quizzical pussy

I’ve been in a mood lately. It’s hard to explain. Maybe if you have a chronic illness it’ll resonate. Maybe it’ll resonate anyway. Sometimes your body just says, “fuck you” for a few days, a few weeks, maybe months at a time. Every string of every muscle, each thicket of cartilage thrums with pain and hums with an unwholesome exhaustion. This isn’t the tiredness that comes after a toe-curling orgasm, or that bludgeons you after a rough workout, or even a battle of a day. It’s a crackling defiance against life itself. No part of your body wants to move the slightest bit, but deep within the pain lies a restlessness. You get no respite from this. A revitalizing sleep feels like the promise of heaven, and you’ve realized you’re nothing but worm food.

It feels sometimes like the anger and frustration and anxiety– hell, even the self-loathing– aren’t reactions to what’s happening physically, but actually originate inside this pulsing, livid, struggle of the flesh.

And that’s been my emotional state for the past couple weeks: pain/anger, tension/frustration, constriction/anxiety, exhaustion/self-hatred, they come in these binaries: they stay, they press, they fill me. And somehow I can’t force the emotional ills out of me any better than I can will away the physical issues. They’re wrapped up in each other, not always, but inevitably in the worst times.

So I’m feeling sick, I’m feeling down. Obviously, that makes me feel like a sex goddess. Yeah… not so much. Clearly I still want to fuck (I’m me, aren’t I?) but I feel about as sexy as a windshield wiper, which makes the self-loathing worse, which makes me feel even less sexy, which… you get the point. Of course, getting sucked into cycles like that is probably the worst choice I could make at this point. I need to focus on staying positive, dammit. SO!

This is the part of today’s entry where I stop bitching about my maladies and malaise and make a random, abbreviated list of some things that I find Super Sexy™. Let’s begin!

I love the whole world…

1. You know what’s sexy? Getting wet with someone: swimming, shower, rainstorm, ooh hot tub! As long as it’s not uncomfortably cold I’m into it.
2. Girls in boys’ underwear. Yum.
3. When someone gets wicked excited and geeks out about sex toys, that’s sexy.
4. Playful little nips in the middle of long, deep kisses.
5. Hidden, surprising tattoos are sexy as long as they aren’t the embarrassing, ill-advised sort. Okay, good visible ones are hot too.
6. It’s Super Sexy™ when someone has better MTG decks than I do.
7. When a guy is really getting into a blowjob and starts thrusting without really realizing it, I am overcome with the sexiness.
8. Adonis belts (a.k.a. “hip thingies” or “Apollo’s belts”) on guys and butch/gender queer girls. Likewise nice lats.
9. Play wrassling.
10. Freckles on a girl’s shoulders. And nose.
11. A twisted imagination. Not mean twisted. Nice twisted.
12. Watching two people kiss while one of them looks straight at me makes me swoon a little. You know, as long as it’s not in a creepy/cheaty way, obviously.
13. Infectious enthusiasm tends to make me wet. Even if it’s for something I’m not really all that into.
14. A good singing voice.
15. Knee socks, preferably striped, on cute girls.
16. Feeling an erection through a nicely fitting pair of jeans feels like… I dunno, like your character in NetHack just ascended. It feels awesome.
17. Doing something to a sex partner’s body that s/he never knew s/he liked before…getting that “Whoa! Do that again!” face flashed at you… that is fucking marvelous.
18. Large vocabularies are, um, you know, good.
19. Drag kings!
20. People with sex drives that match (or, hell, exceed) mine are bona fide Super Sexy™. Call me.

Okay. That actually sort of cheered me up. Boomdeyada boomdeyada boomdeyada boomdeyada…

(image source)

Ancient Egyptian Deities <3 sex toys. Ask anyone.

International Buy A Sex Toy Day is fast approaching (it’s June 4th!), and I’m contemplating what to buy. I want to make this sex toy purchase count (toward mad orgasms). I’m not above buying cheap-ass sex toys, no, but in honor of the first annual BAST day I want to get something special, something I’m sure I won’t regret. So I’ve narrowed my current wishlist down to five top contenders. And here they are…

1. Sqweel The way oral sex simulators are described always irks me. For instance, the marketing copy for this toy on most sites says: “Luckily, the Sqweel won’t give you any excuses. No tired jaw, no early meeting the next morning, so it’ll keep going as long as you need.” Ooh baby. Nothing makes me horny like thinking about how much people hate to go down on me! Nevertheless, this toy looks like fun, and completely unlike anything else out there. In partnered sex, I tend to prefer oral sex with hard fingering right on my G-spot, so I’m curious as to whether I’ll feel the need for some penetration while using this.
2. We Vibe 2 The We Vibe is made specifically for wearing while fucking, in the sense that it’s supposed to go inside you (and also outside you) while a penis is also inside you. That promises like a million and seven standard units of stimulation for everyone involved! A while back, Laramy and I visited a sex toy shop and the We Vibe 2 was sitting there all coy on a glass shelf, begging to be picked up and fondled. Once we figured out how to turn the damn thing on, the vibration patterns were mesmerizing, and my imagination was captured: I wanted to put it in and fuck him right there on the floor immediately. Unfortunately, it was not that kind of place. Two misgivings: I don’t really know if the added friction against something shiny and silicone (even though it is, as advertised, quite soft) is going to be a problem for my partner’s penis, and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to keep up with the plot of the sequel without first seeing We Vibe 1.
3. Njoy Pure Wand This is the G-spot toy, apparently. I want it both for personal use and for its great potential in the realm of girlfucking. It should come with a t-shirt that says “I will make you squirt”. Or wait, would that be tacky? Oh wait, don’t care.
4. Lelo Ina So my Impulse Jack Rabbit all kinds of died. It’s pretty much a mere shadow of its former, bliss-giving self. We had a good run so I’m not mad…I’m just disappointed. But if the rumors are true, Lelo has taken the winning Rabbit vibe formula and elevated it to high art with the Ina. I feel like that might just help me through my mourning process.
5. Eroscillator As a huge fan of clitoral masturbation, ever since I read Epiphora’s review of this technological marvel I’ve been consumed with desire. I burn, I pine, I perish. For reals. Plus, this is the only vibrator ever recommended by Dr. Ruth Westheimer, and you may recall that BAST day is on her birthday. It’s fate or something, I swear. Of course, the package I want goes for $240.90, so I’m starting to think that fate is cruel. Realistically, I’ll probably start saving up now so I can buy it for BAST day 2011. Still, it’s a beautiful dream.

Honorable Mention: Fleshlight Ice I can’t emphasize enough how dearly I want to fuck a Fleshlight with my Feeldoe. It would feel so deliciously postmodern. And the Fleshlight Ice is the clear favorite for this activity because of the visual treat of seeing every inch of my beautiful cock as it slides in and out. The only problem is that I mostly want it for novelty because I’m not sure it’ll beat jacking off with my Feeldoe one iota sensation-wise.

So there’s my shortlist. Each of my top five occupies a different sex toy niche, which makes the choice both more interesting and harder. As always, your input is welcome.

I hope you consider going online or visiting your local sex shop to buy a sex toy on June 4th, or at least spreading the word about BAST day! Blog it, tweet it, whatever! I think it would be wicked fun if it caught on.

(image source)

She's measuring.

My hair is currently– for the first time ever– short enough to easily determine which direction the whorl goes. It opens up a whole world of possibilities. Like, I can finally figure out whether I’m a gay man or not.

In the early to mid aughts we started hearing about research that suggested that more gay men had counterclockwise hair whorls (about 23%) than one finds in the general population (about 8%). This accompanied other modern-day phrenology like relative finger lengths, thumbprint ring density, left-handedness, that all seemed to correlate (according to some studies) in varying degrees with gayness.

But it seems like the finger length and whorl things are trotted out most often, probably because you can compare them more easily in a social setting, but they’re subtler than left-hand dominance. Can you imagine saying, “Oh, you’re left handed! Surely you’re gay!” It would be absurd! But I’ve heard people say that a counterclockwise whorl means someone’s gay, having a longer index than ring finger means that you like guys, or having a longer ring finger means you’re attracted to women.

I don’t know about you, but by varying the pitch of my fingers slightly I can make either one look longer, although I think my index finger is slightly longer, which means OH GOD I’M NOT REALLY A BISEXUAL! I also have a clockwise whorl and I’m right-handed. Oh, god. But actually, no one seems to study the physical differences in the bisexual population. I guess they’re just waiting for us to make up our minds.

I feel like things get dangerous when the public gets a hold of data from (more or less) scientific studies or surveys. Holly’s post on Monday points out a perfect example of this phenomenon, discussing some article that dimly justifies tired gender stereotypes with the decrees of some monolithic entity call science, which doesn’t appear to function quite like any actual scientific community I’ve ever heard of.

Take the whorl thing. The only study I’m aware of that examines the population of counterclockwise whorls on homosexual heads occurred at a Pride Festival in Southern California. Its sample size was about 50 men, which isn’t large enough to “prove” much of anything. We could say that the study suggests that gay men may be more apt to have counterclockwise whorls, but without actually knowing if there was adequate control we could also say that counterclockwise whorls could be disproportionately represented in Southern Californians, or in extroverts, who might be more liable to attend an outdoor festival, or maybe there are more counterclockwise whorls in men who are out, but closeted men have the standard 8% of whorls. We don’t know. We didn’t do the study, and unless we have access to all the information we might just be parroting piffle.

There are reasons it would be cool if we could prove that homosexuality was genetic. All that talk about “choice” might melt away, and maybe people would stop being jerks, right? Right? Maybe. But finding a “cause” for gayness is pretty damn close to protesting that it’s “not their fault”, isn’t it? And there’s no fault anywhere, so we definitely don’t have to go looking for whom to blame. At this time in history, isolating a “gay gene”, or the non-simplistic form of the same concept, would invariably spawn a movement to cure it. Same-sex attraction existing is awesome. It adds to the rich tapestry of human experience, and I personally don’t want to be cured of it because chicks are hot.

The thing is, it makes a good story to say that there are physical “symptoms” of gayness, but as far as I’m concerned the only reliable tell is the whole “sleeping with someone of the same gender” thing, and even that can sometimes steer you wrong.

Here’s the newest batch of crazy internet from your friendly internet strangers and possibly loved ones.

I don’t have a foot fetish, but whenever I scrub the soles of my feet in the shower my genitals tingle and I get crazy horny. Maybe I need to explore foot rubs. :)

I use my hot cousin’s pictures off Facebook to pretend to be a woman on dating sites so I can get off to guys lusting over me. I am a mostly-straight man.

When I was 14 my mom remarried and I got a stepsister. She was destined to be fattish when she got older, but when she was 16 her breasts were amazing. I would borrow her bras and panties and rubbed them all over my penis and balls and jerk off. I even stole one silky bra right before she went away to college so I could keep it up. I couldn’t look her in the face for years. Those were still some of the best orgasms of my life.

I have told every man I’ve ever been with that he was the best I ever had. It’s never been true. The best I ever had was my female camp counselor at Lutheran camp.

I’m ashamed of the person who writes this website who has a tag pie, claims to be a nerd, yet has no mention of PI day or clever pun on it.

Oh god, you’re so right. I’m cutting myself off from masturbating for 3.14 days as punishment. I also neglected to give my boyfriend steak and a blowjob on the day in question, which makes me a questionable nerd and a terrible person.

I’m falling in love with a stranger over the internet.

I’m 90% sure that the person who gave me syphilis still hasn’t been treated because he doesn’t know he has it, and it serves him bloody right.

P.S. Yes, I’m sure he’s the one who infected me and no, I’m never telling him.

Keep ConTuesdays alive by sharing your secrets! It’s fun, anonymous, and cathartic!

Fifteen minutes after the drag show wrapped up, the performers filtered onto the dance floor and were lauded like celebrities. The queens were cooed over and asked to dance, twirled and dipped recklessly. Close up their stage makeup looked like carnival masks. Platform stilettos and male bodies made them seem like statues scaled up from life-size (life-size in a lesbian club being roughly female sized).

But the drag kings got even more attention than the larger-than-life drag queens, somehow. As they swaggered onto the floor necks swiveled. Modelesque femmes in delicate heels and frothy skirts threw their pipe cleaner arms around the kings’ popped and tie-ringed collars, or followed them around like puppies.

On my first trip to the local lesbian club, the weekly drag show pulled me away from the dance floor for as long as it lasted. As I sat through the vivid parade of gender pageantry I was transfixed by the kings. The drag queens were gorgeous and fun: tinsel and butterfly wings. But the kings were hauntingly magnetic. They tugged some blushing, stammering, boy-band loving, adolescent fangirl you didn’t even know you had in you straight out of your spleen. They made her bounce up and down, squealing, on your diaphragm until you hyperventilated a little and toddled up to the stage to give them a tribute in dollar bills. You were powerless against this. I was powerless against this.

I’ve always been fascinated by butches in a “want to be one” way as well as a “want to fuck one” way. Drag kings were butches in overdrive. And I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

Post-drag show, mid-dancing, there was a line like whoa for the unisex bathroom. As I stood there waiting a pretty young thing with a short skirt and teased hair sat on a nearby bench, weaving her impossibly long legs around each other–thighs and ankles both crossed, waiting to pounce on one of the drag kings as soon as she exited the restroom. The poofy-haired she-predator stalks its prey…

As the king emerged her confidence was almost a visible force surrounding her. Her hair was short, she wore a polo shirt and baggy pants over hundred dollar sneakers, the hip hop-loving frat boy look. She was unremarkable in terms of conventional beauty standards. She looked rather like Lance Bass, actually. As a femme she might not have gotten a lot of attention; probably not as much as that pretty young thing on the bench. But drag king Lance Bass wasn’t a femme. She was a king.

Prompted by PYT’s fluttering eyes and hair twirling, she struck up a conversation, and the pretty young thing hung on every word. PYT mentioned something about university classes, and Lance asked her major, like it somehow wasn’t the most mundane question ever conceived of. PYT’s eyes lit up to be asked anything about herself, and admitted she was undecided but leaning toward business. Lance instructed her that business was an excellent major and she should stick with it, then leaned down to PYT’s pretty young ear and whispered something that those of us in the loo line weren’t privy to, but made PYT’s eyes glow even brighter. In that moment I believed that PYT would earn a fucking M.B.A. just to impress this drag king she’d just met. After a few more minutes, Lance sauntered away with PYT’s number.

Later that night I passed PYT as she was talking to a flock of friends. “She’s probably such a player. She won’t even remember me tomorrow.” She was hoping she was wrong, but so obviously worried that she was right. I couldn’t help but think that in a typical, heteronormative high school setting (which would’ve been the reality, what, three years ago tops for these chicks?) PYT would’ve probably been too pretty and popular to say three words to Lance, who would’ve likely been in marching band. With me. Since I was the type of nerd who always nursed crushes on cheerleaders and chicks on the homecoming court, ace bandages were starting to look pretty good.

I resolved to try to harness the ineffable power of the drag king for myself. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. I had, and still have, several things working against my goal. For instance:

1. My face is decidedly feminine. I have big Disney eyes and girl features. I don’t know how to avoid making highly exaggerated facial expressions. I’m hoping that makeup tricks can correct these handicaps, but the most I can realistically hope for is to look like a very effeminate man.
2. I have proportionately large ass and hips. This is not a typical male shape.
3. When I walk, I naturally sway my hips. If I consciously try not to do this I somehow end up also not bending my knees at all so I’m basically waddling like a duck. Not even necessarily a male duck.
4. Often I actually have considerable trouble walking at all because of my disability so it’s extra hard to try to learn to walk like a man when some days I barely know how to walk anyway.
5. Drag kings are at their best when they can dance a little. The only type of dance I’ve actually studied is belly dance. So not masculine.

Despite all this, I’m planning to do my first performance sometime in the next month. But I do have factors in my favor too. My boobs are small enough that they should be pretty easy to strap down. I have short hair (that’s going to get dramatically shorn for Spring all too soon) so I won’t have to hide my tresses under do-rags or hats. I’m nearly immune to stage fright. I’m used to people thinking I’m an incomprehensible idiot so “wtf?” stares don’t get me down. I have lots of swagger even if it is accompanied by a hip waggle at the moment. I think with a little practice and the right guidance I could possibly not suck at drag. I’m sure even Lance Bass had to start somewhere.

Prom dates Julia and Maddie of Victoria, British Columbia

… And why Constance McMillen shouldn’t have to miss hers.

I started dating Reginald Sleeth my senior year, second semester. He’d already graduated from our high school a couple years prior.

I remember the chick he took to prom that year. I was a 10th grader in the seventh circle of my awkward phase who was secretly pining after him although we were only friends. She was a rich, skinny blonde from the rival school who had bought a strapless dress in his favorite color and wore long opera length satin gloves. They looked so good together their picture showed up in the local newspaper. Shortly after his prom, he moved in with that girl and disappeared from my life for a couple years.

I wasn’t jealous, mind. I didn’t have the self-esteem to feel robbed because a guy I had a crush on was with someone else. I just saw that full-color pic on the cheap newsprint and knew that it would never be me. I was neither rich nor skinny nor blonde. Prom wasn’t made for people like me.

I went to Homecoming dances a couple times during my high school career, but I never had a date. All my friends usually had multiple options, but no one ever seemed interested in going with me. And I would’ve sooner died than ask someone! Junior year Homecoming, a female friend’s “just going as friends” date asked me for one dance, and she made a point to come up to me and tell me how nice it was of him. I had to agree, of course, but those things sting.

I’m not sure why Reginald decided to come back into my life. He’d already dated many of my friends and acquaintances, he’d cultivated a mythos at school as an accidental rake. It always seemed like women pursued him and he was powerless against it. It wasn’t that way with me. He hunted me. He got my aim screenname from a mutual friend and messaged me one night out of the blue. He begged for my friendship back. Then slowly, methodically, he insinuated himself into my life and seeped into that “boyfriend” slot I’d never had filled before, never thought would be filled by anyone.

I had what I’d longed for both those years ago. Reginald Sleeth, former high school Lothario, claimed to be head-over-heels for me. Before long there were signs of the manipulative, abusive hell our relationship would become, but they were subtle. He tried to isolate me from my friends (most of whom thought he was sketchy or whom he’d already dated and dumped with glorious apathy), he freaked out when I was too friendly to his male friends. He cried a lot whenever he wasn’t getting his way, and threw things. As a result, I was in a relationship with someone I’d had a crush on for years, but I wasn’t really enjoying it.

I made the tough decision not to go to my Senior prom. Reginald, who would of course be my date if I went, had so much negative history with my classmates and friends, that I didn’t want to deal with the guaranteed drama. It just wasn’t worth the few bright patches it might possibly provide between all the bickering and moping.

Reginald was livid, petulant. He accused me of being ashamed of him (which was partly true, I suppose), and of not taking our relationship seriously (because no partnership means anything until there’s been at least one awkward updo and a corsage has changed hands, naturally). One day, as we approached the fatal night, he even wept, “I wanted to cover you in orchids and show you off to everyone! Now I can never have that!” But in this I remained strong. He could push me around in a thousand little ways, but I wasn’t going to budge on this. We weren’t going.

Instead, if I remember correctly, we hung out at his place and he gave me my first rimjob. Romance.

With my prom, I took what felt like the path of least resistance. Sure, Reginald was pushing me in one direction, but even worse was the thought of dealing with so much upheaval (probably most of which would’ve ultimately been coming from him, the drama queen) just because I’d brought a polarizing character to my prom.

But what if the only polarizing thing about my prom date had been her gender? What if I hadn’t wanted to bring my asshat boyfriend? What if I’d wanted to take my girlfriend, and cover her in orchids (…is that creepy or is it just that Reginald was creepy and he happened to say that? I honestly can’t discern one from the other sometimes…), and run my fingers gingerly through her updo?

If that’s a problem in and of itself, I call bullshit. Bringing a perfectly sane girl shouldn’t put someone in the same position that I was in having a shitty person as a potential date. But in reality bringing a girl is sometimes much worse. Sometimes a young woman who wants to take her girlfriend to prom doesn’t get to decide whether to go or not. Someone else decides it for her by, oh, say canceling prom.

So let me get this straight… I could have easily taken my evil boyfriend to my prom if I’d so desired, but brave Constance McMillen, who is young, gay, and out in Mississippi, not only can’t take her girlfriend to her prom, but school officials at Itawamba Agricultural High School have decided to encourage her fellow students to hate her by canceling the event altogether! “Sorry, kids, no prom this year. The lesbians killed it.” sort of thing.

That’s not just unfair, it’s downright cruel. Even if you don’t agree with Constance’s dating decisions, you likely wouldn’t have liked mine either if you’d known the details. But you wouldn’t have had anything to say when I tried to purchase prom tickets, would you, Itawamba? Hetero privilege is so stupid and arbitrary.

Constance and her girlfriend should have been able to go to their prom this Friday. Instead, they’ll go to a formal dance being put on by supportive local parents. A federal judge has ruled that her constitutional rights were violated, but has not ordered Itawamba to restore the prom.

Help spread the word about Itawamba’s unconstitutional and punitive actions, and you might win a $100 Eden Fantasys gift card! Constance’s courage has inspired tonic.com and talk show host Ellen Degeneres to offer her educational scholarships. Congratulations, Constance! Hopefully yours will be the last generation to have to deal with this sort of prejudiced nonsense.

On a more hopeful note, see adorable lesbian prom pictures here! Some schools aren’t run by jerks, apparently.

I love confession day! And I love portmanteaux as long as they don’t involve famous couples. Thus, ConTuesday was born! It kind of sounds like a magical day of severe bruising, no? Anyway, I have some good ones for you this week:

First off I would like to say this……..I’m one of those “curvy” women that another poster talked about and I would like to just throw this out there. Not all people are “curvy” because they eat all the time or bad food. I personally don’t eat junk food,drink a gallong of water daily, walk almost 10 miles a day, and I still have my curves. So ease off the assumptions.

I was in a relationship for seven years with my exhusband and during that time he kept telling me that he wanted me to be with another woman. I’m so confused I don’t know if it is because he brow beat me about being with one, or if I’m curious? But I could never be with another woman because of all the protesting I did with him……..

I try to catch up with girls I knew back in elementary school because I wanted to fuck them then and it still sounds like a good idea.

An old boyfriend used to go down on me during my period, not at my request. The more dark blood, and clotted tissue he swallowed the more he seemed to enjoy it. I thought it was super nasty when he said I was “feeding him”, but who’s gonna turn down oral sex. After we broke it off I don’t expect boys to do that for me. It would be super gross to ask and I didn’t even like it that much. I also know this was all part of some gross fetish he has. Even so, I can’t come up with many other things a boy could do that would make my vagina feel SO ACCEPTED.

I secretly long for the day that robots become advanced enough that I can forgo having to interact with human women and can instead buy myself a robotic girlfriend. It isn’t that I don’t like human women, I like to imagine I could download updates that would allow for free will and what not for my robotic girlfriend, but I like the idea of something (effectively) immortal ‘loving’ me with the sort of single minded devotion (I fantasise) only a robot to have. Compared to this human women seem to erratic and short-lived. My only regret would be that a robotic lover could never bear a child.

(This may or may not be comparable to my regret that I’ll never be able to bear puppies or kittens. They’re so much cuter than human babies, and the whole time they’re growing up you never have a teenager on your hands.)

I want my housemate’ girlfriend. He fucked my girlfriend whilst we were all living together. I was the bigger man about it all for a long time, but I can’t resist it any longer. I fantasise about her, and even cuddled with her in front of him one evening whilst we were all out and tripping. When next the opportunity presents itself I will seduce her and feel no remorse, she wants it, I want it. And I will feel good about it because he fucked my ex while we were together and still believes I don’t know about it. The icing on the cake is that my ex was his girlfriend’ best friend, it shattered the friendship, my relationship with her and went on to ruin a good social circle. Fuck him.

My mate and I have an Agreement we live by that is very similar to the infamous “Contract of Wifely Expectations” that feminists and vanilla people on the interwebs had conniptions over a few years back. In fact, we were inspired by reading it. We have never been happier. We don’t tell anyone about it for obvious reasons.

(The original Contract of Wifely Expectations.)

I love my fiance. I’m absolutely ecstatic that I escaped a borderline abusive relationship at the right time to luck into finding my fiance. We’re very sexually compatible – similar sex drives and kinks. I do have one regret, though. I never slept with a woman before we had sex. I’m bisexual and he’s supportive. He wants me to be able to sleep with a woman if that’s what I want, but I can’t… he has herpes. I don’t have it (yet – fingers crossed) but the woman I want to sleep with won’t sleep with me because I was honest about his herpes.

I love my boyfriend. I’m very attracted to him. Our sex life is great. I think he’s probably the only guy I could be this happy with. But he left town for a week recently, and I picked up a guy in a bar and took him home with me. I’m in my 40s, and I wanted to see if I still had it (I do, apparently). I wanted a night of anonymous sex with a new body (and it was pretty good). I wanted to prove to myself that if my boyfriend and I split up, I’ll be able to move on (the guy I picked up would have been happy to see me again, although I refused). I’m also quite convinced that my boyfriend cheated on me while he was away, and for the same reasons. I find the idea kind of hot, even though I don’t really like to think about him with another woman.

(This is some O. Henry shit right here.)

I’ve wanted to have sex with a girl with small boobs for so long that when I date a girl with a teenaged little sister I catch myself wondering what she’d look like topless. This is the case with the girl I’m currently dating, and I’ll prolly marry her. This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop hoping to see her sis’ rack.

I spent every penny my Concentration Camp Survivor grandfather left me in his will on prostitutes and pornography. Thanks, Zadie.

…There it is. Your weekly dirt. To keep ConTuesdays going, I need your secrets! Send me your anonymous confession now, and experience the glorious catharsis.

Secret time! This set hasn’t even emptied my inbox of juicy secrets yet, but I’m trying to share them in posts of easily digestible length. Enjoy! There are more to come soon…

As a teenager, I couldn’t get a proper dildo so I masturbated with stuff I found around the house. The weirdest object I used was a rubber toy alligator. It was actually pretty good.

(Tail first or teeth first?)

I’ve had fantasies about most of my friends at some point, but it the asking and aftermath would just be too weird to try anything. But, I’m mostly afraid that the ones I don’t wanna fuck will be jealous or insulted!

I fooled around with a man in his thirties when I was 15 and 16. It actually turned out really well, and we’re still good friends (6 years later).

I’m a cis female who identifies as bi, and I’ve definitely fallen in love with/had super intense chemistry with a woman before, but the women I have ended up having sex with I wasn’t attracted to.

I am highly intolerant of foreplay–it bores me and dries me out. (I’m a chick!)

I’ve told very, very few people about that night when a guy I was set up with by a friend sexually assaulted me. I’ve had a hard time convincing myself that it wasn’t my fault and that it actually was assault. Because I am the rape apologist’s wet dream – I was drinking, I’m a known slut, we were on a date, we’d been kissing, for fuck’s sake, we’d even played a strip drinking game with all our mutual friends – before they went off to have sex and left us alone.

I know it doesn’t matter. I said no. Maybe I was a tease. But I still said no. I didn’t even hedge! I put on my clothes, said I just wanted to sleep, said no no no. Over and over again. But I was drunk. My head was fuzzy. When he pulled me down and tried to make me in the mood by giving me oral through my panties (which I held onto when he’d tried to pull them down as he pulled me down) I thought to myself, ‘I like oral, shouldn’t I like this?’ And I didn’t push him away at first. At first being the first thirty seconds. Then I pushed him off, because no, I didn’t like it, because no, I didn’t want it.

That last part I leave out of the story I told to the few people who know. It confuses even me. How can what happened to me be called assault when for a few seconds I tried to get into it? All of my hardened feminism wouldn’t doubt another woman for a minute, though. Another woman telling me this, I would say over and over again that she had a right to say no -whenever- she wanted it to stop, and if it didn’t it -would be- assault or rape. I had said no before his attempt at oral – that was assault. I said no after when he made me reciprocate – that was assault. I said no as he rubbed his erection on my back, pulling on my clothes and begging me to just let him in, just for a second, it would be fast, just the tip, for around an hour because our hosts had left us to spend the night in the living room – that was assault.

But there’s a part of me that still thinks it was just a bad date. A bad night with an asshole. He didn’t rape me, after all. If you don’t count forcing a penis into someone’s mouth as rape, anyway. And that was for only half a minute at most! I didn’t even leave! Sure, the buses had stopped running, and I would have had to get a cab home, but if I was willing to spend the night in the same room as my would-be rapist (as long as I could convince him to stop trying), how could that be assault? And I only had the one nightmare about it. Not a big deal. I mean, I was fine! I hated him after that, but it didn’t make me feel like my body wasn’t mine, it didn’t put me off sex, I don’t get flashbacks. I’m fine. And if I’m not traumatized, how could it have been assault? Or rape?

All these things I know aren’t true, but I can’t help thinking them. Obviously, I never called the cops. They wouldn’t have done anything, and I would have needed more confidence that something needed to be done to make anything happen to him. I only told the friends who set us up the bare minimum. He wouldn’t leave me alone, he kept grabbing at me, I said. They apologized, said we’d never hang out with him together again.

But I know – intellectually, no matter what other victim blaming shit goes on in there, that I was assaulted. That it was only my force of will that kept him from completing his rape of me. A girl just a little less assertive would have walked out of that apartment raped. And if it happened to me, it has probably happened to other girls, and will continue to happen to other girls, and I really had an obligation to go to the cops, if not for my sake, then for theirs. But I didn’t. And that makes me feel so full of guilt.

(I think a lot of women who are raped feel conflicted and unsure about many of these things. But that asshole raped you, and you have nothing to feel guilty about, not even in regards to your silence. Thank you for sharing this.)

While we do have a lot of sex with dominance and submission, my boyfriend is really into the sappy romantic stuff. He likes to go slowly and gently, staring into my eyes. That doesn’t do it for me, but it is an important part of his sexual needs, so to make it more interesting for me, I’ve come up with a fantasy. In this fantasy, the slow and gentle isn’t about romance – it’s about dominance. I don’t want him inside me, and he’s going to make sure it lasts and lasts, and I feel every inch of him taking me, over and over. The eye contact is another way of establishing exactly who is in control. Using this fantasy, he gets the sappy romantic sex he needs, and I get the dominant sex I need, and we routinely have simultaneous orgasms. It’s fantastic!

All those stories about lesbians in olden times who dressed and lived as men and married young women who didn’t know any better because they didn’t even know what a penis looked like turn me on very much.

I sometimes wish I could do that and have a pretty, innocent little wife who saw me as a real man. I could do it if I infiltrated a sheltered religious community. Yes I’ve put that much thought into it. I’m a straight woman by the way. WTF

Do you have a secret to share anonymously? I want it!

James Randi is an awesome guy. He first made his mark as a stage magician, but his greatest fame comes from his role as a front-line skeptic and rationalist. He and his James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) investigate claims of pseudoscience, paranormal, and the occult, offering a $1,000,000 prize as a challenge “to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event.” Obviously, the money remains unclaimed.

He’s like the cuddly curmudgeon papa of the skeptic community.

Oh, and he likes men. Yesterday, he came out in an interview on JREF’s podcast For Good Reason, and then posted about it on his Swift Blog: “Well, here goes. I really resent the term but I use it because it’s recognized and accepted.

“I’m gay.”

At 81, his close friends and family have known all along, but he thought it was finally time to come out publicly in the interest of full disclosure. He wishes he could marry his long-time partner, but there’s no reason to since his union wouldn’t be valid in Florida, where he lives, and so they wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the later-in-life privileges that spouses automatically get.

In the interview, Randi and D.J. Grothe, who is the current president of JREF and also a gay man, talked about how pseudoscience has been used to back up bogus perceptions that gay people make bad parents or that homosexuality is aberrant and unnatural. They’re also quick to point out that JREF is not and has no plans to become a “gay organization”, they just both happen to be gay (they also both appear to be white, for whatever that’s worth, for anyone working on conspiracy theories).

The most compelling thing about the interview is the fact that although Randi’s generation has always seemed so intolerant and unaccepting, he’s never pretended to be anything he’s not to escape judgment. He says that it was unthinkable to be gay when he was growing up, but he didn’t have the luxury to not think about it. It was just who he was. He never denied being gay or positioned himself to seem straight; it just never came up. He had promised himself and others that if anyone in the media asked him directly, he’d reply: “Yes, so what?” But no one ever did. So he finally thought he should just volunteer the information, even though he insists that no one will care except his crazy detractors and enemies, and that no one should.

But actually, I kind of care. James Randi is someone I’ve looked up to for a while, and I’m not alone. Every time an amazing person comes out to the world, there’s a new opportunity for people to stop looking at LGBTQ people as “other” and start seeing them as part of “us”. Randi’s a major leader in the skeptical community, so this revelation could have a real positive impact there.

His blog entry, entitled “How To Say It?”, closes:

“I should apologize for having used Swift as the venue to publish this note, an item that is hardly the focus of what we promote and publish here, but I chose the single most public asset I have to make this statement. It’s from here that I have attacked irrationality, stupidity, and irresponsibility, and it is my broadest platform. Here is where I have chosen to stand and fight.

“And I think that I have already won this battle by simply publishing this statement.”

I think so too, Mr. Randi. You rock.

When I try to talk about marriage I feel like a little girl dipping into her mother’s makeup and clopping around in size eight high heels. I’ve been in relationships with people who had marriage designs, but I’ve never been able to take it seriously. I’m too immature, or something. I haven’t felt those “lifetime commitment” kind of feelings yet. To me, although I’m old enough that most of my peers are getting engaged and married, it’s still something that, well… grown-ups do. Also, husbands have cooties.

There’s one thing I do know: if there was nothing but a tissue-thin shred of common sense keeping me from marrying Reginald Sleeth, a man who hit me, when I was 20 years old, I think my uncle who’s been in a strong and monogamous relationship since I was four should be able to marry his boyfriend if he feels like it. His right supersedes mine if we’re going to start ranking whose rights are more rightier.

But people all over are being stupid and saying that men have to marry only women, and women just men. I’m not entirely positive if they think transgendered people should be allowed to marry anyone, and if so, whom. I suspect there’s about as much disagreement about that as anything else they can’t paint in black and white absolutes.

These people, the ones who are being stupid, may certainly indulge their feelings and freak out about same-sex marriage as much as they like. They can rail against it, publish hateful books and websites, and thunder “Yo butt ain’t made for that!” into the cold, unfeeling sky. Their freedom to speak their minds is just as valuable as mine. However, I refuse to let them legislate against same-sex marriage if I can possibly help it. What’s wrong with hating it while it’s legal? Isn’t freedom just another word for leaving other people alone? It disgusts me that they devote so much time and energy into fucking up nice things (for the sake of argument, let’s just agree that marriage can be one such nice thing) for people who are lucky enough to find “lifetime commitment” love.

I’ve often thought that if I found myself in the position where I wanted to marry a man, I’d feel pretty shitty about enjoying a perk that many of my friends (or even I, if I found myself in the position where I wanted to marry a woman) are currently denied. I’m not saying life is fair, but this is the kind of unfair that really sucks because it’s the kind we could avoid if we could just all stop being asshats. So it’s a quandary: how much would I hypothetically let my distaste for the unfairness intrude on my personal desire to get a free stand mixer?

I came across this October 8, 2009 Savage Love column about hetero marriage. Dan Savage (a sex columnist who is gay, if you’re not familiar) recalled a wedding he’d recently attended, where the heterosexual couple chose the following selection as a reading in their ceremony:

Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family. Because it fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life’s momentous acts of self-definition.

It is undoubtedly for these concrete reasons, as well as for its intimately personal significance, that civil marriage has long been termed a ‘civil right.’ Without the right to choose to marry, one is excluded from the full range of human experience.

Source: The 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage in that state.

Dan goes on to say that it would be wonderful if the passage caught on as a wedding reading. I agree. Sure, hetero couples can boycott, or move their weddings to states that have legalized same-sex marriage in an economic and symbolic gesture of support. But not many do, and maybe it isn’t practical to expect them to let even deeply-held political concerns influence their romantic commitments. That reading, though? I think it’s a perfect and fitting gesture, and I would love to see it become the new 1 Corinthians 13.