I have been thinking about where I want this blog to go. But first, I’d like to talk about where it started.

Bloody Laughter didn’t start here. It started, in point of fact, with an open diary I had back with my first kinky boyfriend, where I wrote him love notes and jumped whenever I realized someone else was reading. That blog, before I deleted it, was called Your Sadism Is Showing. When I started dating Maymay I decided I needed somewhere to store ideas my family couldn’t read, and I started a LiveJournal, titled Sweet Steel. (It was that LiveJournal, incidentally, that eventually allowed my family member to connect this blog to me and subsequently confront me over my chosen topics.)

Just as I like to think that in his time with me May’s understanding and appreciation of art, literature and fashion have matured, I know that in my time with him my technical capabilities and opinions have matured. Hence, Livejournal moved to Blogger and eventually to my own site with Wordpress, newly titled A Place To Draw Blood Laughing. I have in the past year hesitated over my choice of name, blunt and potentially disturbing as it is, but I kept it because I think it is poetic, and accurate.

At first blush, this was just a space I’d made where I could talk about how I have sex, and be sure (wrongfully sure, admittedly) that my nearest and dearest were not reading, or reading only with invitation and sympathy. It’s a theme here that I over analyze, that I am extremely body-conscious, that I am sensually driven and sex-positive and in some ways deeply strange. So it made sense to write about my strangeness, and to make a place for the dark parts of me to breathe.

And then there was a merry rush in the form of a golden summer of kink, of working on Floating World and digging out my strong opinions in words for the first time. Then there was the death-defying tailspin of being attacked over what I’ve said in this space, and my somewhat pathetic attempts to crawl my way out of the wreckage.

I limped along, for a while. I moved to Australia. I widened my scope.

I said when I started this blog that I would never apologize to myself if I didn’t want to update it. That was my little way of being clever, keeping myself free of the thing. In the end, though, that’s a stupid plan for a blog. Blogs should update. It is unfair of me to not update and still call this thing a blog, and want to make it thrive.

Maybe you have seen where this is going. Maybe you knew months ago, as I knew. As I’ve said before, I make decisions quickly and then come around to them slowly. The truth is I knew in the middle of last year that I would lay this blog to rest.

This is the end. A Place To Draw Blood Laughing is now closed.

I’ll give you two of my reasons. The first is creative.

At the height of this blog I was writing two posts a day and chronicling my sex life with lust and eager glee. I was also not writing anything but blog posts. My stories stagnated, my fiction trailed off and was eventually nothing. It seems I do not have the focus and energy to write here and also maintain my other creative pursuits.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m writing a manuscript, a long and meaty thing. In doing so, I have become jealous of my own words. I don’t want them here. I want them there, in the pages that are growing.

I pour letters out in the shape of sex, of Maymay’s hips and the wispy curls on his soft neck, of hot mornings alone in my bed with my hand between my thighs, of a blond Australian man who moves my hand to his throat when he comes and smiles in his own aftermath.

I pour them out and want to keep them for the book, this thing I’m trying to write that keeps growing into my creative spaces when I’ve looked the other way, so all of my drawings turn up pornography and all on my blog posts are sucked clean-dry.

The reality is I can’t figure out how to write about sex and blog about sex at the same time. I want to write this book more than I want to blog my current adventures; I want it to be finished so badly, the thought makes my chest ache.

The second reason I’m ending my time here is because I’d like to learn to speak for myself, openly, with my real name and my real voice.

I wrote once:

I honestly believe that being able to write what I want about my life and my sexuality is more important to me than the possibility that I may never teach children. I may never become powerful within a large company. I will definitely never run for public office…

A part of it is the belief, the naive, wide-eyed, furious, childish insistence that my life is my own, my body is my own, and I should always be able to speak my mind.

I can only be hurt by the words I write if those words represent a secret that is for some reason damaging. In many ways, being out protects me. Being unashamed, vocal and revealing can only limit the weapons available against me.

I have become increasingly skeptical of anonymity, or pseudo-anonymity, in my case. I’m certainly not saying we all need step from the shadows and reveal ourselves. I think our identities within our community are always our own, to do with as we like. But for me, keeping up the anonymous show seems increasingly pointless.

Most of the reasons I had to keep this journal separated from my real name vanished the day I sat down with my family member over Thanksgiving weekend and found my life suddenly ripped in tiny shreds. I clung stubbornly to the other reasons for a little while; the future jobs, the rest of the family, the possible consequences, the blinding, sneaky fear.

I find it very unfortunate and a little shameful that I feel the want to censor myself more fully now than I did when this blog began. Perhaps you could say that I’ve learned, or grown. You could say I’ve become more frightened, which is also true.

But in a wider sense, the real take-away is that my goals have changed. I am not content to speak from a pseudonym any longer. I have, in fact, soured radically upon the concept of not claiming my own ideas. But I recognize that speaking from my real name and voice will require a different perspective, and will have a different audience.

I’m sick of being afraid. I don’t want it any more. When it comes to emotional turmoil, I only really know how to bury things or confront them head on. I’m not sure which I’m doing right now.

The reality is that this is not an anonymous blog. Anyone with half a brain can find out who I am from here; Twitter was the last step that fell in place and clinched it. Any pretense we all may have made to my anonymity has been out of mutual respect and politeness. The sex community builds itself upon these fragile understandings, thin as sugar sticks. You support me, I support you. You trust me. I trust you.

I am out, but not unified. I’ve decided I’d like to feel unified, for once. I’d like to have a space on the web that can contain all of myself. Right now I have two sites and neither of them do what I what them to do. Both are limited, this site by its very narrow scope and my professional & personal site by its attempt to be clean. I would like a site that can be a little naughty, be professional, host my writing and my job hunt alongside my queer politics and community work. I don’t work well when I’m not fully integrated.

I’ve decided that I’d like to speak as myself, and that I can no longer accept the fragile, imagined protection of using other names and putting on a great pretending show. I am not a conjurer in that way. I am forthright, and know no other way to be.

My name is Sara.

I’d like to thank you for reading me as Eileen these past two years. I don’t mind if you keep calling me that; I answer to it now anyway.

I’ve found amazing support, dear friends and ever-expanding opportunities through this blog and the queer and kink scenes. I’m not leaving. I’m going to stay open, stay active, and keep writing. I’m going to make new spaces, run new events, spread new ideas. Perhaps I will return in a few years to this same ground, swept clean.

For those of you interested in the nitty gritty: the archives will remain active. I will continue to accept and respond to password requests. I may try to find a mental space that allows me to open those posts again; I’m not sure yet. The site may be slightly rearranged, but the content will not change dramatically, or be erased. The BloodyLaughter Twitter account will be suspended, as I’ve switched to SaraEileen.

In the meantime, you are invited to visit my personal site, where in the tradition of most blogs I am writing my way through being young, confused, and complicated. SaraEileen.com is a somewhat different website; it connects to my resume. It has my real name. It is not just about this part of my life, but also about writing, job-hunting, creativity and business. It will be a different blog, and I will not be offended if it doesn’t strike your fancy. Of course, I would love to see you there. As I said, I trust you.

It seems silly to just say thank you, but I will anyway.

Thank you for helping me take the big issues seriously and the little ones lightly.

Thank you for keeping me truthful, growing and proud in return for my words and affection.

It’s been raucous and wild. These things will continue. I’ll be seeing you, good people. I’m always around.

With love,
Sara

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.

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 stood in the optometrist yesterday with two different frames in my hands. One pair was slender, black, square lenses. Very simple. Very sophisticated. The others were thick and shaped on the sides with sleek silver lines over matte black metal. Very modern. Very bold.

I stood there for fifteen minutes looking at the two damn frames, realizing that they curiously represented one of the constant decisions I make when representing myself. I bounce continually between portraying myself as a mature, clean-cut and put-together young intellectual, and a quirky young artist with strange taste and bold decisions. I swing between blazers and denim, plastic and pearls.

Fuck it, I thought to myself. I put the silver and black frames on the counter and clicked my card down. I am only young enough to do this once.

And that’s true. I am only young enough to wear these glasses once. I am only young enough to shave my head and dye my hair blue once. I am only young enough to dress like a schoolboy once. I am only young enough to wear my heart on my sleeve once.

And if I work on it enough, I’ll be young enough once to do whatever I want to, for as long as I want.

I miss New York. Tonight I tied May’s hands above his head and ran my finger up and down his body, and then up and down his cock. I did it over and over, for almost two hours, and I watched him twist and pull his arms to his face to bite at the tender skin. As I did, I pressed into him. I swung my leg up along his shoulder and put my foot in his palm, and he wove his fingers in and out of my toes as he gasped. And I thought how glad I am to have him with me.

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I would hate to imply that I have everything all figured out. I don’t. A lot of questions have been raised about exactly how we can use language appropriately and apply context to our actions, and honestly, I don’t have any answers. This experience has not been so revelatory. I have ideas, of course. I suppose you should expect nothing less.

But first, I want to talk about being out.

By “out” I mean openly claiming my sexual orientation. (I realize that “out” doesn’t always apply to sexual orientations, but for the moment we’ll operate under a narrower definition.) It’s such a tricky word, and in my opinion misleading.

It’s clear that this isn’t a binary situation. “Out” implies an open or shut door, but from personal experience most of us realize that such simplifications are hardly helpful when dealing with real life.

So we could try placing “in” and “out” at the ends of a 1 to 10 scale, and shuffling ourselves into places along that scale. But then, that becomes quickly bogged down. How out is out? Am I completely in if I deny my interest in kink even to myself? Or am I completely in if I think about being kinky, but never tell anyone? Am I completely out if I write under a fake name? A real name? Am I completely out if I get a video camera and start streaming every minute of my life to the world?

Like power, like gender, being out is far too complicated to shuffle into numbers.

I’ve said before that I’m out. Among my friends here in the city, I am probably more out than most. What does that mean?

It means that if someone asks me where I’m going if I’m headed to a CV meeting, I’ll tell the truth. But depending on who I’m speaking to, I might filter that truth, leaving details unsaid. If someone asks me what I’m sexually interested in, if I think they’re serious and respectful I’ll tell them that I’m kinky. I took a day off work to attend a kinky event. I told my workplace, when asked, that I was attending a conference on sexual education. How out does that make me, such a devious half-truth?

I said in my first post on being attacked that I felt blindsided. In all honesty, one of the reasons I felt blindsided is because I told my family I was kinky three years ago. At least, I thought I had. Maybe they missed the memo.

More likely is that the casual conversation I had three years ago is a level of “out” that doesn’t compare to the revelations this blog contains.

The main reason I’m more out than the majority of my friends is because of this blog, and Maymay’s blog. Now, Eileen and Maymay are not our real names. However, we’ve shared personal details, plans and agendas, our voices and even photos of ourselves. Anyone who knows me personally could connect me with this blog through independent observation.

When I started writing here, similar to when I started playing in the scene, I did think about what being out would mean for me. At the time, I decided that I wanted to be able to write freely and speak my mind; I decided that this was more important to me than the threat of a future bogey-boss-man come to take my job away.

I did not direct my family to this blog, nor did I hide it from them specifically. As I mentioned, I did not assume that if they were reading they would react explosively. But I assumed a certain amount of context and experience in my writing, and the results of that assumption were indeed explosive.

My immediate reaction was to take the blog down and rethink exactly how “out” I wanted to be. Of course, as I began rethinking, I realized a very simple truth.

I’ve written here, with personal details and specifics, for nine months. The things I’ve said will probably be attached to me forever. I’ve marched in two Pride parades here in the city. That means that there are photos of me taken by spectators that I have no control over. I have gone and will continue to go to kinky events. I have no method of controlling the information that I am kinky.

The truth is that once out, there’s no going back in.

If I’m attempting to keep a portion of my life anonymous, I face attacks from two well-established fronts. The first is from employers and authorities. The second is from family and friends. These are the people most likely to take an interest in my writing without sharing my knowledge, interest, or arousal in my topics.

Each of us when writing online faces the two sides of the coin: Could someone, starting with my online identity, discover my real name? And could someone, starting with my real name, discover my online identity?

In my case, the answers were yes and yes. Now, the answers are maybe and maybe, but frankly, maybe is the same as yes.

I had not expected attacks from my family or friends. Now that I’ve been attacked, I’m living through it. I’ll keep on living.

I also do not expect attacks from my employers or other authorities. I realize I may be wrong about this. I realize that someday I may be fired from a job I love because of this blog. But I’ve come to the same conclusion I came to the day I started here: that’s okay.

I honestly believe that being able to write what I want about my life and my sexuality is more important to me than the possibility that I may never teach children. I may never become powerful within a large company. I will definitely never run for public office.

A part of this is the knowledge that I’m planning a career which will probably not involve people snooping around to try and reveal something scandalous about me, or that if they do, I can always pray the scandal will help my book sales.

A part of it is the belief, the naive, wide-eyed, furious, childish insistence that my life is my own, my body is my own, and I should always be able to speak my mind.

I can only be hurt by the words I write if those words represent a secret that is for some reason damaging. In many ways, being out protects me. Being unashamed, vocal and revealing can only limit the weapons available against me.

I suspect that some of the essential properties of the Internet are misunderstood. The Internet is not an anonymous playground. The Internet, in fact, is a wealth of identifying information, meticulously cataloged and stored. Even with safeguards and careful planning, all it will take to find out your real identity is someone with better technical skills and more resources than you. It is incredibly hard to disconnect your name from your words.

If keeping your sexuality a secret is essential to a portion of your life, using the Internet to express yourself is a deceptively weak method of practicing information security. Even under a false name, even when writing from a false perspective, there is always the possibility that your words will reconnect with you at an inopportune time. It seems to me that if you absolutely cannot handle the consequences of a specific person reading something you’ve written, you should not be posting online.

On the other hand, we must recognize how blogging and content-production is changing our lives. The Internet is creating undeniable links between our personal and public persona. Again, I hesitate to cite generational influences, but it’s a safe estimate to say that nine out of every ten people I know in my age group keep a blog or maintain an online page. Online footprints are becoming crucial elements in our interpersonal relationships.

As these trends develop, the people responsible for hiring new employees in companies will be forced to change their methods. Eventually the people hiring will be keeping blogs themselves. The economy will have to adapt to a generation of people who share their private lives as a matter of course. Our culture will have to adapt to different methods of sharing information and different expectations in communication.

As I thought about this, I started talking to people about being out. In particular, I spoke with Susan Wright, who can take credit for planting many of the seeds of these ideas in my mind. I began formulating my defenses and tapping the resources and good people of my community.

As I did this, I also realized that I don’t want to go back in.

Although I wince at the cloying humanitarianism, I have to admit that I’m not just out because being out protects me. Nor am I writing this only because the writing has a cathartic benefit. I’m out, and I’m writing, because I recognize that being out, and writing, helps people.

This community supported me from the beginning and can claim a huge portion of the credit for beginning to heal me now. What would I have done without it? Where would I be? Where would any of us be? Probably locked in our bedrooms trying to convince ourselves that we’re not mentally ill.

I wrote once that we should talk about our dark desires and fantasies because not talking about them is the more dangerous alternative. Keeping our thoughts hidden allows us no way to critique our ideas or examine ourselves. Nor does it allow a space for us to learn from others. Our community survives and supports itself only through our individual willingness to keep on talking.

As misty-eyed as the declaration is, this community is valuable to me. I will keep on talking.

Does it mean the blog will go back up completely? No. Although I recognize that I am out, and I will continue to be so, I still intend to edit my blog entires for personal details. I see no reason to throw myself off the cliff simply to see if I survive the fall.

I definitely intend to take my family out of my blog entirely, as they never consented to being written about on a kinky blog, even if they did raise a kinky child.

It would be easy to say that’s that and close the matter, but we all know it’s not so simple. This is a complex resolution, and still tinged through with vulnerability.

I gave a lot to this forum, and I ended up very, very hurt. As valuable as I recognize the giving to be, I’m still not ready to be hurt again.

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