Coming Home: Day 17 - being present with that ceremony

I'm home alone and it's late, almost sixteen hours since my orgasm this morning, the one that tore through and up into me and brought me heaving, heavy, against the porcelain, into that cry-laughter that's become the place I live.

After coming, I rushed to work, dove into projects and last-minute crises, then had a workshop to gather and prepare for; the day filled itself, and all through it, even when I was all Alexander-and-the-no-good-very-bad-day there around suppertime, I had this throb, this openness, this place of laughter in me. Something still speaking. Still singing, maybe. Still open-mouthed. Still hungry.

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I asked a friend what happens in her body when she comes -- and where it happens, and how long it persists. Of course the answer varies, depending on the sort of orgasm, depending on the day. What happens in your body when you come? I was thinking, when I asked her, how the orgasms that push through me when I'm using a vibrator are different from the ones my fingers call forth, are different still from the sort of implosion that the water has been bringing me. But in all cases, now, what's true for me is that the sensation fills my whole body -- centers, sure, in cunt and belly and upper thighs and womb and lower back -- but as it coalesces and then erupts, I get to feel it everywhere: head and toes, forearms, shoulders, face, lungs, calves, mouth, throat, and then beyond, too, into that space that my me-ness occupies that exists not exactly within the bounds of my skin.

And then there's this radiating aftershock that lives in me as heat, that opens out slow and persistent, that comes along with me into my day; I both rush to get dressed and ready to go to work, and am moving slow and measured, unhurried, something in me languid and luxuriant. I grin into the morning concrete, the grey-pantsed people, the BART co-travellers. We are all so lucky, I think, to inhabit these bodies, to get to be with them all the time. Sometimes there are small, bright contractions, hard inside or fluttery within the body of my clit. Where do these come from? Something in me is still dancing.

This is entirely different from how I used to feel, back in college, when I masturbated to orgasm -- both before I was out from under my stepfather's control and after (he continued to abuse me until I was 21). My orgasms then -- the ones I had alone; I'm just focusing on those now, though the ones I my stepfather demanded were similar, if more exposed  -- were always vibrator-and-fantasy-centered. I would be under the covers of my small bed, the lights off, the music loud, maybe I'd be half dressed. Maybe it would be afternoon, which was the sickest time of day for me to get off, because it always brought me into the frame of mind of after school, which was when my stepfather was often home and waiting for us.

I want to be able to explain this to you. The thing that I learned how to do, because of my stepfather's actions, was a kind of kinesthetic calisthenics: while trying to come, I could disconnect my actual bodily sensation from the sex that was occurring in my fantasy -- this is not strictly possible, but to the best of my ability, I brought the sensations that happened to or on my body up through me into the bodies of whomever I was fantasizing about, touching none of the rest of me as I did so.

How do our psyches learn/understand how to care for us in these ways?

I wanted as little of me involved in orgasm as possible. When I came, hard and sharp and fast, the orgasm was almost entirely localized in my cunt, in grabby contractions; then there would be the aftershock-y sort of waves, and these spread nausea through me. I got up fast, pulled up my underwear, shoved the vibrator back into sock drawer or bedside table, rid my visual space of all evidence of orgasm, and tried to relinquish from my muscles any sensation of coming. I had a feeling of accomplishment -- I did it -- but no persisting relief, and absolutely no joy. At that time, I felt both compelled to come and repelled by the experience. I hated coming and very much believed that I was supposed to do it.

So what to say about these intervening years, when--through my own need and longing, through the help of lovers, through the shared experience of friends, through therapy and time and so much writing--I have come to a place where orgasm can more fully ride through me, can ricochet open my throat, can pearl hard between my legs and shove me into surprise at its build, can bring me to breathlessness, to sobbing, to delighted laughter, even when I am alone with my hands on myself? What to say about that kind of healing? How to find a word bigger than heal to describe what feels like miracle, this sensation in/of body that I never would have considered possible to imagine? What to say about this wondering that percolates in me know: I wonder if this sensation could get bigger, if I could feel these orgasms more?

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This morning I was urgent, a little insistent, and my body asked me to wait -- we had a couple of steps up today: build then plateau, build again then another steady plane of pleasure, then that sharp uplift. Today, there in the shower with Pandora serenading the steam and me and my hips rocking under the pulsing flow, my head was almost entirely void of fantasy -- just the terror of just being in my own body, with its hungers, and how I got to be present with that ceremony. Twenty minutes, I think, or fewer -- quick, maybe. Just right. What a thing it will be to go back through these posts at the end of the month, to look at the rise and fall of my mood and emotions, what has felt quick and what has felt endless, to trace the cycle of my month of desire.

Be easy with you in this dreamtime. I'll see you again in the morning, should you choose to come. 

Coming Home: Day 16 - getting caught up

Ok-- back home, and I'm getting caught up. Two orgasms in five hours (just hush up if that sounds slow/easy for you -- it's a big deal for this girl here) -- one I got to go to sleep after, one complete with sobs.

This morning, now, I feel full and raw, wide open, stripped, visible, vulnerable -- and just right.

On legs like those of a newborn foal. You know that kind of wet and shaking, the newly borne thing just learning to bear its own weight? That's where I'm living these days.

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Found a wonderful anthology just the other day, called This Art: Poems About Poetry (Michael Wiegers, ed; Copper Canyon Press), which includes this:

By the Rivers

That spring he was fourteen,
sun on the walls, stale air
sweet in Bergen-Belsen for the first time,
he told me he thought of the nurse
who held him when he was small.
He found a corner
where they did not catch him:
rush of the brilliance and the heat
and no one there. He opened his clothes,
hunched over his wasted body,
and made it spill.

*

The poem wants to look forward, not
back, but out there as far as it can see
are ruins: body of Abel body of god body
of smoke. And no recognizable
child to mourn.

So it begins with longing.
Or with fear, that old dog
stinking beside it, scabby and blind.

And all the time the future
is pushing up uncalled for
under the cold ground, or gliding down
like the first snow, wet syllables
that melt and soak up the darkness.

The poem wants to get out of
where it is. But is instructed
to remember. In shameless daylight.
By the rivers of salt.

-Shirley Kaufman

I read this last night on an airplane, one that lifted off from the East Coast after 10pm and carried me forward through the night back toward home. Look at those lines: He opened his clothes, /hunched over his wasted body, / and made it spill. 

At Bergen-Belsen. Bergen-Belsen.

That's not radical self-care. That's something entirely beyond. Maybe just simply and perfectly human.

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This is what I wrote in my notebook, the day I found that book of poems:

I worried last night that I am too obsessed with sex, that I have made it my whole life, that trauma has inflected me this deeply. But then why is that a thing to worry about? People obsess over all kinds of things, whatever they love: why do we have to shove an interest in sex into a box called pathology? I worry what people will think: is this all disgusting? Am I saying too much?

(Too much again -- of course. Too much. What girl isn't too much? What longing? What desire?)


I'm stressed right now about the blog, about my writing and orgasms, feel strange and difficult in my body. Maybe because I'm not writing about everything, just this one thread of my life, the part where I'm trying to/wanting to come every day for a month and write about what that does for me, but not sharing all the other aspects of myself-ing to which this process is tethered and tugging. Still more bifurcation, still more distinctions between real life and pretend/fantasy -- here's maybe this cognitive dissonance: the bifurcations, the separations, don't really hold these days. It's not a fantasy me who wrote these things down and shared them with the world -- it's the real me. My exact real me. All my muscles are tense, something in me doesn't want to let go the armor that has protected me, these splits, these different selves: holding unreleased orgasm, holding the full on feel of release, holding spent screams, holding the possibility of really letting me have me. 


I want to learn new places, read the strange books, feed my words into the world, this promise, this oddity, this chemistry, this compromise, this practice. 

Did I say at the beginning I was getting caught up? That's exactly right -- when my head goes spinning, I get caught up in the panic, the worries, the explanations, the analysis, the I need to figure it all out. That, my friends, is from a lifetime with parents who want you to understand and describe your feelings (but don't always want you to have those feelings), then an adolescence with a man who wants to yank your feelings out by their roots and use them entirely against your emerging, just-budded body. It's easy for me to get locked --especially when I have only my fingers on myself (no other chemistry, no other technology, no loud distracting buzzing, no hot heavy thud of water)--into a cycle of panic: why is this taking so long? When will I ever work right?

This, then, is the practice (how many times will I write this exact phrase this month? Far fewer times than I'll repeat it to myself): come back come back come back to this body right now, and understand that you get to have everything that you want, body, and we get to be perfect in exactly our responses in this (any) moment. This is not a contradiction, even and especially when what I want is to come fast and what my body is doing is lingering for some long minutes in the pleasure of the plateau, the longing, the long slow burn and build.

Today I wept for that practice, for the release, for the wanting more and how I have to/get to keep learning that my body knows its infinite possibility -- and that when I quit trying to force it/us/myself to come/feel/respond in a particular way, so much more joy and release can open up in me. Contract, then release. Then release. Then release.

Thank you, body. Thanks, too, to your bodies, out there. Be easy, and come as you wish. See you tomorrow.

Coming Home: Day 15 - (guest post!) Lighting a candle and keeping it real (Part 1)

Words today from my friend R_. He invites us to consider how we can use masturbation as a way to care for ourselves when we are depressed-- and how, too, that can be so terribly challenging (So much gratitude to you, R_, for these words, this writing, your practice.)

It’s so good to have someone like Jen in the world, isn’t it? Lighting a candle, putting on the music we love, and keeping it real for us. This space we create together invites us to go to places within ourselves that need us as much as we need them. In this comfortable place we can tell each other stories of how it is. And how it is, is not always how we want it to be.

Antonio Machado has a poem that begins to evoke how it is for me:

The wind, one brilliant day,

called to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

“In return for the odor of my jasmine,

I’d like all the odor of your roses.”

“I have no roses;

all the flowers in my garden are dead.”

“Well then, I'll take the withered petals

and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.”

The wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:

“What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?”

I inhabit a male body, and for the last five years I have struggled with masturbation. I am no longer able to find joy in it, and when I do come, I’m often left frustrated, sad, and ashamed. Occasionally, with the help of images and lots of time, I am able to approach my full strength, but I miss the unencumbered luxury of gathering urgency seeking release.

This is how it was for me this morning:

Stepping into the rain of hot water, I slide the curtain closed and feel the familiar desire to have a release before work. With eyes closed and the white noise of water driving against the back of my head, I consider time, desire, and ability…. and then take a generous helping of amber body wash into my hand and coat my penis in its cool viscousness, sliding down and around my scrotum, pulling gently … holding softly … taking comfort in its form and weight. Do I really want to do this? Bowing my forehead against the fiberglass wall, I conjure scenes with bodies while building sacred rhythms. My passion grows slightly, and I fill the palm of my hand, barely. It is not solid enough or strong enough to satisfy my hunger for a visceral experience of virility. I ask myself: Do I continue? Is some release better than none? If I continue, will I find any pleasure? I hopelessly try to relax, let the movie in my head––undulating hips, dark eyes, exposed collar bone––slow down, but under my fingertips I feel the elongating rope of ejaculate build under soft flesh, pushing its way toward the tip. Disheartened, semen drips down into the tub. Part of me vows never to masturbate again.

And where I go with this is pretty far down. Where I go with this is that I won’t be able to please my partner when I need to. Where I go with this is I stifle desire so that I won’t put myself in a position to have to test my ability. Where I go with this is that sometimes when I do feel aroused, I just wish it away. And having gone to these places, why not just close myself to desire? This far down, the garden is bare. I’m all withered petals, dry leaves, and empty fountain.

So what brought me to this place? There was a time several years ago when I was earning very little money and my partner was working extra jobs to handle the expenses. At that time, my ability to provide materially was tightly linked to my identity, and without it, well, I fell apart. Depression shows up differently for everyone, and for me, as part of this depression, I used masturbation to relieve the boredom. I masturbated to feel alive. Months passed, and while my depression eventually lifted, somewhere within the abyss I had lost the ability to fully please myself.

And hello National Masturbation Month! What a gift to have your support, to share this silent (no more) struggle, and perhaps rekindle my relationship with my desires, my sexuality, and myself. So where do I go from here? Seek professional help? More Journaling? Tantric exercises? I know that medication is not the answer for me. Behavior and conditioning probably got me to this place, and so behavior and conditioning can get me out, right? Or am I too naive? 

Is this familiar to you? What have you done to revitalize your garden?

Coming Home: Day 14 - the bifurcations are refusing

Still traveling, still exploring what embodiment means when I'm on the road and allowing new longings and textures and exhausts and sirens and aromas to touch my skin. Still walking my days with almost, with so close, with right there right there right there -- and letting them throb and hum through me continuously.

I'm doing a ton of writing in my notebook these days, deep journaling, the kind of writing that lets me both remember and discover who and where I'm living these days. When I don't have time for this kind of writing (and I haven't been having time for it), I start to feel fragmented, split, utterly untogether -- the writing practice allows me to bring all the pieces to the page of me. (Helps, then, too, in staying present when I'm sliding my fingers into the pages of me.)

I have something older to share today, something that describes the arc of my particular trajectory these seven months or so -- it's a write from a workshop last fall (the prompts were definitions of the words indigenous and occupy):

10.10.2011

I would like this frame back, this skeletal structure, these muscles and tendons, the jackboot padding that constructs itself across my shoulders and up my neck, down inside along neckbone, esophagus, larynx, feathering pins and needles    those iron bars    down into my back, the breadth of my ancestor center shut off and away from history because there's too much construction    the raw gnawing at belly, this wreckage of a shell, I meant the tension I inhabit    I want you off of me.    Uncolonize.    Deoccupy.

This isn't a thing to be made a metaphor of, no need to take the language of the resistance against the white forefathers and apply it like a balm to my skin, it doesn't soothe the iron anyway. What I want is your remove, what I want is your fingers off my beck, what I want is this body back in time and free, what I want is the possibility of safety tomorrow, which would mean I could relax today. It isn't yesterday I'm worries about, is it, shoulderblades? I'm worried about the promises he made for tomorrow, that any day he could be released, that any day he could be at my door, that any day I could be unsaved, proven wrong: oh look, you thought you were free. Fooled you. People say the parole board would have to contact me. People have too much faith in the parole board. Is it that I still trust him more than anything or anyone else, the promises he whispered into ears that couldn't close tight enough, couldn't keep him out, his promise of always, anywhere, find you. Did he say that? How to walk into this life with the tight rope existing within my own skin?

Breathe into now and don't look over your shoulder. You have to choose just one direction in which to point your eyes; commit to it. But I was the girlchild who sat only half-way in her chair at the breakfast table, hair uncombed, jeans dirty, sneakers half-tied, anxious already to be off and running   how to choose only one now, only this moment, how to choose to breathe into that armor that boulders my shoulderblades and makes muscle untouchable? How to tell it: you can let go now. How to believe, after eighteen years, how to believe it's ok to let go now? How to say I want back what I have never had had: serenity in this body, the profound privilege of safety, of getting to sit peaceful in one 's own skin, not preparing already, tightening up into the fact that he could step through prison walls and into my living room. This is that kind of love song, the vigilance of the body for its violator, the thrumming of the broken and left behind for that which wrecked it.

And so now, this month, these days, relinquishing (in steps almost too small for me even to feel) that allegiance to trauma, to his hands and promises, to the ways he shaped the conditions of possibility for my very being. How could it be any wonder that I am living in a state of cognitive dissonance? How could it be any wonder that my lines feel blurry? They are crumbling. These bifurcations are re(-)fusing and I am wobbly in my shoes and I am still walking forward into a future that looks altogether too brand new for me to even believe.

And yes, more orgasms to come. Tomorrow a guest post from a good friend R_, who is tangling with self-love/masturbation as (potentially) radical self care around depression -- hard wrangling, and good and gorgeous writing. I can't wait to share his words with you.


Be easy with you. Come as you can, as you are -- and see you here tomorrow.

Coming Home: Day 13 (and 12!) - mothering our almost

 So, at the wedding of one of my dearest friends in the world ( Kathleen, you're married!) and staying at the lovely home of friends of hers, and sleeping in a room with no door means, 1) so much joy and celebration and late-night/early-morning talking with the other dear friend I share a bed with one night, and 2) orgasms that look like tears one night and unfinishedness the next morning. Sometimes radical self care means letting myself off the hook when I can't come/post on the day when my tour top/friend-of-my-heart is preparing to say her vows--and sometimes it means letting the 'almost there' live in my body all day, so that my skin is tingling and my fingers shake. (I am so grateful for folks out there who are reading, for your wonderful energy and comments! When I'm back to the land of wifi, I promise to reply!) I got to witness the ceremony, the togethering before community, my beloved friend claiming exactly the love and desire she wants, naming it publicly, taking it onto her hands: that, my friends, is inspiration. (also, there's no wireless at the place I'm staying--so I'm offering an iPhone post.) I did get to talk a little with the most amazing Diana Cage, who has a new book out called Mind-Blowing Sex: A Woman's Guide (and around whom I still get a little star-struck and tongue-tied!) -- I told her about this blog, about my project to transform my relationship with my orgasm, and she has promised me a long conversation soon! I can't wait-- and will share here, of course, the things she teaches me. (I mean really: a chance to talk sex and orgasm with Diana Cage. Somebody help me down.) So--more soon (my thumbs are getting tired, and I need these thumbs.) Today, you know, in the US, is Mother's Day. Here's to all the mothers who claim their whole bodies, their desire and longing and joy and wholeness. Here's to the ways that those of us who need to can (and do) remother ourselves, offering tenderness to bodies that haven't always, and certainly not often enough, been tended to with acceptance, kindness, adoration. Here's to your sweet fingers, your ferocious hunger, the way you deliver yourself do well right into the palms of your own hands. Here's to a deeper mothering that can say yes. Here's to owning that yes all the way in our sore and shouting throats. Here's to your good body. Be easy today, be food to you, and come again tomorrow, ok?

Coming Home: Day 11 - smelling my fingers

(bursty this morning)

Oh hi. Good morning. Here's me wobbly and shaky still in an Atlanta cafe for a quick blog post before I move into the work of the day, the play with my tremendous friends, the wedding planning and last-minuteness. Here's a thing I love about being in the south (if I can just make an uninformed generalization): folks here say hello on the street, acknowledge one another's existence -- even the joggers make eye contact and nod.

I suppose it could help to be a just-come giggler, wide open eyes, grinning at everyone.

You know how, sometimes, after you have sex with a girl, you walk around all day smelling your fingers, remembering? That's me this morning -- only the girl I had sex with was just me.

Here's what happened last night: I nestled under the covers, tucked into a nest of pillows surrounding me, I turned over on my belly, lifted my hips, notched my fingers under myself and breathed into exactly the fantasy I wanted, felt the rise begin. I breathed harder, moaned a little, turned my head to the other side -- and fell asleep. Woke up about eight hours later.

Oh.

Perfect.

Sometimes radical self care looks like not forcing it (haven't I said that before? Don't I have to remind myself over and over into this practice?), looks like long dreams, looks like the best way to gentle myself into a long rest.

(The music at this cafe is all 90s all the time and so now I have Annie Lennox flying into me, into my fingers, her birds singing the sweetest melody and me stroking the tired cheeks of the nineteen-year-old me there so many years ago in a cafe of her own, in a window seat, pen in hand, wanting the wings to fly away from exactly where she was, with no idea of where she would get to. No way to even begin to imagine this embodiment -- it would have blown her open with terror and urgency. Mary J Blige is telling me about searching for a real love, and I'm dancing hard with all the years and into this real love that's entered into the hands of my body...)

So, this morning, I sprawled out on the little hotel bed, slid my fingers back onto into over myself, did not pack the lube so I was back and forth between my lips and clit and mouth. I caught into new fantasies and old ones, I let them dovetail, I let myself use whatever caught as it caught. I remembered the slower build under my fingers. This was the first time I've come under my fingers since Hedgebrook (I think -- maybe even earlier than that), and I kept pausing to smell, taste -- just after I bleed my body is sweet, and I wanted to indulge.

(Here I'm about to move into some difficult remembering -- if you want to stay with the sweetness, just reread the previous paragraph a few times, and then go do something else with your morning. It's ok; perfect, actually.)

Here's the truth: for years I hated the smell of my own cunt -- because it evoked for me, exactly and only, my stepfather's face. When I smelled me, I smelled him, and so the very smell of my own fucking body was a trigger to me. Do you know what that's like? Do you know how fucked up that is? (I know some of you do, and sorry could not live harder in my mouth right now.)

I wanted to rid myself of the smell of my cunt so that I could rid myself of him. I didn't want to see my lover's faces after they went down on me, and it could be hard to let them kiss me when they rose back up off my body. Over the years, it got easier for me to smell and taste myself, and I got to the place where it was just once a month, one precise moment when the chemistry of my body was precisely whatever it was the day that trauma fused and twinned his face against the aroma of me, when that trigger first got traced hard like thorns through my neurons -- once a month, I couldn't stand how I smelled, and revulsion would pull me inside out. Just a couple of days a month. All things considered, that wasn't so bad.

This year, since the beginning of the year, I have loved my very aromas every single day. Every single day. When I became aware of this, all I could do was laugh in surprise. What happened? When I was in the shower, the water hot on me, of course, the whole room would infuse with the incense of me -- and at no point, on none of the days, was I seeing his face smeared with the damp horror of what he'd just been doing between my legs. Something had got uncoupled. Something had let loose. Something had come free, and I could delight, every morning, in the different way I smelled and tasted.

I can't tell you what happens, except for time and practice and fucking tenacity, maybe. I can tell you is that I'm grateful. This morning I forgot to say thank you, good morning, until the very end, until the after, until I flipped over onto my belly, panting, having sung my morning song into the quiet hotel air. And I haven't washed my hands enough yet to strip off the smell of me. Yes, this self-staining is an indulgence. And I'll take it as the earned balm and a layer of self-absolution.

Be easy with you today. Come as it's best for you, whatever that looks like, and I'll see you tomorrow.

Coming Home: Day 10 - the disassembly

Today I'm feeling freaked out about this whole project, ready to let it go, let it fly, set it down at the back of the table with all the rest of my unfinished loveliness: that manuscript, that couple of story collections, those poems, all of it. Go read someone else's book. Other people have done this work, they've figured it out, why do I have to do it again?
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I am crying because I want this so badly -- I am scared of all this wanting. I am broken open and I chase my orgasms all over the country of my body; I want to find them and feed them to you but I am so fucking terrified. Like what? Like I could get over him, over it, like finally my body could be mine again, or just for once, like the thick swell of pleasure could only sift through my own fingers like I could deserve this can it -- my chest feels like it will erupt, split apart, fissure and burst with the weight of what I want to hold, to let in, to release
~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~
I haven't come yet today -- it's 9pm in Atlanta, and I am tired and hopeful and sad and split open and grateful and scared.

Today, this morning, early, I tried and tried to come, to let go, to find what would work, and then finally I gave up. I cried on the plane -- I just get so fucking sad because I know my body is capable of different kinds of orgasms (that means: orgasms I don't have to actively drive with my hand/will/vibrator/etc -- orgasms in dreams or under a mouth, say) and what am I so afraid of, what's the lashing that unhooks in my brain and singsongs me somewhere else, takes me away from just what I'm doing to some grocery list or workshop I need to plan for --

or -- and here's the worst part -- my brain just gets so focused on what someone else (let's just imagine there might be a someone else, because 1) this is what I'm sad about today and 2) masturbation happens in all kinds of configurations, not just when we're alone-alone) is doing that I can't concentrate on coming.

That doesn't even make sense. Can you parse that sentence, that idea? My body can, unfortunately.

This morning it was the vibrator for an hour, try to get there, work it hard, numbing me completely. On a day like today, a vibrator on my clit (or my fingers there, or maybe even the water -- or someone else's hands or mouth pressed fast and slick, let's just pretend) is just not enough.

Yes, it's true, sometimes it just doesn't work (for other people, too, Jen: not just you), but today I hate that. Today I want to be better / different / well / healed / fixed / changed / Other. I want to work. I don't want to be broken. I don't want to feel broken. I don't want to be so fucking obsessed about this.
~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~
What would it look like not to be in charge of my orgasm -- if no one was in charge of it? If I let it have its own life? I wallow in the tears for a minute and then want to go dancing at a blues club, want to be dim lights live band smokey wearing a thin dress with a short, loose skirt.  I want to learn this story new.
~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~
Why can't I be a nice normal porno girl with a hair-trigger clit that creams easy like really, just careens into orgasm at just the right moment -- ok, maybe hands get used sometimes but couldn't I come too just with a mouth, rocking against a body. Couldn't I have a little of what those other women have?

This is my grass-is-always-greener moment, my sour grapes my self pity piss green apple bottle swollen cheeked sad survivor girl if I can come when my fucking stepfather has his goddamn mouth on me then why can't I come with easy with my fingers or when someone I actually like and want to have sex with has their fucking mouth on me? Why is this disconnect fair?

Yes, ok, psyche, I honor your protection of ourself -- but can't we turn it off now? Can't we have that probability back, that set theory, those amalga, that venn diagram with me in one circle, my hands in an overlapping circle, the idea (or the reality) of your body in a third circle that overlaps the first two, and in that big curvy center triangle described by the intersection of the three circles/sets = my fucking multiple orgasms.

I wouldn't even bother trying again today if it weren't for this blog -- and so I have mixed feelings about the whole project today. I don't want to be obsessed with my orgasm; I just want it to happen. I don't want to have to go after it. I'd like to be surprised by it -- regularly, I'd like to be surprised that at its eruption. What would that be like?

Today I'm just sad.  Let the sad in. I'm sad about a lifetime of consensual sex that's been pretty damn good, actually, and yet always too with that distance, the orgasm anxiety, the wax paper worry of what about me will I get to come will I get there how frustrated will I get this time -- will I finish up with coming, how long will it take, how far away will I have to go inside my head to get enough distance from the intimacy / danger / terror / longing / this person I adore to be able to actually come? 

What would it look like to rip off that overlay? Actually, I think that's part of the issue now -- or just today: this deepened ability I have now to be present with what's happening to my body means it's hard to escape / dissociate into fantasy, means I have to do the work now of re-associating orgasm with exactly my body's sensations. We haven't done this before, me and this body. We're dancing a new dance now. Some days the steps won't work the way I want them to. We have to practice more. I can sing this metaphor all the way into tomorrow. Here's me heading back to my fingers, because I said 31 orgasms in 31 days and I'll be damned if I give up now.

(be easy with you. come if you want. see you tomorrow.)