Posts Tagged ‘dan savage’
TP
1. What insight about open relationships do you wish you had when you started?
First and foremost, I wish I had known how much love I would find and conversely how much hate I would find. It feels so natural but I feel as though we are looked down upon not only by the right, but also among many in the gay community who feel we distract from thier cause. As soon as those on the right attack gay marriage saying the next step is legalizing polyamorous marriages, we say why not? Many gay rights advocates turn on a dime and throw us under the bus.
I always thought we would see some converse support for our cause after theirs however I see this to not be the case. See also the recent statement from Dan Savage. In the way he addressed polyamory initially, it almost seemed to discount the experience entirely. He did recover nicely printing responses from other voices he respected. I must also say that I do appreciate his writing for the most part anyways.
I wish I would have known/remembered how hard dating is.
2. What has been the hardest thing about opening your relationship, and how have you overcome that?
Two Words: Time Management. This is probably not what you were looking for but arranging time with our honeys is hard. Really hard. We have to cover for each other in watching the kids and often times we have to facilitate each others dates, we even sometimes buy each other condoms and other items in preparation for each others dates. Balance can be hard unless we are forcefully intentional about it.
3. What has been the best thing about your open relationship?
The freedom to explore our fantasies with other people that we have not been able to experience for ourselves. I am circumcised. In a monogamous relationship my wife could never honestly experience giving falacio to a man with an uncut penis let alone riding him. But with our open relationship she can experience many different kinds of penises, and the concept follows for me with other people. It opens up a brave new world.
Because there isn’t much else to do, I am working.
Reading books, going through to do lists. I’m webmastering for both Butch Voices national conference and Cialis online orderingcgi?CA=929655-0003&PA=1694067&html=http://femme-cash.com/affiliates/feminist-porn-network/1514″>Perversions of Lesbian Lust, and I’m working on some freelance projects. I’m keeping my inbox as emptied out as possible (sometimes I use it as a place to hold information. I know, the GTD and time management people would not like that. But sometimes it really helps me find that info quick).
I have a lot of reviews to do. There are a lot of products on my desk waiting patiently for me to get ‘em out and play with them. A lot of DVDs, quite a few books, some toys, especially from the new “Gender Expression” category at Babeland. I’m excited about these products, but it doesn’t make much sense to toss in a random review post now. I don’t even like that that piercing & body mod post is in the last page of updates. It doesn’t make sense here, not part of the narrative of the last week.
Has it really only been a week? Only barely.
I picked up and finished Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction edited by Sabrina Chapadjiev this week. It’s not quite the same as coping with grief and loss, but it was interesting to think about how creativity can be a tool. In a conversation with my tantra teacher recently, she said some of her most creative growth periods have come out of profound grief.
I picked up Live Through This—or rather, the fine folks at Seven Stories Press sent me Live Through This when they sent me Rose—but I was drawn to it because of the amazing writers included. Seriously, look at that lineup: bell hooks, Patricia Smith, Cristy C. Road, Carol Queen, Annie Sprinkle, Elizabeth Stephens, Carolyn Gage, Eileen Myles, Diane DiMassa, Bonfire Madigan Shive, Inga Muscio, Kate Bornstein, Nicole Blackman, Silas Howard, Daphne Gottleib—and more. I loved Inga Muscio’s piece, but I’ve loved her style and voice and words for ages now and that’s no surprise. I had no idea that Kate Bornstein draws, and I loved the insight into her life that she opened up in her very personal essay. Eileen Myles’s essay freaked me out because it was about teeth, shudder, but it sure was effective. I love Nicole Blackman’s poetry and her piece was incredibly moving.
I’ve also been reading It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living edited by Dan Savage & Terry Miller. I’m supposed to review it for Lambda Literary, but I don’t even know what to say about it; so many people have said so many things. It is such a stunningly successful campaign, and I love what it has done and what it has inspired. I’ve been watching It Gets Better videos this week, reminding myself that it does get better, even when sometimes it doesn’t seem like it will.
I didn’t realize what a stellar line-up the It Gets Better book had in it, either. Ivan Coyote! Kate Bornstein. President Obama. It’s amazing, the list goes on and on. And sometimes the ones that are the most moving aren’t from anybody in particular, just someone who happens to be articulate about their gay experience and what it was like for them to make it better, or how it got better.
I’ve also been mulling over Kate Bornstein’s Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suidcide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws, and over Kate’s addition to It Gets Better, which is the essay that closes the book. It’s still one of my favorites.
So I’m trying to remember to take care of myself, to do whatever I need to stay alive, to keep going. This weekend, I think that’s going to involve cherry picking and watching a movie or two and hanging out with good friends, going outside to feel connected to the earth, reading some more books, eating strawberry shortcake made with our very fresh, very ripe CSA strawberries. And continuing to breathe, one more breath at a time.
Q asked:
do you have any ideas for what to do with lightly used sex toys and accessories? They don’t seem like the kind of thing you just sell at a yard sale! But it seems a shame to just chuck something so expensive and that someone else could get a lot of pleasure out of. If you don’t think it makes sense to give them away (and I mean give, I certainly don’t want to sell), is there a way to recycle them or otherwise dispose of them properly?
Thanks!
Yes, generally you’re right, people don’t want used sex toys, even if they can be sterilized. There are some—glass, metal, silicone—that I would say you can offer to good friends, or people you might think could handle a little use. Some leather/BDSM gear you might be able to swap or give away, but it depends on the condition. But if they’re very broken in (you know how silicone gets after it’s been used a bunch, it kind of starts disintegrating) I think it’d be best to recycle them.
The jelly plastic or other plastic insertables or vibrators … probably there’s nothing to do with them except recycle them.
There is a sextoyrecycling.com place, but it looks like it’s not legit. I haven’t been able to contact anyone from there to get confirmation that they are running.
I did hear from ScarletGirl.com, they have a sex toy recycling program that will give you $10 credit, but more importantly, they won’t end up in the landfill.
Dan Savage has recommended sending your old sex toys to representatives in states where sex toys aren’t legal, which I think is a good idea for activist purposes, but what happens after the politicians receive those toys? Probably they will end up in a landfill. So if your purpose is to be green moreso than to have some impromptu activism, you might want to just write a letter (or an email! Save paper) and send your sex toys off to be recycled.
Some of the sex bloggers who do a lot of toy reviews have set up the Toy Swap Network for toys that are not old, broken, worn-out, etc., but are new and that you just don’t want to keep around.
It is by invitation only, so you can send in a request, and the network itself is on Ning.
Any other recommendations for what to do with old sex toys? Perhaps Folsom East has some leather swap events, anybody know?
So … what are you doing for Valentine’s Day this Sunday?
“My Hands Are My Heart,” Gabriel Orozco, 1991
Remember what Kristen and I did last year? I planned a little surprise trip up to a winery, which was lovely. This year, though, I’m broke and Kristen doesn’t like spending money, so we’re taking swing dancing lessons through February (which we both LOVE) and staying in this weekend, cooking and holing up with each other.
All I really want to do lately is get lost in her, talk to her, touch her, explore her. I’ll probably make a little card or love note too … I’d love to write a perfect poem for her, one of these days. I ran into this lovely haiku the other day, and you know how sometimes you read things and they are just like so fucking perfect that you feel like you’ll never write something that good? I kind of love that feeling. And I really love this haiku.
I have never felt
more completely like myself
than when I hold you.
Not that I’ll stop trying to write her a perfect poem. I will, I am. Just that I keep running into things that are so perfect. Like this: “She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there, leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.” — J.D. Salinger (posted on my tumblr media log recently). Maybe I just need to do some sort of collage or compilation.
On a related note, I was listening to Dan Savage’s podcast Savage Love, which, if you don’t listen to, I highly HIGHLY recommend, he’s sometimes a bit of a jerk, yes, and occasionally has some bad slips of the tongue about plenty of hot-button things, but he’s honest, and very sex-positive, and I’ve learned a LOT from his work over the past ten years. Last week, at the beginning of his podcast, he had this to say:
Valentine’s Day is a week and change away, and when you’re a sex advice professional, as I am, you get a lot of calls on the run up to Valentine’s Day, asking for boiler-plate love and romance advice from bullshit publications that the rest of the year pretend that sex doesn’t really exist. And what they want is usually this bullshit deep-fried funnel cake sugar coated romance crap, and not real romance: you know, “how do you sex up your Valentine’s? How do you make it more erotic?” And what they want to hear is candles, and dinner, and wine, and flowers.
What’s crazy about all the standard Valentine’s Day gifts is that they all have narcotic effects, really! Go out and have some wine, and eat a big rich meal, and you’re really not going to want to fuck when you get home! You’re going to want to fall the fuck asleep. And then you get all these letters—if you’re a sex advice professional, as I am—the day after Valentine’s Day, from people who are worried about the health of their relationship, or whether their partner is really attracted to them, because they went out and had this big romantic Valentine’s Day date and dinner, and then they didn’t fuck because they fell asleep, or he fell asleep. Well of course he fell asleep. He had a gut full of steak and booze and rich crap.
You know, if you want to spice up your sex life, on Valentine’s Day, stay the fuck home, do something that gets your blood pumping, like move your ass, don’t feed your face, and then bone each other! Done! The end, right? Don’t make reservations. Don’t fall into the restaurant industrial chocolate complex conspiracy that is Valentine’s Day, and think you have to mark it by pouring money into … whatever! You need to pour your own bodily fluids into each other (if you are fluid bonded, if not please use condoms and barriers and whatever)! And you can do that best if you stay the fuck home!
You know what you should do, if you do go to the restaurant—and you probably should go the restaurant, waiters gotta eat, I put myself through school waiting tables, I don’t want to like kill the restaurant industry (I don’t think I have that power)—FUCK FIRST. Fuck at four o’clock, if you have dinner reservations at eight. Fuck twice if you have dinner reservations at eight, then go to the restaurant. And toast the awesome relationship you have, and the amazing sex you just had, and then go home and collapse into bed, and fall the fuck asleep.
—Dan Savage, Savage Love Podcast episode 172 (transcribed by me, errors are probably my fault)
Now, I’ve always been a sex-at-night kind of person, probably because I like staying up late, but my days are often so jam-packed lately that I’m finding Kristen and I do this quite often—we go out to some awesome event, or for a great meal, then we end up crashing. This definitely made me think about planning the evening (and the sex play) with a little bit more intention.
I know, I know, Valentine’s Day is a cheesy corporate and capitalistic holiday, and we shouldn’t need excuses to show our loved ones that we care. But, to be honest … I’m a romantic, and I like the excuses. I also fight with my tendency to over-shower, over-give, over-love someone, and an event gives permission to channel those tendencies into gifts or romance.
So the question remains: what are you doing for Valentine’s Day this Sunday? What do you wish you were doing? What’s the romantic Valentine’s Day that you will always remember?
Well, it’s Saturday morning, and I am partaking in my recent Saturday morning ritual, which includes listening to Dan Savage’s Podcast of his sex advice column “Savage Love” while doing some cleaning.I just gotta plug it for a minute here. Dan is fucken rad. Gay guy, he & his boyfriend of thirteen years have a kid together, he’s out of Seattle and has been doing this Savage Love advice column for a long time – ten years? More? Not sure exactly. He is also occasionally offensive, misogynistic, trans- and bi- and lesbian-insulting – so don’t go into it expecting some PC kindness. Today, he said, for example, to a lesbian: “when you have your arm up her pussy, or when you’re pressing her face into your pussy, or whatever it is you lesbians do in bed, I’ve never been able to figure it out … ” (come on, Dan, really? You can’t figure out what lesbians do in bed? Go watch The Crash Pad or the Crash Pad Series or Sugar High Glitter City or Coming Home or ANYTHING from the lesbian category over on Blowfish and figure it out) and then he went on to discuss Patrick Califia, though made comments about the trendiness of lesbians becoming FtMs (“but I’m not going to go there, because I don’t want my house burned down” … um, you already said it) and proceeded to refer to Patrick with female pronouns – while recommending his books, which I also recommend: Doing it for Daddy and Macho Sluts.
And on the podcast, a lesbian called in asking for some advice about dirty talk in bed, and said that her girlfriend liked to be called humiliating names – and the example she gave? Are you ready for this?
“Cunt-hungry cum dumpster.”
I shit you not. That is amazing. I mean I really don’t think that would turn me on, but hey, YKIOK (your kink is okay … another Dan Savage acronym, like GGG, that I picked up years ago), and I have to admire the boldness and the turn of language that it involves! Wow.
In other news, if you didn’t catch the political (sex) role play video that was going around, check that out too. I’d embedd the youtube version, but it cuts off the last line, and that line is really worth it.
Lenore on 
Shereen on 
