I’ll Be At Dark Odyssey Summer Camp in September

Posted on August 5, 2011 in events | 3 Comments

Have I mentioned that I’ll be at Summer Camp this year?

I’m really excited to go, I’ve heard about it for years and haven’t been able to attend until now. I’ll be doing four workshops, Cock Confidence, D/s Age Play, Gender Theory, and a Porn Writing Intensive, so I’ve been practicing those this summer. Those camp attendees are no spring chickens!

I’ve finally registered and I’m trying to figure out how this whole cabin choosing thing works … have you been? How do I figure out where to bunk? Are you going this year, do you have a cabin you would like to invite me to be in? It feels a bit daunting.

Here’s the details about the event, in case you are interested in attending. I think it’s going to be a blast.

Dark Odyssey: Summer Camp
Northern Maryland
September 14-19, 2011

Imagine a vacation that brings together sexuality, spirituality, education, and play in a fun, diverse environment where fantasy becomes reality.

Dark Odyssey: Summer Camp 2011, a journey of sexual exploration for the spiritual and creative sex-positive communities returns for its eigth year. It will be held at a secluded, two hundred acre retreat in Northern Maryland. Our mission is to cross-pollinate ideas and concepts between groups of individuals who desire to explore different areas of alternative sexuality.

The event, from September 14-19, 2011 will feature dynamic workshops taught by top-notch sex educators, relationship experts, SM masters, and spiritual teachers from around the world, including:

Arli * Annie Earl * Artemis Hunter * Bear * Dylan Ryan * Ignacio Rivera * Lee Harrington * Lolita Wolf * The Marine * MojoDaddy * Mollena Williams * Princess Kali * Sam Martin * Sinclair Sexsmith * Sir C * TTT * Wintersong Tashlin

In addition to workshops, Dark Odyssey features creative social activities, nightly special events, erotic rituals, lakeside bonfires, the Sex-O-Rama playspace, and a 10,000 square foot fully equipped dungeon open for play around the clock.

All this happens in a fun camp environment at a retreat with great accommodations: forty cabins with real beds, full bathrooms, hot water showers, electricity and great centrally located swimming pool; plus, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a midnight snack included.

Unlike a typical conference event, where you have to pay for registration fees, hotel room costs, plus meals, Dark Odyssey is an all-inclusive event. Weekend rates range from $350 to $425 depending on when you register, and if you are a member of a participating group. Early registration rates are good through August 1st. Remember that Summer Camp SOLD OUT last year in record time, so sign up today!

Dozens of community organizations have signed on as participating groups in Dark Odyssey, and we add new groups every day. Check the website to see if your group is one of them, and you’ll be entitled to a registration discount. If your group would like to be added to this list, please contact greg@darkodyssey.com

Visit our website, http://www.darkodyssey.com for more details. We hope you will join us for this exciting event!

3 Comments | Category: events | Tags: , , , , , ,

Returning from the Power, Surrender, and Intimacy Retreat

Posted on May 18, 2011 in omphaloskepsis | 4 Comments

I’ve returned from retreat, a three-day workshop at Easton Mountain called Power, Surrender, and Intimacy (PSI) through the erotic energy school that I have studied with for more than ten years. I’m producing these workshops these days, as well as assisting, and while our numbers were a little bit low, the workshop was beautifully smooth and overall very successful. There are some shifts happening at the school, so I’m not sure how many more of these I will produce, but I’m really glad to have done this one.

Easton Mountain retreat center, aka gay sex camp, where the workshop was held

I’ve done PSI twice before, once as a participant in about 2002 and once as an assistant here in New York in about 2007. The first one I remember vividly—many of the different pieces of it—and I easily can point to that workshop weekend to say that that is when I discovered I was a top. The entire workshop centers around exploring dominance and submission, power and surrender. I found the surrender parts fairly easy but not particularly heated, and I was shocked to discover not only how I liked to be in charge, channeling power, but also that I had an inner sadist ready to be cultivated.

I couldn’t remember the second workshop very well. In the week up to this one I was trying to think of what I had taken away from it, what it had shifted for me, and as this weekend went on I realized that PSI was a huge tipping point in my study as an assistant, as a leader of this work and as someone who is able to hold, ground, and move erotic energy.

The difference between what I am capable of doing now and what I could do then is significant—I felt so connected, and so able to move the overwhelming emotion that came up for the entire group at various times. There were certainly moments where I nearly panicked with the expectation (that I set on myself, mostly) that I would be able to hold or move something, but generally when faced with that responsibility I could meet it gladly and capably.

The most significant moment of this was during two rituals on Sunday, when we started out with a wand of light tantric meditation (which I can’t seem to find any description of online) in order to raise some of our energies so we could go into the next ritual, which was transformative and about shadow, and very intense. The wand of light meditation starts at the root chakra and builds all the way up to the third eye, one chakra at a time, and I could feel it so intensely, especially toward the end, that I was kind of certain my head was going to come off as energy shot skyward and began exploding things.

I, as an assistant (and having had experienced this ritual before, which the other two assistants had not), was expected to go first in the second ritual. The facilitator described that we shouldn’t calculate what we were going to do, but that we would know it was time to come up when we felt a quickening. Oh, I felt it alright. I knew I had to go up there, and do something with this energy which was pulsing through my spine, but I wasn’t really sure what to do or how to do it.

Gravity by Nikki McClure. This image came to mind when I was trying to ground

I tried to describe it to another one of the assistants later. During the meditation part, I felt the energy rush up into me so intensely and come pouring out of the crown of my head that I layed down to get some better grounding, trying to remember that I was held by gravity, but even that didn’t work: instead of going up through my entire body, it started going from my root chakra through my pelvis and up into my cock, which became so incredibly erect and upright and felt like it was going to shoot off of me.

I sat back up, and tried to ground in other ways.

It dawned on me that this wand of light, this energetic connection to the earth, was there all the time, not just now—it’s something that I’ve dropped into numerous times at tantra workshops in recent years, and it always surprises me that it’s still there, and in fact it’s easier to access the next time around.

Realizing and deeply feeling this connection made me think of something another assistant had said on our ride up: that we are not living on the earth, but living in the earth, since the atmosphere is not actually part of space but part of our unique planet. We swim around in it. We would not survive outside of it. We are held upright to the earth by this magical gravity, but we are not separate. In fact, I felt like a puppet, like this wand of light was actually the earth creating me, coming up into me and animating me.

That is what I would have liked to express when I got up in front of the whole group to open the second ritual. But I couldn’t form words. As a writer and poet I find that extremely frustrating. The facilitator even asked: Are there words to go with this? I was shaking with every breath. Filling up with light and energy and then feeling it pour down my spine again as I breathed out, or pour up through the crown of my head. My hands jerked and felt electric.

“I feel like a column,” I managed to say. Really this energy felt penetrative. It felt like I was being fucked by spirit. It felt like it—and I—was rising out of the earth. It felt like the earth was using me to fuck the sky. I had no idea how to form words, it was all I could do to sit still and not explode.

“I don’t know if I can say more.”

And that was just about it. Three minutes were up, quickly, and I sat back down, unsure if my head was still attached. And then I started to panic. Oh fuck. What if I stay like this? What do I do with all of this energy? What is it going to do to me? It doesn’t seem to be working to just let it flow through me—and by “working” I mean it doesn’t seem to be calming me, but rather ramping me up. How do I calm this quickening? I have to work now, I have to assist and support others in their reveal, how am I going to do that?

Words from another facilitator came to mind: When you feel you can’t handle something, give it to the earth. She can handle anything. I would have tried anything right then. So I redirected all that energy that was coming up through me and thought of it pouring down into the ground, and immediately my head cleared. Immediately I felt so solid and stable and grounded. Immediately I no longer felt crazy but powerful, and powerfully alive.

The ritual poured through me, one person after another, and mostly I was so intensely connected and moved by it that tears just streamed down my cheeks for person after person, and I gave it all back to the earth. Help me hold this, thank you, thank you.

I feel like my reveal was sloppy, and that I was in a little bit of a state of panic when I went up there, but it’s clear that the energy was present and that I was a conduit for it. And the ritual happened, successfully, with the transformative energies we were seeking, so clearly something went right. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d been able to see outside of myself a little better, and it’s clear to me that what I did was the only thing I could have done at that moment. Perhaps it’s the performer in me who would have liked to have a better translation of my experience into my expression. But I can—or will try—to let that tiny sliver of regret go, and to not let it drive me.

What I learned about grounding was powerful, and I think that will stick with me.

There were a couple other fascinating things I’d like to report to you about, though they were not workshop content so much as things around the workshop that came up, like the debate over where female ejaculate comes from (the urethra) and where it is stored (the paraurethral sponge, I discovered). And the conversations around female/feminine sources of power and how easily that power can be mistaken or misused as manipulation instead of power, and how that flavor of power is even encouraged to be manipulation in this culture. And the conversations about butch identity with the facilitator and the other assistant—how there is a constant butch scale in our heads which compares and contrasts us to each other, and fears that we are the least butch of the group. There are many more things I could write about.

But it’s day three of being back, and I have so many things I need to accomplish, my email inboxes are too full, and I’ve been avoiding some regular tasks the last two days as I have been trying to take good care of myself for this re-entry. Perhaps I’ll write more about those things later, I promise I’ll try.

Meanwhile, I’ll get back to the Ask Me Anything questions, and start working on the next retreat, which is my favorite one (a five-day advanced retreat in New Mexico in late July).

I’m curious if you all might have questions for me about this retreat … do you want to know more about it? Which parts?

4 Comments | Category: omphaloskepsis | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

UW Madison tonight!

Posted on April 20, 2011 in events, photographs | 1 Comment

Hey folks! I’m here in beautiful (rainy, snowy) Milwaukee, had a great time at The Tool Shed last night. And did I mention the cheese plate I had for dinner? These folks know how to do cheese.

Oh hi, Lake Michigan. I almost didn't see you there

I’ll be at UW Madison tonight in Madison, Wisconsin, and since I didn’t ever post the info, here is it:

Fucking With Gender writing workshop (bring a pen & paper!)
with Sex Out Loud
8pm
University of Wisconsin Madison
Humanities building, located on Park Street

I don’t know which room exactly but I assume there will be signs. I’m looking forward to it! This is one of my favorite workshops to do.

Big day ahead of me, better get going—see you tonight!

1 Comment | Category: events, photographs | Tags: , , , , , , ,

What’s Happening In April

Posted on April 8, 2011 in events | 5 Comments

I started this over the last week of March, but this week has been so nuts that I couldn’t get it done.

In sum: April is busy! Lots of events! The most exciting of which is a week-long trip to Minneapolis, Madison, and Milwaukee toward the end of the month, as well as a return visit to Drew University, and the one year anniversary of Sideshow!

Events with Mr. Sexsmith

Thursday, April 7th, 8pm The Gay Ol’ Opry: Queer Country Music Festival! I’ll be in the DapperQ Fashion Show Public Assembly, Williamsburg Brooklyn, NY
Tuesday, April 11th, 8pm Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival: Siblings with Anne-E. Wood, Katie Liederman, and Kay Ulanday Barrett at The Phoenix, 447 East 13th Street at Avenue A in New York City
Tuesday, April 19th, 8pm Cock Confidence at The Tool Shed 2427 N. Murray Ave, Milwaukee, WI
Wed, April 20th, 7pm Workshop at UW Madison (TBA) Madison, WI
Thursday, April 21st, 4pm Radical & Responsible Gender workshop Hamline University, Minneapolis MN
Thursday, April 21st, 8pm Spoken word performance featuring some of my most requested pieces, including “Butch Poem,” “How to Survive Your First Year in New York City,” “Me in a Nutshell,” “For the Record,” and others Hamline University, Minneapolis MN
Friday, April 22nd, 8pm Cock Confidence at Smitten Kitten 3010 Lyndale Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN
Wed, April 27th, 8pm Advanced Gender & Kink Through Feminism (a new workshop!) Drew University, Madison, NJ

I’ll update this if any other events get added.

I’m still booking some spring events! I am mostly planning to be writing in May and June, but I do have some travel days possible if you would like to bring me to your college or organization. And I’m already beginning to book some of my fall travel—I’ll be working at home and writing through May and June, and then doing more travel in July, August, and September, including some travels to Seattle in early July, the Butch Voices national conference in Oakland in August, and Dark Odyssey Summer Camp in September. My schedule is kept up on mrsexsmith.com/appearances if you want to see if I’m coming your way.

I’d love to post other community events happening this month, but I don’t even know what’s going on aside from my own events, since the month is so busy. I’m sure Queer Memoir and Red Umbrella Diaries are happening, and Ruckus is a new queer reading series and looks amazing too.

I do have tickets to go see Girlyman at City Winery along with Coyote Grace, I’m thrilled about that. It’ll be a great peaceful date event in the midst of a lot of travel and chaos. I’ve never seen Girlyman live but I adore their live CD and I’ve heard they are an amazing show. And have you seen their music video for Young James Dean, directed by Margaret Cho? The song is described as “a meditation on butch identity” and the video is full of queers, some you’ll probably even recognize like Amos Mac, Rocco Kayiatos, Ian Harvie, Madison Young, and Tomcat. I really love Doris’s voice though, here’s one of her songs:

Doris was recently diagnosed with leukemia, the same month that Cheryl was actually, and she’s been writing about it in a separate blog from the Girlyman site. Sending love her way, and I’m thrilled to be able to see them all in concert.

Last but not least, here’s my 2011 workshop offerings in a PDF so it is easy to download, you can also download my one sheet PDF or high res photos in my press kit). Get in touch if you’re interested in booking me, you can contact me directly—mrsexsmith(at)gmail—or my booking company, PhinLi, at bookings(at)phinli.com.

5 Comments | Category: events | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Erotic Energy Workshops for Women in May

Posted on March 24, 2011 in events | 2 Comments

If you read between the lines around here, you probably know I’m involved with an erotic energy school. I’ve been studying there for about ten years now. I’ve been assisting for about five, and started coordinating workshops last year.

There are two advanced retreats that I am coordinating coming up in May near Albany, NY and in July near Albuquerque, NM, and if you are experienced with erotic energy work you are invited to come join me there.

I kept writing “workshop” here, because that’s what we call them, but really they are retreats, either 3- or 5-days long.

A good friend of mine (and fellow butch!) is also coordinating the level one class in Oakland in May. Perhaps you’re a beginner, and interested in what all this subtle energy, erotic energy, tantra stuff is about? This one is perfect for you. It explores subtle and not so subtle energy in the body, as well as mapping desires, reclaiming pleasure, and healing old wounds. I’ve taken it probably ten times and it is always full of learning, fascinating, challenging, and beautiful.

I call it “level one” or sometimes even “beginner level,” but it is totally applicable to folks who have experience with this too. Kind of like how in yoga, an advanced student can come into a beginner class and still get tons and tons out of it. There is a lot of room for everyone’s experience, level of comfort, and personal life history in each of these courses and I highly encourage taking them. They have significantly changed my life in the last ten years and I have taken many, many of the foundations of my sexual self away from the teachings of these workshops, with these particular teachers.

I’m not posting all the details here, but I would be glad to send them to you if you want to know more. Email me at mrsexsmith (at) gmail.com and I will send you more information. I’m glad to answer questions you have, too.

2 Comments | Category: events | Tags: , , , , ,

What Workshops Would You Like To See Me Teach?

Posted on February 15, 2011 in events | 9 Comments

My spring schedule is coming together, I’ve been talking to maybe a dozen different places and continuing to keep up my contacts as I plan to visit various cities this spring. I’m hoping that even if some of them don’t work out right away, perhaps they’ll work out in the future and I can come visit in the fall or next year.

I’ve got a pretty long workshop list right now, and while my most popular workshops continue to be Fucking With Gender, Radical & Responsible Gender, and Cock Confidence: Strap-On 101, I’m interested in continuing to develop other workshops that will be appealing. Someone just mentioned she’d like to go to a Daddy/girl workshop about the continuum of the dynamic from the bedroom to living that lifestyle 24/7. That’d be fascinating (I’d attend that workshop certainly). And another friend of mine just asked if I do anything for teens, which prompted me to start thinking about a How To Survive High School workshop for Queers, Freaks, and Gender Outlaws. Working on that one, too.

Point is, sometimes other people see workshops that I don’t necessarily see. So while I’m updating my workshop list for 2011 and thinking about other things I could start thinking about and developing, do you have any ideas for me of what workshops I could add to my repertoire? What would you love to see me teach? What do you wish I would come to your town and lead at your local college, community center, or sex toy shop?

I don’t have my spring schedule finalized yet, but I’m keeping it updated at mrsexsmith.com/appearances and in the What’s Happening in February post at the top of Sugarbutch.net (until March 1st, anyway, where I’ll replace it with a What’s Happening in March post instead).

If you’d like to bring me to your town for a workshop, I would love to go! Or perhaps I’m already coming to your town, and can do an add-on workshop with your group? You can email me directly, mrsexsmith(at)gmail.com, or you can contact my booking company PhinLi.

But, in the meantime, I would love to hear any ideas you have about what you’d like to see me teach. And thank you, it is helpful!

9 Comments | Category: events | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The Butch Voices NYC Conference Starts Today!

Posted on September 24, 2010 in on butches | 3 Comments

The Butch Voices NYC Regional Conference is almost here!

The conference itself is tomorrow, Saturday the 25th, with registration opening up at 9am and workshops beginning at 10am. I’m doing a Cock Confidence workshop at 1:30pm tomorrow, and I have two Aslan Leather harnesses, three Vixen Creations cocks, and another Tantus cock to give away. I’ll also be showing off the brand new hot-off-the-presses VIP Super Soft pack-and-play cock that is barely even released.

I’m also modering a panel called “In the Public Eye: Visibility in Media” with some fabulous folks: Denise Madison from GirlzParty, Grace Moon from Velvet Park Media, Gina Mamone from Riot Grrrl Ink, and Dasha Snyder of The D Word fame who writes at Digital Goddess.

But aside from my own involvement in the panel, there are many more things going on! Tonight is a social event to meet & greet conference attendees at Speed Friending/Dating at Dixon Place, tomorrow is a special Queer Memoir/Sideshow Reading Series Mash-Up at Bluestockings Bookstore, and there’s a special Butch Voices Submit play party in Brooklyn late tomorrow night.

I don’t know if I’ll make it out to play, but I’m really looking forward to meeting people, hanging out, and talking about butch things all weekend. Kristen is baking her “face off,” as she is prone to saying, making her famous rosemary sea salt chocolate chip cookies, savory corn and cheddar muffins, and a special treat for someone’s birthday tomorrow.

If you miss these events, there’s another Butch Brunch on Saturday, October 16th which will be a nice follow up to the conference for those who miss the company of other butches.

To tie up this nice countdown, I’m featuring a recent novel from 2004 called Crybaby Butch by Judith Frank, published by Firebrand Books. It won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction in 2005. My (lesbian) book group read it about a year and a half ago, and we all liked it quite a bit—which is hard, usually novels especially are hotly contested. I remember there being some disapproval of how the femme partners were depicted (as controlling, fairly stereotypical “women”, perhaps with not enough depth) but we liked the butches.

Here’s the premise, from the publisher’s website:

Drawing on her experience as an adult literacy tutor, Judith Frank’s first novel traces the difficult and sometimes hilarious connection between two butches of different generations – a middle-class, thirty-something adult literacy teacher and her older, working-class student. With a disparate group of adult learners as the backdrop, Frank examines, with warmth and wit, the relationship between education and gender, class, and racial identity. Judith Frank is a winner of the Astraea Foundation’s Emerging Lesbian Writer’s Fund prize in fiction. A professor of English at Amherst College, she lives and writes in western Massachusetts.

There are not very many books out there with “butch” in the title, and even fewer of them published in the last ten years. It’s a good read that is complex and interesting, engaging and emotionally enthralling. A few folks mentioned Crybaby Butch in the comments when I featured Stone Butch Blues two weeks ago, all of them with praise for the book.

Buy it directly from Firebrand Books, from your local independent bookstore, or, if you must, from Amazon.

So now that I’ve gone through some of the major butch books, tell me, which ones did I leave out? Are there others I should have featured?

3 Comments | Category: on butches | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Oh Hello, City of Roses

Posted on July 21, 2010 in events | 7 Comments

It’s a perfect temperature here in Portland, which means, yay, that button-down and tie I brought for my workshops tonight and tomorrow are going to work out just fine.

If you’re in the area, come by one of the workshops!

Gender & Role Play
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010, 7:30pm
at She Bop, 909 N. Beech St, Portland, OR
SheBoptheShop.com

Strap-On 101
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010, 7pm
at Fascinations, 9515 SE 82nd Ave, Portland, OR
Free! And, pick up $10 gift card for all those who come! Now that just-right cock or harness will be even cheaper.

And of course tomorrow I’ll be visiting Powell’s. And seeking out amazing vegetarian restaurants or cafes … got any recommendations?

7 Comments | Category: events | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Hey Seattle: See You Soon! Sex 2.0 Next Weekend

Posted on May 11, 2010 in events | No Comments

I’m heading back to Seattle next weekend, May 22-23, for the Sex 2.0 Conference!

I’ll be presenting a workshop on Yes, No, and Consent, based on the article I wrote a while back and some subsequent conversations and feedback. Here’s the description:

Yes, No, and Consent:
It tends to be a basic assumption in kinky and sex-positive communities that sexy explorations must be done consensually, that both parties must express a YES (verbally or non-verbally), especially when getting into the dirty stuff. And many of us know that in order to say YES, we have to be able to say NO, to have full agency and full options available to us. But what about when you want something, your partner says they are into it, but you feel guilty? How do we take the YES more seriously? How can you use social media & the internet as explorations of communication, increasing the desire and friction in your sex life?

There are many other amazing presenters at the conference, including Essin’ Em and Maymay, who I’m really looking forward to seeing and hanging out with. Check out the full session list!

I don’t know which day or time I’ll be presenting, but I’ll let you know when I do know. If you’re in Seattle, please do consider coming! It’s a relatively inexpensive conference, and I always hear amazing things about it. I wanted to go when it was in DC last year, but couldn’t make it.

I went to college in Seattle (at the University of Washington, majoring in Gender Studies and Creative Writing, graduated in 2004), and lived there for almost seven years. I can’t wait to go walk around Greenlake, eat at Rom Mai Thai on Broadway, get a beer at the Elysian, and have a happy hour $4 double whiskey at the Rosebud. I only wish Pete’s Pizza hadn’t closed, I’ve never had calzones that good anywhere else. I haven’t been back in a while, I’m really looking forward to it.

No Comments | Category: events | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Fucking With Gender 2.0 at Brown on Wednesday 4/21

Posted on April 16, 2010 in events | 7 Comments

New workshop!

This is just a quick little announcement, because I COMPLETELY forgot to post that I was going to be at Drew University in New Jersey when I was there earlier this month (hi Drew! I had so much fun with you all, Ryan and Kestin and Arielle and Paula and that talented Classics major who made amazing green tea cupcakes with coconut icing whose name I didn’t catch, thanks for inviting me!).

I’ll be at Brown University next week, April 21st, at 6pm. Kristen is coming with me and we hope to stop by and see the lovely Megan Andelloux and her Center for Sexual Pleasure & Health while we’re visiting.

Brown University
Providence, RI
April 21st, 6pm
on the Brown campus (exact location TBA)

And here’s the (new!) workshop description that I’ll be leading:

Fucking With Gender 2.0: Gendering Power

Fucking With Gender is an interactive workshop which begins with Sinclair Sexsmith’s basic gender tenets and follows up with a discussion of how to have the kind of sex you want to have. Gendering Power takes these gender tenets and puts them into action: playing with gender in the bedroom through role play and power play, with a discussion of how gender identity can grow and change through intentional intimate sex play. Bring a pen & paper, or something to write with and on, as there will be writing prompts.

I’m checking to see if this workshop will be open to the public, or if it is restricted to Brown students only. Will get back to you on that (check the comments).

Looking forward to being back up there—Kristen and I were in Providence for the Kink For All Providence Unconference in March, and the area was quite lovely. I’d never been up there before.

Any recommendations for anything specific we should do on our day trip?

7 Comments | Category: events | Tags: , , , , , , ,

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