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 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

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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? 

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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?

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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.

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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!