quizzical pussy

So Barack Obama, current President of the United States, finally said yesterday that he personally thinks same-sex marriage is a good idea. (Video here.)

Now, the religious right portion of his opposition and its supporters already assumed this about him, and were going to capitalize on it anyway. Also, the vast majority of people with any possibility of reelecting President Obama were clamoring for it. Recently, harder than ever. Then when he capitulated, some of them called it brave, and I don’t know that it was. Maybe a little.

He was also careful to say that his conviction here is personal, and on a policy level he thinks the matter of gay marriage should be left to the states. It makes no sense to me to assume that his activism for this issue will go beyond saying “Hey, yeah, gay people are totally real people in theory.” Still, I am happy about this development.

Why? Because it’s an important step. There needs to be a first time the United States had a president say that, and it finally happened. Fuck. Yes. Finally.

I think perhaps the most heartening aspect of the whole thing is that whether he and his advisers are correct or not, they must have thought it was a good move politically for him to come out as pro-marriage-equality. The fact that it wasn’t terribly brave is actually a good sign: it means we are already winning.

So I am grateful to Barack Obama right now, but not nearly so much as the drag queens and butches and other outcasts who fought back at Stonewall. Not as much as the throngs of people who have actively fought for gay rights when it wasn’t easy. Not as much as the people who came out to their religious families, confronting them with the concrete reality of what hatred and prejudice do. I’m thankful to the thousands upon thousands of individuals who created a world where our president was backed into a corner and decided that the savvy thing to do was stand up for what is right.

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Porn rockstar Drew Deveaux recently linked this disturbing, uh, thing, on twitter. It presents an email conversation between a lesbian activist and a trans activist. In summary, the lesbian activist asked the trans activist what the “cotton ceiling” was. The term, which was entirely new to me, deals with the concept that trans women are welcomed into feminist/lesbian spaces, but they are largely ignored as potential sexual partners in these spaces. Think the feminist concept of a workplace “glass ceiling”, but with panties. I’ll admit that I’m biased against any glimmer of transphobia, but to my eye, the conversation quickly descended to the lesbian activist more or less asking the trans activist “Why are you trying to force me to acknowledge you as a woman and touch your penis!? Eeeeww!” Of course, this is just my interpretation, but here’s a direct quote:

Lesbians are sexually attracted to females. This does not include trans women with penises.

Hold the fuck up there.

First off, hasn’t feminism– especially queer feminism– been dealing for over a century with how fucked up it is that other people try to define “correct” womanhood for us? Distinguishing between “female” and “woman” here may seem deceptively okay because “female” refers to sex and “woman” refers to gender. But sex is so much more than genitals, and I cannot imagine feeling comfortable telling anyone else what their sex or gender is. If you feel comfortable doing that, please spend the next month speaking as little as possible and concentrating hard on listening to the people around you. You are not the boss of the planet: you can certainly say that women with penises aren’t female, but your simplistic view of bodies and selfhood and reality is not fooling the rest of us.

Second of all, and I can’t believe there’s even a remote possibility that this is going to blow anyone’s mind: Some lesbians want to have sex with women who have penises. Yes, really. Accept it now. I’m a queer woman. I love women. I am absolutely open to dating and fucking trans* people, including trans women. You don’t get to dictate to me whom I am attracted to. You don’t get to tell me what girl love means. I realize that my bisexuality might cloud this issue, but let me assure you that there exist full-blooded lesbians who feel the same way. Let’s put it this way: I can also have completely male-free lady sex involving a penis at any time with a cis woman. It’s called a strap-on. A penis doesn’t make someone male; I speak from a place of experience here.

I don’t think the trans activist or anyone else was saying that all lesbians are transphobic meanies unless they go out immediately and find trans women to have sex with. Obviously, each of us has the inalienable right to be attracted to the people we end up being attracted to. At the same time, there’s a big difference between saying “You’re not the type of woman I’m into” and saying “I’m into women and you don’t count.” I suspect that the plea here is to fully acknowledge trans women in the queer community as women, as lesbians (if applicable), to acknowledge their partners as female-loving people, and to open up to the idea that female-on-female sexuality is more diverse than all vaginas all the time.

In short, stop trying to make goddamn rules about other people’s sex lives. Maybe even consider reevaluating some of the assumptions that led you to create rules for your own.

Feminism doesn’t get to be an exclusive club. Feminism is the anti-exclusive club. We will joyfully include everyone in our goal of equality– including men with penises, women with penises, marginalized groups of all kinds, and even people we don’t particularly agree with, or we’ve already failed. We’re either dismantling hierarchy or we’re just rearranging it.

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One of the best Valentine’s days (er, nights) I’ve ever experienced was the one where my friend Eloise and I drove through far too much snow to go to the local lesbian club.

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

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

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

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

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

Oh yeah and HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!

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I want a unicorn horn dildo. Oh, yes, I truly do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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One unpleasant side-effect of a campaign to start remembering your dreams is that when you dream about someone who’s died you wake up with their face burned into the back of your eyelids. They’ll gently pad beside you your entire day, drifting through your thoughts and darting into your peripheral vision when you least expect it. Thanks to your lucid dream experiments, you’re now being haunted.

I miss her.

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

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

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

And then, a couple years ago, she died.

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

She’d have written it better.

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

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

A sharp prickle on skin as clothing drops.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I’ve been researching lucid dreaming lately. Why? Because sex in space, that’s why. And other awesomely impossible things that I will totally get to do whenever I feel like it.

I read somewhere that the first step is keeping a dream journal, which I always thought sounded all New Age and twee, but the reasoning turns out to be sound. If your brain knows that you’re going to be writing down what’s happening in your dreams it will start paying more attention to remembering them, and attentive dreaming is only a few rungs down from lucid dreaming.

As someone who can barely ever remember her dreams, my dream journal entries so far are each only one or two sentences long, and I’ve only been able to write anything at all for four days in the past seven.

So far, I have:

14 Oct 2011

I had a feeling I couldn’t trust the red blotchy stone.

16 Oct 2011

A snarky commando guy was annoying. Someone was attacking us.

17 Oct 2011

Party planning of some kind, possibly with high school marching band director. I sucked at cake decorating.

And, my personal favorite, this morning’s scintillating

20 Oct 2011

Someone sent me an email survey.

Yes, seriously. So that is the entire week’s dreams as I’ve been able to remember them. Keep in mind that I sleep about nine hours a night rather than, oh, say fifteen minutes. Operation: Lucid Dreaming is going to be a resounding success; I can just feel it.

There is one question for which my infant dream journal provides no answers, though: Why did I wake up with a desperate longing to feel someone’s fingers push inside me and beckon me, coax me into a frenzy? The crush of my orgasm, the spray, the prayerful breath, the deep, deep swoon. The thought was there fully-formed when I opened my eyes, a real and complete thing, indivisible. Not cock, not tongue, not toy, and you’d better believe not my own god damn fingers would do. I wanted this like the day was born to see me want it.

So obviously I’m wondering what was in that email survey.

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Yesterday was National Coming Out Day, which means that no, of course I’m not done talking about bisexuals!

But first, to everyone who came out yesterday (or ever), to anyone: you are amazing. Really and sincerely, I cannot say this enough: you’re my heroes. Also, probably hot.

Anyway, it all started, as most stories do, when I bought a new bag on clearance last week for $15. The straps were rainbows, but not regular spectral rainbows so much as those retro 1970s palette rainbows. You know how in the ’70s everything looked kind of like that Sesame Street pinball animation?¹ I think it might have something to do with macrame, or Quaaludes… or both. But I’m really not sure. All I know is my bag is working off that color scheme, and has a monkey on it.

After a couple minutes of owning this bag, my mind returned quite naturally to the subject of sex, and I came to a realization: “If the regular rainbow stands for gay pride, the retro rainbow should stand for bisexual pride! Because macrame! And Quaaludes! Exclamation point!”

Now, here you’re probably going to stop me to remind me that there already is a bisexual pride flag.

But watch now while I rebut the hell out of you with the following two simple points: a) I like mine better, and b) I’m not already carrying around a pink, purple, and blue bag around every day, now am I?

So that’s my modest bisexual proposal. The immodest ones are even better, but I’m trying to focus on this one for now. Bisexual pride, yo!

1. I’m assuming. I wasn’t born yet, but all primary sources insist that the Victorian era was sepia and the 1970s were Sesame Street pinball. I’m just relating the facts here. [↩]

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Many, many butts are perfect. And every perfect ever known to this world has had a but. Enjoy a few of each.

I started the SexLog as a whine to myself. She wasn’t having much sex with me, so every time she did, I would send myself an email about it, and put that email into a folder in my email. Every time I enjoined her to have a tryst with me, I logged it. At first, it was just a sad bitter little series of notes on the rare occasions that we had sex. But when the sex was great, I had to detail it, in fairness. When it was hot, I would detail the situation, how it started, and what positions we got into. I might mention what we said during sex.

Reading back over the last year, I see that we’re only averaging once a week. I wish it were more. But reading those times that we do have sex? Some of ’em are pretty damned erotic.

Once again whining is foiled by awesome sex! This happens a lot, I’m certain.

He makes me laugh until all the muscles in my torso feel sprung. He can make me laugh about anything — the crash and burn of my last relationship, the weather, my simultaneous lust for and terror of taking his clothes off, how mind-numbingly stupid bureaucracies are, what he wants to do to me with handcuffs and an order of Chinese take-out (extra sweet-and-sour sauce).

He’s outrageously, gratuitously beautiful to me, like sunrise in the Sangre de Cristos. The fact that other people seem to consider him either strange-looking or utterly gorgeous, no middle ground, only escalates that. It’s like being part of a secret club of people with good taste.

Every day I find something new to admire about him: His good humor about others’ assumptions, his damn-near epic determination, his delighted embrace of any kind of silliness that makes life a happier place to be, the core of stunningly improbable sweetness that underlies his nature, his playful and seemingly infinite patience with me.

It boils down to this: It’s harder for him to be just my friend than it would be for me to be his lover. But he’s making the effort anyway, because I am so goddamn scared to have sex with him, I damn near hyperventilate when he gets close to me.

It isn’t that he doesn’t want friendship; he’s been a good friend, including when I’ve deeply needed one. It’s that he wants to be more. When he says something or touches me in a way that leaves no doubt he wants me naked and writhing under him, it’s not news to him at all, but the bulletins are just starting to come in at my station.

It isn’t that I don’t want the sex, either. He makes my brain ache for it, never mind the standard achy naughty-bits. He makes me want to lick, bite, suck, pull hair, snuggle, see what his o-face is like, hear the sounds he makes (quiet? grunty? down-and-out nasty talk?). He knows all this, too; I’m pretty sure everyone who gets within 100 yards of us knows it. Might as well be tattooed on my forehead.

So what’s the problem? The past. Naturally. This is the sudden and unexpected beginning of the thing for me — and the end of a long process for him. He waited through my ill-advised relationship with his friend, and through my own blindered foolishness about the kind of man he is. Now he’s waiting through my absolute certainty that sex is going to ruin us, like it ruins everything else it touches in my life. It’s a good thing he’s patient; the more he’s my friend, the more we become something I don’t want to see ruined…and the longer his wait is going to be.

I hate that I feel that way; it’s not fair to him, and I’m religiously certain I’m missing out on an amazing lover, so it’s not fair to me, either. But I know that the moment the orgasms ended, I’d start counting down the days until I lost him — friend, lover, everything — just like every other time. And that thought is unbearable to me.

I hope you’ve worked through your past enough to look back on this confession and shake your head and smile, and maybe twitch a little from some muscle soreness from the mindblowing, love-affirming sex you had last night. Sex doesn’t ruin things; people do, and from how you describe it you are two people who are amazing together.

My friend and his wife really want to mess around with my wife and me.

I want to mess around with them.

My wife’s not sure. She hasn’t said ”No,” but she’s shy.

I don’t want to put pressure. The guy who puts pressure is That Guy. And we all know that That Guy sucks.

But any good partner should let his or her partner know what he or she wants.

So, it’s out there.

And I’m waiting. Tick. Tock.

Don’t be That Guy, no. But I guess you could always send her a link to this ConTuesday and tell her you thought she’d enjoy all the pics of nice asses, and oh, by the way, some guy wrote in about a foursome, so that’s interesting…

Send me a confession, won’t you please?

(image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4)

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Anyone feeling libidinous lately? I jockeyed myself through about fourteen orgasms yesterday, although to be fair I only squirted three or four times. As my victory lap, I’m posting confessions I find especially hot in some way (or at least inspire me to think dirty thoughts). I actually get a lot of arousing confessions, and they wouldn’t all fit in this ConTuesday installment without the compilation thereof cutting drastically into my masturbation time, so perhaps this will be the first of several “QP’s Choice” ConTuesdays. Who knows?

But seriously. This way lies hotness.

When I was in studying philosophy in undergrad, I would regularly be reading something so interesting that I’d somehow get aroused and have to take a masturbation break.

I feel weird defining myself as a sapiosexual because that implies that I’m such a smartypants I get to decide who and what is intelligent and then use it to satisfy my own sordid desires, but fuck it. I’m pretty much a sapiosexual and this makes me feel funny in my smartypants.

This is Confessor #4 from June 7th: I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but he never called. Ah well.

I have this funny feeling it was his loss entirely. Thanks for the update.

This is very very simple. From an early age, I had a terrible crush on a totally amazing older ”father figure” man. He was well-off, well-educated, well-traveled, well-read, well-everything. Tall, slender but strong, blue eyes, darkblonde hair, wonderful voice. He had lost his first wife years ago, married again, had two children with his second wife and I had never met his children because we didn’t live in my hometown anymore. (Actually, we lived in the country, all of us. He had homes in several places.

Years go by, I run into this man, about ten years older than I…and he seemed so familiar and so nice and handsome and sexy and elegant and classy. Ta-da! My preteen crush’s son…over that summer I attended several family functions and parties…the two of them were there. OMG! His father, my serious first crush, had only gotten more handsome, more charming, and he and his second wife were still very much in love. I was considered too young to date this man’s son by my strict father…but I was allowed to go on many family trips and visits.

As if my little mind had a mind of its own, soon, very detailed dreams began of being, uhmm, sexually and romantically involved with one or the other of these two men. And wait. There’s more. Sometimes, the dream revolved around being with the Father…and he and his son ”share” me. Then, it switched, in this dream, the son and I are very very involved and somehow, the son and father began to share me. In incredible and erotic and intense ways. I never really lost my crush on the Father…and I may have seriously fell in love with his son…only our age difference got in the way and then I met my beloved husband.

To this day, we occasionally see this family socially and in and around town. The father’s lovely wife recently passed away, tragically. The son…oh my. He’s very much a chip off the ol’ block. Two more handsome elegant charming and truly kind men, are hard to find.

And I still have vivid dreams and yes, fantasies of belonging to both of these men, and of course, now include in various ways…my beloved husband.

I. Am. So. Bad!

Just for the record, I think it’s really sweet and romantic that your husband now figures into your fantasies. It has to be true love when you share with your lover in even your most hidden fantasies.

I have a cute friend. A cute friend, recently available, whom I would kind of like to fool around with. I think it could be a lot of fun for both of us, probably not too serious, good times all around. Sadly, the cute friend has an extraordinarily crazy ex, and, alas! I am having serious reservations about involving myself in any of it.

Clearly you’re wise beyond your years, ignoring the fact that I have no idea how old you actually are. Too many of us would grasp the shiny and ignore the giant warning signs that we would have to file a restraining order before the whole thing was through.

I feel bad for cute friend, though. One (possibly sustained for quite some time) bad decision could potentially hobble cute friend’s fooling around prospects for years, depending on how scary the ex is. This is why we need to start training and distributing Hell’s-going-to-have-no-fury sniffing dogs (who should all be Papillons because awwwww). Prevention is the best cure here.

But failing adorable toy dogs and time machines, sneaking around can be really hot if you want to start fucking not wisely but too well.

My girlfriend posted on twitter tonight that I had left a pair of my panties at her house after spending the weekend there. A few moments later, she texted my to say she’d just masturbated while wearing them. It’s one of the hottest texts I’ve ever gotten and I just had to share it with someone.

That is insanely hot. I don’t know which of you I want to be more in this scenario, but I’m willing to try either. Or both. Yes. Both. In a “trading off” sense; not in a “both parties are me” sense, because frankly I already masturbate wearing my own panties and while it’s not half bad I think we can do a hell of a lot better if one of us starts being someone else.

Tell me a secret.

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