It’s easy to guess (writer, musical theater geek) that I am inclined toward lyric-heavy music. But it goes a bit beyond that; I often stick to musicians simply because I think their lyrics are sexy.

That seems like a simple thing to say, and sort of obvious as a general statement. But then, throw an alternate sexuality in the mix. Kinky themes show up in odd places in music, in ways that often seem fake, wires crossed, something not-quite-right. Rarely genuine.

So tonight, when I put my iTunes on shuffle and let the program work its way through the 35-odd gigs of music, I caught myself perking up, swinging my hips a little more to the sexy, kinky favorites. I get an irrational shot of joy to hear my life in music; it seems like a cultural acknowledgement of the possibility of viable kinky love.

Yes, I will give you some of my favorites. I know you were gearing up for the link-fest.

I met one of my former partners through a question he posted on an LJ community, looking for kinky lyrics. My contribution was “Blood, Sex, and Booze” by Greenday. I remember writing out the words in the comment form before I surfed over to his journal and found out he lived in New York:

Waiting in a room
All dressed up and bound and gagged
Tied to a chair, it’s so unfair
I don’t dare to move, for the pain she puts me through
is what I need, so make it bleed

I’m in distress
Oh mistress I confess, so do it one more time
These handcuffs are too tight, well
You know I will obey,
So please don’t make me beg
For blood, sex and booze you give me

Almost painfully obvious, no? But I think there’s a good pornographic film somewhere in that song.

Or then, we could talk about The Magnitic Fields, whose 69 Love Songs became the background noise of my rushed-by graduation days, just when May and I were meeting. They swing around from sweet:

Andy would bicycle across town in the rain to bring you
candy, and John would buy the gown for you to wear to the
prom, with Tom the astronomer who’d name a star for you
But I’m the luckiest guy on the Lower East Side
cause I’ve got wheels and you want to go for a ride

To brilliantly disturbing:

A pretty girl is like a violent crime
If you do it wrong you could do time
But if you do it right it is sublime…

And I still love Great Big Sea, not only because they give a thrilling live perfomance, but because they are overflowing-full with these little gems, often from older covers:

Sally Ann, Sally Ann, oh when you dance
Every move that you make is amazing…
See me swallowing my pride
She got me crawling on the floor

Then, once upon a time, Maymay handed me a mix CD that I almost wore a hole in. On it, Sting:

It would make a prison of my life
If you become another’s wife
With every prison blown to dust
My enemies walk free
I’m mad about you
I’m mad about you

And really, no list of mine is complete without the bitter-chocolate-orange voice of Leonard Cohen. The first time I heard “I’m Your Man,” I almost cried of appreciation and want.

If you want a lover
I’ll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I’ll wear a mask for you
If you want a partner
Take my hand
Or if you want to strike me down in anger
Here I stand
I’m your man

All right. Maybe music is more pivotal that I’ve admitted. These songs get under my skin. There’s something sensual there; they thrum with me.

It’s true that most boys are just boys, and that rarely do any of us fit the fairy tales of our childhood. Not only did I grow up wanting leather-wearing horse-riding nerds to romance me alternately with motorcycle rides and Shakespeare, I also grew up wanting to be a skinny girl in stockings wearing lipstick and a pretty skirt with ruffles. Part of me, the part that buys orange shoes and thin gold chains, is still deeply in love with delicate feminine aesthetics. And part of me is still enthralled by manly men and the accoutrement therein.

But it becomes clearer and clearer that the men I then wanted to date hold the qualities I now want to have, and the women I then wanted to be are the women I now want to date. This means a lot of radical redefinitions, not only of myself but of what I look for in a partner. I’m beginning to realize that I don’t really know what attracts me in any specific way. I haven’t managed to sort out where my identity ends and my lust begins.

The other revelation I have been musing my way toward is that, in a strange and unexpected way, I did end up with an amalgam of a white knight, a rebel, and a nerd.

That my boy is a nerd is an unquestioned fact. Once upon a time we spent the night at a friend’s house. Maymay fell asleep on her lap, and she and I talked into the small hours of the night. I remember her stroking his hair while she said, “He really is a genius. It’s a little scary.”

He really is a genius. It is a little scary.

And although it comes out rarely, curiously, and in unexpected places, Maymay is a gallant man. Gallant enough to take me out to dinner, to buy me flowers on a whim, and to stop himself from laughing when he kicks my ass at air hockey.

But what really started me on this series of posts was that I realized something about Maymay’s rebellion. I realized that he has managed to make the separation I could not, as a child, make: that the strength to embrace deviant ideals does not necessarily translate into sexual strength or dominance. And that making that distinction is, in and of itself, a rebellion.

In my mind he makes images like steel wires running through cupcakes, peaches with pits of stone.

“I’ve been thinking about what kind of a geek I am,” I said into his shoulder.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“I mean that I’m not the sort of person who can spend hours in a bookstore or get really psyched up over research or academic papers,” I answered. “And I never really have been, but that’s sort of how I’ve always understood being a geek. I’m much happier to spend that time in an art store or making something, that’s what I’m actually passionate about.”

“That makes sense,” he said mildly, his usual response to my out-loud rambling thoughts.

I thought for a few breaths. “I think I need to redefine my geek identity.”

When I was younger, there was no question that I was a geek, a nerd, and to be such a creature came with a very narrow set of definitions. Among these, wedged between getting good grades, liking Star Trek and wearing doofy glasses (all of which I did), was the silent insistence that geeks and nerds date other geeks and nerds. If, of course, we were lucky enough to date at all. One of the reasons I took to ren faires so gleefully was because they broke this mold in a new way; not by hiding my geekhood, but by redefining it as part of my sex appeal. Unfortunately I never managed to meet a nerdy boy in a leather jacket on a white horse while I was there.

Though I never specifically pursued the male nerd image the way I did white knights and rebels, smarts have always appealed to me. And although very little of the imagery around nerdiness really got me going, I did harbor some long-standing and desperate crushes on very smart boys. I suspect one of the reasons they lasted as long as they did was because there was nothing in the stereotype to mess with my underlying preference for power exchange. The nerds of my younger days were never gallant, chivalrous, or sassy, but they were vulnerable. Shy. Wanting.

On a personal identity note, although I have since learned how many different ways a person can be smart, when I was younger being “smart” matched up perfectly with the kind of people who do spend hours in bookstores and jones over research. So though I never really adapted to this kind of geekery fully, I faked it stunningly well. And it’s taken me ages to work my way back out of that fake, and even longer to be able to say, honestly and sincerely, that sometimes bookstores bore me. That research fails to thrill me. That I would rather be somewhere else. And had I known that ten years ago, it might have changed those crushes. It certainly would have changed me.

There was only one problem, I realized, as I hit my 18th birthday with nary a boyfriend in sight. Most boys are not white knights, rebels, or nerds. Most boys are just, well, boys.

One of the moments I remember from that day was meeting a skinny man in a purple shirt. He had a small pewter dragon nestled on the ridge of his ear, and he took my hand in his, bent down, and kissed my knuckles. I remember feeling him caress my skin with his lips. It was the most shocking thing a stranger had ever done to me; I remember the jolt that slipped up my arm and down again.

I was one of those little girls who thought the knights and princes of fairy tales were fascinating. Early and prolonged exposure to romantic adventure novels wrapped chivalry part-and-parcel up with gallantry, attraction, and once I started going to faires, with sex. It is fair to say that a large part of my sexual awakening came about because I became a rennie. On weekends and in summers I skipped like a fat, awkward stone right out of high school hell and into costume, bawdy songs and dirty jokes. I made friends with men who bemoaned my less-than-legal age, who bought me roses, called me beautiful, knelt, oh god, at my feet.

And Renaissance faires were also my first real exposure to the gender-role bending of fairy tales. So I forgot, for a little while, that the brides of white knights were constantly getting swept away on white horses. That the kind of man I liked was once again a dominant man. In gender-bent fairy tales, strong women are matched with strong men. I wasn’t thinking about power yet; that was as far as I got.

But it wasn’t enough.

Also, I was told to set up a Cafe Press store to make these images more available. (Well, maybe not this one.) Is there an interest in that?

Chibi Emo!

Here is what I have found:

According to FetLife, I am potentially the fourth-youngest cisgendered dominant woman in Australia.

Here are the other three cisgendered women in Australia who identify as dominant or tops, and are younger than me or my age.

Here are some of the small handful of profiles I chose to discard from this “study” because it appears they’ve never been updated.

I know deep down in my toes that this is impossible. And inaccurate. And wrong, plain and utter wrong. Four dominant women at or under the age of 25 in the entire country of Australia?

No, I’m not counting switches. I realize this is all very unfair, but it’s a very unfair blog. And I’m not counting the handful of transgendered folks, because all of the transgender tops I found under the age of 25 are FtM.

Woodwork call. Please prove FetLife and my scrappy research wrong; ladies like me, come out.

Today I took May shopping for clothes. Not really full-on, because as adept as I am at unplanned shopping, he is not really the type for retail excursions. I suspect that the most stereotypical ‘girl’ trait I possess is a love of shopping, which I didn’t admit to much when I was younger because it usually made people look at me as though my IQ was leaking out my ears. But it’s true. I’m a bargain-hunter to the bone; yard sales, vintage, crafts, op shops and all. It’s like a game with rules that only I can play. I love it.

Anyway, to bring this a bit back on track, today we looked for a harem slave outfit for him. That is surprisingly difficult, because although I do have a harem kink, I don’t really have the specifics of what that looks like worked out. I know I want gold and white, and if I had my way there’d be forcible tattooing involved. As it stands, we work within the confines of our lives.