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