12. Kink For All in our Lives

Maymay and I have been talking about Kink For All here, in Sydney, almost everywhere we go. It’s hard not to, as it has consumed large chunks of our lives, thinking and brainstorming and brainstorming and thinking. 

One of the things I keep noticing is that people light up when they grok the Kink For All/Bar Camp/unconference concept. It’s like something very remote and intangible has suddenly taken a dramatic leap closer in their minds. I loved explaining it tonight to our new friends, over mango daquiris. And I loved, in particular, how my friend immediately jumped from the event concept to the potential to create and share lasting information. “That’s so cool,” she said excitedly, “Will you tape it? Will you keep that information around for people who can’t attend?” And we laughed, and kept on talking. I wished she could be there when it happens.

I am excited for March already, and for bringing the concept to San Francisco if someone doesn’t beat us to it. It seems almost silly, this mix of activism and organisation and drive, but I like inhabiting it. I like feeling as though we all might do something that makes the world shift, just a little bit. Because how amazing is that? The thought that together, we can shift the world.

Here, Now, This

I’ve been thinking recently about the defining questions in my life. I came about this backwards; I was confused and vaguely melancholy for a very long time, pulled every which-way like a glob of sticky taffy. I kept asking myself what I wanted, and harping on myself for not being able to answer the question.

For one thing, I have not yet sorted what I want to be from what I want to have. Everything is all mixed up, and in the meantime I look in the mirror and feel as though my skin is quicksilver and my eyes are changing color.

I want to use power tools and cook scones, and date women, and date men, and date everyone in between. I want to be a woman who wears suits and a boy who wears skirts. I want to start a PR business, and live on a sailboat, and bike across the country, and be a fashion designer, and run conferences the right way ’round. I want to be a country singer, and a travel writer, and a sex god. I want to make the world better, and I want to make the world work. I want high, rounded breasts like doves hung from my collarbones, and I want a girl with long hair to go exploring over. I want shoulders and arms like a man – like my first kinky boyfriend’s shoulders, triangular and etched in the hard flesh of military life – and I want a man to fuck who has those shoulders, and also long hair, and also the thick softness of a good life tucked into the curve of his swelling hips, ass in the air. I want people who love to cry for me, and with me. I want everything. I want to know who I am. 
The thing is, the question is wrong. It is too simplistic for subtlety of planning, and to big for specific action. It is the question of a girl nestled in grass looking at stars; I am not that girl, right now.
The questions I should be asking myself are cleaner, crystallised. 
Questions like these:
Do I want to integrate my queer identity with my professional career? How would I do that? What would it feel like? How would it hurt me, and how would it help me?
How should I manage my personal brand? How much energy should I invest into it, and is it worth investing in when split into two halves? Right now it is spinning and wobbling like a cloven coconut, and how do I put it back together without spilling all the juice out?
Should I keep up with my art? Should I focus on developing my design skills? Should I take up photography again, and does that mean I should buy a proper camera? Is oil painting worth my time; is any non-digital medium going to satisfy me?
What kind of work do I want to be doing? Is writing enough for me, or should I be looking into how to integrate my writing with activism, education, organization and social media? How do I do that?
How much of my activism is based upon my location and the people around me? Are the things I want still the same when I am by myself, alone?
Which of the hundreds of thousands of projects I conceptualise are worth developing? Should I be drawing comics, drafting book ideas, building websites?
What do I want to say to other people, and what is the best way to say it?
Where am I strongest?
These are better questions. I don’t have the answers, but these are my current thoughts. This is where I am, today.

Casanova

No, not the romanticized idea. The man. Giacomo Casanova.

I’m utterly cheating on this post. I admit it. At least this cheat is words, instead of the rambling audio journal I’ve been picking up in random moments. Do ya’ll need to hear my musings upon the deliciousness of guacamole? I think not. Obviously guacamole is delicious.

I walked into a little bookstore in the Rocks and picked up a slim black paperback with a rose etched on the cover: Of Mistresses, Tigresses, and Other Conquests. The inside cover informs me that this is a selection of excerpts from Casanova’s unfinished 3,600 page memoir, Histoire de ma vie.

And I took it home and started reading, and ridiculously, laughed out loud sitting alone on my couch. Because Casanova? A pre-computer-age sex blogger. Definitely.

Here are a few choice excerpts that pushed some of my blogging buttons:

If, dear reader, you examine this preface well, you will easily guess its purpose. I have written it because I want you to know me before you read me. Only in coffee-houses and inns do we converse with strangers.
I have written my history, and surely no one could take exception to it. Still, am I wise to present it to a public I know only in the worst light? No. I know it is foolish. But since I need to keep myself busy and to laugh, why should I refrain from committing such a folly?

In recalling the pleasures I enjoyed, I relive them, while I laugh at the pains I endured and no longer feel.

What depraved tastes! And how shameful to acknowledge them without blushing! This reproach tickles me to laughter. Thanks to my coarse tastes, I am so shameless as to believe myself happier than the rest, first of all because I think my tastes make me more sensitive to pleasure.

And for a little something extra, some 18th century T&D action:

With a trembling and timid hand, and watching her with eyes that begged for mercy, I untied the six wide ribbons that closed her dress in front, delighted that she did not stop me, and found myself the happy master of the most beautiful bosom. Time was running out. She was obliged to allow me to devour it after contemplating its charms; I raised my eyes to her face and there read an amorous sweetness that said to me, be happy with this, and learn from me to suffer abstinence. Driven by love and all-powerful nature, and in despair because she would not allow my hands to roam elsewhere, I did everything I could to guide one of hers to the place that might persuade her that I deserved her mercy; but with a strength greater than mine, she would not move her hands from my chest, where there was nothing of interest to be found. Nonetheless, this was where her mouth landed when her lips left mine.
Out of necessity or the fatigue of spending so many hours without being able to do anything more than continuously swallow our mingled saliva, I fell asleep in her arms, holding her close in mine.

15. Books I Have Not Read

Here’s what you should understand when you come asking me for advice on kinky books to read:

I haven’t read it.

Really. Whatever it is, I probably haven’t read more than three pages. Unless it is the Kushiel series or something written by Stephen Elliot. Or a scattered handful of Jay Wiseman books. So if you have been getting the impression that I know something about kinky erotica, consider this the unveiling.
I don’t read kinky books.

There are several reasons for this.

The first is that I didn’t learn about kink by reading instructional books; I learned about kink by going to Conversio Virium, seeing educational presentations, and learning through experience. I’m not knocking this learning style one way or the other. My exposure was simply a twist of advantage and geography.

And I still tend to not learn by reading; I always prefer to learn by watching, doing, fucking up, and trying again.

The second reason is that I am chronically resistant to instructional, self-help, or disseminated psychology books. I suspect this is a hold-over from my upbringing in a do-it-yourself, anti-therapy attitude. So I didn’t read the books that “explain” kink. I have a copy of Bound To Be Free…somewhere. I never got around to reading it. While it might have helped me at some point in my life, right now it simply doesn’t seem relevant.

As you may have noticed, I am perpetually self-analyzing. I usually see reading as a break from self-analysis. Books are my vacation.

The third reason is that I don’t read erotic fiction as literary fiction. So I have not read The Story of O. I have not read Tipping the Velvet. I have not read the Marketplace series. I have not read Venus in Furs. I don’t like to pay for it, I would never carry it around with me, and I’ve seen no compelling evidence, from the few pages of each of these texts that I’ve skimmed through, that I cannot find material just as good or better, for free, online.

I spend my money on kinky photography books. They are prettier to look at and deliver much more long-term satisfaction.

I used to think I owed it to the kinky community and myself to read these books, because they were so obviously an integral part of kink culture. Eventually I decided that this was a bad reason to read books, unless a day came that I was genuinely interested in their historical impact. That interest has not yet surfaced. Perhaps someday it will.

In the end, I prefer literary fiction. I don’t put my energy into long erotic fiction, because it is never, ever as fulfilling as reading good standard fiction. I prefer dense, classic epics; I read a lot of Hugo, Dumas, Austen, Rushdie, Marquez, Allende, Clavell. I went and bought a few new books recently: Eco, Borges, Kundera. And when I want a popcorn book, I reach for the sci-fi: Bradbury, Stephenson, Heinlein, Asimov.

The erotic fiction just doesn’t do it for me. The day someone writes a kinky erotic epic with the scale and scope of The Ground Beneath Her Feet, I will die happy. I simply don’t see that day coming.

So I’ve been asked many, many times for my advice on kinky books. I will keep recommending
Elliot, because I respect his writing and appreciate the balance of erotic/non-erotic narrative in his work. But other than that, I’m at a loss. I’m not the right person to ask.

If you want to talk non-kinky books, I’d love to. Literature is one of the very few fields in which I genuinely identify as a geek.

But lest you think I know the specific reference behind the Story-of-O ring, let me set that record straight. I have absorbed the reference through cultural exposure. I have never read the book.

The Pen Is The Tongue Of The Mind

I’ve joined FetLife, a curious experience simultaneously stimulating my interest in social dynamics and making me want to stab unwitting stuffed animals with forks. I should begin by saying that despite my intermittent screeching noises, it really is a good site and a sound premise, and hopefully it grows into something of a real community.

The stabbing, you ask? Ah yes. The site is simply a little microcosm of kink, and as such occasionally prompts me to sharpen forks.

The well shot, well proportioned, laughably stereotypical picture on the home page of an older, greying man holding the throat of a young, beautiful, bound woman is thankfully no longer getting under my skin, because Maymay is a computer genius. I asked him to make sure that picture never shows when I load the home page, he fiddled a bit, wrote some code doohicky, and voila. Customized log in, Eileen-annoyance free.

And since changing my orientation from “Dominant” to “Top,” I am no longer identified under a gendered abbreviation. Unless some shockingly clever person manages to push “toppe” through as the new label-du-jour, I suppose.

And I admit, I refused to friend the three young men from New South Wales who each requested foot worship sessions with me.

But these things? They are just my little nitpicks. They are not really problems, per say. Just a friendly confirmation that the quirks of our subculture are alive and kicking. And yet, I am beginning to reconsider my membership. This may be part of a massive shift in my life which has pushed my kink awareness under in favor of work and domesticity.

The thing about a microcosm of kink is that no matter how hard I try, it’s only a matter of time before something crosses my radar that just inflames me. And no, I’m not talking about the big issues here. Oh no, I’m perfectly capable of becoming inflamed over tiny things that people less prone to passionate annoyance will shrug off, or simply fail to notice.

I joined The Kinky Intellectual’s Book Club FetLife group. And as I did so, I made a tiny internal bet with myself. “What do you bet, Eileen, that this group will go three days without mentioning Kushiel’s Dart?”

“I bet nothing. I refuse to throw perfectly good money away.”

Good thing I didn’t bet. But oh, the annoyance.

As I have previously mentioned, I have read Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series. At the time, I was ambivalent toward them. They are not staggering works of literary genius. They are passable fantasy that occasionally wanders into “decent” territory. (Yes, you may dispute this. I have high standards. We know this by now.) I am no longer ambivalent. I feel now, toward these books, an annoyance that momentarily lingers on inflamed irrational rage.

I have had these books recommended to me on a rate of about four times a year for the past six years. I am sick of being told I should read these fucking books, so sick, in fact, that I will now sometimes, in very snippy moods, head off sentences that begin with “Have you ever read…” by interrupting, “Carey? Yes, I have.” They do not deserve this overflow of effusive praise. They are simply not that good.

The Kushiel series, along with a very few other titles that compose the core (and only) BDSM fiction reading list for those of us not inclined to get our wanks from online erotica, operate within a starvation economy that skyrockets their value far beyond anything my tastes will allow. We are so desperate for kinky material that’s been proofread and couched in narrative that we will devour, praise and pimp the passable. And since I’ve written here before about my utterly devastating erotic obsession with artistic skill, one can imagine how this makes me feel.

From here I veer off in two directions, both writerly in nature. Starvation economy of words? Duh. Create more words.

There is the little tickle in the back of my brain, the one that moans of how unfair it is that to find kink content I like I’m best off creating it myself. But that little tickle is the remenant of an indignation that has long since fizzled down; it is, after all, not unfair for me to produce content if I genuinely love producing content.

On the one hand, there is that distinct temptation: “Eileen, how about you write a nice juicy kink/fantasy crossover novel? You’d be rich! Rich, I say!” I’ve gone far enough down this road to have sketched a setting, a plot, some subplots. I’ve done character profiles, even toyed with the first few pages. I have, essentially, a half-decent, passable working novel idea. But I’m still feeling my way through fantasy genre writing, and I don’t know how I feel about writing passable novels.

And then, there is the hand that wants to write the real story down. The story that’s on this blog and all the natty details in between, all blended up in a realist half-fiction that’s more worth the time it would take to write and the time it would take to read. I want to write kink and love the way Stephen Elliot writes kink and love. I want to squash Mistress Nan off the market and completely redefine the “real experiences of a dominant woman” in all their intricate, clumsy, laughable, joyful ache and glory.

A telling insight on my ego: I desire to possess skill and desire to possess the skilled. I keep falling flat on my face for artists and writers, the body as a metaphor for the intellect, the intellect as a metaphor for the body. Or, to put it bluntly: the better I craft, the hotter I get. The better you craft, the hotter you get.

Coochie Snorcher

Did you ever play the penis game when you were growing up? The boys in my high school used to play it in math class, and I remember thinking how weird it was that they’d use a part of themselves as a dirty, funny word.

I will never be a good erotica writer. I get annoyed with the euphemisms, I’m sick of the crashing oceans. I’m fed up with the metaphor, the impossible dance to balance the delicate with the raw. I’ve had terms churning up in my mind for weeks now, full of frustration.

I simply do not like any of the words we have in this language to refer to our genitalia. And you must admit, erotica does generally contain genitalia. It’s the nature of the two-backed beast.

This is what I do with my time. I sit around and try to figure out why I don’t like words.

I’ll start with the obvious. The technical terms, if you will.

Vagina & Penis

The Vagina Monologues really nailed the word “vagina” right on the nose:

“It sounds like an infection at best, maybe a medical instrument: ‘Hurry nurse, bring me the vagina!’”

Seriously, that is one awkward conflux of sounds. The “v” comes humming off the tongue nicely only to be brought up squeaking short by the high-pitched vowels. It’s not a word I’d like to run my tongue over; it actually sounds distasteful. Clinical.

“Penis” isn’t really doing much better. Pee-niss. The onomatopoeia of the word “penis” is not sex; it’s urine. I realize that’s right on the nose for some, but I am not quite happy that one of the most inevitable words in sexual language is screaming piss play in my face. A sterile, yellow fluid for a sterile, yellow word.

Insert and remove the penis from the vagina, ensuring a sufficient amount of lubrication has saturated the area to allow for fluid motion. Repeat until climax.

Yes, that’s definitely how I want to spend my nights.

Our vaginas and penises are pretty much the only body parts we still consistently use euphemisms for. We’ve grown past the tightly buttoned morality of the Victorian era that danced around chicken breasts and table legs, but we’re still in a culture where it’s just not okay to admit to sex out loud. Our sexual organs are swearwords.

And the euphemisms are even worse, which goes against the very definition of what a euphemism is supposed to be.

There are, of course, the obvious choices.

Cock & Pussy

What am I, keeping a farm now?

I really don’t get the word “pussy.” It’s a bit squelchy, in the end. I feel as though this word got picked up to mean “vagina” because no one could think of a better option. I have no ownership of the word. The area between my legs, although hairy and soft, does not seem adequately represented by the word “pussy.” This edges into the nonsensical for me, a combination of baby talk and misplaced modesty.

The word is far more illuminating in its derogatory use: don’t be a pussy. Don’t be a wimp. Don’t be passive. Pussy is a swearword of weakness and impotence. Isn’t that just fantastic; we’ve managed to make the word we use for a women’s genitals simultaneously dirty and weak. I can’t really avoid that when I say the word pussy. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

“Cock” is a word that I’m warily all right with. It sounds arrogant and hard and clever. But it is undeniably a bit blunt for some situations. The language forces my hand, the very rhythm of the word like a loud misplaced drumbeat in a quieter symphony. I ran my fingertips gently along his cock.

It’s like a linguistic game: one of these words is not like the others, one of these words is not like its brothers.

Cunt.

Here’s the thing about the word cunt. I actually like it; that’s right, I like it. Its vulgarity and abruptness make it a natural complement for the word “cock.” They sound nice together, an aggressive shoulder-to-shoulder brawling clash of sounds. Cock. Cunt. They are hard, fast sounds, and they work for hard, fast sex.

Cunt. Cock. Fuck. Cunt. Cock. Fuck. Them’s fighting words. Thrusting words.

But “cunt” is also a political word. It holds multiple spaces in my consciousness; a word of female power, a word of reclamation, the word so dirty I didn’t even know it existed because no one dared to use it. A violent word, a feminist word. It is politically charged in ways that my sex is not.

Also, my sex is not always the thrusting rhythm of cunt-cock-fuck sex. This is the battle between technical and vulgar; no matter what words I choose I cannot escape being one or the other, unless I just want to be funny.

So those are my choices: technical, vulgar, or funny. That’s what sex comes down to.

Really, it’s all downhill from here.

Dick.

Horrible sound. “Dick” has all of the shortness of “cock” but none of the flavor. Also, similar to “johnson,” I really cannot get past the fact that this is a name. I don’t name my vagina. I don’t want to name your penis. It’s not a pet, for fuck’s sake.

Organ. (See also: manhood, member.)

What organ? His liver? Am I having a tender tryst with the man’s kidneys?

These words are like having sex through a hole in a bed sheet; distant and full of deniability. Words of coming of age stories and exclusive clubs that I clearly cannot join. In my head these words ring of the historical distaste that made women out as incomplete men. I have organs aplenty, but not the one that counts. My womanhood is innocuous and outdated, and as for membership, well, you get the picture.

Cooch.

No. Just . . . no. I give up on this one. I have no idea how people can stand to even say this out loud. It feels like sandpaper on my tongue.

From here we devolve into the obscure and the outrageous. I cannot create my own euphemisms to use in my erotic writing, precisely because they would be meaningless. Meaningless words are the least sexy of all; they are simply baby talk. Often reading erotica with made-up words makes me feel as though I’ve stumbled into a game of dirty Mad-Libs.

I get that some of us have moved beyond these hang-ups, although clearly I have not. I can talk about almost everything; I spent the beginning of Friday night regaling a complete stranger with my opinions on dildoes. I can talk about sex. And yet I feel hemmed in by these terms: cock, pussy, cunt, penis. I don’t like how they sit on the page. I don’t like that our sexual organs are weighted with such unsexy language.

I mean, coochie snorcher? What the hell?

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Geeks Are Kinky Are Kinky Geeks

Just swinging through here, because something just struck me as enormously funny.

I admit readily and proudly to being an enormous geek. What I find funny is that this geekiness in no way hinders (and sometimes helps) my identity and interests in BDSM. The cultural crossovers are enormous. Geeks are rennies are kinky are techies are LARPers are geeks, etc. I’ve always felt that these crossivers would make a fantastic thesis topic, were I to ever go back in time and study sociology in school.
Anyway.

When I first entered the scene, I chose a scene name. I used this name only on a few occasions, as an online identity that quickly phased out as I became more ‘out’ in the public scene and spent more time thinking about names in general. I now use my real, fairly common first name in the scene, and have long since abandoned any pretense of a scene name.
The name I was using was “Gravity.” I still like this, by the way. Should I ever need a scene name again, I’ll use it. And I like it all the more because it sounds badass, sort of eclectic, rather artsy, and just a little bit off the beaten track, all things I like to be as a top. It brings up ideas of inevitability, power and being inescapable. But in reality it’s close to my heart because it is entirely geeky.
The Tick, that strange cartoon character from when I was a kid that I watched sometimes and quoted often, has one line I remembered all the way to college: “Gravity is a harsh mistress.” And that, really, that just makes me laugh.

I’m writing this now because one of my favorite authors has inadvertantly provided perhaps the best geek-kink combination quote known to geekdom. I am seriously stunned by how funny I find this to be.

“Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word ’safe’ that I wasn’t previously aware of.”
Douglas Adams