Hello dears, It's long past time to post an update here, but in the meantime here's a lovely poem my friend wrote for her husband, about a topic that is near and dear to my heart. The Love Song
I can't play an instrument, but I can suck your dick. I don't have a college degree, but I can make you cum with one lick. Now, you're gonna cum all over my face and you know I'm gonna like it. I'm gonna open my mouth and get ready for your penicular explosion. Your penicular explosion.
Do do do do do do. Do do do do do do do do do. Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do. Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do. Do do do do do do do do do do do do.
You can play the trumpet, but you'd rather have your mouth on my clit. You may have a college degree, but you've got a PHD in that shit. Now, I'm gonna cum all over your face, and I know you're gonna like it. You're gonna open your mouth and get ready for my vaginal combustion. My vaginal combustion.
Do do do do do do. Do do do do do do do do do. Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do. Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do. Do do do do do do do do do do do do.
You know that you're gonna like it. YOU KNOW that you're gonna like it. YOU KNOW THAT YOU'RE GONNA LIKE IT, UGH!
End of the song.
Leticia Viloria was born and raised in New York, NY. She wrote, and performed all her life because she includes mandatory school plays. She lives in Bethlehem, PA with her husband and almost 3 year old. She has been performing short form improv in The Associated Mess for almost 2 years.
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.
I'm a little bit regretful that I lit a match to the blog's old Twitter handle during a grief-blizzard, but what can I do but start fresh. give me a new follow if you want:
One Saturday last April it seemed as though a fissure in my
psyche released, healed, and closed, and with it, the door to all I’d
experienced in my three years of adventure. It was a triumph and loss all at
once. As I page and edit through the beginning pages of the blog to start
wrangling it into a book, I miss the person I was at the beginning of the
story, aglow with adrenaline, defiance, and denial. As I face the story for
what it really is, the end of a marriage, a labyrinth path to things generally
being healthier but less exciting, I have to grieve for what it wasn’t, for
what I may never have—a story of belonging.
After I walked away from that festival last spring in what
an uncharitable commenter called a tantrum but what felt like both defeat and
acceptance, I really did walk into a happier life, in almost all ways. It felt
the way I imagine being newly sober might feel—missing the thrills but
welcoming the lack of roller coasterness, the feeling of belonging to myself,
to my own life.
I spent almost every weekend last summer at my aunt’s beach
house, bonding with family, swimming with my cousins. I felt entitled to be
with my own family in a way I never had before. I went to my sister’s for a
no-reason visit, walked along with river with my niece and nephews. I sat in
the yard at my mom’s dream country house and watched hummingbirds for hours.
I didn’t make it as a teacher, didn’t get to be the change I
wished to see. Despite everything I’ve learned here, I never figured out how to
not be blamed for every single thing—in the fall, a student pushed me into a
door, and somehow I ended up being made to apologize to him. Another child
tried to push a locker onto me, and I was told to “stop putting myself in
harm’s way.” Eventually, I started having real panic attacks. On my second to
last day, I went to the emergency room because my heart hurt. A doctor told me
I could stop panicking, if I stopped going there, so I did.
I say this to say, so many times in the last few years I’ve
jumped in with both feet, fallen in love with every single person and thing
around me, then unequivocally rejected the whole thing, the social equivalent
of a bad donor heart. I guess that’s kind of what I’ve been.
As I begin turning the blog into a book, the big emotional
risk, the scary part, is not the scary stories that await me—I feel safe from
all of those fears and panics, perspective and strength did come as I’d hoped,
right on schedule. What’s hard to confront is the love, held in there like so
many bookmarks. Though at time I saw those adventures as a transformative dream,
it wasn’t, it was real love, even in the most baroquely fake situations. And
with real love, real loss. I held every single character in my heart, just like
I loved the teachers and students and entire causes I walked away from this
winter.
In some ways, these two post-teaching months have been the
happiest, but I’m restless not really knowing what I am, having these vast
reserves of unexpressed something waiting
in case true love or vocation
miraculously come along. Though I’m by and large optimistic about what’s ahead,
I get overwhelmed sometimes about the whole population of lost loves behind me,
the series of identities I’ve slipped into and out of so quickly—the loss and
loss and loss.
Today my beloved therapist, whom I’ve seen sporadically
since we finished the project, had to cancel our appointment. She’s been doing
that lately, switching my times around and so on, and today, I was done. She
wasn’t one of my people anymore, somehow. I let her go and I felt something in
my brain heave and swirl, maybe it was the real end of the story, maybe this is
being free.
I’m new to the world again. I’m taking everything slow. I
don’t know what I’m here for, except to write and eat brunch and pet the cats
and take pictures of flowers. My type-A side wants a mission, my creative side
wants to be a kite, seeing where things take me next. I honestly don’t know.
Are you there, readers? I’ve missed you. A couple of
conversations yesterday made me realize that even though I don’t fit into any
scenes or anything anymore, my adventures are probably far from over. I’ve missed
telling you stuff, so if you don’t mind that it might sometimes just be
pictures of flowers, I’ll start posting every now and again.
Yesterday an old muse texted out of the blue with concerned
questions, since it seemed like I’d ended the story on a down note—it didn’t
seem that way to me but it WAS a rough spring, a hard transition from poly to
post-poly, from unabashed to still-unabashed-but-with-pants-on. I freak out
sometimes lately because I’m not sure where I fit into the world, but I do know
that things are unequivocally better than they were a year ago.
Last Fourth of July, Sweetie and I went to watch some
fireworks over the river. We were lazy and dawdled getting out, still in limbo
out of the jumping-out-of-the-car incident, and I was all heartbreaky about Mr.
Sweetheart. We pulled over to the side of the road and watched the fireworks,
having missed meeting up with friends.
As we pulled away, families were streaming across the
street, kids with glow bracelets and those light up toys that are always for
sale at these things. I was supposed to meet Angel Face and his new boyfriend
afterwards for dancing, but I was crying so hard on the way to being dropped
off at the club that I had to ask them for a dancing raincheck. Sweetie and I
went for a sad, slow, humid, beautiful walk in the woods instead. (We’re lucky
enough to live in a city that magically has woods in the middle of it!) Gloomy
as we were, the trees were not—they were completely full of lightning bugs, so
bright and blinking that they rivaled Christmas trees. Like the girl in a movie
that I sometimes am, even my heartbreaks tend to unspool in an aesthetically
pleasing way.
Lightning bugs were always one of our things, so when they
started to return this year, I was predictably grief-stricken. (It still comes,
though a little less frequently.) The more she and I get along, the harder it
is not to get nostalgic and want to go back. The trapped feeling, the
name-calling, the feeling that I’m way too close to death, those are all gone,
only the good parts are left. I pressed myself to do evening walks on my own,
and was relieved to see that the lightning bugs are still there, and I still
love them.
Last night I woke up in the night for no particular reason
and saw, on my ersatz bedroom clothesline, a firefly. He lit up the front of a
drying beach cover-up, flashed emphatically around the room, and was gone.
Can’t confront the fireflies much more than that.
So today, I woke up happy. My life may still be in flux and
missing some crucial elements, but the crisis part, knock wood, is over. I’ve
been placed in a school for next year that seems, at least so far, to have a
less mean-girl-oriented staff. I have the summer off and a season pass to the
local fancy garden, and it’s sinking in that I can go and sit by the fountains
all day long if I want to. My mom is planning me a 40th birthday
party at the end of the summer and I’ll be overjoyed to blow out the candles
with my niece and nephews, hopefully after a family trip to the comic shop.
And, accomplishment of accomplishments, Sweetie is now a
best friend who lives a few blocks down and was persuaded to join me in being old
ladies at our city’s Fourth of July concert, which features, among others, my
avatar/hero Nikki Minaj. We will make no effort to be near the front. We will
sit in chairs and watch people. Tomorrow maybe I’ll join my aunts and cousins
at the beach.
I’m not awesome at singlehood. I do panic hard every few
weeks or so at the prospect that I may have missed out on having my own family.
A few weeks ago, I was staying with my sister and got to see her kids off on
their second-to-last day of school, and that really lit up the family pangs
inside me. Of course, it may have been less cute if I’d been trying to see
myself off to school at the same time, but we’ll see what the future brings. I
have no way of knowing.
My point is, dear reader (if you’re there) is that this is
nowhere near being a down ending. There’s no ending here at all, just life
moving forward in its gorgeous, mysterious, sometimes-aggravating way. There’s
no more fighting-through-it to do for a while, and I am, for a few months,
nothing but free.
“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.”
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.
I was excited yesterday morning to pack up and get ready for
the Sparkly Festival of Awesomeness, but I was also grumpy and
space-issuey—even the shower curtain brushing up against my legs seemed invasive.
I was thinking it might be better to stay home and rest and write, maybe even
grade papers. I wanted some time to myself.
But I also knew it was time to start reaching out, and I was
curious about whether I’d even be interested in a naked-outside adventure now
that the Big Therapy Project had been completed. When I arrived, I immediately
felt disincluded—the man at the gate couldn’t find my name on the list, and
neither could the lady at registration, at first. Still, I was glad to be there
and excited to see my friends.
I found Mr. and Ms. Sweetheart right away. Their tent was in
the same place it was in last year, where I’d had all the fun with Mr.
Sweetheart and Mr. Shiny Eyes. This time, all the front tent flaps were open
and it had the feel of a veranda, a porch full of inflatable beds.
I got naked and fell easily in with them on their bed. I was
warm from the gorgeous day and from the adrenaline and had lots of lovely
snuggles and sexytimes in front of everyone, but Mr. Sweetheart got impatient
with me for wanting to stop and put on sunscreen—he deemed it shady enough.
After snuggles they were going to a workshop and he was getting annoyed with me
for making them late, and I wasn’t okay with that. I wanted to go enjoy the
woods anyway.
I felt post-coital tired and cranky as I set off on my own.
I started out naked but kept adding more clothes as I went. My spray-on
sunscreen wouldn’t work and everything all of a sudden felt sore. I added a
skirt and then a bra, but still sure did like the sun on my skin. I found and
walked the labyrinth where I’d had such a meaningful experience last year, then
went to explore the pond. It was teeming with tadpoles, a fuck you to anything
that would interfere with the flourishing of life. I found this vindicating,
since the pond where I used to watch tadpoles as a child has fallen prey to
frackers. It felt like the frogs were still winning.
I saw a tiny turtle and got very, very sad that Sweetie
wasn’t there to see it with me.
I tried to have some self-adventures in the woods, that had
long been a fantasy of mine, but my body felt raw and disconnected, guarded
against touch, even my own. I started to realize that no matter how pretty the
scenery, no matter how much everyone else was having fun, I didn’t belong here,
maybe never would.
On the way back from the pond, who should I see but that
harbinger of go-home-already, Steampunk Girl. She was, as always, perfectly at
home, being chatted up by a guy who looked exactly like a young Weird Al
Yankovic. She was directly in my path and I thought I should go talk to her,
say my sorries and get in over with, but everything inside me finished shutting
down and I found a way to get past them without being seen.
I found some nice grass to lie down in, looked up at the perfect
cartoon clouds and thought about the Steampunks, who were probably here
together and fitting in perfectly the way they always do, like I never would. I
don’t know why I still feel so much pain about them, but there is. I’m still
broken about them no matter how much progress I’ve made otherwise.
I started to sob and a couple of strangers came over to talk
to me, but I couldn’t articulate it to strangers, I needed a real friend.
I spotted the Recurring Character and his wife sitting in
lawn chairs and watching a nice couple fuck in the next tent over. I asked if I
could just sit by them, but they got closed and guarded and he said “We’re
having an alone moment right now.”
I think that was the moment that I clocked out of polyamory,
or whatever community this was. The way they used boundaries as an excuse to
ignore the real need of a hurting human being, this has been the essence of
heartbreak after heartbreak for these past few years. It certainly wasn’t
friendship. Like a child, I sobbed away across the field, in front of everyone,
maybe even in front of Steampunks.
I eventually found the Sweethearts leaving their workshop,
hugged them and told them what happened with Steampunk Girl. I lay down on the
bed for a few minutes and when I closed my eyes, they were gone again. There
was nothing and no one here for me, not even myself since I felt so
disconnected.
I tried to get a cup of coffee in hopes that that would make
me feel better, but even THAT felt exclusive—you had to be a member of the
Coffee Club. Never has the universe been so unsubtle at telling me to get the
heck out of someplace.
I headed home sad and wondering what hobbies would replace
unicorning and nudity, if I’d ever find a place to belong. (Where does one go
to meet monogamous available people, anyway?) I stopped at Gold Star Wing
Girl’s house on the way home, and talking to her confirmed what I already sort
of knew: My adventures of the past few years helped me to separate from Sweetie
and successfully tackle the Big Therapy Project, and now that that’s done, they
just don’t have the same meaning. Being a naked peripheral character feels bad
because it’s already in the past and going backwards always hurts.
I hung onto the Sweethearts the longest probably because
they’re the nicest, but it’s time to cop to the thing I said out loud to
Sweetie in the ocean last summer—I didn’t say I wanted an FWB or a play partner
or a couple. I said I wanted a husband. And because, unlikely as he is for
giving such an insight, Steampunk Guy was the one who helped me realize it,
maybe they’ll always be there to show me when I’m off track.
It’s lonely not belonging, but I can only refocus on ways to
keep belonging with myself and hope the rest works out somehow.
