Coming Home: Day 25 -- do it because it's good for the world

This morning I am thinking about how we take care of ourselves even at the moments we are sure that we least deserve it, when I know for sure that I am the last person in the world who needs to be giving herself an orgasm because, after all, I've hurt people, I've done awful things, I have so much work to do -- I should be helping to create the space for someone else to feel good in and about themselves, but who am I to believe that that pleasure and ease could be for me?

There are also those times when we are engaged in battle, and it's clear, 100% clear, that sex/sexuality/desire/erotic self care is not at all revolutionary -- is taking energy away from the fight. How can I think about sex or orgasm when I know there are women being beaten in their homes this very minute, when my next door neighbor might be raping his child right now, when there are animals being tortured, when someone is getting deluged with harassment, when people are suffering, hungry, hurting, houseless, harming one another? There were years, when I was working for an anti-domestic violence organization in Maine, that it was difficult to have sex, and for reasons beyond my own trauma struggle-- I couldn't get my head around how I could spend any time thinking about my own pleasure when the world was so fucked up, when women I knew and was working with were in their homes, or having to flee those homes, terrified?

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In the dream, the door was open to the place where I was staying -- an apartment or hotel room? -- and I was afraid it had been broken into. I was afraid someone was after me, or had come for me. Interestingly, every time I've had a dream like this before, my certainty was that it was my stepfather who had come for me; not this time -- it was someone else. I hesitated, felt the rush of oh no, as well as a surge of curiosity. Who's in there? I went ahead on in through the door; I would not be kept out of my own space by fear.

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The truth is that if I don't attend to my own pleasure, to what brings me joy, to what soothes and replenishes me, then it's not possible for me to be of service to anyone or any movement for very long. When I try to just give and give, taking care of others at the expense of my own wellness, I can be assured that burnout is right around the corner.

And wow did I burn out when I was working at those two anti-DV agencies (one in Maine, one here in CA): after leaving those jobs, all I could do for months was sit and look out the window. I was completely drained, felt like a profound failure because I'd been unable to continue in the work, and did not understand how anything could ever change. People were always going to treat each other badly. People were always going to assume that their partners were their property, so they could treat them however they wanted -- right? Nothing was ever going to change.

This mindset was entirely the result of not having a self-care practice. The only thing I've ever done to take care of me, or at least the most consistent practice, is to journal. Now, writing has saved me -- but it also can keep me close in to whatever is troubling me in the moment. It took me years (and I'm still trying to let it all the way in) to allow for other interests and practices: exercise, dancing, playing with pups, gardening, hanging out with friends.

In Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others (which I think every single person should read, no matter what your work is -- all of us are shepherding someone through trauma, ourselves included), Laura van Dernoot Lipsky reminds me that if I don't take care of my own business, I can't be of service to anyone. She writes:

People may come to believe that feeling happy or lighthearted is a betrayal of all the countless humans, creatures and environments that are under siege on this planet. They may act as if the only way they can express solidarity with suffering of any kind is by suffering themselves. Even for many well-intentioned, noble, responsible people the scope of disease, hardship, and pain from the individual to the global level can be overwhelming. P{eople who experience a sense of helplessness may come to believe there is nothing to be done but keep their heads down and hope for the best. 

Somewhere between internalizing an ethic of martyrdom and ignoring ongoing crises lies the balance we must find in order to sustain our work. The more we can attend to this balance, the greater our odds of achieving a sustainable practice of trauma stewardship. (p.16)

This was the mindset I had while working for these agencies - if others are suffering, shouldn't I be suffering, too? Won't that let them know that I really care, I'm really down for the struggle, I'm here?

And further along in the book, she writes:

...we know that if we want to decrease the suffering in our world, we will need to learn a behavior that is fundamentally different from the ones that have caused such pain and destruction. We must open ourselves to the suffering that comes with knowing that there are species we can't bring back from extinction, children we can't free from their abusive homes, climate chang we can't reverse, and wounded veterans we can't immediately heal. We must also open ourselves to the hope that comes with understanding the one thing we can do. We can always be present for our lives, the lives of all other beings, and the life of the planet. Being present is a radical act. It allows us to soften the impact of trauma, interrupt the forces of oppression, and set the stage for healing and transformation. Best of all, our quality of presence is something we can cultivate, moment by moment. It permits us to greet what arises in our lives with our most enlightened selves, thereby allowing us to have the best chance of truly repairing the world. (p.245)

(I'm not kidding; you want to read this book. Go order your copy.)

When I first met the concept of quality of presence in van Dernoot Lipsky's Trauma Stewardship training, I was completely blown away; I felt both deeply sad, and also hopeful. I became aware that the quality of my presence was entirely lacking -- scattered, diffuse. I understood that I believed I didn't deserve to just be present -- wasn't there something else I needed to right now? How can I take time out for presence?

The hopeful part was this: if people are talking about such a thing as quality of presence, maybe it can be changed. Maybe I can learn to do it differently.
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I also became aware of how scared I was of just being present, which brings me back to coming, to being in my body. This year, I am being called to notice how I'm present in my body, and when I come --

So today the orgasm was a little melancholy, layered, joyous, engaged.I felt the way my body tenses slow but sure, how my muscles pull into themselves, tightening toward the center of me, everything getting harder and harder. I noticed my emotions: hopeful, scared, urgent, uncertain, angry, sad, excited.

(Can we just talk about the soundtrack? I am a girl of my age -- I've had music in and around my every step since about the seventh or eighth grade. First, at the beginning of my rise, was this one, Ingrid Michelson's Keep Breathing. Just gorgeous -- How's that for our theme today, oxygenating our quality of presence? And at the end, just as I came: As the Rush Comes -- which, come on.Sometimes Pandora gets it just right.)

As I rose, I was present with how hard it is for so many of us just to be with our bodies, how we have internalized the training of distance, how the safest place, so often, is away from this skin. And so, when I came, I had that rush of laughter, joy, then breathed hard into the almost-tears.

 We do it anyway. We take care of ourselves even though we were trained not to, even though we were called selfish, awful, self- centered, uncaring. We allow ourselves to open back into these gorgeously difficult bodies even through we have learned the ways of pain there. We cultivate our quality of presence with and in our own skin-- and in so doing, we love the world. We open more space for more presence. We offer joy and contractions and waves of pleasure into what those in power would have us only meet with struggle, rage, loss, lack.

Keep practicing that place of gentleness with you; that's the only way forward. Come just as you wish. See you tomorrow.

Coming Home: Day 24 - all open-mouthed hunger

In my dream, I am both intensely hungry and eruptive, bursting out of my very skin. I can't remember much of it at all, just the feeling, just the sense that I am consuming everything and releasing, pushing out, emerging.

In this month, this year so far, I have met the layers and depths and nuances of my hunger -- and it scares the shit out of me. We're not supposed to admit that we're as hungry as we are: for food, yes, and for desire, for success, adventure, family, love, creative expression, sex, sensation, books, words, color, sound, texture, travel, people, bodies, skin, poetry, flame, performance, space, freedom -- it's all open-mouthed hunger here, which is not necessarily a safe/protected space from which to meet the world. Yet, here's this May-me, walking with my tongue hanging out, wanting to lick everything.

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I've missed my morning come-then-blog practice, so I'm trying it again today: flew out of bed to the computer, then am going to shower before I take Sophie out. I want to be with you in the morning.

The orgasm comes a little harder today, hard in all the ways, because my body/psyche doesn't want any fantasy between me and the sensation, just wants to come to exactly that experience, no distractions. I don't yet have words for what's scary about that -- just know that I have to stop a lot, overwhelmed, panting, reassuring the self inside that's scared of just being here. Then I start talking to myself/the maybeness that's moving against me: don't stop, that's it, god yes, just there. I practice. Then two of my favorite songs in a row come on the pandora station, and so I am not distracted even by new music. It's this line playing while I come: happiness hit her like a bullet in the back. Yes. It's like that sometimes, isn't it?

Speaking of hunger -- that song contains this line as well: And I never wanted anything from you -- except everything, and what was left after that, too.

(right?)

(speaking of dog days -- now the puppy needs to go out)
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It's not at all surprising to me that I have gotten sick just now: two days in a row, I have made powerful connections with women who are inviting me to own my hunger around profession & avocation (this in addition to the hungers I'm meeting and owning here, through this blogging, through my morning/daily masturbation practice) -- and I left each those meetings feeling like a cloud of angry bees was swarming just under my skin, having awakened the censors/editors/sef-protective armoring that wants me to leave well enough alone, to be satisfied with my life being pretty good. Pretty good is damn good when you're coming from torture and rape, right? Do you really need to go for more than that? Why invite loss, disappointment, failure, embarrassment?

Midwestern girls, don't we learn to be satiated? Be quiet? Don't we learn that we're meant to take whatever comes to us with a goddamn smile on our faces, and not ask for seconds?

In the dive deep group (the manuscript/special projects group that I run through writing ourselves whole), we talk about how hungry we are for our own goddamn words, and then we live with the shame of that -- we, women, we're not supposed to want so much. Even we evolved feminist/post-feminist/post-modern women, we women who take everything in our hands like salt, we are still so indoctrinated -- we have not escaped that training to be good girls: and good girls are not hungry.

What will happen if we are hungry? What's the message? That we'll be disappointed? That we'll be sluts, and thereby outside of polite society? That we'll deserve whatever we get? She said she was hungry, officer -- so, you know, I just thought that was an open invitation.


What if we get to be both ravenous and in control, in choice, deciding entirely what comes into our mouths?
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This is not the blog of a good girl -- but releasing that good girl is hard damn work. So I eroticize her. I let her live in bottom space, I let her climb into my fantasy life. She can to excel there; it doesn't serve my whole self if she's allowed to excel at being in charge of my life.

That good girl makes a good bottom: she likes to do what you tell her to, wants to be the very best one at following the rules, and she really likes to know that you think she's doing well. It makes her just want to serve you more.

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Use everything -- that's what all the writing books say, and that's what we are learning/reminding ourselves through this daily orgasm practice (and I don't mean the royal we there, I mean all the women I know who are engaged in an orgasm-a-day during this National Masturbation Month): even the trauma memory, even the 'bad' fantasies, even the loss, even the numbness and dissociation: it can all be a part of self-care, it can all be retrained to serve this now-self, it can all be acceptable until I decide to release, until I'm ready to let go.

Off into the world now, mouth open. Holding this hunger in the palms of my hands. I get to feed it to you; I get to be fed. How's that for radical self care, transformative healing?

Be so good to your hungry self today. Come exactly as you are. See you tomorrow.

Coming Home: Day 23 -- dissociating (to) orgasm

Today I have the sick that was percolating in me yesterday -- and somehow, in spite of the fact that I felt physically worse when I woke up today than I did yesterday, I felt like coming this morning. I dedicated my orgasm to wellness -- let's hope it takes.


(I got that idea of dedicating orgasms from our hero Annie Sprinkle, who does all number of fabulousness around orgasms and wellness and world health.) 


Anyway, right now it's later, I've got my tissues, my stuffy nose, my tea and saltines, and am still going to blog about orgasms. Let's hear it for the glamorously sexy life of a sex blogger.


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This morning, as I settled in under the water, I was thinking about dissociation and masturbation (how's that for meta?) -- the truth is, I don't always fantasize about sex when I'm masturbating; in fact, when I first get started, I think about almost anything but sex: plans for the day, how sweet it was to play w Sophie out in the park, what I new to add to the shopping list, what I'm going to write here. After learning to fully dissociate while also experiencing extreme clitoral stimulation (as with a vibrator), I know how to both feel the pound of the water against me and keep it at a distance -- it's quite possible for me to have a vibrator on my clit for an hour or more and not be any closer to actually coming than when I started, if I don't really pay attention. I have to focus, as with a kind of meditation, if I want to be in the rise to orgasm.

Did you ever hear that joke with the punch line, 'Beige. I think I'll paint the ceiling beige.' In my memory, it's a blonde getting fucked who doesn't know enough to pay attention to what's happening to her. I went and looked it up -- it's actually a three part joke: what's the difference between having sex with a prostitute, your mistress, and your wife? The prostitute asks you, "Aren't you done yet?" Your mistress asks you, "Oh, honey, can't we do it again?" and your wife says, "Beige -- I think I'll paint the ceiling beige."


Now, I think I heard that joke back in college. The only bit that persisted for me was the punchline, because it sounded exactly like something I might think during sex -- not because I wasn't interested in the person I was having sex with, not because I wasn't turned on or didn't want to be there, but because it was just so easy to float away, and it was hard work having to be so present all the time. Sex, for me, is an active clause -- even sex by myself. 


It's somewhat embarrassing to find myself thinking, "Beige..." when I have my hands on my own clit, and I'll admit that I start wondering about my own technique, but the truth is that it's just trauma aftermath, and I give myself a break. 


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I have two orgasm stories to tell you, related to this business of dissociation & focusing in:

1) This morning, I laughed at myself when I found that I was planning out a blog about dissociation while I was trying to come for that same blog. Just too many layers of recursivity there. So I took a breath, brought my awareness back in to my body, and had that thought about dedicating my orgasm to my wellness, to the wellness of us all. Then, I'll tell you, I came pretty fast, in spite of my body aches and the fact that it was a bit hard to breathe. I'm still on these exposure/exhibitionism fantasies, which are working.


2) One night at Hedgebrook, I found my head wandering when I was well into masturbating, and getting toward that place in my rise when I'm going to actually pitch over into coming. I kept the vibrator on me, moving it just slightly, while I began to imagine (totally unintentionally) my new apartment (which I hadn't moved into yet): I could see the cozy living room, darkness from the bedroom and office and hallway; there was a pot of soup simmering on the stove, and the windows were steaming -- outside it was dark, stormy, and the sounds of rain pounded all around. I saw my pup, curled up on a pillow in the living room, sleeping and comfortable and relaxed. And then I saw myself, in the bedroom, on top of the covers, masturbating -- Outside of the fantasy, in my little double bed in the cabin at Hedgebrook, I had this thought: We're going to be all right. It's going to be ok. And then I came hard, crying and laughing at the same time, to an image of myself safe and good in a new life.

That is (yes, here I go, spelling it out), sometimes we can use exactly the skills that were meant to take us away from sex to bring us in, by the back door if need be. We use it all.

Frankly, I consider that latter orgasm to be profound visioning work.

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I'm about to settle into an evening with Law and Order and some soup, hopefully an early-to-bed. Sometimes radical self care looks like an orgasm for the sick girl; sometimes masturbation looks like curling up with a blanket and Emergen-C. I'm grateful for this space, for you there with your eyes, for the space to push into these layers around self-love and longing.

See you tomorrow. Take your vitamins, ok? Come just as you are.

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 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.

Day 1: May 1 - striking bone

(day 1, orgasm 1 -- who's keeping count?)

 I just had an excellent little half-hour of sweaty sex, tumbly and moaning under my covers. And I was all alone. This is a bone-deep bedrock of my sexuality, a place of radical self care, and I'm claiming it for all to hear.

 I woke up at 6, the light was coming up outside the window, I rolled over in this new bed in my new apartment in this newly reframed life, put on a favorite podcast (we love whodat), nestled into the nest I make of all my pillows, and grabbed for my good (good vibes, thankyouverymuch) g-spot vibrator (which I have maybe never actually used on my g-spot) (and which is purple like everything else in my bedroom, because I am trying to have the gayest bedroom in Oakland these days), and said, Good morning, body, Thank you. Here we go.

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 In one of my favorite books about writing, Elizabeth Benedict says:

As sexual activities go, in literature as in life, masturbation has its limitations. And although we may agree, at least sotto voce, that it is the primary sexual activity of mankind, there is no getting around the fact that you usually do it when you don't have any better offers. When you are alone (read: lonely; read: abandoned) or when you feel you might as well be. the plain truth is that it doesn't do anything to help your social life. Alas, it is often a reminder that you don't have one or that there's something missing from the one you have. (The Joy of Writing Sex, pp 189)

I think it goes without saying that I could not disagree more, and I'm here, with this blog project, to come out as a masturbate-a-fan, as a cheerleader for self pleasuring. I want us to undo this terrible, damaging narrative: that masturbation indicates, by virtue of its very happening, a failure, on the part of the masturbator, to get some better offers, to have any sort of social life to speak of. When we capitulate to this narrative, we do a violence to ourselves, and we relinquish the pleasure and knowledge we receive whenever we lay our hands on our own bodies and deliver delight.

For folks who have survived trauma (and when it comes to erotic wellness, there are so few of us in the US or other parts of the world who make it through with our psyches unscathed), masturbation is a way to learn the true contours of what someone else has turned into a battleground; it's a way to bring life back to a deathscape, a way to retrace, with kindness or fear, the very scene of the crime. It's a way to learn what kind of touch we like, and how we like it. It's a way even, as in my case, to take back the exact touches, imaginings and convulsings that were forced upon me (I mean take the way my stepfather trained my hands to move on my own body and bring the orgasm he required before he would stop harming me for that morning/afternoon/evening/phone call) and let them, over almost twenty years now, blossom into new meaning and new possibility.

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 My body took a little bit to wake up this morning, my head took awhile to settle into what we were meant to be focusing on: not how late this masturbation was beginning (how could I possibly imagine to put masturbation on a schedule?), not this blog and how I wanted to describe everything to you, not what all else needed to happen today/this week/this weekend/this month... come back down, I'd say to my racing brain; be right here right here right here, and I'd feel around with the tip of the vibrator, pushing against clit, inside just swelling lips, yes, I'm telling you this, and what I mean to say is that slowly I settled into what was actually happening: me loving my own body to orgasm first thing on a Tuesday morning, letting all my muscles tense and loosen, letting the moans escape from my own lips, imagining you letting me wake you with my lips between your legs, giving myself a little fantasy to jump and sing around the sensations between my legs.

I did it the old way this morning: under the covers (pulled up to my chest), with a vibrator and the music loud around me. This was the way I came for years, the music loud to (somehow, I imagined) mask the vibrations, and I could escape all the way into fantasy, I could move hard into the imagining of some faceless woman getting fucked by any number of faceless guys, I didn't really have to be part of the equation at all. You understand, right? This was about survival -- this was about being able to give myself the small thread of pleasure/trauma re-enactment of orgasm; for years and years it was always both: pleasure and then the nausea that followed immediately in orgasm's wake.

This morning I wanted to do everything while I was masturbating: I wanted to be dancing (the music doesn't help with that), I wanted to be writing down exactly all that was happening, I wanted to forget everything and just fall into sensation. I took deep breaths, shoved a little into that fantasy--I nudged between fantasy and the exactness of my experience: these days, my orgasm doesn't come so easy if I try to ignore what I'm doing, if I think I'm going to disappear into fantasy. These days, I'm actually having fantasies that I appear in, that people I adore appear in, that are based in my known and consensual reality, which is a Brand New Thing. These days, my body wants me aware, only wants to come when I am feeling it, when I am in my body.


When I am in my body. Do I have to explain what a big deal this is? That's precisely the why of this project. I'll spend the next month explaining what a big deal this is.

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This blog project is not going to be a place of simple, unqualified celebration, because I understand that masturbation can be used to damaging effect as well, have spent years when I only felt like shit after I got myself off, used fantasies that made me feel like a monster after I came -- and understand, too, that sometimes even the best orgasm leaves us wanting something more. Loving ourselves now can't change what happened before. But it can change the landscape now, it can alter our every day. This morning, a couple hours now after coming, I still feel a little throbby, still feel my shoulder and back muscles relaxed, still swell inside with that release of pleasure. The morning orgasm alters how I enter into my day.

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I got sweaty under the sheets and comforter this morning, and filled my empty apartment with my own moans. The puppy woke up and tried to get my attention at about 6:30; this is the problem with coming in bed instead of the shower -- not being a fan of baths, she tends not to interrupt me in there, no matter how much noise I'm making.

This morning, after I came, I did what I always do these days: I laughed, giggly and low, delighted. I felt how turned on I was, how I could easily have continued, maybe carried myself on and through to another orgasm -- I don't even feel around anymore for the nausea, for that old horror, for the place in me that carried my stepfather's smile and scent on the contractions my cunt took while coming.

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I often stop touching myself (alone) when I am in a long-term relationship, and then I find some part of my sexual self has shut down, begins to disassemble, because I have turned away from what has been a fundamental part of both my healing and my sexuality: getting myself off is one of the most consistent self-care practices I've actually been able to engage in over these years of trauma aftermath. But I buy into the narrative that Benedict articulates above: someone else is supposed to be the one who gives me orgasms, and if I can't let them bring me off, there's something wrong with me. If I give myself orgasms, I'm taking something away from my partners, I think; so I stop. And then I get angry and disappointed, because I'm missing that part of my sex. And so I start in with the furtive orgasms, spreading out on the floor of the bathroom, on the dirty bathmat, or in the bathroom at work (you may sense a theme at work here) -- trying to come fast (a feat), keeping quiet (not difficult until recently), coming into a place of both joy and guilt, because why? No one else is supposed to know that I'm stealing this orgasm from my lovers' fingers. Please know that no lover has ever communicated this to me; it's my own internalization of society's beliefs about coming home into our own bodies, coming into our own hands or vibrators or shower heads or pillows or stuffed animals or jeans' seams or wherever/however else we come.

We get to know our own bodies. We get to hold our own orgasms between our teeth, and love them.

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This is the challenge I've set for myself this months: thirty days, thirty (at least!) orgasms, thirty maturation/orgasm-centric blog posts. It's National Masturbation Month: you can come home into your own hands, too! Please share your orgasm and masturbation stories with us -- we get so much permission for our own particularities when we learn about one another's practices and experiences; I mean, it becomes more ok that I come in the ways I come when I learn that other people come in all different ways, too! And if you enter into your own daily-orgasm practice for this month, will you post here now and again, letting us know how it's going, what effect it's having on your life?

Be easy with you and your body. Thanks for reading -- come again tomorrow!