A Year After the Sparkly Festival

Last week in my poetry class (the absolute BEST thing I have going on in my life right now) my friend from church mentioned having helped get the congregation’s Maypole ready and I had such a deep, yowly pang for the Sparkly Festival and all that it means. I almost said the heck with it and bought a day pass, even though I am recovering from acute stress and therefore avoiding all things overstimulating.

I didn’t go, but the longing seemed like a good, healing sign, and the nostalgia got me wondering just where sexiness fits into my life nowadays. For a while, it didn’t figure in at all. The stress of teaching at a harsh school had me wishing for as much shelter, as much covering up as possible. The parts of me that were vulnerable—poetry, compassion, art, sex, retreated inward for safety as I went into survival mode. It was easy to welcome back the less complicated aspects of creativity, to write and draw and paint up a storm—in fact, it’s the only way to heal I’ve ever known. But sex is harder to let back in, especially since it’s hard to see where I stand in relation to it.

In the time since I was last blogging regularly, I’ve done one thing exactly right—I moved into a dream apartment in the most woodsy, flowery neighborhood in the city. Gold Star Wing Girl says it’s like I live in a cupcake, and I have a back terrace that’s so private it may as well be another room. Saturday was so perfect, the sun so warm and the air so lilac-scented, it seemed like a good place to see where I was with my old friend, nudism. Only the cats would be able to see me, and they were too busy sunning themselves and chasing flies to care.

The vine covered walls and perfect square of blue May cartoon sky were so encouraging. I changed into my pink fuzzy robe, sat down in my cute turquoise Adirondack chair, and gave some naked Saturday-afternoon reading a try.

I can’t imagine why it felt bad, certainly nothing bad happened—what even COULD have? My heart raced in an unpleasant way and I had clothes back on in minutes. Such a harmless, pleasant idea cast the day in this weird darkness, which luckily I could walk off in the gorgeous neighboring woods. (Maybe I’ve at least made my home a little more Festival-like, now that I think of it.)

Experienced and self-aware as I’ve managed to become, I’m vexingly at a loss as to how to express my sexy side. Sometimes it feels as though the trauma work I did last year took away more than it gave, or maybe it’s the trauma OF work still sticking with me and wanting me to pile on the shelter. I don’t know.

Today at church, we were doing the rites of spring, and the minister was shyly wading through the bawdier aspects of Beltane. The friends I was sitting with joined me in emphatic applause each time he mentioned the sexytimes rites of spring, as he, in his own very much clothed way, admitted that the world NEEDS naked shenanigans. (If I haven’t mentioned it lately, Unitarians are awesome.) So I know from the forcefulness of my applause that I am still aligned with wanting to romp naked in a field, I just can’t seem to want to do it.

As I’ve been working to convert the blog into a book, I’ve had to fight the feeling that the story doesn’t belong to me anymore, or I don’t belong to it. I struggle to feel entitled to it because I ended up writing it as an outsider. I wanted so much to serve you, but by the end (and I’m remembering that this was the point of the story in the first place) I could only end up serving myself. My somewhat disappointingly boring self.

The way the sermon ended felt oddly personal to me. Inspired by the Song of Songs, the minister gave us the go ahead to spout whatever love we had—“If it’s flowery, if it’s corny, that probably means it’s good.” He said there is a time to leave one’s love-nest behind and go out into the world and convert the love into other kinds of goodness.

On the way home from church, I felt lonely, maybe because my brunch pals aren’t around this week, but maybe lonely for the parts of myself I can’t currently access or express. I have such a deep love for my adventures. I miss them like camp friends who rarely keep in touch, but who save me and influence me and cross my mind all the time. I’ve felt little slivers of my sexual self coming back, and I’m curious and impatient to see what form it will take. All I know to do is write the book, so I don’t think I have any choice.

Happy Friday: Sweet Hallelujah, a Good Date

So it turns out there’s one guy I’m not currently afraid of: Mr. Sweetface! For the last month or so I haven’t known what to do with in. I was feeling hesitant about poly and we’re both going through a lot at home. For some reason, I was inspired this week to invite him to join me at the Cute Neighborhood Music Thing that my adorable alt-country duo church friends run. I liked the idea of listening to the music with my head on a nice warm shoulder, sidling up to his faintly leather-scented warmth.

So, for the first time in I don’t know how long, I put on makeup after work, curled up the ends of my needs-to-be dyed hair into a flip. I wore red lipstick and my red date-night raincoat, even though it’s still a little too chilly.

The venue’s a historic Mennonite meetinghouse; the Cute Church Couple live on its grounds. There are tall candles in all the windows and Cute Church Girl made vanilla cupcakes from scratch.

When Mr. Sweetface joined me, a band with the working title “Poor No-Name Cat” was playing and I was enjoying the Breakfast at Tiffany’s reference and the soulful lady singer, singing torch songs in French like it was a café in a movie. I was nervous when he came in—we’ve never had a pants-on date before, so I didn’t know what to expect. He took my hand and I did put my head on his shoulder, kind of swooned along to the music and felt a kind of rest I hadn’t felt in a long time. “I missed you,” I whispered, and he said he’d missed me too.

After the show (They booked me to open next month! First time reading poetry in almost two years!) he drove me home and we curled up on the couch and talked about all the things—his family stuff, the Big Therapy Project (to tell a guy that story and have him hold me protectively is it’s own therapy…), our similarly LSD-fond pasts. We compared the perils of teaching with the perils of parenthood--both involve doing one’s best and feeling like a jerk a lot, it turns out. He got deeply emotional talking about his son and it felt good to take care of him a little, to reside for a moment in a story besides my own. It made me feel true and alive, so gratified that he was kind enough to share himself with me.

I told him I’m a ways away from sexytimes--he held me tight and told me to take all the time I need. I said I’d try to make it quick so I could get back to beating his ass before too long.

His second child is due this fall, so I know I can’t expect much time with him, but I liked inviting him into this new world I’m building and that he’s willing to share his world with me too. I think I’m still poly, given how much I like sharing him with my friend, how much I liked cozying up to a date with a wedding ring. The Mystery Family thing didn’t mean I’m not poly, I just meant I prefer sanity, and so far this seems pretty sane.

On the couch, wrapped up in a blanket with my head on his heart and his (newly beardy, yay!) chin on my head, as he told me his secrets, I felt the thing I love to feel the most—simple human connection. Warmth. Life. We’re getting to know each other in a way that makes my pants-on time seem like even more of a blessing.

Though my heart is still heavy with worry about work, it was lovely to go to sleep last night with an unequivocal smile, to have these gorgeous living moments in my heart, to fall asleep and dream in pretty neighborhood love songs.

Single Life, Week 7: Life After “Thrift Shop”

It’s too early to know what the song of this year will be, but “Thrift Shop” was my song of last year, the one I woke myself up with on the way to work, sweated to at the gym, and heard in my head when something, yes, fucking awesome was happening.

I wrote last fall about how it’s a good philosophy of life; just being delighted at what you find, letting chance and serendipity show me where I need to go. With that theory in place, I left the year with an armload of experiences, many of which were unequivocally awesome, some that didn’t fit, some that were stained and downright nasty. As unegalitarian as it feels for me to say this, chance threw some things my way that simply weren’t good enough for me, and I took them home anyway.

I like that seeing play as a magical thrift shop helped me to take down a lot of the structures of control that I had in place. Though I still do love planning and anticipating, I think that my calendar fixation was a lot about trying to make things stay the same, trying to keep things safe and cozy for Sweetie so that she wouldn’t yell at me and call me names. I learned how to be more flexible, to adjust my expectations, and even how to not want to claim people immediately upon kissing them. Well, a little shaky on that last one, but still.

I really, really miss it, just powering through and experiencing every single sensation that I could, even when the emotional cost was high, even when I had to fight my own instincts to do it. Last night was my first night skipping the Regular Dungeon in a long time, and though I had a fantastic time, I still felt nostalgic for the nights where I was able to experience thing after thing after thing, to slip seamlessly from bottom to top, from fire to floggers, and feel like a princess superhero while doing so. It occurs to me that very, very little of that experience had to do with the Steampunks, so I probably don’t have to give all of it up just because they don’t like me. I hope to eventually return to some of it after the wounds have healed.

Back to my metaphor: In real life, I don’t shop like “Thrift Shop.” Not even when I’m IN a thrift shop. I tend to mostly browse, enjoying the bright randomness of everything and only picking anything up if it’s really special, like a tulip-glass pitcher or a perfect grandma cardigan. I would certainly never take home anything that needs fixing, especially if I already had a broken keyboard at home.

In regular stores I’m even pickier. In fact, I’m currently refusing to buy work pants until tapered legs go out of style. I don’t have a shape or a budget for careless shopping. I’m a grown-ass woman who knows what she likes and should never have to settle for anything that doesn’t fit or that I don’t completely love. If I’m that picky with spending my money, can I be a little pickier with spending my heart?

When my therapist got unavailable because her supervisor wanted to Girl Interrupted me, I refused to even look for another one. I couldn’t stand the strangers’ input that came from the 10-minute screening process. So I waited seven months for my real therapist to get her own practice, and now she even makes house calls. There’s a lesson there about waiting for something that works, rather than trying to fit with things that don’t.

My point, and I do have one, is that I hope to find a balance between the natural excitement and momentum in my heart and the discernment that will allow me to get what I want and deserve. That way I can have chance and magic but also, you know, sanity.

That said, I reallyreally hate being on a break from the pursuit of sexytimes. My emotions are grateful to have the time to rest, but my body is like what. the. fuck?

But remembering what pants-on activities I enjoy is rewarding and comforting. On Thursday night, I sat in the meeting room of a neighborhood historic building (we have a lot of them) and drew while I listened to my friends sing and play the most lovely and gently moving music. I was flooded with a sense of (mostly) platonic wellbeing that nonetheless made me have to go home and ravish myself.

Last night, Gold Star Winggirl (So named because she sends me gold stars whenever I’m awesome at being on my break) came with me to a Bhakti dance, and by the end when we were Om Shanti Shanti-ing, I felt so good and loved that I could have Om Shanti-Shanti-ed for about 10 more hours. The best part was getting lots of time to catch up with GSW and root for her adventures too.

Transcendent and fulfilled as I was though, I still would have liked to have driven over to the Regular Dungeon and handed out some what-for. Funny how that’s the thing I miss most.

But guys! Guess what. Granted, it’s only happening on Twitter (hence the loophole) but for a few weeks, I’ve been spending attention on a guy who actually gives it back. Who is actually nice to me! Who checks on me if I’m sad and whose girlfriends and wives and metamours all seem to be delighted by our exchanges. I’ve never even seen any of their faces and at the moment I’m not ready too, but I do feel a genuine connection and I think this is excellent practice for letting myself be treated kindly when it comes time for IRL flirtations. A gold star for me, and one for the Mystery Man and his family. (I’m quite sure they’ll be good at sharing a star.)

Likewise, the Recurring Character is being internet-adorable, telling me semi-daily which of my (G-rated) body parts he is rooting for. So a gold star to him, too.

Okay, so I’m somewhat terrible at taking a break, but I am still making a lot of progress: Friday I told Sweetie we can no longer do groceries together, and yesterday I told her that this is my last week of sharing the car with her. Next weekend I am going to try and find a car of my own. I’m getting better at letting Sweetie-things go, and that’s progress.

PS. As I leave on pop song behind, I just want to take a moment to celebrate and thank the part of my soul that will always sound like this: