Ethical Sluttery

reading is sexy... especially under run lights backstage

I'm re-reading "The Ethical Slut," by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy. Unlike the other book of theirs I read, that seemingly nobody's ever heard of (unless they're a nerdy, kinky fucker like myself), most everybody I know has at least heard of "The Ethical Slut." And for good reason. It's sort of considered the polyamory bible by a lot of folks.

The first time I read it, I wasn't really reading it to learn how to be polyamorous, or about poly (I was curious, but I didn't have a how-to goal in mind). This time, although I don't think Sir and I will be running out to orgies or anything, I think I'm coming at it with more of that attitude. With a more practical attitude.

I'm a little uncomfortable writing that, actually.

I've always had a really strong desire to be poly, but for pretty strange reasons. Or maybe it's more accurate to say, I've always wanted to learn some of the things I feel like poly people learn, when they are polyamorous. The regular reasons are still there, I think, but they're not the driving force. Do I find lots of people attractive? Yes. Do I think sex with more than one person at a time is hot? You betcha. But those aren't the reasons I find myself reading The Ethical Slut again, or the reasons why Sir and I get into conversations about open relationships.

I think, at the core of it, I'm trying to learn how to love (and be sexual) with certain people without attachment. And not attachment in the healthy, people-get-attached-to-other-people-because-we're-human way. In the "I don't have an identity when you're not around" way. Or, "I don't know what my life/sexuality/attractiveness/beauty means other than how it relates to you." Not only do I think that's not healthy, but I think it's not sustainable.

I want to understand how to be in love, so in love, with my partner, and not feel really terrible about myself when I hear him say "Wow, she's hot," or "Yeah, she's fucking amazing." I think part of me feeling that way, right now, comes from a bit of a rocky patch in my sex life/romantic life (busy schedules, not a lot of time, not great communication on both our parts, etc.). But part of it comes from this deeply ingrained concept of romance, or love: the idea that wanting/being attracted too (and by extension, kissing/being close with/having sex with) someone else means that he no longer wants any of those things with me.

And that's simply not true.

Sir and I have had a couple of hot dates with a mutual friend of ours. Two, to be exact. Because of all of our schedules (again, busy lives, busy times), they were very far apart. The first was amazing. It was hot and steamy and giggly and adorable and sexy and fun. I didn't feel even a hint of strangeness, or jealousy, or regret. The second was a little different. Still hot, still fun, but I had some serious hang ups about it, especially afterwards.

I think I feel jealousy differently than other people. Or maybe I don't have enough ego to feel actual jealousy; my self-esteem doesn't let me get that far. The second time we fooled around with our friend, I started to feel small. I started to feel worthless, and I started to feel cold and distant. I probably should have voiced these things more articulately than I did, but nothing happened that I wasn't comfortable with. I just wish that some of the things that happened were more fun, without all the rest, like the last time.

Because in the end, that's all I want, really. I want to be able to explore and have fun and push myself and live the stories in my head without all this darkness around it. Or at least, a better way of dealing with the darkness, a more complete understanding of where it's coming from.

When I feel (or see, or hear) my partner being attracted/sexual with someone else, I don't feel the need to pull them back to me. I don't feel possessive and I don't feel wronged. I just feel scared, and I feel like I need to get out of the way. And I don't know where that comes from, and I really hate it. The morning after we fooled around with our friend (who ended up staying over, which probably wasn't the best idea, simply because we hadn't talked about it, and I didn't voice the boundaries that I needed to), I had to leave before either of them. I ended up stopping on the bridge over the river and getting off my bike, because I couldn't breath, because I was so sad, and so scared. I sobbed into the river for a few minutes, got my breathing under control, collected myself, and went to work. I don't know what a panic attack is, but that's the closest I think I've ever come to it.

And what is that? What am I scared of? I really want to figure out the answers to those questions.

Partly, this is because I'm pretty naturally exploratory with my emotional self. And partly, I think it's because I believe certain things about love, the love that I have for my partner, the love that he has for me. If that love can't operate in a world in which we're attracted to other people; or rather, if an attraction to other people undermines that love so easily, and to such a destructive degree - that's not a love with a good foundation. I'm not loving with a good foundation. I want to change that. I want to change my own attitudes about that.

This was a more rambly, journal-ish post that usual. I suppose that's the way it goes, when you [I] have all the feelings. Ohhhh, feeelings.

Love without possession. Independent selves. That's what I want. So, like all things I want, I'm gonna go get it, and I'm gonna read (or re-read) books about it along the way.

Bruised (and getting to the happy) as always,

The Good Girl

How to be A Woman

Finally finished "How To Be a Woman" by Caitlin Moran. There's a funny mix of reactions, for me, finishing a book like this. Simultaneously: I love you, Ms. Moran, please be my best friend; and, this is the book I wanted to write, and here it already is. It's ecstatic tinged with melancholy, which I then battle with thoughts of "well, you'll just have to write your own book like this. You CAN write your own book like this. Do it. DO IT." Sometimes it works. Sometimes I blog instead.

Moran's book is a combination of memoir and feminist theory, hilarious recollections of her childhood and smart, deftly written analyses of those recollections, what they mean to her now, what they might mean to other women. It's the kind of feminism that's entirely accessible, and it's a reminder of how good humor can allow to access otherwise difficult or taboo subject matter. I'd catch myself, sitting on the couch curled up with the book, laughing and laughing and then stopping dead on the page, reading back over the last paragraphs, trying to mine the method of how exactly she went from that funny to that smart with such ease. It's a book that's accessible without being stupid or condescending, and thought provoking, literally: provoking of thought, often provoking further provocative thought, a spiral that continued long after I put it down.

Without sounding too full of ego, I think it's a testament to her skill as a writer that someone like me, a woman well versed in feminism (and to a certain extent, the history of our waves and movements), still couldn't put the book down. None of the theory was revelatory for me (although some of the contexts it came out of were); it was her writing that kept me going.

For all I loved about the book, Moran slips into cissexist or heterosexist language a couple of times, most notably in the very beginning of the book, when she explains:

"Here is a quick way of working out if you're a feminist. Put your hand in your underpants. a) Do you have a vagina? And b) Do you want to be in charge of it?"

And while I appreciate the sentiment (and know that, although feminism can be a whole lot more complex than this, the basic gist is pretty spot on), it's a little alienating to a few groups of people; men who are feminists, trans* people who are feminists, genderqueer people who are feminists. In the context of the rest of Moran's book, though, it's pretty clear that she's sacrificed inclusive language for a bit of glib shorthand; from the overall character of the book, it's clear that she doesn't actually believe much along the lines of cissexist or heterosexist thought. I'm not trying to excuse it, but just to clarify it as an abnormality in what is otherwise a fairly inclusive, sex-positive, progressively-worded book.

Out of everything, I was most struck by her chapters on abortion and pregnancy, and have yet to read anything that talked about giving birth the way Moran recounted her first labor. It was incredible, having gotten through much of the book with laughter and punchy politically-analyzed childhood stories, to be suddenly floored by the power and clarity with which she writes about serious subject matter. It's immediate, physical, and pulled my calloused, feminist heart right up into my throat. It made me want to have children, and it made me want to never have children, and it made me want to hug my partner close against my chest and cry. Which I did, after reading him the chapter out loud.

"How To Be a Woman" is on my favorites list for the year, for sure, and will probably stay there forever. Mostly, though, I can't help fantasizing about what it would be like to meet Moran. After her chapter recounting her exploits with Lady Gaga, I spent hours devising schemes in my head about meeting Moran in a similar context, wanting her to know, for so many reasons, that she was my Gaga, wanting to shout from the rooftops, "Caitlin Moran, you are my feminist hero! Caitlin Moran, I want to make out with your book! Caitlin Moran, I'm star struck and a little giddy, but maybe, if all my dreams come true, we can just get boozy together sometime? And rant about the patriarchy? Or not; or rant about everything else, because they don't even deserve that, especially over such a nice bottle of scotch?"

On that note, it's back to graduate school applications. Here's to modern feminist idols, inspirations, and the generations of them to come.

The Hippie Woo-Woo

I finished reading Radical Ecstasy recently, meant to post about it a while ago, and haven't gotten around to it until now. The book deals with ecstatic experiences in BDSM, descriptions of them, some technique advice, and a lot of descriptions of scenes. What "ecstatic experience," means is sort of up for grabs, and the authors spend most of the first part of the book trying to define what it is. Or what it might be. Or how it might apply to you. They are, admittedly, limited by language (which they also talk a lot about), and also by the lack of vocabulary surrounding this sort of thing. It might sound like I'm bullshitting my way through a description, but really, it's a hard book to explain, partly because it's a book that admits it's subject is hard to explain. It's really honest and open and great, like all of Easton and Hardy's books, but it's definitely more... woo-woo than say, The New Bottoming Book. Which was both good for me, and also got me into Super Serious BDSM Mode (see later on below).

On of my favorite things about Easton and Hardy is that their woo-woo is a self-admitted one. From The New Topping Book (also by them, along with The Ethical Slut and The New Bottoming Book and a handful of others):

"...one of Janet's regular partners, a highly intuitive body worker and martial artist, says indignantly, 'I don't do woo-woo shit'). But in our experience, the best tops pretty much universally use these concepts and techniques, whether they do so consciously or not."

They do a great job at the beginning of Radical Ecstasy explaining that, although they use words like "transcendence," and "ecstasy," and "spiritual," they know those words freak some people out, and so they give a long list of other words readers are encouraged to substitute.

I'm a bit of a hippie myself, although my sarcasm and cynicism often outweigh my woo-woo. I was a little surprised with how easy this book was for me, even though it was very.... spiritual (clearly, I can't even use the word without an ellipsis beforehand). Mostly, I just thought of what they were saying in the context of the Forever Place, or feeling close with Sir. There is something that happens in kink, for me, that's more-than-me. Or maybe, it's just an experience of myself that I don't get very often, and that I don't really believe I'm capable of creating with just me, so it seems like there's something "other" going on.

To clarify: I'm not a religious person, or really, a spiritual person. I'm a hippie, I think, because I believe a lot in do-no-harm, because I like and try to practice things like empathy and compassion. I also wear flowy skirts from time to time, had dreadlocks for a couple years, and like to go camping/make bonfires/do illegal substances on occasion/play the guitar, etc. I'm pretty sure that when we die we all turn to dirt, and I think the planet got to where it is by a lot of very complicated scientific and evolutionary phenomena that I don't understand, but that are nonetheless correct. I don't believe the placement of the stars at the time of my birth had anything to do with anything, and I don't have a spirit animal. Although I do like selkies and the mythos around them quite a bit.

But there's a certain magic to kink for me (not all the time, but sometimes) that I think of in the same way that a lot of people think about god, or spirituality (it happens in a real life too, not just in kink, but it's most obvious during kinky times, i think). But my magic (god, I hate hate hate that I can't find a better word for that) doesn't come from anything external. People are so incredibly complex; they have conscious minds and subconscious minds, they have infinitely individual experiences and personalities, and from that, there's a kind of unknown that I really enjoy. This is all sounding pretty new-agey. It's not meant to. Let's try again:

People are fucking complicated. Even me, tiny little me, has so much going on with her feelings and her thinkings that the possibilities of what she'll do or say or feel next are, in any given moment, pretty damn close to infinite. Put a single person, with all that depth, together with another single person, and man, the amount of shit that could go on there is... totally staggering.

This complexity, and the mystery within this complexity, are as close to religion as I come, and I'm pretty sure they're what keep sex (and life) pretty interesting, despite the fact that copulation is something I practice on a very regular basis. They're also what make, I think, the BDSM with me and Sir feel so fucking cool.

Imagine: He's angry, so angry, this malicious, dangerous, cut-throat look in his eyes and his muscle tensing, and he's coming, believe or not, for me. He's got rope in his hands, and the way he moves is methodical, intentional, making whatever is pulsing beneath the surface all that much scarier. I'm whimpering, frightened, but also prized, and wanting to give over to him. He touches me, red rope across my shoulder, hushing under my arms with a flick at the end, a sinlge sting, a fraction of what comes later. I sigh against it, the rope tightening, resting in the binds.

And that's just writing the very beginning of the stuff that language allows. There is so much other stuff, and the interaction of that other stuff does, I think, take me outside of myself; there are interactions and responses going on that I don't understand, and that I'm not really in control of. And it is ecstatic, and it is the forever place. I don't think it comes from anything but me and Sir being people and doing this together, but that doesn't make it any less incredible.

One side of affect of Radical Ecstasy turned out to be that I added a sort of weight to kink, as in, The Good Girl Gets Über Serious About Playtime All The Time. Which was cool, when Sir was up for it and when were both genuinely wanting to go to really dark places, and to play with the really heavy stuff. But I sort of forgot, for a while, that playing can also just be playing. That BDSM, for it's hard metal benches and deep scary voices and dungeon-esque emotionally possibility, can also just be fun. Like, Sir can pin me down and I can fight back and cry and yell and then, in a breath between moments, I'm also allowed to smile at him, and we're also allowed to have moments of kissing each other like we would walking down the street.

Fuck, even the language there: "we're allowed." Of course we're allowed! It's our sex life, right?

Anyway. Good book, good authors, good sex scenes, make sure you remember that Easton and Hardy aren't talking about all BDSM when they talk about these ecstatic experiences; this part of BDSM is an awesome one, but remember (because I forgot for a while) that you can still be playful. Read it with your hair in pigtails or your fuzzy kink slippers on or something.

Radical Ecstasy

Radical Ecstasy

By Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy

All of my post-its fell out. But really, it's a post-it worthy book, and if nothing else, it's full of really great scene descriptions (I got hot from a few, ideas from a lot, and was generally impressed with all of them).

the way you do the (submissive) things you do

The last couple of days have been rough. For a lot of reasons, not all of them kinky, but not all of them not kinky (I’ll take double negatives for 400, Alex). I didn’t start this blog for the purpose of making-me-feel-better writing, but maybe part of what’s making me feel bad would be interesting to other people. Maybe I’m just cheating. Who knows.

I’ve been reading “The Ultimate Guide to Kink” over the last fews days, and it has some really amazing essays in it. I’ve been sleeping in my collar most nights, walking with Sir arm in arm in the specified ways our everyday protocol offers (but doesn’t demand - it’s a voluntary expression from either of us). I’ve been reading first book in the Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by Anne Rice. Sir and I have played a couple times over the last few days, both of them fairly intense (and one of them involving a lot more humiliation play than we’ve ever done before, which I loved, but which presented a really different kind of aftercare, for me). In short, I feel like I’ve been living and breathing kink, eating and shitting kink. Which is awesome. Learning about sex (nerding and geeking about sex) is one of my favorite activities, especially when it’s sex that I really like. But I worry that it’s getting to be too much. And then, being the just-so-full-of-neurosis lady that I am, I worry about the worry. Oh dear.

I’m drawn to kink because I’ve always been drawn to the kink, drawn to submission and masochism because they’re a part of me, and before this little tryst into my subconscious, I’d like to make it clear that those aren’t in question. Kink will, as far as I can tell, always be a part of me, and (with any luck) a part of my sexual and romantic life. Their manifestation, and not their existence, is what I’m parsing.

One of the questions is how much I want kink to be a part of my life. Another is in what way I want kink to be a part of my life. That’s the question I’ve been asking myself when I wake up in the morning, when I go to bed, when I’m knelt at Sir’s feet and taking off his boots at the end of the day. How much of this do I want? And what kinds of this do I want? And if I have the answer to neither, and each affects the other, then what kind of twisty turny shit creek have I gotten myself all up in?

I start to see it as a pie chart, as a mix drink yet to be stirred. One part work life, one part writing life, one part sleeping life, one part social life, one part love life, one part kinky life.

But I’m not sure that’s even right, and here’s where the worrying about worry comes in. I wonder why I’m making that distinction, and why I’m making it the particular way that I am. The only way I can think about it is examples of other things, like: what does it feel like when I’m not writing enough? Well, it feels like I’m not spending enough time with the blank page, and at the computer, and slogging through submissions (heh, no pun intended). So the rememdey is to do those things. When it feels like I’m having too much social life, the remedy is to go home and curl up with a book or a movie, or to sew a new corset, or to do anything that is entirely driven by me, occupied in my own world, quiet, productive, contented. Anything that makes me feel like a whole sturdy person all on my own.

But I’ve never thought about any of these things (writing, work, friends, etc.) astoo much in my life the same way I’ve tried to process kink in the last couple days. I wonder why that is. Maybe it’s the fact that kink influences directly, and obviously, the everyday, mundane aspects of life. Holding hands a certain way is different now; going to bed is different now; my name even, sometimes, is different now. It imbues my life in a way I’m not particularly used to.

But that also raises a distinction that I don’t like, and I think working against this distinction is maybe the answer (if there’s ever going to be something to mercifully clear cut and simple as “the answer”). Just because I’m a good girl, and my partner is Sir, doesn’t mean that I’m not still me, that he’s not still him. It’s easier to see it, with him. I can look at him and see the man I’m in love with, in another role he plays, another expression of himself that’s exciting and gorgeous, but not any less himself. With myself, it’s harder to see… myself (and now we’re getting to the point where I sound like an 80’s teen movie). I can’t see that, being a good girl, or putting a collar on, doesn’t mean that my life isn’t still anything I want it to be, doesn’t mean that I’m still not spit firing below everything. Reconciling these two, letting them exist not even together, but exist as the same thing, is incredibly difficult.

Part of it is that I feel like a freak. Hence the recent obsession with kink literature. I always read, but I’ve been reading *a lot* in the last days. Pouring myself into a community that says “we’re all freaks! A lot of us are way freakier than you, whatever that means! Be okay with it! Be comforted!” And it is comforting, in a many ways. But it’s also a feedback loop. Read more about kink, feel more comfortable about the amount of kink in your life, realize how much kink you’ve been reading, wonder if that’s too much kink in your life, etc…

Part of it is the cycle and method of meaning. Being a submissive headspace (not subspace*), or a masochistic moment, are incredibly meaningful to me. They carry weight. And then I get out into my regular life, and I forget that many, many other things also carry weight. That I don’t have to be actively submissive, nor does my partner have to actively dominant, for a special moment to happen (and blech, that sounds like a hallmark card; bear with me). That I can take pride and meaning in completing a task at work, or doing a good job, without having to define that, or even associate that, with submissive service. In this past couple days, this has been almost impossible for me to believe.

It’s really terrifying, on a certain level. I’m scared I’m creating a life I don’t want, or pouring meaning into something I’m not going to stick with (why this is a fear needs some more sitting, I think, before I can delve into it). I’m scared I’ll disappoint my partner somehow, which is also ridiculous, because he’s an amazingly supportive teammate. I’m scared I’m wading in too deep, too fast, and that I don’t know what I’m doing.

I have some issues with control, and I always have. I like to plan and I like to worry. And it’s a big step, in this part of my life, to try and let that go. To know that no matter how much I talk about it, write about it, read about, that kink is probably going to throw some wrenches at me, some delightful, some probably terrifying. Accepting that is something I’m still working on. And the belief that underneath it all, I get to make a life, and be person, in whichever way I want to be: that’s key. It’s hard too, but that’s essential, and something that maybe one day, I can revel joyful and decadent in.

Ending a sentence with a preposition. Shame on me.

Bruised and confused, but happy enough,

The Good Girl

* “subspace” is a term I don’t like much. I prefer “the forever place,” with no disdain for the other option - I just think “forever place” sums it up better, for me.

The Bottoming Book

My copy of The Bottoming Book. I should really get a copy of the new one and read it, but I think there will always be a part of me that loves the old, the worn, the antiquated. As my mother would say, “what a wonderful practice in holding the opposites!”