I’m still reeling from all the Sideshow amazingness last night, will have more of a recap/update soon.
Meanwhile, here’s an amazing new piece by Ivan E. Coyote at Speak Up! on 4/10/2010.
Yes yes yes ditto to all of that. What a pleasure to hear.
Blog
“Death by Sex” Heels
Mo sent in this photo (and another outtake from the same shot) for my birthday shoes project, saying: “These are my favorite 6 inch Aldo heels- they make me smile every time I wear them. I feel like a Goddess- I call them my Death By Sex heels.” Thank you Mo!
Review: Talk To Me Baby (VOD)
Do you remember Hard Love & How to Fuck in High Heels and Sugar High Glitter City? They were the very first butch/femme dyke porn I ever saw, and I have a special little place in my, uh, heart, for the work of S.I.R. Productions, and the smokin’ hot couple behind it, Shar Rednour and Jackie Strano.
I never saw their third (or perhaps fourth?) film, Talk To Me Baby: A Lover’s Guide to Dirty Talk and Role Play, but it was just released by Hot Movies 4 Her as a video on demand! So of course I rushed to watch it.
It’s 57 minutes long and I think it is mostly clips of scenes from their other films—the last scene, for example, is one of the first scenes in Hard Love where Jackie is jacking off and talking dirty, which is incredibly hot. There are a few hetero scenes, but the talking is lovely, sexy, and interesting.
Here’s the HM4H description:
Talk To Me Baby: A Lover’s Guide To Dirty Talk & Role Play: This lovers’ guide to dirty talk and role play teaches and shows how having a smutty mouth can spice up your sex life. Sex educator and performer Shar Rednour reigns as the Diva of Dirty Talk hosting a bevy of lust-driven lovers who melt the screen with passionate pillow talk and scorching sexual fantasy in this XXplicit viceo by the creators of the AVN Award Winning dyke hit Hard love & How to Fuck in High Heels and the groundbreaking Bend Over Boyfriend series.
I haven’t actually seen the Bend Over Boyfriend series, and I think the first two came between S.I.R.’s first two dyke porns and this one, but if some of what’s in Talk To Me Baby is clips from that series, it’s pretty damn good.
If you’re Shar & Jackie fans, like Kristen and I both are, you might be a bit disappointed that this isn’t actually Shar and Jackie talking dirty to each other on camera. Kristen said that’s what she was hoping it would be. (Shar and/or Jackie! You could still make that video, ya know? Please add it to your list of possibilities, if you feel inspired to make it in the future I would absolutely buy it. Video or audio recording!) It still has a lot of very useful tips, and some great examples, and it’s a great place to start if you want to add more dirty talking to your sex life.
Review: Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (Book)
I’ve been reading Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence by Esther Perel this past week, and it was an interesting enough read to mention it here. I have written quite a lot about my own path to pursuing and finding a fulfilling sexual relationship, as this site was started primarily because I found myself in a lesbian bed death relationship with my ex and was trying to write my way out of it, and to a new sexuality.
Though the cover looks all mainstream self-help-y, it isn’t. Perel is a seasoned therapist and it is mostly full of psychological examples of her clients’ complications in keeping their long-term relationship strong while still having their sexual needs met.
Here’s the publisher’s description:
One of the world’s most respected voices on erotic intelligence, Esther Perel offers a bold, provocative new take on intimacy and sex. Mating in Captivity invites us to explore the paradoxical union of domesticity and sexual desire, and explains what it takes to bring lust home. Drawing on more than twenty years of experience as a couples therapist, Perel examines the complexities of sustaining desire. Through case studies and lively discussion, Perel demonstrates how more exciting, playful, and even poetic sex is possible in long-term relationships. Wise, witty, and as revelatory as it is straightforward, Mating in Captivity is a sensational book that will transform the way you live and love.
Perel quotes many authors I’ve read (and liked), has a very open minded view about kink and fantasy, and grew up largely outside of the US, which gives her a perspective on our achievement-oriented culture that I appreciate. She does include some gay and lesbian couples in her examples, and her examples and suggestions aren’t heteronormative.
The Amazon description reads: “Some of the proposals Perel recommends for rekindling eroticism involve cultivating separateness (e.g., autonomy) in a relationship rather than closeness (entrapment); exploring dynamics of power and control (i.e., submission, spanking); and learning to surrender to a “sexual ruthlessness” that liberates us from shame and guilt.” YES. Isn’t that precisely what I advocate here on Sugarbutch, in fact? Especially within lesbian cultures, the codependency that comes with the “merging” is so normal it’s practically expected, and I feel like we constantly have to fight against it to avoid it. Somewhere Perel has a line about keeping the spark going, how in order to have the spark you have to have friction, and in order to have friction you have to have a gap between you. That is autonomy, right there, and if one or both of the folks in the relationship don’t have enough of it, the spark won’t be cultivated. Obviously I explore a lot of the dynamics of power and control, and I write about why that stuff can be fun and liberating instead of reproducing some sort of dangerous power dynamic. And shame and guilt? I wish it was possible to just wave a magic wand and take away the shame and guilt about sex from this culture—wanting sex, wanting kinky sex, wanting more sex, our carnal desires in general.
To quote Tara Hardy: “This is the sweet glory reason for a body in the first place.”
I really believe that. Now, if only I can find a way to help teach the undoing of that shame and guilt. (I know, I know, that’s lofty. But hey, why not aim high?)
Perel has some great concepts around the conflicts between the dichotomy of love vs lust, stability vs passion, security vs adventures, occasionally misunderstood as a mutually exclusive binary, but, she argues, is really a “paradox to be managed” instead of a “problem to solve.”
It is a puzzle. Can you hold the awareness of each polarity? You need each at different times, but you can’t have both at the same time. Can you accept that? It’s not an either-or situation, but one where you get the benefits of each and also recognize the limits o each. It’s an ebb and flow. Love and desire are two rhythmic yet clashing forces that are always in a state of flux and always looking for the balance point. —p84
I’m not sure if “you can’t have both at the same time,” I think you can love someone and still feel passionate. But you can’t necessarily have security and adventure at the same time … though what if you’re on a backpacking trip with your sweetheart? You’re having an adventure, but you’re with your lover, so you feel the stability that that relationship can cultivate. And sometimes when I’m having kinky sex and talking all kinds of dirty with Kristen, what’s streaming through the back of my mind is I love you I love you I love you …
Still, I get the point. And I really appreciate Perel’s encouragement of treating sex like a hobby, like something you pursue, like grown-up play—that’s what it is.
I was kind of hoping I’d come away with a better sense of how to “unlock” my “erotic intelligence,” but I can’t say I feel like that skill was cultivated so well. (Or perhaps I’ve already done that, for the most part, and while there’s more to do, a book aimed at a general audience might not be teaching me what I’m trying to learn.) I wouldn’t say I had any grand revelations from Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, but it’s very well-written, open minded, and articulate, and it feels very much in line with the work I’m trying to do. I will likely recommend it in the future.
Following Up: What’s Next? Queer Activism in the South
After hearing about the fake prom that Constance McMillen was sent to last week, I ranted a bit about what was next in that string of activsm. Many readers had fantastic comments and I want to highlight a couple here:
AllysonIvy said: “What can we do? Join in the movement that’s already happening. Work to get non-discrimination laws passed. ENDA would change so much on the federal level. My state (Tennessee) not only excludes LGBT people from protection against housing and employment discrimination, but has a Democratic candidate for governor who supports an adoption ban. We need federal protection, and we can all work for that. 150,000 people marched on Washington in October. Arrests were made recently when activists protested both DADT and ENDA in Washington. They were speaking up. We speak up in order to make a change. … We need to pay attention to her, sure.. but we also need to pay attention to DADT, DOMA, and ENDA. We need to pay attention to the fact that a man in Oklahoma who was denied the right to have a license plate that says “I’m Gay” was found dead a few weeks ago after having reported threats against his life. We need to pay attention to the fight for gay marriage in all states, not just California. … Southern queers are an amazing bunch. I can say with experience that we are strong as hell. We are strong as hell, and we fight hard. I welcome everyone to join us.”
Sarah quotes Izzy Pellegrine on Feministing: “My name is Izzy Pellegrine and I’m a founding member of the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition, a group that has been working for two years to promote LGBT student rights in MS. MSSC has been working with Constance for months to help organize her fellow students and educate members of her community. We’re hosting our annual Second Chance Prom in her city and opening it up to all young people in the state. (And this is no seven person event!!) Check us out at www.mssafeschools.org”
ayellowdog said: “we MUST be aggressive with the government – especially at the federal level. We must make sure that the government is not allowed to forget that there is a huge portion of the citizenry of this country that is not being treated equally and thus is always at risk. We must demand to have it made clear that the 14th amendment includes us too. Legislation for the protection of our rights is crucial, obviously, and we should all work in whatever way we can to make it happen as comprehensively and quickly as possible. However, we will never be able to legislate the opinions of others. Opinions must be swayed, nudged, gradually overcome by the opinion-holders themselves. And this kind of change can only occur if we are strong enough to live among those who think they fear and hate us, usually because they don’t know any better, to befriend them in spite of themselves, to share a common world with them, highlighting for them our common ground. Our (legitimate) defensive outrage at how we are allowed to be treated should be directed towards our elected officials. Everyone else should receive a genuine offer of friendship and goodwill.”
EliDeep recommended GetEqual (on Twitter at @getequal): “GetEqual was founded by Kip Williams and Robin McGehee, who both grew up in the South. Kip’s from Knoxville, and Robin is from Mississippi. I first heard Robin speak at the National Equality March in October. Her speech was the most touching to me because she told all us Southern queers that we weren’t forgotten. Often, the gay community writes off the South as a lost cause, and tells us to just move to more gay friendly places. This is NOT a solution.”
You can still contact the school superintendent and high school principal:
Itawamba County Schools Superintendent Teresa McNeece: tmcneece@itawamba.k12.ms.us, 662-862-2159 ext. 14
Itawamba Agricultural High School principal Trae Wiygul: twiygul@itawamba.k12.ms.us, 662-862-3104
And a few more things:
- Donate to the ACLU LGBT Project
- Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to Prom Facebook Page
- Sign the HRC petition to say I Stand With Constance McMillen
2010 Sex Blogger Calendar Giveaway Winners
Happy Friday y’all! Here are the winners of the 2010 Sex Blogger Calendar giveaway:
#2 Lia Sphere who loves Namio Harukawa
#9 Ash-a-Fresh who loves Kat Von D
#13 Alisha who loves Gil Elvgren
#14 ButchTay who loves The Pretty Things Peepshow
#18 Havi Brooks (and duck) who love Persinnamon
I liked seeing all the different pin-ups that people linked to! And was introduced to some new artists, too; thanks, everybody, for the comments and links.
And since the Marilyn Monroe shot of her lifting weights, specifically, got mentioned three times, I’m posting it here. (I like the ones of her reading, personally, but there are so many to love.)
Don’t forget, you can STILL order the 2010 Sex Blogger Calendar, in case you somehow don’t have one yet!
Will be in touch with you winners—just need your mailing addresses to send out the calendars.
Come One, Come All, to SIDESHOW!
(More details & information at SideshowReadingSeries.wordpress.com.)
New York City: home to some of the best performance art, spoken word, poetry, and literary culture in the world. Also home of the freaks, the queers, the outlaws, the weirdos, who have all sought refuge from their narrow-minded little towns across America—across North America!—by congealing at the big cities on the fringes of the country.
It makes sense that thus, this little town of mine houses some amazing queer literary reading series, though few of them are explicitly queer—rather they are run by queers and promote queer voices and perspectives. Vittoria Repetto runs the Women/Trans Poetry Jam & Open Mic at Bluestockings, Rachel Kramer Bussel runs In The Flesh erotica reading series at Happy Ending, Audacia Ray co-hosts Sex Worker Literati at Happy Ending with David Henry Sterry, Kathleen Warnock runs Drunken! Careening! Writers! at KGB Bar, Charlie Vasquez runs Panic! at Nowhere bar, Shelly Mars runs the Bulldyke Chronicles at Dixon Place, Kelli Dunham and Gene Murphy run Queer Memoir at Collect Pond in Brooklyn. And that’s just off the top of my head.
Why does New York City need yet another literary and queer reading series? Despite the many other series, very few of them are explicitly places for queer’s marginalized voices to express ourselves. Perhaps these are actually a newer wave of reading series, born out of earlier waves of explicitly queer series, and these focus on a particular theme or style of work as opposed to the gender or sexuality of those reading it. But still, we have not conquered homophobia, heterosexism, or transphobia, and though many in the queer literary scene might think we can have queers and straight folks reading right next to each other in a line-up, we still face sometimes insurmountable issues because of our sexualities or gender identities.
I’m grateful New York City is different, encouraging art and expression of all flavors. Still, in comparison to some of the medium- and small-sized cities, New York City’s collectivity can be fragmented. The queer literary scene in Seattle, for example, is teeny tiny, and everybody knows everybody, and thus we have to rally around each other and go to each other’s shows and be kind and embracing, because there are only so many of us. Seattle has an extra fabulous queer monthly reading series and open mic, the Seattle Spit at the Wildrose, Seattle’s only dyke bar, and I cut my performing teeth there, attending every month and wishing I was brave enough to read my own things until finally I did.
When I moved to New York City I wondered why there wasn’t an equivalent. Perhaps the communities and scenes here are just too large to sustain any single reading series, we need multiple perspectives, we need lots of different styles, lots of different reading series coordinators who all have different circles within the queer and literary worlds.
Kathleen is a playwright, for example, and there’s such a large play and drama world here in New York City that is very queer and literary, but since I don’t tend to run in those circles myself, I often don’t know of the writers who are on the Drunken! Careening! Writers! roster. But they are always a best of the best, skimmed off the top, extremely talented bunch, and I certainly trust Kathleen’s own literary discernment.
Shelly Mars’s new series the Bulldyke Chronicles is quite the phenomenon, if you haven’t attended yet—comedians, performance artists, and storytellers are primarily in her circles, and she has pulled some amazing folks out of the woodwork to come share where they’ve been and how they see the world. Her performers by and large are not folks that I know, but they are amazing and I’m so glad they’ve been brought together in a forum where I get to see them perform.
It’s amazing how many subtly different queer literary scenes there can be in one place. It still amazes me that a city can hold so many different worlds, so many different circles which do overlap, though sometimes only touch. After four and a half years in New York City, I think I’ve finally made enough contacts in many of the different circles that I could help to pull together some amazing artists, to encourage the lifting of their voices high.
And so, the lovely and talented Cheryl B. and I have teamed up to start SIDESHOW!: The Queer Literary Carnival, which will be spoken word, poetry, storytelling, comedy, and performances of all kinds. It is “serious literature for ridiculous times by freaks, jokesters, and outlaws,” as our tagline boasts. We are booking seasoned performers whose work explores what it’s like to embody and move through the world with marginalized identities, be it sexual or gender or something else entirely. This one particular series is explicitly queer, specifically to encourage the expression of that weird, freaky, perverted, marginalized, queer point of view.
Cheryl has run series in the past, most recently she was the producer at the Poetry Vs Comedy Variety Hour, which started at Galapagos and moved to the Bowery Poetry Club. It was a blast—and I don’t just say that because I was the first poet ever to win the two rounds, or because I won twice. It was so much fun to attend, the judges were always just as fun as the poets and the comics, and of course all the participants went home with a prize, because winning was not the point, and we’re all losers anyway.
When we ran into each other at a holiday party last year, I mentioned that I’d been kicking around the idea of coordinating a reading series, and she said she would love to co-produce and co-host. Since Cheryl has much more expeirence than I do at hosting a reading series, and since she’s a damn fine poet, I immediately thought this was a wonderful idea, and we got into the nitty-gritty planning details in the new year. We secured a home at The Phoenix (thanks to Charlie Vasquez, who I previously mentioned as running the Panic series at one of my favorite queer watering holes, Nowhere Bar), and we booked an amazing first show.
To add some cohesion to the show, we’re going to have monthly themes, and the very first SIDESHOW kicks off in April on Tuesday the 13th. April’s theme is SECRETS, starring Kate Bornstein, Sam J. Miller, Seth Clark Silberman aka PhDJ, and Kathleen Warnock.
Did you see that part where I slipped in that Kate fraking Bornstein is going to be reading at the kickoff of the series? Like it is all casual and not a big deal? Except that I’ve been reading her books for the last ten years, and she’s such a major pioneer not only in gender work but in queer memoir, and the re-valuing of queer lives and experiences in general.
Kathleen Warnock, too, I’m thrilled to have in the line-up; I mentioned earlier that she runs the reading series at KGB Bar, but she is also the new series editor for Best Lesbian Erotica, put out annually by Cleis Press. I’ve admired her work since I first heard it when I moved to New York City and began attending her series, particularly for the extra-special holiday celebration in December that always includes Best Lesbian Erotica writers reading their own work.
Sam and I met because he’s in the brother series, Best Gay Erotica, and we read together at a joint reading a few years ago, and my best memory of PhDJ is his story about getting an apartment through the power of The Secret. Hey, when the shoe fits, you may as well wear it!
Since April is my birthday month, I’m telling friends there’s no need for gifts or a party, just come to Sideshow on April 13th at The Phoenix. I’ll be there from 7pm on, taking photos, kissing Kristen, and trying not to drink too many Jamesons on ice. Can’t wait to hear what everyone has to read, and how this gathering of queers might bring us together in an open, supportive environment.
See you there, New York.
So What’s Next?: McMillen’s Fake Prom
While I was kind of slow to follow the story, mostly because I thought, okay, wrong-doing that has made national news, clearly everybody else is going to jump in and take care of this and I don’t really have to, I’m kind of outraged by the recent update on Constance McMillan’s fight to go to her high school prom. She was told there was a prom, showed up with her date, where there were only 7 students, and some faculty and teachers. The location and time of the “real” prom, privately held, was kept from her.
You’ve probably already heard this. Jesse James had a nice post on it, Dorothy Snarker posted something too.
I can kind of comprehend that that happened. I mean we’re talking about a school district, a small town, a state, which denied her access to the prom in the first place because of her sexuality and gender expression (with her request to wear a tux). I am not too surprised that they would hold another prom, that students—her peers and classmates and (supposedly?) friends—and parents would deliberately deny her access.
What I can’t comprehend is the shock of it all. Because when something like this happens, the experience of realizing reality isn’t quite what you expected it to be is what is shocking.
She won her court case. She was told there would be a (private) prom she could attend. She walked in, expecting that to be the case (at least, from what I can tell in the statements released so far, she expected that), only to find that she had been cast out, ostracized, again. That is such a shock for a person to sustain.
It’s like losing your job or having someone break up with you—you might think, yeah, we weren’t really that good together, but just the act of NOT SEEING IT COMING can make you feel nutso, and that reality somehow didn’t line up with your expectations is enough to make you lose your mind, just for a few minutes. But the recovery from that momentary loss can really be difficult. Because hey, if you didn’t see THAT coming, what else won’t you see coming? What else is going to just blindside you completely unexpectedly? And of course there’s no way to prepare for that kind of thing, but the mind doesn’t really comprehend that, only that if it happened once, we can learn from it, and prepare, in case it does happen again.
Here’s my question, now, though: what the hell can we do about this? What is the piece of adequate activism here? My first thought is that they MUST be doing something illegal, they must be crossing some line or committing some act of discrimination, because HELLO, they so clearly are.
But they threw a “prom.” Teachers and school administrators showed up at it, so it was a “real” event. That all the other students went somewhere else doesn’t have any legal ramification, somehow, right?
Because it is TOTALLY LEGAL to hold a separate prom. It is totally legal for people to hold private parties and not invite certain people, regardless of whether it is due to their gender identity, sexual orientation, race or ethnicity, or if you just simply don’t like that person. This is, in my understanding, how many of the segregated proms still exist and operate in the South: because they are private. And of course these events are products of a culture that makes it normal to have a segregated prom.
Okay, so: if the students were all making a fuss about this, if the students were saying, “we don’t want two proms, of COURSE this really outta-sight gay lady is included, we all want to go to the same prom, yay differences!” then perhaps we would have one prom, yeah? But the students aren’t really going to do that when it is their parents who are throwing the separate prom in the first place. The kids of those parents are probably elite, privileged, and have, to some degree or another, grown up with discrimination in the water, in the air they breathe. They are probably not very likely to stand up and support Constance.
So what next?
No I mean really, what the hell can we do about this, given that technically, TECHNICALLY, somehow, even though it is so fucking obvious that it is blatant discrimination here, technically it seems to me that they have done nothing wrong. Technically they “threw” a “prom” and invited McMillen, and therefore did what they were told. And given that the students are blaming McMillen (I have heard about that terrible Facebook group, blaming her for ruining their “best high school memories,” nevermind that a) those for whom prom is their “best high school memory” are those who are the ones running the school, in a privileged, elite, and often very hierarchical system that discriminates and puts down others, and b) usually, those for whom prom is the best thing that ever happened to them end up stuck in their own home town, with kids and mortgages and dead-end jobs instead of attending colleges. Not always, of course, but often), they are not going to stand up for her.
So what next? How does the queer community rally around her? This is the time when Kristen and others I’ve been talking to all say, Constance, GET OUT. Leave your teeny little narrow-minded town, like we all did, come to the liberal havens, come to the gay meccas, come find your people. You got handed a nice fat check on the Ellen show and now can go to college wherever you want. Or you could harness this opportunity and make a documentary out of your hardship and ride on this ten minutes of fame all the way to a job in the gay-for-pay queer nonprofit world.
If I had her address I would say that we should all send loving letters of support, signed, your queer family, the one that awaits you and already embraces you. And while it might be comforting to Constance to know that there are people who support her, what about the other students (who will be voting adults soon enough), what about their parents, what about the school officials, what about the school board? What about the town who is blaming her for such an OUTRAGEOUS attempt at doing something like dancing with her loved one at a school dance oh mah gawd what is she thinking!
Is there anything anyone can do about the homophobia that is so clearly deeply embedded in them all already? Aren’t there more options than her just up and leaving?
This is where the question of education comes in. How on earth can one—or, more accurately, can this movement of queer activism—possibly continue to chip away at bigotry and hatred and homophobia? Is it actually possible to reach people, to help change their minds?
Generally, activists say no. Activists aim at that same populace as politicians: the Movable Middle, who could kind of be swayed either way, depending on the day or what they had for breakfast or what was on Oprah yesterday.
Thus this is the part where I vow to continue to do the kind of activism I do, and where I continue to encourage the kind of activism you do, in whatever way you participate in the queer community, even if it’s just by being out and keeping your private life private. Perhaps especially then. Perhaps it really will trickle down, that the general culture will disgrace and shame homophobia such that, at least, it can no longer be done openly, and there will be consequences.
On the good days, I believe we’re already there, or at least got quite a good map and we’re in a nice easy stretch of open road. But on days like this, with news like this, my jaw just drops a little, and I wonder what can we do? What can I do?
Nothing Says Happy Birthday Like Bondage
“Stilettos, bondage tape, and a willing victim always make a fun birthday …”
Thank you!
April’s Pin-Up Giveaway
It’s April again, and you already know that means it’s my birthday, and Sugarbutch’s blogiversary. But did you also know that this year, I am the April pin-up in the 2010 Sex Blogger Calendar?
Me, my photo in this year’s calendar with Audacia Ray (photographed by Amanda Morgan), and Kristen at the Sex Blogger Calendar Party, November 2009. Photo by Nick McGlynn
I wrote about the process behind the photo and what Dacia and I had in mind when we started planning our own “vision of sexual freedom.” I still don’t have a good digital version of the photo by itself, but this shot of me holding the calendar will have to do.
Tess and Diva have graciously let me give away FIVE of these lovely calendars to celebrate my pin-up month. Want one? Leave a comment with a link to your favorite pin-up photo, or just one that you really like, or your favorite pin-up photo model or photographer (Marilyn Monroe? Dita von Teese? Hilda? Gil Elvgren? Les Toil?). Don’t worry if you don’t have one—it’s not very hard to Google pin-up photos and waste some time looking through for one you like.
Since you’ll show me yours, here are some of mine: photos tagged “pinup” from my mrsexsmith.tumblr.com log. Not my all-time favorites, but some of the notable ones from the last year or so of tumblr. Maybe I’ll spend some time adding some of my favorites!
There are not very many calendars left, but I bet if you run over to the Waking Vixen store you can still order one.
Here’s why you want one: you’ll be told of your favorite sex blogger’s birthdays and blogiversaries, you’ll get special discount codes from the fabulous sex toy companies who sponsored the calendar, you’ll get to stare at some gorgeous sex blogger’s pretty faces all year round, and, of course, you’ll be supporting Sex Work Awareness with your money.
Five winners of the New York City Sex Blogger 2010 Calendar will be chosen at random Friday morning, April 9th.
Easter Finest
Green-eyed Grrrl says: “I was at my parent’s house, washing dishes after Easter dinner and I thought, “4 inch heels (they may be higher, I’d need to borrow your arm to be sure ;), my Easter finest and an apron, that’s kinda sexy.”
Hell yeah!
The Seal Says Happy Birthday
We al
l know who this is, right? Jesse James‘s dawg The Seal (who is on Twitter, @justliketheseal) who probably had some help in borrowing Violet’s shoes. Jesse said, “You don’t have to post this one!” but hel-LO, like I wouldn’t. It is awesome.
The Seal says: “You is a good dyke. Please bring more rubber chickens in your suitcase next time you come visit.”
On the Lawn
Red ribbon heels from violetwhite, who has another shot over at her own site (and who submitted something last year too). Gorgeous!
Ribbons
Now that’s what I’m talking about.
Thanks Frances!
Italian Boots
Boots from an Italian femme who is visiting New York City soon. Got any recommendations for where she absolutely must visit and what she absolutely must see while she’s here?
The Sugarbutch Birthday Tradition
April 3rd is my birthday, I’m turning 31 tomorrow. I love being in my thirties (fuck those who-am-I finding-myself-bullshit twenties, I’m so ready to be solidly where I’m at). April is also Sugarbutch’s birthday month, I started this site 4 years ago on the 29th. Will have a giveaway or something exciting later this month for that.
Did you flip your 2010 Sex Blogger Calendar to my pinup photo with Audacia Ray yet? I bet there are still calendars to purchase, if you don’t have one yet. WORTH IT, if not only for the blogiversaries and birthdays of your favorite sex bloggers and the sexy photos, then for the discount codes to the best of the best online sex shops!
And those of you who have been following for a while will remember: in the past few years, I have requested for you to send in photos of your most fabulous shoes as a birthday card, if you feel so inspired. “Your most fabulous shoes” can mean anything, the ribbons-around-the-ankles are not required (though oh so hot, gahh). I am really quite partial to the ones that lace up and tie and wrap around, probably it’s a bondage related thing, I’m not quite sure why they are SO DAMN HOT but they just are. Strappy sandals are also awesome. The smaller and more delicate, the better. Mmmmmm.
J. from Toronto, one of my favorites from last year.
Missy, my favorite from 2008.
Oh, and don’t forget the birthday coloring page from Illustrocity!
I’ll post my favorites, with your permission of course. (If you prefer I don’t post them, please let me know.) Send them to 
or post them on your own blog and leave a comment, so I can be sure to see them & link!
Kristen and I have some birthday plans this weekend, including New York City’s best bloody mary, swing dancing, some small birthday adventures, and drinks with friends. I did have daydreams of getting 30 blowjobs for my 30th birthday, last year, but that didn’t really happen. I should come up with something fun I can request from her this year, though I’m not quite sure what it will be (she does so much for me already!). Suggestions?
Update! Sideshow Reading Series has a NEW VENUE
I won’t explain why Sideshow Reading Series now has a new venue, and it doesn’t really matter. Cheryl B. and I are kicking off a reading series on April 13th in New York City, and YOU should be there!
My birthday’s coming up, too (yes I am an Aries), so I am asking friends and family to attend in order to celebrate my 31st year around the sun. Come join us!
Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival
Hosted by Cheryl B. & Sinclair Sexsmith
Premiere Event April 13 @ The Phoenix
447 East 13th Street at Avenue A,
East Village, New York City
Doors, 7pm. Reading, 8pm. FREE!
RSVP on Facebook!
Follow us on Twitter! @sideshowseries
This month’s theme is SECRETS, starring:
Kate Bornstein
Sam J. Miller
Seth Clark Silberman aka PhDJ
Kathleen Warnock
Is That 6″ On Your Arm, Or Are You Just … ?
It arrived! My “Prom Is So Gay” tee shirt from Just Like Jesse James. I feel a little weird wearing it, I feel the need to explain the use of “gay” pejoratively around people I don’t know especially. But I did wear it to The Bulldyke Chronicles (and pimp it when I read a quick poem), and it seemed like the audience understood that it is a reference to Candace McMillan.
And while I’m taking photographs, here’s a shot that caught my new tattoo in it too. It’s a 6″ ruler, positioned 2″ from my palm which means I can measure things to 8″ when I place my palm flat against something. I’ve been thinking about this one for a long time (it even made an appearance in a poem from last year, which was one of three I read at Bulldyke Chronicles).
It’s actually a lot straighter than how it appears in this photo. One could even say it’s the straightest thing about me (ha ha). It is, as I’ve been calling it, an artist’s rendition of a ruler, so it’s not 100% accurate or straight, but it is damn close. Close enough for anything I’d need to measure, certainly. I don’t need to count the picas.
There are a lot of layers of meaning to this, not the least of which is that I’m a graphic designer. Any other guesses as to what it just possibly might symbolize?
Giveaway Winners! Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch Femme Erotica
Comments and entries to win Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch Femme Erotica edited by Tristan Taormino are now closed! The winners are:
bifemmefatale, whose favorite erotica “of all time is Pat Califia’s “Macho Sluts”. It’s female-centric but includes men as well, it’s unabashedly kinky, the Tops are racially diverse, butch and femme, and there’s a wide variety of styles of kink. … The only problem I have with the book is that it raised my expectations too high—I have yet to meet a real-life Top quite as hot as those in its pages!”
And the second copy goes to Irene, who said “I want this book so bad I can’t even think of a coherent comment.”
Will be emailing you both individually, and sending it out to you within a week or so.
And I hope those of you who didn’t win will check out this book, and pick it up! More details about the book here, or order it on Amazon, or from your local feminist queer indy bookstore.
Here’s the screenshot from Random.org:
Review: Sugar High Glitter City (VOD)
I know, I know: I already reviewed Sugar High Glitter City! What am I doing mentioning it again?
Well, it’s worth mentioning twice. Because holy crap, Shar and Jackie. Swoon. I wish they would make some more porn.
But also, Hot Movies 4 Her (which powers the video-on-demand Sugarbutch queer porn affiliate site) JUST added Sugar High Glitter City to their repertoire. Lucky you! That means you can buy some minutes, check out each of the scenes, and only pay for the minutes you watch—so instead of making the DVD $30 investment (or whatever it is, jeez porn is expensive) you can watch the first few minutes (or the middle few minutes) of each scene and decide whether it’s worth it to see the whole scene. Or fast forward when you’re not into it.
Here’s the HM4H writeup about the porn:
Sugar High Glitter City
Studio: S.I.R. Productions Directors: Jackie Strano & Shar RednourIt’s the future. Sugar is outlawed. Cane-addicted dykes stop at nothing to get it – even selling their own bodies! The dynamic dyke team of SIR Video slams the dykespoitation genre into fast-forward with this sticky-fingered belly-crawl through Glitter City’s underworld of sugar-pimps and sandy hos. Fabulously diverse cast and multiple dyke sexualities crunch to the center in this fast-paced futuristic farce. Urban-encrusted glam, gutter-glitter lust, and candy-coated sleaze.
And if you click on over to the VOD site you’ll see some of the photos from each of the scenes, too. That first scene—the threesome with two butches and a femme, where Jackie is talking dirty the whole time? Holy crap I love that one. I think I studied it about eight or so years ago when I had a VHS copy of it in order to learn how to talk that way. She’s one of the best dirty talkers in porn I’ve ever seen.
Actually, speaking of dirty talk, S.I.R. Productions also has a “Talk Dirty To Me” film, which I’ve still never seen, but that I hear HM4H will be adding to their collection in the near future. Will most certainly watch that as soon as I can, and report back to y’all how it is.
Sugarbutch + The Stockroom = <3
… or whatever the text symbol is for “kinky fun awesomeness.”
Clipped from: sugarbutch.stockroom.com by clp.ly
Expect reviews from The Stockroom to come soon. Paddles, leather things, cuffs, hopefully one of those shoulder spreader bars like they featured in the film Secretary (those are hard to find!). I’ve got all kinds of things on my wishlist.
Mr. Sexsmith’s Other Girlfriend: Prom Is So Gay
My latest column from Sex Is discusses the lesbian prom scandal concerning Constance McMillan. If you haven’t been following, Jesse James has been keeping up with it from quite a few bad ass angles.
Clipped from: www.edenfantasys.com by clp.ly
Jesse even made “prom is so gay” tee shirts, which are now available at Cafepress. I’m still waiting for mine (pink letters on black) but will certainly model when I get it.
eLust #10: Weekly Sexblog Roundup
Welcome to e[lust] – The 10th edition! Your source for sexual intelligence and inspirations of lust from the smartest & sexiest bloggers! Whether you’re looking for hot steamy smut, thought-provoking opinions or expert information, you’re going to find it here. Want to be included in e[lust] #11? Start with the rules, check out the schedule in the site’s sidebar and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!
This Week’s Top Three Posts
Negotiation – Not Nearly As Awkward As Having a Breakdown in Public – All the worries about getting to know a new person (“Am I dressed ok? Are they gonna like my stories about my grandma?”) get exaggerated when you’re talking about sex and desire…
Dollar Store Domme – He definitely can’t elude the dollops of toothpaste I dab onto his nipples. It takes a delicious second before he feels the cool burn penetrate his flesh. By that time I’m already up and selecting a plastic spatula from the credenza.
The Best of Both Worlds or Lost in Limbo? – Whether intentional or unthinking, bisexual denial is a frustrating thing for bisexual, pansexual or ‘fluid’ people to have to deal with.
e[lust] Editress
Navigating Genderqueer in Suburbia – But pray tell how do the rest of us navigate it? How the hell am I supposed to know if you identify as male or just like dressing like one?
Featured Post (Lilly’s Pick)
The Daddy Issue: Sexualizing Abuse – I needed to walk through this fear, and turn it into pleasure. I needed to prove to myself that he hadn’t broken me. That he hadn’t changed who I was to become. That I was not affected by what he did. That he didn’t abuse me.
See also: Pleasurists #69 and #70 for all your sex toy review needs.
All blogs that have a submission in this edition must re-post this digest from tip-to-toe on their blogs within 7 days. Re-posting the photo is optional and the use of the “read more…” tag is allowable after this point. Thank you, and enjoy! Continue reading →
Giveaway! Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch Femme Erotica
Thanks to Cleis Press and Tristan Taormino, I’ve got TWO copies of the lovely new erotica anthology called Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch Femme Erotica edited by Tristan Taormino (in which I have a short story). More details about the book when I mentioned it a few weeks ago here.
Shall I mail you a copy of it? Just comment on this post and let me know what your favorite written erotica anthology is, or your favorite erotica writer, or that one erotica story that you always get out when you want to get your blood going. Bonus points if you describe what it is you love about the story. Or comment that you’ve never read erotica, or that you kind of hate it … or something else entirely, the point is just that you comment. I’ll pick two comments at random and notify you by email.
If you’re outside of the US, that’s fine, but I might ask you to kick me a few bucks for shipping. You just have to include a valid email address to enter.
Winners will be picked Friday morning, March 26th.
Introducing Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival
You may have heard me mention the queer reading series that Cheryl B. and I are starting in New York City. Well, it’s official—it’s starting April 13th at 7pm at Sapphire Lounge in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival
Hosted by Cheryl B. & Sinclair Sexsmith
Premiere Event April 13 @ The Phoenix
447 East 13th Street at Avenue A, NYC
Doors, 7pm. Reading, 8pm.
Free! $4 beer/well drinks special
RSVP on Facebook!
Follow us on Twitter! @sideshowseries
This month’s theme is SECRETS, starring:
Kate Bornstein
Sam J. Miller
Seth Clark Silberman aka PhDJ
Kathleen Warnock
Continue reading →
Books That Changed My Life
Back when Sugarbutch was a little baby new blog (did you know it will turn 4 in April?!), I used to write a Sunday Scribblings prompt often. This week’s prompt was “the book that changed everything” and I already happened to have a halfway done list in my drafts, so I figured I’d go back to it and finish it up.
It was going to be a “new year, new you” type of post, which gives away that I started it in January, and which kind of explains the self-help-y list. But of course I couldn’t make a list and show it off here without adding some of my favorite sex books, too!
But first, the stuff to enhance your renaissance-man (regardless of gender!) fabulous self. In alphabetical order:
- The Art of Civilized Conversation: A Guide to Expressing Yourself With Style and Grace by Margaret Shepherd. Excellent for dating, deepening relationships with people you already know and like, and generally elevating the discussion around you. I especially remember the part about how conversations between two people should start with facts, move to opinions, and then and only then should you discuss emotions.
- How to Cook Everything (Vegetarian) by Mark Bittman. Whether or not you know how to cook, this is a fantastic resource. I got a copy of the vegetarian version over the holidays. Though Bittman isn’t famous for his desserts (pastries aren’t really his strong point, or, let’s be honest, so says Kristen) he has a little bit of everything in here and chances are, it’ll be a great starting point, if not an excellent recipe. Lots of great tips for technique, too.
- The Modern Gentleman: A Guide to Essential Manners, Savvy and Vice by Phineas Mollod and Jason Tesauro. I have dreams of writing a butch equivalent, but shh that’s a secret. This contains excellent thoughts about conducting oneself socially, manners, conversation, style, how to tie ties, how to order drinks, how to be suave on a date, all sorts of things that a gentleman would want to know. Not impressed with the sex part (cheesy!) but hey you can’t win ’em all. Along with Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Style, this is one of the books about masculinity that I recommend most.
- The Power of Less: The 6 Essential Productivity Principles That Will Change Your Life by Leo Babauta. You probably already read Zen Habits, so you know Babauta’s style and simplicity. This book is a lovely collection of philosophies on productivity, minimalism, moving on, getting shit done, and focusing on what you really want to do. Along with The Four-Hour Work Week, this really changed my attitude about my time (a non-renewable resource!) and how I make decisions.
- There Is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self-Hate by Cheri Huber. Huber is a buddhist monk, founded two zen monasteries in California, has written about twenty books, and travels widely. I found her writing when I was in high school and have been reading and re-reading ever since. It’s kind of self-help-y, yes, but there’s a lot of spirituality, philosophy, and psychology in it too, which the best self-help books contain. She has many other titles that I’d also recommend, The Depression Book: Depression as an Opportunity for Spiritual Growth literally changed my life when I first read it, and Be the Person You Want To Find: Relationships and Self-Discovery is a great book for those of us seeking long-term valuable love relationships. Speaking of love relationships, I can’t not mention If the Buddha Dated and If the Buddha Married by Charlotte Kasl. Both were very life-changing and eye-opening to my own patterns and tendencies, and very useful. Kasl is a buddhist quaker feminist psychotherapist, and her perspective is so full of lovingkindness and sweetness and understanding that you can’t not be drawn in, only to learn about yourself and your tendencies. Though it’s pretty hetero-focused in its example couples, I tend to change the pronouns (or pretend it’s a butch going by him/her and a femme). Kristen and I have been reading through it aloud and discussing it, which can be intense but has been great.
And because I can’t make a book list without having sex books on it:
- Moregasm: Babeland’s Guide to Mind-Blowing Sex by Rachel Venning and Claire Cavanah, founders of Babeland. I’ve already mentioned this book on Sugarbutch recently, but it’s worth mentioning again. Modern, fun, wide-ranging, inclusive, sexy, kinky, open, welcoming. And the design is just so damn cute. If I had coffee table books, this would be one of them.
- The Topping Book and The Bottoming Book by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy. I recommend these books constantly to folks who want to get more involved in power play or topping and bottoming roles in their sex lives. So many of my philosophies come from these books, and they are incredibly full of useful tips and ideas about aftercare, safewords, top drop, negotiations.
- Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century by Barbara Carrellas. Tantra books are usually way too cheesy for me to even get through, and I have some experience with tantra. But this one is different. Carrellas (@urbantantrika) is as grounded as she is woo-woo, as queer and kinky as she is accessible and open. If you’ve always been curious about tantra, this is a great place to start.
- Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships by Tristan Taormino. There are very few smart books written about polyamory and open relationships (The Ethical Slut, now in a new edition, by the authors of the Topping/Bottoming Books, being the classic cannon), and this is the most recent. I’ve admired Taormino’s work for a long time, since her sex column at the Village Voice (collected into a book called True Lust), and she’s done some pretty amazing things in mainstream porn since then. I love that she’s bringing and underground queer feminist perspective to the things she’s doing, it makes her work even more complex and fantastic. Her most recent book (aside from Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch/Femme Erotica!) is The Big Book of Sex Toys, which I don’t have my hands on yet but will be reporting all about when I do.
- Exhibitionism For the Shy: Show Off, Dress Up and Talk Hot! by Carol Queen. The Amazon description says “[e]xhibitionism as a consensual erotic pleasure and a means to overcome shyness and body image issues” and I LOVE that idea! I’m not actually sure where my copy of this has escaped to, perhaps I lost it in a break-up, but there’s a relatively new edition from 2009 that I should get my hands on regardless. Want to feel more sexy, show off, but feel self-conscious? Pick up this book. In case you don’t already know Carol Queen, she’s the owner of the Good Vibrations toy shops and director of The Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco. She also wrote one of my favorite erotica books, The Leather Daddy and the Femme.
Whew! Okay, that should keep you busy for the next few months, hm? I hope at least one of these is interesting and might enhance your life in some way. Books can be so magical like that.
I’ve included the links to Amazon, and while if you click through those links I do get a teeny tiny kickback from your purchases, I still encourage you to visit your local independent bookstore and support them by ordering these books through them. If you want them to be around next year, that means spending your money in their shop. I know they aren’t as cheap as Amazon, and probably not quite as convenient, but you’ll miss them when they’re gone. Or at least, I will. A lot.
So? What books changed YOUR life?
Oh, Hi
I tossed up a couple things yesterday without really giving a proper hello on my return from SXSW and Austin, Texas. Hello!
My (metaphorical) account of the weekend and what I think of Austin and such is up today on my Sex Is column, Mr. Sexsmith’s Other Girlfriend, titled Mr. Sexsmith Goes To SXSW and Takes a Lover.
The Engaging the Queer Community panel at SXSW and the Oil Can Harry’s meet-up were a big success. I hear the panel was videotaped, hopefully the video will be available online sometime soon, I’ll certainly let you know where you can find it.
But meanwhile, there’s some other media and interviews with me floating around the web and new this week:
- The Feministing Five: Sinclair Sexsmith: “Sinclair Sexmith is a sex blogger who writes the Sugarbutch Chronicles: The Sex, Gender and Relationship Adventures of a Kinky Queer Butch Top. She’s been blogging about sex and gender for several years now, and at Sugarbutch she blogs about everything from getting past old heartbreaks to sex with her current girlfriend to her own evolving masculine identity. When I asked her about how she manages writing for a public audience about such private things, she said, “the sex is actually easier to write about than the emotional complications.” When I asked if she adheres to any ground rules for she discloses about her sex life, she said “there are no hard and fast rules,” at which point I giggled, revealing myself to be twenty-two going on twelve.”
- Feast of Fun Podcast: Butching it Up with Sinclair Sexsmith: “For gay, lesbian, bi and trans folks telling our stories is vital to our personal growth. The internet creates a safe space for people to discover the sexier side of themselves by reflecting on their experiences with others. Today we continue our series of interviews with well known bloggers who know how make it happen. We have kinky writer, queer butch top, Sinclair Sexsmith of the Sugarbutch Chronicles. Listen as we chat with Sinclair about her journey writing erotica, coming out in your blog and New York City’s Lesbian Sex Mafia!”
- Queerty: How Can We Shift the Focus of Queer Media From Homophobes and Lady Gaga To Actual LGBTs? – Video interviews with all the SXSW queer panelists. “Looking around the SXSW Interactive’s first-ever LGBT panel, “Engaging the Queer Community”, I saw a shrunken pink-haired woman wearing steel-toed platform boots and green stockings walking past a large-nosed horn rimmed kid with horse teeth and acne scars, and I realized that even though we’re all adults now, we very much remain the theater fags and lunch geeks we were in high school—conflicted and sightly scared people looking for a voice. But why then are our personal stories so often trumped by the like of homophobic senators and, bless her, Lady Gaga?”
I kind of miss Austin already. I swear I felt my anxiety and stress level raise to ORANGE ALERT as soon as a woke up the morning after my return to New York City. Hard not to be reminded that there are easier places to live.
Spanking 101
Someone emailed me recently with a question about starting to play with spanking, and after looking around online for a bit, I didn’t find much, so I jotted down my basic thoughts on the subject.
Here’s the question:
I was wondering if you know of any good resources for spanking. I have a friend who wants to get spanked and I said that if he wanted to, I would do it. Any tips? Handouts? Diagrams?
Babeland has a decent How To Spank article, so that’s worth a read. And there’s Rachel Kramer Bussel’s collection of erotica stories called Spanked and the corresponding Spanked blog.
This is what else comes to my mind:
- Where to spank: Spank the fleshy parts of the ass & thighs, make sure to avoid the parts that are bonier like the little triangle coccyx bone right above the butt crack, the spine, or the kidneys. Basically, steer clear of the low back. Some people like to have sensation on the upper back and shoulder blades (though that perhaps is for later)
- Start light: Start light with pats rather that swats or hits, jiggle the flesh even, warm it up, gradually increase pressure. Generally when I start I go light and fast, then work up to the big hits later, with full big arm strength, taking pauses and breaks between to press my body close, run my palms along the flesh to sooth it, and whisper sweet things
- Hand vs Ass: So much of the pain is psychological, not about actual damage. It can hurt, but there are hundreds of teeny bones in the hand, and compared the big pelvis and femurs down there by the ass & thighs, the hand will get harmed way before it could do any real damage to those bones. Which is not to say you can’t bruise—you can—but that’s not the kind of damage I mean. Be sure to be reassuring vocally (or with pleasurable touches) as you’re getting heavier, and warm up slowly
- Spanking to Sex: I tend to start spanking closer & closer to the genitals toward the end, working in some fingering in between spanks. That can be a nice way to segue from the spanking back to the sex play, and also when someone is turned on they can take a whole lot more sensation, so I tend to be able to hit harder then
- Positions: Try a couple different positions: leaning over a bed with feet on the floor, on all fours, across your lap on the couch, hands high leaning against a wall. People have different preferences when both giving & receiving, so try out a few different things
- Toys: My hand usually gives out before her ass does. Consider a little paddle maybe like this one, you can go for longer. ones that are flat and wide tend to be “thuddy” and ones that are thin tend to be “stingy”—usually people prefer thuddy ones, especially if they aren’t so experienced. Same rules apply for paddles
Readers, help me out here. Anything else? Any tips and tricks for taking or giving a spanking? Do you know of any online beginning spanking resources that I’m missing? How did you get into spanking? What’s your favorite way to get spanked? What are your favorite toys to get spanked with? Leave it in the comments!
Lambda Literary Nominees Featuring “This One’s Going to Last Forever”
The Lambda Literary Award nominees were announced today, and as usual I’m making a checklist of ones I’ve read, ones I’d like to read, and the ones I think will win be finalists. And, as usual, the only transgender content is in the specific “Transgender” category, though the “Bisexual” category has split into fiction and non-fiction because, it seems, there are finally enough nominees to warrant it. Are there really that few books on trans and bisexual issues? Puzzling. Overall this year, there are 112 finalists in 23 categories. I’m sure there’s got to be a book or two or five in there that you’d love to read. Check it out.
Special congratulations to Nairne Holtz, whose book This One’s Going to Last Forever (Insomniac Press) was nominated in the Lesbian Fiction category. Holtz has a short story called “Bait and Switch” in Best Lesbian Erotica 2009, an anthology in which I also have a story, and when we were both in New York City at the end of 2009 for the annual Best Lesbian Erotica reading at the Drunken! Careening! Writers! reading series at KGB bar, hosted by Kathleen Warnock (who is coming to read at the very first Sideshow!), and I have had a chance to read This One’s Going to Last Forever. It is a collection of short stories and a novella. Here’s the description:
This One’s Going to Last Forever reflects both the naive optimism of those who have yet to learn about love and the cynicism of those who feel that by now they should know better.
Clara, a university student working at the McGill Daily, discovers that in love and politics, commitment is often more imagined than real. Kelly and Sonya share a bond that has less to do with love than with their dependence on each other and a succession of friends who supply them with heroin. A middle-aged man who performs drive-through weddings dressed as Elvis realizes, as he marries his first same-sex couple, that the only domestic partner he is ever likely to have is his ailing father. But when he ends his latest relationship, an unlikely friendship results.
The characters in these darkly comic stories and novella may be searching for love in all the wrong places, but they are also able to find love in the most unexpected places.
The Lambda Literary Foundation recently relaunched their website and it’s quite spiffy, by the way.
Countdown to SXSW: Tomorrow!
I’ve been so damn busy this week, I haven’t even had time to post about this weekend’s exciting festivities!
Kristen and I are heading down to SXSW for a few days of the Interactive schedule. I’m on a panel on Saturday, Engaging the Queer Community, along with Trish Bendix of AfterEllen.com, Bil Browning of Bilerico, and Fausto Fernos of Feast of Fun.
Engaging The Queer Community
Saturday, March 13
at 03:30 PM
A discussion on maintaining successful and active blogs and social networking sites that are geared toward the LGBT community and its niches.
Presenters:
Trish Bendix – MTV/AfterEllen.com
Bil Browning – Bilerico Project
Fausto Fernos – Feast of Fun (moderator)
Sinclair Sexsmith – Sugarbutch Chronicles
There’s also a SXSW Homo site which apparently is keeping track of the queer events during the festival.
Kristen & I are crashing with an online friend (whose Twitter handle I can’t currently find) and we’ve been gathering Austin restaurants and mini-adventures to explore while we’re there.
And don’t forget!
SXSW Queer Blogger Tweetup
Sunday, March 14 at 9pm
OilCan Harry’s
211 West 4th Street (walking distance from the conference)
Austin, Texas
- Live tweetup using hashtag #sxswgay
- Free wifi available
- Your favorite viral videos from 2009 playing on the bar’s TVs
- T-shirt and merchandise giveaways
- Free* drinks to all SXSW attendees and people who follow Oil Can Harry’s on twitter @oilcanharrys or show their SXSW pass.
* The rumor is that because of Texas liquor laws, you can’t ask for “free” drinks, you’ve got to ask for “the hookup” and provide proof that you are following @oilcanharrys on Twitter, if you don’t have a SXSW badge, by either showing your smartphone or by a printout.
So! Who’s coming? Who will I see tomorrow or Sunday? Seems like it’s going to be a bit of a boy’s club, please assure me that the femmes and genderqueers and butches and trans folks and radicals will be joining me too!
Radical Masculinity: Reinventing Our Icons
“Have you seen the Dockers ads?” someone asked me recently at a conference, after I told them I write about masculinity. “A friend told me he liked those ads, because he is so unsure of what it means to ‘be a man’ right now. Everything has changed. There are no icons pointing men where to go, what to be like.”
I hear this frequently, and I have asked myself this often, too, in my own personal identity development process of coming to a female masculinity as butch. Where are the feminist men? Where are the radical depictions of masculinity? Where are the examples of health and strength and skill and honor that I can admire and emulate? Who can I look to? Who will be a mirror showing me my reflection so that I can push myself in the direction that best fits me? I speak to this when I talk about depictions of healthy relationships in the media, too—where are they? What does that look like? Where are the heterosexual couples with men treating women with respect, value, care? Where is the equality? Where are the conscientious, thoughtful dads?
Things are changing. That is my entire premise of this series of articles on Radical Masculinity: that we are at a precarious time, in transition, finally studying what it means to “be a man” in this culture, much like feminists and gender scholars have been studying femininity and women in the past forty years. Underneath the question of what it means to “be a man,” as queers and butches and trans and genderqueer folks are also asking, is what it means to be masculine. The concepts of masculinity have changed, and is still changing, and while there is no singular meaning (like perhaps the fictional version of the nuclear family and breadwinner in the 1950s), I’m finding that there is no shortage of masculine icons.
Read the whole thing over at my column on Radical Masculinity at Carnal Nation: Reinventing Our Icons.
Review: The Njoy Fun Wand
Let’s have a review, shall we?
I’m way behind on product reviews, I have a list and it kinda just keeps getting longer. I’m moving away from doing reviews, actually, trying to be much more discerning about which sites and which products I take on, especially since I don’t use all that I already have. And of course I’m still taking some products for Babeland, which continues to be one of my favorite toy shops. I’ve probably told my Babeland story a dozen times, but I credit their sex-positivity, queer-friendly staff and products, and endlessly useful workshops with a lot of my own queer sexual awakening. I made a special trip to the Capitol Hill store in Seattle when I moved there in 1999 and, like many first-time visitors, purchased the Dirty Dice before I left. It took me another year or so to actually purchase my first strap-on and attend a spanking workshop, and I’ve been learning from them ever since.
They are such an excellent introduction to the worlds of sex-positivity and sex toys, that is precisely their strength and still something they do better than just about any other queer and feminist toy store, in my opinion. That reminds me—the founders of Babeland, Claire Cavanaugh and Rachel Venning (who are included on the Top Hot Butches list, though I’m told that Clare does not identify as butch, though Rachel does), have a new book out! Moregasm: Babeland’s Guide to Mind-Blowing Sex is out and fantastic. I especially like the design of the book, it’s so much fun to flip through. The graphic design and layout is fantastic, and it’s kind of like the sex ed class that should have been available when you went to college in a book form. The site calls it “a warm, expert, and witty guide to a truly satisfying and exciting sex life. Especially helpful for those at the beginning of their sexual self-discovery, Moregasm combines gorgeous, glossy visuals with real-world advice and the frank, reliable information you’ve come to expect from Babeland.”
On to the toy!
Behold: the Njoy Fun Wand.
I kind of feel like the Njoy toys review themselves. I mean do I even have to say anything about the actual function? I kind of want a fancy stand for it (does anybody make those? Someone should!) so I can display it on my coffee table or on a lighted shelf. It really is as beautiful as it seems.
Babeland says it used to be called the Saturn Wand, which to me seems boyish, maybe because Saturn was a god? It doesn’t seem like the Fun Wand is marketed as an anal toy, but that seems like the best use of it, personally. It’s kind of small.
Look at this photo from Babeland’s site of a hand holding the Fun Wand, you’ll see how small it is. Barely larger than a finger, really. The big difference between the Fun Wand and a finger, of course, aside from the hard stainless steel, is the strong curve and the texture, kind of like anal beads, which are um, awesome.
In the months that I’ve had this toy, after trying it out (both on myself and on Kristen, since it is easily sterilizable for sharing), I haven’t used it much. I’m more inclined to use strap-on cocks, harnesses, and bondage toys when playing with Kristen, and though we have started using some anal plugs of sorts fairly regularly, I am more inclined to use my fingers as a supplement to my strap-on than to get out another toy like this one.
I do tend to bust out the Njoy toys during my own solo masturbation play, though; both this one and the Pure Wand. Partly it might be that it does not have a flared base (and therefore makes it a little bit dangerous to play with anally—things actually can get lost up there you know, unlike the vagina which has nowhere to go. Do NOT insert it all the way and be sure to keep a strong grip on the end), and because I only insert it about halfway, it’s not the most comfortable to use when on your back.
Since this review has been half in photographs, I’m going to give you one more:
To be honest, I’ve lost the photographer of this shot. I think I found it on Tumblr, and my best guess (thanks Dacia) is that it’s a shot by Aeric Meredith-Goujon. All I can remember is that I’m pretty sure it was shot by a guy, and that when I found him on Twitter his icon was one of those make-yourself-a-Mad-Men-character cartoon. Going through Aeric’s daily photo blog, I did come across this shot: Ponderosa also, and the style is similar enough that it’s quite likely that is his photo. If you know for sure, or if you have this sourced somewhere else, please tell me! I want to give proper credit! Photograph is by Melvin Moten, aka mErocrush, reprinted with permission. Model: StephyC, taken August 2009 in Tampa during FetishCon ‘09.
Also, it’s a really fucking hot photo. Add to the list of more amazing ideas of what to do with a Fun Wand.
Njoy Fun Wand photos from njoytoys.com. The Njoy Fun Wand was sent to me from Babeland to review. Buy the Fun Wand and other fabulous sex toys at your local feminist sex-positive queer-friendly shop, or, of course, at Babeland.
How Do I Let Go of a Past Hurt?
After some strong realizations about what really is the strength and foundation of my relationship with Kristen, I’ve been thinking a lot about healing past wounds, especially in terms of former lovers and broken hearts.
I often notice some sort of snag or conflict come up between Kristen and I, and using those things I mentioned are the super strong foundations of our relationship, we can usually talk through it, understand where we’re both coming from, and explain how we got there.
My part of that often looks like this: “You did x, and x is very familiar to me because in my past relationship x had this kind of role and did this kind of damage to me, so it’s really hard for me when you do x, because I feel triggered and panicked.”
Another important part of this is: it’s pretty likely that she wasn’t intentionally doing x, or at least she certainly didn’t mean to hurt me; I do keep that in mind. Probably it was a by-product of her attempting to do something else. And usually she can express that explanation and I can hear her and I don’t get mad at her for doing it, generally I understand what she was trying to do.
But somehow I am still stuck in this past relationship, this past me, where that feeling was true and x meant something specific and my reaction is to PANIC. And I am starting to ask myself: is that happening in this relationship, right now? No, usually it isn’t. That is something else, that is in my past, that is an old wound that this new thing is pulling on, but it’s not the same wound. I am not becoming re-wounded there. I am not at danger of falling back into that wound.
So. Clearly, I need to “let go” of that old reaction. But how does one do that? How do you let something go when it feels like it’s so fucking hard-wired into the way my brain works? How do I not be scared and feel triggered and panicked when these things come back up?
This is what I’ve been contemplating lately, as things between Kristen and I are improving after another brief panic. One of the things about relationships that I deeply believe, indeed one of the POINTS of being in an intimate, loving, romantic, sexual relationship, is that they teach you things about yourself that you perhaps wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to learn, and if they are strong and founded and good, they also can be the space in which you have enough support to actually practice the growing, someone who is patient with you and who recognizes how hard you’re working to rewire yourself, who can gently remind you when you’re falling back into old patterns, and who can support you and encourage you as you try on new ones. Plus, they provide endless opportunities to use those new patterns, since conflict and difficulty and triggers from old broken hearts come up in relationship all the time. Isn’t that lucky!
I think what I’m talking about, in this question of “how do I let go,” is becoming more aware, becoming more mindful of what triggers what and what means what, especially in my relationship. I’m tired of all these old ghosts coming up. I have done a shit-ton of work to put these ghosts to rest, but the pathways in my brain are still carved out in many ways.
So I guess it kind of looks like this:
- I have a reaction to something that’s happening in my relationship (usually a negative, bad, “unreasonable” emotional reaction)
- I realize where my reaction is coming from (usually a past lover, wound, broken heart)
- Let go of the old reaction, be in the present (instead of gripping onto and explaining myself through the past). How to do that?
- Well first, I need to be able to release my grip on #2, to be able to ask myself, How did I come to this reaction? Where did it come from, and how did it serve me? What remains unacknowledged about this old wound that means I still think I need this protection? Can I heal that wound and know I no longer need that protection? What is asking me for acceptance?
- Then, I need to be in the present. I’ve noticed myself grasping at these old stories, justifying my high emotions, so much that I am not sitting with what is. So I must learn to ask myself: What is happening now? Is this old pattern that I fear actually present?
- After letting go of that old reaction, I can have a reaction to what’s happening now, with Kristen, with me, and aim, as always, to respond and react with lovingkindness and care and awareness and openness and love.
That seems fairly straightforward, actually. I think that is possible.
I spoke with a lovely friend and mentor recently about this exact problem, and she suggested a fairly simple rephrasing of relationship needs. I think that too will help in conquering this “how to let go” question. For example, if I notice this process happening, and get to step #2, realizing that I’m being triggered because it’s relating to a past hurt of mine, if I go on to say, “Okay, I need you to not be x like my ex,” that brings a lot of baggage into the conversation, a lot of layers and complicated past ghosts and old wounds and old ways of working and whoa suddenly it’s a whole lot more than just me and my beautiful girlfriend trying to talk through a little snag in communication or interaction.
Let me be a little more specific for this example, I think it’ll make more sense that way.
So one of the things that triggers me heavily is when someone in a relationship with me is withholding. It reminds me of my former lesbian bed death relationship, among others, and I get panicked that I’ll never again know what’s happening in her head and will spend years trying and it will eat me up. Ahem.
But this plays on other ways I work too, especially in that I am a very insightful, observant person who often knows what’s going on with another person’s emotional landscape even better than they do (especially if they aren’t too self-aware), and I have the tendency to constantly check in with them (silently, emotionally) to see where they’re at. If they aren’t telling me where they’re at, and in fact are deliberately putting up a wall and withholding that information, saying “I’m fine,” or “I don’t want to talk about it,” when I ask, I tend to assume something is brewing and will bubble up and explode later, which makes me way anxious.
I know, this is a totally unique situation that nobody else has ever been in, right? Nobody else has this problem, ever.
So, instead of having the reaction of “I need you to not be withholding like my ex!” I can rephrase it to something like, “it’s really important for me to know what’s going on with your mental/emotional landscape.” Not that we have to spend hours processing that, but I can briefly explain why I need that, and if she can just say, “oh, I’m feeling anxious about work, but I don’t want to talk about it,” that’s enough. Some broad-stroke explanation of what “that feeling” is that I am reading on her face but she’s not expressing.
Knowing what is going on with someone else’s emotional landscape one of my basic relationship needs, in fact! And in some ways it has nothing to do with my ex, it has to do with ME. It just reminds me of a time when this basic relationship need wasn’t met (and was probably taken advantage of), and what’s important is that the need be acknowledged and get met, not that there was a time in my past when it wasn’t met. (I mean, that’s important too, but I have done enough healing to hopefully not stick a rock in that wound to keep it open.)
Whew. That feels like a lot, but it feels like a relief, and like I’ve hit on something important.
One of the things about the ways that I work, and the ways I grow and change and get over capitol-i Issues that plague me, is that generally, as soon as I can articulate what’s going on for me and write—that’s the key here, WRITE—out a possible solution, or at least a path to try, I often find that I can rewire myself through that process. By time I articulate it, by time I name it and label it and say OH that’s what’s going on, and OH here’s what I can do to do that differently, those skills and awareness have kind of already integrated. This isn’t a 100%-true-always theory, but I have noticed that this tends to be true, and that too feels like a relief.
Okay so: how about y’all? How have you addressed this problem of past hurts in your current relationships? Any tips for me? Any tricks to keeping your own mindfulness and awareness up while dealing with things that are triggering and hard? Anything I might be missing here? Does this make sense? Can you relate to it? Or does it seem like I’m way off base?
PS: A teeny colophon note: I’ve been making some changes to this site’s sidebar and structure in general. A little bitta spring cleaning, if you will. And as such, the category formerly known as SSU has been renamed Critical Theory. It might change again, there are an awful lot of C categories over there in the list, but that works for now. Do not be alarmed, it’s still there.
Also, if you aren’t following my Tumblr log, mrsexsmith.tumblr.com, you might be missing out on some of the things I used to frequently put on Sugarbutch, like for example calls for submission for queer and kinky and feminist anthologies, eye candy photos of hot butches and femmes, media like youtube videos, announcements for other events, and more. It’s easy to subscribe by RSS or pop over there and check out what’s going on.
Desperation & Dominance
“Want to know what I was thinking about when I got off yesterday?” she asks. We’re lying in bed, tangled limbs and sheets, a little sweaty, breathing heavily still, hearts calming. She’s nude now. I’m still in boxers and an undershirt. I’ve taken advantage of the ongoing permission I have to fuck her, take her, if I wake in the middle of the night or before her in the morning, as I often do, like this morning, hands on her, fingers in her, forearm holding her down by her collarbone until she thrashed and came and muffled a scream into my shoulder.
“Yes,” I answer, arm under her neck, the other hand on her hip and curved under her thigh and ass as she drapes herself over me partly.
“I was thinking about … you using me,” she starts in a small voice, quiet, by my ear. I can feel her breath. “Filling me up. Fucking me and fucking me without caring how it was for me. I was thinking about tears streaming down my cheeks, and you not stopping, just … taking me, until you get what you want, and you come.”
I bow my head a little to find her mouth by feel in the dark bedroom. “I like to use you like that,” I say. She nods. “Let’s play later.” She nods again, pulls closer to me.
This story contains Daddy/girl roles in sex play, some domination and submission, and lots of tender loving care. Continue reading with that knowledge, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Continue reading →
And the Lezzy Goes To …
The 2009 Lezzy Awards are over, and you all voted Sugarbutch as the Best Sex/Short Story/Erotica site for the second year in a row!
Thank you so much to all who voted and all who mentioned me in the promotions … I’m honored and humbled and promise to keep up the sex and erotica writing. I was a finalist along with my fabulous femme friend Essin’ Em and the lovely lady behind Scintillectual, who I don’t actually know, but I’m certainly going to be reading now. Both blogs are excellent. Jeez, I am so glad to see the abundance of butch and femme and genderqueer and queer sex blogs out there! Nearly four years ago, when I started Sugarbutch, there were very few queer sex blogs.
The competition was fierce this year, and the final winners are all heavy hitters. If you don’t read ’em regularly, you’re missing out.
Best Entertainment: Dorothy Surrenders
Best Humor: Grace the Spot
Best Parenting: Up Popped a Fox
Best Engagement/Wedding: My Big Fat Gay Wedding
Best Feminist/Political: Feministing
Best Personal: Peaches & Coconuts
Best Out Later in Life: Making Space
Best Sex/Short Story/Erotica: Sugarbutch Chronicles
Best New Lesbian Blog: Autostraddle
Best Podcast: The Lesbian Lounge
Lifetime Achievement: AfterEllen.com
Sincere thanks to all who voted, thanks specifically to Kelly who runs The Lesbian Lifestyle. I continue to be amazed and touched by the support for and the recognition of this site and my efforts, thank you so much for being a part of these larger communities of queer, feminist, sex, and gender explorations.
Love Letter #4 (Growing Pains)
“Relationships take work,” they say. But as someone who now knows I spent way too long in failed or failing relationships, desperately clinging to any fragment of hope or chance of ‘making it work,’ as someone who stayed with abusers, bought their bullshit and was convinced by their smooth-talking blame-the-victim manipulations, as someone trying to wake up to my own power and control and confidence (and yes, maybe I’m spectrum-banging there a little bit, but I think sometimes that’s how I learn), as someone finally finally able to say, “I feel when you because,” and “you’re right, I’m sorry,” as someone who is still prone to overgiving and overwhelm and losing myself, my tendencies go the other way: to RUN. That this, this one, this time, this sign is The Sign, that any red flag is a Red Flag and is grounds to be a dealbreaker, that in six months I’ll look back to now and say there, that’s when it all went to hell, that was the point of no return, I should have listened to my gut, why’d I stay, why’d I trust her, again, how did I get here, I lost myself again, I swore that would never happen and here I am …
But that is not this relationship.
I am still skittish. I am still prone to explosions of emotion when I get scared. I am still unsure—not so much of her, or of this beautiful shiny strong relationship we are building, but of myself, my own ability to keep myself strong, solid, taken care of, whole.
It comes up again and again, especially lately, since she’s been in crisis and I want to help. I am a helper, and a service top, after all. My job is to take and care (but not caretake). My role is to comfort and protect. And when we both started realizing it was too much, and our parts in that, that I took on too much responsibility for her well-being and that she was leaning on me too much and not taking care of herself, I was left unsure of my standing.
What does she need me for, if she doesn’t need me for this?
Then came the silence, and look we stumbled upon another one of my many triggers: withdrawing. And we discovered containment doesn’t mean withdraw, and that I still need to learn how to listen without giving advice.
I need to remember who it is I am dating: her, this girl, only her, not any of my exes. How does one undo triggers, once they’re found? Or will they just always be there, like an old skiing injury, something to be constantly aware of and work around?
I need to remember this, rely on it: here are the things she and I are particularly good at:
- Telling each other, as openly, kindly, and honestly as possible, how we feel about where we’re coming from
- Taking responsibility for the parts that we own, and not blaming the other person
- Being totally willing to work on ourselves individually, and the relationship
- Being quick, thorough, vigilant learners, willing to do extensive research to get somewhere faster
I have never had any of these things, truthfully, in practice, in previous relationships, though I and my exes have often given lip service to many of them. Some of that was certainly my fault—it really is only recently that I was capable of executing them, the first one especially.
She keeps saying, “we love each other, we’ll get through this,” but that is not as comforting as those four traits, to me. This is about skill, this is about commitment, this is about patience. And yes sure, this is about love, too, and I am way too in love with this gorgeous, fierce, extraordinary person to stop the hard work it may take to get through these growing pains. They are as much mine as they are hers, and when we get through to the other side, we will know each other and ourselves better, we’ll be stronger and have more tools and skills to weather the changing emotional landscapes of love and relationships.
This continues to be a huge opportunity to grow and evolve and unstick the stuck places, and what better way to take that on than with a kind, loving person who knows me practically as well as I know myself? Together we are more than the sum of us separately, together we are stronger, bigger, more capable, more supported, buoyed by the magic strength that is sharing one’s life with another. Nothing cuts through the muscle, the bone, exposing the marrow, like love, does it? There is never so much to lose, so there is never so much to gain; with the highest stakes come the highest rewards.
I know relationships take work. I am willing to do the work, I just have to be certain that the work is worth doing. And perhaps for the first time, really, for the first authentic time, for the first awake and aware and really fully known time, I have someone who knows this takes work, who is certain the work is worth doing, and who is willing to do the work to be with me, too.
Lezzy Finalist! Vote Daily Until March 2nd!
Whoa! I’m a finalist for the 2009 Lezzy Awards in both the Best Lesbian Sex/Short Story/Erotica Blog & The Lezzy Lifetime Achievement Award categories! Thanks so much for the finalist nominations, everyone who voted!
Voting runs from February 22nd at 12:00 pm EDT to 12:00 am EDT March 2nd.
I’m listed up with some freakin’ amazing sites, many of which are my regular reads. First up, my buddy Jesse James is up in TWO categories—Humor and Personal. Dorothy Surrenders is up in Entertainment/Culture, as well as AutoStraddle and Fit For a Femme. And of course my favorite funny-because-it’s-true blog, Grace the Spot, is up for the Humor category. I haven’t read any of the Parenting or Engagement/Wedding blogs except for my good buddies Lesbian Dad and Don’t Let’s Talk, but I am loving checking out the others! Then of course there’s Sexuality Happens by Essin’ Em up against me (gulp!) in the Sex/Short Story/Erotica category, and my buddy Harrison at How To Be Butch in the New Lesbian Blog category and Dear Diaspora in Feminist/Political.
That’s a lot. It’s a great list of strong writers, check out ALL the finalists! And remember, vote DAILY until March 2nd at midnight EST. (Make sure you click the confirmation link in your email after you vote, or it won’t count!)
SXSW and Austin Bound in March: Update
I’m still heading down to Austin and will be there for a few short days, March 13-15 (with Kristen!). Thanks for all the fantastic suggestions for where to EAT while we’re there—I know we’ll be exploring many of those places. So! I’ll be on a panel on Saturday, the 13th, called Engaging the Queer Community, along with Trish Bendix of AfterEllen.com, Bil Browning of Bilerico, and Fausto Fernos of Feast of Fun.
Bil just said in a recent post that “[t]ens of thousands of people attend each year. My understanding though, they’ve never had a session that was explicitly queer.” Huhwhut? Seriously? Whoa. I didn’t realize that.
Feast of Fun is one of the most popular LGBT podcasts on the entire interwebs, and Bil recently was a guest, talking about the power of the group blog. I may be a special guest sometime soon too … will let you know!
I mentioned before that I was going to try to do a Sugarbutch meetup on the evening of the 13th (Saturday), but I just found out that Fausto is organizing a queer tweetup meetup at Oil Can Harry’s—apparently Austin’s oldest gay bar—on Sunday, March 14th at 9pm, so the four of us are going to co-host a little gathering. Come out and say hi, meet some folks, get some free drinks!
So that means there won’t be a Sugarbutch meetup on the night of the 13th. Sorry about that, I hope that’s still possible for all you folks who saw my last mention and said that you wanted to come by to still make it.
Details!
Engaging The Queer Community
Saturday, March 13 at 03:30 PM
A discussion on maintaining successful and active blogs and social networking sites that are geared toward the LGBT community and its niches.
Presenters:
Trish Bendix – MTV/AfterEllen.com
Bil Browning – Bilerico Project
Fausto Fernos – Feast of Fun (moderator)
Sinclair Sexsmith – Sugarbutch Chronicles
SXSW Queer Blogger Tweetup
Sunday, March 14 at 9pm
OilCan Harry’s
211 West 4th Street (walking distance from the conference)
Austin, Texas
- Live tweetup using hashtag #sxswgay
- Free wifi available
- Your favorite viral videos from 2009 playing on the bar’s TVs
- T-shirt and merchandise giveaways
- Free drinks to all SXSW attendees and people who follow Oil Can Harry’s on twitter @oilcanharrys or show their SXSW pass.
Lesbian Sex Mafia Workshop: Revised (this Friday!)
I already mentioned that I’ll be doing a workshop at the Lesbian Sex Mafia this Friday, but I’ve got a revised workshop description, so I’m reposting it here.
If you’d like to RSVP for the event via Facebook, please do.
LSM Presents: Gendering Power: How to Spice Up Your Role Play
with Sinclair Sexsmith
Where: LGBT Center, 208 West 13th Street (bet 7th and 8th Ave.)
When: Friday, February 19, 2010 at 8:00-10:00PM
Cost: $5/LSM members, $10/Non members
Who: Women & trans folks only
Perhaps gender roles are just a construct. But that doesn’t mean they’re not hot! Lots of queers come to our own unique expressions of gender, and it can be a powerful way to explore many sides of ourselves with each other. Adding gender dynamics to sex play can encourage self-discovery, to solidify or express identities which are budding, or to further express identities already in progress. In this interactive workshop we will explore the addition and power of gender roles in sexual role play scenarios to increase desire, vulnerability, self-knowledge, and intimacy. Bring a pen and your notebook, we’ll do some writing exercises to get us thinking.
Consent Obsession
I’m realizing that I’m a little bit obsessed with consent, in perhaps a way that is too much. I mean, it is not a bad thing to get someone’s consent in sexual play, and there are many ways to do so. But I’m starting to see ways that I’m conscious of consent or non-consent in many other aspects of my life.
For example:
One of the reasons I don’t really like sex in public is because of the other people who may witness it. Some people find the getting caught part the part that is thrilling, and some folks find the threat of getting caught (though not actually getting caught) thrilling. I do like being in such lust and desire that you can’t keep your hands off the one you’re with long enough to get home and really have to take them, have to have them, right now, right here, but I don’t want that to have anything to do with being in public or potentially watched by strangers, because the strangers are not consenting. No matter how sex-positive (or sex-negative) they might be, they are not consenting to seeing someone else having sex right now, right here, and I guess that I feel like doing it, then, is a little bit rude.
Now, consenting strangers, like at a sex party? Sure. No problem. I’m glad to have sex in front of other people, though I’m more of a voyeur than I am an exhibitionist, I do like showing off my partner and what she can do, how she looks, how I can make her scream and gasp and cry and come.
When I perform at a reading series and decided to read some erotica, I try always to warn folks at the beginning of the reading, to tell them what the content will be (just broadly—a blow job, some fucking—without ruining the “plot,” of course). Sometimes one is just not in the mood to listen to explicit sex, certainly I am not in the mood sometimes, and have been at events where someone busts into some really explicit sex (or violence, or something else a bit controversial) and often the audience gets very uncomfortable. It’s not that I don’t sometimes want the audience to be uncomfortable, when listening to my work, or that I think anyone who has a problem with sex should necessarily leave if given a warning, just that it’s easier to kind of brace yourself if you have some vague expectation of what’s upcoming.
This consent obsession happens in my own apartment, too. I noticed it just recently, when I was, yet again, shushing Kristen as we were fucking, probably in the morning, possibly when either my roommate was around or when my new neighbors with their young child were loud enough to hear through the walls. I know my roommate knows that I have a lot of sex, and I know he doesn’t really mind, but still, I try to be respectful.
I was discussing this with Kristen a little bit lately, this particular one about being quiet when we have sex at my place, and she pushed me a little to think about it. Especially in terms of the neighbors. “That’s just something that happens in New York City apartments,” she shrugged. The walls are thin, we live close together, cramped in this big ol’ city. And sheesh, there are way worse sounds to hear than your neighbors having good sex—hell, maybe they’re pervy enough to really like hearing their neighbors get it on, and it ends up inspiring them to have sex, too. Sometimes I really do let it get in the way of really letting go when we’re fucking, and I don’t want that to happen.
(Hey look, Sinclair is putting other people’s perceived—not even actual!—needs in front of her own. Surprise, surprise. Yeah, working on it.)
I’ve been noticing this lately in terms of my email inboxes, too. I have a public email inbox, and twitter stream, and thus sometimes I get things in my inbox that I don’t consent to, that I don’t ask for, from products and ads and offers to hate mail. One of the things about email is that it’s really hard to receive an email, see who it’s from, see the subject line, and then either not open it or delete it without reading it, and thus I have ended up reading all sorts of things that I didn’t really want to. I’ve kept this in mind when sometimes writing long sappy emails to my exes in my mind, too, thinking, are they consenting to receiving this email? Do they want to hear from me? It’s different to send a note saying, hey, thinking of you, hope you are well, verses sending a two-page long story-of-my-life and pouring-my-heart-out emotional letter.
Perhaps it’s a form of containment.
That’s not to say that I don’t love and appreciate the occasional emails in my inbox about my work, folks pouring out their hearts and emotions and sex lives, telling me about gender and their partners or exes and how my work has changed how they are relating to their relationship, sex, or gender issues. I do love that. I’m so glad my work isn’t going out there into some big black void. And I know that when I reveal this kind of personal stuff about my own gender, sexuality, sex life, relationship, and emotional life, it makes it easier to open up about yours in response, and I cherish that opening. It’s inspiring and beautiful and I love that kind of connection with other folks.
I suppose that’s just one of the side effects of having a public email address—and I’m starting to really envy folks like Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and Havi Brooks of The Fluent Self who have shut down their email inboxes entirely. I know that wouldn’t exactly solve the problem, and I do like to have a place where folks can write to me. And the only thing I can do about this is to note the ways that I sometimes throw things in other people’s inboxes that they don’t consent to, and be aware of that.
I still have my own issues with trusting the agency of my partner, too. My relationship with Kristen was kinda tough over the holidays, and one of the things that came out of that was some distrust on my part of the D/s dynamic that I’d come to love and cherish. I second-guessed myself and her to the point that I wasn’t trusting what either of us were saying, I was (subconsciously or unconsciously) convinced that there was something else I wasn’t seeing, something I didn’t know about that would come bubbling up (again) and … be scary. But, so what if it does? That could certainly happen! There’s always more stuff to figure out that comes up and demands to be dealt with. So what. More and more, I trust that I—and Kristen and I together—have the tools to deal with that stuff, whatever it is. And when I can bring this all into articulation, it’s very clear that I haven’t been trusting our dynamic enough and have needed to relax and let go a little more (instead of gripping tight and trying to keep control and protect and help, yet again).
Maybe my “consent obsession” is slightly more accurately described as an obsession with control—or perhaps that’s related, though not entirely the same, like an overlapping Venn diagram. Regardless, it’s something I notice coming up in various places in my life, and I want to be more aware, mindful, and intentional with what I choose to do with it when it arises.
Bulldyke Chronicles, Saturday 2/20/10 in NYC
Thanks to Kelli Dunham (who is currently in Haiti being all awesome and saving the world and stuff) and Phin Li Bookings (who has a new website, have you seen it?), I’m going to be appearing in Shelly Mars’ new venture Bulldyke Chronicles at Dixon Place in New York City this coming Saturday night, February 20th, 2010.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20 AT 9:30PM
THE BULLDYKE CHRONICLES
Tickets at the door, $6 (cash only)
Shelly Mars & Kirby (DP’s mascot) offer a night of bull-dyke bullshit, artistry & edgy performances. Shake your tails off. Performing will be Elizabeth Whitney, Lea Robinson, Sinclair Sexsmith, Susan Jeremy, Shelly Mars, and Kirby!
Dixon Place, dixonplace.org
161A Chrystie Street, between Rivington and Delancey
Nominate Sugarbutch for a 2009 Lezzy Award!
I was so flattered to win the Best Gender Bender Blog and Best Lesbian Sex/Short Story/Erotica Blog categories in the Lezzy Awards, run by the Lesbian Lifestyle, last year. Help me defend my title, will ya? Nominate me again!
Nominations will last from February 15-22 at 12:00 am EDT. The top 3 nominated blogs will then go on to the final voting round which will begin on February 22nd at 12:00 pm EDT. If you nominate blogs, you MUST click the confirmation link in your email, otherwise your nominations won’t count!
Here’s the categories this year:
Best Lesbian Entertainment/ Lesbian Culture Blog
Best Lesbian Humor Blog
Best Lesbian Parenting Blog
Best Lesbian Engagement/Wedding Blog *New in 2009
Best Lesbian Feminist/Political Blog
Best Lesbian Personal Blog
Best Lesbian “Out later in life” Blog *New in 2009
Best Lesbian Sex/Short Story/Erotica Blog
Best NEW Lesbian Blog (Posting for a year or less) *New in 2009
Lesbian Blog Lifetime Achievement Award *New in 2009 (This award is replacing the Lesbian Blog of the Year Award. This Award can only be won once. The award represents longevity, excellence, and overall greatness in lesbian blogging. Nominated blogs need to have been posting for a year or more.)
Best Lesbian Podcast *New in 2009
Hmmm … who will I vote for? I’m not sure yet. Probably Lesbian Dad, Just Like Jesse James, Grace the Spot, and Dorothy Surrenders, as they are four of my favorite reads. But who else? Want me (and the Sugarbutch readers) to nominate your blog? Add it in the comments, and tell us which category you’d like to be nominated in. And please, nominate Sugarbutch Chronicles for Best Lesbian Sex/Short Story/Erotica Blog!
My Hands Are My Heart (Valentine’s Day)
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?
Word of the Day: Antevasin
I’m not one who tends to read bestsellers. In fact, when I do pick up—and like—a bestseller such that I actually want to carry it around with me and read it, I am often way embarrassed to be seen reading it on the subway. As if I am one of those people who only read popular books.
But of course, sometimes bestsellers are bestsellers for a reason: they are very, very good. I would argue for the Harry Potter series, and for The Time Traveler’s Wife (though against the Twilight series).
What made me pick up Eat, Pray, Love by Elisabeth Gilbert, aside from my sister‘s strong recommendation, was her talk on creativity from the TED lecture series.
I’ve probably watched this four times now, and a new part of it sinks in every time. This really jives with many of my conceptions about creativity works, and I really appreciate the shared responsibility of creation. YES.
So I picked up Eat, Pray, Love. And … it’s beautiful. Seriously. I hesitate to call it One Of My Favorite Books because who knows, I haven’t finished it yet, maybe it’s just speaking to me at a particular time about a particular thing and everything is just so resonant and perfect right now.
Like this:
Maybe the best thing to do with favourite films and books is to leave them be: to achieve such an exalted position means that they entered your life at exactly the right time, in precisely the right place, and those conditions can never be re-created. Sometimes we want to revisit them in order to check whether they were really as good as we remember them being, but this has to be a suspect impulse, because it presupposes is that we have more reason to trust our critical judgement as we get older, whereas I am beginning to believe that the reverse is true. —Nick Hornby, Shakespeare Wrote For Money
I had it out from the library, and I ordered my own copy from paperbackswap.com (my current guilty pleasure, though I suck at getting to the post office to do the mailing-out part). I’m looking forward to reading it again, and marking it up.
Yesterday, I came across this:
So I saw it during my last week at the Ashram, I was reading through an old text about Yoga, when I found a description of ancient spiritual seekers. A Sanskrit word appeared in the paragraph: ANTEVASIN. It means, ‘one who lives at the border.’ In ancient times this was a literal description. It indicated a person who had left the bustling center of worldly life to go live at the edge of the forest where the spiritual masters dwelled. The antevasin was not of the villagers anymore-not a householder with a conventional life. But neither was he yet a transcendent-not one of those sages who live deep in the unexplored woods, fully realized. The antevasin was an in-betweener. he was a border-dweller. He lived in sight of both worlds, but he looked toward the unknown. And he was a scholar.
—Eat, Love, Pray by Elisabeth Gilbert, p203
And oh my god that word is just so … potent. Perfect. I immediately saw it as an elaborate cursive tattoo over my collarbone or on my upper arm. That’s my word.
Then I started thinking: this is everybody’s word. That’s why this book is a crazy insane-o bestseller. Everybody thinks they live on the borders. Nobody thinks they fit in. And, sure enough, when I searched for “antevasin” online, many of the results are from personal blogs saying, “I recently read a book that described the word and I felt like it was describing me,” and “In one of the many books I am reading at present I came across a word and an idea that really resonate.” (Funny how they don’t necessarily identify the book. Or perhaps it’s just obvious enough that they don’t have to.)
Maybe not everybody thinks they are at the borders, not fitting in. Maybe there are some people, like my girlfriend claims, who know they are the status quo and average and buying in to pop culture and like it that way. I guess it’s mostly just that “my people”—the queers and the misfits and the artists and the writers and the thinkers—are the ones who surround me, and of course we all tend to have this deep, deep belief that we never fit in, that we probably never will, and that we’re straddling multiple worlds, being border-dwellers.
But I guess my question is … if the majority of us are the ones who think we don’t fit, aren’t the ones who ‘fit’ actually in the minority, making them, by definition, not fit?
And also … how do we truly, deeply, believe that we do in fact fit, perhaps not into a problematic hierarchical oppressive society like this one, but in our own communities, in our own subcultures, in our own families, in our own lives, in the larger universal human family? I really do believe that we all belong, we are all valid, we are all just where we are meant to be: right here.
“On Dichotomies that (No Longer) Jail Me” and More From KinkForAll Providence
I really admire & adore Maymay.
He is one of the big minds behind both KinkForAll, which is an “unconference” of folks coming together to skill-share and discuss topics relating to kink and bdsm, and also Kink on Tap, which is a weekly internet video show where participants and special guests discuss the week in kink and what’s been going on in the media, as well as dozens of other things (tune in live at 8pm EST/5pm PST on Sunday nights at live.kinkontap.com and chat with other folks watching it in the chatroom!).
And like I mentioned, I attended KinkForAll Providence this past weekend. Kristen and I drove up from New York City for just the day, and we co-presented a workshop on Gendering Power (the short version—only twenty minutes—and I’ll be doing it full-length at the LSM here in New York City a few weeks!). And of course I saw many fantastic workshops—they are only twenty minutes long, in unconference style, very compact and specific, so you gotta really be precise about what you want to get across, and go for it.
Maymay’s was phenomenal. It’s called “On Dichotomies that (No Longer) Jail Me” and it kinda blew my brain. Now that I’ve re-watched it (and read along), I think it’s even more brilliant, and I highly urge you to set aside just twenty minutes, sometime today, and watch it.
The full text is available over at Maymay’s blog, which you should possibly follow along with in a side-by-side window situation when you finally watch this video of his presentation. There were so many parts that I loved, but in particular, this quote:
People speak of ’sexual morality,’ but that is a misleading expression. There is no special morality for sex. No matter what you do with yourself, whether you go to bed with girls or with boys, and no matter what it occurs to you to do with them or with yourself, no moral rule applies to that sphere of activity other than the principles that govern every aspect of life: honesty, courage, common humanity, consideration. —Jens Bjørnboe
[And then Maymay goes on to say:] What Jens understood that I think is so valuable is that people who dichotomize consensual sexual activity into obscene and decent acts also tend to approach morality as a dichotomy; they couple obscene with immoral and decent with moral. Indeed, Jens sees that the failure to recognize one false dichotomy actually blurs one’s view of which other dichotomies are true and which are not. On the other hand, when you begin to see the gradations between things you once simplistically believed were absolutes, you empower yourself to break out of all false dichotomies.Now, before I go any further, it’s important to mention that false dichotomies are not inherently bad things; they can be useful, as I mentioned, and they can be a lot of fun. Case in point, I think dichotomies of power are really fucking sexy! Specifically, I have always loved (and still love) playing—but not being—powerless. That is, I enjoy being sexually submissive.
Trouble is, I’m a man. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: DUH! Thing is, the fact that I’m a man wasn’t always clear to me. In fact, thanks to this really strong tendency that false dichotomies, when we incorrectly believe they are true, have of reinforcing one another, for the longest time I thought I was actually a woman! Yeah! Let me tell you why.” —Read the full text over at Maymay’s blog!
Maymay goes on to explain what I’ve called identity alignment assumptions, though in a much more illustrative and specific way than I ever did in that post. Dichotomies can be so jailing, so harmful, so specific—but we also have an infinite number of tools we can use to break out of those and come into ourselves, fully.
Watch it. Seriously. This is really good stuff.
On Dichotomies that (No Longer) Jail Me – KinkForAll Providence from maymay on Vimeo.
And because Maymay has been working probably non-stop since Saturday to get these videos working and live, here are a few more talks from KinkForAll Providence which were PHENOMENAL.
In this KinkForAll Providence presentation, Marty, Brown University Alumn (Class of 2008), reads from his impassioned graduate college application personal statement. “One reason I have chosen to out myself is to legitimize my identity and the identities of those I care about,” he says. By the end of obtaining his linguistics undergraduate degree at Brown University, Marty was already an accomplished sexuality freedom advocate. While in high school, he started a date-rape awareness theatre troupe, he helped found and run an ongoing male sexuality workshop at Brown University, and wrote a sex education and advice column for a local newspaper. Now, he works at Planned Parenthood in Boston and volunteers for Men Against Sexism.
I’m looking forward to talking to Marty more, especially about masculinity and his work as a sexuality freedom advocate. I think that might make for a great Radical Masculinity interview, don’t you?
How and Why I Came Out as Pan/Poly/Kinky on my Law School Applications – KinkForAll Providence from maymay on Vimeo.
If you were following my twitter stream over the weekend, you also know that Kristen and I got to spend some time hanging out with Megan Andelloux, and her two talks were fantastic. She recently opened The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health in Pawtucket, Rhode Island—and she showed us around! It is such a cool space, if I lived closer I would go hang out there all the time, read a book on the comfy couches or browse my RSS reader and chat with the visitors about what’s going on in the world of sex. If you’re anywhere nearby, I urge you to check it out.
But it wasn’t as easy as just “hey, I’m going to open a center, kthxbye!”—Megan was threatened and barricaded from opening for more than five months. In her second talk at KinkForAll, she explained what happened, and how she fought it—and won. Check it out:
When Megan Andelloux wanted to open the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health in Pawtucket, RI, “freaked out” residents barricaded her opening for 5 months and the local police threatened to arrest her. At KinkForAll Providence, 1 week after Megan’s education center opened, she gives a talk about the “sex panic” that swept the state and captured national headlines. Megan tells of a University of Rhode Island professor who waged a “war” to stop her from educating adults about sex, how locals demanded that “we should outlaw sex!” and how Megan fought for your sexual freedoms—and won! Learn more about Megan Andelloux at OhMegan.com and about the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health at TheCSPH.org
Sex Panic in Pawtucket – KinkForAll Providence from maymay on Vimeo.
I hear there’s talk for a KinkForAll NYC3 sometime soon. And as always, find out more than you probably need to know on the KinkForAll wiki.
Masculinity Icons: Happy Birthday, James Dean
Today, February 8th, James Dean was born in 1931.
I’m working on a piece for Radical Masculinity about masculinity icons, particularly American icons (though I do have some plans to explore masculinity in other places too, in other columns).
James Dean comes up frequently as an icon, both as a traditional icon of American masculinity and as a personal icon. Take a look at the James Dean Lives tumblr for more photos and information about him, if you’d like. Good stuff over there.
I’m gathering ideas and statements for my in-progress (and vastly overdue) column currently, so I have a question for y’all: Who, in your opinion, are traditional icons of masculinity? Who are your personal icons of masculinity? What kind of traits do these icons portray? What kind of traits do you think icons of masculinity should portray? What makes someone (a guy, a cis-gendered guy in particular) a butch icon, or a radical masculinity icon, or a traditional masculinity icon?
I love pondering this stuff.
Introducing: Mr. Sexsmith’s Other Girlfriend
I’m starting a second column, writing weekly for Eden Fantasys web magazine Sex Is called Mr. Sexsmith’s Other Girlfriend, focused on New York City.
Mr. Sexsmith’s Other Girlfriend: A small-town Alaskan butch navigates queers, sex, and kink in her ongoing love affair with The Big Apple, a.k.a. The Naked City, New York. … Everyone knows I’m dating Kristen and living it up in New York City, but not everyone knows I grew up in Alaskan rainforest at the bottom of a mountain and have struggled with the vice, fast pace, and sensory overload of the concrete jungle. Here’s my ongoing saga of navigating life, love, gender, sex, kink, and really good food on an artist’s budget, all while trying to change the world through social activism.
Here’s an excerpt from the first column, The Myth of New York:
If New York City was on Facebook, our relationship status would say “It’s Complicated.” I love her, I do; I have idolized her since I was a kid, watching all my favorite cheesy eighties movies like Big Business, The Secret of My Success, and Big, over and over again. Our culture mythologizes her, paints her as the place to be, so full of potential. She might even be The One.
Everyone comes to New York seeking something very similar: belonging. Especially in the communities in which I run—the queer, the kinky, the subversive, the social change junkies—we have all come from other places, other more small-minded, limited, restrictive places, hoping that the Great Mythology of New York will hold true for us, too: “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free …” wrote Emma Lazarus in her famous poem “The New Colossus,” printed on the Statue of Liberty.
Read the whole thing over on Sex Is, and keep an eye out for the upcoming articles, including How To Survive Your First Year in New York City.