Coming Home: Day 25 - one more for the road

Who can get enough?
I've got one more for this hungry Friday...

A gorgeous poem posted today by my friend R_, in honor of National Masturbation Month ...

Listening to Your Hunger

 From the other side of the door
I hear your breath escape in deep
irregular bursts followed by
sharp instantaneous inhales
and the occasional moan.

I know you are trying to be quiet
and have Enigma in the headphones
with your eyes shut tight, imagining

(go go go read the rest)

How are you listening/honoring your hunger? Take it out for this long weekend (or for whatever moments you can spare, if you don't have a long break) and let it stretch its wings...

Come again soon...

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 19 - using all of it

[burst into fire]

Once again it's the end of the day before I can blog -- it's a workshop Saturday, and so after a morning orgasm (big and upending -- more about that in a minute), it's rush to eat, get Sophie to her playdate and get back to set up for the writing. After an workshop filled with excellent words and gorgeous community, I went with a friend to another friend's and we made incredible food and played music and with kids and were generally California and fabulous and laughed and maybe cried a little inside and out and got to just be in these lives of ours. Who gets this?

These are my questions today (just two of very many more, actually): what does it mean to get to have orgasm be a routine part of my day? (Today's was not routine, but still.) And: what does it mean to have writing and workshops just be a regular part of how I spend my time? (That is, not set apart, not special, not anxety-provoking -- just... my real life.)

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 I want to give you this paragraph from The Chronology of Water, a memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch. I want, actually, to give you the whole book. Please go find this book and read it. This is a book about trauma and recovery, which is the most horrifyingly reductive thing I could say about it. It's a true story about the ways we get damaged, how we damage others in our attempts to heal and just fucking survive, it's a story about loss and wanting, the thick desire to keep living even amid the coping mechanisms that just lead us around by death, it's about a true and messy kind of resurrection. I was going to loan my copy to everyone I know, but now I can't let it out of my hands, so I just want you to go buy it, please, so that we can talk about it.

I'm just going to give you this paragraph about the narrator masturbating after she has just stood all the way up to a father who has been mean, controlling, abusive, and devastating for much of her childhood -- but I can't give you the whole paragraph, and so you won't get everything it means for her to take her hands to herself in this moment. In this chapter, she is taking down the suitcase that used to be her father's; she's going to use it to pack the things she's taking with her to college, a school he didn't want her to go to. He catches her in the garage, where she is pulling down the suitcase, and begins to scream at her about how selfish and shitty it is that she's leaving. Yuknavitch writes this, about that:

My sister and I, we were selfish. We wanted selves. There was no rage or love that could stop us. That's what opened my mouth.
Fuck
You.
Motherfucker.
(pp. 50-51)

Then there's a bit more confrontation -- I don't want to give it all to you now, because I want you to find and read this book. But here's what happens, after she gets through it:

I carried the suitcase to my bedroom. I went in. I closed the door behind me. I took off my clothes. My skin smelled like chlorine and sweat. Summer heat snuck through the screen of my window. I put my head down on my pillow. I waited. I heard a car go by. I heard a dog bark. I could hear a shiver of wind in the shrubs outside my window. And Cicadas. And frogs. I waited and waited. And then I didn't I put my hand between my legs. I parted my lips. The wet slid my fingers around and around and fast and hard. I closed my eyes. I thought about Sienna Torres shoving her fingers up my wide open cunt, as open as a mouth screaming motherfucker. I came so hard it shot out of me. I didn't know until that night a girl body could do that. Shoot cum. (pp. 51)

Do I have to tell you how hard I fell into this book after reading this paragraph? There, this character, this young woman, this girl claiming all of her prowess and fear right under her fingers right there in the threat that was the aftermath of that argument.

Go get this book from the library, from the bookstore, from your friend who has a copy. Read it read it read it. Keep your hands on your body while you do. Keep your hands on your pen.
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Here part of what was not routine about today's orgasm -- I came hard and strong under the water, in the tub, fully immersed in the fantasy of being watched, being observed; I let myself fully into that desire, did not concern myself with the well-being of this watcher, did not even perform much as I thought about her/them/you catching a glimpse / listening / looking in on me. Shar Rednour writes, in the Femme's Guide to the Universe, about allowing oneself to be an OoD (Object of Desire), to be objectified in all the right ways (she writes about letting ourselves have OoDs, too, and getting to consensually objectify our lovers sometimes as well!), and this morning, this is what I was imagining: I'm in here, making all this noise, taking care of myself so well, and the object of my affection is out there, on the other side of the curtain just listening, or able to see me but not able to touch -- and the fact that she's getting so turned on watching/listening to me turned me on further, which, you see, just becomes the best feedback loop ever.

It was a little scary to give myself over all the way into this fantasy, feels selfish, almost mean. And what happened, then, was that I used those feelings, too. Look at how fucking selfish she is, how mean she's being. Doesn't that make you hotter? Use it all. Implosion. I'm telling you.

This evening I'm tired, want quiet, don't want to write about orgasms; more, I want to be having them, and then drifting off to sleep. I'm going to take some tea and read instead, maybe go back into my re-reading of The Chronology of Water.  More tomorrow. There are still thirteen more days of this marathon.



Did you like how you were good to you today? Come tomorrow, as you want. See you then.

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
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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.
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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.
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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.)

Coming Home: Day 9 - letting what works work

Thanks so much to Dick Schmidt for this fantastic photo (and to Jan Haag, who passed it on to me!) -- Dick shot it on Maui last year, at a cafe/shop called Na Kani O Hula.

The sign reads: Haven't had an orgasm today? Come on in... we can help!

Kind of a perfect fit, don't you agree? 

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I have to tell you, this masturbate-a-blog / 31 orgasms/things-that-feel-good-to-your-body in 31 days idea is taking off. How are you celebrating National Masturbation Month? Is it getting any easier to say, Yes, I masturbate -- even just to yourself? What are you noticing in you body, your spirit, your interaction with others, as you continue giving your body deep love / attention / joy every day?
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Do you wish we had a better word than 'masturbate' to describe this act? I, myself, wish there were a word that weren't derived from the Latin for defile or to be stunned.


What about autoagape (which works both in translation and metaphorically -- deep self love and also in a state of wonder). Autoeros?

Or, oh, here's this:

The Greek word enkrateia, which means "possessing power, strong, having mastery or possession of, continent, self-controlled" (Kenneth S. Wuest, Word Studies in the Greek New Testament, "Galatians," p. 160). Vincent's Word Studies of the New Testament adds that it means "holding in hand the passions and desires"

Holding in the hand the passions and desires. enkrateia. And let's face it -- self-control and self-stimulation are not even remotely mutually exclusive. Yes, this is a Biblical term that has as its understood interpretation something entirely opposite of masturbate -- it means temperance, continence.

But why is self-love considered intemperate? (These are the auto-erotic questions for the morning; it's a philosophizing kind of day.)

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I notice how I've quit, for the moment, worrying about coming in different ways. Just for now -- after reading stories by, chatting with and listening to the words of friends / colleagues / inspiring others who have claimed exactly how they like to come, with no apology or equivocation -- I'm entirely ok with coming how it feels best to me right now, and that's in the goddamn shower.

This morning, all through my morning pages, through the dog walk and playing ball in the sun, through my breakfast prep and puppy breakfast prep, my body was talking to me. I could hear my labia, those nerves, swelling, singing a morning song, urging me on.  

Please, they were saying. Isn't it our turn yet? 

I hushed them. Shush. Just wait a second. Dang it, I have other things to do.

But they did not go quiet.There was a constant hum between my legs, like something just slightly electrified.

Then it was their turn. I nestled us down (can one nestle into porcelain?) under the water and started my fantasy-surfing, looking for what would click.

Sometimes I explicitly work to fantasize about acts that I want to associate orgasm with -- I mean, I think about how I want to be able to come in real life (fascinating, no? am I not in my real life when I'm on my back with my hands between my legs? So deeply internalized is that sense of masturbation vs real sex. ) -- I mean, how I want to be able to come with a partner -- I have this idea that if I come while I'm thinking about whatever that thing is (oral sex, getting taken by a couple of hot dykes, just to pull two completely random ideas out of the air), my body will associate orgasm with those acts, and then it'll be easier for me to come while I'm doing those things with a partner. (As soon as a couple of dykes want to help me see if my idea is effective, I'll let you know.)

It may very well be that I think too much about all this, and that it's much better (better? Do we even need that word here?) just to let my body feel what she's/we're feeling, wherever we are, and to just go with that in the moment.

Anyway -- this morning I tried to do some of that applied-fantasy work, and then I fell onto something completely different, something having to do with me acting on another's body, rather than someone else taking me, and I came fast and hard as soon as that fantasy clicked into place. And then I was giggling at myself, at how I try to control even my damn fantasies, at how difficult and how delightful it can be to just let go into what works in the moment.

Still tingling here, and grateful -- and with fewer cramps: still a bonus.

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Tomorrow I'm off for nearly a week out of town; I'm excited to see how I can work out the daily orgasms/blog posts during the trip. Posts might come later in the day,but I'll get 'em (and me) up!   

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

Coming Home: Day 8 - romantically exhibitionistic

It was romantic today. This morning I'm in love with you, with all of you, with how gentle you are with yourself, with the showerhead, with this body this practice all this cracking open.

I come hard, feeling nearly torn open I'm pulled so deep inside out. After, cannot move for several minutes, just lie there, prone and boneless, panting.

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Today was to ease the cramps, my period having come on I think when I was on stage on Sunday night. The cramps abate for a bit but then return with a vengeance on BART, despite the ibuprofen. I breathe deep, grin at the boys sitting on their scooter in the bike part of the train, little, 2 or 3, adoring each other, brothers, maybe twins. The other day on the train I saw a little girl, long hair a little stringy, big glasses, clothes almost don't fit, and there was my 8 yr old sister in front of me, there was me almost crying 30 years later.

History is all over me, joy, small ones, the offerings, the forgiveness, how even the small parts inside of me are handing me back the old longings and the parts of adulthood they had to carry -- they are handing the grown pieces up to me and saying, here, this is yours right? Can you take this now, so that we can rest? And finally, I can take it from them.
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I'm disassembling, not taking care of much except the workshops and this blog project (which means, of course, my body-- imagine that. Putting the body first, even before writing. When does that happen?) This morning the fantasies were faint and flitty. I jumped from one to the next to the next --do you do this? I feel myself starting to build, to get Close, and then I want to be at he right and hottest part of whatever story I'm in tje middle of when I actually come--so I slow myself down, because god forbid I rush the fantasy; that breaks all the suspension of disbelief. (Actually, given this fact, maybe I am still putting the story ahead of my body.)

I'm writing this into a note on my phone while waiting for a MUNI train at Embarcadero station. Everything gets public, all the have-tos about writing are broken: do it where you can. That's what I've come to.

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Yes, of course this is exhibitionistic--did I mention that? Let's not pretend this project is entirely altruistic. I imagined you listening to me this morning, maybe recording myself so that I can listen, too -- what do I sound like? The deepening and shift, the build, where I giggle, where I remember to say thank you and good morning body--where I finally start asking for help. I imagine the listeners, the watchers.

Claim this part, too. In Carol Queen's fabulous book Exhibitionism for the shy, she encourages us to practice our showing off just for ourselves, first, to get comfortable (and get turned on!) by the sounds we make when we are loving ourselves -- not just the oohs and aahs and moans and yes and please and oh god don't stop that (how very dirty it sounds to say that when I'm alone!); Carol writes, about a lover with from whom she learned a great deal about how hot it could be to watch and be watched:

Natalie's sexual pleasure with me depended on our  being able to communicate. For my part, her insistence that I openup and tlel her the truth about my desires and responses served as proof that she really wanted me. It was healing as well as hot that my lover insisted on good sex. [...]  One profoundly useful reason to get comfortable with explicit sex talk has to do with communication. After I had comfortable mastered 'verbal intercourse' and we were on fairly equal footing guiding each other in pleasure, [Natalie and I] began to tell each other about some of our fantasies.

I've found it can be damn hot to tell someone else what I want, or what I'm fantasizing about while I'm getting myself off -- whether I'm imagining doing this or actually having them in the room (or on the phone), listening -- there are all these layers of eroticism in the practice: hearing my own voice saying the words that have lived only in my head for however many years, the risk of offering this vulnerability to someone else, the fact that they're getting turned on by my imagining, what I'm doing to my body while I offer these thoughts/desires to them... it all forms a tremendously hot feedback loop, until I finally have to stop attempting to speak in coherent sentences.

Ten years ago, and certainly further back than that, I never would have imagined being able to claim this part of my desire -- I was mostly ashamed of my fantasies, and frankly needed that shame in order to be able to come. Getting to this side, where I want to slide it all under your door so that you can hold it with me -- it's fascinating and delightful and a profound surprise. I just keep riding it all. Let's see what happens next.

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

Coming Home: Day 7 - what if I stopped apologizing to/for myself?

2.26.12 (dd)

What are the words that are falling away: the slick shame of apology, I mean apologizing for what lives inside my heart. Shame. Shame. This is the thing I want to give up for Lent, the hollow hoarding of misery just to wear it like a fur coat on my tongue, just so that I cannot fully enunciate, just so I can’t quite speak. Give me this, mother. Hold out your two choir hands and let me drop there this years-long bath of shame, this unguent tenacity, this bilge of broken bones, this dishonest levelour, this underskin. I have been wearing shame like it was my own name for so many years that I am not quite sure who to be without it, am altogether too naked, feel uncloaked even if what I really mean is washed clean. Clean has not been my name; I’m the girl who climbed into dirty and made a home, swept out one corner and brought in my books and a blanket. This is what I want to tell you – shame has been the armor, sure, wet and creaky though it was, wholly eroticized, consecrated, entangled with my every vein. I thought it was my own heartbeat – but I was wrong, wasn’t I? What does it mean, now, to be without that slick skin?

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It's mid morning and today's orgasm came pretty quick and hard; last night was a sleepy buzzing, I think I may very well have dozed through my actual coming I was so goddamn tired. But there I was in my nest, all sparkly in the aftermath of the Femmes Go Dirty South event, ricocheted through with all of those women, their voices, the articulated and claimed desire, the saying precisely what we want from our bodies, from our lovers, from our communities -- asking questions, naming truths, fucking shit up. Virgie read a piece with so much clarity about how she comes (from an instruction manual for new lovers, phenomenal) that I almost wanted to cry: yes yes yes. Look at her not apologizing at all: doing the opposite, in fact.

Where has it come from, this sense that I have to apologize for how I come, how I like to come, that my orgasms are less than because they happen mostly under my own fingers or vibrator (or--yes, can I say it over and over again -- in the shower)? Does it matter at this point that I've spent years basically apologizing for being a survivor -- look, I'm sorry that I'm broken in this way. I still really like sex, though, and if you can just help me come now and then, if you can just put up with how I come until I'm fixed / whole / healed  and able to come different / hotter / better / more normally, then we'll be all right.

But I do come normally. I want to come in other ways, too, sure -- but these ways that I get to orgasm are normal. What would happen if I stopped obsessing about coming different and just let that be?

I'm speaking to the part in me that still feels broken, feels the direct link between the way that I can come the most easiluy/consistently when I'm with a lover and the fact that I first learned how to come in this particular way when my stepfather was raping me. How do you hold that link? How do you let it go? How do you fully claim a part of your sexuality that came to you through rape?

What if I stopped apologizing inside me, stopped saying: sorry, body, that we came at all during those years that we learned this skill, that we took this pleasure from him even as he tried to kill everything else in us -- what if I stopped demanding that the teenage girl inside me apologize for what she did to stay alive? 

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

I want something hotter, sexier, cuter today -- but this shit isn't cute today. I was worked up this morning, got in the shower and was barely wetted down before I was on my back in the tub. Ready. Please. I dropped hard into a fantasy about actually getting to make use of one of those bathrooms at the Center for Sex and Culture last night -- maybe we were on break, maybe people were starting to settle back into their seats and it was starting to get quiet and you wanted me to be loud when I came, you wanted me to let them all know where I was and what I was doing.

And so I did.

I thought about how much I like to be in that place just before coming, when everything in me is swollen and sensitive and close, when I am so close. I can live in "so close" for hours, ride it, make myself crazy. Then there was that acknowledging whisper in me: yes, we're going over the edge -- and I grinned, remembered to say thank you to my goddamn body, kept the water spray exactly where it was, imagined everyone in that place last night being able to hear me as I yelped and shouted and begged and Yes!ed.

Oh, that was hot, my friends. I'm still a little wobbly.

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This is all there is today: too much to do, more I want to say. Last night I got to meet Shiloh McCabe (of The Sex Positive Photo Project) who, last year, spent the month of may documenting the images and stories of folks who masturbate -- it's devastatingly hot! I can't wait to read all the stories.

I'm grateful to all of the women I got to read with last night, everyone in the audience, all the folks who name the truth about their desire and share that with others -- with lovers, with friends, with strangers. I can't tell you how much gets freed in me every time I hear another story that normalizes the way I come and all the different ways that we come. I need those stories. I need to share mine with you.


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

Coming Home: Day 4 - particularly blessed

 A poem for today, to begin with.

(Thanks to my dear friend, the divine Miss M, who sent this one to me today just at the exact moment I was about to start hunting for it... :)







'This is for every man who licks'

This is for every man who licks
his shoulder during solitary sex,
rubs his beard against the stripey
deltoid muscle or bites himself hard.

This is for the woman who at the body's
buffet touches her breasts one at a
time then reaches for the place
she has made as clean as Mother's kitchen.

Masturbation should be as exciting as any
heavy date: have a drink first, lay out
some poppers, open that favorite book
to the most shameful passage because
without blessed shame nothing is
as much fun.

And please don't jump up afterwards
and rush for the washcloth like all
the relatives were on the porch
knocking, their hands hot from
casseroles and a cake with God's
name on it.

Rather lie there, catch your breath,
turn to yourself and kiss all the nimble
fingers, especially the one that has
been you-know-where, kiss the palms
with their mortal etchings and finally
kiss the backs of each hand as if
the Pope had just said that you are
particularly blessed. 

 - Ron Koertge

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

Today, I did, in fact, jump up afterwards and rushed not for the washcloth but for the towel -- not out of shame but because I was about to be late to meet my friend for coffee. Could I explain to her about my shaking hands, the flush across my cheeks, the grin that lives in my belly these days? (Turns out I could, but that came later, after squatting down on BART to scrawl in my notebook, to write out a draft of this post, after rushing down Market St with the words (just the words, mind you) still staining my fingers.)

This morning flowed like most of my mornings have for the better part of this year: 

• wake before the light
• make tea and write my morning pages
• take Sophie out for her walk, then prepare both her breakfast and my meals for the day
• get in the shower for the daily ablutions (it's fun how anything can become a euphemism)
• dress and get out of the house as fast as possible so I can make it to work not too late.    

This morning I almost didn't even try. Coming has been hard and taken a long time recently--

(these words, these damn words -- hard, long time -- perfect in some erotic contexts but never right for woman's orgasm. Sometimes I hate how many times I read P. Califia's "Taste of Vanilla," how I've internalized that sense of being too much work, no matter the fact that none of my lovers have ever once complained. It's all about what lives inside. Guess who did complain that I took too long. Guess. Right -- and stepfather-rapists shouldn't get to complain that their stepchildren are taking too long to achieve orgasm during their sexual assaults, should they? Isn't that the epitome of adding insult to injury?

We're going to get to the language part. Promise.It's time for some rethinking/transformation there.)

--and it was already just about 7 when I got in the shower, and I was supposed to meet my friend at 8. In the city. Did it make sense even to drop down to the porcelain after my quick shampoo and wash, to taunt myself open, just to have to leave all throbby and unfinished? 

~~ ~~ ~~

Here's a fun tidbit I just found on the Men's Health site, from an article called 10 lessons about the female orgasm:

Oh, and studies show that it takes 15 to 40 minutes for the average woman to reach orgasm. Going somewhere? 

(Ok, yes, Men's Health. And, you're right, there's the dreaded "studies show" -- we would like to know which studies, wouldn't we? But still: 15-40 minutes for the average woman to reach orgasm -- and I've been feeling like a bizarre outlier in the world of girl bodies and coming? Why have I never thought to look up this detail before? Why didn't I pay more attention in SFSI training?)

So, then, what the hell is this 'too long' business about, anyway?

~~ ~~ ~~

This morning, I managed to be out the door by 7:30, throbby, yes, and having come -- having come, almost certainly, in under ten minutes. Something moved fast and together for me today, surprising me; something in me was ready. A reward, maybe, for having actually written what I needed to write (morning pages that were emotional, complicated, connected), who knows. 

The fantasy today was one of the under-pressure ones: we're in a bathroom at a club or a party or a closet or a classroom (I know) or some other situation where someone might walk in on us soon, or there's another appointment in a few minutes or someone's looking for you or someone else has to pee so we need to get out of the goddamn bathroom and you're not going to quit whatever it is you're doing to me until I come, so either I better come fast or else get ready to get watched by others while I do come. Sometimes I come fast, hard, laughing -- sometimes it takes a bit longer and I get to have those strangers watching. Either way it's hot -- and it worked.

~~ ~~ ~~

Yesterday I was sure I was only going to come slow this month (or, let's rephrase that, mid-average) -- around 30 minutes most days -- and then today I had that stretch of certainty that I wouldn't be able to come at all. 

So now I'm being invited to be less and less certain, and am feeling grateful for how my body works, for how it surprises me when I just ask for what I want -- even from my own self! How about that for some radical self care on a Friday morning?

What's your body story for today? What are the ways you are allowing yourself to be particularly blessed?

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

Coming Home: Day 2 - opening the throat

1.21.12 (from my journal)

Expose this old wound, this hot hound of anger, all this ache that has fitted itself to gnaw at what I imagined we would be when I thought I had the stamina to fold myself for you forever. Expose all the lost girls in me, the ones who didn’t fit, boot-wearing drama queens, the unnice, let the mean girls put their mouths around the back of my throat – I am tired of being a clammy handed yesterday, yes slipping too weary from all of my wrong lips, these wounds are picked too hard and my planting hands have been itchy for years-- I could put a spade into the wrong part of your planter but really what I think this trowel is meant for is my own back forty.

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

my dictionary says orgasm comes from the Greek word orgasmos, to grow ripe, be lustful; and probably is akin to the Sanskrit ūrjā: sap, strength.  (My copy of Roget's has nothing between the entries for organize and orgy; we can have orgy, I guess, because it's so often used synonymously-- is that what makes it safe?) 

The online etymology dictionary says (in part), of the word, masturbate: The long-standing speculation is that this Latin word is altered (probably by influence of turbare "to stir up") from *manstuprare, from manu, ablative of manus "hand" + stuprare "defile" (oneself), from stuprum "defilement, dishonor," related to stupere "to be stunned, stupefied." 


to grow ripe. strength. stunned. hold these words today; let them frame a new possibility.

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

This morning I wake up early and can barely move -- was up until after midnight dealing with the psychic blast zone I became after a particularly difficult conversation with my mother. How can I masturbate after that? I think, wanting nothing more than to stay under the covers and nestle in deeper to the warm covers and quiet. Sophie was still sleeping; no one wanted anything from me. Couldn't I just sleep? How could I get up, journal, come, then blog?

Here's how. 

Today I did it the new way, me in my shower, back bent against the porcelain, shower head switched to massage and held between my legs, the water hot as I can stand it. I say, Good morning, body. This is for us today. I say, thank you. I float into the conversation with my mother, then pull myself back. That was last night, that was another moment, that is not what I'm here for now. Now I'm in the bliss of your mouth (the water is so much easier to make into a mouth than the vibrator -- a new development for my fantasy life), maybe we're at a fancy bathroom at a fancy party and you shift aside my long skirt to find stockings, garter belt -- and nothing else. Then you are asking me to sing, and I moan into the white quiet of my bathroom. I get loud, breathe hard, cry out, oh my god oh my god oh my god. This is a new way, too.

The water pounds hard onto me, harder now that I no longer allow the tub to fill while I am masturbating; that's how I did it in high school. I'd be so long in the water that my whole body would prune, and I'd have to empty the tub down once or twice, so as to avoid drenching the kitchen with overspill -- that's how long it took me to come. (Feel the perforative there. Don't consider what a tremendous piece of self-care it was for me even to soak in a bath for an hour or so, to allow any self-given pleasure during those years of trauma. This is where reframing begins.)

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

I'm a bit frantic today, and my heart pounds hard behind my fingers. There's rage roaming around in my ribcage, and coming doesn't settle that ire: just feeds the other parts of me that need tending to, and maybe even offers some sweetness to that long-held-down animal of my anger, some oxygen, a little breathing room.

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

These are the pieces I want to offer today, that I want to explore more over this month: 

• Today I came relatively quick, which means in about twenty minutes; often I will take half an hour, even sometimes closer to an hour, when the watcher that lives just outside my brain won't let us pitch over the edge into coming. Quick often feels better to me, more normal -- I want to take apart these words, want to unhook fast from good--and slow from bad! --want to love my orgasms exactly as they come to me.
• And here's the other thing: I want to be able to come faster. I want to be able to come different. I want more kinds of orgasms ready in my repertoire. I want to come hard and slow sometimes, and fast and light other times (or even fast and hard. Could I sometimes come fast and hard?) I have had other kinds of orgasms in my life, unmediated by my own fingers (or vibrator, or shower head) even (although one of those was when my stepfather was in the middle of an assault, and so I wonder if it's one I should even count, except for this: I understood, in that moment, that my body had this capacity, that I could come that way, even if I didn't want to be doing so with him. This was important information for me to tuck away inside of me.) I've also come during dreams, and woken up mid-contraction. This means my body can do it: and I want to know how to allow those different kinds of orgasms all the way into my sex.
• Today there were tears living just behind the small laugh that pushed out of me after I came; they didn't pour out of me, though that's happened after I come (both with a partner and alone), and I was a little disappointed not to feel that additional release, too.

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

In the Survivors Guide to Sex, Staci Hanes gives some great tips about how to masturbate, especially for those of us who didn't start masturbating until later, sometimes not even until after our experiences of trauma were over. One of the pieces that she tells us is to breathe: "When you breathe and relax your body while you masturbate, you are communicating something new to your body-- that it is safe to feel sexually turned on, that it is fine to get off and to enjoy pleasure. Relaxation communicates safety to your body on a very deep level. (pp 93-94.) 

She also writes, in the section about making noise:

Groaning and moaning is good for you! Your voice is an integral part of your sexuality and your pleasure. Opening your throat and making noise helps keep your body open and relaxed. it keeps you breathing. If you are concerned about roommates or neighbors listening in, soundproof your room as best you can. Play music. A towel at the base of the door can help to absorb sound. Masturbating in the shower can give you the privacy to use your voice freely.
(pp. 94, emphasis mine. ahem.)

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~


Now I'm off into my day, off to a staff meeting, off to notice how the swell of this early morning coming continues to open, yes, to unfurl in me -- and how it will curl around and into the anger freed beneath my skin, what songs they will sing to each other.


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

 ~~ ~~ ~~

 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.

 ~~ ~~ ~~

 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.

 ~~ ~~ ~~

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.

 ~~ ~~ ~~

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.

~~ ~~ ~~

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.

~~ ~~ ~~

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!