ask, and you shall receive
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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.
I don’t think I’d ever cried while having sex, until last night.
Granted, big changes always unsettle me. When I first moved into the place I just left last year, I felt disoriented and weepy for the first week, questioning my decision to move and convinced I would never feel at home there. Of course I got over the disorientation and weepiness after a bit (though I never did feel quite at home there, with a roommate who was lovely but who really had made it her home). I didn’t think it would happen this time, given that on the surface there didn’t seem to be anything remotely disorienting about this move: same neighbors, same building, mirror-image floor plan of the old place. And moving in with my lover, ferchrissakes. What’s disorienting about that?
Well, I’m not quite sure what’s disorienting, but I think I do feel vaguely disoriented and weepy this time around too. The move in with her feels completely natural, and in fact it doesn’t seem like much has changed in terms of our patterns except that we no longer have the stress of trying to balance quality Us Time with roommates being around. The shift into not working also seems entirely natural — I get up early, when she does, and the past few mornings I’ve been popping muffins in the oven (batter whipped up the night before) so that by the time she leaves for work, she can take some fresh out of the oven with her to work. And then I spend my days doing (for now) house stuff — massive grocery trips, unpacking, setting up internet, cleaning, organizing… But I guess there’s a period of adjustment just the same. Stuff still spilling out of boxes, things every which way in the house, closets utterly overflowing (damn San Francisco and its tiny closets!). It’s just not settled yet. And when things in my environment are unsettled, I think I’m more prone to being emotionally unsettled, too.
So maybe that’s part of why I cried last night when she was fucking me. But somehow I think there’s more to it than that.
It’s not like she was doing anything new. She was fucking me with her right hand, which I love because she can fuck so hard and so fast that way. But lately, I’ve developed a kind of mental block about being fucked this way. It started back in November, when I noticed one time after sex that I was bleeding. Then I kept noticing it — almost every time, I bleed. And despite the fact that I brushed it away, “don’t worry, I’m fine, no it doesn’t hurt, it felt really good, don’t worry!” sure that it was just some very minor tearing, it did bug me. I did go to my gynecologist, and she didn’t find anything wrong, so that was comforting as well. So I just shrugged it off. What’s a little blood here and there?
I thought I’d shrugged it off, anyway. Except for this afore-mentioned growing mental block around penetration. There’s a tiny rise of panic when she first goes in me, which she can read and so she always checks in with me. “No, no, do it, I’m fine.” But for some reason, that tactic wasn’t working last night, and as she was fucking me, my panic was stealthily rising. Panic isn’t exactly the right word. Not anxiety either, really. It’s more like this little voice of fear in the back of my head that kept getting louder, only since I was keeping the voice kept in a glass box, it was getting louder and having to pound at the walls of the box in mounting force and anxious energy because I was trying to ignore it. (How’s that for an extended analogy?) And so suddenly, I found myself crying.
My poor lady, she was so concerned, and was probably perplexed, too. I was telling her to stop and go and “it feels good” and “something doesn’t feel right” all at once. All of that was true. It did feel good, I really, really wanted her to fuck me. But at the same time, something wasn’t right, and it wasn’t anything about our connection, or about the way she was fucking me, or anything specific like that. It was so frustrating not to be able to put my finger on it. So instead I cried.
It’s funny. I’ve often wondered about triggers, since I’ve rarely been “triggered” while having sex. I’ve heard that many women who’ve been raped have a lot of trouble with sex and have a lot of trouble with physically-triggered flashbacks. I’ve only had that once, I think. I’m not sure why, but I think it has something to do with the fact that my memories of being raped are dissociated. I don’t have physically-triggered flashbacks because my mind separated from my body completely. But I wonder whether what’s coming up for me now, what came up for me last night, is some kind of trigger. I was dissociated from my body during the actual trauma, but came slamming back into it right after and for the aftermath — immediate and long-term — I was definitely experiencing my body. I have very acute physical memories from that time. But even those are rarely triggered, and even when they are, it’s not always easy to identify what it is that’s going on. I’m not even sure whether it’s worth trying.
Last night, though. I think that was a trigger. I think the slow build-up of anxiety over the past few months about this bleeding thing, I think that’s a trigger. It’s a trigger of physical damage, lasting physical pain, blood, and above all not knowing — not knowing and trying to repress, make it go away, ignore it, not let anyone know.
Jesus. I don’t know. I guess talking about it is a good thing. I’m not sure what to do about it though. Therapy, yeah, I know, right. I’ve cut therapy out, though, for now, for budgetary reasons since leaving my job with cushy health insurance. I just wish I knew how to help soothe that panicky, isolated voice in my brain that thinks it’s invisible and inaudible and that’s afraid of — what, pain? I guess — I hope — noticing it is the first step. Hearing it, voicing it, hugging it, letting it know I hear it. Does it sound like I’m schizophrenic? I think I feel kind of schizophrenic about this. Is that what dissociating does? It’s confusing. I don’t want that flattened 15-year-old creeping back. No.
Or, maybe I do. Maybe it’s the right time to go back and visit her and tell her everything is going to be okay.
Fuck this is ridiculous. I cried during sex last night, and look what I’ve made out of it! Anyway, here’s the moral of the story: I’m working on sorting shit out. And luckily, I have the most amazing lady to support me in all of it. After the tears last night, and after a little bit of trying to articulate what was going on, she asked me if I wanted to stop.
“No,” I said. “I want you to fuck me.” And so I patted that anxious voice on the head, and listened instead to how good it feels when she’s filling me up. Mmmmm.
A few days ago, my vibrator died.
I had had Patchy Paul for almost five years. Sometime last year, some of the settings stopped working, but you know how it is when you have that thing that gets you off, completely reliably, in under 10 minutes? It used to be my hands, but as soon as I got this vibrator I knew I’d found my vibrating soul mate. And though I can still use my hands in a pinch, if I had Paulchen within reach (don’t worry, I didn’t actually call it that), Paulchen it would always be. So even when some of the settings stopped working, I didn’t give up on it. I probably spent more money on batteries last year than it would have cost to buy a new vibrator, that’s how much I loved this vibrator.
But, after some of the settings stopped working, eventually the settings that still worked started being unreliable. They would require that I hold it at a very particular angle, or that I apply firm pressure to a particular point on the battery compartment. And eventually even the strongest setting wasn’t enough for me anymore. But still, I kept on, changing the batteries every time so that the vibration would be strong enough to get me off. I can’t tell you how many times I walked over to Good Vibes to buy a replacement, and how many times I walked out empty-handed — not because they didn’t carry Patchy Paul anymore (they don’t, but they carry other Fun Factory models that are just about comparable aside from the color and ridging), but because I just couldn’t believe that another vibrator would ever be able to replace the one I had.
What was it, exactly, about this vibrator? Well, the main thing was that the vibration (on the highest setting) was quite powerful, and yet the head is small enough that it focused the vibration directly enough on my clit (as opposed to the Hitachi and Hitachi-like vibrators which have very large heads and tend to numb me without their add-ons!). It’s a dildo, so I could put it inside me, or even (one of my favorite things ever) put the head inside me and lean the shaft up so it was against my clit too. Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmy orgasm. (I think I might be getting wet right now as I’m typing this.) AND, it wasn’t too loud. I mean, it wasn’t silent or anything, but the drone of the vibrator, even on the highest setting, could be easily drowned out by music. (Important when you have roommates.) And it was silicone, which feels lovely and is easy to clean.
But then. Tragedy struck. I was in the middle of getting off, I had just put new batteries in, it was strong enough! And everything! I was getting worked up, my breathing was uneven, I was in heavenly climbing-to-orgasm-land. And it just stopped. All of a sudden. Dead.
And I was very, very, very, very, very sad. And distraught, because there I was getting close to orgasm and my vibrator had fucking died. I had to whip out my other vibrator (which is a lovely vibrator, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t strong enough for me) to finish the job. And it ended up taking quite a while and was immensely frustrating.
There isn’t a real point of this story except that people! My vibrator died, in the middle of my using it! You should feel sorry for me.
(PS: I still haven’t replaced it. I bought a Mystic Wand to see if maybe it was a good replacement because it’s a bit cheaper and also even stronger than the Patchy Paul, and I like strong, but I have to say the Mystic Wand is maybe too strong for me, or maybe it, like the Hitachi, is just too big and not focused enough, or maybe there’s nothing actually wrong with it except that it isn’t Patchy Paul. So honestly? I should just go out and get another Patchy Paul.)
[Edit: apparently I have problems with copy/paste and this appeared twice so I've edited to delete the repeated text. Didn't intend to force y'all to read it twice! :)]
A few days ago, she sent me an email with some instructions. She wanted me to masturbate, stop just before coming, vividly play out a fantasy in my mind, and only then make myself come. And then, I was to write out my fantasy and send it to her.
So I did. Here it is. (And tomorrow, I will finally see her!)
***
You’ve had a long day at work; I left my office before you and I’m at my house, cooking, a vegetable gratin, so that when you get here dinner will be almost ready. I love cooking with you in mind; I love it when you eat what I cook. I’m wearing my black leggings and the long light pink cami, the one that barely covers my ass. I know you love the way my ass looks in those leggings, and when I wear them, I’m wearing them intentionally, for you.
When you finally ring at my front gate, I run to the door to buzz you in the gate, as usual, and leave my front door open a crack so you can let yourself in. I run back to the kitchen to give my attention to what’s on the stove. You come in, take off your shoes in the hall, leave your stuff in my bedroom, and come up to me at the stove, approach me from behind. You put your icy hands, fresh from the foggy San Francisco chill, on my waist, under my shirt, and you breathe warm on my neck. I shiver, flinch from your cold hands but you don’t let me wiggle away, and you slide your hands down to the front of my stomach, between my belly button and my pubic bone. I shiver again, from more than just your chilly hands.
“Take off your shirt,” you say. You whisper it behind my ear. Standing there, facing the stove, I oblige. You trace your fingertips down my spine. I’m wearing the bra you got me for Christmas, and you’re very pleased. Still standing behind me, still breathing your hot breath on my neck, you gently grasp my left hip with your left hand and slip your right hand under my waist line. I’m wearing the matching panties, too, and your hand can feel them. You breathe in sharply and lightly bite my neck as your fingers meet my swollen wet pussy. You easily slip two fingers inside me. My head grows light, my breath catches, my eyelids flutter as I try to keep my composure (and prevent dinner from burning).
“Good girl,” you say, as you remove your fingers, hold them up to your nose, breathe in my pussy scent. “I like that you’re wet. Now take off your leggings.” I take them off. You nod, glance me over, head to toe, and then you go to the table and sit down. I stand there, my composure lost for a moment, confused in the empty air that suddenly surrounds me where your body just was.
You see my confusion, and you half-smile from your seat. “Keep cooking,” you say. And you sit there and watch me, never taking your eyes off me, only talking to give me little directions. “Bring me a glass of water. Good girl. Turn around, bend over.” Et cetera. I go about my work, my body aware of your eyes on it, my skin alert under your gaze. I flirt with you, subtly, sassily, making fleeting eye contact, biting my lip a bit, and purposely giving you the best views of my ass. I know you want me, and I savor it.
At one point you stand up and disappear, and my mind wanders, focusing again primarily on the food. Finally the gratin goes in the oven. As I straighten up from closing the oven, you’re suddenly behind me, you’ve grabbed my hips in your hands, and you shove me against the countertop, push my legs apart with your knee, and then I feel something hard and smooth teasing my pussy, and I know it’s your cock. I bury my face in my elbow on the counter as I tilt my ass up to you, wanting you inside me, filling me. Finally you thrust inside me, and I moan, as you bend over and whisper hot in my ear “is this what you want baby?”
“Yes please,” I stutter. Instead you pull out, turn me around, and push me firmly to the floor. I know exactly what you want me to do. I take your cock on my mouth, your cock that tastes now like my pussy. I take your cock deep in my throat, flutter my eyes up at you, and reach up between your legs and find your clit with my thumb, and suddenly I’m in power, I’m in control, because you’re distracted by your pleasure and forget that you were the one inventing the rules of this game.
For a few moments you’re sinking in your growing arousal, but you soon catch yourself and try to get back control. You grab my hair and try to pull me back from your cock, but it’s too late, I’ve got your cock in my mouth and your pussy in my hands and I’m not giving up. You struggle, pulling on my hair and writhing away from my hands, but you have to grasp the counter for support and you can’t help it, your orgasm is rising in you and you thrust in my mouth and your pussy pushes into my hand as you come, and your body crumples to the ground, flushed and pulsing, your eyes floating.
But you don’t stay that way for long. You blink and look at me, suddenly grin impishly, and say “get up.”
I stand up. You stand up in front of me, take off your cock, and now you’re in just your work shirt and a tie that you’ve only recently started wearing regularly because I told you I thought it was a sexy. I think about tugging on your tie, pulling you towards me to kiss you, but think the better of it — you mean business. You shove my legs apart and thrust two fingers in me. I’m sopping wet, wide open, and you easily slide in a third. I’m meeting you open, wanting you, needing you filling me. Instead, you kiss me on the neck so that I get goose bumps, take your fingers out of my pussy, wipe them off on a towel, and take off your tie.
“What are you doing?” I ask wonderingly. You smirk. “Tying you up,” you say. You turn me around so my back is to you, grab my wrists, and securely knot them together behind my back. “Sit down,” you say, and I do, on the same chair you were watching me cook from. You grab two kitchen towels, tie my ankles to the legs of the chairs. I close my eyes, my lust burning inside me, trying to work its way out, but the restraints work like chains to keep it in my body, and it mounts to what feels like a dangerous level. I’m shaking, almost crying, needing you to fill me up and bring me down from this endorphin high.
And oh, you do, you do. You start off torturously slowly and painfully teasingly with your tongue flicking my clit. My moans grow and my pelvis is writhing against your mouth. You force me back down to the chair and shove three fingers inside me. This is what I needed. I gasp, open wide for you, and sink in my body, aware only of feeling you inside me and out, as if your hand were reaching all the way inside me and your mouth were covering my whole body. The orgasm is already squirming deep inside me, and you know exactly how to reach it. You reach your fingers as deep inside me as you can, still sucking and licking my clit, you wiggle your fingers against my G-spot, and you very subtly push in and out of my pussy as the deep squirming becomes a massive tidal orgasm and I’m pushing against all my restraints and into your mouth and against your hand, begging you to go deeper in me and keep working my pussy, moaning and crying out as you fill me up even more and more and more. You’ve got four fingers in me and you’re up to your knuckles and I know that soon I’ll be able to take your whole fist inside me. I’d take all of you inside me if I could.
You stay inside me as I start gently coming down off the orgasm. I collapse against the chair; you release my hands, and I stroke your hair and face and pull you up to finally meet my mouth, craving this closeness. I taste myself on your lips but pretty quickly my taste has dissipated and I just taste you — your lips, your mouth, your tongue, your sweet breath mixing with mine. I feel your eyelashes on my cheeks.
The timer goes off. We look at each other and laugh, having forgotten all about dinner. Perfect timing.
We started talking a few days ago and continued talking last night about how to make sure sex is a central part of our relationship, and not just an incidental part.
What I mean by that is this:
When you first start seeing someone, it’s all about sex. Or mostly, anyway. Obviously you’re attracted to her as a whole person; she makes you laugh, you have conversations about God and past relationships and what your favorite drink is, you share an interest in music and books, you can rib on the northeast, since you’re both from there originally. But if you get right down to it, it’s about the sex. Every gesture of her hands, every toss of her hair, every sideways glance makes your heart thud and your pussy pulse. And when she touches you, even casually, accidentally, you swoon. You’re liquid in the lap of Eros.
Luckily for you and everything else in your life, this isn’t indefinite. The time returns when you can be in her presence without feeling completely dysfunctional, you can exchange emails at work without the rest of the day becoming a fluster of distraction and desire. It’s lucky for your relationship, too, because you can finally get to know and trust and love each other deeply, talk about difficult things and fun things, share stress and anxiety and joy and excitement, unwind together, and (perhaps most importantly) get some sleep. With your bodies warm against each other, of course.
But a side effect of this natural progression of a healthy relationship can be, if you don’t pay attention, that you forget about sex. Or rather, you don’t forget, but sex becomes The Thing You Do In The Bedroom When You Want To Be Intimate Or Just Want An Orgasm. It’s The Thing You Do At The End Of The Day When Everything Else Is Taken Care Of. It’s like “recess” for elementary school kids. A regular occurence, but distinctly separate from everything else you do. For kids at school, it’s workworkworkworkworkPLAYworkworkwork. For you two sexy partnered people, it’s workworkworkworkworkSEXworkworkwork.
And, YAY!, we have great sex. It’s not boring, it’s not mediocre, it’s not slowing down, it’s not tired or old or mechanical or artificial or put on or anything like that. There are days, sure, when it’s kinda like “ok we’re both super tired, let’s just make out a little and get each other off” but even those days are intimate and binding. We desire each other.
But, I guess that rather than the workworkworkworkworkSEXworkworkwork model, I’d rather cultivate a model that looks more like sEwoRXkeskoRseoSEXworsekWORKkerweX.
Um, does that make sense? I definitely still want there to be uninterrupted, undistracted, maybe even scheduled SEX time. Time when there’s nothing on our minds but fucking. And, to that end, I want there to be time for just “work” (and that doesn’t just mean “job” work, but anything else, too, like writing, or doing music, or cooking dinner, or fixing the heater, or whatever it is that we do). But I also really want sex to be integral and fully integrated in my day. So that it’s not just cordoned off into its own little section of the day. In other words: I want to practice eroticizing the daily grind.
For example: cook in a corset, garters, thigh-high seamed stockings, and four-inch heels. Why not? Rather than the more typical “I’m feeling horny, let’s do some role-playing, how about I’m your submissive wife and I cook whatever you want while you boss me around,” let’s make it “I’m feeling hungry, so I’m going to go put on some lingerie and head to the kitchen.”
Another example: get a piece of jewelry that designates a particular role, so that if I, say, wear a particular ring on a certain finger, it means that I’m sexually available the whole time I’m wearing it, and so I’ve got a constant physical reminder of “SEX!” on my body during the day. Or even a gesture, a particular innocuous gesture (biting my lower lip?) could be re-identified as meaning “I want to fuck you hard” or “I want your giant cock inside me.”
I think Sinclair‘s idea of homework is a perfect example of this, too, because it sends the erotic outside of the we’re-fucking-here-and-now, extends it beyond the moments in the bedroom, and builds it into the regular structure of the day.
The reason we’re talking about this is not, I repeat, because our sex is getting boring or tired; it’s not because I want to “spice things up.” It’s because I think our mainstream culture has a way of stifling sexual energy – we’re not supposed to talk about sex in public, with anyone other than our closest friends (if even them), and sex is supposed to take place privately and discreetly. (And, hypocritically, it’s simultaneously obsessed with sex.) But that’s not what I want. I want to cultivate an active sexual energy that isn’t constrained by the bedroom door or the time of the day, and that can be nurtured and activated throughout the day by various things. That way, when I finally do get to have sex, I’m not starting at 0 (or 5 or 10) and going to 60; rather, I’ll already be going at 30 or 45. That’s a whole lot easier to manage, frankly, when I’m tired and stressed and anxious and the thought of needing to find the momentum to get from 0 to 60 is daunting.
And on that note, I’m going to go write mi’lady a dirty email ;)
It was the best welcome home she’s ever had, she said.
After all my thinking and processing last week about my femmeyness, I allowed myself to just revel in it. I spent all day Sunday preparing for her to come home. I booked a Zipcar to pick her up at the airport when her flight came in at 6. (Typically we would just take BART, and I had told her I would meet her to help her carry her stuff home… the car was a surprise!) I got my nails done in the morning (fingers and toes!)–short, a little bit squared, bright red polish. Paraffin wax, so my skin was silky smooth. I’d gotten a fresh legs and bikini wax on Saturday, so that I’d be ready and smooth for her. I planned out Sunday evening’s meal, bought the necessary ingredients on Saturday, and brought them over to her place on Sunday afternoon to begin prep before her flight came in. AND, on Sunday morning after the manicure and pedicure, I went to my favorite lingerie boutique in San Francisco, Dollhouse Bettie (they specialize in vintage and pinup lingerie), to make sure her welcome home would be *extra* special. (Dollhouse Bettie’s website doesn’t have a link to the piece I bought, so I found a link to it elsewhere instead. It’s got gorgeous detailing, and I got nude seamed nylons instead of black ones because I really wanted the basque to speak for itself. With these shoes and my full-sleeve black leather gloves from Doncaster, this is a stunning get-up.)
And it was such a wonderful day, from start to finish. Waking up and knowing that I was going to be getting my nails done, going lingerie shopping, cooking, and seeing/fucking mi’lady for the first time in a week was such an amazing feeling. I don’t think there’s anything I’d have rather done on a gorgeous Sunday. Seriously. And it all went off without a hitch.
The only thing I think could have gone smoother was cutting the pumpkin. Pumpkin soup was one of my menu items (and as SOON as she saw it she was really, really excited… she loves pureed vegetable soups), but I’d forgotten how ridiculously hard it is to cube and peel a raw pumpkin. SO HARD. I wrestled with it for a good hour. But it was so ridiculously worth it. It was really, really good, if I do say so myself. And the recipe is really simple — really all that’s in it is pumpkin, onion, a tiny bit of garlic, bay leaves, a bit of orange rind, butter, vegetable stock, and a tiny bit of milk. I garnished it with fresh chives. And that’s it. The best part though? Was mi’lady telling me that the pumpkin soup she’d had earlier that week at an upscale restaurant in Boston with a client “wasn’t even half as good as yours. Well okay, maybe half. But seriously, only half!”
The other menu item was risotto with leeks, spinach, white wine, and a little bit of plain yoghurt. I love cooking.
The best part of everything was that she just felt adored. I love that. Love it. It turns me on and makes me stand up straight. I’m doing what I do best, what I love to do. Fuck yeah. From getting picked up by me at the airport in a car, to having dinner planned and prepared to the AMAZING fucking hot sex we had, it was the best welcome home she’d ever had. And I’m responsible for it :)
There’s a mirror at the foot of my bed. It wound up there by accident — the movers just happened to lean it agaisnt the wall there back in July, and I haven’t touched it since. It’s not even hanging; it’s just sitting on the floor, minding its own business, angled slightly upward so that it appears to be looking casually at the bed.
The bed itself is low to the ground, and the mirror being rather large, what this means is that for the past few months, everything I do that happens in my bed is reflected back to me.
I fuck her doggy-style facing the window, so we can both look sideways and watch each other’s reflections in the mirror — she watches me thrusting, I watch her back arch and her breasts bounce. I sit at the foot of the bed, legs spread, as she sits back to the mirror and licks my pussy — I look down and see her face buried in me and her eyes swimming up at me, and I look up and watch my own pleasure, see her as if from behind, an observer of our own live-action porn. She rides me, the strength of my own core propping me up as I grasp her hips and help her pump up and down, and I’m thrusting too (the best work out there is) — and she faces the mirror while she rides me so she gets the same view of herself that I always get to see from this position, her body tight, her legs apart, her cunt wet and open and welcoming my cock. She squirts this way, she can watch herself squirt, and she climbs over my face and watches in the mirror as she comes in my mouth, and it spills out of my mouth and over my face and my hair because she keeps coming and it’s too much for me to swallow. And the mirror catches it all.
That mirror has made me see and made me believe that I look hot fucking. It’s like, wow, we look like porn artists! Look at us! Our bodies are sexy and our faces reveal tension and beauty and ecstasy and lust. My slightly crooked spine? Totally not apparent. The small breasts I’m so self-conscious of? They look good. In a way, that mirror encourages me to break out of my mind when we’re fucking, because it can make me think, “what would I do now if I were in a porn movie?” and so the sex I have becomes the sex I’d like to watch. It helps me be less self-conscious, watching us in the mirror. Who’d've thought.
That mirror is amazing. It never really occurred to me (beyond perhaps the vaguest thought, not even formed enough to have words) to put it there before, and I am so grateful to the movers that they put it there. Sometimes I wonder whether they knew what they were doing, and knew they were doing me a favor by putting it there. Or whether they assumed I’d want it there. Probably they weren’t thinking at all. That mirror is leaning as if an afterthought. But I’m certainly not planning on hanging it up anytime soon.
Anyone else have thoughts or stories about sex and mirrors? I know I’m not the only one…
I’ve been thinking a lot about cocks lately.
And no, I’m not questioning my sexuality, haha, thanks for asking. But I am questioning, well, something. I’m just not sure exactly what it is I’m questioning. Mi’lady and I use cock play (for lack of anything better to call it… is there something better to call it?) a lot when we fuck, in various ways. For example: I strap on and fuck her. I strap on, and she gives me a blow job (SO HOT, oh my god I don’t know if I can think of any image hotter than of my cock in her mouth, and her looking sweetly/seductively up at me). Occasionally, she straps on and fucks me. These are all ways that we use real fake cocks in our sex. (I know, real fake is contradictory, but what I mean is there’s a real cock there, a non-flesh one, a dildo, but it’s a real cock just the same.) These are the more straightforward ways of fucking with cocks, and these are the ways that don’t make me think much beyond HOT! TURNED ON! HOT!
And then there are ways that are more psychological. One of my favorite ways to get off is orally — her tongue has insane endurance and is oh-my-god so so good. There are no words. She is truly the mistress of licking pussy. Except… sometimes (dare I even say often?), when she’s between my legs licking my clit, I pretend she’s sucking my cock. And something about that psychological trick just turns me on so much that I can come really, really fast after that.
And I’m not the only one who does this. The only way mi’lady gets off is with my fingers on her clit (mmmm I love the feeling of her slick hard clit under my fingers…). And one time last week, I was rubbing her clit and she said “how do I feel baby?” “Slick and hard,” I said, “hard like a cock.” And she literally writhed in her sudden new arousal. “Oh baby yeah, jerk my cock,” she moaned, and for the remaining moments until she came, we dirty-talked cock imagery. Imagining that I was jerking her cock was a profound turn-on.
We talked about it afterwards. Though this kind of cock play is really hot and fun, it definitely brings stuff up for me (and for her as well, in similar ways, but I’m just going to speak for myself on my blog). For one thing, I’ve struggled quite a bit with the whole idea of Authenticity in the lesbian “community.” I’m sure I’ll write more about this at some point; I’ve touched on it a bit in my post “On Femininity” (see link under my Favorite Posts, over there on the left). It’s this whole idea that “gold star” lesbians are the most authentic lesbians, and on down the line until women who have sexual/romantic relationships with men as well as women are often peered at in suspicion, and lack total authenticity. (Along with that, I think, is the notion that women who present intentional or unintentional masculinity are automatically more authentic as lesbians, and women who present intentional or unintentional femininity are less authentic.) So, this whole thing of somehow liking cock in sex… especially as a femme-presenting dyke… brings up issues for me of “can I talk about this? will people doubt my sexuality?” And of course, it doesn’t matter whether other people doubt my sexuality. But it feels oppressive all the same.
But something that’s even more unsettling for me, I think, are questions of patriarchy and heteronormativity. Are we just buying into some sort of hetero-paradigm by including the cock in our own man-free sex? Are we in a way proving people right who think that the ultimate sex acts (“real sex”) have to involve a penis? (Clearly there are many things we do that do not involve the cock or any kind of cock play, but hey, those could be just foreplay!) And… do we have penis envy?? Are we proving Freud right? Women just spend our lives trying to make up for a gaping hole (to be utterly literal)? (It might be relevant to point out here that both of us do not identify as trans or genderqueer.)
As I sort of said above, strapping on by itself never raised these questions for me. I’ve never been uncomfortable with the idea of using a cock. It seems so blatantly and purely not straight, so clearly not pretending to be a man — it’s very much its own thing. So strapping on in itself has never seemed to me to be heteronormative or patriarchal. But somehow, imagining that my clit is my cock starts to make me think there’s a line I might be crossing. I don’t know. It’s hard to articulate. And mostly, I still just think it’s hot. But it makes me wriggle the tiniest bit just the same, in some sort of vague discomfort. Luckily, the vague discomfort isn’t enough to make me want to stop.
I’ve stopped taking Prozac.
I did this without consulting with my psychiatrist or my therapist–I was supposed to have appointments with both last week, but then last week turned out to be INSANE, what with work piling up and mi’lady’s family in town, so I had to cancel both appointments. (I was at work until 10pm on Friday, just to give you an idea of how bad it was. Um, ugh?) Anyway, I know that’s not a particularly good idea, but I just had to stop. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t swallow that baby blue pill anymore. I only had one side effect, just one, but it was a dealbreaker.
I couldn’t orgasm.
Well, okay, I could. But it took. FOREVER. F.O.R.E.V.E.R. For-fucking-ever. At least an hour. And it was a stressful hour, because I would get up there pretty quickly, would be turned on really fast, and then would plateau. And I’d be on this plateau for at least 45 minutes, usually longer, and just couldn’t get anywhere. If I gave up, I was really, really uncomfortable. I totally believe in “blue balls” now. It actually hurt to stop. So I would have to keep going, and it would get number and number, and eventually, after a fucking eternity, I would finally have an orgasm, but by that time I was so stressed and frustrated that I couldn’t even feel happy or satisfied or warm and fuzzy, I just felt relieved.
And every morning, swallowing that pill became harder and harder, because I knew that it was going to continue to prevent me from just having a good orgasm. It didn’t affect my libido at all — I was still as horny as ever, thank god — and mi’lady was really good about being patient and encouraging and supportive and all that. But it just wasn’t worth it to me. So I stopped taking it.
And OH MY GOD. People. ORGASMS ARE SO AMAZING. I forgot how good orgasms are. I forgot!!! They’re so good!!! I just want to have sex all the time now. It was a really bad week to want to fuck all the time, because I was so busy and the family was in town and etc etc. But we still managed to get some good (quick) fucking in there, and OH BOY am I glad I stopped taking that pill.
I know it may not have been the most responsible decision. When I see my psychiatrist next week, I’m going to talk about it and figure out whether something else might work better, and what I should do next time when I’m feeling like I just can’t do it anymore. Maybe there’s a better option than just quitting the meds. And maybe I’ll regret it next time my period rolls around and I’m sinking into despair again. But it certainly made me realize how important sexual satisfaction is for me, and how stressful it is to not have that release available to me. And so I think I did make a decision that was taking care of my mental health.
Plus, even though she was a total trooper, it makes mi’lady so much happier when I’m having good orgasms.
Whoopee! I’m going to Mexico!
Wednesday is my birthday. Wednesday is also the day that mi’lady and I hop on a (direct) flight from San Francisco to … Puerto Vallarta! Yesterday, in preparation, I got a pedicure, and my toes are now painted a suitably tropical color. Late August is not, I must say, the best time to be going to the tropics. We’ll be there until Sunday (short and sweet) and the current weather forecast predicts thunderstorms every day. Ha. Coming from the bay area, though, thunderstorms are a rare commodity, so even if we do get them every day, it’ll be out of the ordinary and worth flying south for.
Plus, if it rains, it’ll just mean we’ll have to have more sex!
Speaking of sex, we’ve now each read one of The Topping Book (me) and The Bottoming Book (her). We do plan to swap and each read the other as well, but it’s a good start. We’ve talked about it some, and plan on talking about it (and doing other than just talking, ahem) some more while on vacation. We’ve both agreed that there are things we really like about the books and things we really dislike.
We like that they have made us think about how vital communication is to having satisfying, gratifying, and truly consensual sex. If I’m going to top her in a way that works, I have to first know what she wants from me, what turns her on most, what she thinks it means for me to top her, what it means to her to be submissive, what her limits are, et cetera. And conversely, she has to know what I want from topping, what it means to me to be a dominant, what expectations and needs I have from topping, and what turns ME on. I mean, right? It sounds obvious, talking about what you want. But really, it’s a lot to talk about. Certainly we’ve talked about our sex before–we talk about it all the time in fact. We generally talk afterwards about what worked and didn’t work, whether it was good, how it felt… We communicate during sex as well (and I find it to be absolutely a necessary part of good sex). But neither of us has really thought to really sit down, maybe even with pre-thought-out notes (!!), or even a pen and paper to jot things down, and truly discuss and understand each other’s desires, fantasies, and needs. I’m really, really excited about doing that.
One of the things that both of us disliked about the books, on the other hand, was that they seem very geared to people in some defined BDSM “Scene” whose goal it is to “Play” with other individuals who are also in this defined “Scene.” Mi’lady and I are monogamous and are not particularly interested in having “Playdates” with others, certainly not at this point and I’m not sure about ever. If our relationship ever evolves in that direction, then sure, I’ll consider it at that point. But I don’t think that that direction of development has to be a given, and that exploring BDSM with a partner has to involve this sort whole sort of BDSM culture. I don’t want to really go to dungeons, or have sex in front of an audience, or switch partners all the time. To me, sex and romantic love are very connected, and I don’t know that I want to try to unconnect them. (And additionally, I tend to only feel developed romantic love for one person at a time.) But the books, to me, seemed to implicitly enforce this idea that in order to do BDSM the Right Way, you have to be willing to open yourself up to this whole new way of contextualizing sex. And it’s not that I’m not open to it. I’m certainly very open to it on an intellectual level. But it’s a culture that just doesn’t feel like a good fit for me. And I just don’t agree with the notion that if you’re interested in BDSM, or if you identify as Kinky, then you must also somehow belong to this Culture-Capital-C.
Anyway… hmmm. I’d like to develop those thoughts some more later. When I’m not at work, haha. In any case, though, I’m sure you’ll hear more on this, if nothing else in the form of a full vacation report!
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