quizzical pussy

There are things I am good at.

I can find an orgasm in a bag of mediocre. I can give you goosebumps with my voice. I make the best brownies on the planet and my pumpkin pie is worth its weight in plutonium. My sense of style is irrepressible. I am a damn good person to have on your team because I’m loyal and giving and clever and awesome.

I’m enumerating all these positive things because it’s important to me you don’t think I’m just feeling sorry for myself when I say that I seriously suck at dating.

Because I seriously suck at dating.

Lately I keep meaning to date more. Mostly because I want to have more sex, but also because I feel like I finally have room in my life again for another partner. I’m not in a hurry to get into another relationship, but I’m more open to it now than I have been for a while. The only problem is that I suck at dating. And it’s kind of more stressful than it used to be now that I understand why.

I mean, I like meeting new people. I want to hang out and ride bikes with every kickass person who comes my way, and there are a lot of kickass people on this planet. And I’m not generally unlikeable, so it’s not like dating is like sopping up failure with biscuits or anything. But dating is incredibly frustrating because I’m not attracted to many people, which means that dates are awkward and ambiguous and I’m oblivious to woo. I’m forever assuming that the lack of attraction is mutual, and that usually isn’t true because duh, these people wanted to go on dates with me in the first place. In contrast, the only reason I’ll be on the date in the first place is because I enjoy someone’s personality, and have agreed to go along for the ride on the off chance attraction develops. Chemistry for me is so often more of a slow burn, and it seldom really catches. Even if I meet people in an expressly-for-dating website, I mostly end up wanting to be friends. I find that this is especially true with cis men (sorry cis men!)

This used to be mere triva. I don’t have to feel magically drawn to someone to be willing to experiment with them sexually. I have even had lengthy relationships with people I wasn’t particularly attracted to. I could tap into their attraction for me, or use the power of having many orgasms together, or mine a thorough understanding that a person was awesome and fetching, to cultivate an appreciation that compensated for visceral attraction. It took me a very long time, actually, to realize it wasn’t the same thing.

But having experienced a few connections involving deep, resonant, multi-leveled attraction, I’m sort of meh about doing it the old way. Which means that if I’m not fundamentally excited about people I just can’t get excited about people because they’re excited about me. Not anymore. Not in the same way I used to. I’m not saying that the attraction has to be compelling and immediate for me to want to explore a connection, but I’m starting to question the wisdom of totally ignoring my gut. True attraction is a very strange alchemy for me, and it’s worth studying.

Another problem with not being attracted to most people is that I basically never seem like I’m attracted to anyone. Even when I feel a pull, I’m mostly just nonplussed because it feels so alien. And I normally withdraw or get all bro-ish when I start realizing a person wants to get me naked. For some reason this makes me bad at flirting. Weird, right? And then when I do really like someone there’s this weird thing in my brain that keeps telling me that if I’m obvious about it my face will completely melt off my skull and, unrelatedly, no one will ever love me again.

So while I’m hypothetically totally open to dating, it’s a fussy proposition to implement on account of me being so fundamentally fucked up. I know there are people out there whom I can have brilliant, life-altering sex and relationships with. I know I’ll find some of them eventually. Whenever it happens, though, it’ll shock the hell out of me.

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There was a day this week during which every moment I wasn’t directly focused on other people I was fantasizing about killing myself or having my head bashed in with a cudgel. The good news is that the day is not today.

It was rather frightening, though. And so unaccountably weird.

Why am I even mentioning this? It’s the simple reality of the situation, but that doesn’t mean that it’s appropriate or useful to share. I don’t think I’m writing about these increasing mental health issues because I want people to pity me or make much of me. It’s okay to need attention when you’re in crisis, but I’m not asking for any. The thought of alarming anyone with this upsets me. Even worse is the thought of eliciting an awkward “Ummm why are you telling me this?” response. Honestly, I have been dealing with this almost entirely on my own so far, and successfully¹. But now that it seems to be getting so much worse, I’m forcing myself to write about it rather than keeping my head down and making jokes about dildos. Reasons:

1. This is as much of a diary as I have. While I realize other people read it, and I do try to limit myself in certain ways because of that, if I think about that too much I won’t write anything here. This is where I tend to go to be honest about my feelings. Even and especially the unpleasant ones.
2. When I get too secretive about my inner life– good, bad, or neutral– I always, always withdraw from the people in my life and feel isolated, which is not a productive way to manage self-destructive thoughts. I don’t expect anyone specific to read my blog, nor for anyone to react in any specific way. But at least I’m being honest at all, anywhere.
3. What’s going on is very weird for me. I don’t understand it, or why it’s suddenly gotten so bad. I am almost certain it’s related to a bombardier-beetle-like combination of chronic illness and hormonal weirdness. It’s also gotten worse as the days have gotten shorter in my part of the world, which could a coincidence or not. Anyway, I don’t hear much about people having out-of-the-blue suicidal ideations for a huge chunk out of the month because their lady hormones are acting up. People don’t walk around saying “Hey, so I’m on my period and I suddenly want to kill myself. You know how that goes!” And that makes me feel like this is a fairly singular experience, but maybe it isn’t. Maybe someone will google “PMS suicide” or similar and find this and feel a little less alone.

I don’t have any use for problems I can’t fix, so I’ve been tackling this issue as a project. I found two months’ worth of birth control pills left over from before Laramy got his vasectomy, and they are miraculously not expired. This is not a long-term solution for moderating my hormonal issues, but it could potentially buy me some time. I also bought a sunlamp just in case winter SAD is a factor. Today is the second day I’ve used it.

I am going to make sure next month is not this bad or die trying. Er… bad choice of words. But yeah.

1. Because look at how I’m all still alive and stuff! [↩]

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I attended a BDSM play party recently. My ass was sore the next day. These two things are unrelated.

Oh, there was some spanking– of me, even. Other asses (tits, backs, thighs, balls…) around me got rawer and redder as the night went on, but my ass’s complexion was largely unthreatened, despite a few delicious moments in which Rudyard Flicksnake, a man who does the most amazing things with whips, blades, and other paraphernalia, tried to wring pouty faces out of me. And succeeded. But even his wooden paddle, which I’ll admit was not my favorite thing, didn’t make me sore. The brutal yoga workout I did hours before the party started? That’s what did it. Yeah.

I know there’s not really a wrong way to do kink¹, but if there were I’d wonder about myself.

And I do wonder. I don’t know where I fit in the BDSM world. On Fetlife I identify as a switch, but my experiences are all light bottoming and lighter topping with sensation play (e.g. “Now let’s see what this toy feels like!”, or “Do more of that thing that feels awesome!”). I haven’t delved into the whole psychological aspect of domming or subbing, even just for a single scene. And, though I’m certainly open to both, I’m not sure I ever will.

In kink, and maybe in every other thing ever, it’s hard to effectively pursue a desire before you actually define it. I’m not sure what I want to experience in the kink world. I know why I want to be involved in it: I love the community, I love the sexy geekery, and I love experimenting and feeling new sensations and finding new ways to orgasm. However, I don’t fit in well enough to meet someone and rattle off my BDSM pedigree: “I’m a fireplay top with an emerging daddy dom side”, “I’m a rope bunny switch, but I only service top”, “I’m a non-painslut masochist with a huge subspace fetish”. I don’t have a firm grip on what I “am”, what I like, or what I want; so far I’m just playing at playing.

I have some ideas of what I’m not. At this point, I do not connect with the masochist label. Not not not. After years of constant chronic pain, I have explored pain; it holds no mystery for me. I adore certain interesting sensations at the lower end of the pain spectrum: sensual sharpness, the thrill of electrical play, the cold point of a dulled blade, little things that pluck the nerves and wake them up, but once it starts hurting I will prove what a masochist I’m not. Hard. I also don’t think I’m a sadist. At least, seeing (and I’ll assume causing) someone else’s physical pain doesn’t do much for me.

Admittedly there are a lot of things I know I want to try, but I don’t know just how I want to express them yet. BDSM is a language with many dialects, and it’s easy to think you’re saying one thing while conveying something totally different. It’s not sorted in my head enough that I can list it here and tolerate looking at it.

Still, I’m going to keep playing as I have been. I want to keep pushing and trying new things. Kink is interesting, fun, often sexy, and there’s a freedom in it that recalls the experience of being a kid on the playground. Some of the equipment is worlds cooler; some if it is eerily close to what your parents stored in the closet and brought out when you needed “discipline”. But at least now you have a safeword.

I don’t know. Can I just say I have an experimentation kink for now? And an orgasm fetish? Because I know those ones are just empirically true.

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1. Unless it’s non-consensual, obviously. [↩]

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For about thirty minutes last week my kissing life flashed before my eyes.

I’ve been making out with some people lately. Maybe other things too with some of them, but let’s focus for a moment on the making out. At this point in my life, if you called me a kissing slut I probably wouldn’t correct you. This is one of the ways, of course, in which my life kicks major ass.

One other way is that my health has been much better than usual for the past six weeks or so, allowing me to be out of bed and into people’s faces more. Until last week, when some acute infection brutally slapped my throat with a pus cactus. Which is why I was sitting on an examination table with a short, bright-eyed man chafing my hands, about to peer at my tonsils.

“Are your hands always so cold?” He asked me.

“Yes.” Sometimes it’s rather convenient. You can do ice play without running to the kitchen.

“Did you walk here? Is that why they’re cold?”

“No. They’re just cold.” He took out a tongue depressor and looked into my throat.

“Mono,” he said. “Have you ever had mono?”

“When I was 18.”

“This looks like mono. Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No.” The literal truth.

“Good, because if you have mono you can’t be intimate. We’ll do a quick test right now.” Having had mono, I knew that kissing fell under this intimacy umbrella. Not only that, but I knew that even though I’d felt remarkably well (for me) a week ago, I might have been contagious already for over a month.

Shit.

As a friendly, frizzy-haired nurse came in and tried to poke my finger for a blood sample, also expressing dismay at my cold hands because it was harder to squeeze enough blood out, I thought about what mono would mean for me right now. I would have to contact all my recent makeout partners and tell them I might have gotten them sick. I would possibly have to watch some of them grow sick and miserable for a long while, knowing I and my slutty, slutty lips were responsible. Meanwhile, I myself would be sick and miserable and cease to enjoy my recent run of good health. Also, my spleen would be enormous.

Then it dawned on me, this must be what it’s like to have an STI.

The nurse returned fifteen minutes later telling me we hadn’t gotten enough blood, so she stabbed another finger as I wondered how long having mono would mean going without making out with any sexy people.

I was playing pokemon on my DS but really composing a form email to warn people of my infectious face when she announced that the test was negative. My doctor returned and told me he thought it would be, and prescribed me antibiotics for my bacterial throat infection.

It’s clearing up.

But I almost had a not-quite-STI, and it was scary. Also, I couldn’t kiss the people I wanted to kiss on Saturday because, well, throat infection. But everyone’s spleens remain comfortably normal-sized for the time being.

But if it had been mono– and certainly if I had an honest-to-goodness STI– I know I would have sucked it up and told people and refrained from spreading the contagion further, however uncomfortable or inconvenient it was. There was never any question. Period. My fun is not worth anyone’s illness.

Which reminds me: April is actual-STI awareness month! Let’s all get tested and stuff.

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“If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?” – RuPaul

The sentiment that you have to love yourself first before loving another person never rang true for me. There are dark places in me, places where I use my own face as a dartboard and trample my own spiritual tulips because bitch stole my sweater. Oh, and also because when we get right down to it, I’ve never cared for her much.

But with other people, I can be very loving. I try to plant and nurture their tulips, lend them sweaters. Once I get warmed up, I love unstintingly and honestly and sweetly. I’m really rather good at it. Until it blows up in my face. A lot. Every single goddamn time. Maybe that’s the point of the adage. Maybe you can’t successfully love someone else until you love yourself.

But then I see all these people in seemingly successful relationships and I wonder if I’m really so much more messed up than they are. Don’t we all secretly loathe ourselves¹? How many people on the planet actually love themselves? Are those sixteen people the only ones capable of real, healthy love? I don’t buy it.

However, I do generally like the idea of loving myself. So there’s that.

I’m afraid of it too, though. As far back as I can remember I’ve worked tirelessly to avoid arrogance and self aggrandizement. Maybe it was because early on, a lot of flashy things like getting good grades and the arts came naturally to me; maybe at some point someone told me to keep my head down and stop showing off and I took it ridiculously seriously. I don’t even know. I just know that I became convinced that overconfidence is more repugnant than crippling self-abasement. I no longer actually think this is true, though. And if it is, I’m pretty sure I no longer care.

I’m usually good at projecting confidence even when I don’t feel it. I’ve also mostly avoided outright self-destructive behaviors; I’ve always been terrible at giving up and pretty good at finding silver linings. And I have to admit that I do often suspect I’m rather awesome. I think my nature is probably fundamentally confident, but I’m afraid to really commit to it, and instead I’ve taken on a lot of fucked up beliefs about myself.

This isn’t even about my romantic life, although I have been told multiple times that my self-esteem issues are by far the least attractive thing about me. Really, I’m just sick to death of being so hard on myself. It’s irritating to spend so much time with someone who doesn’t appreciate me. And yes, it is worrying that I have consistently sought out relationships with people who one way or another end up treating me how I feel I deserve to be treated², and I would prefer that that change. Honestly, though, me treating myself like I’m worthless is more troubling, by far.

So I’ve started working on all that self esteem shit, more aggressively and purposefully than I’ve ever done before. If I overcorrect and start seeming at all egotistical as I work through things, I hope you’ll understand. I’m trying out this new thing of not being a dick to myself, you see.

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1. I understand that I may be projecting a rather lot, but really, don’t we? [↩]
2. Although, it needs to be said, this is trending better and better. [↩]

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I lay no claim to being exceptionally dateable. It can’t be easy to let yourself fall for me, and maybe it’s not even smart. I realize everyone has their own personal red flags, but logically, I must live in much of their overlap.

When you read discussions about evolutionary psychology, debates about weight, or even conversations on general attractiveness, someone will always raise the point that human beings are fundamentally attracted to health. This probably seems like a diplomatic, benign way to speak about physical beauty: Can’t we all just agree that we’re programmed to read signs of health as beauty? Isn’t health really the most important factor in choosing a mate?

Every time I hear that, read that, I flinch just a little. It’s such a casual way to tell someone that no matter how she actually looks,  she doesn’t count as pretty.

I am not healthy. My body has not been healthy for several years. I am disabled; I am sick. I have debilitating fatigue, chronic pain, a compromised immune system, and a low tolerance for activity.  I wouldn’t have a breath of a prayer of surviving in the wild. Despite the fact that even I get mesmerized by my ass sometimes, in one sense I’m unattractive on the most basic level. And even ignoring bullshit theories and pseudoscience, being in a relationship with me day-to-day must be frustrating.

Want to do a fun activity together? Depending what it is, I might be able to do it if I have a week’s notice so I can rest. And a free week after, so I can rest. Want to do a fun, spontaneous activity together? Haha fuck you no.

Feel like grabbing a bite to eat together? Okay, but right now I’m off gluten, dairy, sugar, and fifteen other things just in case it helps my illness. So far it hasn’t helped much, but it means we definitely can’t order that pizza. Also, I bring my own sugar-free ketchup or wheat-free soy sauce along, which I acknowledge might be weird.

Do you want a partner who can be your workout buddy? Who’ll go dancing with you every weekend? Who lives a normal, productive, active life? Who can work a normal full-time job? I’ll say it now: you can’t rely on me. I may never be this for you no matter how much I try.

Add to this the fact that even if I were perfectly healthy I’d still have my emotional issues and my weaknesses, just like anyone else, and most people would run away, sweating from the adrenaline rush of having just dodged a bullet. Wouldn’t they?

But I know something they don’t: I’m worth it. Not to everyone, maybe, but to the few, I’m so entirely worth it. I will love them so fiercely and sweetly, we’ll laugh together so joyously, and those things I do offer will bewitch them so thoroughly that my health will be a detail, trivia, like the maze of color in my eyes. Like the ridiculous songs I make up. Like the brownies I bake that I can’t even eat myself, but I know you like them. Like my insatiable lust for the people I love.

I’m no one’s textbook ideal mate. No one describes their perfect woman as always sick. But I make up for it. I try to. I have to believe I do.

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It’s kind of a lonely feeling.

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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I like to think of this moment in my life as mirroring the nascent winter, when legends say the sun dies and is reborn.

It’s probably not, in actuality, quite so dramatic.

I feel dormant, but changes are afoot. I’m exhausted and restless, quiet and crouching. I’m an irritable, hopeful malcontent. I need a nap and a pick axe, among other things. I have a lot of needs, you see.

For most of my like I’ve felt like it was by far the most shameful thing of all to need things. Anything. Almost as horrible was being noticed.

In seventh grade I was supposed to go on a class field trip, which probably cost about twelve dollars. I decided that instead of asking my mom for the money to go I would just skip it. My family wasn’t desperately poor, but I remember worrying about money a lot as a child. My parents had so many kids, and what if they really couldn’t afford us?

My first period teacher noticed that I hadn’t turned in my permission slip and asked me about it. I shyly (I did nearly everything shyly in those days) told him I wasn’t going. Later that day the school counselor called me in to see her, and it became increasingly clear that “I’m not going” wasn’t a valid position to take. Why wasn’t I going? I answered honestly that I didn’t want to bother my parents for the money.

The last thing I wanted, in the entire world, was to be a bother to anyone.

The counselor told me they had a special field trip fund for students in need. I stammered out that it wasn’t necessarily that we didn’t have the money, understand, but things were kind of tight and I didn’t want to add to expenses if I didn’t have to. She assured me that she understood, and that’s exactly what the fund was for. I looked on in horror as she produced a permission slip and told me to just get it signed; the money part was taken care of. My plan to bother no one and skip the field trip had completely backfired and somehow I had scammed this woman into giving me twelve charity dollars.

I went on the trip, but it felt wrong. Between calling a great deal of attention to myself, miscommunicating my situation horribly, and possibly taking money from someone who needed it much more, things hadn’t quite gone the way I’d planned.

This is pretty much what happens whenever I ignore my needs, neglect to ask for things, try to make things smooth for everyone at my own expense. I make a mess of things. I steal twelve dollars. Every time. I am only recently realizing how reliably this happens.

So lately I’m feeling that quite a few things in my life (not the least of which being the way I treat myself) are going to change. Because I need them to. Because I’m ready. Because I’m restless. Because I am the sun returning triumphant from the land of ice and shadows.

Or I could be. You don’t know.

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The most pressing matter is what to wear.

In my head, a play party is populated by people in surplus costumes from The Matrix. I’m aware that this is Real Life and it’s not actually going to look anything like that, but I can’t shake the mental image. I suppose I will find out tonight.

I don’t have a long black leather trenchcoat. I don’t have experience with BDSM. I might not even have anyone there I’ve met in person more than twice. I’m excited, but it needs to be said: Eep.

My first BDSM play party starts in a disturbingly few number of hours, and I am quite honestly nervous as fuck.

It’s probably going to be awesome, as long as I can manage to get myself there not-naked.

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I truly believed I was going to find a sexy Eeyore costume to post here, but I could not. Imagine my surprise!

I haven’t been in a very good place mentally of late. And now that I’ve read that over I’m not sure why I don’t just come out and say I’m unhappy.

I’m unhappy. There.

Part of it is that my health has been bad, and that isn’t happy-making. Part of it is that I mis-prioritized some meds and stopped taking something brain-preserving that I should have kept taking, and the results have been evident in my mood and mental state. On top of that, all this has converged with more general situational life frustrations that would normally be challenging but not quite so difficult to cope with if I were in my right mind.

It’s stupidly easy for me to justify any depression to myself. My health is a constant struggle, I’m in pain all the time, and my disability currently prevents me from having the independence and success (not to mention walking-around-doing-stuff-ness) that I want, and would normally constitute entirely reasonable expectations. There’s this voice in my head that insists Well of course you’re depressed, kid. You should be. What are you accomplishing? What are you worth? You basically fail at being a human being. At this point, it’s really embarrassing you’re not suicidal.

And I’m not. With the illness I have, a lot of people end up going out that way, but I’m not going to. And I don’t believe the voice is right otherwise, per se. But it’s there, and it kind of has a point. And the pain makes it easy to give in and just ease deeper and deeper into misery and self-pity.

If I think about it, I know I’m very lucky. I have food to eat and a bed to sleep in and a car to take me places when I’m up to driving. I have people willing to put up with me. I have every reason to believe I will be alive in a year. I can have nipple orgasms. I’m lucky. I know it. But right now all I can do is know it. The closest I can come to feeling it is to feel guilty that I don’t.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that when I feel that my emotional or physical needs aren’t met, that’s on me. It’s my responsibility to make sure I’m taken care of, whether that means asking for things or figuring shit out on my own. My responsibility, not my friends’, family’s, boyfriend’s, or pet chinchilla’s¹. I have always had a very hard time asking for things: sexual requests, emotional needs, favors, whatever. When it feels like you don’t even deserve what you’re already getting it’s excruciating to ask for more. And it’s obvious that my problems aren’t the only ones that exist, and making them the focus seems completely tacky. Lots of people are unhappy. Lots of people need support. It isn’t just me.

So I’m trying to figure shit out on my own, but today I need an outlet. Hi, sex blog. This is sexy, right?

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1. Disclaimer: quizzical pussy’s life may not contain actual chinchilla. [↩]

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