I’m excited about exploring BDSM and figuring out where I fit in that world and what I want from it, but I’m mostly doing it alone. I don’t have a partner who wants to tie me up, or hit me with things made out of leather, or have long discussions about what trips our respective kinks. I have a few friends I can compare notes with, and they are truly worth their weight in Lelo toys, but it’s not quite the same as someone I trust pushing my boundaries and giving me orgasms.

My intention here is not to gripe about the fact that Laramy isn’t interested in this stuff. I have absolutely no wish to force feed kink to my boyfriend or cram it into our relationship dynamic or sex life. I’m not even sure if it would be a good idea for me to introduce any significant kink involving power exchange into my primary relationship just yet, even if he was into the idea. No, actually, because of the wonders of open relationships, I’m griping that I don’t have any other kinky partners to experiment with at the moment. Glad we cleared this up. Good talk.

Because honestly, I’m feeling a little lost. Overwhelmed might be more accurate. I read about it, discuss it in the abstract, ponder it and fantasize about it, but for me, BDSM is still a tiny bit of experience and a long and jumbled string of thought experiments. It’s fantasies that I’m not even sure I’d enjoy in real life. It’s trepidation and fascination. It’s a slick and nimble creature that my mind can track but never catch.

More specifically, I’m unclear about when bottoming becomes submitting.

…Which wouldn’t matter so much if I weren’t so conflicted about submission. My fundamentalist Christian family aggressively taught me from birth that as a female I should submit to men like Jesus and my dad and my future husband, and I have never been a fan of any of that. My first romantic relationship was abusive, and I completely lost my sense of self trying to survive it. This is what submission has meant to me in the past. I fear it, and see it as personally nullifying and harmful¹. The idea that it would be all too easy for me to let go and dissolve back into that abused mindset haunts me.

I worry if subspace, which, as I understand it, is a type of dissociative state, will feel like a trauma-based flashback.

I’m confused about how the fact that my ex boyfriend used to hit me relates to the fact that I now want to be hit, and I know this is something I’ll eventually have to deal with. Is it messed up? Is it a craving for catharsis? It’s something I can’t even look at directly yet, but it lurks in my periphery, waiting. Right now when I’m bottoming I’m just after the endorphin rush. Just give me the sting and the swoon.

I have so much I still need to figure out. Is it any wonder I’d like a hand to hold through all this?

But that seems like kind of a long shot right now. I don’t know this for sure, but I don’t think I’m very good at attracting people. I know people who can find relationships and play partners like you can find D’anjou pears, in or out of season. I am convinced that those people are either sexier than I am (likely) or have luck dragons (less likely), but either way, I’m not of their tribe and cannot work their wonders. So I’m not in love with the odds that someone appropriate² will saunter up to me and observe, “I couldn’t help but notice that you have no idea what you’re doing. However, I find you oddly alluring. I would like to tie you up, possibly hit you with leather things, and lay bare your deepest fantasies. Would you be good with that?”³

Does anyone have a luck dragon I can borrow?

1. In my own case only. I want to make it very clear that I do not see submissives in general in this light. I just have my own personal issues to work out on the subject.
2. Someone who is responsible, mature, compassionate, experienced in BDSM, enjoys talking philosophy, and with whom I have chemistry.
3. And really, if this were to happen, who’s to say I wouldn’t try to crawl into my shit and hide?

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But then I look around me and see all these amazing people I have in my life. I have friends who are more interesting, brilliant, accepting, and tolerant of my flakiness than I ever dreamed possible. Some of these friends, shockingly, even find me attractive and want to play together: an outcome far beyond my loftiest fantasies. And my boyfriend? He challenges everything I used to believe about relationships, after years of making stupid, harmful-to-everyone-involved decisions in my love life, just by being himself. I didn’t know what it felt like to be loved and respected by a partner until Laramy showed me. Did I mention he’s awesome? And he picks me.

Even on the most superficial level possible: I, Quizzical Pussy, mere mortal, have gotten to have sex with some of the most exquisite, intriguing, and frankly hottest people I’ve ever had the privilege to meet. Not bad for a cripple who sucks at flirting and can’t tell whether people are into her or not.

So with all this evidence in front of me I have good reason to wonder if maybe I’m just a little awesome after all. Otherwise wouldn’t these seriously cool people shun me? I mean, even allowing for the fact that they’re also kind, wouldn’t they at least try to keep some distance?

Of course it doesn’t do to base my entire self-worth on the fact that people of excellence want to know and possibly even fuck me. But it’s good to remember that maybe I have some good points I’m not seeing, that they might. And I love these people; I trust them. Maybe they have a point.

And even if I’m seriously Not Awesome in any way, shape, or form, which I accept as a distinct possibility, life is making up for that by being boundlessly awesome in some of the ways that matter most.

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Any typos I make will be ignored until later, when I surreptitiously edit them and hope you didn’t notice.

Here are some confessions from the denizens of the internet!

I just bought my first vibrator yesterday! Its awesome!

I know, right?

Tonight, I lost my having-penis-in-vagina-virginity in a threesome. I’m not attracted to him or his girlfriend, and feel a little smug in having been the most attractive person in the room. They did it to ”spice up that side of their relationship.” I didn’t think it would affect me, but I feel… funny. A little depressed. It wasn’t very good at all, and from this point forward I will refer to this guy as turtlepenis, because it was hiding in its shell–didn’t even stick out–when he pulled his pants off. And now I wonder what having (penis-in-vagina) sex with someone I’m actually attracted to is like.

I’ve had sex with people I’m insanely attracted to and I’ve had sex with people I’m not-so-attracted to. I have to say, the former wins. Hands down.

It’s wrong to snoop. But that friend’s bedside drawer only takes a second to open and then close. Am I the only one who’s done this? I don’t look in bathroom medicine cabinets. I don’t look in checkbooks. I don’t go stand outside windows and look at people. But here, in this dark room of anonymity, I’ll confess that I’ve been a repeat offender at looking through bedside drawers and in sock drawers to see sex toys (I don’t handle them). I’ll tell you, something: I’ve almost NEVER been wrong, and I’ve got a weird sense of where the toy[s] will be hidden.

Usually my thinking goes: ”I knew it! Good for her/him!”

I would be very surprised if you were the only one who does this. How about it, gentle readers? Have you peeked? I have not, but my friends and I tend to talk about sex toys so there’s really no need.

I just had the urge to share with the web that relationships do get a second and even third creative sexual wind. After 19 years of togetherness me and my wife have just given anal a go (and she loved it to both our surprices) and are considering a threesome – so were there is love there is hope!

I’m not even kidding when I say that this confession makes me feel a whole lot better about the world. Thanks!

Confess! It’s not too late!

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At this point it’s probably occurring to you, and rightly so, that I’m not the altogether most healthy, normal person you’ve ever come across.

What is it about oral sex that turns me even more neurotic than usual? I think it’s the focus. While one of the things I love about giving oral sex is being able to focus on someone else, I feel guilty once the tables are turned. I feel like it’s really unfair for me to accept that level of attention.

I’m aware that this isn’t exactly rational.

Early on with a new person, it’s usually much easier for me. There’s a lot of lust flying around, and everyone wants to put their mouths everywhere. But after a while things tend to settle down a bit, and I start feeling like it’s getting to be a chore, going down on me. Like my naked vulva is sitting there expectantly and prompting an aggrieved “Gawd, this again”.

Not that there’s anything preternaturally trying about giving me oral sex, that I’m aware of. I come within seconds, I give enthusiastic and appreciative feedback, I reciprocate, and I don’t think I taste weird. Sometimes I squirt, but definitely not always! My problem is really conceptual more than practical.

The thing is, I’m not hard to satisfy in bed. My orgasms come fast and boisterous, and although it takes some effort and skill to blow my mind, it can usually be done without a lot of fuss. In no way do I need oral stimulation. So it seems almost too greedy in my case to ask a partner to pay attention to me in any way that’s so one-sided. That’s where the guilt comes in.

Sure, sometimes I want it. Sometimes I even crave it. It feels really good, and the exact orgasms I get from it don’t occur elsewhere. But in my experience, once you start seeming reluctant to receive oral sex, you kind of get fewer and fewer offers for it. And that situation is both comfortable and depressing. Because in my weird, twisted little world that somehow makes perfect sense, asking for oral sex would be even more unforgivable than actually getting it!

I’m absolutely insane.

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O RLY?

I’m not interested in playing the “more horrific” game, nor being an armchair criminal philosophy expert. I’m really not. But there’s something disturbing about their reasoning.

Are you suggesting, person who has (every time so far) admittedly never been raped, that a rape victim would be better off dead? The response is usually something like “a murder victim’s suffering is over, while a rape victim has a whole lifetime to deal with what happened.” So that’s pretty much a “yes”. Rock.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I would prefer murder to pretty much nothing, and I think plenty of people who’ve survived rape, torture, and other atrocities may feel the same way. Some probably wouldn’t. But the bottom line here is that I don’t think a bystander is the right person to decide which of these people would be better off dead.

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Then I got over it, laughed at myself, and was afraid to buy condoms and spermicide products. When I filled my prescription for birth control I could tell myself a little story about how I was really on it to regulate my periods so this wasn’t about sex, even though it had this amazing side effect of greatly reducing my risk of pregnancy! But the condoms, the contraceptive eggs: those decisively pointed to the fact that stuff also went in my vagina, and that I was doing everything I could to facilitate the process.

But after you’ve bought condoms enough dozen times that wears off too, and the scariness goes out of the adventure. You don’t have to buy other stuff to buffer the potential shock a cashier might have, thinking that maybe you’re going to leave that store and go have sex immediately, forsooth! You don’t have to avoid the male-manned registers in fear of leering smiles. You just don’t care anymore, unless they happen to not have your favorite brand in stock.

My last hold-out was lube. For a while there, I could buy almost anything without a blink, save lube. See, I usually only use lube for anal play/sex, so there’s an extra stat boost in transgression that a cashier might judge you like really harshly, and oh wait, they don’t fucking care what I buy!

I think it’s part of growing up to realize that it’s not that big a deal to buy any product in a store that routinely stocks it.

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Hopeless tool of the patriarchy that I am, I just don’t like having very much pubic hair. I’ve been shaving to various degrees since I was sixteen, even though no one was helping me enjoy it until two years after that. It’s a tactile thing: I like feeling smoothness when I play with myself; I don’t want hair dampening sensation. To me, a shaved pussy doesn’t look much– if at all– better, and as long as I can sort out what’s where I don’t mind other people maintaining a healthy bush themselves.

But I’ve always had different standards for myself than I have for others. That’s why I feel confident saying you’re a degenerate for reading this smut.

In the realm of pussyshaving, though, you know what I hate? Razor burn. I hate it with the passion that we reserve for those who disagree with our politics and cut in front of us in line. It itches, and looks ugly, and sometimes even hurts (especially if you try to shave over it). I’m going out on a limb and guessing that every person who’s ever seen me naked, and not mentioned a razor burn that I had at all, didn’t exactly swoon over it either. I only fuck the brave, oblivious and/or polite, apparently.

Because, you see, I tend to get it a lot. Those chicks with gorgeously naked genitals swathed in silky, flawless skin? I’m not sure what they’re doing but I suspect they’re not shaving. Or maybe they are, and my skin is even more sensitive and fussy than I thought. Or I’m a Oh God I’m a freak of nature, aren’t I?

Bikini Zone cream has always helped the issue, but I accidentally transferred it from my hands to my lips after applying once, and the taste is not something you want on your pussy unless you’ve utterly despaired of getting oral sex that day. So there went that solution.

It’s actually been a lot better lately because I’m following the rule of only shaving with the grain of hair growth, which I used to think was for pussies. It turns out that it really, truly is, and should be observed accordingly. I’m also shaving a little less often (mostly because I’m exhausted and therefore not as precious about my bush these days), and conscientiously applying coconut oil after shaving.

Still, based on the recommendation of some head-shaving friends, I’m wondering if a safety razor is actually a gentler, superior shave, or just makes them feel like fancy gentlemen. Also, if this stuff works.

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Modern demons have advanced a bit.

Words are like people. Complex. They each have a history, an evolution. And just like when you sleep with someone you’re also sleeping with everyone that person has ever slept with (hawt), when you say a word you summon up all these wonderful tendrils of ghostly meanings that you might not even realize.

And some of the tendrils just tickle me.

Chastity and celibacy are now used interchangeably to mean “miserable”…er, rather, to mean “the state of not fucking”. In days of yore, though, neither of them meant that. You could actually be either and also get laid. Chastity referred to having no illicit sexual liaisons, so no-frills sex inside marriage for purposes of procreation was perfectly chaste. Celibacy simply meant “the state of not marrying”. Celibate clergy would have loads of bastard babies back in yore.

The etymological roots of incubus and succubus come from the Latin for “to lie upon” and “to lie under”, respectively. This suggests that even demons observe the missionary position. How bland.

There’s no point to this other than the fact that I find it terribly interesting.

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One night I walked into my favorite karaoke dive wearing this shirt and two guys immediately approached me and sat down at my table. Every time one got up to put in a song or take a piss the other would jump in and try to make increasingly awkward conversation. Later they retired to a corner and seemed to be discussing something with drunken intensity. “They’re fighting over which one gets to ask you out,” my friend Miriam, who is wise in the ways of men, whispered.

In the midst of all this, a guy leaned his chair back and asked me if I was single, which I was at the time. “My friend is in love with you,” he informed me, pointing to an entirely other (intimidatingly good-looking) guy besides the first two, and asked if I could introduce myself because his friend was shy. (Which, if you read my blog, you know I’m too chickenshit to ever do.) Then, as I was leaving the bar for the night, still another guy asked for my number.

This sort of thing never happens to me. I was completely nonplussed. This was almost two years ago, and I still wonder if the bar had coordinated a “Let’s Fuck With Quizzical Pussy!” night.

About a year later, I was on a road trip. I met up with a bunch of friends in a little college town across the state, and we decided to go to the local gay bar (like you do). It was Drag Queen Bingo night, which is another way of saying the place was packed. I happened to be wearing the shirt. A cute lesbian couple sat alone at a table with an empty chair, and I asked to join them. We talked a little, marked some bingo squares, they asked if they could buy me a drink, and I told them thanks, but I don’t really drink. They bought all my friends a few rounds instead, still seeming genuinely distraught that they couldn’t get me anything.

After bingo, we all danced for a while, and at least three people came up and told me I was cool for absolutely no reason. This particular college town is either some sort of uncanny hellpit of friendliness, or all this had something to do with the shirt. Yes, those are the only two options.

Okay, so those are just two examples, but it truly seems like when I wear the shirt I have more social success than usual. People find me just a little hotter, more approachable, intriguing, something. Maybe. I don’t really know.

But here’s the thing you have to realize about this shirt: it is completely and utterly unsexy. It offers no cleavage, hugs no curves, and accentuates no waist. In fact, it’s a little boy’s polo, size large, bought at an unfashionable big box store. It has horizontal stripes (which I can say about roughly half my shirts, because I like them). Actually I have this striped boy’s polo shirt in several colors, but the blue-on-blue version is the only one that has ever given the faintest hint of being special. The green/green, the yellow/gray, the white/blue: they hold no mystery.

Last Friday, I saw an actual little boy wearing the same shirt, same version, and I wonder if it renders him magically chaseable to all those little playground vixens.

Now, I know it’s not truly a lucky shirt. It’s likely all down to coincidence or the Dumbo’s feather effect or some such phenomenon. It’s silly to think otherwise. But still, it has gradually become the shirt I tend wear when I’m planning a day that might well turn nerve-wracking or awkward. Some superstitious, primitive part of me believes it might give me an edge.

So, although it’s not one of the sexier pieces in my wardrobe, it’s what I put on when I was dressing to go to my first foursome last week.

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Recently one of my Facebook friends posted the following status update: “Smile, it makes people wonder what you’re thinking.” It’s another quote in a long line of hackneyed “folksy wisdom” gems he’s read or heard somewhere, and just had to share. But even as folksy wisdom goes, this advice is really atrocious.

I can think of countless reasons to smile: a friend’s face, the sun on your skin, the elation of running and jumping and climbing trees, remembering that puppies exist, or getting a new sex toy in the mail, just to name a few. But just to get a reaction from people, to seem more intriguing? Booooooooooring. I can get behind smiling out of friendliness, or to put people at ease, but this stupid cliche goes a step too far. It’s “I want people to think of me in a certain way, so I’ll disingenuously alter my behavior.”

This, gentle reader, is why we can’t have nice things.

Cilfton Overmangle texted me out of the blue recently to ask if three days was still the customary amount of time to wait to call a girl after getting her number (I don’t know why I’m the person he asks, but whatever. I’m here to help, I guess…) I wasn’t trying to be glib in the least when I responded that he should simply call her when it was convenient for him to talk and he would care to have a conversation with her. Has anyone not heard of the “three day” rule? And doesn’t it seem contrived and a touch desperate-not-to-seem-desperate when you can tell someone has purposely waited exactly three days to call? I’m not the mayor of dating or anything, but even my commitment-phobic ass couldn’t muster up a speck of contempt for someone calling me on days one, two, or four, especially if a decent conversation arose from it.

It strikes me that conventional wisdom encourages us too much to fake things, to play games with each other for social rewards. The fact that there’s a “rule” of how many days to wait before calling an individual with a pulse and a mother and unique thoughts and experiences betrays such cynacism. And you know if Quizzical Pussy is calling you on your cynicism you’ve gone too far.

That’s my major issue with Pick Up Artistry: it couldn’t be less like art. Art is human, individualistic, all about sharing a unique and fallible perspective. It’s against homogeneous rules; it runs counter to a jaded, cookie-cutter approach to people and the world. Hell, even if an artist is expressing a misanthropic point of view, the act of creation itself is the opposite of cynical.

In fact, the “art” referred to in PUA is more just at odds with being “artless”, in the sense that has positive connotations of sincerity and being unaffected.

Instead of embracing the natural, PUAs (and girls that follow The Rules or whatever the kids are calling it these days, or other con artists) devote themselves to running through life like it’s a role-playing game. And the person you’re trying to date isn’t even the princess you need to save or a member of your party. Your “target” is just another monster to vanquish on your way to your goal. So if you don’t get results with one chick, you just need to beef up your stats, or else you threw the dice wrong and luck just wasn’t on your side. Either way, you’ll encounter lots of HB9s on this level, so you’re cool… you’ll get the next one. How is it a good idea to treat a potential partner like a non-player character? Like ultimately, they don’t matter.

There has to be a better way to deal with rejection than dehumanizing people. Can’t a person not want to fuck you, yet remain fully human? Can’t social interactions be more about discovery and less about achievements? Can’t you just relax and see where and with whom you fit naturally, without trying to force perceptions and opinions you can’t control? Can’t you just smile because you feel like it, call when you want to, and acknowledge that if you’re playing a game, we’re all in it together and probably actually all on the same team?

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