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.”

New Guys, Old Triggers, Real Dating Break, Part One

 

Please send good luck that this therapist will remain a match! The last one I tried used the phrase "sister wives" in reference to poly. She'd said some helpful stuff before that though!

Last Thursday was a two-date day, and I was excited about both! I was meeting the Guy With a Big Telescope for lunch at Emotionally Neutral Diner, and then Le Monsieur was picking me up (in his faaaaancy car) in the evening to come visit his new apartment. I felt horny and shiny and new, amazing how the optimism always shines through.

GWBT was sooooo cute, just the right combination of grown-up and boyish. (He’s 39.) I liked him because his profile mentioned the possibility of stargazing dates, perfect for summer! The big telescope is not a euphemism, he really sent a picture! He was hesitant about the writing-about-stuff aspect of things, but otherwise seemed like he might be a lovely match!

GWBT had warm vibes and was such a gentleman, even offering to have them make me a to-go order in case my French toast didn’t end up being filling enough. Less charming was when he watched out the window as a lady parallel parked, critiquing her entire process.

Still, SO cute. He loved to travel and talked about wanting to whisk me away for a weekend sometime. He was installing a new speaker system in his car just in time for beach trips. (He mocked his current system for having not just a CD player but a TAPE DECK, and I felt envious because I just have a CD player in mine.)

(Side note: Many things are uncertain, but it’s very clear to me that I would like to not be the one doing all the driving in my next relationship.)

Anyway, he was a somewhat plausible catch until:

He: I like your first date outfit, can’t wait to see what you’ll wear on our tenth date!

(Okay I like this line.)

Me: It’s cute that you’d think I’d wear clothes on our tenth date!

Okay, I was being a little obnoxious, but he literally said:

“Shhh!” and looked around like we were going to get in trouble.

I’ve had enough of that particular look-around for this lifetime and the next. And shushing on a first date!

Knotty Thursday: Heart Knot!

 ...Did I sort of accidentally make this one last week?

Anyway, I hope to have something with a pretty human in it (Self and/or others! *ahem* to the universe!) next week, but I've been having fun with these flourishes while my heart gets its act together. Better a heart knot than a heart tangle! 

Knotty Thursdays: Merry Christmas!!!

 No actual skills here, but I had fun! I was surprised that this purely decorative experiment gave my brain a little of the rope-quiet--after I took the picture, I lay on my side and spaced out for a few minutes before the lights started to feel a little hot. Having just sort-of-played for ten minutes or so,  I went back to my less-bonadgey Christmas chores refreshed.

I've been working on my goal-setting for next year and I think one of my great 2021 successes has been my more-consistent rope practice. I like the ways that the ropes have expanded my sense of possibility, my creativity, and my general amusement with my own body. Plus, I think this picture is pretty hot.

Next Thursday, if all goes as planned, I'll be on a long-awaited museum visit with The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow. So Happy New Year, dears! Thanks for helping me grow and giving me a place to show off! <3 <3 <3 

Heart and Hoo-Ha Check-In

The other day in a tricky facebook argument about the porn industry, a twenty-something woman who was mistaking my anti-rape stance for being anti-sex helpfully explained to me that “Sex is good and people like having it.” She was on the defensive and making a mistake about what my values are, but she got under my skin.

Being mistaken for a Puritan got me thinking, where DO I stand with sex these days? This blog wouldn’t be here if I didn’t find sex a difficult thing to wrap my head around, and lately I’ve been wondering if I might be something like demi-sexual. I almost typed demi-romantic but then I remembered what really sweeps me up and carries me away.

One thing I’m sure of is that sex is not presently the central force of my life. My wrongheaded friend inadvertently shamed me for that, but most of the time, my life is a happy and calm one, punctuated by marches and letters to congress. When I’m not working or activist-ing, I prefer to be by myself, reading novels, drawing, singing random songs to the cats. Sex is still with me, just quietly, a gentle tide that buoys me up sometimes, but not the emergency it used to be. Sometimes I miss it, but mostly I’m just relieved.

But also, there’s this: I let my heart run away with itself for Mr. Makeout Music, and, to a more sense-making extent, for The Professor. The pain of those two failures-to-connect is still so much that it’s hard to see the good in those attractions, hard to see what was gained. The sense of loss I feel around those two guys has turned into a barrier against even the most modest fantasies. I’ve dated since them, sometimes to great enjoyment, but those two still loom large in my heart.

There’s no risk of running into Mr. Makeout Music—I haven’t even been to the library where we used to work together since I left. I didn’t go to the Big Poly Conference this year, partly because of some misogyny in the organization’s leadership but partly because the pain of seeing The Professor and not hugging him would have been too much.

The thing with Mr. Makeout Music ended in such misery and heartbreak that he is a lost cause, and probably The Professor is too, but there was something so real about my connection with the latter, something so sweet and easy about the physical spark between us—I am still having a hard time convincing myself that there wasn’t a potential there for love, a potential that I ruined in a flurry of panic and, okay, both of us being jerks. I ended up feeling thoroughly embarrassed, and because The Professor is so connected to the higher-ups of that particular poly community, the embarrassment feels public and hard to get past.

Oops, I set out to write about sex and ended up writing about love. These are attachments built on a workplace flirtation and a few days of glorious hotel-kissing, followed by an almost-relationship where we talked on the phone while I colored in a coloring book called “Secret Paris.”

Objectively I don’t see what’s wrong with being a fool for love, I would never judge a friend for it, but I am angry with myself still for the shame, loss, and trapped feeling that went along with Mr. Makeout Music, for the miscommunication and can’t-keep-up feelings of that connection with The Professor.

When I sat down to write this, I imagined that it would be a post about being a little scared of sex right now because of “metoo, because Trump is president (PLEASE WATCH THE BROAD CITY EPISODE “WITCHES” ON THAT THEME) because activism is demanding and news cycles keep bringing new waves of fight or flight, because it’s hard to relax and be vulnerable in the midst of so much fear.

But it isn’t bodily harm I’m afraid of, it’s love. I fall. I fall and it so seldom works out well. I feel like I can’t keep up because I CAN’T KEEP UP—people can fall into physical affection without worrying what it means, meanwhile my heart is sprouting flowers and building monuments. I’m afraid of the addictiveness of those flowers and monuments, and I’m afraid of the way everything else pales in comparison. I LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE, I don’t WANT it to pale.

So, the times when sex and love are put aside are just as important to me, just as vibrant, just as shiny with life-force. Love and sex are overwhelming to me and sometimes I like to be overwhelmed by other things. I don’t want to be ashamed of the times of solitude or of the romance that sometimes spreads rampantly from me like morning glory vines. I want to accept that it happens at inconvenient times, with the wrong men, or the right men when I’m unready for them. I’d like to think that none of it was a failure at all, just awkward, messy collisions that were just as important as the loves that make more sense, just as beautiful and necessary.

Friday night at yoga, I was stunned to notice that a beautiful man seemed to be flirting me, maybe seeing through the veil of good vibes and invisibility I tend to bring with me to self-care occasions. He was covered in tattoos that were clearly from a younger part of his life. On one hand it said “fear” and the other it said “less.” It was from when he used to think he was tough, he said, and I recognize a good new mantra when I see one. So that’s the goal: while I work to accept my solitary self, I can probably make a little more room for magic, I can probably manage to fear love less.

April Mischief Managed and May Goals

Mostly I'm job search girl for at least the next few weeks, so send me all the luck you've got, dears!

March Checkmarks, April Goals: Good Job!

Even though the month often seemed impossibly dark, (Fancy new side-effect to the Big Therapy Project/work stress? Memory lapses that make me feel like my work's own Jerry Gurgitch.) I still overachieved on self-kindness. I hope to do the same next month!

Checkmarks and March Goals: Loss and Recentering

I feel so much loss when I look at February's checkmarks. I started the month in the beginning of something new, with an admittedly illusory feeling of being surrounded and embraced, and I ended it more authentically but also with a bruised sense of reality and trust. I've learned so much and I wouldn't take back any of it, but I'm still so sad and lost about the Mystery Family's rejection, about how much they meant and how quickly it was erased. I can only hope that my real heart goals will prevail to take me forward into something real.

More Songs of the Week:The Mountain Goats and Idina Menzel Want Me To...

Though I'd rather not meet the same fate as David Foster Wallace, I haven't learned to let go yet, but I enjoy the idea of being the only person who'd put these two songs together.

Song of the Week: Graceland

Facing Grief and Hoping for Forgiveness

For the last few weeks, my street, like many of the streets in our city, offered only snowbank/glaciers disguised as parking spots. Last Saturday, relieved to be home after a bout of sobby snow-driving, I pulled into one and was promptly stuck, pulled-in but crooked, my tiny front wheel drive car unable to move forward or back.

Though part of me saw this as a permanent condition, I went out every evening after supper and shoveled it a little, watching the sunset in the process, getting in long, somewhat overshare-y conversations with my downstairs neighbor while his two-year-old goofed around with the shovel. I wasn’t really hoping to unstuck myself, just to thin the layer a little bit so I could get out sooner if a thaw ever came.

Yesterday was the most beautiful day, the perfect day to finally drive somewhere, anywhere. I was shocked, shocked! when the car pulled right out and I was on my way. I drove around for hours listening to old mix CDs and stopped at a state park to take a walk. I loved the sunlight and the smiles on the other hikers. One girl behind me was so overcome by the relief of the weather that she began singing “Don’t Stop Believin’” in a way that made me immediately want to agree. I stopped and watched in awe as a constellation of geese made bright white shapes across the sky and disappeared into the distance.

When I stopped at a Whole Foods for supper, the girl who was ringing me up must’ve thought I needed Buddha so badly that she gave me my copy of Tricycle for free. From what I read over my sushi and chocolate cookies, she wasn’t wrong. I drove and drove, belting out early Beatles songs at the top of my lungs until the rottenness inside me started to break up and be replaced by warmth, the way the parking spot ice had begun to. I started to be free as soon as I realized that I have to just go ahead and be stuck for a while.

When I look with compassion at my most vexatious connections, I see a common motivation for all of us: trying to fight grief with love. All of my most painful mistakes happened with people in the midst of dissolving relationships, mourning deaths, post-traumatic stress, or just trying to forgive themselves for their parents’ sins and their own. People, that is, just like me, trying to build a fortress of sensation, experience, and love in the face of unfathomable loss, a pain so big it’s hard to even see, let alone start feeling it. I’m sorry for the ways I’ve combined with their pain to make it worse.

That last night, the Mystery Family asked me for forgiveness, but if I look honestly at the situation, there’s nothing to forgive. Once I stopped coming from a place of fear, stopped fighting to regain some imagined loss of dignity, I can see an honest attempt at connection that just didn’t work. Of course it’s possible that he could have been both missing me and playing with someone else—I was never nothing. I just wasn’t the right thing for me to be, and that was my responsibility too.

More important, though, is the fact that they were not nothing. The pain that I’ve caused others every time I’ve failed to take care of myself, failed to say the good no, is real. When I’m in that place of helplessness and smallness, I feel as if nothing I could do or say can have impact, so I scream and rage thinking no one will hear me or ever be affected, but I know they are. I know we were all trying to do what we could for each other and that every accusation, rejection, and harsh paragraph breaks down whatever was good between us. I’m very lucky to have been forgiven by some of them.

I know I can’t make it up to anybody, but I know I can act in better faith from now on, recognize my real limitations and not just what I wish my limitations were. Instead of trying to solve grief with outside love, let me turn and face it, let it be where I am right now. I’m not cute or compersiony, I’m pissed. Sometimes I’m simmering with bitterness and rage that my friends are at the center of loving families while I am here alone. Though I’m alone for the best and most necessary reasons, I hate it with every cell in my body. I want to be the person I want to be, not the one I am right now. I want to be loved and embraced and to do the same for others, but right now I have to admit that I can’t.

As long as I try to correct grief with new relationships, I will be dehumanizing people in exactly that way that drives me crazy. I’ll be the contradiction that upsets me most in others: both nakedly available and completely inaccessible, a plate-glass window for sparrow hearts to keep smashing into. The way I’ve played through grief has often been deeply irresponsible, and for that, I’m truly sorry.

I will try and honor the hearts I’ve harmed, accept the love they gave for what it was, and do my best to care for myself, shovel myself out a little each day until the thaw comes.

Saying it like a prayer, people!

A Farewell to False Love

BY SIR WALTER RALEGH

Farewell, false love, the oracle of lies,

A mortal foe and enemy to rest,

An envious boy, from whom all cares arise,

A bastard vile, a beast with rage possessed,

A way of error, a temple full of treason,

In all effects contrary unto reason.

A poisoned serpent covered all with flowers,

Mother of sighs, and murderer of repose,

A sea of sorrows whence are drawn such showers

As moisture lend to every grief that grows;

A school of guile, a net of deep deceit,

A gilded hook that holds a poisoned bait.

A fortress foiled, which reason did defend,

A siren song, a fever of the mind,

A maze wherein affection finds no end,

A raging cloud that runs before the wind,

A substance like the shadow of the sun,

A goal of grief for which the wisest run.

A quenchless fire, a nurse of trembling fear,

A path that leads to peril and mishap,

A true retreat of sorrow and despair,

An idle boy that sleeps in pleasure's lap,

A deep mistrust of that which certain seems,

A hope of that which reason doubtful deems.

Sith then thy trains my younger years betrayed,

And for my faith ingratitude I find;

And sith repentance hath my wrongs bewrayed,

Whose course was ever contrary to kind:

False love, desire, and beauty frail, adieu!

Dead is the root whence all these fancies grew.

Overachieved On Self Care and Lovey-Dovey February Goals

I limited the goals for January because, like I said yesterday, I thought the month would be a lot harder. But the further my old relationship gets behind me, the happier and better able to take care of myself I feel.

For February, I really want to celebrate my ability to love and be loved. I've tended to be annoyed with that side of me before, but the more I let it in, the more aligned and healthy I feel. Regardless of who shows up, I'm planning to bathe myself in all different kinds of affection and romance.

Why a Break and the Next Quest

It should be noted that I wished for extra time to write and draw this morning and then we got an early dismissal because of the blizzard. And a snow day for tomorrow! It’s pretty superstitious but I do consider snow days to be evidence that the universe hearts me.

As I’m typing this I reallyreally miss my Mystery Man (Yes, I got smitten with somebody via Twitter, are you even a little bit surprised?) but here’s how I realized I had to take a break even from him: On Sunday afternoon I was getting ready to go out and having a nice exchange with a couple of the Mystery Ladies and just for a tiny second I thought they might be displeased with me. (They were not.) Before I could stop and think, tears were coming right out of my face, and I realized several things:

1. Ohyeah, I’m kind of a submissive. And also just kind of not okay.

2. Even though I’ve never (as far as I know) seen him/them and only know some of their names, I have real feelings for him and his family. As Twitter followers and then as friends and then a flirtation, they’ve been in touch almost everyday for the past while, and I can’t afford to lose that.

(Also I can totally understand now how people get invested enough in strangers to be Catfished.)

3. He’s not a loophole, he’s just a guy I really like.

4. The internet is magic.

So when I got home from my weepy date with the new Spike Jonze movie (on not entirely unrelated themes) I wrote a love letter 140 characters at a time explaining why I have to let our cute little nice thing go for a while, and he wrote back all kinds of wonderful supportive poly-mensch things that made him even more irresistible. I feel like I’m fighting the tide of myself, but I can’t can’t can’t be worrying about messing up and losing friends right now.

The tears weren’t about the Mystery Ladies, of course. They were for all of the trying and failing to be good for Sweetie, for the emotional land mines I’ve kept running into over the past few years, for how hard it was to ever do anything right by anybody’s girl sometimes.

Last year, counting immediate metamours, I broke up with/broke things off with/ let go of at 11 people. Given that one of those was my wife of 10 years and there was also the whole Scary Party fiasco and a brand new career on top of everything, it’s no wonder I’m still randomly weeping.

I don’t want to take a break. I don’t want to keep saying no to genuine affection when it’s been my wish for so long. But in order to really be able to experience the love I’ve been wanting, I think I do have to shift the tide a little. I think that some of the crazy, excited, twitterpated love that gushes out of me all of the time (sometimes making a mess) is actually meant for someone in particular: me.

From years of bad decision, self denial, abuse and self-abuse, I’ve got the proverbial hole inside me. Like any vacuum, it’s eager to fill itself up, and will do so hungrily and desperately if I let it. The (sorry, there’s really no other way to say it) hole in my heart doesn’t care what’s healthy or fruitful, it just wants to be filled.

So I think what I really need to do here is to slow all the way down and let it be empty, then work on gradually filling it up with self-love. I’m not supersure how to do that, but I know that if I keep trying to love while I’ve got that emptiness, things will keep getting poisonous and broken, and I will really never learn to let myself be loved.

(It really is hard to write this without clichés, I apologize…)

I don’t think that I can fill up the whole thing in just a few months, but maybe I can learn some new habits, break the old patterns and learn some better ones. I think that if I can find a way to give all of the ridiculous love I keep feeling to myself somehow, I can turn myself from a vacuum to the endless fountain I was probably born to be, and give some nice people the infinite, generous love they deserve.

I got a pink glass vase from the dollar store to remind me of the gap in my heart I’m trying to allow to be not-filled-yet. I didn’t get anything to put in there, it’s just sitting there being pretty, with an empty space inside. (Okay, yes, like some other poor neglected pink parts I could name…)

The first few years of this story were all about learning to love my body, finding my inner Bettie Page, and as the Nakedest Person at thePagan Festival, I certainly achieved that. Whenever my work friends are fretting about their body issues, I kind of feel like they’re speaking a different language.

But now I would like to learn to give some of that brazenness and bravery to figuring out how to love my heart. I’ve spent so much of my life impatient with it, trying to tamp it down, pretending it doesn’t want things that other people decided I couldn’t have. In pursuit of experience and adventure, my poor heart has been through the ringer and I would really love to learn how to treat it kindly.

So the question is, what can I, on my own for now, give to my heart, to make it feel celebrated and loved like I did for my body? What’s the heart equivalent of Shibari or fireplay? Where is my heart’s nude beach?

Single Life, Week Six: Antsy But Enjoying the New Goals

Last weekend, I told my therapist that sessions might be boring for a while, and that’s how it might be with the blog, too. (Though adventures must not have been particularly unboring when I was hitting the same patterns again and again…) Anyway, I’m supposed to be mostly taking a three month break from sexytimes. In a way, it’s liberating, not having to worry about making plans or scheduling dates, and maybe letting the (already pretty lax) shaving routine lapse a little bit.

But since even in this hard transition I am still my horny, half-extroverted self, I feel antsy. The adrenaline of the past couple of years, though not always healthy, kept me fueled and inspired most of the time, and now I have to look for quieter, more sustainable forms of inspiration. I’m a little afraid that if I let myself rest for these few months I’ll suddenly wake up 60 with no one but cats. It’s the stupidest of tropes, but there it is anyway.

I know where the next adventure’s coming from: there’s a big poly conference coming up soon. And I don’t think I’ll be away from the dungeon forever—I’d thought I was probably graduated from there, but this morning when I saw the invite in my Fet inbox I felt a little surge of joy—right before I RSVPed no. In pursuit of this break-taking goal, I now even have a friend who’ll text me a gold star any time I RSVP no or just stay home in my PJs for any reason. It’s nice how the right influences tend to come along.

The story now is about self-care and about slow, safe progress. One big obstacle-removal is that Sweetie got a promotion and now works closer to home, allowing her to fully take over the car payments so that I can save up for a car of my own. Yay my future little red car! Trading the car back and forth has been a too-often chance to see each other, and that’s getting dicey. Plus, pretty soon I will never again have to drive the car that I jumped out of.

In some ways, it’s getting harder to let Sweetie go. Now that she’s free from her terrible commute and the job she hated, she’s getting frustratingly appealing. I’ve had to stop having her over for TV because the other night I got the biggest urge to hold her hands during some Community reruns. As the pain of the bad parts starts to heal, all I can see it the love and it’s hard to move on, even though it’s paradoxically the moving on that brings the appeal. It makes me both reluctant to and impatient to get further and further apart. Sometimes we still do groceries together but it ends up feeling like a date, so I guess we’ll have to knock that off too.

The big excitements of the past week or so have been little acts of self-care: staying late on Friday to give my Monday-morning self a break by getting the homework packets ready. Remembering to buy batteries, adding DVDs to my Netflix account so that I can have better movie nights. The big social adventures have been after-church brunches that have made my heart so happy and full. (Resolution with the Cute Church couple: “Waffles in ‘014!”)

Slowing down has given me the chance to do what I always wanted to do: feel all the feelings. I feel sadness at letting go of Cute Master and Pretty Slave, but a happy hope that I’ve left a pattern behind. I feel nervous excitement at making new neighborhood friends and navigating social situations at which I have pants on. I feel frustration, of course, at being away from sex adventures, but pleasure in knowing that I’m the only one I have to please.

I vacillate between shyness at the year’s goals and wanting to show them off, but I like the way you guys help me keep myself accountable. The theme of the year is kindness to myself, which I know will make some friends and readers (and also, me) sigh with relief. It’s fun thinking of new ways to care for myself, to reach out to people closer to home, to look for magic in the world, to try (though I’ve always had a nice time keeping it at arm’s length) to embrace my faith.

I’m still smarting from everything I’ve let go, but sometimes when I’m washing the dishes or making the bed or cooking myself breakfast for dinner, I feel the odd sensation of liking myself. It’s a real thing and I think I can learn it.

Naked New Years as Benchmark: So Many Gold Stars

As I alluded to last week, the Sweethearts came down for the Lady of the House’s annual New Years party, and to my delight they offered to stop by my apartment on the way. I was so excited to make them soup and catch up—hard as it is to believe, we hadn’t seen each other since the Sparkly Festival of Awesomeness, when he was part of my first threesome and she brushed my hair after.

When we started getting ready, there was a spark of energy in the air, and not just because we were enthusiastically comparing shiny butt plugs. At my encouragement, she came in to keep me company while I was getting dressed and we agreed that my Snoopy Christmas underpants were much more festive than my lucky polka dot ones. I found my shiny red bra, packed my red satin heels in my trusty suitcase, and chose a pretty outfit that would certainly not be on for very long.

I was shy around Mr. Sweetheart at first (Well, my version of shy…) but his body felt warm and welcoming. While they were sitting together on the couch getting the directions situated, I made some room for myself and kissed him, still the same softness, still the same lovely, steady connection. Then I got up the courage to lean across him and kiss her. She was a fit, just as I always suspected she would be. It is a wonder we ever made it to the party, but we did, in spite of my somewhat haphazard driving. (Note to self: become a better driver before the next time I drive someplace with a butt plug in.)

Shortly after we got there (While we still had clothes on, even!) the friend whom I’ve just named The Recurring Character arrived. He tends to be present at many of my formative experiences: He was the first person I (sort of) cuddled at my first cuddle party, he was in the clothing optional workshop where I first (sort of) stripped down, he was even there the first time I went to the nude beach. Last February, with Sweetie’s help, I was his first rope top. Like many of my guy friends, he’s a belle-of-the-ball type with lots of partners. Maybe I gravitate towards characters like that because they’re the most approachable, or maybe because I kinda want to be like them. Maybe both.

The Lady of the House’s parties always have a designated play space, adjacent to the rest of the party but not visible. That’s where the Sweethearts and I headed before too long. Last year, even though I was having a lovely rope scene with Sweetie, sex at a party seemed like a distant dream. Not even one year distant, it turns out. (Pause to high five Pretty Slave and Cute Master, who got to be that first. Jeez 2013, you were awesome sometimes.)

The aim was to have my first anal sex before midnight, but it was not meant to be. The universe seems determined to have me wait on that one, I don’t know why, but I’ve decided to settle in and be patient about it. Well, as patient as possible, anyway.

Anyway, playing with Mr. and Ms. Sweetheart was perfect. Especially considering that I’d been fantasizing about it for half a year! I always thought she looked like some badass Nordic goddess, all pale skin and smooth, heroic curves, an ass like a Romantic-era odalisque. (Yay I just used my Art History degree everybody!) Mr. Sweetheart is still such a wonderful combination of gentle and mean, though in this case, more gentle. The kindest spanks I’ve even known, kindest finger in my asshole.

As I lay between them like a loved-up princess, the Recurring Character asked if he could join, and after a quick soul-search I said yes and was plunged into the middle of the three of them. He kissed me while the Sweethearts played with my breasts, while Ms. Sweetheart ran her fingers over the front of my more-and-more-wet underpants. Everyone wondered how I could possibly still be wearing underpants and worked together to get them off of me. They were kind enough to let me leave my socks on, though, as all the best people are. With them everywhere on me, I felt helpless and goddesslike all at once, floating/submerged/drowning in an ocean of ecstatic sensations, the most perfectly myself I can imagine, all white light and joy.

At midnight, we all got up and toasted, danced with the Lady of the House, kissed and ate cookies and drank wine and caught up with friends. There was no one I wanted to text at midnight, though I did text a few at 2 AM. I was fully present and immersed in things, that was the real difference between this year and last year.

After the midnight revels, Mr. Sweetheart put a rope harness on me and fucked me so perfectly that I had to put my hand over my own mouth to stifle the screams. This was the first night I had PIV sex in front of other people; there was something comforting about hearing my friends’ conversations nearby while I was in the throes of him. Heartwarming. Connected. Shortly thereafter, I put Ms. Sweetheart over my knee and spanked her while Mr. Sweetheart sat and petted us both. I was proud to turn this powerful woman into a sweet, sleepy angel.

I’d planned to stay over and snuggle with them, but this was a rare night where I’d had enough.  Enough closeness, enough kisses, enough snuggles. I wanted to be in my own bed and I hadn’t drunk much at all so I had a soda, found my clothes, and said my prolonged and grateful goodbyes. It was an astonishing feeling to be so filled up by others and yet still self-contained.

When I met the Sweethearts last New Years, I couldn’t have predicted what we would become. I still can’t. The same goes for when I made friends with The Lady of the House by cuddle/wrestling her the June before last, or the first time I laid eyes on Cute Master and Pretty Slave or any of the other characters. We never know what magic we’re making or where connections are leading, but I’m more convinced than ever that there’s a current underneath it all, taking us where we need to go. The Sweethearts seem to have fucked me full of faith.

A Quote and a Song for a Happy New Year!

“It doesn’t matter if we’ve been prepared or trained or certified or if we’ve been delayed for years. What matters is if we can listen to our own unmitigated possibility with our whole being. For this will enable us to begin, the way one day of rain and one day of sun will start the flower in its destiny to bloom. In deep and unexpected ways, saying yes is a form of listening that brings who we are and what we experience into true meeting. Saying yes is the beginning of all flowering.” Mark Nepo, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

Here’s to everything new, loves. Midnight kisses to all.

One Resolution: Give Each Adventure Time to Be Special

Yesterday, I was settling in to make gingerbread cookies and I realized that Sweetie had taken the rolling pin. This was one of those unpredictable divorce-grief floodgates, and suddenly I was a mess. Yes, I could get my own rolling pin, but I didn’t want to have a separate rolling pin from her. Etc.

That grief widened out into tears for everything that’s gone past this year, and it got overwhelming. I realized that I never took quite enough time to soak up the emotions of each thing. I often (sometimes literally!) ran from one person to the next in order to minimize feelings about them—negative or positive! Maybe especially positive. There was no need to come to terms with the depth and nuance of one relationship when I was spanking and sparkling onto the next! It sure was fun but it repressed some of the experiences and turned others into neuroses.

So yesterday I got stuck and sad about all of the things that happened, all of the adventures that went by so quick. The way that one love/hurt/infatuation/grief bled into the next and everything got all tangled up. It was a beautiful mess, but I’m not sure that I honored each experience enough.

I am going to stop pretending that everything doesn’t mean everything to me. In the coming year, I will stop and let myself feel every emotion that comes with every adventure. I’ll share those feelings when I can and whether they are returned or not, I’ll coddle them, love them, kiss them and put them to bed, or let them go. I will not spend any more time trying to pretend things are not a big deal to me. Things are a big deal to me, and it’s time to let that be who I am.

Friday the 13th is Forgiveness Day

It's a holiday I made up. Every time Friday the 13th rolls around, I listen to this Big Star song and try to do all of the (usually self-) forgiving that needs to be done. This time, I may just have to settle for listening to the song.

Nice Affirmation With Snoopy on It

I can't imagine being attracted to anyone any time soon, but when I do, I'll try to remember this. For both love AND like. Except, I have to admit, some of the things I tried to be were really fun to try to be!