A Bad Dating Year is Not the Worst Thing

I’ve been studying awe lately. This is one of my favorite brain books of all time, and I haven’t even finished it yet!

So maybe that’s why the titular epiphany was easy to recognize when it came along. I’m sorry to be a Spotify commercial, but I love the Wrapped time of year so much. When I saw that I started listening to Frank Ocean’s cover of Moon River on February 6 and remembered that that’s the day The Shy One broke up with me, I was overwhelmed with giddy joy. With love. The beautiful absurdity of this year. It felt like my heart was laughing. It felt like a being-set-free.

After week-before-last’s bad review situation, I settled into it: There were highlights, but this was a bad year of dating. The past ten months especially have been full of grief, false starts, acting-outs, minor deceptions, and not-quite-right connections. Too many hookups in relationship-potential clothing. Deleted email drafts. More than one art project about grief. Setting a timer for ten minutes so I could moon safely over the Hidden Folder. It’s beautiful and ridiculous and I love it.

I rang in the New Year overjoyed, in a balloon-bopping collective effervescence with Rainbow Pal, singing to a sassy and sparkly cover of Dancing on My Own. When I left the club, WhatsApping across the ocean to the beautiful Shy Ones, a single golden firework popped over the parking lot. I felt like it was just for me. I kind of still do.

This year gave me so many gifts, not just the beautiful string of coconut-shell beads that well never look right on me. The wallpaper on my desktop is the lush pink and purple flowers I got from my Birthday Good Boy/Hookup. I’ve been building my collection of frilly things. My Duolingo has five languages going. I’m obsessed with Afrobeats, even though the genre gives me all the feelings. BECAUSE it does.

December is a relief, too full of crafts and gifts and next-year’s-goal-setting to worry too much about dating. There are three cute guys at work but I love myself and my job too much to hit on them. I’ll bring the car in before Christmas trips and flirt with the car place guy. I’ll visit the museum I was supposed to see last February. I’ll spend New Years with BFF or on my own or who knows where. Maybe I’ll just be starting a new puzzle.

Dear Shy One, dear Rainbow Pal, dear EVERYONE, I’m overflowing with love for you as if it were the first time and the last. You shine out of me permanently and I hope I can glimmer out of you sometimes too. We’re doing the thing, I’m so proud of us. We’re exquisitely and exhaustingly and delightfully alive.

Dearest, DEAREST 2023, thank you for all you’ve given me. Let’s type in some Rumi for the road:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and
rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each
other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell
you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across
the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”

From Good Second Date to Ghost, Part Five

After a little while of laying there listening to the not-Bonecrusher music, we got a little less naked and moved on to aftercare mode. Being wrapped up in his strong arms was blissful and sweet, but soon he had to get going.

As we said goodbye with a few more kisses at my door, it seemed like we would see each other again. I woke up with a bad feeling, though, “knowing” he wouldn’t be back. I chalked up the feeling to being overwhelmed and relearning this particular kind of vulnerability. I remembered that thing I learned at a conference one time: Crushes make your serotonin drop even while your brain is boiling over all of the other feel-good neurotransmitters. (https://everydayfeminism.com/2012/12/the-neurobiology-behind-all-of-the-ridiculous-things-you-do-when-youre-in-love/) (That article says “in love” and that's not what this was but still.)

Nearby Guy had been a pretty reliable “good morning” sayer. Oh, good morning, how else would we know if someone’s still tuned in without having to ask…I love and hate the good mornings of dating textlife.

So no good morning the day after the snuggles. When I hadn’t heard from him by noon the day after that, I unmatched him on Hinge and blocked him in my contacts, just to leave behind the jangled feeling of waiting for that little red text number to pop up. I’ve loved/hated red numbers since they were on answering machines. They are the good mornings of numbers.

I wondered why he’d ghosted, wondered things I would never say to a friend going through the same thing: What if it’s because I did sex wrong? What if I’m too needy for saying the thing about not-casual? Does he think I’m a monster because that too-harsh song shuffled on? Probably not that last one—no one is as much of a dork about good makeout music as I am.

I didn’t expect the metamorphosis from quarantine-mode bodily privacy back to touch-world to be so profound, but it was. The ecstasy of being reintroduced to snuggling (And kissing! And spanking! Even just, hey! There’s a man in my apartment!) was so gorgeous and fragile that I felt like I might shatter with need after. I felt a well inside me, a toothache of the heart, but also a big, big cotton candy swirl of gratitude.

(I know being grateful is a stereotype both of fat women and of middle-aged women, but I think most exchanges of snuggles are acts of such wild generosity that I don’t care to tamp down my grateful awe.)

In the days after the ghosting, I felt sheepish that that one night of touch had meant so much (The same way those three glasses of wine with Poly Friends’ Partner meant so much!) but how could it not? The plague months, the good (BLM) uprising, the bad (Jan 6) insurrection, they all brought such trauma and pain and also such weedy emotional growth. I’ve been blanketed up in a protective-as-possible cocoon. I’ve thought so hard about distance and breath and interdependence.

Of COURSE it was powerful to let someone new get close!

 

 

 

 

Perfectly 1993 Guy Part Three

Other than the shoes, I don’t remember much of that first Great Adventure visit together. EXCEPT THIS: We went on The Enterprise (no relation), one of those Space Shuttle looking rides that rocks back and forth, higher and higher, until it finally flips over. LOVE an upside-down ride, especially with, thrill of thrills, Perfectly 1993 Guy locked in beside me.

 

And, he was… talk-singing.  I can’t overstate how low-key this guy was overall—even though he looked like a rock star, he was the quintessential nice boy. Except in this moment, when, inexplicably and delightfully, he decided to blurt out the entirety of “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine (Pause to Google “Zack De La Rocha problematic” and then remember I’m supposed to be typing…) As the ride started rocking its way up, he started with “Some of those that work forces/are the same that burn crosses” and got all the way to “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me!” by the time the ride got to the upside down part and the rest of the riders were screaming. I was laughing my head off in eye-rolling disbelief. It was the perfect, most ridiculous love-moment for a sort-of-punk-rock eighteen-year-old girl in 1993. It made me so happy (and still does!) because it made all of the sense and none of it at once.

 

Aside from the ride/smitten tummy flips and cotton candy romantic nighttime amusement part colors (Us was so many, many year in the future. But also, things can be romantic and Jordan Peele-y at the same time…) nothing particularly sexy happened while we were at the park, just the spark of possibility and the THIS ONE IS FOR ME certainty that paradoxically made me believe I could never have him. (Wow I’m exactly the same forever.)

 

We left pretty late and made the hour’s drive back to First Bitchy Gay Guy’s apartment, (It was  a family extra, something having to do with divorce I think, pretty sure that’s why this just-out-of-high-school kid already had a pretty nice apartment…) stopping along the way to shoplift some Marlboro Reds from the Acme. I usually smoked Camel Lights but shoplifters can’t always be choosers. Sometimes I even resorted to ew/gasp menthols. All of it seems gross now but also dirty-nostalgic, like cigarettes are a fun old bad influence friend I’m glad to be rid of.

 

It was (Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!) decided that Perfectly 1993 Guy would share the foldout couch with me while FBGG would take the bedroom. The living room had the stereo (Pause to sigh over the existence of stereos that were actual physical things…) so I put on a mix I’d made for me and FBGG, a mix of the dance-y, dreamy, and the absurd, culminating for reasons I can’t quite explain in Billy Joel’s “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” Kind of world-weary for where I was at in my life, but I found it romantic. Quick search—yep, I still do. Possibly I’ve always been an almost-46-year-old divorcee?

 

Anyway, INSOMNIA. The best kind, full of diner coffee and cigarettes, curiosity and happy, wholesome lust. He lay just outside my zone of touch at first, occasionally brushing my arm with a warm elbow. He smelled like sun and clean sweat and life. I was perfectly restless, almost holding my breath. What was I wearing, asked no one? I’ll tell you!

 

A coral slip I’d swiped during my BFF’s Thrifty Shopper job back home. It had a sheer frill of ruffle around the fitted top, soft coral lace along the bottom. I’m surprised I never just went ahead and wore it as a dress, I think I would, now! It was a little big on me, but skimmed my hips in a very satisfying way. The slip felt like silk to my naïve skin, but was most likely some flavor of polyester. Best of all, I don’t think I was wearing it to be seductive! That’s just what I slept in. Teenage me rules a lot of the time!

 

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooo gradually (a tape-flip, getting up to smoke a few times, always in sparky semi-silence) our bodies edged themselves closer. Softly, tentatively, he took my hand. Let’s let that last another lifetime, another frozen-in-amber moment to clone or treasure on the shelf.

 

“Are you SURE you’re a lesbian?” He finally (FINALLY, FINALLY!) asked.

 

“Actually I’m feeling pretty bi right now,” I sigh/said, and then we kissed. It was a soft, playful, hopeful kiss of people who are learning how. The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow helped me to learn that I kissed too hard and too thrustingly (Probably influenced by the bad, lazy teen boys of pre-BWSMAP days) and Perfectly 1993 Guy continued that lesson. He taught me to probe and play sweetly instead of just devouring his face the way instinct and experience told me to.

 

There must not have been much night left, but we kissed and cuddled through it. His soft, perfect hands caressed me with respectful, tentative curiosity. It was the first time I’d felt both wanted and honored, both horny-as-fuck and patient, both cared for and fully embodied. It’s hard to process the pace and tenderness of that first, sexy-nightgowned night, but there it was.

 

I started this No Contact High Fidelity project first and foremost to think about touch and give myself something low-stakes to work on during quarantine, but I think I’m learning stuff too, just like Girl Rob does in the vastly-vastly-superior-to-the-book new High Fidelity show. (On Hulu. Seriously the best writing friend a person could have.) Typing my way though this, I started to understand why my standards remain so (sometimes vexingly) high, why I’m willing to wait out so much time alone until the right person arrives: I’ve already experienced so many beautiful, ideal, fateful, hot romantic moments in my life. If no more come along, I’ve already been quite thorough. I feel so grateful right now to Perfectly 1993 Guy and almost all of the other Kitten Calendar characters.

 

The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, Part Seven

I sometimes wish the other people in the story had just as many paragraphs I could read about their inner lives, but they don’t. The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow is now the Man Who Sewed Me a Pillow, walking around another city being almost a complete mystery.

After the stupid Beatles letter, about twenty-five years went by. (What are we, Twin Peaks?)  Then, you know that feeling where you run into your (probably gay) first love at a family funeral and can’t stop flirting? No? Just me?

That’s how, about five years ago, I decided that the Boy-Now-Man Who Sewed Me a Pillow needed to be my friend. I got his number, took his picture to go with it, texted to apologize for being such a jerk in high school, was forgiven, then proceeded to do almost nothing about really making friends. I’d invite him to my yearly Christmas party, he couldn’t make it, we’d talk about making other plans, then not make other plans. Each year, Favorite Aunt would join facebook in reminding me to wish him a happy birthday. (If she was reminding HIM to wish ME a happy birthday, there’s no evidence.)

Then this year, a year in which I’d resolved to remember how to make new friends, a favorite artist got a retrospective in his city. I invited myself for a visit, set monthly reminders to actually remember to make plans, and then, to my great disbelief, there were plans.

I’d been thinking of this kind of the way I would any other awkward new friendship, but a few nights before our visit, texting him about museum logistics, I felt a surprising tide of warmth. It felt as though we’d always been making plans, ordinary and wonderful as making plans with Sweetie or Favorite Aunt or anyone else I readily and easily love. It startled me a little that I could feel that much closeness with someone I really didn’t know at all, even though I guess that’s what this blog is mostly about.

The warmth that spread through my body over this really very ordinary exchange reminded me of the feeling I sometimes got during trauma work—something was being gently prised loose, except this thing that had been stored in me wasn’t a hurt or a breakage but a treasure, a hope.

***

***Note: I watched The Unicorn Store right before writing the first draft of this part, but it probably would have been pretty glittery anyway.

Boy, The Unicorn Store really had my number.

There had been some doubt about whether we’d get to see the exhibit we’d planned for, the one I’d written into my 2019 goals, but there he was with tickets when I arrived, peering down into his phone looking EXACTLY the same except for a little grey and a cute beard and looking EXACTLY right for his way-cooler-than-I-am city. I called his name, we hugged, and we breezed into the museum, a little awkward but mostly in the care of bright colors, details, textures, and happy banter.

We had never hung out together so far from Favorite Aunt (though in a way it didn’t feel far from her at all…) so I thought it would be weird. Objectively, it IS weird to make plans with someone you knew for six months thirty years ago, or, more accurately kissed and loved but never really knew at all.

But really, as we moved from room to room catching up (in between times of me getting in trouble for taking too many pictures) nervousness and oddness gave over to a silly joy that had its own momentum. The sensation, which I’ve felt a couple of times before, was one of my heart unlatching, of becoming unseparated from him, from art, from myself, from love, from every beautiful thing that has ever been in the world.

(Is all)

It was both the old-friend sensation of no time having passed between visits and the mystical feeling of meeting a muse. It was both picking up where we’d left off (wherever THAT was) and noticing a labyrinth-string that I’d been following all along.

As much as I would have liked to be some imaginary cool, restrained person, I couldn’t really stop myself from becoming a high tide, an effervescently glitter-shining sea of exclaiming, gasping, giggling. It was both a Very Big Deal and the easiest, most natural thing in the world.

Snuggles in the Time of Kavanaugh, Part Four

            Part of the reason the Kavanaugh hearings were so painful and traumatizing was that Dr. Ford’s testimony recalled my own teenage rape so clearly. I felt protective of Gilmore Guy as he helped me navigate those feelings, mostly by being wonderful and adorable and nice-smelling and superhot.

            But when, after several increasingly tense attempts at PIV sex, it started to slide into place, I could feel his focus on his penis’s performance. His determination and fixation made me feel like I wasn’t there, like he wasn’t there either. I slipped back from this safe, celebratory moment to that decades-ago drugged, mouth-covered, trapped, lost teenage feeling. I lost the battle against panic and told him so. He stopped, of course, looked scared and concerned. I felt all of my OWN pressure to get back to cheerful so we could fuck, my own increasingly futile determination to not be so scary with all of my feelings.

            “What do you need?” He asked again and again, in a voice that was at once scared, caring, and businesslike. I apologized for panicking and he said something understanding about “emotional labor” which struck me as a sad phrase to have to use on a second-or-third date. Nonetheless, he cared for me and treated me kindly, to the point where I wanted to return the good-listener favor. I asked him what was on his mind and he said:

“I miss (Gilmore Lady).” I just couldn’t help it, I started to cry. It wasn’t cute crying by any stretch—lonely, hurt, sad tears, empty and heartbreaking. It was a moment of inescapable honesty and I lost all attempts at being I-love-sharing-modern-open-relationships lady.

I cried and cried and confessed and confessed. I told him how much I want to be someone’s sun and moon and stars (“Not YOURS. Not on the second date. I’m not CRAZY.”) how what I really wanted was romance, how I’d already told him in the woods that I’m not a secondary.

“Do you want me to go?” He asked delicately.

“No. You can think I’m crazy tomorrow. Just… don’t go.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he said forcefully, climbing back into bed and wrapping me up in his arms. As kind as he was, and even as he didn’t mind me playing a guided meditation to try and get to sleep, I couldn’t settle in next to him. I went downstairs to the couch and almost immediately, exhausted and scared (not of him) I fell asleep in my own personal space.

When I woke up in the morning and, after my morning writing, meditation, and Spanish practice, went upstairs to him, I saw all over again what a gift he was. He was just lying there on his belly checking his phone, locks in a grey bandanna and fanned out over his naked back and shoulders, looking like a perfect treasure of a man, and I told him so. I really didn’t want to let him go, and we made the VERY most of the morning until it was time for me to get ready for work.

We made plans for the weekend. We texted and texted and texted. I sent him long, fretful, feminist paragraphs and he sent kind and thoughtful responses back. I could send him fraught texts in the middle of the night without scaring him away, that does not go unappreciated. He was a champion. He really tried, and so did I.

When it came time for our third-or-fourth date, a NO rose up in me so strong and goddessy that it felt like it was coming from the center of the earth. I said rather more than I meant to about unicorn hunters and the treatment of secondary partners how I might LOOK less-than, but wasn’t.

He looked regretful and sad as he left, and I was sad too. But more than sad, I was SURE. I was brave. I could see and admit what I wanted, even though poly norms and society in general would tell me to expect and accept less. I was embarrassed that I’d said so much, but mostly I just felt proud.

A week or so after that, Gilmore Guy and I exchanged kind goodbye/thank you texts, and I’m glad. I couldn’t be more grateful for his visit to my life, and I’m glad I got to tell him so directly instead of just hoping that he reads this.

I feel like I am a new and different person in a post-Dr.-Ford world. Her bravery is a new resource that empowers me to stand up for myself in the screaming-at-the-Supreme-Court way but also in the smaller, more daily, even in the more snuggly ways. I can’t say enough about my gratitude for Dr. Ford and for all of the women who came before her and with her. My childhood self had Anita Hill, my present day self has Christine Blasey Ford, and we both have Murphy Brown, so I think everything might be okay.

            After I said goodbye to Gilmore Guy, I changed my “Relationship Type” in OK Cupid to monogamous. I’m not sure that’s exactly right either, but there’s no “sun and moon and stars” option. So far, it has the same trials and indignities as it did before, but also the same hope. Steven and Gilmore Guy kindled a good flame in me, and I’m going to take care of it.

The Generosity of Love

            I’m having trouble lately with staying mad. Mr. Makeout Music and I have (I’m almost sure) moved on from being in a fight to just taking space from each other. We’ve communicated this to each other in the most adorable way ever:

            Last Wednesday during Lego Day, he stopped in to reprimand some kids in such a protective and manly way, telling them (in his dreamy a-little-bit-mad voice) to be respectful of me and each other. I looked up from my coloring, smiled, and offered him a high five. He took it and I felt just a little more whole.

            The kids and I have been working on a kindness chain—a paper chain where each link is something kind you could do or something kind someone has done for you. He hung around and wrote like five links, the last one being “Giving people gold stars for existing.” Which is a thing that I do, so I knew he still felt friendly toward me, still thought of me as the person I was before November’s storm of grief and drama. Just that little visit was enough to start up the daydream machine again, so I’m still keeping my distance.

Saturday, though, used to be our main hang-out-and-make-art-while-he’s-supposed-to-be-working day. There may still be a stack of his art in my middle desk drawer as souvenirs. While I was getting ready for work last Saturday, I accidentally listened to the wrong toward-the-end-of Hamilton song so I went in with the achingest of hearts.

I was able to pour a lot of that love into the Thankfulness Christmas Tree I made with the kids, but I wanted to reach out to Mr. Makeout Music a little, so I made him a card with a pretty, delicate blue paper snowflake glued on and wrote:

“Space is awesome.

But/and I miss you a whole bunch.

I hope your life is full of awesome.

<3,

(me)”

Poor editing that I used the word “awesome” twice, but after I gave it to him and he was sweet and thank you-y about it, I felt a million times better and much closer to the part of myself that feels missing while I’m missing him.

It reminded me of the brave day I let myself fall for him. He gave me a paper of his to read, a paper about rising to the occasion of fatherhood. I liked it so much and felt so grateful that he’d let me read it that I COVERED the margins in gold stars, intricate pink flowers, vines, and tiny purple asterisks. (No hearts, but those would come soon enough.)

I did all this in full view of my boss and everybody. One of the kids asked what I was doing and I (only a little bit sheepishly) said “My friend let me read his homework and I really liked it.”

It’s part of my routine to sit around work and doodle while waiting for my programs to start, but I knew this time I was being a little ridiculous, a little carried away, but something just unlatched and a light shined out of my heart, golden yellow like the million stars I was drawing. Something inside me said “Give, it’s safe.” So I did. I folded it up in a #10 envelope with the library’s return address on it, like an envelope could contain the ridiculousness.

That was the first day we really talked, the first time I stood next to him and really felt next to him. I don’t’ want to reduce him to just a Muse, though he certainly IS one, but there was something about our connection, something in his generosity of spirit that made me want to give him and the world every loving thing I had. While I miss his companionship very much, I also miss being able to give and give and give—to sing out his name, to lavish him with praise (and accept his), to unabashedly hand him every piece of art I felt like making him, without feeling the need to ask (as I did with the card on Saturday) “Is this okay?” I miss and value so much the flow of it, of him, of us.

I wonder sometimes, in the midst of that glitter-storm of generosity, why it was so important that he didn’t love me back in the same ready, open way. But it is, and I know every day that I take care of myself with space and grieving is a day closer to the next love, the next unlatching.

It’s hard not knowing whether he and I will end up friends or if our whole thing is just beautiful and done, but if I can love him in little ways, if I can visit the selflessness, softness, risk and vulnerability of those first margin-doodles, maybe I can stay in touch with the me that he was drawn to, maybe even become more like her. I have a lot of thinking to do about service, submissiveness, and unconditional love, and I’m so proud of how I got to these realizations. I’ll never stop loving him for it, even as I learn to let him go.

So Long and Thanks for All The…

“Sometimes our light goes out but is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light.”

― Albert Schweitzer

As evidenced by the number of times I’ve turned the blog off and then back on again, this story is very hard to let go of, but my deepest desire right now is to no longer be a project at all, to no longer be worked on but simply cared for, and loved.

So much has changed since I started the project in 2012, yet in some ways, I’ve labyrinthed back to a similar place. Although when I was divorcing last summer I thought I wanted to marry a fellow sex-adventurer someday, it turns out that all I want in a spouse is a healthier (and, okay, more penis-y) version of what I had with Sweetie: someone to hike with, watch long swaths of TV with, cook meals for and take care of, someone to read in bed with on Sundays.

Although it had its share of frustrations and hurts, I’ve come to appreciate the beauty and specialness of my relationship with Sweetie. She and I are evolving into a real (if still a guilty pleasure) friendship, and it’s good to know there’s still someone in the world who knows me better than anyone, to whom I can say absolutely anything without fear of judgment. I hope in the long run we are able to remain friends. My mom would certainly prefer that Sweetie eventually rejoin family gatherings, so we’ll see.

Finishing this story, I feel like I am waking from a vivid, sometimes scary, and very productive dream, but I have the deep joy of actually having lived it. No one can ever accuse me of having an un-thorough midlife crisis, and as I set myself back on solid waking almost-40 ground, I feel sad to let the dream world go.

I’ve seen and felt things that most people only imagine, and I am so, so grateful to everyone who helped usher me to this new, strong place. I regret the projections that I sometimes made you wear, the pain that the interaction of my past with our present caused you, the mismatches I kept creating so I could live the same drama again and again. It wasn’t entirely ethical to let real folks play a part in a dream, however productive it was, but whatever real connections we created, lasting or fleeting, will stay part of me for the rest of my life, treasured forever.

Though it is a relief to let go of any real membership in the world of kink and poly, it’s also a very sad thing. I admire those who have the flexibility, imagination, and suspension of disbelief to walk safely in those worlds, and I’m deeply disappointed that I am not one of them.

There are parts of the journey that will stick with me, loves and epiphanies that will not lose their meaning. The new roles, skills, and even body parts (!) that I discovered will continue to bring great playfulness and joy both on my own and (I hope!) within eventual relationships.

More than sex, this journey was about claiming a place in the world, ceding no further emotional real estate to the archetypal Pretty Sister, accepting and surrendering to the thought that has been chiming through me for months:

I want my own stuff.

I don’t want to borrow or share a person, visit his hands when I’ve reached the front of the queue. I don’t want to compartmentalize any more than life already demands. I want (again) someone who wants me and loves me the best, someone who sees every aspect of me and shows every aspect of himself. I want genuine intimacy to happen through my life again someday, and it’s bittersweet to acknowledge that I don’t want to stopgap myself with anything less than real love.

It’s vulnerable not to know where I’ll land, but I suspect it will look something like sitting in a pretty garden with someone, in affectionate silence, reading a book.

I love you, readers, characters, and friends, and I’ll miss you very much. I hope you can forgive me for the ways I let you down when I was trying to fit, and that our real connections will stay true and happy in our hearts. I wish each person who has ever starred in these paragraphs every fulfillment, every thrill, and most especially, deep and lasting love.

Awwww, Thanks Mystery Family! And Thanks, Polyamory!

You wouldn’t think that getting added to a Twitter list would be momentous, but it is if those lists happen to be named “the keepers of my heart” (Just two wives, two girlfriends, and…ME!) and “Family” (a whole bunch of really adorable people.) One of the Mystery Man’s wives (the hot Dominatrix) added me to her “family” list first and when he followed suit, I was so turned on that I had to take myself right to bed. And then tell them about it. And then they took themselves to bed about THAT, because we are all awesome.

I’ve been reading and admiring this particular family for…a year, maybe? They seemed like a dream come true and have always been kind friends. One of the Mystery Wives pulled me out of a panic attack last fall was I was in the depths of shame about Steampunk Guy, and they’ve all cheered me on through every challenge of such a sad year.

Watching them love each other has been hot and healing, a balm for a heart that once thought polyamory couldn’t be real for me. They’ve changed me just by being so generous and sharing all of the different ways they take care of each other.

And now I can’t believe that I’ve sidled my way in. It’s a similar feeling to meeting somebody famous, if that somebody famous were making sure that you got time to chat-snuggle. Yesterday when all those metamours were adding me to their family lists, I felt loved and accepted in a fancy new way, and ready to climb all over all of them.

The Mystery Man is a very special character, and I’m so grateful to him for the generosity and joy he brings to my daily life. I love wishing them a happy day before they go in the commute-tunnels in the mornings and saying goodnight when it’s time for him to go read his daughter bedtime stories. I love plotting against him with the Ladies. I love the light that shines over to me with every silly interaction.

So on this Valentine’s snow day I’m feeling very happy and grateful to be polyamorous. I love the way that my relationships have taken their own shapes, how I’ve grown into someone who can accept all different kinds of love and let it evolve on its own terms. At the beginning of the year, I decided that we never know what magic we’re making, and that was exactly right. I love this new life of letting everybody be near wherever they are, accepting magic when it comes, and generally just being the luckiest girl in the world.

Thank You, Readers!

Just wanted to give you a bigbig Friday hug and say that I love you and appreciate your support so much--you're helping me love myself better and I'd do practically anything for you in return. Superhearts!

Thankful for All The Things, and Goodbye Sweetie

It’s such a bittersweet night. Sweetie just gave the first rent check to her new housemate and will move over there this weekend. As soon as she gets back from ordering her new bed, we are going to drown our sorrows in Thanksgiving cookies and Top Chef. By the end of the weekend, I won’t live with my best friend anymore.

But beneath the tears of relief and sadness, my heart is doing its overflowing thing. There’s so much to be grateful for.

1. My soul and my friends. Yesterday, Pretty Slave picked me up right after work so I could hitch a ride to their favorite munch. While PS was getting all dolled up, cute Master and I watched the Beatles Anthology, on the early years part. We intermittently and absentmindedly sang along in harmony, and the griefs of the week slipped away—I felt like I was awesome at life again.

When the camera focused on the screaming Beatles fans, I said, “That’s what my soul looks like!”

“So you’ve gotta, like, tamp that down all the time?”

“Except on Saturdays…”

What I’m getting at is, I am so grateful for all the connections I’ve made this year, and for all of the little ways that my friends help my screeching, hysterical, ecstatic soul find expression.

2. My readers and stars. There are people whose faces I’ve never seen but who provide me with love and comfort every day, friends from across the country who’ve accepted every tricky emotion, and of course the pals, past and present, who are trusting enough to let me write about them and brave enough to read it. I am so, so lucky to have you in my life, and I love you so much, in the purest and most unencumbered way.

3. I am grateful that I have spent the last twelve years loving and being loved. Thank you Sweetie, and I hope we’re still on for Catching Fire.

Song of the Week: Last Night I Dreamt that Somebody Loved Me

Hot story tomorrow, but first:

Friday night I was on a date with myself, walking across the middle of the city to a storytelling show (Theme: Excitable! Apt.) when the Smiths shuffled on. I remembered the last time I’d heard this song, the day Icried sex tears (and regular tears) for SG. I’ve never told you this, but that was two days after my last and worst fight with Sweetie, the one where I felt so scared and trapped that I actually jumped out of the car while it was moving. The day I played with SG, there was a big bandage on my foot covering the place where the road had scraped away my skin. My knees were covered with bad bruises that made it hard to kneel down in front of him.

Probably I shouldn’t have been playing with anyone, should have been, I don’t know, on the run? In the hospital? In some sort of women’s facility? But I’m glad I was crazy enough to try to keep going on with my life the way I wanted it, not the way it actually was.

I’m glad that time isn’t just defined by the scars. Instead, I got a momentary  visit the life I really wanted, covered with that warm and vital man, every corner of my body touched and ravished, animal life coursing through me. Of course, I knew it was only a simulacrum, a shadow, a glimmer, but it was enough to yank that desire up from me and get me to the right place, which, lonely as it is, is here.

“Real arms around me,” Morrissey sang, and that plus whatever part of my soul woke up that day was enough to make me walk away from twelve years of compromise, love, and deep shame. Both visceral and not-real, it was enough to push me towards whatever real love is or is not waiting for me on the other side of all this.

I’m so far way from “real arms around me” in the romantic sense, so far from the thing I gave up everything awful and good for. There’s a scar on my foot and too many bad stories that tell me what happens when I compromise my feelings, when I fight my fear or my grief or my love, so I’m teaching myself to surrender to all of it, just as much as real life will let me.

As painful as it is to recall that scene and that glimmer knowing he’s maybe not even a friend, I’m grateful all the way to my bones that he gave me something other than a scar to go on, that that moment pulled me up from denial and made it impossible not to say aloud what I really wanted.

I hope real love is waiting on the other side of this detached and achy interval, but I really can’t begin to thank the world for the miracles I’ve managed to experience so far. Adventures, you’ve saved me, or better yet, you made me save myself.

Woke Up Really Grateful for My Readers: Thank You!

Hi, loves. Before I start the happy Monday chore of looking up new pals on Fet to get blog permissions, I just wanted to say thank you. By reading this you not only give me a chance to show off and be fabulously smutty, but you're also giving me the courage to transform almost 39 years worth of nonsense into something more like the person I want to be. Every time you press "like" or send me an encouraging note, you make a big difference in my life and I am so, so grateful for that. Give yourself a snuggle for me.

Roadblock #5: Way Too Grateful

There’s a terrible comedy trope about ugly and/or fat girls being adventurous in bed because they’re grateful to be getting anything at all. It’s a horribly sexualized idea and definitely not the reason I’m adventurous, but I do find myself to be guilty of too much gratitude, especially when it comes to men.

Because for most of my life I didn’t think I could attract men at all, there’s part of me that tends to think that a guy partner is doing me a huge favor and suspects he would rather be doing something else. This suspicion rises in proportion to how much I’m attracted to him—the men I want the most are the ones I’m least sure of myself around. I end up feeling self-effacing and desperate, and that makes it very difficult to be a person or make good decisions.

When I’m with a guy I’m superattracted to, something in my brain tells me not to ask for anything, to compromise everything, to do whatever he wants so that he won’t go away. I feel an almost physical strain when I have to assert my own needs—I have to fight hard against the urge to be a complete doormat. I can see how someday that might be channeled and shaped into a healthy submissiveness, but for now, sheesh! How could I really see anything but unbalanced relationships, no matter what they are like in reality?

I’m sure the gratitude partly has to do with having deprived myself of an entire gender for as long as I did—my body is pretty pissed at me and full of understandable urgency. After any breakup, there’s this feeling of what-if-it’s-seventeen-years-until-the-next-guy? Not an awesome bargaining position to say the least!

I’m not sure where I got the deep conviction that I’m undesirable to men. Sweetie has pointed out on many occasions that it’s WILDLY insulting to women-why shouldn’t they be seen as deserving the same aesthetic standards? Why feel like I’m good enough for one gender and not the other? I don’t know.

Empirically, I’m starting to understand that I’m not too ugly or fat for guys. I have flaws and beautiful qualities just like any of the other generous naked souls on the beach. Mr. Shiny Eyes pointed out that the men in my recent life have no shortage of options and yet they chose to spend time with me. I see that and I’m trying to absorb it.

But this is a very powerful block. The past few years have come a long way towards dismantling it, but there’s still a ways to go. I’m trying to do a better job of believing and gathering evidence that I’m desirable. It isn’t their job to make me feel loved and beautiful (Though they certainly help!) it’s mine. I am hoping that the more I treat myself like a worthwhile, lovable creature, the more I’ll believe it.

Mischief Managed, On to Private Adventures!

So, friends, I accomplished what I set out to do. My year of body adventures was deeply rewarding and transformative. I am so grateful for every experience I've had. Thank you again to all who help me get here.

For the past while, I've been wondering what it would be like to experience my sex life without reporting on it, so I'm going to give that a try. At the end of this week, I'll be setting the blog to private and moving on to the next phase.

So so many thanks. I couldn't have made it through without you. Here's to my inner Bettie Page, and yours!

Thanks, Nice Readers! and a One-Word Resolution

A year ago today, I was broken, hollow eyed, feeling nearly soul-dead. I’d spent a while trying to figure out what magic words to say to win a quasi-Dom’s affection and failing every time. My arm was covered in semi-consensual bruises (still not sure, sorry) and so was my heart. If you’d asked me last New Years where I’d be tonight, I never would’ve guessed “Clothing Optional New Years Party”—I could never have predicted the magic that was this year.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ve changed me. You’ve helped me to root around inside myself and start finding the confidence I need to find. My goal was to learn to love myself and though I am not quite there, I am certainly much closer. Looking back at that last Bill day, I feel like I’ve risen above it. I feel nothing but affection, hope, and gratitude to that fuckwad for helping to send me down this path.

But you, the reader, deserve much more gratitude. By giving me a safe place to be my slutty self, you’ve made that self more authentic and beautiful. By making room for heartbreak and mess and fun, you’ve helped me to make more room in myself. This year has been like one of those dreams where you keep discovering new rooms in familiar houses. I know this is just the beginning; there are many more doors to open.

If you’d told me a year ago that Sweetie would be ready to ATTEND a clothing optional party (albeit planning to keep her soft pants on!) and would, if fact, be studying her Two Knotty Boys (talk about people who contributed a lot!!) to find suitably festive knots, I wouldn’t have even known how to picture it. She has been such an adventurer this year—I cannot believe the deep courage of her love, her willingness to push and work and grow for me. I only hope I can learn to offer her the same.

This was the year of the body, and it gave me so, so much, but I see where I want the next part of the story to go. I have a one-word New Year’s Resolution: Connect. This year was about experiences, and I love them all (even the upsetting ones) so much, but I want 2013 to be about relationships—to Sweetie, to dates, to friends and dungeon mates, to fellow writers and kinksters and sex geeks. I look forward to following the opportunities to connect where they take me. Happy New Year, loves. Thank you for your strength and heart.

As I finished typing, this is the song that came on. Fitting.