A Place To Draw Blood Laughing

The Components Of A Lifestyle

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Today I want to talk about lifestyle.

I am having some trouble sorting out changes in my perspective upon the world, and myself. And my New York friends, the lot of them, are trouping off to Floating World this weekend, an instance that has produced a welter of nostalgia as I reflect on the truly marvelous experiences of last year.

I am certainly not cut off from the kinky community. Sydney’s scene continues on around me. My internet connection continues unabated. But as I mentioned in my last post, a shared sexuality does not my community make.

So when we get right down to the nitty gritty, the reality is that I am isolated now that I’ve left New York City. I’m isolated from my kinky friends and my favorite spaces and my comfort zones.

My reaction to this is akin to exhaustion. I ask myself how much effort I want to spend on building a life here in Sydney? Aren’t I just going to pick up and move again? I had never envisioned our move here as being long term, and I know how quickly a year or two can pass. But “in an hour, there are many days.” I have great swaths of time I try to fill with work. I’m writing a novel. I could kick myself for being so cliche.

(As a side note, I have been stalwartly resisting the impulse to turn this into a blog about teaching, understanding, and perfecting one’s writing. I don’t think my readers would appreciate the switch. “What is all this nonsense on teaching styles, Eileen? Remember the kinky sex we come here for? Come on, kinky sex!”)

As a result of this general ennui, my kinky identity has been going through something of a hibernation. I can envision the kinky part of myself, curled adorably in a large fluffy blanket somewhere warm, sucking her thumb and cradling a singletail to her chest. I haven’t stopped having sex, I haven’t stopped thinking about sex in masturbatory ways. But I have stopped thinking about sex in community ways, about the connections in, and advantages of, communicating with others like me.

So, seeing this disconnect in my identity coincide with my withdrawal from public spaces, I ask: How much of my kinky identity is based not around what I do in the bedroom, but what I write and say and do in public?

I don’t actually know the answer to that question. Do you?

The kinky community consistently picks words to push back against. We’re cranky like that. Among the list that garners resistance is the word “lifestyle.”

But I don’t buy into that particular resistance. I like the word lifestyle, specifically because it implies that being kinky is not just a matter of freaks in their bedrooms. Being kinky crosses those boundaries; I am kinky all the time. My sexuality is a part of my lifestyle, and affects the decisions I make in multiple contexts, not just when I’m flipping through my porn stash looking for something juicy.

In my observations, one of the best ways in which queer communities have gained acceptance is the acknowledgment of queer identities as being connected to lifestyles. Having gay neighborhoods, gay bars, gay-friendly merchants, gay-friendly medical centers. Acceptance trickles down, slowly but surely, as we begin to insist that we can’t just leave our sexualities at the bedroom door.

So how do I maintain that lifestyle in a healthy way now that I’ve moved away from the community that supported it? And more specifically, how do I do that without spending four hours of my life every day surfing blogs?

The Thing About Tiggers

Saturday, January 5, 2008

The events of the past six weeks (damn, six weeks already) have put me off the Internet. I have commented scarcely, posted rarely, abandoned my Scrabble games in lonely binary heaps. Curiously, in this age there is actually such a thing as an electronic hermit.

But, all things pass.

I’ve recently started reading Axe’s blog, ever since I got a few chances to chat with him in person. Axe is a sweet, smart submissive guy here in New York, who writes primarily about his search for a relationship with a dominant woman. I get the impression that his search has morphed into something of an epic quest at this point, spanning several years and causing him to move from the midwest to New York City.

As is often the case for those of us with experientially based learning styles, for me recognizing a thing is not the same as knowing a thing. As such, I often come to long foregone conclusions in my own way, and in my own time. Getting to know Axe has really driven some issues home for me, issues that Maymay and others have been writing about for ages.

Where the hell are all the dominant women? Where are the women like me?

The supposed scarcity of dominant women is bemoaned, condemned, dismissed and mistrusted. And yet, my experiential evidence within the New York scene confirms this scarcity.

And, a less-recognized issue but one that I find personally just as relevant: Where are the other couples in relationships like mine?

I think I’ve remained so persistently blind to this imbalance because addressing this issue demands that I acknowledge exactly how rare I am. I have no real sense of personal rarity in my life; it consistently surprises me that other people are not like me.

Obviously there are multiple issues at work here, which play against one another. The scarcity of dominant women in the scene says many (predominantly negative) things about how scene space welcomes women, and how the dominant sexual orientation is portrayed and understood. The scarcity of femdom/malesub couples speaks to the scarcity of desirable, sane, smart male submissives, which in turn illuminates how the scene marginalizes that brand of sexuality.

Honestly, folks, there’s too much at work here for a single entry, or even a single blog. Here’s my suggestion: for more insight on how scene space “welcomes” dominant women, I refer you to the brilliant, bitter Bitchy Jones. For more insight on how submissive men are marginalized, see Maymay’s entire blog.

Just right now, just here, I want to talk about what the scarcity of dominant women means to me, as a dominant woman in the public scene.

Axe writes not once but twice that Maymay and I are the only femdom/malesub couple he knows. This confirms my experience; we are the only femdom/malesub couple I know as well. The rare dominant women I do know in passing are usually dating dominant men.

I intend to keep my data on a meatspace level during this entry. Yes, I know other dominant women online who are like me. We make similar choices about our identities and maintain similar relationships. And I have online friendships. But, for me, they’re not the same.

The part of my brain that thinks the world should make sense finds it strange that Axe has not met an appropriate dominant woman. He’s a polite, sane, well spoken submissive man: an attractive rarity. He’s good looking, has great kinks, and a charismatic ‘nilla personality.

But it is ranging on impossible for him to find a partner.

I’ve had three long-term relationships with submissive men, at the age of 24. I’m picky as hell, but I can find partners. On the other side of the coin, I’m the first dominant woman Maymay has dated. Before me, he dated three submissive women.

Believe me, I understand how much the imbalance created by the scarcity of dominant women works in my favor. I see how unfair it is to him when Maymay and I compare our numbers of potential play partners.

I understand how desirable my age, gender and orientation are.

There’s a part of me that deeply distrusts this desirability. After all, it’s not particularly reassuring to know that one is the best choice because one is the only choice.

I suspect we all feel, at times, as though we are unseen. Being a young, sexy, dominant woman gives me privileges in the scene that I don’t earn. I show up, and people give them to me. At the same time, being desired (or respected, in a culture that consistently confuses sexual attraction with respect) because of a particular flux of timing, genetics, and orientation makes me feel like a cardboard cut out.

Of course, from many perspectives I have nothing to complain about. Inherited privilege trumps any kind of card I might play about feeling insecure, or unseen, or unwanted. In a world where rights are gained through suffering, yet again, I have no right.

I wrote after I came back from Floating World that I was wrestling with the difficulties of supporting a fluid culture from a standpoint of relative stasis. This was true then of gender, and it’s true now of power.

I firmly believe that power balances shift, that people are capable of embracing multiple roles and defining themselves as they choose, in as many ways as they choose. In short, I believe in the existence of switches.

Right now, however, I am not a switch. And perhaps because I love fluid people, the overwhelming majority of my friends are switches. Most of remainder of my friends are men who top and women who bottom. Within my circle of friends here in New York, there is not a single dominant woman besides me who does not switch. I know dominant woman as acquaintances, and almost never in couples.

The simple truth of the matter is, I have no friends like me.

Where are the other dominant women? Women my age? Yes, in friendship and the exchange of ideas on related experiences, age does matter.

Women who don’t switch, and are doing their best to incorporate that choice into their lives? In an avidly fluid, changeable culture, and possessing a chameleon-like personality, that choice is sometimes very hard for me to manage.

Women who’re smart, and wise, and local? Where are you? Could we have coffee sometime?

Educator

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

The fourth and final word is educator.

I went back to Pleasure Salon this past Thursday, drank bourbon cosmos (strange invention) and put some faces to some names. And I was asked a handful of times, “How do you feel, having photos of your face on your blog?” I was surprised by this, in all honesty. It had occurred to me only in passing that I might not want to put a face to my pseudonym.

But then, let’s review. I’m 24 years old. I work a job I enjoy, but I don’t intend to make it a career. I have always intended to work primarily for myself. I’m out to all of my friends. I’m out to my parents. Who, then, would I be outing myself to? My situation is dramatically different than the majority of my readers and fellow partners in kink.

And as I am rapidly realizing since this past Sunday morning, I don’t ever want to live a life that means I have to stop talking about sex.

In addition to Kate Bornstein, I also saw Susan Wright (founder of The National Coalition For Sexual Freedom) speak this past weekend. I am developing mild hero crushes on both of them. And if you must know, my friends, hero crushes are not generally my style. Most of my heros are writers who died several decades ago.

You will laugh at me, but I’m not really a political person. (See? I knew you’d laugh.) So I take it as an indication of something significant that I am passionately interested in the political and social ramifications of sex. I take it as something significant that this blog is 60 posts long and I feel like I haven’t even touched most of what I want to talk about. And that I have managed to create a space where education, discussion, sex and writing (i.e. almost everything I get excited about) have come together.

I have many creative skills. I can paint, draw, sculpt, weld, write prose, write poetry, blow glass, throw pots, tile floors, make stone walls . . . you get the picture. My trouble has never been having a skill set; it’s been having material. When I was picking up oils for the first time and sending photos of my work to my dad, he’d write me back and say, “You do an awful lot of naked people. Why do you do so much with naked people?” Or, “How about a nice landscape or two? You know, they’d sell better.”

Or, “Eileen, all your work is about sex.” Which is slightly unfair. But only slightly.

Because far more unfair is the subtext that sex doesn’t make good material. Socially acceptable, career-like material.

I had always assumed, you see, that eventually I would have to go into hiding.

After Kate’s class was over, May and I wandered off into the depths of Floating World. “Do you want to see the kinky ren faire?” he asked me, wonderful man that he is, and I nodded numbly. I held his hand while he led me down the twisting hallways like a lost four year old. Inside my head all manner of tumultuous things were going on.

Because, you see, that was the first time I’d seen a really good sex educator speak, and care, and make a difference in someone’s life. Namely, in my life. And changing my life? That was not on my radar for last weekend.

There was a little baby seed that got planted the day I started my first kink blog five years ago, and got a little water the night that May and I had our first date, when we started talking and didn’t stop for 36 hours. It wriggled about a bit when I started teaching a class or two, and probably got a good shot of juice the day Bloody Laughter said “Hello, world.” And then, 12:30 on that Sunday afternoon, it sprang up and hit me right across the face.

I stood in that weirdly lit hallway with my forehead on May’s shoulder, hyperventilating fit to pass out and with tears streaming down my cheeks. All around me, big chunks of my life were slamming into place. Pathways that I didn’t know existed were becoming clear.

Because it hadn’t occurred to me until that morning, you see, that I could be a sex educator.

That I could live a life that means I never have to stop talking.

Ally

Friday, August 31, 2007

The third word is ally.

Three months ago I did not know who Kate Bornstein was. Despite what I write here about gender, power, culture, and the like, I have no academic background (or self-educational background) in sociology or gender theory.

So I didn’t know the woman I met at Pleasure Salon all those weeks ago, the woman I bugged for a class description and biography, was famous. But I read her class description when it came, and then people started mentioning her name with that little hitch of awe, and then I started getting excited. And then I realized she was a writer, and that everyone I knew seemed to know her name, and I grew into an awareness of how much I wanted to see her speak. And of how silly I was being, and how awkward I felt, because let’s face it, even if you meet me for the first time and think I’m charming, outgoing, or sweet, the reality is I’m awkward as hell, I dread meeting new people, and I’m simply a very, very good actor.

So when I started plotting my Sunday morning around her class, my thoughts swung between It’ll be crowded and I probably won’t even get to say hello and Christ, woman. You’re going to make a fool of yourself.

And I did make a fool of myself. But of course, it was all right.

I’ve written before about how we, as scene member or simply fellow humans, form tight-knit groups, often around common interests or experience. The groups I frequent are more often than not characterized by being deliberately academic and/or consciously fluid. And such is Kate.

So when I sat down in her class, Survival Tips For Sex and Gender Outlaws, I did not know what to expect. The class was small, ten, maybe twelve of us who’d gotten out of bed early and made it to that space. She got out a big pad of white paper and began drawing Venn diagrams. The intersection of identity, desire, and power.

She talked about oppression and “isms” and politics. She has this remarkable gift of performance; she’s brilliant, and her words resonate. It’s a shock to hear someone say out loud the ideas you haven’t learned to articulate. I won’t regurgitate her research here; go read her books if you’re interested. It’s great stuff.

Then, as the group began to open up, to share experiences and talk, the conversation shifted. She talked about suicide. Her book is subtitled “101 Alternatives To Suicide,” and she talked about compiling that list, throwing in everything she could think of that would encourage people to stay alive. Illegal things, stupid things. The camaraderie in the room built up, threaded through the conversation.

We understand. We went through this. We’re with you, Kate. We struggled too.

And very, very quietly, I started to cry.

I didn’t have that experience. I’m sorry, but if you’re expecting me to eventually, after I’ve been writing here for a while, come out and talk about all the horrible trauma of my childhood years with maybe something touching and dramatic thrown in about kitchen knives or pills, you will be disappointed. Once, in the very young stages of our relationship, May turned to me and said “You’re the only emotionally smart person I know who’s actually healthy.”

I did not have an abusive childhood. I did not overcome a disease. I did not question my gender. I did not have a struggle which forced me to think. I did not attempt to reject my identity. I did not have a difficult time coming out. I had a difficult time growing up, but really, I was, and am, lucky. Overwhelmingly lucky.

And then sometimes, maybe a handful of times, people have seen me hugging May and sneered. God, I hate straight people. Or closed me out with their shoulders when I walk around in makeup and trendy clothes. I can’t stand these vanilla tourists. I can walk down the street and not get a second glance; I can work a corporate job, and get into bars on weekends. I can find partners, and be loved, and have orgasms and sex.

Apparently my luck shines through, and it makes my life look easy.

So this feeling, of having no right in a world where right is gained through suffering, this is a feeling I know very well.

Familiar as I am with being a crazy overthinking crazy person, eventually I calmed myself down. I did some breathing techniques. She continued to speak, drawing on our sense of community and mutual support. Of being allies. And I figured that she, if anyone, could handle this question. So I raised my hand.

“Could you give some ideas on-” and then I started crying again. The minute I open my mouth every time, damnit. Only this time I was really crying. May put his arms around me, Blaise reached back and hugged my knee with his hand. I held up my fingers and took a deep breath while everyone watched me. I laughed and cried at the same time; laughing because I felt so silly and crying because the words were hard.

I got it out eventually. “Could you give some ideas about supporting or being part of a fluid community when you identify with one pole of that community?” And I thought to myself, Well, fuck, that made no sense at all.

Except I watched her process the words, and I watched her understand. “Ohhh,” she said, drawing air in through rounded lips. May hugged me harder.

If you ever meet Kate, you will notice that she has amazing eyes. They are warm; they can make you feel toasty with just a glance. She fixed those amazing eyes on mine. “You have every right to this community, honey. This is your space too.” Other people murmured around me. I gave up on trying not to cry.

After the class was over, my friends started turning around to hug me. “I was getting teary too,” May said in my ear. “So were we!” cried Jen, her arm around Tyler’s waist. Blaise just grinned.

Natasha and Barbara came up and hugged me. Then Kate was kneeling by my chair.

She pulled me in me tight and spoke into my ear. “You are fluid, you know. You tell anyone who gives you shit that Kate Bornstein will come and beat them up. You tell them I said that.” I started laughing helplessly. She gives good hugs.

When the doors to the classroom opened and the rest of the convention started mixing back in, I walked with ragged steps. Tyler, Jen, May and I made a little cluster just outside the door. I had finally stopped sniffling.

Tyler had her big smile on. “I feel like we all just had an emotional orgasm,” she said.

I threw my head back. “Ha! Yes!”

And running through my head, over and over, was the word ally. That’s what I felt like. That’s what I am.

One thing Kate said during the class is still with me clearly, although much of the class itself has sunk in the haze of that emotional orgasm. She gestured at the room, the twelve of us up close in plastic chairs. “In here, this is my family.” She raised her hands to indicate the rest of the convention center, the 700-odd people running through that kinky space. “Out there, that’s my tribe.”

Protected: Sadist

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Pansexual

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Imagine you get 350 people who have consistently hidden, ignored or marginalized a similar, crucial part of their lives. Then imagine you’ve put these 350 people in an enormous space together for three days, given them power, and let them play.

Floating World was not a culture shock. Floating World was a culture validation. An absolute, no questions asked validation, warm as a big gooey oven, warm as my hands deep inside a gorgeous girl. I come out of the weekend, back to the shock treatment of database software and street meat lunches, with four words to claim. Four words that I have made and will make my own.

The first word is pansexual.

“Pansexuality is a sexual orientation characterized by the potential for aesthetic attraction, romantic love and/or sexual desire for people regardless of their gender identity or biological sex.”

I was walking down the hall of the convention center, 6pm on Saturday night, and Jen and Blaise were cuddling by a wall. I had just gotten out of a panel I was speaking on about labels. I had mentioned briefly that I was struggling with the identity of bisexual versus the identity of pansexual; in essence, caught between the two words with no visceral understanding of either one.

I popped up to them, put my chin on Jen’s shoulder, grinned. It was mid-event; I was already high and climbing.

“Do you want to do a fisting tonight?” Blaise asked me.

“Who’s getting fisted?”

“This one,” Blaise smiled as he pulled Jen closer to him, “has requested a group fisting. So far it’s Tyler, me, Corey, Calico, you, and May. And I asked Kate Bornstein and Barbara Carellas too.” Jen was turning a ripe peach color.

I grinned wider. “What time?”

Jen is one beautiful half of a remarkable couple. Tyler is the other half, and she is smaller, but no less beautiful. It took me ages to recognize their kind of beauty. It is full of softness and permeated with sexuality and humor. They laugh when they’re fucking. They giggle and tell jokes and seem to have sex as naturally as I breathe.

That night we gathered in the corner of the mixed gender space, a wide curtained room off the main dungeon. We pulled a futon up to a sex swing in the corner, and made piles of bodies while Jen settled herself in the swing, her dress around her waist, leather boots in the air. Tyler was gathering lube and paper towels. “Okay guys, we’re going in order of hand size,” she said. She leaned over Jen’s body and they whispered together while on the futon we pressed palms together, comparing the lengths of our fingers and the thickness of our palms.

The cluster of people stayed on the futon while Tyler went first, making little theatrical motions in the air that sent us into hysterics. But soon, as Jen’s breathing became louder and more regular, we gathered closer. Jen is mesmerizing; we were all drawn into the magnetism of her skin. She pulled her top down, flung her arms over her head, and closed her eyes. I knelt beside the swing and grazed my lips along her neck. “Hi,” I said. “Hey you,” she answered back.

We changed places slowly, tapping out as each person drew their hands into her. Everyone in the group wanted to touch her; I would pull her hardened nipple into my mouth and smell the bootblack on Blaise’s hands as he caressed her from the other side of the swing. When we weren’t touching her, we stood close and watched.

“I’m trying to practice your breathing techniques,” she said to Barbara at one point, drawing her breath in deliberately through small moans. That got a general laugh from the sex-drugged peanut gallery.

My hands are small. When my turn was coming up I pulled on rubber gloves, dropped lube over my hands and began rubbing it to warm it into a soapy mess. As I took my place at the foot of the swing, I watched Calico pull her hand out and marveled that it had gone in so easily. Clearly in the world of penetration I am tightly lagging behind my fellow explorers. “So Jen, dear, should I mention that I’ve never fisted a girl before?” I smiled at her, fighting down the little bite of apprehension.

Jen’s pussy, as she lay with her boots sprawled upwards, was wide and slippery soft, that peach color all over again. I eased three fingers inside her, pushed a little, and jumped as my hand slid past her labia and was enveloped.

Her pussy was hot; I was reminded of fever kisses. I pushed deeper and marveled as my wrist bone touched her ass. Blaise and Tyler started giving me directions, making turns and twists in the air that I would mimic inside Jen’s body. Jen was vibrating with every motion by now, fingers grasping into Tyler’s sides and her throat all thrown back and trembling.

I piled more lube on my palms, cupped one hand around the base of the other and slid back in. With a hand and a half inside her I went exploring slowly. I couldn’t pound away, leaving that to more experienced hands than mine. Instead I made deep thrusts. I watched her body. I poured myself into her. Fucking hell, I was thinking. I want immortalize you. I want to to carve you in white marble like a goddess and paint you all in pink.

When I drew out she let out a little kitten moan and then swelled up again as Blaise’s hands replaced my own.

As I looked around the circle magnetized to Jen’s presence, I was struck, shot, paralyzed with wonder. Half the dozen-odd faces were people I’d never met before that morning. I felt a little shy when Kate turned to me and smiled; its seems that Kate is like that, at first. Barbara too. These people have so much passion it’s hard to process.

I was paralyzed so suddenly because everything was so fucking easy.

The space was easy, the people friends already. The sex was gorgeous. When Jen screamed the second time, gushing outward in a frenzy of relaxed tension, that was easy too. Easy, sexy, gratifying, and perfect.

Once Jen had struggled her liquid bones up from the swing and was standing in just her boots by the futon, I took the time to collapse and look at her. Christ, girl, you look amazing naked. I wish we could stay here forever.

The next morning in a class on male bisexuality Jefferson asked the class for a show of hands of people who identified as bisexual. I started to put my hand up, and stopped. I was thinking about the night before.

I didn’t want that space divided by gender. The “bi” in “bisexual” wouldn’t touch even half the people that stood in that circle. Do I use language for what I am or what I do? And are they different, in the end?

I raised my hand. “Can I make a distinction between bisexual and pansexual?”

“Sure,” he answered.

I am pansexual. It was time to say it out loud.

In the comments string on this post, Juliet (f’ing brilliant, by the way) and I have been having a discussion about the nature of the word “pansexuality” as it relates not only to gender but to activity. I like the word for several reasons, I have not touched on them all here, and I suggest that as further reading you explore the comments thread. And go read Juliet’s blog.

Protected: A Moment

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Creation, Education, Recreation

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Shameless plug! Shameless plug!

I apologize in advance for this if your geographic location makes this event inappropriate.

As I mentioned, I’m one of the organizers for The Floating World. What I may not have mentioned is that I am one of the programming organizers, and I have been working my ass off along with my fellow committee member.

What that means is that we’re in charge of the education and a good chunk of the entertainment for the event, and there are some seriously fabulous people coming to speak. People like Susan Wright, Kate Bornstein and Jack McGeorge. Go look at the list that is the result of a lot of fabulous people and a lot of hard work coming together. Like what you see? Look at all the rockin’ organizations who are involved with us.

Not only that, but we will have some wonderful play spaces. And our event has been structured to allow play, kink, sex, fire, mayhem and puppies to coexist. It took some doing, believe me.

Floating World is located in Edison, NJ, and runs the weekend of August 24th to the 26th. Registration closes on August 5th.

Let me say that again. Registration closes on August 5th. No exceptions. We have to close the event registration at that time for issues of legality. Have you registered? No? Go register!

I’m not usually one for shameless plugs, actually. I think this will be a good event. I can feel it in my chest, insistently clamoring. I’m looking forward to presenting with May, and wandering about, and existing for a short time in such a space. I like kink events and kink people. I like spaces where I can be all of myself.

Do you?

A Place To Draw Blood Laughing

The Components Of A Lifestyle

The Thing About Tiggers

Educator

Ally

Protected: Sadist

Pansexual

Protected: A Moment

Creation, Education, Recreation

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