journal entries

workshop revelations

The workshop this weekend was phenomenal, as this workshop always is. This is my seventh time at a workshop through this same school, my third time as an assistant. It’s different every time, though the structure is very similar, mostly because I’m different I suppose – it brings up and heals and expells and calms different things in me depending on what is happening in my life.I had a lot of revelations this weekend. It’s different to be back in the “real” world now.

Let’s start with Friday.

I realized how little I breathe, and how much I’d like to do some serious study of breath on my own, not just in workshop. We did some tantric breathing, including a “pelvic lock” which seriously rocked my world, and after being blown away I swore to myself I’d look for some lesbian tantric resources. I also very much remember thinking the same thing last year, as I went to this same workshop almost exactly a year ago, and I started wondering why it was that I didn’t follow through on that.

Which is when a list of things fell into place. (I’ll give a little recap.) I split with my girlfriend of four years over the summer, in July, after I met Callie and went on a date with her. I have often described Callie as a “defribrulator for my heart,” as she jolted me awake in a huge new way – I hadn’t even realized how numb and hiding I was in my relationship with my girlfriend (at the time, often referred to as “the girlfriend” or “the ex-girlfriend” in the archives). Callie made me feel desire, lust – made me feel interesting, fascinating. I fell in love with her that first date. But, I had a girlfriend, and Callie found out, and refused to date me until I figured it out, said she wouldn’t wait for me, etc. Which, you know, makes sense. I spent the next three months getting my life in order – leaving my girlfriend, moving into my own apartment, fucking around – mostly so I wouldn’t be completely lost in my lust for Callie if/when we started dating.

And then, in October, on a Wednesday, I put up a person ad – the same one she had put up, to which I had responded, only in reverse – and then sent her flowers on a Friday. She called, almost immediately.

And that was the weekend of the workshop last year – so I couldn’t meet her that weekend. We had lunch on Monday, the day after the workshop.

I barely remember anything about the workshop last year. I remember lunch at the South Street Seaport, talking about Callie. I remember having a hard time focusing, because I really just wanted to be with Callie. I spent three months dreaming and preparing and wishing Callie back into my life, and there she was, ready for me, too – so I skated through the workshop and probably even used it to fall deeper in love with her. On my own, without her even there, without knowing her.

Dangerous, dangerous.

So, on Friday, I was remembering the feeling of wanting to study breathwork and tantra last year, and wondered where that energy and inspiration went, then realizing it was all focused into that relationship. Sex always worked with Callie (see: all of October to May, explorations from desire and role play and force, to lingerie and topping and ten times in twenty-four hours) and I always assumed that because it worked so well, better than I’d ever had in my life! Which was a combination of Callie being a femme bottom (finally, finally) and coming out of a sexless four-year relationship with a girl who didn’t really like sex, among other things. Because things worked so well between us, sexually, I quickly took that to a spiritual level – of course I did, coming out of this workshop the day before our relationship began! – and thought that that meant something much, much more than it did.

It didn’t mean that much. It wasn’t a spiritual connection, it wasn’t a “meeting of the souls.” Or, I don’t know, maybe it was a little bit, but that doesn’t mean that she wasn’t also unstable, seductive, and manipulative.

I’ve said this about Callie before, too, but it rings particularly true: she is beautiful for the same reason that puppies and babies are adorible – because if they aren’t, you would murder them for their horrible, life-shattering annoyances.

So. That was Friday, and throughout-the-weekend revelations about Callie. Things I took away: I want to make a serious study of some tantra and breathwork; and I feel like this relationship with Callie is further coming into focus.

(Saturday & Sunday revelations to come.)

Published by Sinclair Sexsmith

Sinclair Sexsmith (they/them) is "the best-known butch erotica writer whose kinky, groundbreaking stories have turned on countless queers" (AfterEllen), who "is in all the books, wins all the awards, speaks at all the panels and readings, knows all the stuff, and writes for all the places" (Autostraddle). ​Their short story collection, Sweet & Rough: Queer Kink Erotica, was a 2016 finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and they are the current editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica series. They identify as a white non-binary butch dominant, a survivor, and an introvert, and they live outside Seattle as an uninvited settler on traditional, ancestral, & unceded Snoqualmie land.

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