they’re not everything. I’d rather have someone interesting, witty, sweet, silly, and funny. Okay, and adorable. And I’ve had the good fortune and excellent taste to get more than my fair share of genuinely pretty people into bed. But sometimes adorable comes later, after all that other good stuff, and that can be pretty awesome too.

I was up way too late, but the Sci Fi convention I was attending had negotiated extended pool hours with the hotel. I couldn’t resist the temptation. I had to check out the hot tub.

I like cons. They’re silly and exuberant and many of my nerdy friends are there. But there are also all these… other people around. Some of them are the “friends you haven’t met” kind of strangers, indubitably, but there are also the “that guy that talks like a robot just farted on me in the elevator” kind. So conventions are admittedly a mixed bag.

Another thing about geeks: they’re often (not all of them, mind, but probably more than average) starved for attention, kinky, and accepting of the social quirks of others. I love this about them, but it puts a little extra pressure on me to be tolerant of quirks I don’t enjoy.

Take, for instance, bad breath. I have nothing against you if you have bad breath. I think you’re, like, fearfully and wonderfully made and stuff, and I’m sure your gorgon breath has nothing to do with dental hygiene and everything to do with a medical condition you can’t control. I’m not saying it’s your fault or that it reflects on you as a person (although I am totally judging you) but I’m still going to want a significant space between your face and mine. I would like you to stay outside the breath bubble, had I my druthers.

…And that’s just one example. But it often comes back to the personal space thing.

But I was talking about general acceptance before I was talking about my raging olfactory hatemongering. Acceptance is good. It’s freeing. Watching some of these people, it’s like a metric ton of societal pressures have been lifted off their shoulders for one weekend and they tool around frenetically, being who they wish they could be every day, in a gentler world.

This is all just a very round about way to say that as I entered the pool enclosure, 90% of the people there were stark naked.

Fandom is populated with some legitimately hot people and a host of other people that aren’t… I mean, that are more… well, people I’m sure are beautiful on the inside. I’m speaking for me here, since everyone finds different things attractive, but I’m going out on a limb and saying that there were three naked people tops at that highly attended pool party who would be considered above-average looks-wise.

Yeah, it’s shitty that my brain made evaluations about which naked people were pretty and which weren’t. They were just hanging out (ha) and not necessarily asking to be stared at and graded by shallow sex bloggers. But guess what? I’m human and I’m anonymously honest on the internet, and my brain probably didn’t do anything yours wouldn’t have. So there.

I wasn’t actually there to gawk at naked or to be naked. I was there to relax a bit in the hot tub before bed. If I flirted with some hot people (naked or clothed) so be it! But personally I’m a little naked shy, so I stripped down to my bra and knickers and grinned at my own cleverness having selected dark colored undies that day.

The sunken hot tub was crowded, but I found some space next to my (betrunked, if you’re curious) friend Crispin Hijanx. We chilled out and maxed, relaxing all cool, trying not to stare directly at anyone’s fun bits. It was all of two minutes before a naked (not ugly, if you’re curious) guy I’d never seen before came up and started small-talking me. I made some fairly bland, exhausted answers, failing in my attempts to not watch a curvy girl with an awesome ass ascend the hot tub stairs and dive into the nearby pool. When she was safely submerged, I turned back to my nameless naked companion.

“So,” he said, now that he had my attention, “you’re not going topless?”

I looked down at my bra “No. No, I guess I’m not.” Actually none of the women there were topless. They were naked or suited. But I guess Nameless Naked Dude thought boobs would be a good start.

“Why not?” Hmmmm. I’d never had a stranger ask me why I wasn’t showing him my tits before. His tone creeped me out: like he wasn’t mad, just disappointed. Like I was cheating him out of something. I suddenly felt oddly exposed. With all the flesh in that room he was feeling petulant that my breasts (probably the smallest pair in the room, even) were going to remain a mystery.

The cute thing about carefree light-hearted nudity is that no one makes that a big deal of it and no one solicits it. Everyone’s enjoying it, sure. That’s natural. But I don’t think that a hot tub needs an Ambassador of Naked. I didn’t have to flash Crispin the “save me” eyes or anything, but the whole exchange did convince me that the best way to get me to keep clothes on is to creepily request that I remove them. Maybe that was Nameless Naked Dude’s cunning plan all along: to keep me covered and hasten my departure. If so, his naked fu is very good.

Or: Let’s all have a chuckle at my needlessly intricate self-loathing!

When I first started masturbating with mens rea and intent to get off (rather than my earlier preteen system, which was basically “Wow, neat! This feels cool! I wonder if other people know about this!”) I ran into a slight problem when it came to fantasizing.

I hadn’t discovered the wonders of visual aids yet, so all I really had was my libido and my imagination. I would lie alone in bed in the silent, friendly dark, thinking about sex. I only had a rough idea of what sex was at this point, but I could feel the vague promise of it purring down between my legs. I wanted to pretend it was more than that, though. I wanted to think about what it would be like to share that lust and that dark with someone: another body, a counterpoint breath weaving through mine. But there was this difficulty, you see.

I couldn’t figure out an honest way to fantasize about sex. I could not realistically conceive of anyone actually wanting to have sex with me. No one had ever told me that boys only wanted one thing from me, but if they had I wouldn’t have believed it for a second. I was shy, undesired, awkward, unattractive, uninteresting: being invisible was the best I could hope for. Being admired was something that only happened to other girls. How was I going to pretend I had a willing partner? My suspension of disbelief just wasn’t that good. I’d start composing a story in my head about some attractive guy from school touching me and my brain would jump in, “Wait wait wait. Are you delusional? Every girl he goes out with is stylish and thin and decidedly unhideous. This fantasy is ridiculous!” And pop! I’d lose the budding narrative. I was usually too disgusted with myself to try again.

I wouldn’t even let myself imagine an anonymous guy. “Nope. Not buying it. No one would ever want to touch your boobies.” I had to admit I had a point.

But horniness really is the slutty cougar mom of invention. It wasn’t long before I came up with an ingenious way for “fantasy me” to get sex without overburdening my skepticism and turning all my masturbation sessions into self-harangues about how ugly and worthless I was. I didn’t imagine myself thinner, prettier, or with better social skills. I did way better…I turned to Sci Fi.

I’d pretend myself into a dystopian society where as some strange ritual, everyone in my high school had to have sex with one of our schoolmates as determined by blind lottery. It was kind of like a Battle Royale key party. Each girl went into a cramped little chamber that was furnished with a bed, and there we waited for our surprise sex partner to enter. No one knew what or whom they were getting into until the door opened. Of course, my guy always turned out, through the magical luck of daydreams, to be whichever one I fancied especially at the moment.

Once my crush opened the door and realized it was me his face would fall (my hypercritical brain demanded this). Mortified, I’d immediately apologize for not being someone attractive, but he’d reassure me that it was really okay; he knew it wasn’t my fault, and besides, he’d always thought I was kind of funny. Oh good. Funny. And that’s when the fun could start. Then and only then would my brain allow me to fantasize about having sex. It was like the cheat code for my self-loathing.

I was so sure that no one would ever voluntarily fuck me, which is weird because I later found out that several of the guys I locked in that fictional sex pod with me would’ve had all sorts of sex with me in real life if I’d given the least encouragement. I’m so glad I eventually stopped being a teenager.

I already tweeted about this, but I couldn’t leave it alone. When I was a kid I used to chew on the inside of my cheek when I got anxious or bored. The skin would start to get ragged and then it would be even harder not to gnaw on, and it became this vicious cycle of livid pink injury. That’s pretty much exactly how I feel about My New Pink Button. And by that I mean it seems a product of anxiety and boredom, it appears completely pointless, and I just can’t leave it alone even though (or maybe because) I already touched it.

My New Pink Button™ is labia dye. Did you ever think you’d see labia dye? Because honestly, I didn’t. Sometimes, it seems, a woman’s labia change color over the course of her life. According to the product’s website, “Yes, it’s perfectly normal and there are many factors that can contribute to this. Ethnicity is a big factor, also age, hormone change, surgeries, childbirth, sickness, health, diet, and medications can all contribute to a change from “Pink” to “Brown” in a woman’s genital area.”

…So, what you’re saying is that it’s perfectly healthy and normal for women of different ethnicities, ages, and states of health and reproduction to have different colored vulvas? And there’s nothing wrong with it that at all…

…that a little cosmetic dye won’t fix?? Awesome!

I’ve never really thought about pussy colors before. I have noticed different pussy colors, but I haven’t really thought of them as having any sort of a hierarchy. I mean, if you want to dye your labia, have at it! The more things you can dye, the more fun and interesting life is. What bothers me here is that while My New Pink Button™ offers four different colors for your labia-dying needs, all four of them are pink. Does that seem right to you?

The four different shades range from a light baby pink (called Marilyn) to a rosy burgundy pink (called Audry). The other two, Bettie and Ginger, are also– you guessed it– pink! If I’m going to dye my vulva, I want more options. I want a crayola box full of labia possibilities. I want an alien pussy, is what I’m trying to say. That’s what I will pay you $30 for: an alien pussy or nothing. Got that? Also, I slightly resent that this product is suggesting that my labia are supposed to be a certain color. Why is pinker better? This is probably the one thing to hate about my body that hasn’t yet occurred to me, and My New Pink Button™ is trying to fuck that up! This is just like the discussion I had with several male friends last summer where I learned that all of them consider large clitorises (did you know “clitorides” is the other plural form of clitoris, by the way?) amazingly attractive, and I suddenly realized– without ever considering it before– that my tiny clitoris is inadequate. And now maybe my labia aren’t “Bettie” enough? Are you just fucking kidding me?

Yes, I’ve gotten out the hand mirror before. Which of us has not? But never specifically to scope out color. So I immediately brandished my trusty mirror and went to studying my naughty bits:

• I’m not familiar with the etiquette involved, so I’m not sure if it’s obnoxious to say that I think my labia minora are kind of cute. They’re not exactly symmetrical, but they fold together like two little petals of a delicate budding flower. I literally just looked at them and said “awwww” out loud. (I suspect my attraction to them has a lot to do with the fact that they’re mine and we’ve had countless orgasms together, which is very bonding.)
• My clitoris is really, terribly small. :(
• Looking at my pussy makes me horny. Is that normal? Oh well. Don’t care. (brb. fapping.)
• Oh right. Color. I guess my labia are pink. I’d say they’re just about EE9572 in hex; fairly close (though not quite so ZOMG pink!) to the My New Pink Button™’s “Ginger” shade. But my skin is so candescently pale that it doesn’t really “do” brownish.
• Are my labia pink enough? Sure. They’re labia, not my sixth birthday party.
• Would I be dismayed if they suddenly became less pink? Maybe even (doom!) browner? I’m trying to imagine this bothering me. I really am. Look, I have trouble walking most days. Kittens are born without homes. Somewhere, someone is mistaking “its” with “it’s”. I have a minuscule clitoris. Please understand, I have enough problems. I really just can’t care about the color of my labia right now.

But some women apparently care, which is why this product exists and has five whole testimonials! And if this makes them feel better about their bodies or lives in any way, that’s awesome and I’m excited for them. However, if “labia must be pink!” is the new “labia must be small, smooth, and even!” I’m about to get grumpy. Although, come to think of it, I much prefer silly pink dye to drastic elective surgery. But can’t it just be time yet to decide that pussies are sexy just the way they are, and natural variety is part of what makes them so? No? It can’t? Didn’t fucking think so.

I didn’t know what it was called when it first made me come
The nomenclature’s trivia, it always knocks me dumb
Unless “Oh god oh god oh god”’s superior to mum
If my G-spot is a fantasy, Oh god! Let me succumb

Dear Gräfenberg, you clever chap
Your spot at least, I mean
It’s helped me fuck and helped me fap
Almighty, though unseen
I swear I’ve never doubted you
It seems so simple, tried and true
And I thought everybody knew
But then, things got obscene
The meanest edict to debut
Since herpes and the clap

Some scientists in Britain gave a survey, not exam
These scientists in Britain say the g-spot is a sham
It’s marketing, they argue, it’s a sexy little scam
So stop pretending there’s a magic pearl inside your clam

Perhaps not standard issue like a coccyx or a wrist
But take away my G-spot and you’ll find me fucking pissed
Though time and time again it’s been neglected, scorned, or missed,
My orgasms don’t lie and they confirm mine does exist

Hey Gräfenberg, can you believe?
They think it’s in my brain
They think I’m terribly naive
My dildos curve in vain
But why does it feel so sublime
Consistently and every time
A climax on a ruddy dime
Not fictive or arcane
How could that lofty two-inch climb
Into my cunt deceive?

Just because you have no G-spot, you can’t wrestle mine away
And if you prefer the clitoris, I promise, that’s okay
But recall they came for G-spots on that dark and distant day
When experts say that prostate stimulation makes men gay

I consider it a sign of my burgeoning adulthood that I now consider the new year to begin in January as opposed to late August, as I did for several years after graduating from University, even. It’s just now feeling natural to me to make New Year’s resolutions rather than new school year’s resolutions.

So I guess I’m finally a grown-up (yay?)! And as such, my resolutions should be very, very adult. That just follows! Anyway, I’m me… it’s always going to come back to sex.

So here they are, my 2010 New Year’s Sexual Resolutions:

1. Flirt with strangers. Over the holidays, my aunt was talking about her personal philosophy and said, “My friends always want to know why I have such good luck with men, and I tell them, ‘I just smile!’ That’s all I do. I smile at a man, and he comes up and talks to me.” Simplicity itself! Of course, she’s five foot naught, blonde, has the skinniest legs I’ve ever seen on a human, and eyes so luminous they could power Nebraska, but I’m sure that all her romantic success is really just due to the fact that she puts on a friendly expression. Nevertheless, I’m going to try it. I smile a lot generally, but not at people. I realize I’ll have to talk to them as well, but maybe I’ll hone that next year.
2. Start initiating sex. Not with strangers. Maybe just with my boyfriend, and it doesn’t have to be all the time. Just ever.
3. Allow myself to admit when I’m attracted to someone. Even just to myself. Hopefully, eventually, to the someone.
4. Fulfill at least three [3] new fantasies. I’d like to try a FMF threesome, try pegging and/or getting a blowjob, try packing in public, play around with dominance. Maybe explore sex with women more. Actually, I should do all of these things immediately! But as a goal, at least three this year.
5. Perform in my first drag show. There is something so sexy about drag kings. I want that something to be about me, too.
6. Try out at least five [5] new sex toys. Use at least three [3] sex toys with a partner. And tell you wonderful people all the gory details!
7. Become more comfortable wearing “sexy” stuff in front of sex partners. I hate feeling like I’m trying to be sexy, and so I’ve gotten into the habit of trying not to wear my cutest underwear, etc. in front of someone I’m fucking. It’s to avoid feeling like I’m parading around and demanding “look at me”, but at the same time, it’s a silly prohibition. If you have matching bra/knickers sets, you shouldn’t only wear them when you’re sure no one will see them.

Like a wise person should’ve once told me, the best resolutions are the kind you’re going to enjoy the hell out of keeping. Happy New Year, all!