ask, and you shall receive
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You should subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting AlphaFemme.net! I’ve been away for the past week and a half. I’m finally back (sort of), and I am so ready for my life to resume as normal.
Last Sunday, I went to Gold Country with my family. It was beautiful. We were in a cabin about 20 miles away from Jackson, a quaint old gold rush town in the foothills of the Sierras. The weather was perfect — temperatures in the 80s, no humidity, not a cloud in the sky. There was a family of deer that lived about 50 feet from our cabin, and they would casually look up from munching leaves when we came near and then disinterestedly return to their meal. There was a swimming hole in a creek about ten minutes away, and we spent an afternoon there alternately baking in the sun on the rocks by the creek and jumping in the bitingly cold water from rocks 30 feet high. One day, we went for a hike at Devil’s Lake — it was about 4 miles to the lake, and we didn’t see a single other person that day. The trail took us up up up into the mountains and the cool lake was very welcome when we finally reached it. It’s amazing how much land there is that’s isolated — I forget that, living in the city. We took turns cooking there, so the first night was my night and I got to cook for someone other than just ML. I kept thinking that I was making too much food, but apparently 6 people can eat a lot more than 2 people can! I roasted fingerling potatoes with fresh rosemary, made a green bean and cherry tomato salad with spring onion and a light balsamic vinaigrette, and chicken marinated in lemon and garlic with a spring onion, garlic, ginger, and lemon sauce to spoon on top. Fresh fruit for dessert. I love California and its agricultural bounty! I got to read a lot too, being disconnected from the internet and my phone. Four days without being able to check my email once! I hope there will always be places on the earth that signals and cables can’t access.
And then the very same day I came back from the mountains, ML and I flew to Vermont for her sister’s wedding.
I had no idea what to expect from the wedding. I knew that it was the first time anyone in her family aside from her parents and sister were seeing her in the knowledge that she was gay. I knew that I would probably be under a bit of scrutiny because of that, though not nearly as much scrutiny as she would be under. I knew that there would be people there who would potentially be uncomfortable with us. I knew that I have ambivalent feelings about marriage, and that the last wedding I went to (of one of my best friends from childhood) felt contrived and, for me, uncomfortable. I knew that ML’s sister (who is younger than she is by a few years) is a darling, but is also pretty foreign to me. She’s 24 years old and has a career, a husband, a dog, a perfect apartment… It’s a life that sort of baffles me. So straightforward. So straight. I was a bit apprehensive about the wedding, to be frank.
But it was absolutely beautiful. A few minor bumps (throwing up after brunch the first morning because I’d been on a red-eye and hadn’t slept and the food was too much for my delicate system!, one of ML’s family’s close friends not being able to look me in the eye through an entire evening the night before the rehearsal dinner, having my feelings hurt – unintentionally – by ML’s mom the morning of the wedding, etc.), but otherwise — it was kind of indescribable. The couple obviously love each other a lot, and everyone was full of love and glowing with joy. Sounds cheesy, but it’s true. No one, aside from the one family friend, was remotely weird to me, and in fact people seemed to make an effort to be nice. The wedding was at a gorgeous lakeside location and the ceremony was simple and personal. Unlike the last wedding, this one wasn’t remotely contrived.
I did feel a bit uncomfortable. It was a bit melancholy, actually, just knowing that our wedding would be different. Of course most of the ways it would be different would be intentional, and thus would be better for us. But other ways are just side effects of queerness — the love and joy from all the guests at this wedding wouldn’t be as effortless at our (hypothetical) wedding. Of course, we wouldn’t have to invite people who would have a hard time feeling effortless about it, but then we’d be missing half of the people in our lives who we love. How do you get around that? How do you have a wedding that has everyone you love and also know that everyone there is unadulteratedly loving you and supporting you and excited and happy for you… In my family, at least, I know that that’s not quite possible. Almost, but not quite.
But. This wedding also made me want one. ML’s sister and her now-husband have been together now as long as ML and I have. (Yep, they got engaged after about 4 months of dating!) It was hard to be at that wedding and not think “this could be us getting married.” Not that we would’ve had the same wedding, but you know what I mean. I know that we love each other as much as the bride and groom love each other. I know that we have an awesome relationship. And there was something (ick alert) kind of transcendent and magical about watching the two of them make vows to each other in front of everyone they love. It felt so authentic and real and significant. I want that. And being there, it was hard not to want it now. It sorta made me feel like, if they’re doing it now, why shouldn’t we?
The truth is, I do feel ready to marry her in a way. I feel certain about her. I don’t think it’s possible to be certain about anyone forever. I think that contemplating the notion of “forever” in general — with regard to relationships or not — is dizzying. You can’t know about the future, in any regard, and that’s why trying to be certain about something in the future feels so scary. But I’m certain now. And day by day I’m more and more certain. Not certain that she’s my forever-girl, but that she’s my girl. Am I making any sense? But then the thing is, there’s no rush to get married. It’s important to me, someday, and it was a fun party and I love the idea of everyone getting together to help us celebrate each other, but that can be anytime and hopefully it will only happen once in my life so why get it over with? Anticipation is always almost as fun as the thing you’re anticipating, anyway. Plus, I have some things I have to do. Grad school starts on Friday. And before then is my birthday — tomorrow :)
I’ve been reading a book lately about relationships, specifically about making relationships work. It’s called The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (affiliate link). I’m not married, no, and my relationship is working just fine, but it seems to me that everywhere I turn, relationships are failing and it makes me nervous. One of my good friends here is in a marriage that on the outside seems lovely, but it turns out is on the brink of collapse. A couple that ML and I are good friends with and who were living together broke up. My parents are moving forward with divorce procedures. It’s enough to make me start to withdraw into the safe dark hole I keep for myself as a last resort, a hole that makes me feel safe and guarded from exposure, but a hole that isn’t particularly good for ML to be able to find me. And so, I’m reading this book.
Part of it is that apparently one of my values is order (surprise!) and another of my values is mastery. (This I have learned from exercises I’ve done with the help of my career coach.) Reading about things and preparing for things helps me feel in control of things; creating a working system for dealing with problems helps me feel productive and confident and content. Plus, a book of seven principles? A list of ways to have a good relationship? Based on research? That produces results? Count me in. I love shit like that. It’s like a problem-solving triage. In a fight? Let’s go through our seven principles to make sure we’re not getting in a nasty shouting match flooding gridlock.
Thing is, ML gets sort of skeeved by my reading relationship self-help books. “We’re fine,” she said, “why do you need to read that?” Because I want to, because it helps me feel secure. With relationships failing all the time, I like to be sure I’m doing everything I can to keep ours on solid footing. And I want to be intentional about it, rather than one day years from now waking up and realizing that we’ve let it slide. “Ok then,” she said, “but you don’t expect me to read it, right?” No, I don’t. I don’t expect her to read it.
But then I realized I was fighting some voice in my head that was all she doesn’t want to work for this relationship as much as you do. She’s not as invested in it as you are. She just wants it to be easy, which means that when it’s not she’s going to run. And I let that little voice in my head kick around for a day or two, feeling a bit uneasy. And yet, as I was reading the book, I was learning that we already adhere to all the principles, just by accident, just because we’re awesome. And then I came to the principle about how to solve problems, and how to recognize which problems are perpetual because they’re grounded in something other than the surface problem, because they’re grounded in clashes that run much deeper… and I read how when you find a problem like that, it’s going to be one that strikes a nerve, and what you have to do is figure out what the actual problem is and relate to each other and be willing to understand what that actual problem is in order to get anywhere. And I realized that the actual problem in the whole little-voice-in-my-head-saying-she’s-not-working-as-hard situation is really this: I like to know, I like to have solutions, I like to be prepared, I like to have a system for things, I like to plan ahead. So reading a relationship book is a way for me to have all that, to appease my want for a personal sense of security. As for her? She doesn’t care for any of that, she doesn’t try to always be prepared, she certainly doesn’t have systems in place for things, and she’s not much of one for planning ahead. She just takes things as they come. In fact, for her, seeing me reading this book made her feel a little uneasy, because it looked to her like I thought there already were problems that I needed to turn to a book to fix. For her, it triggered an insecurity that she was doing something wrong that I wasn’t communicating to her.
And once I understood that that’s what was going on, I was flooded with … something. Not relief, really. Just calm. This is just the two of us, it’s the way we work. We have different values, different stuff going on in the backdrops of our minds, different perceptions of the same scenario. And with that understanding of what’s actually going on in our minds, beyond the surface tension of why-don’t-you-value-our-relationship vs. why-do-you-think-our-relationship-has-problems, it’s so much easier to value and respect our differences, and to accept them without being critical, defensive, or insecure. So, for me, the book has already been helpful. It’s already helped me see that every relationship has those kinds of differences, and the point is to handle them graciously and with a willingness to learn about each other, rather than a desire to force one another to change.
So now I can continue reading the book without her being suspicious, and I’m completely okay with her not ever reading it. And in fact? We had a really good conversation about one of the concepts I’ve picked up in it (an argument will end in the same tone in which it started, or worse, which means if an argument starts out harshly and defensively, we can’t expect it to end gently and respectfully!), and she was receptive to talking about it, and it was helpful for both of us.
I’m continually in awe of our capacity for loving and understanding each other.
Over a late breakfast of salsa scrambled eggs, toast, and sliced strawberries, we’re listening to NPR and sipping breakfast tea. Occasionally, we murmur commentary to each other on what we’re listening to. My mind wanders from the latest Energy Bill updates, and I look across the table and suddenly feel absurdly lucky. Her head is tilted, her eyes askance as she listens to (and grows indignant at) the radio, and I fleetingly feel like I just woke up from a long dream and this, this, is what is real. Out loud I say, “I’m so lucky,” and her focus shifts to me. She shakes her head affectionately and cracks up. “You’re a weird one,” she says, “I love you.”
***
We’re at a giant thrift store together, sorting through all the junk to find a few things to take home. She heads for the t-shirts, I dive into the sundresses. Ten minutes later, I’ve scoured the racks, have a few picks, and the first thing I do is stand up on my tip-toes, crane my neck so I can see over the racks, and look for her. I don’t see her right away. But after a few seconds, her purple hoodie catches my eye and I feel a wave of … I don’t know what, exactly. Familiarity, comfort, warmth, affection, love, security, and (dare I say?) a mild surge of arousal, all wrapped up in one feeling that doesn’t have a single name but it should. All of that, just from alighting my eyes on her in a crowded room. Do other beings have the capacity to feel this way? If not, why do we humans? Where does it come from?
***
I’m lying in bed, trying to fall asleep. I have to get up in the morning to go into the law firm to do some contract work, so I couldn’t go out with her and some friends. That’s fine anyway, because I read a bit, watched a bit of a movie I knew she didn’t want to watch, ate nutella out of the jar with a spoon, and took a bath. It was nice to have the evening to myself. But I can’t sleep without her in bed next to me, big spoon to my little. I slip in and out of half-consciousness, restless, unsettled, waking with a start at every noise, thinking maybe it’s her. She comes in, finally, around 2:30. She sits down on the bed to take off her shoes. “Hi,” I say, mustering all my sleepy energy to squeak out the single syllable. “Awwww you’re awake!” she says, “hi cutie!!” She goes out to brush her teeth, and I prep myself for Sleep Position, turning onto my side and curling up. Soon she’s curled up behind me, and I finally feel the heaviness of sleep settling in. “Did you have fun?” I ask. “Yep!” she says, “but I missed you the whole time.” Not melancholy, just a sweet matter of fact. “Me too.”
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This is my life these days. Sometimes I think conflict (in my relationship or just in my life in general) is what most moves me to write. If that’s true, then that’s too bad, because moments like these are just as worthy of being captured.
By request! The recipe I use for bread these days. Very, very yummy, and very, very easy. Remember how ML gave me a baking class for Christmas? Well, I finally went to a class back in June, and this recipe was one of the ones the teacher taught.
A few notes first:
- you have to plan ahead a bit for this, but only a bit! The dough has to rise 12-18 hours. But the dough itself only takes about 10 minutes to throw together, which I do in the evening the night before I’ll plan on baking it.
- if you have a digital kitchen scale, use it to measure the ingredients (rather than cup measures). It’s a much more accurate way to measure. I don’t have a digital kitchen scale, but it still turns out fine :)
- You can turn this into whole wheat bread by substituting a small amount of the bread flour with whole wheat flour. I typically use 3 parts bread flour, 1 part whole wheat. If you use more whole wheat than that, you’re dealing with a much denser bread!
Okay, so, ingredients:
3 cups (14 oz or 400g) unbleached bread flour
1 1/2 tsp salt (or 1 tbsp kosher salt)
1/2 tsp instant OR active dry yeast (doesn’t matter which)
1 1/4 cup (10 oz or 300g) COOL tap water (not warm!)
1 tbsp white vinegar
corn meal for dusting
Equipment:
parchment paper
a 5-6 quart dutch oven, or some kind of large stock pot with a lid – just note that it will be going in the oven, so it canNOT have any plastic on it (some pots have handles that can be removed…). I use a stainless steel stock pot.
some sort of pastry scraper/flat spatula
colander
mixing bowl
And here are the instructions:
Mix the flour, salt and yeast in a medium bowl. Mix water and vinegar and add them to the dry ingredients, mixing together until you have a wet, sticky dough (about 1 minute). Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set aside at COOL room temperature for 12-18 hours.
Then: line a colander or strainer with parchment paper and sprinkle with cornmeal (I like to use medium-grain cornmeal so there’s a bit of a crunch in the bottom crust of the bread). Set this aside.
Generously dust a work surface with flour and using a dough scraper or spatula, gently coax the dough out of the bowl in one piece. With well-floured hands, gently nudge and tuck the dough under to form a round ball. Put in the colander. Cover loosely with plastic wrap or tea towel and let rise for 1-2 hours until doubled in size.
Thirty minutes before the dough is finished rising, place a covered 5-6 wuart heavy pot on the lower third shelf of an oven and preheat to 475F. (Make sure all the parts/handles are oven-safe!)
Lightly flour the top of the dough and add decorate slashes (about 1/2 inch deep) if you so desire. Carefully remove the lid from the post and immediately place the dough, parchment paper and all, in the pot. Put the lid back on the pot and bake for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, remove the lid from the pot (carefully, because the steam from the pot can burn you!) and bake another 15 minutes. Remove bread from the pot and cool at least two hours before eating. (This is important because the bread continues to cook while it cools!)
Steaming the bread in the covered pot is what gives it the great artisan-style crust. And letting it slow-rise in cool water and at a cool temperature is what allows you to forgo the kneading process.
People have told me that they thought the bread was from a professional bakery! And that has nothing to do with my skills. :)
Feel free to ask me questions!
*The baking school is Baking Arts in San Francisco (www.bakingarts.net) and I highly recommend their classes! I’ve only taken the bread class, but it was a lot of fun and the teacher was fantastic.
And the summer is plodding by.
I’ve been in a bit of a weird mood the past two weeks. Hence the prolonged quiet here. I’ve been having trouble pin-pointing its origin, but whatever it is is making me feel dull, listless, uninspired, disconnected. And the mere fact that I’m in this funk is making me cranky on top of it all, because I’m on summer vacation, dammit. I have time and energy out the wazoo, so what’s wrong with me? Ye olde depression is raring its ugly head.
I’m lacking process. I started seeing a career coach because I’ve been having cold feet about graduate school and feeling in general like following my gut doesn’t do it for me. I need more of sense of order in my life about things. And I’m worried that grad school will turn out just like undergrad — I’ll love it, and I’ll be super happy while there, but then once I’m spit out, degree in tow, I’ll just land haphazardly. I need more of a sense of purpose.
That’s it. Purpose. I lack purpose. And so I’m sort of drifting aimlessly this summer. Don’t get me wrong, it’s really nice. I read a lot, I go on lots of walks/hikes around the city with a friend who has afternoons off, I cook (a LOT) and bake (a LOT) and organize my home… I planted an herb garden and harvested the first basil last week. I found an artisan no-knead bread recipe that’s easy as pie (which, come to think, isn’t that easy… so maybe it’s easy as … brownies-from-a-mix?). I’ve been working at the rape crisis center several days a week, and I love the people there. On the surface, everything seems like it’s perfect. Idyllic.
But yeah, purpose. I’m missing inspiration, drive. A reason to get up in the morning. Something that makes me really excited, something beyond the insular projects I do that don’t have a particular direction (like cooking, volunteering, going on walks). I need goals. Something to work towards.
And I guess because of that lack, I’ve been having a hard time writing. I’ve lost my sense of purpose about this blog, too. What am I doing here? Writing a personal journal? Stream of consciousness, whatever comes to mind? Am I writing a coherent series of personal essays about queer and sexual identity? Am I writing an ode to my relationship? What? I’m confused, and I’m worried I’ve gotten off track, started writing to fulfill expectations (but whose?) rather than writing to capture an essence of something real. This isn’t an issue so much of what I have written, but rather of what I haven’t written. Everything I write here is genuine, it’s me. But I haven’t been writing as much lately, largely because I get stymied, paralyzed by self-consciousness. It’s only when I successfully box the self-consciousness that I manage to write a post.
But here’s the thing. I love this place. I love it too much to leave it, and so instead I’m going to try to re-establish a sense of purpose for myself here. A purpose will give me a sense of direction, a reason to write. So while I’m not sure at the moment what the purpose is, I had an idea of where to start. I’m going to start by putting something real here, something to help me re-connect.
So:
My name is Eva. Hi, y’all.
Lately, I’ve had a lot of questions in my Formspring inbox about BDSM in my relationship. I figured I could address a lot of it in a post of its own.
To be frank, there’s a lot more *desire* to integrate BDSM (specifically bondage, dominance, and submission) into our relationship than we have so far. There are a few reasons for this. The main one is that I have a very, very hard letting go of my mind. During sex but also just in general. I have an extremely active brain, always mentally sorting things and being in charge and adding things to my to-do list and needing to know exactly what’s going on at all times. I’m a control freak, yes it’s true. I’m trying to find strategies for shutting down my brain a bit, but it’s largely a process of trial and error. This doesn’t mean that I’m checking off my to-do list while fucking, but it does mean that I tend to be focused a lot on what she’s doing and how and why and what does it feel like, rather than just letting go and getting into any sort of subspace. I desperately want to find that subspace and carve out a mental home for myself there, but for me it’s definitely a process. I suspect this has a lot to do with protecting myself from trauma, because when I was raped, I guess you could say in a way I went waaaaaaaay too far into some sort of subspace. So now, whenever I feel myself slipping into submission to ML, my mind tenses briefly and it’s gone.
Trust is my main way out, I think. We both need to be able to trust each other absolutely in order to pull it off. I need to trust that she is taking care of me, and she needs to trust that I will be absolutely honest about what’s ok and what isn’t. Conversely, we both need to be able to trust ourselves. She needs to trust herself that she won’t hurt me and that she is absolutely capable of carrying my pleasure in her hands. And I need to trust myself that I will know my limits once they’ve been reached, and that my body is strong, not fragile. So, trust. I think we’ve got the trusting each other part down. Why is trusting yourself so much harder?
All of this isn’t to say we don’t use elements of BDSM in our sex, because oh, we do. That’s what makes me crave it so much, because I want more. Feeling physically trapped has been, so far, the most reliable way of triggering my slip into a preliminary subspace of sorts. She’ll lean her arm across my chest to pin me down and I gasp and feel a tug and a release inside somewhere, in my mind. Last weekend, when we were in Cambria for the long weekend, she had my arms pinned down to the bed and she was on top of me and she was looking over my shoulder at something and when I asked what she was looking at and tried to follow her gaze, I couldn’t because I was trapped beneath her, and she laughed at my struggle and I felt that familiar internal tug and release which is the best way I can figure out to describe the feeling of letting go of control. It’s like I feel physically and emotionally surrounded by her in the best way possible. It’s hard to explain. But it’s that feeling that opens the tight fist my mind has over me. That’s the feeling that I equate with submission.
Bottoming is something else entirely, and maybe I’ll write a separate post soon on what I consider the difference between “bottoming” and “subbing” and the difference between “topping” and “domming.” Quickly: topping/bottoming don’t involve head-space and power imbalance. Subbing/domming do. I “bottom” quite a bit — she orders me around, fucks me, spanks me — but I’m only sometimes able to land in sub-space. I’m working on it.
Her: I like that you wear the pants in our relationship!
Me: …?
Her: …I mean, I like that I wear the pants, and you wear the skirts. But I like that you wear the pants!
Me: Really?
Her: Yeah! I like it when you boss me around!
***
So far this weekend, I have: made strawberry shortcake, supported a friend through a break-up, bought a new sofa, found a small shelf for the bathroom, cooked mirza ghassemi (the eggplants at the market last week were too beautiful to resist), and dozed in the sun while reading.
Tomorrow, we get up bright and early to drive four hours south, to Cambria, where we’ll soak up the sun (assuming it shows itself, which weather reports insist it will), relax, take our minds off of anything regular-life related. We’ll be back late Monday night. I hope you all enjoy your long weekend! I’ll see you on Tuesday.
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