Long Time No Angst

There’s a reason why all the greatest works literature are all mostly about tragedy, death, destruction, despair, ill-fated affairs, violence and upheaval: it’s because they’re easy to write about.

Seriously, do you know how hard it is to write any kind of fiction without at least one of your characters carking it? It’s amazing how so few of us have actually experienced anything to do with, say, murder, and yet how many of us feel compelled to write about it.

Even if you don’t agree with me, there’s no arguing with the fact that ‘Peace and Peace’ just doesn’t have the same ring.

Do writers write about Doom all the time because they’re depressed? Or is writing about Doom the cause of depression? It’s a chicken-and-egg dilemma which could probably fill its own book, but anyway, here is something one of my ex-boyfriends said:

I see you’re writing a novel…. good thing that writers are the happiest people in the world eh?

(John Safran has built an entire career out of narcissistically dissecting his failed relationships; why can’t I?)

Petty bitchiness aside, (yeah, Xavier*, cos being a religious zealot makes a person SO much more contented than being a writer), there was a point I was trying to make, which as usual I seem to have forgotten.

Oh yes. I remember now. Okay. Right.

I haven’t blogged in a while, for the following reasons.

1. Happiness

Look, despite the romantic ideal of the impoverished writer alone in his/her garret, swilling wine and single-mindedly hammering out that tortured masterpiece before they inevitably die miserably, I know that there are thousands of creative people will back me up when I say that we are actually at our most productive when happy.

So, it’s not that happiness itself that has caused me to become uninspired, it’s just that happiness is hard to describe.

I’ve been trying to find the words to do it justice… the absolute most perfect way to tell you all how it feels.

But all I’m left with are reductive clichés:

I am seeing someone. He is wonderful. I am happy.

Beyond these flimsy, inadequate, ultimately futile statements, I am reluctant to share any more at this stage. Just as Bic Runga said It’s not for anybody else to know, I feel a need to gather this beautiful feeling up to my chest, hold it close, keep it safe. It is an embryo – too fragile to fling carelessly into the public domain.

I am trying to accept that it’s okay to be happy. That a giant flaming meteor won’t drop out of the sky and land on my head just because I dared to pull my head out of that expansive emotional quicksand known as Depression.

I feel better, stronger, more like myself. This is good.

2. Writing

Oh man, for some reason, I thought that once I’d finished writing my book, all my insecurities about writing would drop away. What I wasn’t prepared for was that they would get worse.

The act of writing a book is productive, brave, bold, admirable. Tell anyone you’re writing a book, and they tend to go all kind of silent and reverent, and say things like: “oh, wow. That’s really, like, interesting.” However, once you’ve finished writing, you find yourself with a giant ugly lump of a thing, that maybe could contain gold once it’s been chipped and dusted and polished, but is just as likely to turn out to be poo.

There was a five minute period after finishing in which I felt proud of my accomplishment, sure.

Beyond that it was just basically 100% pain.

So I got a job in a burger store, and actively stopped writing. Which made blogging difficult, since blogs are typically created with words.

But it was around about the moment when, after six long, sweaty, greasy hours in the burger store, while handling a customer complaint (that there weren’t enough pickles on their 1/3 pounder with cheese), that I realised I was ready to return to writing.

Sure, Tolstoy I might not be, but at least I now have the confidence to say that my talents are greater than heaping fistfuls of icky pickles onto an outrageously thick hunk of cow meat.

Last week I printed out my manuscript and mailed it to that competition I’ve been talking about entering. Gotta be in it to win it, I suppose.

3. Uh, they’re basically my main reasons. But while I’m here, might I mention that I’m a bit of a sadist now.

I’ve topped before, and enjoyed it on the level of: ‘ooh, this is a bit fun’. And intellectually, I could totally understand the appeal of inflicting pain and torment upon another. But it had yet to reach the stage where it made me, you know. Come.

Like, the idea of topping was not repellent to me, but it was never something I would jerk off to.

But something has changed. A part of myself has been prised open somehow. And it’s scary – I feel like a bit of a monster. Like, what does that say about the person I am, if I want to strap my lover to a bed and cane his bottom until he is insensible with pain? Until he is sweaty, gasping, straining, breathless? Begging for mercy; pleading for release?

Lately, my hands seem to have grown minds of their own. I seem them creeping around his neck, pressing, squeezing.

My confidence is quavering; I don’t know if I can quite follow through. But something that is deeper, darker, and more thoroughly doused in the slick black liquor of sex, is speaking louder than all these insecurities. The Creature has claws. I am awed and afraid and excited.

4. Oh yeah, that’s right. I totally remembered what I was going to say before.

You see, blogging is much like doing a grocery shop. During the week you are reminded continually of exactly what you need to buy, to the point where it is nearly inconceivable that you could ever forget, but then when you actually get to the supermarket everything useful gets completely erased from your brain, so that you spend yet another week living off Crazy Cheese and Marshmallow Fluff, when what you really needed was Food With Actual Nutritional Content, and an Industrial-Sized Container of Nappy San.

Anyway.

I am unsure about my organisational future with the Under 30s Group.

See, I’m no longer going to parties and events, and I don’t see myself re-emerging anytime soon (due to monetary restrictions, an anxiety disorder, and a general desire to keep my kink quiet and private for the time being). I feel out of the loop. And I don’t quite have the time or the energy to keep up with the influx of excitable and nervous newbies anymore.

That said, it seems sad to slink away from the group right at the point where it’s taking off.

So, I dunno. We’ll see.

In the meantime, hi! How y’all doin’?

* Not his real name. Der.

Things I Wish I’d Known

Last week I spoke at a kink workshop called the ‘Social Etiquette Discussion Panel’. The inspiration for this event stemmed from a conversation I had with HallowsEve and Tonbi a few months back; the general theme of which was “I wish someone had told me these things when I started out.”

When I first started to explore this kink thing, the path I took from Wide-Eyed-Newbie to Hardened-Old-Shrew was of the ‘baptism of fire’ variety. I’ve ended up in a good place, but there are times when I resent that the innocent wonder I once had for BDSM was stolen so quickly. Which is not to say that it is no longer magical for me, but I do slightly envy those who have no experience, because it means they are about to discover something amazing.

(Similar to, say, a person who has not yet heard a Radiohead album. Although Radiohead has brought me many, many, many, MANY hours of blissful enjoyment, nothing can quite replace the first time I heard Kid A, which redefined music for me, and blew my freakin’ brain).

Through Under 30s, I meet a lot of young people who are stepping into the BDSM scene for the first time, and who are somewhat ashamed of their innocence. Which is unnecessary – there’s no shame in being new and clueless.  It’s okay to admit that you wouldn’t know a sjambok from a violet wand. What’s annoying are people who try to act as if they’ve been around the block a hundred times, when in reality all they’ve done is watched Secretary furtively that time their flatmate was out.

As a general rule, established members of the scene seem happy to bitch about others if they’ve broken the unwritten code of social ethics, but it’s a bit unfair to criticise  if they themselves haven’t made an effort to improve communication. The Social Etiquette Workshop was about breaking down this vague wall of silence, and creating an environment in which people could feel comfortable enough to discuss ideas.

My main contributions were as follows:

People in the BDSM scene are people.

When I was twenty years old, I literally had to be dragged to my first munch. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was absolutely terrified. But all that happened was I met a bunch of polite, intelligent people, who welcomed me and were genuinely interested in what I had to say. I was amazed.

I had the same experience (of relief and disbelief) at the first play party I ever went to. Imagine my surprise when, instead of flames or severed limbs, the only things that came out of the mouths of the other guests were words, many of them friendly.

Now it amuses me how, every time I shepherd a new member into Under 30s, they all say the same thing: “wow, I didn’t expect you all to be so… normal?”

Know how to say ‘no’.

Even to this very day I suck at saying no. I tend to say yes for the sake of pleasing others or to avoid making a fuss, even when this means I have to go very far out of my way to follow through with whatever I’ve agreed to. But the thing is, you’re far, far better off turning someone down (if they’re asking to play with you, for example) than to freak out when you find yourself in a situation you can’t handle.

Because I know how shocking I am at saying this simple, monosyllabic word, I’ve found that it helps to go to public events with a friend who can say no on my behalf.

Even doms need to know how to say it. I’ve heard stories about doms who have agreed to something that they weren’t comfortable with, just because they didn’t want to lose face, or because they wanted to make their sub happy.

Everyone has a right to say no – everyone!

Sexuality is fluid.

I used to have very rigid ideas about labels, and thought that your only kinky options were dom or sub. I really believed that people were born a certain way and could never change. I’ve since discovered that the term ‘switch’ is completely valid. (It does not mean a person is indecisive or confused!)

Now I know that there are so many different labels and definitions out there, and that people can identify as all of them, or none. It can change depending on your headspace, who you’re playing with, whether you’re playing in public or in private, etc.

Even though ‘submissive’ is still how I choose to describe myself, it’s not totally correct. I top occasionally, and I’ve also learned that ‘bottom’ is a much more accurate way of describing the role I play during public scenes. (For me, submission is so much more than simply receiving a beating. It’s an intensely emotional thing; the physical act of receiving pain/sensation is somewhat incidental. It also has a lot to do with love, service, pride, and humiliation. Simply bending over at a play party and letting someone have their way with my arse does not quite qualify as submission).

In addition to this, my sexual tastes have evolved and changed greatly, which has surprised me. Things that once terrified or disgusted me have become great loves. Be aware of the hubris inherent in saying something like: “oh, I’ll never understand how anyone could find (INSERT FREAKY KINK THING) appealing.” You’d only be asking for trouble. Trust me.

You don’t have to assume a role to interact with people at public events.

It took me a long time to realise that I didn’t have to be Lou the Submissive when I met people at parties – I could just be Lou.

I also wish someone had told me that it’s perfectly okay to go to a kink party and NOT play. When I ran the Sexy Freaks parties, the number one question I got asked by first-timers was “is it okay just to watch?”. Not only is it okay, but at these sorts of things there are people who are happy to hog the spotlight, and revel in the fact they’ve got an audience. Strangely enough, at Sexy Freaks, this person generally turned out to be me.

If you do play, be prepared for the possibility of a come-down.

BDSM brings up a lot of intense stuff. Some strange, surprising and sometimes difficult reactions and emotions can escape you – laughter, tears, elation, depression. It’s always wonderful to be able to channel these things and let them out, but it can also be incredibly draining.

This is why it’s so important to have friends in the scene, so you’ve got people you can talk to, and who will understand. If you’re feeling kind of bummed because you had your arse caned to a bloody pulp last Friday night, but that the bruises are not nearly as colourful as you hoped they would be, you might find that your vanilla friends are not satisfactorily sympathetic.

*

There are so many more points I can add to this, such as don’t be a dick, and use condoms. But this post is by no means intended to be a definitive guide. It’s just a list of things I wish I’d been told when I started out.

By the way, I’m still learning. We all are.

How to Blow

We’ve all met them. Those irritating people who will happily claim, without a shred of irony or self-doubt, that they are good in bed.

Of course, it’s those sorts of people who generally turn out to be duds. Not because of any physical or technical failing – it’s because their arrogance gets in the way of being truly receptive to the needs of their sexual partner.

Here’s a tip: just because it worked for your ex, doesn’t mean it will work for everyone!

These people get so blind-sighted by their smugness that they fail to account for the fact that people are, like, different. And if their masterful performance fails to bring you countless screaming orgasms, then you must be the one with the problem.

Now, I know I’m capable of being great in bed, but I would never promise it to someone. There’s just so much that can go wrong, especially when you haven’t had sex with that person before. I’ve discovered the hard way that what floats someone’s boat can just as easily sink another’s. There are probably a few people walking around this world thinking that I’m a crap shag, and well, I couldn’t really blame them.

I’d also like to stress the importance of making mistakes. If you hold yourself back for fear of doing the wrong thing, that’s not sexy either.  We all learn by getting it wrong occasionally, and if you’re afraid to experiment a little, you’ll never grow.

And while we’re still in the key of Rant, let it be known that flipping through the sealed-section of Cleo magazine does not a great lover make. You can read all you want on the subject, but nothing can replace hands-on experience, communication, and intuition. The notion of keeping crib notes on the bedside dresser is both hilarious and sad.

Similarly, you’re not going to turn into a sex god/goddess because of something you read on the internet. So go on, turn off your computer, grab your lover, and go have fun.

That’s it. This is the best advice I can give you. (And yes, your computer has an off-switch. It’s true – I’ve seen it!)

I’ll just be over here, dusting my cat figurines.

Doo di doo. (*mutters: blasted porcelain Persians*)

Ah, guys? You’re still here.

*sigh*

Oh all right, fine. Fine! Off the back of the success of my highly-acclaimed Guide to the Clitoris, I present to you:

How to Suck and Not Suck: Helpful Tips for Giving Head

1. Lube Changes Everything.

Yeah, you can perform fellatio using only the moisture in your mouth, but it makes the job more difficult than it has to be. If you’re going for greatness, lube is your friend. Before you begin, whip out the lube and apply generously all over the penis and testicles. Seriously, more lube = more better. I just can’t stress this enough.

And don’t skimp on the quality of the lube, either. Again, if blowjob glory is what you want, you’ll need some decent silicone-based lube – not the KY-type crud you get at Coles. (Also, the cheap stuff tastes awful!)

My personal recommendation is Pjur. It’s silky smooth, odourless, and it lasts forever (thus justifying the cost). Available over the internet, or from most good sex shops!

2. Have Fun With It

Contrary to the notion that fellatio is a submissive act, it is actually extremely powerful. I mean, your man’s most prized and sensitive body part is between your teeth, and he’s the one with the power? I don’t think so.

For me, it’s the power trip of being solely responsible for the most awesome pleasure that man has ever experienced in his life that makes giving head not just a positive experience, but a pleasurable one. It’s the look of their faces – complete abandon and utter gratitude.

So many women approach this kind of thing with reluctance or disgust. And even though I know I’ll get lynched for saying this – I do think that in a committed, loving relationship, it should not be considered sexist or offensive or horrible for the man to want a blow job every now and then.

It’s all in the attitude. Approach it with a sense of playfulness and love, and it’ll bring you closer. Approach it as you would an overcooked hotdog, and it’s going to be much less fun, for both of you.

3. Take Your Time

If you’re racing through it, thinking ‘let’s get this over with’, it’s not likely to be great.

My suggestion is to start slow, and build your way up gradually. Perhaps start by licking the shaft and around the head, as opposed to sticking the whole lot in your mouth at once. Some guys like it fast and some like it slow – so to hedge your bets, start slow and go from there.

4. Use Your Hands

Bringing a man to orgasm using only your mouth is actually extremely difficult. For best results, I like to place one hand around the shaft at the base of the penis, and if possible, one hand gently cupping the testicles. Slide the hand that’s on the penis up and down in synch with your mouth (this is after you’ve poured on tons of lube). If you’re feeling lazy, just keep your mouth on the head, while your hand does all the work.

You can also squeeze the base of the penis, which keeps it hard, and which I’ve found can induce orgasm quicker (that’s only if you want them to come though – there’s a lot to be said for making them suffer and wait!)

With the hand that’s on the balls, just stick to tickling, stroking, or holding. (Do not squeeze – unless cock and ball torture is his thing). If you and your partner are the adventurous types, you can even venture down a little lower, and, ah, stick your finger(/s) up his butt. Once you get over the conceptual grossness of this, you’ll find that it’s actually the easiest way to bring him to orgasm (as it stimulates the prostate gland).

Don’t look at me like I’m crazy – it’s true – and if he’s comfortable with the idea, he’ll thank you for it. Trust me.

5. Don’t Stop The Instant He Comes

Orgasms can be increased and prolonged by staying there for a minute or so after the initial spurt. Which brings me to…

6. Swallowing is Easier Than Spitting. Sorry.

Yeah okay, so semen is pretty nasty. But swallowing is, by far, the better way to go. It’s like taking a shot of tequila – you wouldn’t put that in your mouth, swish it around a bit and then spit it out again, so why would you do the same with come? If his penis is in your mouth at the point of orgasm, it’ll hit the back of your throat, and then you can swallow without needing to taste it. Up until now I’ve been trying to resist using the phrase ‘suck it up’, but, there’s just no better way of saying it. Suck it up, bitches.

7. Watch Him Masturbate

If you’re in a relationship with the person, and comfortable around each other, get him to masturbate while you watch. It’s hot in a voyeuristic kind-of-a-way, and it also provides valuable information as to how he likes to be touched. Sometimes it’s impossible to get an understanding about how he likes it just from reading his body language, or even from asking him, which is why watching him jerk off will prove to be highly informative.

Watch, my friends, and learn.

***

Now, having said all that, there’s one final point I’d like to make:

8. Men Are Harder to Get Off Than Popular Culture Would Have You Believe

If you’ve been down there for half an hour, and nothing seems to be happening, don’t take it to heart. According to teen movies, getting a guy off is as easy as, say, slow-dancing with him for a few minutes during prom night.

Men are actually pretty tricky to bring to climax. Most of the boyfriends I’ve had have had difficulty coming during sex, let alone from oral.

The goal of any form of sexual activity should not be an orgasm – it should be about the connection, the pleasure, and the intimacy. Don’t approach this as merely a method of getting him off – try to see it as a way of giving him something incredible.

Finally, it’s your gift to give – not his to demand. (Well, unless you’re doing the D/s thing, which is kind of a different story, but even in that scenario there should be an underlying respect).

And that’s just about all I have to say about that. Happy blowing!

Not So Nice

When I was a girl, I believed the key to being liked was to be nice. I would put up with just about anything, just so people would like me. And, it worked. Except of course it meant that some people liked me not necessarily for who I was, but for what they could make me do.

In the adult world, being nice is not all that useful. When it comes to sex, it’s often a hindrance (let’s face it: assholes are hotter than saints). At work, niceness is usually interpreted as weakness, and those of us who are nice tend to get screwed over. And personality-wise, merely being nice is, unfortunately, just not very interesting.

I probably got it from my mum – who was famous for answering the phone in a honey-dipped tone of voice, maintaining a conversational tone that was ludicrously polite, thanking the caller profusely, and then slamming the phone down, picking up a butcher’s knife and screaming like a banshee.

(I’m not sure that wanting to be liked was the reason for my mum’s niceness – I think it was more to do with a deeply imbedded code of social obligation that states that no matter how much you dislike a person, one must always, always maintain a friendly facade. Unless of course you live with the person, in which case you can wield knives at them with frequency and vigour).

Being nice is like having the word “sucker” tattooed across your forehead. I can’t walk ten metres though the city without being asked for change/propositioned by a sleazy foreigner/accosted by credit card salesmen. For years, the common features of all the men I ever dated were ‘unemployed’ and ‘had no qualms about asking their girlfriend for money’. I also had a way of attracting guys who were trying very hard to come across as nice, but who were actually dicks.

It’s hard however to separate this incessant niceness from my personality. Apart from the fact it’s ingrained, it is also based upon a certain amount of fact.

But being sweet and lovely is kind of incongruent with being a depraved, horny, kinky slut-bag.

Hence my current dilemma. I’m a nice girl who wants some really nasty things, and who doesn’t want to say “please” anymore. Unless it’s in the context of saying: “Please, may I have another?”

This is not to say that to participate in the BDSM scene, you have to be a prick. Ironically, these so-called freaks and weirdos are actually some of the friendliest, most welcoming people you’ll ever meet. When I first stepped out of my shell and into the Sydney kink scene, it was with a sense of celebration. No longer did I have to hide my weirdness from the world – in these spaces it was valued and appreciated. Finally, I’d found ‘my people’; those to whom I could relate.

However, there are days when I don’t feel all that celebratory about my sexuality. It can be a right pain in the arse, and I wish I could just be a goddamned normal person. I feel like kink is a burden that makes the chances of me meeting a compatible partner astronomically difficult. Sure, in the scene I’m surrounded by people who share my taste in perversion, but I have other passions and interests that go beyond a desire to be tied up and violated. Sex, while an important part of any relationship, is not everything.

Lately I’ve been faced with the dilemma of needing to get my kinky rocks off, but being utterly exhausted by social situations. It’s strange – in order to fully relax, let go, and truly be the person I am, I must first make a bunch of chit chat and go through the motions of pretending to be a confident extrovert. As a representative of the Under 30s group, I feel it’s expected of me to be something of an ambassador –  to ‘network’ and make favourable impressions upon all the right people.  It has started to feel like work.

I’m just so sick of being nice all the time. Being submissive is supposed to be about being selfless, but it can also be a very selfish thing. I want to be tied up, I want to be punished, I want to be used. I find myself feeling guilty for ‘taking’ from others – even though I’ve allowed them their kink, too. These wilful, demanding ‘wants’ of mine don’t go together very well with being nice. The Creature doesn’t care about putting other people at ease, or asking how a person’s week was, or being intelligent and witty, or laughing at other people’s jokes. It just wants what it wants, and lately, it’s been running out of patience.

Cue: anxiety.

So I’ve been thinking of ways around this problem. Is there a way to separate the kink from the social?

Then I realised, of course there is. It’s called seeing a professional.

It’s funny that I’ve come all this way, to wind up right at the point where so many others begin their journeys. For a lot of my kinky male friends, their first BDSM experiences were of going to commercial dungeons and seeing pro-dommes. For some, the bulk of their kink happens with a professional mistress, and they go to public events simply to socialise.

After having been involved in the scene for years, that approach seems unusual to me, but then I have to remind myself that way-back-when, I once believed that the only way for a submissive female to get their rocks off was to be a porn star. It’s only because I started meeting people who were volunteering to dominate me that I stopped thinking that way.

Seeing a pro-domme doesn’t mean that it has to be strictly business. Just because you’re paying someone to have their way with you doesn’t mean you can’t also be friends. But… that’s not what I’m after. I want someone who doesn’t know me, who hasn’t met my ‘Nice Girl’ persona, who doesn’t care about whether I call them the next day. Because some of the things I want are really pretty fucked up – stuff I can’t even admit to my kinky friends. I don’t want those things to be associated with ‘me’ –  yet I want them all the same. They are things that I myself am not particularly happy about wanting. That hard edge where what you’re comfortable with slides into the grey area of what scares the crap out of you. The sweet spot.

A pro-domme could be exactly what I need to be able to live a ‘normal’ life. See, I could date a man who is not in any way kinky (but who is passionate and sexy – this is non-negotiable), and then go off to see a pro every month or so to get my dose of electro torture/latex/breath play/blood, pain, depravity, etc, and be completely content.

I mean, yeah, nothing in life is ever quite so neat as that, but still, I think it could be a workable solution.

There is just one small problem: money.

Darn.

Ah well. As soon as I sign that movie deal for my best-selling novel, I won’t have to worry anymore. Until then, I guess I’d better keep being nice to people.

Subspace

Ever felt tired of being you?

I know, right. Strange concept. For we all love being ourselves, all the time, continually without ever taking a break, even though we’ve had our entire lives to trawl over the same sort of things we always think about, through dealing with the never-ending barrage of trivial concerns that come up in the course of an average day. (What will I eat for dinner tonight? In my fridge is a carrot, some cheese I’m too scared to look at because it’s been there a while, and half a litre of soy milk. Does that constitute a meal? / Gosh, it’s a bit chilly; I should have brought my jacket. But of course my favourite jacket is at the dry cleaners. Damn that incontinent cat! / Will that person I like ever call me back? I texted them on Tuesday, and then again on Wednesday, and they didn’t reply, but maybe they have run out of phone credit? Maybe they were involved in some sort of heinous accident that rendered them incapable of using their thumbs? Or maybe, just maybe, they were put off by that time I stalked them. But surely not – nothing says ‘I love you’ like a stalker… right? / I should probably do more sit-ups; I’m starting to look a bit chunky-monkey down there. But how many sit-ups is an adequate amount? My Wii Fit instructor said I had a ‘beautiful posture’, but is he really to be believed? Maybe he’s just buttering me up so I feel positively-inclined towards Nintendo, and thus decide to fork out the stupid amount of money needed to purchase the next edition of Rock Band??)

Oh ho ho. Who would ever want a break from such scintillating commentary? Well, call me crazy, but that kind of shit gets old, man. And so if someone gives me an opportunity to escape, well, I’ll take it.

Trouble is, there isn’t an off switch. It’s like… well, okay this is a long story, but it’s relevant, trust me. Right, so, when I was a kid, my grandparents lived in the country. Thus every summer, my psychopathically self-absorbed loving parents would drive me and my sister several hours to the country for a visit. I would barf in the car every single time, but that’s not the story I’m trying to tell. No, the real doozey was the time the cassette tape (c’mon kids, you remember those) melted a bit and got stuck in the player, so that mum couldn’t get it out. A drive out to country NSW is interminably boring, thus any music was better than none. Which is how we came to listen to Tracey Chapman’s Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution about forty million times, and mum’s favourite: Can’t We Talk it Over in Bed by That Dude in the Eighties. Well anyway, what I’m trying to get at here is that my head is much like an overheated Commodore with a dicky tape deck that refuses to let go of a cassette that was maybe okay the first time, but makes you want to hurl yourself out of the car after repeat listens; of which you have no control over; it just plays and plays and plays.

(Incidentally, it took me until I was about twenty-four years of age to realise that a request to ‘talk it over in bed’ is not quite as innocent as donning your flannelette PJs and tabling your arguments over mugs of warm milk. *Shudders at thought of how many arguments parents had, and how many of those were conciliated ‘in bed’.*)

Even though a bed is all some people need to chill out, unfortunately it’s not quite so simple for me. As previously mentioned on this blog, I tend to think a lot – especially a lot – during sex, of all things. Which is frustrating, because I pride myself on being a switched-on and considerate lover, but sometimes my goddamned head gets in the way.

But then, there’s kink.

Ah, now we’re talking!

Last week, I had the pleasure of being hogtied. It had been so long since I’d done anything kinky, I’d nearly forgotten why I like it so much. All this time I’ve been all cranky and depressed, and all this time I’ve been thinking: “I don’t need nuthin’ from no one.”

As I’ve also mentioned in this blog, there is a big difference between suffering artfully and just bloody suffering.

Last Wednesday, as the rope cinched tighter around my wrists and ankles, I started to float. My thoughts slowed down and became quieter. Any petty physical complaints I had disappeared. I stopped feeling self conscious about my body. The energy in the room altered; intensified.

Subspace can be described as calming and meditative. For me it’s both of these things but it’s also deeply sensual – my perception of the world shifts from my eyes to my skin. It’s like tapping into an undercurrent which is always there, but which is ordinarily obscured by sounds, sights and thoughts.

What I love about subspace is that I don’t need to try. It’s not up to me. See, normally, I’m a control freak who thinks that good things only come about as a consequence of putting a lot of effort in, and conversely, that bad things happen because if I don’t try hard enough. Submitting to another person’s will forces me to remember that I’m not responsible for every single thing, and that it is necessary to sometimes drop your defences and let yourself be held.

There was a moment on Wednesday when, after I’d been hogtied for about fifteen minutes or so, I started to feel physically uncomfortable. I had to hold my upper body up somewhat, and I was starting to get sore. Reality was seeping back in, and I was starting to feel like my ordinary, annoying self again. But just as I was on the verge of asking to be untied, I realised that it wasn’t about me. My will was largely irrelevant. The person who had tied me up now had control over my body, and it was my duty to endure whatever he wanted for as long as he wanted it.

And just like that, I swooned with pleasure and acceptance, and dropped so deeply back into subspace that I can’t even quite remember what happened after that.

Lost, swimming, weightless. Warm and dark and vast. At peace.

I closed my eyes and became perfectly still. He lay beside me and stared at my face. It was the most intimate and revealing place he could have looked, and it was almost too much to bear. To have someone look into me that closely, to really see.

Stripped, naked, and vulnerable; yet unharmed. Cared for. Cherished.

‘Freedom through bondage’ is by no means an original concept. But it’s the best way to describe it. For I was free – free from time, from the constraints of my physical body, from my mind, from the constant burden of having to be productive all the time; from everything except that which was pure and true.

Also, it was sexy. I think that deserves a mention.

Denial

It’s handy being a masochist. When life gives me lemons, I rub the juice into my wounds.

Yesterday I was talking to a friend, and we were discussing how people come to associate places with relationships. She told me that there are certain places in Sydney she can’t go anymore because they remind her of her ex. When she said that I realised that there are certain places in Sydney which have the same effect on me, but which I actually enjoy visiting because I’m sort of into morose self-induced sentimentality.

The same goes for music – there are some albums that will always, no matter how much time has passed, remind me of lost loves, misery, heartache. Which I absolutely love playing, precisely because they make me hurt.

(For the full effect, you can combine the two by putting on your favourite wrist-slashing anthems while driving through the suburbs and streets where your failed relationships took place. Fun, fun, fun!)

When faced with my demons, I clothe them and feed them.

But I’m no Shirley Manson, because I’m not only happy when it rains. I also happen to like pleasure. Love it, in fact. But like a cold blob of  ice-cream melting over a hot pancake, sometimes the beauty is in the contrast. Too much pleasure is monotonous, and too much pain is just maudlin. But splice that baby through the mix, and you’ve got yourself something so powerful, it’s addictive.

Sometimes the pursuit of pain is really the pursuit of pleasure, but in disguise. Orgasm denial, for example. The suffering caused by not being allowed to come is only really a way of making the orgasm, when you’re finally allowed to have it, that much better. (Sadly, even though orgasm denial is a concept that makes me waterlogged with lust, I’ve never properly explored this with a partner before. I mean, I’ve done stuff where my orgasm has been temporarily withheld, and I’ve even been ordered to go a weekend or so without coming, but the real, juicy mind-fuck of it has not been properly fleshed out yet. Which is a crying shame, but hey, there’s still time).

Suffering in itself can be pleasurable. There have been times when I’ve been caned, flogged or needled, where the pain sensation has flipped over into pleasure, or when it reaches a certain level of intensity where the concept of pleasure versus pain loses meaning. Then there is the pleasure that comes when something that is very painful stops, and you become flooded with gratitude and relief.

But suffering is not limited to that which is merely painful, particularly not where emotions are concerned. In the emotional realm, suffering can be defined as anything from boredom to frustration to agitation to fear to embarrassment. These are all things that most people try to avoid, and certainly, on a conscious level I do my best to steer clear of these kinds of feelings.

Yet there’s something in me that is drawn towards suffering, that likes it. There’s got to be – how else can I explain my lifelong attraction to men who are unavailable, strange, confusing, changeable?

It’s not all about the pain though, it’s the payoff. The jackpot. The hit.

There are days when I wish I could get my kicks through easier, more reliable means, like gambling, or heroin. In terms of a stupid bet, nothing tops love. Sorry to keep quoting pop lyrics at you, but as Amy Winehouse says, ‘love is a losing game’. (No wonder she turned to smoking crack – it’s less bloody trouble!)

What do you do when the one thing you really want is also the most elusive?

Well, I don’t know about you lot, but I went to the desert.

Sometimes when I’m feeling powerless, I like to take control into my own hands. So when the universe only seemed willing to give me loneliness and boredom, I decided to take myself to a place where I could continue to be lonely and bored, but on my own terms. The desert seemed as good a place as any – so I went to stay in an eco-hut 110 kilometres north of Broken Hill.

The minute I got there, the constant torment of having an outrageous libido and an unsatisfied heart was lifted. Because there was absolutely no way I was going to get laid or fall in love, (as I was staying on my own, in one of the most remote places in Australia), the pressure was taken off, and I was able to chill-the-fuck-out. It was wonderful, and exactly what I needed. I devoted my time to reading through my manuscript (which, to my surprise, was awesome), writing in my journal, aimlessly strolling around, staring at the sky, and trying not to think too much.

Funny the way that, by embracing all the things that were making me unhappy, I was able to find peace.

That said, six days into it I was ready to move on. I wanted to plunge back into my life, with all its frustrations and annoyances.

So here I am. Desert fresh. (Just quietly, I’m all for environmental conservation and all that, but when your solar-powered hot water generator stops working because of unseasonably cloudy weather, eco huts SUCK!)

I came back to find that Sydney had finally succumbed to spring. And I knew that this winter had just been a dark precursor to something full and sweet and beautiful.

If you’re playing with orgasm denial, part of the exquisite psychological torture is not knowing exactly when you’ll be allowed to come. Maybe tomorrow, maybe never.

The only thing I know for certain is that when it comes, it’s going to be explosive. Just how I like it.

What Has Debbie Done?

So, I was watching Debbie Does Dallas with two of my friends the other night, as you do.

Friend 1: “Hey, let’s watch Debbie Does Dallas!”

Friend 2: “Hell yes! This won’t be at all weird!”

(Film is screened. Awkward silence descends. It is weird.)

Friend 1: “Ha ha ha. Ha. Isn’t this funny? Ha. How about I fast-forward to the end?”

After everyone nods dumbly, he skips through the highlights of the film, straight to the grand finale where Debbie does the guy who owns the sports store. (Bonus points to the dude who played that role, as it required running with an erection).

Now, due to the sheltered existence I’ve led, this was my first experience of seventies porn. And shamefully, I was shocked, as was Friend 2, by how disconcertingly real the actors looked. Specifically: in the shot where Debbie is on top, the viewer is treated to a close-up view of her anus, in its unbleached, un-waxed glory.

Holey moley, I thought. I have never seen an image of a woman with hair on her arse before.

That’s right, folks. Never.

Compared with what I’ve become used to in porn, where the women featured are more-or-less identical, I felt confronted by Debbie. Even though I know that the women in modern day porn aren’t ‘real’, I had still lost sight of what an actual woman looks like, to the point where it took a B-grade seventies skin flick to remind me.

And my overall feeling was not repulsion, but relief.

Now before we go any further, I’d just like to state for the record that I’m pro porn. I’m not saying that it doesn’t objectify women, but I am steadfast in my belief that sexual desire has nothing to do with political correctness. My favourite kind of porn is the kind where the woman gets tied up, tortured and humiliated. Beyond the fact I’m kinky and this kind of shit turns me on – I like it because the woman’s reactions are real. The set up is artificial, (as are the tits, in so many cases), but the tears, the screams, and the moans of forced pleasure are sincere.

Last week I was interviewed by a journalist who was conducting research for her Masters project; a thesis about young people and their attitudes to sex. It is her hope that this research will lead to “…a less sensationalised and more empathetic portrayal of young people and sex”, which is a cause I can totally get behind. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting any of her questions to surprise me or provide any further insight into my own sexuality, since sex is a topic I ponder pretty well constantly. For the most part, I reiterated the same rants I’ve been spouting for years: Australia is a largely conservative nation with very dated attitudes to sex; young people are given conflicting messages about sex; women are presented by the media as either angels or whores; we are a culture saturated in sexual messages and yet simultaneously coy about sex; most Australians are bollocks when it comes to talking about and communicating their sexual desires; many young Australians wouldn’t know what true sex appeal was if it came up and hit them over the head with a piece of two-by-four.

However, one of her questions forced me to revisit how I perceived sex during my high school days, which gave me this realisation:

The most damaging thing the media is doing to young people and their ideas about sex, is propagating the notion that ‘attractive’ people are the only ones having sex, and more to the point, ‘attractive’ people are the only people who are allowed to have sex.

That the concept of an ‘unattractive’ person having sex, or having any sexual desires of their own, is disgusting.

I know ‘the media’ is a uselessly vague term, so here’s where I level the barrel of this gun and point it in one direction:

Porn.

Question: when was the last time you saw a woman in porn with lopsided breasts? Have you ever seen a porn star with stretch marks, cellulite, or pimples? Can you name a woman in porn with hairy armpits? Dangly labia? Buck teeth??

These sorts of things are rarely shown, because they are gross, ugly, and unsexy.

Right?

How often do we really see people, regular people, at their less-than-best, particularly when it comes to nudity?

When I was in high school, I was repulsed by myself. I felt like I had the body of an overweight 13 year-old boy, because instead of curves, all I seemed to get was puppy fat. I had pale (in my eyes: pasty) skin, freckles, acne. I kept waiting to develop into a woman, to suddenly grow long limbs, and ‘actual’ hips and breasts.

I was ashamed of my body, which in turn made me ashamed for having sexual desires. How could a creature so hideous be brazen enough to want anything? Didn’t I know my place?

Women compare their looks to other women that are deemed desirable. Women see other faces and bodies every day. They also see boyfriends and husbands openly ogling other women, especially on the beaches during summer. This sends the message to women that they’re not desirable or attractive enough to their partners or potential dates.

On TV and in porn, you only ever see thin, flawless people engaging in sexual activities. The only time you see ‘fat’ or ‘funny looking’ people having sex, is in comedies.

Pornography plays into the false idea that to be sexually attractive to men, or good in bed, there are certain things women have to do, be, look like, act like or enjoy, whether or not we actually can, are, look like, act like or enjoy those things.

The more I think about this, the angrier I get. Because I wasted my entire adolescence despising my appearance, when the reality was I was in my physical prime. I told my friends, quite sincerely, that I would never let anyone see me naked, and that if I ever got married, it would have to be to a blind man. I really believed that I would never have sex and that I would never get married, because I was so hideous.

And in ways that have only begun to be measured, (porn) is coloring relationships, both long-and short-term, reshaping expectations about sex and body image and, most worrisome of all, threatening to alter how young people learn about sex.

In researching this piece, I stumbled across two remarkable websites:

The Shape of a Mother – a site dedicated to photos and stories of women who have had children, and the 007 Breast Gallery – the pictures and voices of women who want other women to know what normal breasts look like.

The pang of empathy I felt when looking through the Breast Gallery was sharp and profound. And in the space of about half an hour, I went from thinking my own breasts were aberrant, to feeling truly proud of them. Seriously, up until this afternoon, I always secretly wanted some sort of cosmetic surgery (not augmentation, because I think implants are abominable), to accepting my breasts as my own, and beautiful.

Breasts are an issue especially close to my heart, because not only are mine small, but earlier this year I was diagnosed with ‘breast mice’ in my left breast – non-cancerous fibrous growths. This means that my left breast is both bigger and a differently shaped to my right breast, and I am extremely self conscious about it.

An ex-boyfriend of mine once told me that my breasts were the weirdest he’d ever seen, and that my right breast was “basically non-existent”. To say that this was devastating for me is something of an understatement, and I went right back to feeling ashamed for having sexual desires, and ‘lucky’ to have a man who was willing to put up with my deformities.

This was the same gentleman responsible for this pearler: “For someone not very attractive, you get a lot of attractive guys.”

Experts say men who frequently view porn may develop unrealistic expectations of women’s appearance and behavior, have difficulty forming and sustaining relationships and feeling sexually satisfied.

Of course, ‘experts say’ is a ridiculously vague thing to say. Except I’ve lived that. I know exactly what they mean.

Is porn really to blame? And if so, what can be done?

Personally, I don’t think porn is the culprit, I think it’s the producers of porn who only hire actresses with certain body types. And it’s not men who are to blame – the demand is there for women who look different to the ‘usual’. If my week working in a sex shop taught me anything, it’s that men crave variety.

Also, more women are getting into porn, which means we’re going to be able to make some demands of our own.

And, as ever, I think the key to dismantling these body image monsters is to encourage more people to talk about it. To share their photos, their stories, their feelings.

Which is why I think the most eloquent way to end this post is with a photo of myself, taken not long ago (by the lovely Marauder), showing a woman who is far from disgusting, but who is still struggling to believe it:

Blood

Writing fiction is probably one of the most psychologically revealing activities you can do, with the exception perhaps of volunteering to be a participant in the Dr Phil Arena Spectacular. It’s like installing a plate-glass window in your bedroom, or a floodlight in your bathroom. Whatever you’ve got festering away in your subconscious invariably gets exposed for everyone to see. Is it any wonder that most writers are nervous wrecks?

Sex and death have been the prevailing thematic favourites in my writing. The novella I wrote for the HSC was about a woman who was ‘cursed’ with unreasonably good luck, which made her life bland, which made her become suicidal. (A ‘hilarious’ black comedy ensues, in which this woman keeps trying to kill herself, only to be saved by some miraculous fluke every time. *SPOILER ALERT* It ends with God telling her she’s an idiot, before sending her back to earth with heinous injuries and a long and painful recovery ahead of her).

As you can see, I was a tremendously happy teenager.

During my uni days, I tried my very hardest to steer my writing out of the gothy black hole it kept wanting to veer into. Which resulted in stories about schizophrenic sex addicts and outspoken promiscuous gay men.

But really, I was hiding.

The reason why the idea behind my novel (which is now sitting, meekly, on my hard drive, waiting for an edit), was so powerful, was because I decided to Man Up and write something straight from my pulsating, bleeding heart.

Ker thump. *splodge, splodge*

Which brings me to:

When you write, you notice patterns.

For me, I was actually a little surprised to realise that the word I kept using, again and again, was: “blood”.

And like, hey. I hate vampire fiction. Also, the reason why I became officially sick of Stephen King, was his insistence upon ending any book with torrents and torrents of blood (much in the same way that Shakespeare ends half his plays with everyone being slain). Both of which I put down to men being lazy.

Shakespeare: “God. How do I end this play? Oh, whatever, I’ll just do the mass carnage thing again. Those suckers just love this shit. I mean, this was supposed to be a comedy, but whatever. Tragedy it is!”

Stephen King: “God. How do I end this novel? Oh, whatever, I’ll just dump a whole heap of blood and guts over all the characters, who were actually kind of sophisticated up until this point but who cares, and then make the ending incongruently happy, because that means more sales in the American market. Win! Where’s my cocaine?”

If there’s a point, Mulder, please feel free to come to it.

Right, right, right.

Blood appears to be something of a fascination of mine. It comes up so frequently in my book that I’ve decided to put it in the title.

But it wasn’t until a friend of mine sent me this link that I actually started to think seriously about it. What does blood mean to me? Why the obsession? Why do I engage in activities that force it out of my body? What can I say about it that no one has said before?

I’m not really sure yet. But as a means of collecting my thoughts, here is a brief history of me and blood (specifically with reference to my sex life):

First off, I bleed a lot. Ten days at a time, easily. At nineteen, I had the depo provera contraceptive injection because I was told it would stop periods altogether. (HA HA HA). What it actually did was make me bleed for three months straight. Whatever reservations my boyfriend at the time might have had about that sort of thing, quickly got shoved asunder at the prospect of not having sex with me for ninety days.

Ever since then, I’ve stuck with the good old fashioned pill, and it works for me. That said, there are still seven days in the month where my uterus ejects a not-insubstantial amount of menstrual fluid. Anyone who’s been my lover for more than a few weeks will be able to testify: you’ll get bloody. Get over it man, and get in there!

Menstruation doesn’t have to be a shameful, dirty thing. Certainly, some of my all-time best sexual experiences have been defined by it. One of my favourites was the time Marauder wrote the word “slut” on my stomach in my own blood, and photographed it. Another was the time I came home late from work to discover he’d bought me a mechanised fucking machine. Well, I wasn’t going to let a little thing like being on the rag spoil my fun, and again, we have photographic evidence to prove it. (The photos from this night would probably get Marauder arrested on manslaughter charges. They are AMAZING).

Despite the fact I personally don’t have a problem with sex while Aunt Flo is in town (excess laundry aside), it’s something I only feel comfortable sharing with boyfriends. Apart from the obvious – blood is a potential carrier of diseases – it’s also a spiritual thing. There’s something about marking and being marked; something permanent.

I had one boyfriend who couldn’t stand the sight of blood – due to a childhood trauma. Which was something I couldn’t argue with… but I always felt… ashamed and unclean. So I suppose if I’m ever going to ‘settle down’ with anyone, ‘being okay with lots of blood’ would be a non-negotiable requirement.

The other times blood has made it into my sex, has been through kink.

During a scene, there’s something that changes the moment blood is drawn. Sometimes it’s unintentional – a caning that goes harder than expected. Other times blood is an unavoidable by-product of play – if you’re using needles, for instance.

Both are awesome, so awesome.

During a caning, if the skin breaks so that blood is drawn, it changes the dynamic from what might have been light, sensual, and fun, to Fucking Bloody Serious. It brings out the adrenaline-laced scent of battle – of glory, release. I know people who have been caned so hard that their blood splattered the walls, and I’m impressed, but have never journeyed that far myself. Don’t know if I ever will, but if I do, it will because someone who loved me wanted that blood out of my body, all over my skin, all over his/her skin; everywhere…!

The blood that comes as a result of a play-piercing session is always after-the-fact. It oozes during the aftermath, as the needles are removed. I suppose it does it for me because I’ve got a medical fetish, and I particularly love the smell of alcohol wipes. (Alcoholic, much?)

When I was an angsty adolescent, I used to cut neat lines in my leg with a Stanley knife. The object was not to kill myself, or not even really to hurt myself; oddly, it was about healing. I used to take great care in washing, sterilising and bandaging the cuts, so that they might heal as quickly as possible.

Tattoos are another passion of mine, particularly because the process of getting them is bloody. And again, the significance is ultimately in the healing. Going through an ordeal to emerge stronger, irrevocably changed.

My next kinky ambition is knife play that involves cutting. I’ve had sharp knives drawn across my skin before, but never to the point that blood was drawn. Now, something in me is craving it, and will not be satisfied until it happens. I’m finding it hard to explain why, other than I want to be opened and observed, and being cut is one of the most explicit and direct ways of achieving that. There is nothing more personal, more erotic than blood.

Also, it scares the shit out of me. Which is precisely why I want it so much.

Surrender

Believe it or not, I’m actually a shy person.

Certainly, that might seem a bit rich coming from the girl once seen at a fetish party getting her vagina electrocuted while tied to a dentist’s chair. Or from someone who regularly took out the nudy award at any given Sexy Freaks event, and who was always first to put her hand up for a caning/bondage session/rubber sack experience/whatever.

If you don’t know me very well, you’re likely to think of me as that mad, exuberant, drunk person, clutching her fourth glass of cheap red, laughing, shrieking, talking, flirting; always up for a party.

And yeah, that’s who I am – some of the time. But it’s not who I always am, and it’s certainly not how I used to be, not at all.

These last three years have been massive. I went from being someone who found it hard to make new friends, had trouble making conversation with strangers, scared lovers away with my intensity and desperation, and had lingering troubles with insecurity and feelings of worthlessness. I was perpetually nervous and almost completely lacking in confidence.

Needless to say, parties were not my idea of a good time.

I’d like to think that my transformation from wallflower to social butterfly was brought about entirely by my own motivation, but the real reason why I started leaving my house frequently was due to a disturbed flatmate who was eating my food, using my computer, and cavorting naked in my room while I was out. It was during this period of my life that I started seeing Marauder, and it was then that she started to get all Single White Female on me – demanding to know who I was seeing, when I’d be home, and whether or not she should save any of her bizarre vegetarian cooking for me (the highlight of which was the dish made entirely out of couscous and onions).

I went from being a person who was once content to eat noodles in her pyjamas on a Friday night, to someone who would attend the opening of an envelope. Your neighbour’s cousin’s best friend’s bar mitzvah? Gosh, why didn’t you tell me sooner?  I’m THERE!

Marauder helped. An excitable Gemini, I fell in love with his fearlessness. As I fell into step with him, my life became a series of crazy adventures and schemes. By the end of 2007, I found myself in New York, shaking my booty with a bunch of drunk Santas in a jazz bar in Brooklyn, reaching out to him and letting him lead me places I never would have gone on my own.

2008 was something of a blur. Marauder and I started hosting our own fetish parties, the first of which was attended by the press (Michael Atkin from Triple J) and broadcast nationally. (How fucking cool is that?) It was at these parties that I really came out of my shell – and went further with public play than I’d ever imagined was possible.

I learned that pain is only a bad thing if you interpret it as such, and that I am a much stronger person than I give myself credit for. I also gained confidence in my appearance, and realised that 95% of sex appeal comes down to how you present yourself to the world; not the genes you’re born with.

I realised that people are drawn to those who are comfortable in themselves.

Simply: I stopped apologising to the world for my very existence.

All of this is awesome. And in the process of coming out of my shell, I’ve met so many interesting people and made so many amazing friends.

But now I find myself in a place where I’m questioning everything. I suppose it’s the depression speaking when I ask myself: what is the point of going out? What do I want out of public play? What am I trying to prove?

I feel like I’ve reached the limit of how far I’m willing to go in public. In the same way you tend to have deeper, better quality conversations when you’re alone with someone, the same goes for kink and sex. The more people in the room, the more self conscious I become. On top of that, I just feel tired. Summonsing the energy to behave like a socially-adjusted extrovert takes a lot out of me. Yes, it’s rewarding, but at what cost?

It takes a lot of bravery to open yourself up before a group of people. To bare not just your body but your all your emotional hiding places – the little pockets of grief and despair.

Now that I’ve been to more kink events than I’ve had hot dinners, I feel in need of a rest. I also feel like it’s threatening to become stagnant. When you do the same thing repeatedly, even if it’s something as imaginative and energetic as BDSM, the tendency is to become complacent.

This is not to say that I’ve ‘grown out’ of kink. Far, far from it. I mean, gods, this morning I jerked off with the black butt-plug I got in Japan, to thoughts of being dressed entirely in rubber, strung from the ceiling, teetering on thigh-high ballet boots, and electrocuted while having my breath restricted. Seriously. The less I give this thing, the more bizarre it becomes.

(When I went to see Dylan Moran, he did this bit about how we all have a Beast inside us, and the Beast only says one thing: ‘MORE’. He then goes on to explain that if you refuse, the Beast says: ‘GIVE ME WHAT I WANT OR I’LL MAKE YOU WEIRD.’)

My desire for more kink in my life is precisely the reason why I feel like it’s necessary to retreat. Because now I crave play that is more serious, more emotionally involved, and more sexual.

See, one of the reasons I’ve never been interested in the swingers’ scene, is because group sex is ridiculous. Add an audience to sex and it becomes a pantomime. Which is some people’s cup of tea, but not mine. I find it nearly impossible to let go sexually unless it’s private – I even find it hard to fully relax enough to come with partners the first few times I have sex with them. Which I think makes me, ah, normal.

Anyway, I’ve had some truly fantastic public play experiences over the last couple of years – but they’ve not been overtly sexual. They’ve been sex-y, sensual, arousing, but not orgasmic. (Except that one time with Marauder and needles – but that was private – which proves my point).

I *want* my kink, now, to be sexual.

Which means that I’m going to have to open my heart a bit, and let some people a bit closer to me. You know, put something of myself out there where it can be potentially stolen, lost, or hurt.

*Ack*

I don’t know if I’m ready. I’m in a bit of a strange place – caught between the past and the future, wrestling with some old demons which have chosen this moment in time to resurface. I’m still fending depression off with a stick, holding on until it passes.

Kink can be used for healing. I know that. And I know people who would be willing to help me out.

I need to surrender and admit that I can’t do everything on my own, and admit that yes, sometimes I need people. As does everyone.

It’s hard for me, though. Damn hard.

From Whence You Came

I’m sorry. I know that for many thousands of people, some of them kinky, the internet is a legitimate source of soulmates. But for me, it has only ever been a source of pain. (The shit kind).

Aw, c’mon, you say. Can’t have been that bad.

Yeah, well. You know that thing you say to yourself when someone hasn’t responded to an email? When your mind starts to turn over possibilities as to why they seem to have lost interest in your flirtatious banter? The point at which ‘maybe they died’ comes up, and you chastise yourself for being such a freaking egomaniac?

Well, turns out, in this particular instance, the person I’d been chatting to over the internet did actually die.

So, I’m a bit burned. But hey, I’m not saying it couldn’t work for you. Just make sure that the person you’re chatting to didn’t used to be a heroin addict, and if they were, tell them to go easy on the drinking, k?

True story.

Anyway, when I joined Fetlife, it was only ever with the intention of keeping in touch with people I actually knew in real life. (Fetlife, for the uninitiated, is the fetish equivalent of Facebook. I can’t say I dig the name, but as far as kinky social networking goes, it’s pretty awesome).

Now that we’ve got Under 30s up and running on Fetlife, I’ve been enjoying it even more.

But, as tends to happen when sex and technology collide, you get your usual share of idiots.

My profile states very clearly:

I am looking for friendship, and I do not chat online.

However, I don’t know why I bothered to stipulate these things, when the only pieces of information sleazy randoms appear to be reading are ‘submissive’ and ‘single’.

Ger.

On about a weekly basis, I get a new message from someone desperate, saying something predictable, stupid, or both.

I’ve been around long enough to be able to separate these losers into categories. First cab off the rank:

• The Dude Using a Cock Shot as a Profile Pic

Okay, I don’t care if you have the literary prowess of Hunter S. Thompson, if your profile picture is a blurry snapshot of your erect member, I will instantly delete your message. Seriously guys. Seriously. When, in the history of the internet, has a woman EVER been wooed by a picture of a wang? What is WITH guys and photographing their own genitals?! And then feeling the pressing need to SHARE it with everyone? Sharing is NOT caring! BLERGH!

It’s gross. So very gross. Lose even more points (plunging your score into negative infinity) if the cock is pictured ejaculating.

• The Dude Generously Offering to Make You His Lifelong Slave

This gets my goat even more than the cock shots, and that’s saying a lot. You wouldn’t believe the amount of messages I’ve received from dominant males listing all the qualities I should possess to be worthy of being their slave. This one, for example:

From time to time I require, need a woman to give over to me possession (sic), control of her body (ohh and most certainly her mind S) to enjoy, to direct, to ……use. I seek a woman who at a predetermined time, for a set duration and with prescribed limits, will do what I tell her, when I tell her, where I tell her (and with what S). I want a woman who will do ……..things to herself while I…… direct her.

Sounds like… he wants a woman who will… masturbate a lot… with random objects… when told.

(The ‘S’ is for ‘Sucks’).

Dude, I’m not on Fetlife so I can be instructed to masturbate, all right? Believe it or not but I’ve got that one taken care of, and all under my own direction!

Bur.

A dominant asking a submissive to be their slave on Fetlife is the equivalent of a man asking a woman to marry him on RSVP. Like suggesting to a person that you have sex based on the observation that you’ve got a compatible set of genitals.

The thing that REALLY annoys me is that I’m willing to bet that this sort of pitch is probably often successful. Because there was a time in my life where I didn’t value my sexuality at all, and was willing to throw my submission at any old dom who so much as scratched his hairy paunch in my direction. I just couldn’t believe that anyone would be willing to take the time and effort to hit me with things, and as such I always felt unduly indebted to anyone who did.

Well, those days are gone.

• The Dude Looking for a Webcam Playmate

First of all, for me, all the power and beauty of BDSM transpires in the energy exchange between two people. Which generally necessitates both people being in the same room.

I know that it probably makes me a luddite to say that no form of communication can beat a real, physical exchange, but seriously, I just don’t get the whole webcam or phone sex thing. What’s the freaking point? As mentioned, I don’t need encouragement to masturbate. I’m doing just fine with that, thank you.

Secondly, it has occurred to me that the guys who are looking for webcam playmates are probably MARRIED, and looking to get off with some stranger on the internet while the missus isn’t around. Which really isn’t my gig.

• The Dude Who Cannot Construct a Decipherable Sentence

These messages are usually entitled “hey…” and the body of the message usually contains one failed attempt at a sentence.

can we talk?

No, we cannot talk, due to the fact you cannot speak English properly.

U have MSN

Despite your confident assertion that I have MSN, (presuming of course that ‘U’ means ‘you’), I do not. Any other wild guesses you’d like to make about the software I’ve got installed?

hey how r u?

In answer to your question, I’m bursting with energy, unlike yourself, who appears to find the task of hitting the ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘y’ and ‘o’ keys altogether too taxing. I’m not quite sure why you’re sending me a message, since you should clearly be at the doctor’s office, getting that chronic fatigue thing you’ve got going there seen to.

Don’t even get me started on those who end their every sentence with ‘LOL’.

• The Dude With Nothing on his Profile

No picture, no information about himself, no interests – and yet clearly we have SO much in common.

Look, we all suffer from the lazies at one point or another, but if you want to speak to me, at least put in SOME effort to write a sentence or two about yourself and upload a goddamned photo. (Note: A photo of your cock doesn’t count.)

• The Older, Married, Submissive Wife who has been Instructed to Recruit Another Sub

There’s this thing that happens where submissive wives get ‘encouraged’ by their dominant husbands to explore their bisexual, switch sides. (Which is usually just a way for the dude to con his wife into having a threesome – while sneakily tricking her into thinking it was her idea, and that it’s all about her own desires, not his).

Having been in a D/s relationship where my master kept telling me I was bisexual (and then guilting me into having threesomes to prove my love for him), I am particularly cynical about this kind of thing.

It’s especially yucky if the couple is a good twenty years older than I am.

So, no.

*****

From now on, in answer to any poorly-worded romantic query via Fetlife, I will provide the sage words of Jack White (from the end of a very rocking album called Get Behind Me Satan):

I’m lonely (but I ain’t that lonely yet).

By the Throat

Being single (and living alone) is great. I love it. Don’t get me wrong, I do.

(As Mulder once said to Scully, “I sense a big ‘but’ coming.”)

But.

It’s not easy. In the sense that anything worthwhile never is.

See, learning how to be happily single is a valuable experience. I’ve been sticking up for myself, pleasing myself, and most importantly: getting a lot of shit done. (Like, that darned pesky novel, which I did actually finish last weekend).

I have many awesome friends, and more than my fair share of lovers. (Not to mention my wife – for those of you who know me on Facebook). I’ve been busy, productive, social, and assertive. I am, without sarcasm, tremendously satisfied with my life.

So why, I ask, am I so fucking depressed?

*sigh*

Ah, depression. You little gem. One need never be lonely with such an enduring companion!

Now look, right. Don’t get all Lifeline on my arse. I’ve been depressed since I was three years old. (Not a joke – one of my earliest memories was of being overwhelmed by the thought of facing another day at pre-school). Stupidly, it wasn’t until I was about 22 years old did I ever pause to consider that not everyone in the world feels continually anxious, self-conscious, and paranoid; and that not everyone considers everything in life to be pointless because ultimately we’re All Going to Die.

Ah, I don’t *always* feel like that, at least – not anymore. I’m much, much better balanced than I used to be. And, these days, even when I do feel like that, I know intellectually that it’s only The Depression, and not that the world is actually ending.

Being able to compartmentalise it like that is very convenient – because I can be feeling like shit, and still continue my day with no one any the wiser.

It’s a matter of following through with the motions of living life like a Normal Person, and from there I usually become distracted enough to shake it.

(I went to see a psychologist once, who literally said “Wow, well done! You’ve managed it really well. Sure you don’t want some drugs?” To which I responded: “No, thanks.”)

I’ve come to terms with it. This is how life’s going to be for me, because this is just how I am. I like the way I am, and strangely, a lot of good has come out of the depression. It’s not a *bad* thing, not exactly, depending on how you look at it.

But like I was saying, worthwhile stuff is generally difficult, and difficult stuff is… well… difficult. There are days when I just wish everything wasn’t uphill, all the time. Days when I wish I could just take the world and my place within it for granted as do so many people. Days when I dream of making small talk with kindly strangers without it becoming a psychological ordeal.

Ah well. It will all be made right, in my next life as a cat.

This blog isn’t about depression. It’s about sex. So I’m not going to go into details about how I manage depression and anxiety in my everyday life. (If you would like to talk to me about this, please use my brand spanking new email address: thesexytimes@gmail.com).

What I would like to talk about is the relationship between sex, kink and depression.

According to this article, depressed women have more sex. I know this is just a crappy little study shoved into the ‘life&style’ section of the paper, but I indentify very strongly with what they’re saying. The use of the word ‘sex’ in this context is however misleading, as they go on to state that it’s really just a way of finding ‘closeness and security’.

That’s not to say I have sex with people as a way of buying intimacy. I love sex, and I’d never use it consciously just to ‘get’ something from someone.

But what I love best about sex is that moment of pure connection with another human soul. Orgasms aside, that’s where it’s at.

Which is why I blogged about sex being no good unless there is love. You don’t need to be in a relationship with the person for this to happen, and you don’t need to be making love. But if you’re holding yourself back during the act, if you don’t feel your spirit lifting out of your body, if at the end of it you’re still a stranger hiding behind a mask – I ask you – why not just masturbate?

Of which: I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. It feels good. But it’s not what I need.

Sex and kink are different but similar things. In the short term, playing with people when I’m out and about makes me feel good, and temporarily chases away the deadening dullness of depression. It clears my head, puts me back into the present moment, and acts as a kind of on-the-go catharsis that a lifetime of thinking-too-much periodically requires.

In the same way that a good shag makes me momentarily happy, a nice caning can boost me up and tide me over.

The good thing about casual sex and social play is that neither requires much of an emotional commitment.

Which, right now, I’m quite enjoying.

But the only thing that really makes a meaningful dent in the depression is to have emotional closeness with someone.

It’s a catch 22, and it’s got me by the throat.

Bugger.

See, being around people is very different to being connected to another person in the way that a romantic relationship facilitates. Of having a partner in life – someone to share all of yourself with (not just the parts of you that are fun to be around) and someone who, reciprocally, lets you in.

A person you can laugh with, but also, cry in front of when your head’s a mess; when you’re sick of pretending to the entire world that you’re OK.

Someone to make the mundane aspects of living extraordinary. For example: cooking for myself is simply a matter of getting the right vitamins/etc into my body. Cooking for someone else becomes an act of love.

Sex that goes beyond ‘good’ or ‘fun’. When I love someone, I pour all of myself into how I fuck, so that it becomes the truest form of communication. In the same way that you generally put on a happy face in front of your friends, having sex with people you’re not in love with restricts the act to being good, but not transcendently so. There’s only so much I’m willing to reveal to someone I’m not in love with, which is, I think, how it should be.

It’s not that I desperately need someone to love me in order to fill whatever inadequacies I’ve got left over from childhood. It’s that I want to live with love – to feel it coursing continually through me, to express it, share it, breathe it. And yes, it is possible to feel that way when you’re single, and I do. But nothing is quite as strong or profound or as powerful as when it’s directed towards a particular soul.

Thing is, we cannot choose whom we are free to love.

And even if I could, at this point in my life, I don’t know if I would.

Because there’s something comfortingly predictable about depression. It’s not ideal, but like I said, I sure am getting a lot of shit done right now. And I refuse to toss away all the freedom I’ve fought for simply because I can’t hack being a bit cold in my bed at night.

It won’t always be like this.

But must everything follow the same pattern?

(p.s. I did a bit of googling about the correlation between depression and BDSM, and stumbled upon this quite remarkable article. It didn’t end up quite fitting into my post, but it’s well worth a read).

Writing a Novel is Really Hard

…why didn’t anyone tell me?

I haven’t blogged for a while, and I wanted to point that I have not just been sitting on my arse, browsing porn, eating puddings, swilling whiskey, inviting strange men up into my room and yelling profanities at small children.

Not to say I haven’t been doing any of these things, but as well as all that, I’ve been finishing My Novel. (Crazy AND organised!)

Whenever I mention this to people, I am invariably presented with this perplexing question:

What’s it about?

Simple, right?

Um, no. It’s actually very difficult. Particularly since I don’t express myself terribly well in conversation (without the aid of a backspace key and a thesaurus), and most people are only really looking for a one-sentence answer.

Here’s a tip for anyone who is not used to talking to writers: don’t ask them about their novel/thesis/dissertation/collected works of poetry unless you want to be subjected to three hours of them explaining, with a sufficient amount of self-effacing humour, (which is only really there to cover up the fact that they secretly consider themselves to be undiscovered prodigies), the conception, development, grammatical intricacies, emotional hardships, existential crises, highs, lows, and disturbingly frequent moments of utter insanity brought about by their project.

See, I’m even doing it now. I couldn’t tell you how many well-meaning friends and relatives have been bombarded by this torrential outpouring whenever they’ve asked me about The Novel. I’ve watched their poor faces become frozen in the same expression of polite obligation as I’ve opened my mouth and breathed all over them like a neurotic and slightly flatulent dragon.

So, once and for all, at the risk of alienating everyone I’ve ever known, I’m writing down what my novel is about, so I can print off a bunch of cards with a link to this blog, and send these people away to read about it in their own time, if they’re so damn interested.

Kay?

Now. In order to properly answer this question, I must tell you that in order for you to properly understand what my novel is currently about, you must know what it used to be about.

Why?

BECAUSE I SAY SO. Now, shut up, and pay attention:

Way back in 2005, I went to Europe instead of sticking around for the fourth year of my wankerific communications degree. I knew that I would, at some point, have it in me to write a creative thesis, but back then, I was bored, tired, annoyed, and fed up with study. So I went on an overseas trip, (part of which included a Contiki tour of Russia – in which I did not manage to score with anyone – the shock of which nearly prompted me to ask for a refund); and I dedicated much of the time in which I was NOT having sex to thinking upon what my Big Glorious Great Idea for a Novel could be.

All I could think about was how horny I was.

“God damn, Catlady,” I said to myself. “Halfway around the world, standing on Moscow’s Red Square for Christ’s sake, and all you can think about is sex?”

Twenty-two years in the world, and the only thing I had to show for it were some sexy anecdotes. What use were they?

Another year later, I took myself off to a writer’s retreat for two weeks. I went up there with an idea to write a book about a teenage girl who dies… or something… (I’ve since erased this idea from my mind, due to it being shit).

It didn’t take long for me to realise that I hated being a teenager, and revisiting that entire hellish portion of my life in the form of a novel was not my idea of a good time.

So what did I want to write about?

Sex, of course. Sex, sex, sex.

“Okay, Catlady,” I says, pen poised above my blank notepad, “you can’t just write a novel comprised entirely of sex scenes. Think harder.”

Then, like a lightening bolt, like a herald from the heavens, like a thousand other ridiculous clichés, it struck me:

A novel comprised entirely of sex scenes.

Like, not porn. An actual, serious work of contemporary fiction, that just so happens to tell its story from the point of view of two lovers, using sex as their primary means of conversation. Letting everything that occurs outside their bedroom express itself through their fucking.

Sex as language.

It was at this same point that I gave up on feeling guilty about using my own life as inspiration for my writing. As Helen Garner puts it: “People talk as if a story is something found lying on the ground.”

I’d a had lot of unusual sexual experiences. Why not ditch the disclaimer and use them in my fiction?

So I did. And ‘Some Kind of Love Story’ was, uh, born.

I wrote twenty-seven chapters of this, during a period of intense misery in my actual life. I made all the rookie’s mistakes. The whole thing was self conscious, overwrought, indulgent, boring, infested with errors; basically absurd.

But it taught me a lot. By the time I’d made it to chapter 27, I could see exactly how far I’d come since chapter 1.

So I went back to uni, and began again.

My supervisor was an intimidating woman. ‘Ice Queen’, I believe she was unkindly dubbed. It wasn’t easy to walk into her office, located somewhere in the catacombs of the UTS Bon Marche building, and tell her that I intended to write a creative thesis entirely about sex.

The best thing about ‘ol Icy Pole, was that she did not mince words:

“All your characters seem to do is have sex and fight. Where’s the plot?”

Ah, plot. That slippery sucker. It would seem that somewhere in between my character’s second threesome and umpteenth hardcore bondage session, I’d neglected to write anything of, ah, substance.

With two weeks to go before my thesis was due, Disney-on-Ice suggested that I rewrite the whole thing from first person to third person, and write about ‘things happening’. (Crazy concept, I know).

Now, as part of this whole ‘being at university’ thing, I was forced to go a little out of my comfort zone and do some ‘research’ by way of reading some ‘theorists who had lots of fancy things to say about shit’. And what I ended up reading were a lot of feminists, all banging on about the representation of female desire in fiction.

Which led me to thinking: is it anti-feminist to write about female characters who desire to be sexually submissive?

(The short version of my conclusion to this essay was, ‘no, it’s not’).

Anyway. Since all of my research-type-stuff revolved around the notion of desire, I thought: how can I include this as a central theme in my creative work?

Then, late one night, after a lot of teeth gnashing and tea making, I decided to write my story from the point of view of desire. So, ‘desire’ acted as a sort of third character, who even got its own speaking part. (Which was kinda lame, and I’ve since cut it, but hey, the academics just love that kind of crap).

The name of the thesis was ‘A Conversation With Desire’.

At this point, I was willing to part ways with the whole stupid idea. After I handed it in, I would have been happy to burn it and never speak of it again.

Unfortunately, academics are the biggest perves of them all – and they loved it.

Although, they did make it clear that if I wanted to develop the concept into a novel, it would need a lot more work.

Another six months passed while I decided whether I was ready to look at it again. In the meantime, I got myself a job as a retail copywriting whore, and watched morosely as my soul died a little more each day.

Still, the idea wouldn’t die. It pestered me constantly, until there was nothing left to do but sit down again and open a brand new Word document: Chapter 1.

This time, I wrote a plan. I created back-stories and subplots. I worked on my character development. I made it funnier – less oppressive.

Halfway through this process, I quit my job. Now I was free, free to write all the time! No more getting butt raped by The Man on a daily basis!

Which of course resulted in the most crippling writer’s block I’ve ever known.

I got lost in the murk of it, forgot what it was supposed to be about, became intensely frustrated by my writing style, hated my characters, became depressed by writing it, but even more depressed by not writing it.

Around chapter 34 it all turned to shit, and I wanted to throw it in. (And grow up, get a job, and suck it up, just like everyone else. How much easier that would be!)

Then, in all that darkness, I realised I didn’t care anymore.

Which cured the block.

And then I rose up like a mighty horseman, galloping towards the finish, shaking my sword at the dawn.

Ha HA, novel! Thought you could fucking beat me! Well, think again. For it is I, Amazing Novel Finishing Woman, here to vanquish you!

Yesterday, at chapter 47, I came up with a new and improved title, which I think brings it all together:

‘Of Love and Blood’

Now with 50% more blood!

(It’s OK. You can go now. I know that it’s getting late, and you’ve missed all the best bits of the party, and the punch bowl is empty, but gosh, wasn’t it worth asking me that simple little question! Wasn’t it? WASN’T IT??)

Canberra, It’s a Wonderful Place

Canberra is just like Las Vegas, except that it’s colder, more boring, has less casinos, zero Elvis-themed 24 hour wedding chapels, and no one likes going there. But apart from that, they’re like, totally the same.

But really, it’s unfair of me to bag Canberra, because I’ve only ever had awesome weekends there (disregarding all the lame school excursions and the times my parents might have taken us to Our Nation’s Capital under the pretence of ‘family fun’). It’s far enough from Sydney to create the illusion of being quasi-exotic (if your idea of ‘exotic’ is really wide roads and a lot of boxy apartment blocks), and for this reason it gives you an excuse to behave outrageously.

Not that I need an excuse.

I went down last weekend for a fetish party that was being organised by the Canberra Under 30s group. (Yes, kink is alive and kicking in Canberra – who knew?). Initially, just me and Whipslave were going to go, but in the end our group snowballed into a posse of six. Four of whom had never been to a kink event before, let alone fully considered this side of themselves. Apparently, I’ve become the ‘bad influence friend’. Ha.

A while back I blogged about how there’s not really such a thing as ‘vanilla’ – that perversion is best represented by a sliding scale. I believe that all human relationships contain elements of dominance and submission – after all, BDSM doesn’t come from nowhere. And as part of that particular rant, I asserted that people who only socialise within the kink community are cutting themselves off from the possibility of being surprised.

That theory was proven when my presumably vanilla friends not only jumped at the opportunity of attending a fetish party, but came prepared with their own handcuffs and floggers.

It’s what Marauder describes as ‘kink-dar’. That sixth sense for pervy freaks – when you find yourself drawn to particular people, for seemingly unknown reasons. This is your subconscious at work, hinting to you that the friendly young man with the eyebrow piercing has it in him to one day pulverise your arse with a cane.

Still, as I was entering the party, I became flooded with anxiety – worried that I’d led my friends to a place that would be awkward and uncomfortable for them. Since ‘anxious’ is my default setting, I poured myself a glass of wine, and tried my best to ignore it.

The venue was really cool. It was at a property about thirty minutes outside Canberra – on a farm, pretty much. The owners of the house are a pair of doms who have lovingly converted the spare rooms of their home into dungeon spaces. Not only were the spaces fully equipped (with more floggers, canes, needles, hoods, and other assorted sexual implements than you can point a pointed stick at, boom tish), but they also had a great energy. The main dungeon area had a padded leather wall, a leather spanking bench, and a soft black mini-hammock-type-thing, which was suspended from the ceiling by chains, and which had soft little stirrups for feet. (No one got fucked in the chair that night, but it did serve as an excellent ‘spaced-out subbie seat’).

The other room was decorated to look like a medical space – with white walls, a bright overhanging lamp, and a gurney. This was of course my favourite, and it was in this room that most of our night unfolded.

When we first arrived, I couldn’t see myself playing that night. I was feeling shy because I wasn’t familiar with the crowd (who were all friendly and welcoming, but yeah I’m a freak), and I didn’t see myself initiating anything. Whipslave and I have been wanting to play for a while – we’re both subs who are curious about topping. But the idea of topping and actually topping are two very different things – and I was almost certain that I was going to lose my nerve.

(Funny, isn’t it, the way I get terrified at the idea of topping – that kind of psyched-out ‘no I just can’t do it!’ kind of fear, when logically that would be a normal reaction for someone about to get hit.)

Fortunately, it was Whipslave who took the initiative and got the ball rolling by offering to cane me. It really took a lot of convincing, but eventually, he twisted my arm. (For the more thorough, and probably more accurate version of this story, I suggest you read his version).

He was very good with the cane. In the same way that you’ll always get a better meal out of a cook who loves eating, receiving a caning from someone who also loves receiving a caning tends to make it extra good. Knowing how to build it up, how to bring you to the edge, when to push it further, when to pause.

I got lost so quickly. I was lying face down, and my hands were handcuffed behind me. This was an interesting caning, because I went to so many places. At first it was sensual, sleepy, dreamy. Then it was erotic – the sort of caning that makes me writhe and groan and smile and gasp. After that it got harder – heavier strokes from a heavier cane (my favourite sort. I adore the thick heavy canes – even though they look more intimidating, they are far easier to take than those little whippy ones, which sting like a mofo). This broke the dam of euphoria in me, and despite the pain, I hardly felt it. I became still, and went deep, deep inside myself, to a place of silence.

Only to be pushed out of it again, as I was hit quickly, relentlessly; many hands upon my body; all male. The spell was broken and I came out cranky, like a child woken from a nap. I was petulant then, shrieking, wriggling, trying to get away. I didn’t care about composure anymore, didn’t care about appearing to be brave – I ‘did not want’, and yet down it came, again, again.

Somewhere in it, a voice: “stop it”. I was defiant, non-compliant. I scrunched my face,  not allowing the welled up tears their release. Raging, growling, spitting curses through clenched teeth.

When freedom was granted, I emerged as if from battle, woozy with too-much relief.

Then came The Shakes. The Shakes is a physical reaction to trauma – the fight or flight response. I love The Shakes. It’s sort of like being possessed, speaking in tongues, as your body does one thing while your lips try to articulate what is intangible, inexpressible.

I was so fucking high.

After enough of an intermission to regain control of my hands, I was totally g’ed up to cane Whipslave. He lay on the gurney, shirtless, bum bared.

I started off by flogging his back. For the first time, I feel like I truly found my rhythm. I didn’t doubt, didn’t fret. Just let it whack, felt the music in the act, the art. The performer in me suddenly sparked, and I was on.

Now I get it. Finally, I get it. How fun it is, how freeing. I’ve always known this, that BDSM comes from elements of your own personality – you don’t need to put anything on. So, I could be the cute, bubbly, giggly person I so frequently am, but in a dominant role. It’s a matter of working with what you’ve got, and channelling it outwards, deliberately, unapologetically.

(A trick I learned on the night was to keep my left index finger pressed to my lips – which was an effective way of stopping me from trying to say “sorry” when I hit a bit hard).

After the flogging, I moved on to the cane. This too, was fun. There’s something completely mesmerising about it – for the all the time I was caning Whipslave, I wasn’t thinking about all the meaningless crud which usually cycles through my head. Which is exactly why I love submitting – it’s one of the only things that makes my head SHUT THE FUCK UP.

It was also really nice to play with someone I knew trusted me, and who can take a lot of pain. This gave me the freedom to stop worrying, and to just go with it. Instead of flicking my eyes to his face after every stroke, I relaxed and allowed myself to sense what he was feeling. This is far more enjoyable, and a far more accurate way of reading a person. You don’t need to look, and you don’t need to ask. You just need to trust.

It was a very sexy way to feel. I revelled in it, to the point where I ended up caning three more people before the night was out. Taking delight in the way they trembled and flinched.

Who would have thought?

(By the way, I still walked away with the most bruised arse out of everyone who was there. Amazingly bruised. The whole thing is purple, still).

As the night was winding down, Whipslave gave me a lovely foot massage as we lay on the couch, watching the football. (This was kind of like torture for me – football is a hard limit! Those Canberrans really are a bunch of twisted sickos, I tell you).

In recent years I’ve been slowly coming around the concept of accepting kindness. I’m still not very comfortable with it, but I’m getting better. Normally when someone gives me a massage, I lie there feeling guilty for making them work while I receive all the pleasure. But to know that it brings the other person pleasure to give me pleasure makes it possible for me to enjoy it.

Which is a good thing. I think I’m making progress.

Now that I’ve conquered Canberra, I’m plotting my next escapade. Brisbane, perhaps?

Kinky Night Out

I have the frenetic energy characteristic of a person terrified of inertia. The reason why my days are so full is because I’m terrified of what will happen if I ever actually allow myself to be lazy. Because secretly, I love being lazy – it’s in my nature. I’m afraid that if I ever did slip into a sustained period of lying dozily in bed, I might never get out.

The all or nothing approach is perhaps not healthy, but it mostly works. I propel myself through life, stringing together social appointments and other endless commitments and obligations, ticking things off enormous lists with relish.

But it’s hard sometimes to keep up a sustained fight. And when I’m not feeling well, or it’s cold outside, it can become excuse enough to take the lazy way out. Even though I know that if I go out I’ll have a great time, I still have a really tough time with it, particularly at the end of a long day.

Which is why I need people in my life, so I don’t always have to rely upon my own motivation.

Last Friday, that person was Dragongirl – who had come up from Melbourne for the weekend. Since I had a sore throat and it was cold AND rainy outside on Friday night, I literally wouldn’t have gone out had it not been for her.

So I’m super glad she came to Sydney, because it was magic.

Fet Nights (as I’ve succumbed to calling them) start long before you walk in the door of the party. There is a whole ritual surrounding getting ready, and I’ve always been a sucker for rituals.

Actually, the process of getting dolled up for these things reminds me strongly of getting ready for the ballet performances I had when I was a kid. I’m also fascinated by the way people (particularly women) dress and prepare themselves; the little details that you wouldn’t think would make a difference, but do.

Public fetish parties are performative, absolutely. Makeup and costumes give you confidence and provide a sort of armour that you can lurk behind. They enable you to be superhuman.

There is something fantastic about the lead up to entering a party. Nervous energy rising towards the ceiling, like heat.

Even though I’ve done this enough times now to be slightly less awed by it, I still love that I never quite know how the night’s going to pan out. This used to scare me, and I would try to establish some control over the situation by seeking people out and asking for them to tie me up/hit me on the bum/etc. Being the driving force behind what was about to happen, despite the fact it would require me to relinquish control, made me feel safer. (Submissives, for the record, are the biggest control freaks of them all). These days I don’t do that – instead I just put myself in the room, and let it happen. It’s more fun, more organic, and then I can walk away saying: “well, none of that was my idea…”

Now, before Dragongirl and I got to the party, we went to Peter Pan’s house (who I refer to from now on as Pan). This was Pan’s first Fet Night, and might I say he looked resplendent in his basic black. Due to the fact I was hopped up on cold medicine and red wine, I don’t quite remember quite everything that was discussed in front of his straight-laced but inquisitive flatmate, but I don’t think it matters, since he was clearly preoccupied by Dragongirl’s amazing rack.

Although, Pan still seemed happy to associate with us the next day, so it can’t have been that bad. Heh heh.

Anyway, when we got in, I gave Dragongirl and Pan the unofficial tour of the place, and then we did the standing-around-having-strange-conversations-over-the-top-of-loud-music thing with some other people. This is always my least favourite part of any evening – because it’s one thing to follow through with social conventions at parties, but it’s another to do it while dressed entirely in rubber. It lends the scene a certain aura of ludicrous. (People still managed to pussy foot around their reasons for being there – at any time we could have been surrounded by a mixture of leather/corset/rubber/or PVC-clad individuals, as well as the occasional naked person, and STILL be discussing the weather. I suppose, after all, that weather is crazy, but…)

One of the reasons I like going out with Dragongirl, is that she has no qualms about cutting to the chase and doing something sadistic to someone as soon as possible. Which she did – to the youngest person there! (There was this cute metal/goth/emo dude who’d been dragged along by someone else, who we thought was eighteen, although that remains a question mark. He was super sweet, and his eyes were so big it looked like they were going to fall out).

We went into one of the more private play areas (that had the beautiful medicinal smell of a tattoo parlour, ahh) and she stuck a bunch of needles in his arm. Which he reckons didn’t hurt at all, because he’s a Real Man, even though I totally saw his lips quiver as they went in.

After we finished wiping the blood from Emo Boy’s arm, it was time for my flogging. There was a brief moment where I got uncharacteristically shy about taking my top off (the concoction of Codral and alcohol was wearing off by this stage), but it was thankfully short-lived. I peeled the rubber off, allowed Dragongirl cuff my wrists to the St Andrew’s cross, and let it happen.

Gods, it was good.

How to describe a flogging?

First of all, by ‘flogging’, I mean she used one of those implements that was a bunch of leather strands attached to a handle. There were a few different sorts available for our use, and she alternated between them. (The longer the strands, the heavier the blow. Also, there was one with knots in the leather, which really hurt a buggery, haha).

The feeling is of being beaten, but in the kindest possible way. An expert flogger (as Dragongirl most certainly is) will flog with a steady rhythm, which sends me almost immediately into a trance. There’s a sort of jungle energy to it – of sacrificing a virgin to a volcano, or, erm, some shit. (I’m on fire with this metaphor thing right now).

It doesn’t benefit from intellectualising too much – which is another reason why I love it. It sends me to a place like sleep, it makes me feel safe, calm, beautiful; it relaxes me more deeply than anything I’ve ever experienced; it sends me into the headspace of an infant, it pushes the pain out of me, it makes things tranquil, spiritual, peaceful.

The force of it almost winds you, the pain flutters across the skin like ripples of colour. And always at the other side of it – the person who is flogging you. The connection is as intimate as sex, or more so. Purer.

We’ve been doing this for years now – Dragongirl can read me so well. She takes me right to the edge of where it becomes unbearable, and then backs it off just a little. Massaged my skull occasionally between stokes. Covered my mouth; her hand getting coated in my tears.

I’ve taken to crying a lot during scenes lately, which I think is just evidence of having recently ended the longest and most functional relationship of my life. There is no lying in kink – the truth gets forced to the surface.

There are more embarrassing fluids that can escape you in an evening, believe me.

Later in the night, just when I thought things were winding down, Dragongirl bent me over a chair, tied me to it, secured my hands behind my back, and put a lycra hood over my head (which is a little something I picked up while I was in Japan – but had not until then actually used). I sank back down into subspace in a matter of seconds. The hood intensified the experience on two levels – it gave me an opportunity to completely disappear, and it gave me a break from being ‘me’.

See, I get sick of myself. During a scene, I hate being pulled from my reverie to answer a question or assure someone that I’m ‘okay’. Because the submissive side of myself doesn’t care for talk, or for reassuring people, or for being congenial. It just wants to roam, unchecked, unscrutinised. Do you know what a relief it is, not to have to smile, not to have to be nice, switched on, polite, funny, erudite, responsible? To go fully, quickly, towards that welcoming black, to give someone my body, to leave it behind?

To not have to apologise.

I know Dragongirl loves to hit people, and she knows I love to be hit. It works.

Towards the end of the night, Pan had to go.

“You’re crazy!” he said, all grin and sparkle.

“No I’m not,” I said. “Oh wait. Yes I am.”

Kink After Kids

Today I’m going to talk about something I know nothing about: parenthood.

I was at a baby shower the other day, and it got me thinking. (Before I go any further, I should point out that the inspiration for this post has nothing to do with anything springing from my own loins, nor the loins of any of my lovers. No loins were involved in the writing of this).

So anyway, I was at this baby shower, and it was every bit as freaky as I’d anticipated. Freaky because there it was, right in my face, unavoidably real: I am the owner of a (presumably) fully-functional BABY FACTORY.

One of those moments as a woman where you realise that your lower abdomen is not just an excess cake depository.

Around me were women in their twenties and thirties, with fat bellies themselves, or with small children on their laps, or both. And as usual I was feeling very out of place.

You might be surprised by this, but I actually want kids at some point in my life. There was a time when I didn’t – because I was terrified of post natal depression (runs in my family), and of turning into my mother (runs in my family). I also think that procreation is one of those things that doesn’t bear thinking too much about – lest you tear a hole in your brain from ruminating too deeply on the nature of existence and the origins of life. (Seriously, am I the only one who finds the whole thing REALLY FUCKING WEIRD? Most of the pregnant women I’ve met seem so incredibly blasé about it – more concerned about stretch marks and the lack of attractive maternity gear than the fact that they have ANOTHER HUMAN inside their body. Um, hello?!)

Putting the complexities of the universe aside for now; I really do want to know what it’s like to be pregnant. Firstly because I like the idea of my body having these hidden functions – to not sprog would kind of be like being a really gnarly transformer, and never transforming. The curiosity just gets the better of me.

Also, despite the fact that we live in a society that does its best to desexualise mothers, procreation is the ultimate sexual act. The biological purpose of sex is to reproduce, and as a highly sexual person, I think I absolutely have to see this through to its logical conclusion. (Conveniently ignoring Kathy Lette when she says “kids are a contraceptive”).

Women complain about what pregnancy does to their bodies, but between you and me, I find the whole thing kind of hot. That as opposed to looking ‘fat’, I think they look bountiful with life, sex, energy, beauty, etcetera.

Finally, as a person fascinated with human relationships, particularly romantic relationships, I’d love to know what it would be like to share the experience of being a parent – and to discover how that would deepen your relationship, and expand your capacity for love.

But hey, let’s not go crazy just yet. All in good time. (By which I mean, after I’ve turned 30, which as everyone knows, is the point at which you stop being confused about life, you turn into a real adult, and you discover the meaning of life. Right?)

All I’m saying is, I’m not opposed to the idea of sprogging at some point in my life.

However.

What happens to kink after you have kids?

Does having kids mean that you have to bury that side of yourself, because it’s impractical, improper, and altogether too adult?

Sitting there at the baby shower, hoeing into the twee finger food and trying to act interested in a conversation about daytime television, I was feeling the way I usually feel – like an alien. One of these things does not belong here…

Everyone surrounding me was so cheerful, so motherly. Most of the women at this baby shower had spent their Saturday night indoors in their mortgaged houses with their husbands and children, eating wholesome home-cooked meals and watching PG-rated, family-friendly DVDs.  Meanwhile, I was sitting on a sore bottom that had recently been caned, wearing makeup from the night before, and about to jaunt off to a book launch at the Writers’ Festival. Compared with these real women and their real lives, I felt like a ridiculous caricature. Like everything about my life was just a meaningless preamble in the lead up to having children.

This life that I’m currently living – who am I kidding? Going to fetish parties, getting falling down drunk, having love affairs, kissing men, women; everyone, slutting myself around like some sort of genetic mutation between a rabbit and a slug – it’s all just killing time, isn’t it? Until I discover my true purpose in life, the true meaning of love, and all my demons disappear?

Thinking about kink in the context of being a parent has caused me to ponder: is kink an indulgence or a necessity?

I’m an intensely practical person, and this side of myself is always a little bit annoyed at how absurd and illogical my fetishes and desires can be. They usually involve staying up all hours of the night (most kink parties don’t kick off until at least 11pm), spending money on the entry fee, the outfit, and the alcohol (and whatever else it takes to have a ‘good time’), getting bruised to the point where doing ordinary things the next day is difficult, and needing time afterwards to recover and come back to reality.

Most parents don’t have time to sleep, let alone dedicate this much energy to something so impractical. Which is why most of the people in the kink scene are young (without kids), or older (kids have grown up).

So does that mean that, for twenty years or so, you must put your own desires aside for the sake of being a good parent?

And is it healthy to neglect everything you used to be passionate about because being a parent is ‘more important’?

This is the sort of territory in which I flounder, because I can theorise all I want, but ultimately I’ll never be able to offer anything worthwhile to the argument, because I don’t have kids.

I’ve been reading some online forums on the topic of BDSM and parenthood. Most maintain that it is possible to still have an active kink life, and raise your children in a responsible and loving way. However, most of these scenarios rely upon a situation where the parents have a monogamous D/s relationship. Basically, it helps if your fetishes and kinks can be channelled into something resembling a marriage.

But… what if you have desires that just don’t go together with being a parent? What do you do with them? Do you avoid the whole thing altogether, and leave it to the people who are more inclined to be satisfied with the domestic ideal?

In considering this discussion, my thoughts turned, reluctantly, to my own upbringing. Which was conventional in a lot of ways (two parents, two kids, house in the suburbs), and unconventional in a lot of ways (having two parents who were severely depressed most of the time, for starters…)

My parents were not naturals– not the sort of people who you would say were destined for parenthood. But in saying that, they weren’t bad parents. It’s just that things in our household were perhaps a little different to how they were for my friends (particularly since most of my childhood friends came from very conservative Christian families).

My mum in particular has always treated me like an adult. As a kid that’s not always a good thing – sometimes you want to be mothered, and don’t want to have to deal with  grown-up responsibilities. However, now that I am grown up, I appreciate that my mum loves me for who I am – not the cute toddler I used to be.

When I was growing up, the fact that my parents occasionally forgot that my sister and I were children (and that they themselves were parents) meant that we weren’t censored from much. And without going into too much detail (because, ew), my parents basically did have a D/s relationship (with my mum, most definitely, on top).

I was never traumatised by it – in fact I find it kind of funny now. (What was traumatising were the constant fights, the screaming, crying, and uncontrolled anger – which happens in so many households).

I’ve been forced to acknowledge that if my parents had spent more time making love, and less time making war, I’d be considerably less fucked up.

Which gives me an answer, of sorts.

And now, having reached this conclusion, let’s never speak of it again.

I’m Lazy, so Here Are Some Pictures

These photos of me and Talby were snapped at the Uber Rope workshop by the very talented and sexy Marauder. And yes, the last photo is of me eating cake. I was, as usual, demonstrating a mastery of poise, composure, and grace.

Man, I Feel Like a… Man?

Of all the complaints I might have about my body, there’s one thing at least that I’m unwaveringly happy about: my gender.

I’m one of the lucky majority who was born, more or less, in the right body. Growing up, I was a girly girl. Pink ribbons, pigtails, frilly socks and skirts made from tulle and satin and chiffon and sparkly things. My favourite colour was purple, my favourite super hero was Cat Woman, and my career aspiration was ballerina.

So, ‘girl’ was always right for me. And even though being a woman can be complicated, I wouldn’t want to trade. I’ll keep my emotional sensitivity and multiple orgasms, thank you.

If anything, my biggest body frustrations stem from not being quite womanly enough. I’ve always felt a bit thick, stout, heavy. I envy girls with delicate shoulders and narrow waists. I’m not happy with my breasts, because, stupid as this sounds, I’ve never felt like they qualified as ‘real’ breasts. And although I’ve never tried it, I’m pretty sure that if I truly threw my weight into a punch or a kick, there’d be a good chance I’d fuck you up. (So be nice to kinkycatlady, y’hear?)

All the same, I’ve mostly graduated from feeling like a ungainly tank-like object, to a sensuous, seductive woman. In conclusion: yay for me.

But wait, hold on. Before you release the balloons, there’s just one thing that doesn’t fit the mould. One thing that has always made me feel different from other women, not quite in the club, not quite as enraptured by scrapbooking as the other girls in the craft shop.

My sex drive.

I’ve always known I was a randy slut, but I kind of always thought all women were secretly like that. I thought the difference between me and ‘them’ was that I’m one of the shameless few who admits it.

Turns out: not so much.

Two things in the last week have altered my opinion.

The first was seeing Bettina Arndt talk about her new book The Sex Diaries at the Sydney Writers’ Festival. For this book, Arndt surveyed the sex lives of ninety-eight couples in long-term relationships. Unfortunately, the results were overwhelmingly in favour of that depressingly cliché –men want sex more than women want sex.

I haven’t read The Sex Diaries (yet), but I get the impression that it paints a fairly grim picture of the female libido. It basically suggests that women are able to live without sex, but men are not. (As in, it doesn’t seem to torment women in the way it torments men).

Arndt’s advice to the women of Australia is to “just do it”. Her reasoning is that desire does not need to be there for good sex to be had. Her argument is solid, but I still find it sad and decidedly unsexy. Just do it? Sounds about as erotic as getting a pap smear.

She did also make a point of saying that there are of course women out there in relationships whose sex drives were higher than their partner’s – but they were exceptions to the rule. (Although she did say that these women’s complaints were particularly fierce!)

Now.  In three out of the four long(ish) term relationships I’ve had, I have out-sexed my partners. In only one relationship did I find a man who could match my desire for sex. Which would have been peachy, had it not been for the emotional abuse and his just generally being a prick. But the sex, the sex…!

I used to believe that women have been socially conditioned to think sex isn’t very important. I thought that the reason I was gagging for it was because I’d given up trying to fit into any type of ‘norm’. That I was paying attention to what my body was telling me, not what my parents/peers/etc thought was appropriate behaviour for a woman.

That was, until I read a Feminist on Testosterone. (Thanks to Marauder for sending me the link!)

I highly recommend you read it in its entirety, but for those of you who are pressed for time, it is basically the account of a person who was born intersex, was raised female, and much later in life decided to become male (the process of which involved taking testosterone).

This experience has given him a remarkable insight into gender, and the social and political issues surrounding it. But what I found most astonishing was the way he described the effect of testosterone on his sex drive. Astonishing because I could identify with it. Particularly the bit about “wanting to do it all the time”, and jerking off “to relieve an itch”. Also, he describes how he started to get aroused in non-sexual situations; a concept most women have trouble understanding.

…Except me, who understood completely.

It had never actually occurred to me that there could be a physiological explanation behind my bottomless sexual appetite. Psychological, certainly. But, hormonal?

Before we get crazy, let’s take it back to the pink ribbons and My Little Ponies. Considering that I’m not balding, I don’t have excessive body hair, I’m not at all aggressive and I don’t have the slightest interest in war, cars, or football, I think it’s highly doubtful that I’ve got a higher than average level of testosterone in my system. (Yes, women do have small amounts of testosterone. Thank you, Yahoo Answers!)

However, there are aspects of my sexual behaviour that are decidedly man-like. I think about sex pretty much constantly, I get turned on in non sexual situations…(but that’s probably because I’m perverted), I jerk off frequently to relieve boredom/tension/restlessness, and if I had it my way, I’d have sex at least once a day. My favourite part of being in a relationship is the sex (and I will admit I’m struggling a bit with being single, for this reason). When I haven’t had sex for a while, I start to get leery. My sexual urges don’t just go away if I ignore them – they get more demanding and more intense.

I promise I’m not just making this up in an attempt to differentiate myself. This is how I’ve always been – ever since about fourteen onwards. And the slightly terrifying thing is, my sex drive doesn’t seem to be diminishing as I get older. Quite the contrary – it’s getting stronger. To the point where it actually frightens me a little.

It leaves me in an in-between place, where I’m forever trying to conceal my sexual desires because they’re unseemly, weird, unladylike. See, I can have a good old chat about the virtues of exfoliation and cuticle oil, and then I can turn around and talk dirty in a way that would make your fingernails blush. It’s a strange position to be in, and sometimes I feel like a bit of a spy – a woman who dares to brave the no-man’s-land between genders, and who gives secrets away to both sides.

I get annoyed when I’m confronted with yet another cultural artefact that reinforces the idea that women are the less sexed sex. Sometimes I feel invisible and voiceless – an anomaly. And I feel despair when I think of all the women out there who aren’t getting the most out of their sexuality – who would ‘rather eat chocolate’.

I’m quite partial to chocolate, but girls, come on. Sex is life! Joy! Abandon! Transcendence!

Compared with… a Ferrero Rocher? That’s Ferrero Fucked Up, is what that is.

I’m also fed up with this assumption that sexual desire is something that belongs to men, and which women borrow from time to time (when they’re not eating Kit Kats, of course).

It’s not. Men don’t own sex. After writing a goddamned thesis on it, I’m here to tell you that female desire is strong, boundless, beautiful, powerful, and unique. To say that sexual desire is intrinsically male is like saying that anger is instrinsically male. If you don’t believe that ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’, you clearly have not yet met my mother.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I still believe that women have an amazing capacity for sexual desire. I think women should be encouraged to explore their sexual selves, and to be able to talk about it without being labelled a slut.

Also:

I have an idea for my next thesis. ‘She Kink’ – a book exploring and celebrating the stories of kinky women.

Watch this space.

Switching Between Worlds

In BDSM vernacular, ‘vanilla’ means ‘someone who is not kinky’.

If the black and white cookie is anything to go by, chocolate and vanilla are two flavours which can peacefully coexist, but don’t blend very well. There is not really such a thing as partially chocolate. Once that cocoa hits the icing, it will go brown. The vanilla becomes tainted. If you wanted a pure vanilla flavour, baby, you’ve gotta start again.

People in the BDSM scene adore using the word vanilla. Shortened sometimes to ‘nilla, it is often delivered with a condescending sneer, so that it also starts to carry connotations of ignorance and stupidity.

Just like any group of humans, the kink community is certainly guilty of the ‘we’ve found the light while meanwhile the rest of you poor sods are still stumbling around in the dark’ mentality. We patronise people who, for whatever reason, are outside of our world. It becomes nearly impossible to see how anyone else could have a different opinion, and how that opinion could ever be worthwhile or valid.

I know, because I’ve behaved this way myself.

Why?

Because all my life I’ve felt like a freak. I’ve always had something to hide – some part of myself I needed to obscure in order to fit in. I’ve felt like I was the crazy one, the dirty one, the one with the problem.

And so to find out that there were other people like me, and then to have my weirdness not only accepted by these people, but celebrated as valuable and beautiful – it was like coming home.

Still, even though an entire community of twisted perves exists, we’re still very much in the minority. And thus, for most of us freaks, we find that it becomes necessary to switch between worlds.

We all need money to live, so we must fit into some kind of work environment. We all have families, and unless we’re estranged from them, we must fit into the role of daughter/son/sister/brother/uncle/niece/etc. We need somewhere to live, so we must be able to convince a landlord that we are good, trustworthy people.

Not that being kinky has any impact on your suitability as an employee, your love for your family, or your ability to pay the rent in a timely manner. Of course it doesn’t – but we hide it just the same, because it could be perceived to be ‘bad’. We might not personally have a problem with this label, but it creates inconveniences for us in our everyday lives that we’d rather live without.

So we pretend.

Do you know how exhausting it is, pretending to be ‘normal’ all the time?

And how frustrating it is, to have to disguise something that you’re proud of, something that you love, something that makes you you?

It sucks. It makes you cranky. And then you find yourself at a fetish club, during one of the few social occasions where you don’t have to lie about your personal life, and you find yourself mouthing off about the vanilla world and how closed-minded, repressed, and irretrievably dull everyone in it is.

The thing is, however, that going to a fetish club every Friday night in your latex catsuit so you can bitch and moan to the same people about the same people, is just as boring as going to the same pub every week with the same bunch of friends so you can talk about the same football team.

Non-vanillas might think they’re so superior, but ultimately, they’re just people, just like everybody else.

There’s nothing special about us, other than we’ve got distinct tastes when it comes to what gets us off. New members of Under 30s often remark about how relieved they were to discover that we’re all so friendly and normal. As if they were expecting us all to have wings, claws, tails, and be raving, delirious psychopaths who want to eat their brain for dinner.

Many of my friends are kinky. Many are not. (Which doesn’t mean that I pretend to be someone else in front of my not-so-kinky friends – they know who I am and they love me for it, even if they are not necessarily interested in it themselves).

But with new friends, there is always an awkward ‘coming out’ phase, which I’ve not yet mastered.

Many in the scene would say that this problem could be solved by not bothering with the vanilla world.

Which I think is extremely narrow minded. For these reasons:

• Being kinky does not automatically make you interesting, and by that reasoning, being ‘vanilla’ does not make people boring. What’s boring is making judgements about people you don’t even know, and thus becoming limited by your own spectrum of experience.
• On first impression, a person might appear to be vanilla, but you never know what dark desires they might be hiding. I once knew a man who seemed to be more vanilla than a crème fraiche, but that was until he got very drunk one night, and asked me to slice up his chest with a steak knife. (I said no, and I regret that now. It would have been hot.)
• If we, as a community, insist on barricading ourselves inside our own world, like a secret society, of course people are going to have misconceptions. What we need is more people talking about kink, not just among ourselves, but to anyone who is willing to listen. *Waves to my not-so-kinky readership*

Coming out is never easy. At best, you can be laughed at. At worst, you can be shunned or discriminated against. A friend of mine has blogged recently about the difficulties of telling people about her kink life, because she wants to be perceived to be “dependable, reliable, and trustworthy”. I feel exactly the same way. Even though I know that being kinky does not detract from my ability to be dependable, reliable, and trustworthy, I fear that other people will see it differently.

The solution?

It’s up to the dependable, reliable, and trustworthy members of the kink scene to educate the less informed.

I don’t think this Berlin Wall of ‘us versus them’ is doing anyone any favours. Instead of retreating into our dark corners to play out our sick and twisted perversity, perhaps we could bring a little of it out into the light?

Or would that be defeating the point?

The Clitoris: A User’s Guide

It’s not uncommon to hear women complain about how clueless men are when it comes to this part of the female genitalia. And it’s not uncommon to hear men complain about how women are notoriously difficult to get off.

But here’s something that you don’t hear very often:

Women only have themselves to blame for this.

Seriously, girls, there’s no point in faking an orgasm, only to turn around the next day over coffee with your ‘BFF’, and moan (in an unsexy fashion), about how crap men are.

Sisters, hear my plea! They ain’t never gonna learn if you don’t bloody tell them!

(Women, including myself at times, can be so damned shy. There’s nothing more awkward than interrupting that moment of blind passion by giving your new lover a step-by-step tutorial. Which is why most of us keep our mouths shut. And then, once we’ve established a relationship with this man, it’s even more awkward to turn around and tell them, after all that time, that they’ve been doing it wrong. So this ineptitude continues, basically, forever. If you should break up, the man will go on to his next relationship believing that he’s the bee’s knees, and that if his new woman doesn’t respond to his expert caresses, she’s clearly got some sort of malfunction. And if the happy couple ends up getting married, she turns into a bitch who never wants to shag, and the poor bloke is left scratching his head and complaining to his mates, who will tell him the same story, because their wives have done the exact same thing! Gah!)

So, let’s set the record straight. This, gentlemen, is how it’s done:

“You don’t have to go leaping straight for the clitoris like a bull at a gate. Give her a kiss, boy.”

John Cleese was absolutely right. If you’re trying to turn your woman on, leave the clit til last. Being touched in that area before you’ve warmed up, so to speak, feels terrible. So hold your goddamned horses and try “sucking the nipple” or “stroking the thighs” before you march on down to Clitoral Town.

“There’s always time for lube.”

This might come as news to some of you fellas, but girls need lube too! There is a common misconception that touching the clit is the best way to get a woman all juiced up for sex, but what many don’t realise is that the clit itself needs to be well lubricated. If your woman is not adequately wet by the time you get down there (and dudes, please don’t take it as a criticism. Not all women are naturally gushy, okay?) PLEASE use lube. If you have none, spit can be used (as a last resort). For clitoral stimulation to be pleasurable, the area must be like a lame nineties band: wet, wet, wet.

“I suggest: feather touch.”

But you have selected: POWER DRIVE.

You know how guys jerk off, right? Like they’re using their dick to jackhammer concrete? That is the WRONG way to touch a clitoris. (By the way, I’m assuming that you can all find the clitoris. If you can’t, please go and look at this film, which I’m sure you’ll find to be very informative).

Now, the clit is very small. Maximum circumference = 1 centimetre. Therefore, if your finger is moving in an area larger than 1 centimetre, you are only touching the clit some of the time. This is annoying! Imagine if some girl was touching your cock, and kept alternating between rubbing the head and then rubbing your belly button. Not painful, perhaps, but definitely not as sexy as it could be. So pay attention and make sure that your finger doesn’t stray!

The second, most important bit, is that the clit is not a button and as such should never be pushed. DO NOT APPLY PRESSURE! If you do this, at best your woman will come too quickly, and at worse she’ll punch you in the face. (But how, you ask, is it possible to touch something without pushing down? The word to remember, my friend, is glide. The tip of your finger should glide gently over the surface of the clit, in tiny, tiny, little circles. This is why lube is important.)

Less is more.

Start with the absolute bare minimum of movement and friction, and work up from there (SLOWLY!). Find out what works for your woman, and maintain whatever it is that you’re doing. Which leads us to:

If she likes it, keep doing the exact same thing.

Don’t try to be fancy by increasing speed, or changing the direction of your tiny circles, or ANYTHING. Just keep doing precisely what you were doing to get her going, and don’t change it. For boys, faster + harder usually = better, but this is not the case for girls. So if it looks like she’s gonna come, for the love of god don’t change what you were doing – unless you don’t want her to come. Which, when done deliberately, is hot, but when done by accident, is more irritating than an Adam Sandler movie.

Please, at least *try* to act interested.

Nothing impedes an orgasm more than knowing that your partner is bored. I’ve literally had boyfriends fall asleep while attempting to get me off. Just so you know, all girls are psychic and can tell what you’re thinking. Twenty minutes of watching while a beautiful woman moans in ecstasy is not a boring thing, so pay attention, goddammit!

Multi-tasking.

Once you feel fairly confident that you’re on the right track with the clit, you can try doing other things at the same time. Having your nipple nibbled while your clit is being stroked is one of the most beautiful feelings imaginable. Also, fingers in the vagina are also fantastic, and if your woman is a certified kinky bitch, a delicately placed finger in or on the ass is also pretty freakin’ good. (Or so I’ve heard…)

The longer it takes, the stronger the orgasm.

If you’ve got a lot of time on your hands, see how long you can draw it out before you let her come. It will drive her wild, it will put you firmly in control, and it will deliver an outrageously powerful orgasm. These are all good things.

For The Win:

• If she squirts, consider this to be the ultimate compliment. Do not go: “ew, gross, girl germs.”
• During cunnilingus, all the same principles apply. It’s actually a little easier, as it’s impossible to exert too much pressure with a tongue, and it’s already wet. For best results, experiment with sucking the clit very gently into your mouth.
• Learn to read body language. Generally, moaning = good, heavy breathing = good, and writhing = good. However, staring blankly at the ceiling, or saying “ow, that hurts” = bad. Perhaps you can ask your woman if she’s enjoying herself on the first couple of occasions, but after that, you should be able to tell.

If this becomes my grand contribution to the internet, and indeed, humanity, I’ll be happy enough. Go forth and pleasure!

Empowerment Fail

Lately I’ve been pondering – is it possible to find a middle ground between being a complete pushover and being a complete bitch?

The obvious answer to this is: ‘yes, of course’.

But it’s not that easy. Since way back, women have been divided into two categories: angels and whores. It’s a simplistic concept, but unfortunately, it’s just as relevant as it was a hundred years ago. Case in point: Christina Aguilera.

Good ol’ Christina. Back when I was an impressionable teen, she was on my TV screen every week, fluttering her eyelashes about being a ‘genie in a bottle’ and needing to be ‘rubbed the right way’ before she’d, er, put out. Record company marketing execs know how lucrative the sweet-and-innocent-girl-next-door routine is, and my what a killing they must have made with innocuous little Christina. (Bitter? Me? It’s just that when I was a teen, these were the type of role models my generation was presented with. Vapid air-headed prick-teasing goody two shoes butter wouldn’t melt in their perfectly pink lip-gloss covered mouths. Utter. Bullshit. Erghhh).

So I was amused to see, on Video Hits one day in my late teens, the image of none other than Christian Aguilera, writhing around in assless chaps, smearing herself in brown-coloured water that appeared to be coming from a flooded toilet, dry-humping big black men, and singing about how she wanted to get ‘dirrty’.

Angel to whore – MTV style.

(A word of caution to all you nubile young pop stars out there; the transition from angel to whore is much easier than the other way round. So think carefully before becoming a whore, because once you’ve shaved off all your hair and flashed your vagina to the paparazzi, there’s kind of no going back. Not mentioning any names.)

The journey from angel to whore is closely linked to age. The older you get, the more tainted you become. It’s inevitable.

Having mentioned this – I had a birthday last week.

Now that I’m ten years on from sixteen, I’ve decided that the cutesy schoolgirl shtick on which I’d relied so heavily as a means of getting attention and being desired, is getting old. So I’ve dyed my hair a normal colour, and I’ve tossed out some items from my wardrobe that were wearing thin, conceptually and literally. The aim was to eliminate all the gimmicks I used to use to lure people into being interested in ugly little me, and see if I could survive on the strength of my, er, charming personality.

I had an inkling that it would work, but nothing could have prepared me for how well it’s been working.

Which places me in a difficult position – one that I had anticipated and knew I’d need to face. As predicted, I’m in an enviable place where I’m going to have to say no to people.

Such a little word to bring about so much consternation.

I’m not the only person in the world to have ever had a problem with the word ‘no’, but hells bells, it’s still really bloody hard.

Case in point: last Saturday night.

A while back, I bought myself a ticket to see Dylan Moran at the State Theatre. The opportunity to see your favourite comedian on your birthday does not present itself often, so when my friends were busy or poor or otherwise, I took the initiative and decided to go by myself. I will admit that seeing a comedian on your own is a little weird, but no matter, I’ve been to concerts on my own before and had a good time, so I figured ‘fuck it, I’m going’.

It was great. Dylan Moran was reliably hilarious, and I didn’t feel overly weird or conspicuous.

At interval, a man walked past my aisle and looked at me. Since I’ve been trialling this whole ‘confidence’ thing, lately I’ve been trying to hold people’s gazes, as opposed to blushing and looking away. So I stared back at him, and there was an slightly too-long moment where our eyes stayed connected.

I didn’t think anything of it.

Then, after the show, as everyone was walking out, that same man sidled up to me. At first I thought he was someone I was supposed to know (like, someone from school or uni that I had forgotten), but after he introduced himself and told me “I couldn’t help noticing that you were here alone” I realised that I was being picked up.

Picked up? Me??

I’m just not used to it. And on all of the occasions in my life when a man has gone out of his way to approach me, I’ve behaved like a nervous, giggling idiot.

Saturday was not much of an exception.

He offered to buy me a drink, which I tentatively accepted. By this stage, I was already feeling indebted to this man – feeling as if I couldn’t possibly hurt his feelings by saying ‘no, I’ve already got plans for tonight’ (which was true).

So we went to a strangely empty bar, where a strange bartender poured us glasses of cheap shiraz for free (because he couldn’t accept my suitor’s credit card), and the whole thing was surreal in a not particularly good way.

I was feeling anxious, apprehensive, uncool.

I always automatically place myself below anyone I meet for the first time. I don’t know why, but I always assume that everyone else is cooler and more interesting than me. So it was jarring when my suitor turned out to be boring, egotistical and narcissistic, and spent the entire time talking at me about his unoriginal idea for a TV series. I could barely get a word in, and when I finally did manage to say something (to mention that I too was a writer, which I would have thought would interest him) he said “oh!” and then proceeded to launch back into his incessant diatribe about how all TV comedies were crap, except, of course, for his.

As I sat there blinking rapidly, thinking about how I didn’t find him at all attractive and was not at all interested in him or his TV show, I was also thinking:

Damn, I really wanted to go to Oxford Street, to meet Whipslave as previously arranged, and now it looks like I’m going to have to sit here all night listening to this tool.

And:

I guess I’m going to have to sleep with him, because he was nice enough to approach me and offer to buy me a drink, even though the drink was free.

And:

I suppose I should give him my phone number, because he seems nice and kind of lonely, and maybe I should just marry him and have three of his children and nurse him into old age, because I feel kind of sorry for him, poor guy.

What the fuck!!!

I mean, I go to all these lengths to announce to the universe that I’m not going to let anyone take advantage of me, and that I was going to be empowered and forthright and unapologetic – only to indebt myself to a man I’d know for all of twenty minutes, just because he was kind enough to pick me up?

It was only sheer luck that after he gave me his phone number, he didn’t ask for mine. And it was only sheer luck that I really did have somewhere else to be, because otherwise I would have had to tell him no, which means that I’d probably still be there now.

GAH!!!

And what’s worse is that even as I write this, five days later, I’m still feeling BAD about not calling him!

Yes, bad! Awful, in fact! I can feel his phone number burning a hole in my sim card, begging to be dialled.

It’s so tempting to think that I’m just no good at this dating game, and I should either just get married or sign myself into a convent and be done with it.

But that’s bullshit and I refuse to be beaten so easily.

I’m sick of being an angel. But I don’t quite feel comfortable with being a whore.

Which leaves me with…?

Erotic Thoughts of the Week

So I’ve been having a lot of rude thoughts this week which would be rude of me not to share.

Part of the advantage of having an overactive imagination is that I can provide my own sexual fantasies. (Or ‘wank material’ for the uncouth portion of my readership). I’m too lazy to download my own porn, and stupidly I never think I’ll need it until suddenly I’m horny and impatient. As a result, my mind has become quite good at crafting scenarios – increasingly strange ones. Here are some of the most recent:

Breath play with rope bondage and champagne.

Okay, so, the heart of this idea was pinched from something a (brilliant) friend of mine wrote, which was never intended to be perverted (or maybe it was?). But the thing about sexual fantasies is that they’re like recipes – you borrow the core structure of something that has been proven to work, and then you add your own ingredients according to your own preferences. In the same way that I compulsively add chilli and herbs to bland recipes, I add restriction and pain to the more mainstream sexual concepts, and – voila! Orgasm soufflé.

Um. Anyway. In this scenario, I am tied with my arms behind my back. I’m sitting down – I was toying with the idea of being tied to the chair, but in this one I think it’s hotter if I’m sitting there of my own accord, trying to be obedient. I am in a room (hell, let’s make it a motel room) with a beautifully evil woman (hell, let’s dress her in rubber). She has a bottle of very expensive champagne. (No, this is not leading to a champagne enema. That’s another story). She pours it into a glass, pinches my nose, and forces me to drink the entire glass before I am allowed to breathe again.

Between each glass, she undresses me, slowly, one button at a time. Even though I have no say in this, she makes me want to be touched, need to be touched, and I become increasingly desperate and helpless, willing to do anything so that she might touch me more. Whenever I start to drift into pleasure she takes her hand away and pours me another glass. Again, nose pinched, glass held to my mouth, as I gulp and gulp, dying to breathe.

Needless to say, with each glass, I become more and more inebriated, unable to retain dignity or control. (She stays sober, but she smokes a lot; drawing the tension out).

This continues until the bottle is empty and I am naked, shameless with lust, and coincidentally, busting to pee.

There are a million ways this story can end. I suggest we play Erotic Choose Your Own Adventure:

ENDING A

Still with a full bladder, I am put over the chair and fucked with a strap-on until she is satisfied. I come and come like the dirty little slut that I am.

ENDING B

(I only just thought of this one right this moment, and am actually a little embarrassed to write it. But it’s so perverted I can’t resist). I am allowed to pee – into the champagne glass. Ten points to anyone who can guess what happens after this.

ENDING C

She goes down on me, telling me that if I come I will be severely punished – the cunnilingus is just another form of cruel torture. I try my hardest to resist but it is impossible – I end up squirting all over her face. So then, naturally, she puts me over the chair and canes me mercilessly. The end.

Blades and blood

I had a dream last week, one of those clear, reality based dreams where you dream you are in the same room that you’re actually in. (And when you wake up, you’re surprised to see you’re in exactly the same place, and then you get all freaked out that life is a perpetual dream… etc). This dream was simple, but I tend to find that erotic dreams work best when they are uncomplicated. I was holding a blade (a razor blade, I think), and I was dragging it over the skin of my thighs, enjoying the way it felt, and admiring how beautiful my blood looked. They weren’t deep cuts, and it wasn’t an act of self mutilation or depression – far from it. It was an act of celebration and joy. I was touching myself as I would a lover, except I just so happened to be holding a blade. Each cut was reverent, meditative, and I savoured every second of it, enjoying how it felt and looked.

This continued until my legs were covered in this strange art. The sun was shining through the window. I felt happy.

The image of this dream stayed with me all week, appearing whenever I shut my eyes. It has reminded me of how much I want to experience knife play again. I have a wonderful friend in Melbourne who owns a giant steel scalpel that her boyfriend nicked from a hospital – I think I need to see her again.

Head shaving

I have a thing for women with shaved heads – a serious thing. I first met my aforementioned friend in Melbourne when she had a shaved head, and I was instantly mesmerised. (She also happens to be an awesome person, which helped!) Thing is, although I’ve always been reduced to a swooning puddle every time I’ve encountered a shaven women, I’ve never believed that it would be something I’d do myself.

But my opinion has changed. However funny a shape my head might be, I think it’s something I simply have to do in this lifetime. So the plan is to grow my hair real long, and then shave it off for charity.

Now. I know this is very odd, but I’m currently sitting on this idea for an erotic story, which revolves around a woman getting her head shaved. I’m thinking of it as some sort of initiation ritual for a new recruit into some sort of underground community. This woman is told to go to an place she’s never been to before, at a specific time. When she enters, she is blindfolded, and stripped off all clothing and jewellery. She has no idea what is going to happen to her.

She is placed on a table, where every nook and cranny of her body is examined and then bathed. Then, her legs, thighs, cunt, and underarms are shaved as close as possible, with a razor blade. (I appear to be obsessed with razor blades right now.) Finally, the blindfold is removed, and the woman is told that her head is going to be shaved. It is her last opportunity to back out, before becoming a slave. She makes her choice, and her head is lovingly and thoroughly shaved.

(I saw a girl on Fetlife who had done exactly that for her master – shaved off all her long blonde hair. It was obviously a massive sacrifice for her, but she did it for him as an act of love and submission. She looked amazing).

Caning

Well, this isn’t very complex, but in the last few weeks I’ve really been hankering after a good caning. I feel a bit vulnerable and foolish saying this, because I know what I’m getting myself in for, but the Creature inside me has been severely underfed, and I know I need it again.

That’s all. A nice caning.

(And then, the next day, having my arse squeezed by a horny lover. Mmm hmm hmm.)

Right, well, guess I’d best be getting back to the parts of my life that don’t involve masturbating. Whatever that might be.

Rope Workshops

Hey, you! If you live in Sydney, and want to improve your rope bondage skills, you should totally come to these workshops. They’ll be informative, fun, and even better than that – I’ll be there!*

thursday 7th may 2009: rope bondage 202
at manacle, the clarence hotel 450 parramatta rd, petersham

getting into the groove? getting to feel the power of the rope?
ready to take the next step?

moving from the fundamentals of workshop 101, we incorporate limb tying, with more interesting restraints and combinations.

you will learn the steps to include rope in your play, including the delightful rope tying for [shhh] sex.

[cost $20, $15 SLPA & Kindred, start time: 7:00pm. approx 2 hrs ]

thursday 14th may 2009: rope bondage – body harnesses
at manacle, the clarence hotel 450 parramatta rd, peterhsam

ready for something a little more intricate? the stuff that has the WOW factor?

not just for the visual, the different variations of body harnesses can be a lot of fun to play with, and combine naturally into rope bondage scenes.

Learn a basic harness, then two more, then experiment with different variations on the theme. keep ‘em bound (and smiling).

[cost $20, $15 SLPA & Kindred, start time: 7:00pm. approx 2 hrs ]

For more information, please visit the Uber or Sydney Leather Pride websites.

* As the model, not the instructor. My own rope skills are shamefully bad.

‘Submissive’ Does Not Mean ‘Doormat’

(But it so often, depressingly, does!)

I’ll kick this off by formally announcing that Marauder and I have broken up, and I’ve moved out of the flat we shared.

The reasons for this breakup are as Facebook would describe: ‘complicated’.

Not bad per se. Just, comprising of more than one reason. And for the record, I still think Marauder is a kind, graceful, and generous man. (Graceful in the most manly possible way!)

Over the last few weeks, I’ve come up against the realisation that I’ve been hiding inside relationships for most of my adult life. Hiding in the sense that “I have a boyfriend” is much easier to say than “no, I don’t want to”. Towards the end of our relationship, Marauder told me that he wasn’t going to sit back and watch people take advantage of me anymore (both in the context of kink and in everyday life). Which was extremely dashing and sweet of him, but ultimately unhelpful. Because I need to learn how to stand up for myself.

So, wearing my bravest of brave faces, I packed up my life and moved into my own place.

This is about prioritising myself; looking after myself.

*Cue the Destiny’s Child song*

But where do I begin? What is it that I want, exactly? The stupid thing is that in all my life I’ve never precisely gone after what *I* wanted in life – I just accepted what I got. I thought myself lucky to be paid any attention from boys, no matter who they were, no matter how objectionable they tended to be. I thought myself ugly, and so I always felt inordinately grateful and surprised whenever anyone ‘accepted’ my appearance enough to have sex with me. And when I discovered that I was submissive, I gave my submission away as if it were a disease I needed to be rid of.

I like to think that I’ve come a long way since the days when I used to believe these things about myself, but on reflection, I’m not so sure.

Here’s one that will make my feminist sisters’ toes curl with indignation and recognition:

I have sex with people because I don’t want to cause a fuss by saying no.

I’m one of those women who thinks that, if I’ve wound up inside someone’s bedroom, it would be dreadful manners to back out of having sex with them.

Just because I suddenly don’t really feel like having sex doesn’t seem like a valid enough reason to say no. And I don’t want to be seen as a ‘tease’ or a ‘frigid bitch’, and anyway, who am I to refuse sex? Me, with my weird little body –  daring to turn someone down?

Of course this line of thinking is utterly ridiculous, but it lurks in my subconscious nonetheless.

And in fairness to the men I’ve shagged – I’m pretty sure that most of them would have been perfectly fine with me saying “I like you, but I don’t quite feel like fucking right now”. But instead, I’ve kept my mouth shut, and found myself halfway through the act feeling bad because I’m not connected. Which makes for crappy sex.

Even inside relationships, where I’ve known and loved and trusted my partner deeply, I still felt like I couldn’t refuse them sex just because I wasn’t in the mood. Like it was somehow my job, my role, to be ready and available whenever they wanted it.

Again, that’s ludicrous. But when I force myself to admit it, that’s how I’ve always behaved.

So something’s got to change, and it’s got to come from within me. It’s no good to just be with someone who can read me well enough to know when my heart’s not in it.

Here, for the first time in my life, I face the heady prospect of choosing my lovers according to what I want.

It just seems so decadent; so gratuitously indulgent.

But it’s fucking not. It’s a basic right – as is happiness – which is another thing I’ve never quite felt worthy of. As if I will be ‘punished’ somehow for enjoying myself, for acting upon my desires.

…and I wasn’t even raised Catholic!

What then, do I want exactly?

Um.

Ah.

Well, let’s see.

Okay. I want to be single, but I don’t want to be celibate.

I don’t want one night stands – sex for me is about spiritual, intellectual and emotional openness. The physicality is somewhat incidental.

I want safe sex, always, and for no one to try and argue with me about it.

Sex is not the only thing I want, in terms of physical intimacy. In fact, I’m sick of the intrinsically male viewpoint that sex (as in, intercourse) is the ultimate best thing, and that it is what all sexual acts should lead to. Because it’s wrong. The idea of ‘foreplay’ as being a tiresome precursor to intercourse is lazy and irritating, and I’m sick of it. In fact, I hate the word ‘foreplay’ because the word itself sets up the idea that it comes ‘before’ the main event. As if there’s no value in anything that doesn’t involve penetrative thrusting. Which leads me to:

I want eroticism. Talking, flirting, kissing, touching, dancing, sparring, spanking, grabbing, pulling, pressing. Sinking into it; placing it in the hands of the gods.

Finally, I want my submission to be a gift. It is the most intimate part of myself that I can share, and it is something that I will only share with those I trust and love. I need to be able to know the value of this beautiful and rare thing that makes me uniquely special. It’s not something that should be forcibly taken from me, as is has been in the past. It can only be earned.

So now that I have made my polite request to the universe, I shall wait.

Forever, if need be. But something tells me it won’t be long.

My Kind of Party

A Brazilian man once told me that when he made the decision to move to Sydney, he knew it would mean he’d have to leave parties behind. At the time I spoke to him, he was more than happy with his choice – Sydney is a wonderful place to live. But there was an element of sadness in his voice which, in spite of the massive cultural differences and the age gap between us, I could completely understand.

Not to say Sydney does not have ‘parties’. It certainly thinks it does. But although this might be an undeniably beautiful city, it also happens to be filled with Aussies. And the Australian idea of a good party involves standing around awkwardly, clutching a beer or some other sort of alcoholic beverage, making banal small talk (usually about the football or the weather), listening to terrible music, and sometimes pretending to dance.

…gods!

Growing up, I didn’t like parties. As usual, I blamed myself, rather than consider for a moment that I hated parties because all parties tended to be crap. I liked cake, but that was about all that I liked. Being anti-competitive meant that I didn’t enjoy games (am I the only person who was ever massively stressed out by Mintie hunts?), and being antisocial meant that I didn’t enjoy talking to people. (It wasn’t until I was about 23 that I truly came to appreciate the art of conversation, and the joys of going, like, out).

When I was 18, I attempted to throw a party while my parents were out. And in planning this party, I was struck by the thought: what does one do at a party? Social constructs have never made much sense to me, which is probably due to being raised by wolves my parents. I always overanalyse every social situation, to the point where all I can see is absurdity. Your average 18 year old would not feel the need to question what actually happens at a party. They would just stock up on the RTDs (back when a six pack of Vodka Cruisers did not set you back a million dollars), turn the music up, and set about getting as shitfaced as possible. But as I had yet to discover alcohol, I just didn’t understand the point of parties other than to eat unhealthily and dress up like a mini goth (back when the term ‘emo’ had not yet been coined).

So why was I throwing this party? I think it was really out of a sense of obligation – my parents were out and thus it seemed requisite. Also, I think I might have had a vague idea that if I opened the door and called it a party, I would automatically have fun. Using the Underpants Gnome mode of reasoning:

Step 1: Throw party

Step 2: ….

Step 3: Fun!

Needless to say, my party kind of sucked.

It wasn’t an utter disaster, it just wasn’t very interesting. I think the highlight of the evening was ‘chain smoking’ three Marlborough Lights with a friend of mine in the lounge room, which wasn’t even all that naughty considering I was 18 and could legally buy cigarettes anyway.

The whole ‘I don’t enjoy this thing which everyone else seems to enjoy must mean that I’m the one with the problem’ mentality has been the story of my life. Also, knowing what you don’t enjoy does not put you on a path towards discovering what you do. I reckon that no one enjoys parties as much as they say they do or as much as they feel they should. And yet we all do it – the standing around awkwardly, the banal chitchat. The idea of a party holds so much promise and anticipation – the appeal is contained within the concept, not the execution.

The first fetish party I ever went to started out every bit as disappointingly as every party I’d ever been to, except everyone around me was dressed in fetish gear. I found myself doing what I usually do in awkward social situations – stuffing my face with unappetising food. (Which created some physical discomfort on top of the social discomfort, as I was wearing a corset). And you know when a party is so bad that alcohol is useless? There is nothing worse than thinking ‘well not only am I still bored, but now I have a massive hangover to look forward to. Fan-bloody-tastic’.

(As a brief aside, why do we as a nation insist on pumping ourselves full of alcohol just so we can act sober? It’s a social faux pas to drink so much that you’re staggering around, and yet at every social gathering you go to, alcohol is almost forcibly poured down your throat, and anyone who refuses, especially if they’re male, is considered to be a joyless wowser. Huh?)

So anyway, there I was at this fetish party, eating from the amazingly crap buffet, making small talk with a bunch of PVC-clad people thirty years older than me, wishing that an alien spaceship would fly overhead and take me to the planet Zorbor for anal probes and hopefully death; when at the eleventh hour my boyfriend took me to the front of the house so I could see the room with the cage.

And, just like that, I was having… fun?

‘Fun’ is not the best way to describe the experience I had inside that cage on that night, but it gives you an idea.

It was then that I realised that fetish parties are my kind of parties. For the following reasons:

• They give you an opportunity to shuck your everyday persona

In my experience, dressing up in something outrageously slutty gives me a chance to act out the sexual side of myself that is usually kept frustratingly under wraps. Being a shy introvert all the time gets annoying, and these parties give me a chance to say and do all sorts of crazy things, because the person doing them is not ‘me’. (Even though it is – but shh!)

• They provide you with things to watch, and things to do

At fetish parties, stuff happens. Stuff is entertaining, and means that your night does not need to revolve solely around drinking and talking.

• They encourage acts of imagination and spontaneity

Put a bunch of perverts in a room, give them canes, ropes, paddles and whatever else, warm them up with a bit of booze, and you are guaranteed an interesting night. You never quite know what is going to happen at one of these things. Even though I’ve now been to more fetish parties than I’ve had hot dinners, I still manage to be surprised by how weird and wild and interesting they can be.

• Craziness is largely accepted

If you were at a normal party, and you saw a half-naked person simultaneously screaming, crying, bleeding, and laughing, you would probably call the police. But the fetish party setting provides a heterotopia in which normal social codes are disrupted. Do you know how freeing it is to lose all self consciousness about your body, your mind and your sexuality, all at once? The burden of acting ’sane’ all the time is never so apparent as when you’ve suddenly thrown it off, and have started to interact with people in a way that is intimate and genuine.

• You don’t have to disguise your sexual agenda

Normally, people go to parties secretly hoping that they’ll do something naughty and sexy. Fetish parties remove all that coy bullshit. People don’t have to steal glances at your outfit – you wore it so you could be perved on, and it would be weird if people didn’t look. Everyone is generally very complimentary at these things – a comment of ‘nice boobs!’ is not as sleazy as it would be in an ordinary setting. That said, a fetish party is not a great place to ‘pick up’, and most people who go with this intention end up disappointed. It’s all about the play and the pervery; anything else is a bonus.

• You don’t have to fit into a stereotype to be considered attractive

Most of the people you see at these parties are comfortable in their own skin, which makes them sexy. ‘Hotness’ is relative, and fetish events do not impose the tired standard for women that you need to be tall, thin, big-breasted and blonde to qualify as attractive. I’m willing to bet that there are more men fed up with this cliché than there are women – what would be the point if we all looked the fucking same?

• They’re funny

This might seem a little odd, but allow me to explain. In my general experience, a lot of people at ‘normal’ parties take themselves too seriously. At a wedding, for example, everyone is allowed to have ‘fun’ so long as they stick within the boundaries of how they are allowed to have fun (which, in Australian society, usually means drinking a lot and ‘dancing’ to the Grease Medley). Now, a lot of people at fetish events take themselves very seriously too – but I don’t hang around them. All of my good kinky friends have an appreciation for irony, and have a certain sense of humour about what they do. Sure, some acts of kink are very serious – but they’re only serious in so far as life itself is serious. And since life is pretty funny – good kink reflects that.

Hmm. I set out with this post to talk specifically about the party I went to last Friday, but I got carried away. Which means you’ll have to wait for the next instalment to find out. Sorry!

Stay tuned for more Sexy Times, coming to a darkened computer room near you…

Badness

If love is war, sex is the ammunition.

For anyone who has ever had awesome sex after a fight – you’ll know what I’m talking about. Or anyone who has ever had a moment of weakness and shagged their obnoxious and horrid yet somehow alluring ex. Or for those who have given in to torrid temptation and shacked up with someone who wasn’t yours.

Bad sex is good sex. And good sex is sometimes bad sex.

Don’t tell me it ain’t true. I’m onto you.

It’s this thing that people seem to ignore when they’re theorising about sex. And I should know – I spent a year reading a lot of academic literature relating to sexuality and gender for my Honours thesis. After reading a lot of stuff that suggested we should all be aiming for a genderless utopia in which everyone is treated equally and sex becomes non-violent and unemotional, I came to the conclusion that you can theorise all you want – but ultimately, critical objectivity is never going to get you off.

Sex doesn’t answer to political correctness, and thank god for that.

See, I know I’ve been all a bit down on our friend Monogamy, but I will give the ol’ fellow this:

Monogamy provides rules, and breaking the rules provides opportunities for badness.

Without a standard against which one can be rated as ‘good’, one cannot ever be ‘bad’.

And badness is hot.

Like, jalapeño sauce on top of Scarlett Johansson’s bosom in the middle of a bushfire on Mercury hot. Badness, badness! Badness is hot.

I’m tired of all these Kumbaya alternatives to monogamy that doggedly insist there is a way to have everything you want without it upsetting anyone else. If there were a way for us to have all the love and sex we want with whoever we want without any fear of recrimination, that would be ideal, right?

Maybe, but then again, maybe not. It is a quintessentially human compulsion to go after that which we can’t have. To want more than we’ve got. If we all end up living in a polyamorous commune in which love is shared and sex is exchanged freely as an act of mutual respect, what room is left for that terrifyingly awesome feeling you get from doing something different, unauthorised, unscripted; wrong?

(Actually, the hippies and feminists *did* try to do the free love thing in the sixties and seventies, but it didn’t end up becoming mainstream as they had hoped. If you read Monkey Grip by Helen Garner, you’ll see that all the same issues of jealousy and betrayal still came up in these polyamorous communities, and that in some cases it became even more complicated and heart-breaking than the standard, particularly where kids were involved).

Now, look. I hate hurting the people I love, I really do. Much as I loathe the word, I am, deep down, a nice person. There is no point in pretending otherwise – I generally always want to do the right thing by people, and even more hideously, I want everyone to like me. But here’s the thing – when it comes to sex – I like it mean. What turns me on has nothing to do with my conscious identity. (Or, it probably has a *lot* to do with it, in that everything I deny about myself gets pushed underground into my subconscious, which is the main driving force behind what pushes my sexual buttons).

So I’m a bundle of contradictions, just like everybody.

And I don’t have any answers, not yet. I’m not suggesting that we should all just stick to monogamy and accept that affairs and indiscretions are unavoidable parts of the package. Monogamy can work, as long as it’s what you both want. But ‘want’ is such a slippery word. Any relationship can start out based upon mutually shared values. But what if what you want changes over time? What if one person wants something that will make their partner unhappy? Do they shoulder the burden of that unhappiness by denying themselves what they want in order to protect their partner, thus ruining the relationship anyway through resentment? Or do they go after what they want, thus ruining the relationship through guilt and betrayal?

Clearly, want is ruinous. Buddhists believe that craving is the cause of all suffering. Fundamentalist Christians try to program themselves into believing that the only thing they want is God’s love. Addicts streamline all of their wanting into their addiction. It is human nature to want, and it seems like you’ve got to be more than human to transcend such earthly desires. Which I kind of think negates the point of being here in the first place – depending on what you believe, you’ve potentially got a whole eternity to exist in a peaceful bliss removed from the burden of earthy desires, so isn’t suffering something you should accept as an intrinsic part of the life experience? (Unless you believe that you will be punished for your sins when you die – which I don’t).

I like a little bit of suffering now and then, as I’m sure I might have mentioned once or twenty times. I’ve stopped running away from hurt, and have come to a place where I embrace it as evidence that I’m alive. Just as night follows day, the patterns of joy and sadness are cyclical. The good thing about the fact that nothing lasts, is that even the really bad shit doesn’t last forever. I once met a man who had the words ‘things fall apart’ tattooed on his wrist, which struck me as particularly beautiful. (On the other wrist, now that his life has improved somewhat, he is going to get ‘things come together’).

So, I’m cool with suffering. I like it. Without getting all emo on your arses, I do believe that it’s just as important to feel sad occasionally as it is to feel happy. BUT, the trouble is, I’m still completely uncomfortable with being the cause of suffering in anyone else’s life. I just can’t handle it. Nothing depresses me more than to think that I’m responsible for making someone unhappy. But other people have made me unhappy plenty of times – why can’t I accept that this is just the way things are?

Sometimes I feel backed into a depressive corner where I feel that the only way to prevent myself from causing suffering is to shut myself off from the world. But then I realise that that’s a one way ticket into crazy hermit depressed recluse-ville. And for all that I’ve got to give, say, and share, it would be a total shame for me to do that.

And anyway, without all of this angst and complexity, what on earth would I write about?

Badness makes life interesting, whether or not you accept this fact.

I’m not saying badness needs to be manufactured – there’s more than enough that occurs naturally and spontaneously. And it shouldn’t be overdone, otherwise your life will get thrown out of balance and you’ll end up suffering all of the time. Eroticism hangs in the balance between pleasure and pain – too much of one thing and it becomes artless.

So I’m a good girl who likes to do bad things, but who also doesn’t want to upset anyone.

Hmm. If I manage to figure out how to consolidate all of this, I’ll be sure to let you know. Until then I guess I’ll keep wandering around, rubbing up against people, loving, crying, laughing; blundering my way through.

Love

I have never had good sex with someone I didn’t love.

Love is that thing that makes sex (plain sex, the vanilla kind) interesting for me. Without it, I don’t quite see the point. If I can’t reach out and connect directly with a person’s soul, then I’m not really interested. If I’m not getting ‘closer to God‘ while having sex, well then, I believe my time would be better spent scrubbing the toilet, doing my taxes, or staring blankly into space. Anything is preferable to supposedly engaging in one of the closest acts of human contact, and still feeling trapped behind a mask.

Love is truth. It’s about stripping yourself back until you are ugly. ‘Love hurts’ is a cliché, but the thing about clichés is that they are based on truth. Love hurts like a motherfucker. That’s why I like it so much.

In my history of relationships, I’ve loved fast and hard. Like, you know that Bjork song?  I love like that. BAM! BOOM!

Since today seems to be cliché appreciation day, here’s another one: ‘love at first sight’ is totally possible. I used to believe that having sex on the first date(/whatever) was a really slutty thing to do. Now I don’t care labels or about all the silly games people play when they are supposedly getting to know someone. The concept of ‘dating’ is a great big pile of poo. Because the only way you can really know a person is to get inside them. Physically, metaphysically, whatever. All I know is that that sure as hell doesn’t happen at Greater Union. (At least, not now that they’ve got that stupid allocated seats thing…)

When I was 21 I had a startling experience where, despite being powerfully in love with my then boyfriend, I fell in love with a man who I’d known for all of about 3 hours. It was a total disaster – not only was my boyfriend the insanely jealous type, but the other man was also in a committed relationship himself.

It was a confusing time in my life. Up until that point, I’d unquestionably accepted the culturally ingrained construct of monogamous romantic love. I believed that you could only love one person at a time, and that if you happened to fall in love with someone else, that meant that you didn’t ‘really’ love the person you were with. I believed that the ultimate conclusion of love was marriage.

About two years after that night, I found myself in a situation where I was sleeping with with two ex-boyfriends and an illicit lover at the same time (not literally – that would have been awkward). It felt kind of slutty, but I loved them all. By this stage, I’d realised that love cannot be erased, and in that sense, it’s possible to love more than one person at the same time. Once you love someone, it stays with you forever, regardless of whether you notice it’s there. Also, ex sex is pretty hot, so.

But I thought there was something wrong with me. I felt guilty about it – like my love was insincere. I worried that I’d loved too carelessly and too freely, and that I was going to ‘use up’ all of my love before I was even 25.

I still, secretly, wanted to believe that everything I’d been through was just a messy preamble to the main event. That I would still find my One True Love and that suddenly everything would work, and would make sense. That I would find a love that would drown out all the others. That it would solve my problems and fulfil all my sexual, spiritual and intellectual needs.

How could this all just turn on me, when all I wanted was perfection?

Of course, it doesn’t work like that. Which is actually a good thing.

My relationship with Marauder has altered the way I see love. Never in a relationship had I ever felt clear-headed before. I used to treat my boyfriends like drug additions – scratching the constant itch with sex, sex, sex. Holed up in a dim bedroom somewhere, drinking the river dry. In these sorts of places, clarity is impossible. My sense of direction and sense of self was perpetually sacrificed to the cheap fix. How could love bring fulfilment when love took everything away?

With Marauder I discovered something simple and plainly good – happiness. A love that wasn’t strung out with guilt and blame. Cool and calm and clear and easy.

But as recently as January this year, I still had that old mentality hanging around – the one that said that you should only love one person at a time, and that marriage should be the ultimate aim of any union.

There were cracks appearing around these values, chipped and battered as they already were.

Everything’s been coming apart again, but now I have the wisdom to know this is just a symptom of change. It’s resisting change which brings all the trouble, not the change itself.

Something, suddenly, has been blown open in me.

It started on that night in February this year, at R&R. A person entered my life, and all the symptoms of spontaneous attraction appeared. And I thought: ‘Oh no, not this. Not again. You know better than anyone that no good can ever come of this.’ And I also thought: ‘Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah! Fucking, fucking, yeah, YEAH!’

Bipolar? Moi?

Then Marauder went to Thailand, and I slipped into the different lounge-rooms of various friends and lovers, talking, laughing, flirting, thinking. Getting wasted, getting poked with knives and canes, getting myself off, getting confused.

Marauder came back, and our love was still there, twinkling.

But it was no longer the only star in my sky.

Now, my world is replete with stars, like a canvas has been lifted to reveal a plethora of light.

And I’m overwhelmed by it, stupefied by so much choice. I’ve managed to eliminate the rules which used to govern how I loved – and now I feel I can love so many people in so many different ways that it boggles my mind.

All it takes to love someone is to connect with them, to see into them while simultaneously revealing yourself to their gaze. I’m learning ways of doing that that don’t involve sex, but sex is still my most preferred method.

Sex is my language.

I want to converse.

Rope

Last Tuesday I got tied up. And as I was swinging serenely from the ceiling, I realised that sometimes the best way to get what you desire in life is to ask for it. I’d known the man whose ceiling it was for at least two years, and yet in all that time it had never occurred to me to simply ask him if he’d like to play privately. I didn’t think I was worthy. Dumb, huh?

(Like, do you remember when you were in school, and there was some person you were all pining over, and you really wanted to go out with them, and all your friends said ‘why don’t you just ask them?’ And you were all ‘well of course it’s not that easy, duh’. Well it actually, mostly, is. Duh).

Anyway, rope is beautiful. Literally – rope turns sex into art. Sex and beauty are not usually easy bedfellows (see: previous rant) but rope is one of those rare things which both looks and feels amazing. (Rubber also falls into this category, but I will admit that there are some aspects of rubber that can be scary-looking or even downright comedic. Rope is just intrinsically artful – even if it was purchased on special from Bunnings).

Ever since I went to Japan (and saw the Shibari Master Osada Steve live in action), I’ve been curious about suspension. To be bound and lifted completely from the ground is a perfect representation of submission. That moment where you forget who ‘you’ are, and your body becomes aligned with a current of energy. The point of transformation between the physical and the transcendent. When suddenly, it just works.

Kink is similar to good sex, in that sometimes when it begins it can feel awkward and self-conscious, but that’s the path you’ve gotta go down to arrive at a place that is breathtaking and sublime. I will admit that there is an element of dagginess inherent in kink – there are a lot of clichés you need to go through in order to find what works for you. But the thing about clichés is that they’re based on truth, and it’s the truth of what lies inside of us that draws us to these rituals and acts. You might turn up at a fetish event in your best PVC feeling like a bit of a dork, but later in the night when someone is caressing you, striking you, binding you, all your misgivings melt away.

When kink happens, when that point is crossed, it’s like that moment where the wheels of a plane leave the tarmac. That subtle yet all important shift, where your weight sinks back into the chair and your head lolls gently, like a baby in its mother’s arms. (Incidentally, it’s no wonder that aeroplane travel makes me horny. I once willed myself to orgasm on a flight from Sydney to Melbourne, using only my filthy mind and the slight rocking of the plane).

It might sound bizarre, but I like bondage because it makes me feel safe. Having a rope harness secured around my chest, arms and legs makes me feel snug and secure, like I’m being hugged closely, constantly, all over my body. All forms of constriction give me this feeling – of total trust and gratitude. I start to go into a sort of doze, like being hypnotised, lulled away from the frantic chatter of my conscious mind. It’s intimate; foreplay. The intensity of the experience increases as each person feeds off each other’s passion- it’s the same energy bounced backwards and forwards, gaining power steadily, becoming larger than both people, filling the room.

And then, to lean forward and have the rope support your weight – ah! The exquisite tension in the moment right before the rope pulls taut. Your body leaves the floor one toe at a time until you are completely suspended; free. Naked except for underpants and the rope, air softly touching every part of your body. Quiet.

Having the responsibility for my own physical safety taken away from me helps my mind to focus on other, less mundane things. For these precious times I am not concerned with eating, drinking, exercising, surviving – I simply am. It’s surreal to see the ground swing below you, and for me it was exactly like one of those flying dreams where I can zoom like a hovercraft over the earth. I loved that every movement I made affected the rest of my body, reminding me of my predicament. My ankles were tied so I could bend or straighten my knees, and my hair was cinched with rope and tied as well. My arms were firmly behind my back – I forgot I even had arms.

Weightless, floating.

Having a blindfold added to this experience ended up being too overwhelming for me, and I had to come down because I felt like I was going to faint. Motion sickness, of all things. Annoying, but I’d like to try suspension again on another, less humid night.

There was an interlude where we recuperated on the floor, my arms still secured behind my back, my breathing restricted periodically by his hand. The quiet beauty of it – the hard, sexual edge. Of reaching the end of breath, and being willed to hang on a few seconds more.

(If you’ve ever seen the film clip for Radiohead’s No Surprises, you will note that the lyric ‘Silence. Silence.’ happens at the point where Thom resigns himself to putting his head completely underwater, as he calmly accepts his fate before drawing a final breath and sinking down. This is how it feels to have your breath consensually restricted by another person. God, I love Radiohead.)

The final act of the night took place on a no-nonsense, straight-up-and-down metal chair, to which I was bound, sitting. My arms were tied with loops of rope from above my elbows to my wrists, along the back legs of the chair, while my chest was secured immovably to the back. Then, my feet and knees were tied either side of the front legs, so that I couldn’t close my legs. It was the least room for movement I’d ever been given in a rope tie, and it was fantastic. The moment I was blindfolded and gagged I dropped completely into subspace, gone.

See, this is why kink does it for me. Normally, during sex, I worry a lot. I worry that I’m too fat or that I’m ugly or I smell. I worry that the other person isn’t having a good time. I worry about the dishes in the sink I should be washing, the state of the bathroom, the fact that I’m not eating enough fresh vegetables. I keep having to remind myself to let go, to just enjoy the moment. But I have a real hard time giving myself permission to accept pleasure. I rarely think that I deserve it, and feel guilty whenever someone tries to touch me in a way that is exclusively about my own pleasure, not theirs.

But the minute I was tied to that chair, unable to move, see or talk, all of those negative voices shut up. Kink removes the middle man. My responses come directly from my body, from my sex, without being routed through my head. I respond in a way that’s animal, guttural, unrefined. I forget who I am, and thus all the angst and baggage that goes along with my sense of identity gets chucked overboard, leaving me free.

Ironic that it takes a carefully calculated cerebral act (the act bondage) to get to a place of undiluted primal rawness, but hey, I don’t profess to understand it.

I just try to experience it as much as I can.

An Open Letter to the Men of Victoria

Preamble:

Before Marauder went on his overseas trip we both agreed that we were free to do whatever (and by ‘whatever’, I mean ‘whoever’) we wanted during the upcoming two weeks. Pining wistfully for an absent partner never helped nobody, and so I proactively, wholeheartedly set out to create as much distraction for myself as possible, even scheduling in a ‘dirty weekend’ away in Melbourne. However by the time I was circling the international airport parking lot, I was feeling a little bit sheepish about how many people I’d spent time with (not a euphemism; sex is not the most intimate thing you can do with another person) and was pretty much planning to throw it all in the vault, lock it, throw it into the ocean, and pretend it never happened. Of course, we were barely in the door of our flat when, faster than you can say ‘big fat slag hag’, I’d blurted out every detail of my two weeks’ worth of debauchery. Which is convenient firstly because it brought us closer (the ‘not talking about things’ approach to relationships which my parents practiced has never quite been my style) and secondly because now I can blog about it. So without further ado:

Dear Men of Victoria,

After providing me with an appreciative welcome to your illustrious state, the enthusiastic nature of which could only ever be matched by the men of Queensland, I was made to feel more than comfortable during my recent visit to your capital city. Demonstrative displays of friendly hospitality were particularly apparent in your fine drinking establishments, such as the Richmond pub I visited early one Saturday evening. Nothing makes a girl feel more special than being affectionately groped on her back and arse regions while ordering herself a beer. Here I was, feeling a little out of place being the only girl with green hair in a bar full of rambunctious AFL fans, when all my fears about not being accepted were allayed by one of your confident and upstanding young men who took it upon himself to run his finger down my spine and tell me in a reassuring tone that he was ‘trying to rub the glitter off’. Indeed, I was certainly thankful to this fine gentleman, because had the glitter that was attached to my top been allowed to remain, only the Lord knows what sort of catastrophe could have befallen me later in the night.

Furthermore, the calibre of the young and not-so-young men who took it upon themselves to sit next to me during the course of my Richmond pub experience were not only dazzling conversationalists, but were also noticeably appreciative of the area of bare skin located around the neckline of my top. This thoughtful gesture alleviated all the tension usually generated by having to make eye contact with the person you’re talking to. I should also point out that strictly limiting the topic of conversation to the amount of points scored in the most recent football game by whatever team it is you happen to support was a welcome change to the conversations I’m used to which involve a lot of tiresome ‘thinking’ and ‘exchanging of ideas’.

Don’t get me wrong, men of Victoria. I like you. I particularly like your fondness for and devotion to the art of drinking. Admittedly, the Richmond pub was probably not the best forum at which to get to know your people (distracted as you were by a rowdy sporting event), but as soon as I’d changed venues to a Tapas bar near Federation Square, my night got exponentially better. The food was excellent, the service was flirtatious and the wine was plentiful. So distracting were the pleasurable delights of eating and drinking that I didn’t quite notice, until halfway through the meal, the hulking figure of potent manhood who had been sitting next to me the whole time.

Like a lone wolf crossed with a dark horse crossed with a dashing wombat, I realised somewhere into my sixth drink that this man was kind of all right looking, and that this kind of all right looking man was looking at… me. More than that, he was giving me The Eye. The Eye is a particular look that I have only just become good at recognising. The best way I can describe this look is ‘hungry’ – there is something about it that sort of roughly communicates a desire to consume. One eyebrow slightly raised, with a glimmering spark right in the centre of the eye, glinting like a black pearl.

Ordinarily, when confronted with The Eye, I would blush and turn back to my half-eaten Spanish cheese, never to look in their direction again. But this time, I decided to sit it out and stare him down, shooting back with my very own version of The Eye, which I like to think communicates something to the effect of ’so you’d like to eat me, huh? Well, I sure am tasty, like some sort of cream-infused gelatinous dessert. But, Mister, the thing you gotta ask yourself is, are you really ready for this jelly? Because too much bootylicious can cause heartburn, you know.’ Rampant insanity aside, once confronted with this, my dinner companion smiled in a sexily evil kind of way which seemed to say ‘I got plenty of Mylanta, baby.’

And so, men of Victoria, I was instantly entranced. This weird and intoxicating and spontaneous thing was happening, and I was loving every minute of it. When he slipped out at the end of the meal for a cigarette, I followed after him. The night was blustery and so very Melbourne, and the city lights were shining. We finished our cigarettes (a bad thing that I occasionally do precisely because it’s so disgusting) and stood about in the alleyway, looking at each other like untethered animals.

Then it was on. We started to pash frantically in a way that felt terrifically cinematic but probably looked more like an episode of Kath and Kim. Clawing at each other and pressing our bodies up against the stone wall. (Even better was that he kept grabbing my arse which was bruised and sore from being caned the night before). It was then that I realised that I had discovered something simple yet amazing – power. I’d never before understood the appeal of ‘picking up’ a stranger, but now I do. The pleasure is secondary to the rush. I get it now.

So we bid goodbye to our friends (who were cheering), and scrambled our way out of there, hailed a taxi and made our way to The Bachelor Pad.

Might I just pause for a second to say: nice going, Victorian men! This Bachelor Pad was top rate. It had art on the walls, a fridge that was full of cheese and alcohol; it was clean and nicely furnished and had a big TV on which Flight of the Conchords was available for viewing. So far, so good.

However. After assisting each other with the removal of clothes, I soon encountered a problem with the Bachelor Pad. This is where, Victorian Men, your attention is required. It went like this:

Me: (breathing heavily) “Do you have condoms?”

Bachelor: (also breathing heavily) “No.”

No? Whaddaya mean, no? Hello! What kind of a Bachelor with his own fully equipped Bachelor Pad does not have condoms? This is a fail, Bachelor man. You can’t expect to be running around the city of Melbourne, giving suggestible sluts like me The Eye, and not be able to follow through with a little bit of lubricated latex. I mean really. Which leads me to:

Bachelor: “It’s okay, I won’t come in you.”

Bachelor was perplexed as to why this didn’t automatically allay my concerns. What’s worse is that Bachelor was a fair bit older than me, old enough to put him firmly and squarely into the category of Gen X, which as the media would lead us to believe, is far more savvy about safe sex than all of us filthy skanks in Gen Y. The icing on the cake was this comment:

Bachelor: “Condoms don’t really ‘work’ for me.”

Excellent! Splendid! Fantastic!

Bachelor: “Can I go inside you, just for a minute?”

My answer: “No.”

This lead to some fairly unsatisfying ‘fooling around’ which resulted in an orgasm for Bachelor (thanks in part to the awesomely expensive silicon lube I just so happened to be carrying in my handbag), and some inept finger poking for me.

Men of Victoria, hear my plea. When attempting to pleasure your lady friends, please note that the clitoris is not designed to operate like a button. Whatever points you might score for locating this part of the female anatomy will be immediately cancelled out by jabbing or pressing motions. If you’re confused, here’s a tip. If you hear your lady friend saying something to the effect of: ‘ow, that hurts, please stop,’ then jabbing or pressing even harder is probably not a good idea.

After ten or so minutes of this, I decided, like the pragmatic and forthright young woman that I am, to take matters into my own hands. Literally.

I have no shame, and I’m proud to say I’ve never faked an orgasm. I tell you – if I’m not having a climax, I’m not going to let the other person get away with thinking that I have. I mean, how are you men going to learn anything if I let you believe that the jabby jabby technique you’ve got going there is in any way pleasurable? I’d be doing a disservice to all the other women folk who found their way into the Condom-Deficient Bachelor Pad of Doom, that’s what.

So, I directed his mouth to my nipple, and finished myself off. It was okay.

All of this said, Victorian men, Bachelor was very nice to me and didn’t scream when he woke up in the morning to discover he’d lured home a green-haired sea urchin. He also didn’t seem to mind when, in a moment of sleep-deprived and hung-over horniness, I got myself off again sneakily in the morning.

I can’t say that I loved every piece of Victoria, but I very much hope we can still be friends, seeing I want to live in Melbourne at some point in the (not too distant) future. I guess I’m just going to have to start carrying my own condoms from now on.

Sincerely,

Kinkycatlady-Winterbottom Esquire the Third.

xoxox

Impostor

On the eve of my 17^th birthday, I wrote the following words in my (tragic adolescent) diary:

“I HAVE THE BODY OF A 16 YEAR OLD!”

I was making fun of myself and the world, generally. Because how many times do you read or hear references similar to ’she had the body of a 16 year old’ as a representation of physical perfection? As if being aged 16 automatically guarantees you the body of a supermodel.

Yeah, right.

The irony of this certainly didn’t escape my 16 year old self. There is nothing quite so depressing as finding yourself at the age where you’re supposedly as hot as you’re ever going to get, and being awkward, dumpy, plain.

It’s this image of myself that has followed me into adulthood, and it’s a story that I’m certain that pretty much all women can identify with.

I should also point out that at age 16 I had not, as yet, discovered sex. How can one know sexiness if one has never had sex? (Incidentally, this is why I think the sexualisation of children is utterly obscene. Sex is powerful, dangerous. It’s like giving a person language without explaining the meaning behind it. Other people can understand, but you don’t know what you’re saying. But I’ll save this discussion for another day’s rant.)

Last weekend, nearly 10 years on from my 17^th birthday, I caught sight of my reflection in the full length mirror of the hostel I was staying in while on holiday in Melbourne. I know it’s a cliché, but it was one of those moments where it took me a second to realise I was looking at me.

Me? A woman with graceful curves, a deep sexuality about her, a few really awesome tattoos and luminescent green hair? In pink polka dot underpants and a black bra; wearing it… well?

A woman.

Sex alone does not a woman make. Nor do the numbers on your drivers licence. Nor does makeup, high heels, a full time job, or even marriage. Again I’m edging dangerously close to the clichéd territory of God-awful pop songs, but there is something about being a woman that can’t be bought, hurried, painted on.

It’s the sort of thing that requires a lot of pretending before you actually get the hang of it. The difference between me and other people is that I always feel so phoney when I’m pretending. But sometimes it’s the only way. For example, I learned how to be confident by pretending to be a confident person. Even though I thought my acting abilities were terrible, people bought it. And when people bought it, my confidence grew. Until instead of pretending it became something I just did.

I feel like I’ve been playing a lot of very adult, very ‘womanly’ roles in life for a good while now, but I’ve never quite bought it myself. Not until I saw myself in front of that mirror, and saw it. Seeing is believing; I’ve finally grown up.

How to describe it?

Much as I loathe the expression ‘puppy fat’, I finally realise what it means. Since my teens I haven’t exactly lost weight, but now there’s something about my appearance that looks more defined, more set. The word ‘harder’ carries connotations of roughness, but it’s not like that. A physical manifestation of wiser, perhaps? I feel like at 16 I was an amorphous blob of possibility, and now I’ve settled a shape that reflects who I now am.

It’s like… I had no idea who I was or what I wanted in life when I was 16 – who does? I was living with a set of values that I had borrowed from my parents and the people surrounding me at the time. And as mentioned, I had not yet found sex, which would turn out to be that missing piece that helped me to finally understand myself. (I hated being a child and I can’t understand people who want to return to a place where they were powerless, voiceless and without sexuality). So my body at 16 was somewhat unformed, confused. Something I tried to hide, and hated the idea of anyone seeing naked.

For years I’ve been telling myself that beauty is relative, and that true sexuality is deeper than skin. So I finally got to a place where I was happy enough with how I looked, and dropped a lot of the draining self loathing I carried around with me in my teens. It’s as if the minute I finally lost all care about having a perfect body, I was rewarded by looking into a mirror and realising I had one the whole time.

Which is wonderful.

But here’s the thing. No matter how ‘attractive’ or ‘beautiful’ I might become, there will always be the memory of being ugly. And it’s this that undermines everything, and makes any compliments I receive feel undeserved. As if desirability is simply an act that I’ve mastered as a means of hiding my ‘true’ self. It makes me really nervous when people tell me I’m sexy, because I feel like it’s only a matter of time before they see behind the mask and realise the truth. Like I’m ripping them off or something? Bait ‘n switch!

I don’t know why a younger version of yourself should come to represent ‘who you really are’ but for some reason it does. Even I do it to others, I’ll admit. You know how you might have gone to high school with someone who was all into heavy metal, and now they’re super gay and clubbing every weekend, and you find yourself thinking: who does he think he’s fooling? When clearly that’s a ridiculous way to think, because it’s not like a person’s sexual orientation is a fashion statement, and obviously the heavy metal thing was the cover up, not the other way around. But still.

I didn’t go to my high school reunion because I didn’t want to look like the girl who’d bought a pot of hair dye and moved to the inner west in a quest to become ‘alternative’. Actually I resisted this lifestyle for many years because I thought there was something phoney about Newtown being packed with goths and punks who all actually grew up in the Western Suburbs. But what I realised is that people are drawn to these places because it speaks to something in them. Just because you were born in Blacktown doesn’t necessarily mean you belong in Blacktown. Growing up is a process of discovery. At 16, the journey has only begun.

But still I feel sheepish. How can a girl from the suburbs ever hope to be taken seriously as a writer, a poet? I have these dreams of moving to Berlin, learning German, writing abstract poetry about art and love, swilling wine and hanging with the all the beautiful freaks – but then I think; who, me? Who the hell are you kidding, little girl?

I know that all the beautiful freaks to which I refer were all once like me. That’s what makes us beautiful freaks.

I’m sick of feeling like an impostor. Like someone who’s gatecrashed someone else’s awesome life and awesome body.

Because I’m not. This is me; this is the person I was always supposed to be. Had I stayed in the suburbs and married my high school boyfriend I’m certain I would have ended up depressed, miserable, unsatisfied. And scared, too afraid to go beyond my comfort zone to try and find out what I might have been missing. And, worst of all, with absolutely nothing to write about!

So I’m going to try to leave the past where it belongs, and move forward.

Actually I think I might start by doing something I’ve been fantasising about doing for a long while now. By burning my old diaries!

Thrill is Gone

Oh, I remember the days. When I’d be at it every night, rapturous, feverish, insatiable. When everything was so simple, so deliciously easy, filled with butter-richness, endlessly warm and hazy. When the only thing I could think of was more, more, more, over and over in my head as I lay pulsing in my bed, knotted through the bedclothes, aching.

Yes, although it pains me to say it, it’s time I face up to the truth:

Masturbation is just not as good as it used to be.

I’m not normally one to agree with the sentiment that adolescence is the best time of your life, but when it comes to jerking off I’m going to have to make an exception. As much as I might have enjoyed it at the time (most notably during my 14^th and 15^th years), I need make peace with the fact that my auto-erotic heydays are behind me. It’s time now to put my right index finger to better use (perhaps by typing the rest of my novel), and get on with my life. In the immortal words of Blink 182: I guess this is growing up.

You see, Marauder has been overseas for the past week, and won’t be back for another 9 days. And even though in recent posts I’ve been all on about polyamory, I’ve run into some problems with that philosophy. (Mainly the bits about ‘respectfulness’ and ‘etiquette’; which contradict with *my* idea of a good time, which is ‘being a gigantic uncontrollable trashbag’). I haven’t given up on the concept of polyamory, (I mean, I haven’t even begun to understand it), but I’ve decided that now is not the time. A friend of mine put it very plainly when he told me that my main priority right now should be finishing my book. I know, I know. Goddamn. My life right now is a carnival of distractions – I’ve gotta draw the line somewhere or else I’m going to have to give up on being a writer altogether and just join the fucking circus instead.

(As cool as lion taming would be…)

So anyway that’s all well and good and I’ve spent the last few days dutifully at my desk and generally being productive. Which is fine except that when my head hits the pillow at the end of a long day – I can’t sleep.

It’s evitable to become somewhat comfortable inside a relationship; accustomed to things being a certain way. Now I remember how things were. This is how I get when I’m single – cagey, irritable, intolerably dull. I’m all Martha Stewart, steaming vegetables, doing laundry, forcing myself to exercise, joylessly prim.

And then it grips me, the Terror, the thought that I might have to wait another week before I can shag someone again, when I want it, I need it, now, NOW!

I always used to think of myself as someone who lacked willpower. A slave to my uncontrollable appetites, greedy, weak. But then I realised that contrary to what I’d always believed, I’m actually a master of self control, because my ‘hunger’ is always far, far greater than what I ever let myself consume. I am so very controlled all of the time, because I have to be. I can’t even imagine what would happen if I let the floodgates open, only that it would probably result in my death.

I’ll order one serving of dessert – but I could eat the whole cake.

I’ll have a couple of glasses of wine – but I could drink the whole bottle.

I’ll survive on sex every second day – but I could fuck all day and all night, for the rest of my life.

Don’t even mention drugs.

And kink?

Honestly?

I used to do the 24/7 D/s thing. And I  loved it.

According to Mae West: too much of a good thing is wonderful.

Is it?

And what has all this got to do with the physical act of self love? Well here I am, you see. I spend the whole day being prim and proper, all smug that I’ve managed to keep my swollen, gluttonous desires in check for another day, and then it gets me back with insomnia. I’ll get to the very end of the day and something in me just refuses to lie down and sleep until it’s had some fun.

Which is when my thoughts usually turn to masturbation as a quick, easy and harmless solution.

Trouble is, I don’t want quick, easy or harmless. It feels like trying to put out a volcano with a glass of water. And all that this mockery of passion does for me is to create more frustration than it actually alleviates. I’ll finish up and not only feel less satisfied, but angry because without someone there to share it, it feels wasted. And that’s at least one thing that both Martha and the Demon can agree on – waste is a terrible thing.

Last night I literally got so bored halfway through that I gave up altogether. (It doesn’t help that my downstairs neighbour is currently having the loudest, most enthusiastic sex I’ve ever had the pleasure to overhear). I just can’t be bothered anymore, and I’m not going to insult myself by pretending that a physiological orgasm is the answer to what I’m craving.

I should also just clarify here – I’m not talking about a desire for any person in particular. What I want is vague and nameless. I can’t even quantify what it is in words, but I’ll know when I find it.

I haven’t found it yet.

I’m afraid to.

But the alternative is…?

Yay for Men

Before I write anything further about kink, I feel the need to make a shameless confession:

I like men.

Gasp! Horror! Outrage!

Who am I? Am I a woman who not only disagrees with the notion that all men are liars, scumbags, oppressors and rapists, but who would actually go so far as to say I *like* them? What is this world coming to! Haven’t our feminist fore-mothers taught us anything? Next I’m probably going to cancel my library membership (because my pretty little head can’t handle reading anything more strenuous than Woman’s Day), write to the electoral commission explaining that I couldn’t possibly accept the responsibility of being a voting citizen (owing to the fact I eject blood from my lady-bits for approximately six days of the month and am thus mentally unsound), and then devote myself wholeheartedly to the task of getting married and popping out sprogs (because, let’s face it, at nearly twenty-six years of age, I’m virtually a washed up old maid)!

Forgive the rant, but I think the brand of feminism that promotes women to a higher status than men is intrinsically fucked. I know that sort of attitude isn’t as popular as it was in the seventies, but there still appears to be an arrogant assumption among women that ‘equality’ means ‘reserving the right to slander men’. At the innocuous end of the spectrum, men are often used as the butt of jokes (portrayed in advertising and on television as stupid and gormless) and at the extreme end there are feminists out there who believe that women who are sexually attracted to men are still buying into the patriarchy. Announcing that I like men shouldn’t be a political statement, and yet it is.

In my younger days I was defiantly straight. Despite the fact I’d slept with women, I still felt a certain stubborn pride in listing my sexual preference as ’straight’ on my Myspace profile (shut up, all of you). I’ve always had a thing against liking what is popular, and describing yourself as bisexual during my undergrad was extremely popular. But I liked men and I wanted people to know that. I didn’t want to have to feel apologetic about mentioning my boyfriend when chatting to the lesbian with the dreadlocks from my cultural studies class. But I did. Behind my staunch defiance I felt sheepish, immature, uninitiated. I went to lengths to avoid using the phrase “my boyfriend” in conversation, because it made me sound like I was still in high school, like I was reliant upon a man to prop up my personality. What is it about women using that phrase that makes them sound a bit lame? I still don’t like it, and I still feel a twinge when I tell people I live with my boyfriend. Something that makes me sound weak? Like I’m a woman who needs a man?

I’ve been hurt by men. I’ve been patronised, made to doubt my abilities because of my gender, belittled for expressing my emotions, bullied, lied to, threatened. But I’m not going to hold it against every member of the male gender just because a few of my ex-boyfriends (and ex-employers) were dickheads. Women can be just as shit as men, yes, even lesbians. What it basically comes down to is the fact that people are shit, not just men specifically.

People are shit, people. Learn that, and then forget it.

Another thing that really annoys me is the way that women expect men to behave like women. Fight Club (both the novel and the film, but especially the film) should be required reading/viewing for every teenager – because it addresses the taboo of finding (/’fighting’ for) male identity inside a post-feminist culture.  The men of today are confused, at odds with themselves, lacking role models, lost; a concept which is distilled in the film by the line: ‘a generation of men raised by women’.

I grew up in a family run by women. My mum was the ‘man’ of the house, and on top of working full time she also cooked, cleaned and made all the important decisions. My dad didn’t dare get in her way – no one did. We were all afraid of her. I grew up with an implicit understanding that ‘empowerment’ meant ‘being a massive bitch’. (I do love my mother, but yeah). I treated my first boyfriend horribly. I was controlling, stroppy, demanding. Interestingly, he also came from a family where his mum ran the show and tried to control his life. We were both unhappy, but that’s how we’d been raised to behave. Compared with the relationships of our friends and seemingly everyone around us, it was normal.

My second boyfriend (the one who introduced me to BDSM) was older than me, rough, rude, arrogant and unafraid to be dominant. He was very masculine but at the same time he respected my intellect and urged me to fulfil my potential in life. He didn’t need to push me down in order to assert his masculinity – in some ways the fact that he was the master and I was the slave was incidental to his being male and my being female. This is very important. He wasn’t dominant because he was a man, he was dominant because he was dominant. So many men are afraid of acknowledging their dominant side for fear that they will be persecuted as sexist wife-beaters. This is why the act of dominance needs to be separated from gender – because it has nothing to do with politics. It’s about sex, and sex is not politically correct. How many heterosexual couple’s sex lives are suffering because men have been taught that it is not acceptable to exert dominance? How many men have received the flawed message that women want ’sensitive’ lovers? I tell you, whoever invented the fucking ‘SNAG’ thing should be shot.

Might I also say that I love everything about men’s bodies. Love them. I think they are beautiful in their own right – women are not the only ones capable of beauty! I even think cocks are attractive (well, when they’re erect). Like I said, I’ve fucked women and it’s been awesome, although the most awesome time was when my girlfriend and I were stoned and we both imaged we had… cocks.

COCK! I LOVE COCK!

Ahem. (Funny thing, actually. I love cock but I hate dildoes. What I love about cock is that it gets pleasure as it pleasures me. When the pleasure stick is inanimate I just wind up thinking – what’s the point?)

Oh and hey I may as well milk this to its predictable conclusion, (haw haw), but how cool is ejaculation? Even though I generally always experience multiple orgasm (yeah poor me, I know) I do sometimes envy the spectacular finality of the male orgasm. To blow. Oh, man, so hot!

IN CONCLUSION, I am a woman who likes men and I’m not ashamed to say it. I think men are severely underrated and that the Australian Government should run a campaign to increase their approval rating. Something like this:

Assuming All Men are Violent Jerks For No Justifiable Reason?

Australia Says No.

Pain Slut

At the risk of sounding repetitive, I love pain. Did I mention that I love pain?

2008 was all about my experiments with the physical sort. I got needled, tattooed, caned, flogged, spanked, burned, choked. It taught me a lot, improved my confidence, got me high and made me sparkle with secret glee. All the while my life in general was sunny, calm, domestic, creative. All good things. But a certain dryness had crept into my kink. My forays into pain were strictly regulated by scheduled social fetish events. I kept the ‘Creature’ (as I like to call it) firmly in place; I thought I had it tamed.

I was wrong.

Events of the last few weeks have forced me to remember something about myself, something that I thought was long buried. And now I realise that the Creature was not tame, nor could it ever be tamed; it was lying in wait.

Before I go any further, allow me to explain: I have an uneasy relationship with this thing. On one hand, it makes me who I am, it gives me my sex, it has brought me unadulterated, animalistic joy, and it breathes life into my writing. On the other hand it makes me make terrible decisions, it hurts people, it fucks up things like study and work, it obliterates everything and leaves me with only its own selfish, bottomless need.

Having been nearly destroyed by this thing in the past, I suppose it was understandable that I’d shoved it out of my conscious mind. I knew that I’d always need an outlet for kink, so I found a way to incorporate it into a life that was mostly balanced and happy. I also knew that the Creature would always demand a voice, so I channelled it into my novel (of which I’m up to Chapter 23). Things were humming away nicely; I was so proud of myself. But as we all know, pride comes before a…

…oophf.

Damn. The air was so very nice up there, too.

Which brings me back to pain. See, physical pain is sexy and interesting in its own right. But for me, the real, absolute power of BDSM comes from the combination of pain and emotion. Pain AND emotion. Maybe it wasn’t so much that I’d forgotten about this, but that I thought I’d never encounter anyone who could deliver it as potently as did my psychotic ex-boyfriend. Now, five years later and seemingly out of nowhere, there is a contender. (A non-psychotic one).

I should point out that emotion/pain combo is not the same as emotional pain. It comes down to the difference between ‘good’ pain and ‘bad’ pain. In a physical sense, good pain could be described as being spanked suggestively, while bad pain covers anything from slamming your thumb in a door to being slapped by an abusive lover. In an attempt to describe the good sort of painful emotions, I’ll start by describing what invokes the bad: blackmail, guilt-trips, insults, meaningless cruelty. My ex inflicted this sort of emotional bullshit on me and it hurt far more than anything physical he ever did (and meant that his behaviour did not technically qualify as domestic violence). I’ve also suffered enough emotional pain through other problems in life, as well the angst that’s generated from my ongoing troubles with depression and anxiety. So I’m well-familiar with all that kind of crap, and am not seeking more of it, thank you.

So how can painful emotion possibly be good? It’s not all that hard to understand, considering that most of our euphemisms for love are based around references to pain: ‘burning’ with desire, ‘bleeding’ love, ’stabbed’ through the heart, ‘tortured’, ‘breathless’, ‘aching’, ‘trembling’, ’stricken’, ‘throbbing’, ‘helpless’, ‘consumed’, etc, etc, etc. In the same way that I like to experience physical sensations right on the very edge where pleasure becomes pain, so too do I like to feel emotion to the point where it hurts. Or rather, ‘I’ don’t necessarily seek this, but ‘Creature’ does.

Perhaps ‘Creature’ is just a silly way of describing the things that, deep down, I want, but am too frightened to admit to myself. In the days of my misspent youth, I didn’t care about throwing myself away, throwing myself at full force towards foolish things. Now I’m old and I’m cautious. What if I fuck everything up? What if I lose everything I value and love? And worse, worse than anything else, what if I hurt Marauder?

I can try to ignore it, but that has never proven to be an effective means of controlling this thing. It just makes it angry. Perhaps this is my opportunity in life to find harmony, at last? To figure out a way it can work for everyone?

Then again, who the hell am I kidding?

I’m confused, and the hot weather in Sydney right now isn’t helping. Talking about it feels so useless. The side of the brain which handles language is miles apart from whatever part of me screams, bangs, thrashes wildly.

I don’t want to live a neutered existence where this sort of stuff doesn’t affect me. I don’t want to dull down my experience of living, just to make it more bearable, more ‘acceptable’. I want to burn, I want to bleed, I want to suffer beautifully. But I don’t want to hurt anyone.

So I’m stuck.

Ah, advice, anyone? If you have any idea what the hell I’m talking about?

P.s. For anyone who is a Dexter fan – I particularly love the expression he uses to describe the serial killer side of him: dark passenger. I suppose I should feel lucky that my vice is not so terrible (or illegal) as murder. There are far worse things to be addicted to. But I do still find it disturbing that I should identify so strongly with a serial killer, fictitious as he may be.

Honesty

A little while back I blogged about my frustration with not being able to tell my work friends about my lifestyle. Well, last Saturday night, with the assistance of an outrageous amount of red wine, I admitted to one of my work friends that I was into “whips and stuff”. And… he was completely respectful and supportive. All this time I’d been thinking he would pick me up and whisk me to the nearest psychiatric hospital, but actually all this time I’ve been underestimating people’s capacity for acceptance and open-mindedness. He looked at me as if to say ‘no big deal’ and the conversation continued. It was a massive relief and as a result I feel like I can now have a proper friendship with him. Which is very cool.

Meanwhile, Marauder and I have been discussing what it means to have an open relationship. We’ve been living together for nearly a year now, and yet so far neither of us has properly tested the waters of this thing (i.e. neither of us has had sex with another person). I mean, we’ve played with other people in the scene, we’ve had some awesome ladies over at our house for naked cavorting and general rudeness, we’ve entertained the concept of being sexually adventurous libertines, but up until now we’ve been getting a handle on the live-in relationship thing and devoting the majority of our energy to each other. Which has been fuckin’ rad. I realise now that the reason why most people settle for monogamy is that it is, ostensibly, the easiest option.  If it’s just generally accepted that you’re meant to be shagging each other and no one else, you don’t need to draw up any kind of agreements or boundaries or anything (although as we all know this can often just be a farcical arrangement in which people are forced to take their extraneous desires underground). I love Marauder; what we have is stable, sane, precious, and I’m very worried about upsetting the equilibrium between us. But at the same time we’re both in agreement – faced with the prospect of never feeling that heady rush of kissing a person for the first time, never expanding our sexual repertoire any further than the scope of our separate imaginations; and thus becoming bored and stagnant inside our relationship, we want to investigate alternatives to monogamy. But where to start?

I’ve mentioned polyamory in this blog before, and I have to say I’ve yet to be convinced that it is actually worth the work that it apparently takes to maintain. In addition to this, I don’t think I really want a proper, long-term relationship with more than one person. Maintaining even one functional, loving relationship is a hard enough feat (and it hasn’t been until Marauder that I’ve ever managed to do it at all), and I don’t have the energy to multiply that by two. Which probably sounds harsh, but it’s how I feel. That’s not to say I want to go out there and nail a bunch of strangers – it’s more that I would like sex to be an extension of my close friendships. It’s how I express deep affection; it’s how I converse. Maybe I’m fucked up, but I never feel truly comfortable with another person until I’ve slept with them. I like getting to know all there is to know about a person, and I think sex is one of the deepest and most powerful ways to do that. To see a person disappear with pleasure – breathtaking.

While searching the internet for information about polyamory, I stumbled across a book called The Ethical Slut. This phrase better describes how I feel about my sexuality. I don’t mind the label ’slut’ – nymphos sleep compulsively with anyone they can find, sluts sleep with whoever they like. I’ve only once had sex with someone I didn’t like (not hatred or anything, just a one night stand), and it was an abysmally dissatisfying experience. (He asked me to stay the night – I told him I had to go home and feed my cat). I’ve had phases in my adult life where there was no one I was interested in sleeping with (which sucked). Up until recently, there were no other dudes in my life that I particularly wanted to shag; no one that would justify the risk to my relationship with Marauder. Now, things are a little different. Which brings me back to: how do we proceed? How do we decide what is wrong and what is right in an arena of so much grey?

Marauder has told me that he’d prefer to be included and involved in my sexual pursuits, and I agree with him. I’ve had threesomes both with him and with previous boyfriends (two girls, one guy), and it has always worked without angst or jealousy because all three parties liked and respected each other. Two guys in a bed is a different story, however, and one I’m not all that convinced can work so harmoniously. I’ll leave an impassioned discussion about how all women are expected to be bisexual and all men hetero out of this for the time being, because we are a product of the culture in which we live, as much as our intellectual pontificating and alternative ideologies might attempt to reject such a notion. I’m not saying I don’t believe in change, but it’s certainly not an easy thing. An open relationship is the tougher choice, but then again the rewards could be amazing. What we could learn, what we could experience, would make the difficulties worthwhile. I also believe it could actually make this relationship the best it could be. I never want to fall into a rut with my partner, I want always for there to be new ideas, fresh energy coming into it. Marauder admitted that the way he saw me changed after the night at R&R – that it brought that sparkle of newness back into our sex life. I realise that what we have is worth more than even the shiniest of shiny things, and yet whenever we bring some of that shininess back to our world it makes everything light up.

I still find it hard to accept that my boyfriend is not going to fly off into a jealous rage if I admit to feeling desire for another man. I’ve had jealous and possessive boyfriends in the past and it has forced me into a bad habit of lying by omission. Most people would argue that honesty is always the best policy, but I disagree with that in the instance where being honest will relieve one person of a burden, and make the other person feel like crap. But Marauder keeps telling me that it’s okay, it’s okay. I’m still having trouble trusting that he won’t suddenly decide that it’s not okay. I still feel guilty about this sort of stuff. A lifetime of indoctrination is a difficult thing to reprogram.

Because sexual desire doesn’t answer to notions of morality or ethics. I’m not saying that we should all run around doing exactly what our sex drive tells us to do, but I am saying you need to be honest with yourself rather than deny that these things exist. It’s about finding balance. I don’t believe in setting yourself up for failure, and more importantly, I don’t believe in sacrificing what could be an incredible experience in the fleeting journey of life (and the even more fleeting period in which you are sexually active and sexually attractive). Some people remain faithful in marriage for twenty-odd years, but are crucified as ‘bad people’ if they eventually have an affair. Does that twenty years of faithfulness count for nothing? So many people are trapped in loveless, sexless marriages, and yet they persist with it because of…? I think, even if you add the messy element of children into the equation, most people remain in unhappy situations because they are scared of the alternatives. Better the devil you know, etc.

I don’t want to live my life in fear. I don’t want my partner, the person I love most in the world, to be unhappy. Who am I to tell this person what they are and are not allowed to do in this life? As long as we keep talking to each other, keep cherishing what have, I think we might, maybe, be able to do that thing that eludes so many – the successful long term relationship. I have faith.

Some Needle Photos

Photography by www.marauder.com.au

Photography by www.marauder.com.au

Photography by www.marauder.com.au

Photography by www.marauder.com.au

Needles

The first time I heard about play piercing, I dismissed instantly it as ridiculously hardcore. It just sounded ludicrous – about as erotic as having your leg amputated (even though some people do, actually, have fetishes for amputation). It just didn’t cross my mind as something I would ever be interested in. This was partially to do with the mild needle phobia I’ve got, and partially to do with the fact I couldn’t see the eroticism in it. I mean, I like a good medical fantasy as much as the next pervert, but needles just seemed too clinical. Pain for pain’s sake – not sexy enough for me.

When I actually got to see a play piercing session, I found myself staring in the ‘it’s terrible, but I can’t look away’ style of watching. A woman was sitting on a bench while a man threaded a series of needles through the skin of her back. At first I couldn’t bear to see the needle penetrate the skin, and focused my attention on her face (which was serene – eyes closed, concentrating, vaguely smiling). She twitched a little every time a new needle went through, which made me freak a bit. But the end result was undeniably beautiful; glinting metal spikes protruding from her pale skin, luminescent green plastic tips all in a straight line, enhancing the gentle curve of her back. I watched in the same way people watch travel programs, entertained by an exotic destination without ever considering the possibility of actually going there myself.

Despite having three tattoos and having had no less than twelve body piercings during my ‘youth’ (of which only six ear piercings remain), needles still scare me. What grosses me out the most are blood tests. It’s not so much the pain or the metal or the blood as it is the concept of having something inserted into a vein. The sliding. Ick, ick, ick. However despite my initial repulsion, the idea of play piercing started to circle my mind. It’s how these things start. Everything that has ever thrilled me always starts out just outside the realm of what I thought was possible. Just that little bit further than I was originally willing to go.

In February last year I went down to Melbourne with Marauder to attend a Melbourne Under 30s party. The morning after the party, just when I thought I was safe, I foolishly mentioned to my Domme friend, ‘Miss F’, that I was curious about needles. Which was how I found myself blindfolded and tied to a table inside a room with her, her boyfriend, Marauder, and a box of 200 needles. I wrote about this experience in my diary at the time:

“So I was firmly bound and I really couldn’t escape. I tried to concentrate on being still, on being calm. On breathing so I didn’t pass out. Never had the blackness felt so deep. It was also an interestingly erotic feeling of being laid out on a table and scrutinised by others. The medical gloves, the sinister smell of alcohol, the terrifying sound of plastic packages being carefully opened. I think it was that sound that scared me the most – I started to recognise the sound of the plastic needle being opened, and that’s when I knew I had about twenty seconds before it would go through.

The first one happened, too quickly, because had they waited ten hours it still would have been too quickly. Very sharp pain; it hurt more than I thought it would. Not unbearable, but terrible because it was a needle. After the first one went through I thought I would lose my head. It was spinning, I was lifting, and I was then flooded with euphoria. I wanted more/I didn’t want more. But I didn’t have much time for that argument because the second one was happening. Again sharp, again scary, and I tried to calm down but my fist was clenching and my toes were twisting. I tried to tell myself that it would be exactly the same if I clenched or if I didn’t clench, and that the anticipation was worse than the actual, but I simply couldn’t let it go. I didn’t make a sound though, and I kept my back still. Once the second one was in I felt more release, more adrenalin. But almost too much, I was trying to keep on top of it. I was on the border of requesting that we stop at two, but Miss F worked at a relentless pace and the third one was going in. I started entering a realm, subspace I suppose, where there was nothing I could do to stop what was happening. This was my biggest, clearest thought. I knew I couldn’t go anywhere. I couldn’t do anything. Struggling would make it more painful, would show the embarrassing side of my weakness. So the only thing I could do was accept it, to think: “this is happening and I have to let it happen and there is nothing I can do to stop it happening”, and this spoke volumes about life. I started to twitch as they got further down, that involuntary tickle response. Of dreading the first pierce of the needle; my skin shying away from it, a sick feeling. I had to say something then, because it was getting the better of me, and I was getting scared and tired. They let me have a rest, and the relief was massive. Their fingers drifting over my skin, close to that terrible metal.

There’s no escaping the pain of a needle – it stayed as sharp and as clear from beginning to end, and there was absolutely no blocking it out. It was pain in its purest form. Just pain, a very small measure, a small reminder that I am mortal. Enough pain to make me cry, to make me feel owned by it. When they started on the next side I was crying. The next side hurt just as much, except it was similar to getting a tattoo in that I was able to find solace in the rhythm. Also I am pedantic, and I wanted both sides to be even, so I was determined to see it through. They were getting down the left side and ‘Reckoner’ by Radiohead was playing, and partly because of the pain, and partly because of the purity, I cried with beautiful release. Just as the music reached that sweet spot, that bending moment where it hovers, pauses, rouses and turns, that’s when another needle went through. I could have died in complete peace. It was downhill from there – the hardest part was over. I let it wash through me as they stroked me, reassured me, guided me through.

Taking the needles out was painful, and I think I freaked a bit because I was untied by this stage. Somehow being tied up makes things easier. I get a bit whiny when I’m too free. But it stung like a motherfucker, and was more of a wet bloody pain than the careful dryness of insertion. Messy. But they came out and then I was bleeding, cute dots in straight lines down my back. Then I was high, full of energy, bursting. The sense of achievement was incredible.”

After that experience I felt glad to have done it but uninterested in doing it again. While most of my fetishes have grown and evolved, this one I felt happy to abandon. It was just so intense, and too intimate for a party environment. Still right on that edge of ‘too much, too far’. Months went by and I continued to have lots of new kinky experiences, but never felt inclined to return to the needle. Marauder managed to acquire a few boxes of surgical grade needles from a friend of ours, and while I watched him perfect his skills on other people, I was still not keen to volunteer myself.

However in October 2008, Marauder, Talby and I spent a sun-dappled Sunday afternoon mucking about and frolicking, as you do. We did a lot of weird things (which included shaving Talby’s legs – one of the most surprisingly erotic moments of my life) and somewhere towards the end of the night I asked Marauder to stick some needles in my back. It was exactly the right blend of celebration and intimacy that made the first experience so tingly. Here is how I recorded that experience:

“The needle tip eased in and my skin gave way like butter. It all slushed around as the metal pushed my blood to either side before emerging with a tiny rip. It was so clear, and so bittersweet. The rush was narcotic. I got flooded, filled heavy and waterlogged with blood-rich pleasure. It swam up over my head and made my eyes hooded and leaden. I sank down, weights on my limbs, unable to move to unable to tell him to stop, even if I’d wanted him to. I was muttering, “oh my god, I’m so fucking high” but somewhere around halfway the muttering stopped and it was all I could do to keep from going under completely. I shivered and twitched as each evil point made its way under my skin as he probed deeper, drew it out longer, wriggled the needles and made me taut. I was gushing, dripping, melting. It was complete peace; pure unadulterated pleasure. Pain became meaningless, it was all intensity of feeling. It was tight and strong and sickly feeling. I rose up on waves and waves of warmth and floated through it, floating through clouds. He could have gone on all night, all down my back and legs. Each needle brought fresh pain but it was quickly gobbled up by roaring thunder. And beneath each little prick I could feel blood, fresh and red and wet. Meeting the air.

He was naked, I was naked, Talby was bundled in a towel, watching with wide eyes. It was so warm, so yellow, so muted. Free from time, free from anything more complex than the physical. I got up and looked at the needles down my back, the bright little green tips all neatly aligned. It matched my hair extremely well. I felt like an angel with wings. Sharp metal wings, like a half robot.

On the last needle I had an orgasm. It propped up quickly in my mind, and I couldn’t quite believe it but I was moaning, coming. The intensity pushed me over the edge and my whole body reverberated with orgasmic energy. It shivered outwards and radiated from my fingers and toes. I was gone, so gone, so lost to it, deep inside the rhythm of Marauder’s tapping fingers playing the piano over my wounds. I’ve gone from having very uneasy feelings about needles to loving it, loving it, waiting eagerly for the next time I can feel the sharp metal enter me. But it was Marauder’s touch that did it. His magic hands.

The needles slipped out with erotic intensity. I licked up the pain, ate it, swallowed it into my belly, gulping for more. That slippery slipping, lubricated with blood. They whisked out and left me released and blubbering blood. Little fountains dotted alongside my spine. Shining brightly – the telltale evidence of life.”

Which finally brings me to the grand finale of this epic post. The other weekend, the day after R&R, me, Marauder and Talby stayed up late on a Saturday night and fooled around with needles again. This time I broke yet another barrier: I managed not only to accept needles through the skin of my breasts (8 in total – pointed towards my nipples in a symmetrical pattern, which was much more painful than having them through my back), but I actually swapped roles for a time and managed to find the courage to stick needles into Talby. This freaked me out far more than even receiving needles, strange as that sounds. I get freaked by watching the needle sink into skin, which is obviously something you can’t avoid when you’re the one doing the needling. And I wouldn’t have been brave enough had she not asked me to do it. She offered herself up as a pincushion for me, and the gesture was so touching that it broke through all of my fears. She asked me – I wanted to obey. It was a weird but endlessly interesting scenario; two naturally submissive people, neither super okay with needles, guiding each other through the experience. It was a beautiful demonstration of the way in which power exchange does not have to be loud, does not necessitate force. It is actually all about subtlety, of nudging each other to a place that neither could get to on their own.

She smiled as each needle went through – five little lines on her upper thigh. Exquisite.

Finally, right at the very end of the night (morning, in fact), Marauder and I did one last thing. I have always been curious to have a needle inserted right through my outer labia, because the concept of being sewn or pinned together has always been a giant fantasy of mine. I have had a piercing through my clit hood, so I’m no stranger to needles down there, but there is something extra powerful about having your lover on the other end of it, and doing it simply for the sake of interest and eroticism. So I asked him to do it, and, grinning and fastidious, he did. Marked out the entry and exit points with a felt tip pen, got the needle out, waited impassively as I attempted to get him to stall or to maybe even abandon the idea altogether, and then he pushed it through. It really fucking hurt. Halfway through I begged him to stop, but he said “we’re doing this” and then it was out the other side. Incredible. A thin piece of metal threaded through one of the most sensitive and sexual parts of me. It was hot.

Herein ends my needle experience thus far. I’ll post some photos up here a little later.

Man Enough

Last Friday marked the return of what is, in my opinion, Sydney’s best fetish party. R&R (Rhythm and Restraint) started out as monthly party on the top floor of a uniquely decorated warehouse space. Since it was a private venue there were none of the usual problems you get with clubs (like exorbitant entry fees, ridiculously priced drinks and bitchy bar staff), and it also meant that most of the participants were serious about their kink – not just gawking tourists from the vanilla world. (Yes, a lot of my negative comparisons are of Hellfire, but that’s another story).

June to November 2007 – those were the glory days. Every second Friday of the month we’d all rock up there in our fetish best, hand over our $10 (a mere $10!) and ascend a narrow wooden staircase into the otherworldly space that was R&R. It was great not only because it offered a variety of spaces in the one venue (dance space, private play area, public play area, social areas and a curtained room right at the end with a giant bed in it for sexing and other such rudeness), but because there was just simply a general air of celebration – the joy that is created when a bunch of people are suddenly unshackled from the burden of acting normal. At the time I was still getting the hang of a thing known as ’socialising’, and parties were not normally my idea of a good time, but R&R was something I could genuinely enjoy. I’m only just realising now as I write this how many ‘firsts’ I experienced in that six months; first flogging, first caning, first experience as a top, first time I’d been more-or-less naked in front of a group of people, first time I’d worn underpants as an outfit (it was awesome), first experience with a gas mask, first time I’d fainted. (This last thing happened during a session in which I was tied up by this guy, and then caned by a crazy Maltese girl. It was exquisite, transcendent. And it freaked the hell out of Ms Crazy, which is a difficult feat. Heh.)

All of this considered, the new-and-improved R&R (at a venue conveniently closer to where I live), had a lot to live up to. I’d been anticipating that night for a long time. And as with every important event, the most pressing question on my mind was, naturally, ‘what am I going to wear?’. (Yes, I know that obsessing over one’s outfit only reinforces the gender stereotype that women like shoes and clothes while men like engineering and computer science, but whatever.) Normally I choose my outfits like I choose my hair colour – through an intuitive process of discovering what ‘feels’ right. Usually it’s easy, but sometimes I experience outfit block. Outfit block is that thing that happens when a girl gets out every item of clothing they own, tries it all on and then throws it to the bed in despair. I hate outfit block. For some reason all my favourites just weren’t doing it for me – the stockings weren’t right, the heels weren’t right and even my rubber felt uninspired. And then, as if illuminated by the translucent light of a miraculous rainbow (or, er, something), I spotted Marauder’s suit hanging over the cupboard door. Yes! It was perfect!

It really was. Marauder is taller than me, but waist-wise we’re about the same (due to Marauder being freakishly thin, I feel the need to add). From the very moment I put it on I started to feel confident, powerful and sexually assertive. I’ve always found men in suits attractive, and now I realise why all the businessmen of the world wear them. Power was not ever something that interested me all that much… but then again maybe that’s because I didn’t have the right suit.

Women dressing as men is a thing that has always done it for me, ever since I learned about Frida Kahlo in year 10 visual art. I always secretly yearned to be able to pull it off – to ditch all the bells and whistles associated with dressing to please a man, and still exude sex. (Admittedly I did wear makeup… but then I think men look good in makeup, so). It reminded me of the first time I cut my hair short, after having it long all my life. I was worried that short hair would take away from my femininity and thus detract from my sexuality. This was, of course, horse shit. Hair does not create a person’s sexuality (or femininity) any more than their clothes do. Sex is something that comes from within, something you embody. It’s why I reckon Kylie Minogue is pretty but not sexy – she’s wearing all the right outfits but somehow she just doesn’t carry it off, in my humble opinion. (Madonna, now she’s a different story…)

So I arrived at R&R with my hat tilted and my black fibreglass cane tucked under my arm, miles away from the flamboyantly girly persona I usually occupy at these events. The new venue turned out to be just as good as the previous one, and there was an excited vibe running through the place. I strutted about in my suit, feeling a strong desire to dominate, which is a mindset I rarely ever experience. And then the most curious thing started to happen:

I got acknowledged, winked at, talked to and hit on by more men than I ever had in one night.

This might sound odd, but normally when I’m out and about it’s usual for me to attract more lesbians than I do men. In fact, in all my experience of fetish parties, it’s mostly ever women I’ve flirted with, kissed, played with (Marauder = notable exception). But at this R&R, not only did I have the privilege of testing out my latent dominant side on two ridiculously sexy men, I ended up lying between two ridiculously, outrageously sexy men on the big bed at the end of the night. It was a dream come true. And you know how it’s a generally accepted fact that the reality never quite lives up to the fantasy? Well, that’s a pile of crap.

I have a few different theories as to why I suddenly became visible to men:

Theory #1

There is something intrinsically empowering about wearing a suit. Suits are like a modern-day coat of armour – covering and protecting any physical weaknesses. They are a symbol of authority. And finally, they simply look good; they’re sophisticated, stylish. The combined result of all of these factors is: confidence. Coming back to my theory that sex appeal is built around confidence, I think I was exuding a heightened level of confidence (perhaps even a touch of arrogance) on the night, which made me especially attractive.

Theory #2

As mentioned, the moment I stepped into the party I immediately felt an urge to dominate someone. I know it’s not politically correct to associate dominance with masculinity and submission with femininity, but my libido doesn’t answer to politics and thus this cliché forms the basis of what turns me on. (Although this is a funny thing: a lot of the time when I fantasise about being in a submissive position, I fantasise about being a submissive man. Seriously, even to the point of receiving cock and ball torture. Weird, eh?) Anyway, I find there is something sexy in the bulk, the might and the force of a male body, and when this is channelled into the role of a Dom it can be frighteningly good. Sometimes I find it annoying that as a woman I’ve been given a very muscular, strong little body. I’ve found myself in submissive positions having to pretend that I couldn’t overpower the other person, or struggle out of some sort of binding. But on that night, for the first time, I found a use for it. I was giving out dominant vibes, and I think all the men who ever wanted to be used and abused by a woman, consciously or otherwise, were looking at me and thinking ‘aw yeah’.

Theory #3

Part of the reason why men don’t usually come on to me is because of me. I’m a bit weird, you see, and I get freaked out by too much attention while simultaneously going to lengths to attract attention to myself (crazy hair, for example). My body language shouts “LOOK AT ME don’t look at me LOOK AT ME don’t look at me”, etc. It’s confusing, I know. Now I don’t know why I do this except that it’s probably a deep-rooted psychological thing that will probably affect me until I’m really, really old. Hoo-ray. But it’s not something I consciously consider all that often, until just now when I was searching for a reason as to why the suit changed the way people responded to me. I realise that it gave me the opportunity to explore a persona who was different to my usual self. I was able to shelve the more neurotic side of myself and lurk comfortably inside the suit, peering out from a position of safety. Interesting.

It’s probably a combination of all three, or none, who knows. All I know is that I liked it, and it gave me another important reminder that we need not be bound by who we think we are, or how we think we are supposed to act. I never would have imagined that I’d enjoy flogging another person quite as intensely as I did that night, or quite as much as I enjoy being flogged. Later in the night I did receive a flogging, stripped down to only my shirt. It was fantastic, and I think it was extra fantastic for all the energy that had been built up in me over the course of the evening. The person who flogged me was one of the men I had flogged, and the intensity in the transferral of power when the suit came off and my wrists were cuffed was mind bending.

Now, I’d better get that suit to the drycleaner’s before Marauder becomes displeased with me. Right after I fold the laundry, do the dishes and slave over a hot stove for a while. (Note to self: buy suit.)

Sex Versus Beauty

Sex.
Beauty.

Related?
Perhaps.

Interchangeable?
No.

Recently I read a book called Sugarbabe by Holly Hill (Random House, 2007). Sugarbabe is the apparently true story Hill’s brief stunt as a professional escort (the long-term variety otherwise known as being a ’sugarbabe’). I didn’t like this book, because I found it to be unimaginatively written, (in no circumstance should the word “flaps” be used when attempting to describe an erotic scenario, nor should the words “pelvic floor” need to be used more than once), and although it raised some interesting and provoking ideas, they were inadequately fleshed out. Literary bitchiness aside, what irritated me most about this book was the language the author used to describe herself:

skinny
beautiful
attractive
hot
perfect
lucky (in regards to her physical attributes)
svelte
gorgeous

“I guess I should also mention that I’m lucky enough to be considered darned attractive. How this came about, I’m not sure. At school I was the tall, pale, awkward girl who was always the wallflower and didn’t even get to touch the male species until I was sixteen… Then, somehow, someway, when all the boys got taller and I stopped trying to appear shorter, the pear-shaped hunchback turned into an alright kind of gal. The straw-bleached hair turned out to be soft and auburn, and the tendency to fat was merely excessive after-school snacking. Even more surprisingly, I moved gracefully and confidently without a hint of curvature of the spine!”
(pp. 6 – 7)

“The girl in my bedroom mirror had seemed gorgeous but I still found it difficult to believe she was me. What if they didn’t think me good-looking? What if they judged me to have an average face? What if they considered me too old?”
(p. 37)

On top of all of this she spends half the book getting herself manicured, pedicured, waxed and fussing over what kind of lingerie/make-up/shoes to wear in the hopes of delivering extra value to her paying customers. Because as we all know; a woman who is not dressed, decorated and painted in the right way is not sexy. After all, who would want to fuck something that looked ordinary?

By now you’re probably rolling your eyes at me – trust the ugly girl to get all bitter just because someone prettier than her has written a book.

The thing is, I’m not ugly. I’m not tall, skinny, perfect nor particularly lucky in regards to my physical attributes, but that doesn’t mean I don’t got sex appeal. That’s because sex has nothing to do with beauty. They can cross paths, and one can arguably enhance the other, but they are not the same thing. Since when did everyone get this mixed up?

I’m sucking in a deep breath, ready to projectile-rant a bunch of unspecific accusations at “advertising” and “the media” and “the entertainment industry”, but I’d be wasting my time. While all of these are culpable in the blurring between sex and beauty (and, even more insidiously, in dictating how “beauty” is even defined), I’d be wasting my time to unleash a tirade in this direction. How do we dismantle something so large, so unwieldy, so culturally entrenched?

It’s just that I’m twenty-five years old and I’m sick of being made to doubt myself, of being told what sexually active women should look like. I’m sick of there being these ridiculous standards of beauty standing between me and my most favourite activity. I’m sick of the only sexually provocative women portrayed on TV as these long-legged creatures with flat stomachs, generous yet pert and even breasts, flawless skin beneath a ton of makeup and the only point of differentiation being whether they are a blonde or a brunette.

Men* suffer the same sort of pressure, yes. But guys, if you want to know the truth, it’s not pecs that get women into bed. It’s confidence. Confidence – that infuriatingly elusive quality that gets further away from you the harder you try.

Confidence is sexy. Yet everything out there in life is set to undermine our confidence in ourselves. It’s fucking retarded. Perfectly beautiful women walking around all down on themselves because they’re not five kilos lighter, because their breasts aren’t big enough, because they have freckles, wrinkles, stretch-marks, scars.

Want to know why I think women have been unfairly accused as being frigid, bitchy, more interested in marriage than they are sex? It’s because they feel ugly. They lack confidence in themselves because they don’t believe they are beautiful. If you don’t feel sexy, you don’t feel like having sex.

Anyone who has met me in the last five years will have met someone confident, outgoing, and attractive in a cutesy alternative sort of a way. But underneath that is someone who is sometimes so wracked with self-doubt it’s unsurmountable. I’m sick of feeling this way. I can look at my own unadorned body in the mirror and see beauty in it; it’s only when I have to pit my own idea of what is beautiful against what appears to be the popular notion of beauty that it falls apart and I feel ugly again.

Some people have a way at looking at a person and seeing only the flaws. I look at the people I love, flaws and all, and love them all the more for it. I love people not in spite of their flaws, but because of them. I love to see the evidence of having lived in the form of scars and lines. I love the roughened edge of experience and assurance that only comes from age. I get turned on by people who have something unusual about the way they look – just because something is different does not make it unbeautiful. Why do we all want to look like everyone else? Why can’t we embrace that which makes us unique?

I had a conversation with a friend where we both admitted to having a fetish for crooked teeth. It drives me nuts that most people have theirs straightened, whitened, homogenised.

What have notions of physical assimilation got to do with beauty and what has beauty got to do with sex?

For everything I disliked about Holly Hill’s Sugarbabe, I did like this:

“I now understand that the increased self-esteem I felt as a sugarbabe wasn’t a result of my sense of attractiveness being reinforced; nor was it from having power over powerful men. Rather, it was because I no longer cared what people thought about me.”
(pp. 300 – 301)

*Note: this particular rant focuses on beauty as it pertains to women, because I am a woman and have something of an insider’s knowledge of the subject. If the dudes want to send me their own perspective on this topic, by all means do. I’d love to hear from you.