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.
Amidst all my excitement about this summer and all the potential it carries, I have one nagging worry. I’m worried that my copious amounts of free time, most of which will probably be spent by myself, will put a strain on my relationship, that when she’s home I’ll be wanting to hang out while she may often have other things to do. Maybe this isn’t so much a worry as it is something to look out for and be mindful of this summer.
As it is right now, I do sometimes feel as though we don’t have enough together time. I work a lot of hours, take burlesque classes, volunteer on the crisis hotline, have family obligations once in a while and statistics homework to do, and have various appointments that sometimes inevitably take up evenings and weekends. She, meanwhile, has band practice generally one evening every week and one full day into the night every weekend, plus the occasional late evening at work or evening/weekend appointment. All this PLUS spending time with friends at least weekly means that … we really don’t have that much plain old hangout time. We spend a lot of time together, but it’s often just in that hour before bed when we pop in the latest disc from our Netflix queues, watch for a bit, and then have a quickie before going to sleep. It’s been even tougher lately with her new work schedule, which has her (and thus, often, me) getting up at 6:15am, rather than 7:35 as it used to be — a change which necessitates an earlier bedtime, obviously. But since my work schedule hasn’t changed (yet! ha!), and I’m still getting out of work at 6 or 6:30 on a good day, our evenings have been shortened.
And, to me, it doesn’t feel like enough. To me, it feels like our sex has stopped progressing — we do the tried and true, rather than the new and unknown. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, I realize — hell, we’re still having sex at least 3 times a week, usually 4-5, and it can’t always be new and unknown (nor would I want it to be! familiar is often exactly what I most desire). But it’s at a point now where I do feel like we don’t have the time to spend with each other working on our relationship. The time we spend together gets filled up with having our relationship — watching movies, fucking, cuddling, cooking/eating, giving each other footrubs, talking about our schedules, decompressing after our respective days, sleeping — because those are usually the most pressing wants. We want to relax after work, we really want to hear about each other’s days and all the things going on that are bothering us or exciting us. We want to zone out and watch movies and curl up together just feeling each other’s bodies. And we want to have sex, to connect physically, erotically.
But I think a lot of that stuff is very short-term gratification. It’s what we think we want to do right NOW because NOW I’m tired and want to relax and chat about regular stuff. It’s comfortable, and cozy. But to me, always indulging that immediate sense of relationship laziness starts to take a toll. Sexually, I start to feel like many of my more elaborate or scarier desires are slipping into the realm of “fantasy,” rather than the realm of “to do this weekend.” Other than sexually, I start to feel like the more we do the same things with our time together, the less able we are to do other things. So maybe this is about spontaneity — making sure we keep infusing the Regular with the New and Exciting. And this spontaneity has to be something that we work on together.
I’m not sure how to start bringing more of an Our Relationship Is a Project that We Work on Together mentality into our routine, especially because (1) we’re both so busy doing our own personal projects that we really love and that really fulfill us, and (2) I think the Project Relationship mentality is more of something I want than something she wants. She, I think, is perfectly happy to just go along the way we’ve been going along. She likes comfort and routine, and doesn’t like feeling like she has to work on yet another thing in her life. I, on the other hand, really like to have relationship check-ins, and to discuss what’s working and what isn’t, figure out how to fix what isn’t and congratulate each other for what is, and to set little goals, and to be intentional about things that we do. In fact I start to feel anxious and unsettled if we don’t do those things. And I know that because that’s not a high priority for her there will always be some give and take on that front. But it’s starting to feel more pressing for me lately.
To bring that back around to my worry about this summer, the worry I have, I guess, is mostly that I’ll have a whole lot more time to devote myself to our Relationship Project than she will (I mean, I’m hoping to write here every day, and oftentimes, even this is, in a way, part of our Relationship Project), and that that will start to build up in me as this tension that isn’t getting resolved because there just isn’t time.
(What’s a good balance, anyway? How can you find the spot between co-dependent and over-committed to other things? Is it better to spend a lot of time on our own things so that we’re whole complete individuals without needing the other to complete us? Or is it better to spend a lot of time on each other, so that we feel unity and affinity? So that these anxieties don’t surface? Clearly I think a balance is necessary, but what is that balance? And at what point do we have to start sacrificing one thing or the other in order to strike it?)
So, I think it’s good that I’ve identified this issue as something that might come up for me this summer. I still have enough time to work on coming up with ways to avoid that surfacing, and strategies for combatting it if it does. Like if I set goals for myself every day, enough to keep my on my toes and sufficiently busy, then that should help. Spending time actively out and about with other people will help, too. And I think I’d like to bring up with her the idea of committing to eat dinner together whenever possible, shutting off all our other projects at least an hour before we go to bed whenever possible, and identifying and scheduling Together time as separate from time we’re together but working on separate things, so that we can make sure we’re staying attentive to each other and our relationship. And I just need to remember, too, that it’s much more of a relationship Want, for me, to be intentionally thinking about this stuff than it is for her, and that that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about the relationship as much as I do.
Last night, we climbed into bed much later than we’d planned, both tired and already bracing ourselves against the Monday morning alarm clock. We settled into what we call our Sleep Position: big spoon (her) and little spoon (me), her arm wrapped around me. It’s become so much of a habit that I hardly think of it anymore. But last night, after a few moments, she pipes up: “Do you like sleeping like this?” “Yes, baby, I do.” “Why?” “It makes me feel safe, and snug, and warm.” “Okay. Just checking.”
Snug as two bugs in a rug.
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.)
As I mentioned a few posts ago, I really love Valentine’s Day. I love it when I’m in a couple, I love it when I’m single. I’m not one of those people who gets bitter and resentful if I’m single for Valentine’s Day—I know that’s common, and this isn’t meant to be preachy, it’s just true: it just makes me happy to see happy people together, celebrating their love for each other. Also, when I’ve been single, I’ve always had someone else in my life who was single at the time too, generally several, and it can be really fun to celebrate the holiday with loved ones who aren’t romantic partners. Just sayin’.
BUT, this year I’m not single, so I will be celebrating the holiday with mi’lady. Last year, we had a lovely day that involved a trip to Guitar Center to buy me a digital stage piano, a 5-mile walk along the San Francisco western coastline and up to the Legion of Honor, where it was one of their free admission days PLUS there was a free organ concert in the atrium, and then an impromptu tapas dinner in the Mission followed by lots of sex. Last year, we were still just entering, cautiously, the phase of “relationship” after a few months of dating, and so neither one of us really wanted to plan anything huge and romantic.
This year’s different, obviously: we’ve been together now a year and a few months, and we’re continually growing in our love in ways that challenge me, comfort me, hold me, and strengthen me. But we had such a delightful day last year that we were reluctant to plan anything huge and romantic again this year. Not to mention we don’t have tons of cash to blow. And anyway, the point is to spend quality time together, not quality money.
So, here’s our plan:
I’ll cook brunch at my house; I’ll keep it simple: cream biscuits that I’ll make the night before, fried eggs in heart-shaped toast, veggie sausage, some sort of fruit concoction. Then, we’ll go to the Apple store to get her new computer (keeping in the tradition of making big purchases on Valentine’s Day… but not on each other!), maybe walk around a bit downtown or in our neighborhood, I’m thinking maybe go to Buena Vista park or something, get our blood pumping. Then come home and fuck the afternoon away (it’s so much better before dinner than after! when you have an appetite in more ways than one, the sex is better–livelier, hungrier (literally), and you’re not in that stupor you’re in when you’re full) before an 8:15 dinner reservation at Blue Plate on Valencia. And finally, we’ll come home, put on Gilda (what’s better than Rita Hayworth on Valentine’s Day? or any day?), and sip wine with chocolate and strawberries. And then snuggle into bed and fall asleep, of course.
How about you?
[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’m interrupting my normal broadcast for a PSA!
GO TO THIS PARTY! It will be awesome. Why?
1) It’s at El Rio. And with winter looming up ahead, everyone and their mothers should be at El Rio on a Friday night to enjoy the patio.
2) It’s for ArtXX magazine, and the cover is only $5. ArtXX is seriously sweet, if you don’t know anything about it, please go to its website, and buy the issue. The art is radical and by/for queer/trans/artists of color/seriously awesome people.
3) The music will be sweet. I know one of the bands is Elle Nino, bay-area based queer/synth funk band — the lead is a dyke, and she’s got 3 guys backing her up. (I love it when guys back up girls in music. Pretty rare in the music industry.) Their music is amazing and they’ve got great chemistry and stage presence.
4) Big Moves will be coming through!! In their words, “Big Moves is the only producing, training, and service organization in the world dedicated to getting more people of all sizes into the dance studio and up on stage.” AWESOME.
Basically, pass the word along to anyone you know in SF to come support this magazine and the awesome work they’re doing on getting underrepresented art out there. And pass the word along to anyone not in SF that they should either:
1) Move to SF and go to this party, or
2) Go to artxxmagazine.com and BUY THIS ISSUE!
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