quizzical pussy

I do a lot of sharing on this blog, probably bordering on oversharing, but if that’s not what sex blogging is all about, I misread the charter. This forthright honesty doesn’t come naturally to me. In real life I’m totally comfortable talking about sex all day as long as I don’t have to get emotionally vulnerable about it. I revel in the abstract and avoid getting personal. It’s easier, for instance, to talk to my friends about the horrors of unbirthing than it is to admit to having a crush on someone, or discuss what I like in bed.

I’ve always tended to be even more reserved with the people I’m actually fucking. My first romantic relationship was a huge cat-and-mouse game, where eventually I hid as much as possible from Reginald Sleeth, unsure which things were going to set him off. This got to be a habit with me. I don’t lie anymore now that the threat of violence is removed, but I’m also not as effusive or direct as I’d like to be.

In my blog I try to push these limits. It’s difficult because a small handful of people I know in real life read this, my boyfriend among them. So being open here actually translates to being open with them, and with him (OMG scary). But I’m finding that I can better discuss things with Laramy face-to-face because of what I write here, whether he reads it or not. Honesty begets more honesty or something. It’s a weird way to approach relationship communication, sure, but it’s helping me get better at it.

I still have some secrets, though, from pretty much everyone. Not necessarily things-which-must-not-be-named; more just things that don’t come up, and yeah, that in some cases might make you think less of me. Like:

• When I made out with my friend’s little brother after he told me he’d broken up with his girlfriend, I kind of knew there was a chance he was lying. Now he’s married to her, and she must never find out. Also, I really like her now that I’ve met her, and lying to her makes me feel like kind of a jerk.
• I’m in favor of safer sex. But giving blowjobs while using condoms does nothing for me and at that point I’d rather just fuck instead. Sorry.
• I tried to convince myself that even though Piers Vitiard forced his penis inside me while I was saying “no” and begging him to stop, it didn’t really count as rape because my reason for choosing not to fuck him wasn’t all that good in the first place.
• After reading that post-sex dopamine supplies fade about two years into a relationship, I’m worried that no one will ever have a reason like me for longer than that. And yes, I do know that’s a silly oversimplification only loosely based on real science. Still.
• I’m not sure what the difference is between a woman being good in bed and just being really enthusiastic. What if I’m only the second and not at all the first?
• According to a friend who lived with him after I moved out of our apartment, Reginald likely beat the girlfriend he had after me. He has yet another girlfriend now and I wonder if he’s hurting her. It haunts me because I never called the police on him.
• At the same time, I have to admit I wouldn’t like knowing that I alone summoned that violence from him, like I somehow turned him into something ugly that he’d never otherwise have been. It double haunts me that any part of me is even a tiny bit relieved that he might be torturing another woman.

So many little secrets that I just tuck away while I try to present as clean, sane, pretty. You probably have some too.

That’s why I’ve just launched the Sex Confessional. This is like a lazy, less artistic version of Post Secret: I’ve put up an online form (linked on my top menu bar) where you, I, or your mom can anonymously post sex secrets. I’ll receive a form-generated email with your sex secret, but that email won’t have your email address, name, IP address, or any other identifying feature. When I collect a decent number of them I’ll put them up on my blog and we can all gawk at them in comfort and safety. Trust I have a few horrible ones of my own left to sneak in, but hopefully they’ll be impossible to suss out in the swarm. So get confessing! And spread the word because I want to read absolutely everyone’s anonymous dirt.

They come to Monday night karaoke at the pub sometimes, and when they arrive the party considers itself brought.

They’re a middle-aged couple. He’s husky with a Van Dyke goatee; she’s short and slight and definitely shops in the juniors’ department. Often they have costumes on: a cowboy hat and loud print button-up for him, platform boots and mini-skirts for her. The first time I saw them they were wearing matching gold lamé outfits, so to me they’ll always be the Gold Lamé Couple. I can’t explain how intensely I adore them.

The thing you have to understand about the Gold Lamé Couple is that they take karaoke very seriously. The other thing you have to understand about them is that they are not strictly very good at it. Their singing isn’t anything to write home about, but they commit. You think you’re committed to karaoke? Do you bring your own CD case full of Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga karaoke tracks? Do you have a prop bag? Is there a harmonica for every conceivable key in your prop bag? Have you ever pulled out a whip and set a hula hoop aflame whilst performing “Circus” by Britney Spears? Yeah. Didn’t think so. The Gold Lamé couple comprehends all these wonders and more.

My friend Miriam likes to play a little game when she’s at bars. She looks around at the different couples and tries to guess what kind of relationship each pair has and how long they’ve been together. She’s either pretty perceptive or great at bullshit because she can usually back up the reasoning behind her guesses with details about  body language and other visual cues. She thinks the Gold Lamé couple found each other fairly recently, perhaps a second marriage for each. Miriam suspects they were tired of decades of boring relationships and their exuberance about karaoke mirrors their glee at finally finding someone to really cavort with.

Eloise, another friend of mine, surmises that they aren’t even together romantically but decided to form a platonic partnership, knowing that they had the potential to be a gestalt karaoke tour de force. They do it just for the love of performing…in front of thirty or so pub patrons. Their electrifying chemistry is limited to what they do on the mic. And with props. And the choreography.

The one thing everyone agrees on is that they probably practice their act for hours every week at home. You don’t mess with hula hoop fire without a trial run or six.

But I prefer Miriam’s theory. I want the Gold Lamé Couple to be a real couple. It makes me smile to know that maybe these two people have something beautiful and playful and oddly fearless. They don’t care what they look like to each other or the pub at large. They go balls out and have fun, wasting no time being self-conscious. If they ever settled for boring before, they certainly don’t anymore.

And if that’s what they’re like about everything, I think they might just have the perfect relationship. Life, and especially love, should be like music you don’t care if anyone else likes… and definitely like a motherfucking flaming hula hoop.

Stranger rape is kind of like a shark attack. Most people are alert to the dangers of sharks. They’re something that we learn and agree to fear (Jaws, news articles, Shark week), and sometimes we avoid places and activities just to better our chances. Swim in the ocean? Walk down a dark alley? Are you mad? On the other hand, sharks can’t get to me if I’m in Albuquerque. If I stay in tonight with my Mastiff I’ll be safe from scary rapists. Well, safer. I hope.

Can you always maneuver around these things? No. Albuquerque has an aquarium, and when an evil psycho wants to hurt someone he usually finds someone, and sometimes there’s not a lot you can do can make sure it’s not you.

When you get attacked by a shark, there may be a few people who say that you weren’t observing proper shark safety, or that you must’ve been dressed to look like a seal or something, but most people are correctly going to blame the shark.

Date/acquaintance rape is like a dog attack. There’s an adorable puppy in the park who looks perfectly friendly, and his owner says it’s okay to pet him. Everything seems okay, so you approach him and give him a friendly pat. Then, he tears your face off.

People will have a lot more opinions about a situation like this. You might hear a well-meaning “Did you let him see your hand before you touched him?” or a rueful “You should’ve known better than to try to pet a dog you didn’t know!”, even “You must’ve scared him!” It suddenly gets so much more complicated. Most people will be sympathetic, but a part of their minds may just work overtime to figure out how you were responsible because it’s scary to think that it could happen to them. And hell, they can’t imagine their dogs doing such a thing! Must’ve been something you did wrong. That makes it easier. But they’ll usually agree that you no longer have a face, that things went awry.

To be clear, I’m not saying that stranger rape is worse than date rape, although shark bites might tend to be more damaging than dog bites. I’m also not saying that rapists are like sharks and dogs. They’re actually like people…horrible, horrible people, and they’re completely responsible for their actions in a way that animals aren’t. I’m talking about attitudes here: the similes are about peoples’ beliefs and reactions to these events. Got it? Cool. We’ve got one more…

To some people, partner rape is like a Bigfoot sighting. It’s a ridiculous myth, a concoction beloved of the media and hyped beyond all reason. No harm was done, nothing out of the ordinary actually happened, and only lunatics and members of weird fringe groups believe in it.

But in reality, partner rape is more like a bite from a disease-carrying mosquito, spreading something really nasty, like the ugliest kinds of malaria or West Nile Virus. It is very real, and it’s a global problem. It can be invisible to the casual observer. The victim may have reasons to minimize the event or even think it’s commonplace, but the fallout is devastating. It is also, like a mosquito bite, not the victim’s fault.

People often dismiss partner rape. They’ll call it a gray area, or say that it’s “crossing a line” or “not cool” rather than saying it’s “illegal and disgusting”. It’s hard for many to grasp that a person can be raped by someone they’ve already consented to sex with in the past. It’s hard for victims to grasp that (see: my reluctance to call this rape); it’s hard for many experts-of-everything on the internet to grasp it. It’s obviously especially hard for the rapists to grasp it.

But when consent is absent and sex is happening, that’s rape. Consent must be clear before sexual activity starts. Assume a lack of consent until you have a clear positive indication that something’s okay. That’s the way human beings are supposed to treat other human beings. If you have to wonder whether your partner consents to a sexual activity, you should ask rather than assume. Nonverbal agreement is very possible (e.g. enthusiastic involvement, affirming grins, decisive nods), but if it isn’t obvious, you ask. And for the non-initiator, if you’re the kind of person who thinks consent questions “ruin the mood” and you prefer aggression from a partner, please become an emphatic nonverbal consenter or confirm what you agree to before things start, because an occasional “is this okay?” is a good, sexy habit that I’d prefer you not go around squashing. Consent doesn’t kill the mood. I promise.

After you get to know someone, consent cues can and do get subtler. You can relax a little when you trust each other. But if there’s hint of a “no” signal– verbal or nonverbal– everything stops. It’s your responsibility as a sexually active adult to ensure that you have consent. Every time.

That’s why the old tropes of “wifely duty” and “frigidity” and “compromise” are red herrings in the partner rape debate. There are lots of reasons someone might consent to sex when he or she doesn’t necessarily feel like it. A relationship is sometimes about compromise, and part of that might be agreeing to fuck your husband when you’re exhausted or to bone your girlfriend when you feel too fat. Sometimes it means that the partner with the lower sex drive tries to meet the partner with the higher sex drive halfway. All these things are okay. When you’re part of a loving couple, you often want to take care of your partner’s sexual needs even when you’re not precisely in the mood for it. But consent still needs to happen to get to that point. Compromise never means that the person who wants to have sex gets to force or pressure the one who doesn’t. If the pro-sex person wants to enact a compromise, it’s called “masturbating in the bathroom”. Only the anti-sex person gets to decide that sex is on the compromise menu.

Another thing people tend to say is that false rape reports are common, especially when a woman wants to hurt or punish a lover or gain the upper hand in child custody battles. It never fails. If you talk about rape, someone will probably eventually bring this up. About 2-3% of all reports of sexual assault are false, which is similar to percentages of false reports of burglary and grand theft auto. Lying about being raped is never okay, but this is not exactly an epidemic.

Those who are anxious for the continued safety of partner rapists can rest assured that victims are still reluctant to bring justified charges against their rapists, especially in cases of partner rape. It’s obviously hard to tell how underreported partner rape really is, but very, very, very is a good estimate. Women who are raped by their boyfriends, husbands and exes have a lot of shit to wade through, and sometimes pressing charges is just one thing too many. In addition to all the physical, emotional, financial, and sexual legacies the rape can leave, the victim may be dissuaded from prosecuting even if the police believe her. And if she gets that far, what are the odds that she’ll get a conviction against a man with whom she’s had consensual sex countless times before? Unfortunately, while the myths of gray areas, compromise, and rampant false rape reports persist, the convicted partner rapist is sort of like, well, Bigfoot. Or at least the Barbary Lion.

The following personal story can be seen as a supplement to my series on rape and consent, although I didn’t set out meaning to write it. I started relating the experience as a brief example in an upcoming entry and it got longer and longer until I realized it was its own piece. To be clear, I’ve never called this incident rape; I’ve never known what to call it. It was a bad experience, though, so if reading it will upset you, read about tentacle dildos here instead!

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Reginald Sleeth and I were having a fight again. We fought a lot: snarling, ugly fights. He’d threaten to kill himself, or to hurt me. I’d bawl until the salt from my tears formed little icicles on my lashes. Sometimes the battles started when I’d raised my eyes too high from the ground in public and looked another man in the face, which always convinced Reginald that I was hell-bent on fucking that visibly-faced man. Sometimes they started when I found out he’d been making promises to other girls behind my back again. Sometimes I didn’t even know what the problem was and the fight just seemed to start without me.

We sat on his futon. I was sobbing, and he was only getting angrier. I just wanted things to be okay; I apologized again and again, not really knowing or feeling why. I said the words “I’m sorry” so many times they stopped sounding like words and became a strange background noise interrupted by the gasps and hiccoughs spewing from my wailing, puffy face. The part of me that I considered my personality had been broken for a while, and whatever was left of me seemed to cry a lot.

His face got crueler and he looked more disgusted with every sorry I said. But I couldn’t stop. It was mechanical now; it was the whirring gears that kept me breathing. Finally, I said the “I’m sorry” that tipped him into a rage. His movement was so abrupt and violent that I assumed he was going to hit me, and I flinched. But he turned away–toward the door–not toward me, so then I thought he was going to leave me all alone in his apartment with no car, no phone, no self. That scared me too. I reached out to stop him from exiting, but I realized I was already being pulled, dragged to the floor by my shirt. He ripped it trying to take it off. He tore my favorite bra too but it clung, wounded, to my body. His grip was too tight on me. The air conditioning was suddenly too cold on my newly bared skin. I shook my head, tried to back up, struggled to regain the safety of the furniture, to get away. I was sure he was going to hurt me. Badly. Maybe he would kill me. He was stronger.

Reginald was on top of me, holding me down with his knees while he undid his belt and opened his pants. He was hard and I was terrified. His anger and his force and my misery transformed even the erection I’d always been happy to see into something frightening. He grabbed my hair and moved me around to my knees, facing him. I cowered as he loomed in front of me, and I couldn’t look at him. I pulled away but he had my hair and I was too afraid of him to really fight. I didn’t say any real, human words because I wouldn’t stop screaming, and then he slammed my head down and rammed his cock into my mouth, and it felt like my face was on fire. I choked on my tears as much as his thrusts. My mewling panic was muffled now, less shrill and more like a ragged, guttural hum. I wonder if the vibrations made it better for him.

It didn’t take him long. When I felt him release into my raw throat it was bitter and nauseating. I wanted a drink of water. I wanted to be sick. But then his fingers jammed into me between my legs, raking against the dry flesh there and now a new pain tore through me. I was afraid to tell him no and I’d run out of screams, but I shook my head again and whispered “please”, mute tears running down my cheeks. And he did stop after a minute, and I curled myself into a ball thankful he hadn’t killed me, all the while just wanting to die.

Why why why why why? It kept buzzing in my brain. It was punishment. I’d finally done something that bad, and I didn’t even know what it was. The amount he must hate me is unfathomable I told myself, like hovering at the edge of a bottomless pit.

Reginald sat on the floor with his back to the wall, looking away from me. His presence nearby was ugly, but no part of me was willing to move. I was still and he was still as I tried to ride the roaring whys in my head. It wasn’t until I heard him crying that I looked and saw that he’d covered his face with his hands. I don’t think there were any tears.

“I’m scared now,” he told me, in a shrill voice that threatened hysteria. “I’m scared because I thought you wanted that and now I’m afraid you didn’t like it.”

Of course I hadn’t liked it! What the fuck? I probably looked at him like he was speaking Icelandic, like he was a Martian teapot or a huge aphid-shaped gumball. Why would anyone want that?

“Remember?” he sputtered. “Remember how you told me you wanted that? I didn’t think I could, but I wanted to try. For you!”

Oh shit. It fell on me, a cold, dead weight. Months ago I had told him that I’d fantasized about “forced” blowjobs. I had wanted it to be like a game, defined sex play done in fun. Not like this. Never like this. How could a misunderstanding be so profound? But it had happened. He’d done it for me. He’d taken my throat while I cried, while I was terrified. And it was my fault because I had literally asked for it.

I unraveled myself from my fetal position on the floor and gestured toward him affectionately. I could not bring myself to touch him yet. I was fighting back nausea and shudders, and tears leaked silently from my eyes. I was so thirsty I couldn’t afford the tears, but they wouldn’t stop. “I’m sorry,” I told Reginald. My voice sounded tired and raspy, but I tried to make it soothing. I knew I had to say this or worse things would happen. “I’m sorry I made you do that, baby. I know it was so hard on you. It’s okay. You never have to do anything like that again.” I hoped like hell he never would. I stared vaguely at his cheap, stained carpet because I couldn’t look over at him and I couldn’t look down at me. I hated us both too much just then, as I kept purring my lies and his breathing quieted. “You were so good, baby. You were only doing what I wanted you to do, and it was very wrong of me to ask. But I’ll never, ever force you to do those things again.”

Does this happen every year?

The day after Valentine’s Day my laptop broke out in a rash of news articles and blog entries about sexual violence. Maybe it’s because sometimes rape feels like the other side of the sex coin that Valentine’s Day embraces, or maybe there was a coordinated effort/awareness day that I didn’t know about. Maybe the day-after-Valentine’s Day thing is a red herring and President’s Day is the real culprit. Maybe it’s Zeitgeist. I suck at Zeitgeist sometimes.

Breda got a day-early jump on the trend when she wrote about a video that was posted on ManUp, a campaign whose mission is to stop violence against women. The video’s original source is Omnipeace, “a humanitarian fashion brand that donates 25% of all profits to charities promoting peace, education, human rights and ending extreme poverty in Africa by 2025.” The video, which I’m going to call the iRape video, uses violence against women as a trope to call attention to ongoing violence in Eastern Congo over conflict minerals (tin, tungsten, titanium, and gold ore). The video isn’t just about rape, really. Rape is one “weapon” being used, and it’s not the only intolerable thing happening there: Omnipeace uses rape in the iRape video because sexual assault is especially visceral, horrifying, and to many the rape of a pregnant woman (which this video depicts) is even more so. The overarching issue is that electronics manufacturers (and by extension, consumers) are fostering violence (definitely including rape) when they buy these minerals from the wrong people and out of the wrong mines in the Congo. The escalating war crimes, the unchecked violence, and how corporations are providing economic motivation for them to continue, are the larger issues, and rape is but one really, horribly disgusting aspect of all that.

The iRape video does the job it was designed to do. It communicates the problem and even appropriates pop culture images culled from the once-ubiquitous silhouette commercials for Apple’s iPod. Surely Apple is one of Omnipeace’s biggest targets here, if only because it’s emblematic as an industry leader. In the sense that it presents information about conflict minerals and violence in the Congo, it accomplishes a lot in ninety seconds.

But it raises some issues. Some of us…well, I… think making rape into a cartoon/parody is just a shade tacky. Even the “iRape”… “iSuffer” copy in the video is so flippant it kind of makes me sick knowing that they don’t mean it as a joke, they’re only accidentally presenting it as one. When you use rape as a supporting argument or an attention-grabber you’ve just invoked something complex and rife with emotion– sometimes raw, throbbing pain. I also think it’s worthwhile for organizations to make it very clear when reposting and sharing the iRape video that it isn’t about rape in general. It’s pretty specifically about rape as a war crime, and to me it’s more successful at highlighting a regional conflict and its related atrocities than it is at saying anything about violence against women in a broader sense.

Breda linked to iRape via ManUp, “a global initiative to engage youth in preventing violence against women”. Theirs is an admirable goal, and I haven’t a clear enough picture of them yet to say whether I agree with their politics and methods or not. But clearly their mission isn’t specific to the Congo. So the fact that ManUp has the Omnipeace iRape video as the lone offering in the “Media Center” section of their globally-minded website seems like a counterintuitive decision because it depicts a very specific type of rape in a very specific context–with little surrounding explanation–on a website that has a very diffuse goal.

In war-torn Congo, rapists are certainly often armed. Non-combatant civilian women have no practical means to defend themselves nor access to legal justice. The details are far removed from what many of us might experience in other parts of the world (and in this and many other respects we are so damn lucky). Here in the United States, for example, that isn’t what rape usually looks like.

Breda’s point that self-defense knowledge and preparation (particularly access to and training with firearms) are key to preventing violence against women is an important one. Her declaration that “…the only way to stop violence against women is to make it a very, very risky endeavor,” is nothing more or less than absolutely true. There are dozens of ways to educate and mitigate and hope the bad guys stop being bad guys, and some of these can help, but they’ll never eradicate sexual violence. Only a culture that tolerates no rape and gives women the tools to enforce that standard would have any chance of existing beyond the threat of sexual violence. I’d be thrilled to see more organizations focusing on teaching women how to defend themselves, and spreading the message that it’s completely appropriate to do so. We shouldn’t be expected to leave our protection solely in the hands of men/authority figures/social change campaigns.

But it bears repeating that “you can fight back!” is not the same thing as “you should’ve fought back”, because I think sometimes people conflate the two. You can’t tell a rape victim she (or he) should’ve been “better” at being assaulted and violated. Well, obviously you can, but if you do, you’re an asshat. Empowering women to stop sexual violence dead in its tracks is good; expecting women to claw, shoot, gouge, or maim their way out of every such situation, and wondering what’s wrong with them if they don’t or can’t, is just another way of blaming the victim. Blaming the victim really needs to end, people. Rape isn’t just a physical fight, and even if it were, not everyone has the strength or reflexes or equipment to stop it. Sometimes sexual violence isn’t exactly what you expect it to be, and if we don’t have a clear and realistic picture of what diverse scenarios rape can include, we definitely can’t stop it, decry it, loathe it… in fact, we’re in immediate danger of tolerating it in many of its more insidious forms.

Ladies, are you prepared to fight whenever you’re on a date? Are you prepared to claw your best male friend’s eyes out at a moment’s notice? Would you kill your husband rather than succumb to forced sex with him, or might you take the abuse, and maybe even blame yourself for it? If you’re an average American silhouette woman bopping around to your iPod in Everytown, USA, the armed soldier bogey is probably not what you need to worry about. The scary shadow you need to keep your eye on is the inky outline of the devil you know.

I’m not saying that all the men in a woman’s life are potential rapists. I am saying that 77% of rapes are committed by non-strangers, and sometimes it’s hard to see these coming. If you’re a man and just felt a glimmer of umbrage reading the examples I gave at the beginning of the previous paragraph, your reaction should provide one flash of insight as to why women might have a disincentive to remain ever-vigilant and prepared against acquaintance rape. Often men want and encourage us to be on our guard with every guy… except with them, of course.

Britni posted a great piece on marital rape and the mythical gray area it presents. I want to address some of the things that occurred to me while reading it, but that will be its own blog entry (Soon, my pets. Very soon…) because I’m not writing a goddamn dissertation here. I’m just some chick on the internet who happens to be not so fond of rape.

Sometimes reunions drip with lust, and not much else. You’re finally occupying space again with a body whose proximity means “get ready for orgasms” to yours. Pheromones seem to hang in a cloud above you both, and he presses into you, seething with the frustration of every time he masturbated thinking about you, each time he reached down to his cock and wished your head was blocking the way. His hello kiss is full of tongue and teeth, mimicking the waxing hardness you feel through his jeans. It’s dizzying, delicious. He doesn’t care much what you have to say; he wants to occupy your mouth in other ways. It’s all very low-stakes and purely erotic, and somehow that’s what makes it hot.

Sometimes reunions are joyous and fun. Like you haven’t seen your boyfriend in a couple weeks and it felt like too damn long for both of you. He hugs you like it’s been months, like he’s been waiting for you– not just your body, not just the orgasms he knows are going to happen. You inhale richly, smelling each other’s mingled scents of detergent and skin and breath and shampoo and other things all intangible and sweet that have become shorthand for contentment. Things suddenly feel more right now that you’re touching, even if you’re just holding hands. There will be fun, and conversation, and hysterical laughter. Also, there will be really amazing orgasms. This one is both hot and warm.. and pretty bloody cool.

Both of these are much, much better than the “I fucked you once, have been avoiding you ever since, and now here you are, looking as horrified as I do,” reunion.

A while ago my friend Penelope Svelterwald jokingly asked me to have a threesome with her and her husband Max for his birthday. I believe my response was something dorky like “Well, now! I had a feeling today was going to be my lucky day! Har har har.” and we all laughed and went on with our lives.

Obviously, the threesome did not happen (still waiting for that first FMF to come my way). Penelope and I did end up fucking a couple months later, and that’s an interesting story that I should tell you about sometime, but it was largely unrelated.

The thing is, she was joking (or half joking, or mostly joking) about the birthday threesome, but that doesn’t make it a crazy concept. Another female friend of mine was a birthday present for my friend Crispin Hijanx from his girlfriend in a similar-though-far-less-theoretical manner. Crispin had mentioned that he’d been in threesomes before but had never been “the focus” (aside: I’m not sure what happened in these past experiences that made him specifically feel that he wasn’t– or even had to be– “the focus”, but I kind of prefer a three-person sex=three-person focus paradigm. I’m pretty sure the only way one out of the three people involved can get lost in the shuffle is for things to transfigure irretrievably into a twosome. So I’ll admit I’m confused by this part of the story, but I guess we’ll never know. Unless the subject comes up again and I ask.) and his chick sweetly secreted him off to a hotel rendezvous with a mutual friend who also happens to be a fetching redhead. And a good time was had by all.

Now, I’m not sure if people have always been doing this and I’m just now catching up or if it’s a fad/zeitgeist/what the hip kids are doing, but more and more I’m hearing about people-as-gifts scenarios. And I want to go on record as saying that the more I think about it the more it actually sounds really hot.

I’m being a bad feminist here. I get that. Women are people. People aren’t toys. And, thankfully, you can’t strictly speaking give a person as a present this side of 1865. These things are certain. But who’s to say people can’t play toys recreationally? Because I’m a woman and a person and I kinda wanna. With the right people, naturally (obviously I’m not volunteering to fuck anyone and everyone with a birthday and a dream.)

There haven’t been many moments in my life when I’ve gotten to feel like a treat. And by that I mean I can’t really think of one ever. I’ve felt like prey, a possession, a playmate, and a respected partner– a couple of these I even appreciate. I think, though, that it would be neat to occasionally feel like someone was giddy enough to touch me– even if it was only just once–that I actually rated up there with other awesome and highly anticipated birthday presents like PS3 games and robot kits. I’d like to feel like I’m the dessert someone is looking forward to, sitting glistening and toothsome at the end of a long and glorious meal. I want to be the fucking mochi ice cream for once, instead of just a bowl of miso soup or those carrot shavings on the salad. It’s exciting to be exciting!

Yes, I realize that all I’m accomplishing here is saying I’d like an ego boost. But there’s more to it. The birthday threesome could be giddy and gleeful, full of enthusiasm, and extra fun because at its essence it’s a celebration and a gesture of friendship and lust and adventure all at the same time. This is all assuming that no one gets buyer’s remorse or starts having rampant attacks of jealousy or goes into sugar shock, or whatever. But I’m arguing on potential, understand.

I’m not sure I’d want a threesome as a present myself, though, because I’d never be entirely free from the specter of worrying that one or both of the other parties would never have fucked me without factoring in the “well, it’s her birthday… might as well throw her a bone” card. It turns out that catalysts for self-loathing paranoia probably don’t make the most thoughtful gifts, after all. But a birthday threesome where I’m not “the focus”? Wrap me up, bitches!

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

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

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

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

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

I love my friends. Sometimes I even love my friends, if you know what I mean. But that’s another entry or four.

The feeling seems to be universal among us. Sometimes I’ll get home from a party or from hanging out and someone has tweeted or blogged it; sometimes it’ll be expressed aloud in the moment. It’s always that exact sentence: I love my friends.

And it doesn’t just mean that we’re always there for each other, or that we share important life events, that we work on nifty projects together, or that we always have plenty to chatter and laugh about. When we say it, it means something slightly more specific. When we say it, we’re saying “Thanks, you guys, for being such big, dirty perverts.”

There’s this whole disapproving world out there where most of us are expected to be reserved about sex, to behave nicely and not paw all over each other in the glaring light of day. I mean, there are social niceties, sensibilities! Won’t somebody please think of the children! And that’s cool, I guess. I have this really convincing innocent face that I need to keep in regular circulation, lest I forget how to use it. And I do have many rich and wonderful friendships with people who don’t need to know that I’m obsessed with sex; that wouldn’t get it if confronted with it. And that’s cool too.

But it’s great to have people in my life that do get it, and are possibly close to as fixated as I am. I love having a close group of friends who can invite one another to participate in threesomes without making things weird. I love that I can give my male or female friends lap dances while their partners watch, and we all get a little turned on but mostly just giggle. I love the fact that I medaled in Saturday’s great impromptu Totally Huge Dildo™ suck-off (I didn’t get the gold, sadly. Maybe guys really do give better blowjobs, after all…) and came home with a sample of throat-relaxing gel, because friends share.

I feel privileged to have seen some of their come faces. It feels comfortable and oddly poignant that I know the exact expression the slightly reserved and delicate brunette in the corner makes when she’s being spanked (it’s thoughtful and appreciative, like a person who brings her notebook to a wine tasting), even though I haven’t seen her naked (yet). It’s fun to teach my boyfriend how to tug a girl’s hair on the scruff right where her hairline meets her neck, and watch him practice on a lovely nymph with freckles on her shoulders.

I can talk about politics, petitio principii, and pony play with these people, and everything in between. Where else could I ever really fit in?

I’m not afraid of much. I love heights, I relish the chance to get up and make an ass of myself in front of a crowd. When I’m walking alone at night it crosses my mind embarrassingly seldom that I might get jumped. My grandma bought me pepper spray as a high school graduation present, and I never bothered to bring it with me to university: it lay scorned in a desk drawer in my old bedroom until my little brother discovered it while snooping and unleashed its wrath on his own face. I’m not afraid of snakes, spiders, or ceolacanths. Maybe I’m a little afraid of commitment (commitment and velociraptors), but even that bogey doesn’t leave me in a cold sweat. I’ve had my share of ugly experiences. I know that bad things happen, and I’ve learned that this isn’t a safe world. I still just can’t manage to work up much day-to-day fear about things; I have this bizarre and baseless confidence that I can manage whatever nasty surprises come along in life.

That said, fisting scares the shit out of me.

Sometimes I’ll watch a video or read a first-hand account of a woman experiencing vaginal fisting, and it’s obvious to me that the pleasure involved is transfiguring, transporting. It’s all so over-the-top and sexy. The apparent intensity of it is incredibly erotic, and that makes me think “Hmmmmm, what if I…” for a split second. But then, my inner realist shuts me down with “Surely any sex act that would require an episiotomy needs to come off the table, sweetie.”

Okay, medical intervention is probably hyperbole here, but I literally do not understand how an entire hand would fit in me. Four male fingers is the most I’ve ever attempted, and my vagina felt like a clown car. A ripping, throbbing clown car. Three fingers is usually too intense, if I’m catching knuckle. Where would the thumb even go? And it isn’t like my vagina is freakishly small. It’s accommodated some beautiful penes in its day (no, never more than one at a time). I’m pleased when a partner remarks that it’s nice and tight, but I’ve always thought that was more a function of my mighty pelvic muscles than an indication that I’m anatomically much smaller than average. So I put it to you, speaking as the possessor of roughly normal-sized equipment: where would the thumb even go?

Also, I don’t think I could feel right about being the fister unless I was absolutely sure the chick was a seasoned veteran. I have huge hands for a woman. Whenever I consider the possibility of fisting someone I look down at my gargantuan mitts and flinch in sympathy. And I haven’t even gotten started mentioning anal fisting! I can’t even grok that at this point, although I’m thrilled that people are having their fun.

So how does fisting work for these courageous women who welcome it enthusiastically into their sex lives? I guess, like most things that are potentially awesome, it requires training. It’s probably like gauged piercings: you work up to larger and still larger sizes until finally you’re absolutely guaranteed to never have a career in corporate America again. I mean, until you can fit the whole thing in. And I know there’s skill involved: the whole “silent duck” entry with all the fingers tapered to a (relatively) comfortable point (aside: is it still a silent duck if I’m screaming in agony?), the copious lube, the necessity of relaxing. It all just seems like it’s a lot of time and effort to put into making sure I’ll have to order a diva cup in size 2.

Fisting might be one of those things I’ll just have to file under “not for me”, along with water sports and nu rock. Although, what if I tried it with a really small-handed woman? That could be sexy. I mean, I hate to think I’m missing out. You know, fear is the mind killer.