miscellany

Come Together Gift Basket – winner!

cometogether2

Thanks for all the beautiful comments about your Valentine’s Days and ideal gifts and wonderful things you’ve received in the mail.

Jodi, commenter #33, is the official winner of the Come Together Gift Basket! Congrats Jodi, hope you enjoy it!

Valentine’s Day – or Single Awareness Day – is coming up, and I think we’re going to do something special over on Queer Eye Candy, still trying to figure out exactly what.

I especially liked the comment that ephraim left:

on a commune where they initiated a tradition of “Validation Day” on Feb. 14th to be a community-wide celebration of all the different kinds of relationships people have instead of just the romantic ones. Preparations begin sometime in mid January; people sign up to make each others cards (usually elaborate and 3 dimensional affairs with lots of collaging); the cards go into a box alphabetically; and people spend the week or so leading up to V-Day gathered around the box thoughtfully signing them and usually feeling much happier about their fellow communards – an important thing in the midst of winter doldrums and restlessness when everyone is all cramped up inside. After V-Day dinner, there’s a playful round of trying to guess whose card is whose based on randomly selected comments and then they’re distributed (after which a rockin’ dance party commences).

That sounds SO fun and lovely, and what a great way to validate *all* relationships and not just the romantic ones. Maybe you might feel inspired to send Valentine’s Day cards to your mother or best friends or the mentors whom you adore, this year, instead of just your romantic interest.

dirty stories, real life

Wait For Me On Your Knees

Two weeks ago:

I arrived at her place late – I was delayed, but I won’t go into that – but still in time for dinner.

I don’t remember what she wore, what I wore. I remember what she made for dinner: caramelized onion and gruyere tart with roasted broccoli, and peanut butter & chocolate pudding for dessert. (And she made scones in the morning.) I remember her lived-in kitchen, the way she looked at me with passion and want, the way her body felt under my hands again. I remember I brought wine.

She gave me the quick tour of her apartment.

“I want you in every room before the weekend is through,” I said.

“Even the bathroom?”

“… There are ways.”

I started with the kitchen, before dinner was even ready.

*

The next morning:

On her bed, after hours of fucking, in the bright light of midday because her room has no curtains. I study every inch of her.

Inside her, on top of her. Riding the waves of energy between us, sometimes strong and steady, sometimes collapsing to kiss her neck and whisper sweet nothings. Not so much “oh you’re beautiful, you feel so good” as much as “you little slut, you feel my hard cock in you like that?” – though the former is sprinkled into the mix, too.

We come down together from a peak, panting, I’m shivering from my body’s own heat and sweat in contrast to the cool air, and rest against her, still inside.

Her legs around me.

Her arms around my neck.

And she shifted, and suddenly I was coming, right then. Don’t mind the tantric-hippie moment here, but it was all energy, her pelvic bowl opening to catch me, pull me deep inside her. I can still feel how the contractions shook me, eyes rolling back, so sudden – and it started from stillness! – so sweet. Gasping in her ear and shuddering.

We lay wrapped in each other for a while after. Talking touching, fucking more, her insatiable body able to take more, more, more.

And then: “I’d like your fingers in me. Would you do that?”

She nearly froze, as to not disturb whatever was aligned for this delicate moment. “Now?”

“Please. Now.”

We shifted, I took my cock off, she got on her side next to me, hand on my thighs, between my legs. Gentle and sweet and slick.

“I know you said inside,” she whispers, mouth close to mine, “but I want to feel you.”

“Feels good. Don’t stop.” I whisper back.

Slowly: her fingers in me, pressing deep and stretching full, my hand on my clit, calling it my dick in my mind, and keeping my eyes open, watching her, as long as I can, until I come, screaming, hard and big, a release a year in the making, and pull her close against me.

*

Later:

At the dining room table in her living room. She sits on my lap, kisses me. I pull her hair and move my mouth to her neck.

“Ohh yes, yes,” she breathes.

“Mmm, I like it when you say that. Say yes again,” I demand softly, next to her ear. She hears me, and says nothing. She bites her lip and looks right at me, which tells me she’s refusing to say it. Am I pushing her too far? Does she know – she must know – that saying yes is playing with consent, that I am warming her up for saying no. Does she feel pressed? Pressured? I study her face, wait for her to say it for what seems like minutes. “Say it,” I say again, low, with a grip on her hair, desire and dominance building in me. I pull back a little to get enough distance between us so I can hit her. I wonder how fast I’ll have to do it for her to not see it coming. I want her to be surprised.

Underneath her resistance, she’s got that tiny self-satisfied smirk on her face.

She is surprised. A quick, hard smack against her cheek. Then five, six, softer, in rapid succession, warming her up. And another, stronger. Another. Her whole head turns on impact. I don’t stop. Harder. I vary the rhythm and let her have a breath, a quiet moment in between, when she straightens her body and feels the sting.

This is the hardest I’ve slapped her, but I can feel the way she can take it, now, differently. She’s not scared or wincing but open and accepting, drinking in the sensation.

I stop. Pull back a little and watch her recover.

When she can, she whispers, “yes,” hand to her stinging cheek, eyes dark and smoky and submissive, that look, that look, that strong and active giving over that makes my knees weak (and oh I’m glad I’m sitting down).

I kiss her. Smooth her cheek with my fingertips, feel the warmth with my lips. “Good,” I say between kisses. “Good girl.”

“Yes,” she says again with her breathe out, chest shuddering.

I want more.

“Get off me.” I say quickly, pulling away and pushing on her body. “Down. On your knees. Now.”

She does. Slides onto the floor and I unbuckle, unzip, pull my cock out. “That’s right, suck my cock. Oh that’s good. Yeah, that’s so good.”

And she is so good at this. Lips pursed, tongue flicking softly, eyes looking up at me, hand gripping the base of it and sucking hard into her mouth. I take hold of her hair. Pull her up by it and shove my fingers in her mouth. I like how her tongue gets wide and flat. I like the gulping noise she makes when she swallows.

“Up,” I say, and stand, pulling her to her feet. “Take these off.” I tear at her clothes and so does she, pull her shirt over her head and her jeans, socks, undies off, then embrace her briefly for kisses on her swollen mouth. I bend her at the waist, swift, over the dining room table.

I start spanking her, hard. Harder than I usually would without warm-up but she’s warm, the blood rushing through her, veins dilated already, I can see it in the flush of her skin and in the response each time my palm makes contact, landing with a satisfying smack. She’s moaning and squirming off the table, wants her pussy touched. I haven’t even felt how wet she is yet, how have I resisted this long? She’s pushing back against me so hard, her torso is nearly off the table. She lifts herself up and stands, presses back into me, reaches back for me.

“Who said you could get up,” I growl in her ear and bend her over quickly, her palms landing hard on the table to catch her. “Stay there.”

She likes direction. And oh do I like to give it to her. I like it even more when she does what I say.

She stays put. Breathes. I pause, run my hands down her back and thighs, tease her cunt only slightly with my fingers on her soft hair, then bring my arm back and down in a smack right to her cunt and she gasps, winces, sighs. I go slow with taps more than slaps and build up to a couple sweet ones, hand landing just right, her body responding, so smooth and open.

I keep my tongue unlocked throughout. I wish I could recall better now what I was saying. [Kristen, if you remember any particular good phrases, perhaps you could leave a comment, or tell me?] I know she wanted to be called names, so I began a narrative about how much she loves sex, look how wet you are, you like it when I hit you don’t you, slut. Bad girl. You like this, look how wet you are, feel that?

… And by time I got about to there in the talking I couldn’t wait, I had to have her, I was practically growling with lust.

Still unzipped and unbuckled, I pulled my cock out, only to realize: I left the condoms in the bedroom. I try to keep one in my back pocket so I have it at the ready, but I think I hadn’t replaced the one we used earlier.

Mouth next to her ear, bent over her: “I want to fuck you, but you’re going to have to wait,” I sneer a little. Then … yes. Let’s make her wait.

I pull her up from the table and cradle her close, her naked body against me, still fully clothed. Kiss her tender and run my hands along her skin.

“Now: down.” I command. “On your knees.”

She didn’t quite respond quickly enough, still looking at me heavy-lidded and getting her brain to catch up with the sensations in her body. I push on her shoulders. “Down.”

And she slides to her knees. I take a fistful of her hair. “Put your hands behind your back.” She does, eyes shining, blinking.

“Wait for me. Be right back.”

I walk the ten or so paces to her bedroom slowly, deliberately. Pick up two condoms from the nightstand. I hear her cry out softly. Can feel the desire rising between us, even from the next room. I pause a moment. Feel the dominance rushing through my body like a drug. Quickening my blood pressure, the pump of my heart. I can see her so distinctly in my mind, kneeling. I breathe, put my hand on the wall for support, to gather myself.

I have no idea what I’ll do when I get back to her. Fuck her, eventually. But I want to play first.

She’s waiting so nicely for me. Knees apart, head down. When I approach she looks up at me with such fierce submission my knees go weak: eyes heavy, smoky, dark; mouth and tongue swollen.

Cock at the ready, I press it right to her mouth. “Suck my cock, again, while you’re down there,” I say, and touch her cheek, her forehead as a sweep her hair back, palm the back of her head.

She does. Takes it deep and long with the first stroke in. I start groaning, moaning, pressing into her farther, down her throat. “That’s right, so nice, feels so good,” I’m babbling but I don’t care. I have her tipped backward and she’s left her hands behind her back, I’m throwing her off balance. My hips start thrusting – she gags a little with the depth and breathes hard with her mouth full. I don’t let up, but keep shoving my cock in, down her throat.

I nearly come. Can feel how her mouth and throat would tighten as I pulse and shoot. But I can’t, I can’t quite get there, just not quite enough, so frustrating. I pull out fast and shove my fingers in her mouth before she can notice her mouth is empty, kneel down between her legs and push her back onto the floor, lower my mouth onto and cock into her beautiful body.

I slide in easy. Easy, slick. God I love the way she takes me in. Deep, deeper, I keep her pressed open all the way, laying back, legs spread wide, hands grabbing at my shoulders until I grab her forearms and hold them above her head. Perfect leverage. And I thrust, fuck her hard, burn my knees against the hard dark wood of her living room floor.

Damn, the floor is hard. No give whatsoever. I haven’t fucked her lying on a floor ever – I’ve forgotten how it feels. She can’t squirm as much, she doesn’t slide as much, stays where I put her and the impact is harder, I do like that. But there’s less give-and-take, less sensuous connection, and goddamn my knees are going to be wrecked after this, probably it’s the sheet burn from earlier more than the floor itself, but I’ve got to change positions.

I lose myself in the hard impact of cock against cunt for as many strokes as I can muster before I lift myself up, sit back on my heels, and breathe. She’s vibrating, head lolling side to side.

“Get up,” I say. “Bedroom.”

I change cocks when we get to her bed, and pull the two lengths of rope from my bag. She sits near the pillows and reaches for me as I sit on the edge of the side, and I kiss her but don’t move.

“Look at you, all ready. You really are insatiable, aren’t you. Slut. You can’t get enough cock, can you.”

She moans, drops her head. I bring one hand between her legs and the other keeps stroking my cock. “So wet. What, you want me to fuck you? You want it? look at you, can’t think of anything but sex, but getting filled. Can you.”

I slide two fingers in and watch her face. “You want it, don’t you.”

“Yes,” comes out in a small breath.

I know she does, I can feel it. I want to hear her say it. It turns her (and me) on to hear her talk and I want her to do it more. “Tell me.”

“I want it.”

“You want what?”

“Your cock. I want your cock, please, fuck me, please.”

I lean in to kiss her and take my hand away. “No.”

She whimpers.

I pull out the rope. She hands me her wrists, I secure one, then the other, to the bed frame, fuss about the tightness and my poor knots (I really need some better techniques.) She is writhing. I could fuck through steel, I’m so hard. I can’t make either of us wait any longer and I position myself between her legs, slap her inner thighs to get her to open up. We’re both so smooth and slick and desperate for it, we can’t wait, I can’t stop myself from plunging in, hard as I can, hard as I dare, and fucking, thrusting, pounding into her, kissing her face and neck, hands in her hair, on her chest, pulling her nipples and sliding my arm underneath her to grab at her waist and shoulders.

I’m babbling again. Her name, dirty things, take my cock, slut, you’re so tight, I love to split you open like this, and she comes, twice, three times, I loose track and she doesn’t collapse yet so I keep going, reach between us and slide my fingers along her clit and she gasps, bucks under me, I feel her tighten so hard around my cock that she nearly shoves me out of her and I work to stay inside. She’s holding her breath so I keep my hand and hips steady, hard, and then she shudders, body quaking, and I feel her squirt while I’m still inside, clit quivering under my fingers as she pushes my cock all the way out and lets out the breath she’s been holding, a gasp in for desperate air, and comes hard, shaking.

I watch. Witness. Feel her body quiet, tender and open. Holy, holy. (Holy shit.) Feel her breath as I lay my body against hers, holding tight, touching everywhere.

“Hey,” I say after a minute, lifting my face to see hers.

She sighs and opens her eyes, fingers trailing along my shoulders, on the back of my head. “Hey.”

And we nap the afternoon away, sunlight streaming through the window, though it’s cold outside we’re warm in her room, satiated, spent.

reviews

Review: Butch Jamie (film)

I watched Butch Jamie recently – you can imagine why I was intrigued, there are so few butches on screen, at all!, that I like seeing my kind represented and tend to seek out the queer films anyway, so of course I picked it up. And by picked it up, I mean, Wolfe Video was kind enough to send one to me.

Here’s the trailer:


Cute, right? And I stand by my original impulse – it’s really fun to see a butch in a film. I’m pretty critical of film in general, especially queer films, so I definitely have some criticisms of the way the plot developed. Some of it was just silly and unbelievable, in a kind of annoying way. But I actually really enjoyed Jamie’s roommate, I thought her character had probably the most integrity.

Have you seen this film? What’d you think?

miscellany

Want to win a Come Together Gift Basket?

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Valentine’s Day is coming up quick. I know, I know, we only just finished the winter holidays, but it’s true, it’ll be here way before I’m prepared for it, I’m sure.

It’s a stressful one … don’t get me wrong, I’m a romantic, I love making wonderful little gift things that are sweet and romantic and red & pink for this (cheesy) holiday. And then there’s the whole S.A.D. thing – Single’s Awareness Day – where we shouldn’t discriminate against those who aren’t partnered! Right? Right. Oh it’s a challenging holiday.

So hey, let’s do a little give-away, shall we?

Come Together Gift Baskets specializes in sexy, sensual gift baskets made for lesbians by lesbians. These are perfect for saying, “Thank you,” “I love you,” “I want to see you again,” “Happy Anniversary,” or “I’d really like to tie you to the bedpost and have my way with you.” The majority of our products come from woman-owned companies who do not participate in animal testing.

(I’m pretty fond of the Rescue Me basket, myself.)

The fabulous queers behind this site have offered up the controversial (their word, not mine) I Kissed a Girl gift basket, which includes:

Soy Massage Candle
Massage Oil
Lip Butter
Lips Pillow
Silver Bullet Vibrator

Perfect for Valentine’s Day! Give it to your sweetie, or keep it as a lovely gift to yourself!

So: here’s whatchoo gotta do to win this bad girl:

Leave a comment in this post that tells me either:

– The best gift you’ve ever received in the mail
– A fabulous Valentine’s day present you received
or
– Your ideal perfect Valentine’s day gift

Winner will be chosen from the comments randomly on Friday, January 30th.

Three … two … one … go!

miscellany

Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom & Autonomy #15

carnivalWelcome to the 15th Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom & Autonomy! I’m your host, Monsieur du Sexsmith, as we wander around the sex, feminist, queer, and gender blogospheres to bring you some amazing reading, writing, introspection, self-reflection, and inspiration on the subjects of sexual freedom and sexual autonomy.

[If I missed your link, I’m so sorry – it was a challenge to keep all of these organized! Email it to me, aspiringstud at gmail dot com, or leave a comment with your link in this post. Thanks!]

I’m going to start with a reproduction of the entire poem from pomegranate pen called temararious. Don’t worry, I won’t reprint everything in its entirety, but this was particularly beautiful and I have such a soft spot for poetry. It’s so incredibly sexy and I really felt the inner conflict of BDSM, of coming to one’s own with power and surrender. Make sure you leave comments over on pomegranate’s blog. (ps: I had to look up temerarious. What a fantastic word.)

    you make me want to do
    what i shouldn’t,
    which is to give

    in. to stay up all night
    for the company of your warm and breathing body,
    to keep my eyes open in case

    you should want to meet my gaze.
    you make me want:
    to succumb. to surrender, hands above my head.

    (reckless abandon,
    they call it,
    i think.) you

    force me to my knees and
    you
    make me feel every second
    in my body –
    we are connected –

    every atom suddenly becoming
    something of us
    the sharp focus of my eyes
    and your breath filling my lungs
    my own blood pounding
    faster with each place you touch and
    my hips leaning slowly

    in –

    these are the things you do to me
    from across rooms and rivers
    (you make me want to do
    what i shouldn’t
    and you make me want to whisper

    please.)

I asked some very specific questions about sexual freedom and autonomy, and these are the 18 particular responses to that question. I know that’s kind of atypical of these feminist carnivals, but I have long thought that this carnival was full of fascinating concepts and was hoping to get some of the folks in my queer sex & gender circles to participate.

I was incredibly touched reading each one, witnessing people’s stories of coming to their own sexual power and understanding their own sexual journeys. Writing and examining our own stories is such an incredibly powerful way to witness our own lives unfold, and that is one of the reasons I adore the writing medium of blogging so much.

I have so much to say about each of these contributions, each of which held revelations for me. But I’m going to let them speak for themselves, with a small excerpt from each piece.

Without more fanfare: let’s get on with the contributions and excerpts.

When or If: When Your Heart Holds You Back

A friend asked that I write about sexual freedom, and being as I am a pretty sex-positive queer kid I figured I’d write about how I got my freedom. What obstacles I’ve overcome to reach the place in my life where I feel free to express my sexual desire, show off my sexuality. … But I couldn’t. I can’t write about that, because it hasn’t happened.

Running Away with the Spoon: Crossing Over

Earlier in our relationship, after we have talked about fucking, we wander into a conversation about how I am her woman, and I say, uncertain of her response, “I want you to be my man.” She pauses for a second, a little surprised, and then says evenly “I am your man. You are my woman and I am your man.” My heart jumps. I have so longed for this, someone willing to cross over into that genderfucking territory with me. but I can see that this is new for her to vocalize, new words for her to speak. So we tread slowly.

Butch Girlcat: Sexual Freedom, Autonomy, & Stone

I accepted the label of stone around the same time I embraced the identity of butch. In both cases it seemed like a matter of accuracy. I’ve written pages and pages now about being butch but very little about being stone. Which only makes sense. We do silence well. She does give me pleasure, oh my god she does, but you won’t hear about it from me, not even if you’re standing next to the bed. I know my face gives me away to her. That’s my version of surrender.

Freedomgirl: Some Thoughts on Sexual Freedom

The word ‘freedom’ is incredibly powerful and meaningful to me, hence the title of this blog. I titled it, and myself, at a moment when my life changed completely; I was realizing just how unfree I had been, for a stretch of time in my relationship, and more largely during my whole life. Unfree to be me, unfree to want the things that I oh so much wanted, unfree to express my sexual desire. […] it’s more than just opening the chains of my relationship; it’s also removing the limitations that I imposed on my own mind and my own desires. Sexual freedom is the new joy in my own body that I’ve found this year. It’s claiming my sexuality for myself, not for my partner or in opposition (or conformity) to some societal ideal.

Miss Avarice: Sexual Autonomy & Sexual Freedom

For me, Sexual Autonomy means having age-appropriate access to the wealth of information that exists about different types of relationship styles, different sexual activities, fetishes, and interests, as well as safer sex practices and contraception. I think this will only happen when we live in an environment that encourages open communication, mutual respect, and an understanding of the important role that sexuality plays in every person’s life.

Uncommon Curiosity: Straight Talk

At this point, keeping track of all the gradations of gender involved in living my life would take an accountant, three maps and a well-trained sheepdog. But I only say “pretty much” because there is still a small spot in my heart that yearns to join the club, to earn my queer patch – if only so the 11-year-old inside me could make it right.

Tina-cious: Freedom is Rarely Free

I thought, at first, [this was] a no sweat kind of question. Turns out, it wasn’t as easy as I thought. Truth is — my sexual “freedom” hasn’t – for the majority of my life – been mine at all. What it had been was the will of my lovers. … All of a sudden I knew what it meant to be allowed to have a say in what sex meant to our relationship. My ideas for new things to try all of a sudden were met with enthusiasm. EVERY sexual deviance I could come up with was open to me for the taking. I just had to vocalize them. Games, role playing, toys, positions, apparatus, anything. All of a sudden I actually felt sexy. Wanted. Lusted after.

Jess I Am: Then And Now

True sexual freedom came to me when I started fucking women. I was the initiator, the aggressor, the top. I felt like a whole new world of possibilities opened up for me and soon after, it did. I discovered the online queer community and before I knew it my inner perv resurfaced and I began to own my sexuality and my body once again. I started to come to terms with my gender identity and understand that sex was going to be something I would only enjoy if I was doing things that I desired. I realized that I could experiment with role play, kink, and even a bit of pain. To this day, there is still so little that I am not open to trying, and there is nothing about sex to fear because everything I do is on my terms, and I am 100% in control of it all, even when I choose to surrender that control.

Femme is my Gender: Shame

When I came out in my twenties I felt myself very liberated. And in some ways I was. However, shame was certainly preventing me from exploring my sexuality freely and in its entirety. I did make progress in some areas though. … Now in my forties and in the ridiculously late flowering discovery of my essential sexual nature, I feel less shame than ever before. That is not to say I am freed from it, but it certainly withers as my confidence grows.

Packing Vocals: What If

So what does “sexual autonomy” and “sexual freedom” mean to me? It means that I can enjoy, appreciate and express my sexuality and gender without fear of rejection or ridicule. It means that I finally have the access to knowledge, the experiences of others and the support to explore my emotions, fears and desires. It means that instead of standing still and stagnating, I can move forward, learning and growing as a person. It means I can be me.

Don’t Let’s Talk: “One of the virtues of not being puritanical about sex is not being embarrassed afterwards.”

[H]aving sex with girls has given me the freedom to access other aspects of my sexuality. Because coming out as gay was easy, but being gay is what gave me the ability to come out (at least to myself) as slutty, kinky, and maybe a little less than gay.

Butchtastic: Don’t fence me in

For me sexual/gender autonomy and freedom are ultimately about self-determination. We should each have the freedom to not only choose our identity labels at any given time, but change them as we wish. I don’t know about you, but my notion of who I am has changed a helluva lot since I came out as a lesbian at seventeen. For the first part of my sexual life, that label and the expected behaviors associated with being a lesbian fit me. I had no desire or need for men in a sexual way. At the same time, I also didn’t relate much to ‘butch’ because of what I saw as a restrictive set of behaviors associated with that label: being less open sexually and emotionally, and taking on what I saw as mostly negative masculine behaviors.

The Verbosery: Finding my Pieces

A woman who personifies the masculine spirit but still craves being fucked like a woman? To me, personally, that’s just about hotter than the surface of the sun. … Part of my journey in understanding my personal relationship with femme was coming into the realization that the stereotypical femme bottom role did not apply to me. I had to come to terms with the fact that femmes top, too. Not only that, but I had to revisit my own personal understanding that I don’t, have never, fallen neatly into given categories. I have always endeavored to forge my own trail, to find the pieces that fit best and felt right for me, personally.

Three-hole Punch Me: On Sugarbutch Chronicles, Sinclair Asked …

To me, sexual autonomy and sexual freedom are synonymous with “owning” my sexuality. This means that I am responsible for putting myself into sexual situations as well as removing myself from those situations when I need to. It means that I decide when I want to have sex, and what kind of sex I want to have. No one else pressures me into it, and I am not forced to do things that I don’t understand or don’t want to do. It means that I am honest with myself and honest with my partner(s) and that we communicate openly and honestly about what we will do together and what the boundaries are. It means that my partner asks for my CONSENT and I do the same for the other person.

Green-Eyed Girl: Sexual Freedom

If asked a couple of years ago what my thoughts on sexual freedom were, I would have laughed and said, “A whip, silly. A whip in one hand and my fingers wrapped around your hair, pulling tightly – that is when I feel most sexually free.” That’s the person I used to be – very much in control & a touch on the violent side (sexually). I don’t know when it changed, I can’t give a specific time when I came to the realization that I am no longer that person. I am fully aware of it though, this huge difference in my sexual behavior. I am also fully aware that it is because I trust her and that is the reason why I have shifted from being a top to a bottom.

A Feminist View: Freedom & Autonomy, Part 1: All Places are Not Alike

[M]y journey to sexual freedom (and autonomy?) is synonymous with my discovery of consensual and safe BDSM sex, and of consensual D/s relationships. With reference to my own past, it is clear that I had no freedom or autonomy as I grew up, and it was only when I came to understand other ways of seeing what was innately in me that I came to have any sense of having control over my own sexuality – that I could own it in every sense of the word. [Also check out part two.]

Sugarbutch: Sexual Autonomy & Freedom

I’m supposed to be writing about sexual autonomy and freedom – so let me tell you this: I cannot untangle gender from sex from power. They are all the spiraling sugar-phosphate backbone in the DNA of my sexuality, and it wasn’t until I unlocked my gender that my sexual liberation truly lived in my body, that my sexuality was truly realized and in practice. It wasn’t until I had a cock – no: it wasn’t until I had a girl who knew what to do with my cock. My gender is the language of my desire, my attraction. The ways I communicate physically. Say gender is a drag, but also say this: I wasn’t me until I discovered my own gendered space.

… and yes, I know this is the longest post in the history of long posts on Sugarbutch, but it’s worth it, I promise.

Read about 20 more posts after the cut.

Continue reading →

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Sugasm #157

This Week’s Picks

More Sugasm | Join the Sugasm | Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup Tuesday and Friday

My personal favorites:

(A Quick Fuck in a Shadowed Corner was also included in #157.)

essays

Sexual Autonomy & Freedom

Written for the 15th Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom & Autonomy. Thoughts in response and reflection to my own call for contributions.

Let me say this: I don’t think, in this culture which vilifies sex and punishes especially female sexuality, that I will ever be “done” reaching my own space of sexual freedom and autonomy. It is probably an endless task, a lifetime battle.

Let me also say this: I have crawled up out of shame by my bloodied fingers and I am not going back. I stand on my own two legs, strong-cunted, and I am not going back. I drive the engine of my body hard, glide it through passageways I have previously thought unnavigatable, and I am not going back.

Maybe ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is freedom.

I would not have had the sexual awakening I’ve had if it wasn’t for feminism: the feminist health movement, the theories of consciousness raising, the lesbian sex wars of the 80s that produced porn and smut and BDSM with theories of liberation at their roots.

I am so grateful for all the things that have contributed to my gaining of sexual autonomy and freedom, to my sexual awakening. Nancy Friday’s book My Secret Garden: Women’s Sexual Fantasies. My high school boyfriend telling me kink was great and fun and he respected me, too. Cunt: A Declaration of Independence by Inga Muscio and Cunt Coloring Book by Tea Corrine and Femalia and Nothing But The Girl; The Blatant Lesbian Image and the entire series of Best Lesbian Erotica (especially 1998). Kitty Tsui and that one scene in Breathless with a knife. S.I.R. Video and Hard Love / How to Fuck In High Heels and Sugar High Glitter City. Babeland, which taught me more than I thought there was to know. Body Electric, which woke me up to my own power, and still does. The Topping Book and The Bottoming Book. The Ethical Slut, which changed how I see relationships. Pink & White, which finally made porn I wanted to own and watch over and over again. My academic studies and my degree in women studies which taught me how social change works. Dan Savage and Savage Love.

The fucking INTERNET. From BBSs to chatrooms to the web to Wiki After Dark to Scarleteen to RAINN to the amazing sexblog communities. The connection to marginalized community despite distance and fear.

Let me say this: I don’t know how any woman grows up and develops her sexual autonomy and freedom, let alone a queer woman, let alone a genderqueer butch or femme. These are not things that are built into us, no matter how progressive our families, no matter how much our parents loved us. There are so many layers to the damage, and the length of the legacy is long and wide, the depth of those wounds are long and wide.

Let me also say this: for me, the first step had to be seeing those wounds, recognizing the damage. By beginning to feel what a “healthy sexuality” (uh, whatever that is) felt like in my body, I could more easily differentiate between the damage and the strength. And I learned to use erotic energy to heal those places in me still reeling, still healing.

Why do you think gender dynamics are so erotically charged for me? I was damaged as a girl. As a girl, I was damaged. And I don’t mean “I was abused when I was young” but rather, that this culture hurt my girlhood. That’s why I turned to feminism as soon as I began to understand the power of social conditioning and gender roles: to learn how to undo the damage.

And why do you think I love femmes something fierce? Our wounds run parallel. We are the same, but opposite; opposing, complimentary, full of traction and friction when we rub against each other. Lay your wounds here next to mine, they fill and warm and comfort each other.

Why is gender so erotically charged for me? Because it has been the site of so much discomfort, so much damage. Not just for me: for my friends and lovers, for my sisters, for my parents, for the one boy I ever slept with, for our collective unconscious. So when I take it and corral it and tame it, when I become the Gender Whisperer and see the thoughts in its head despite our different languages, when I learn its language and teach it mine, I become strong. I take the lead. I win.

I know, I’m supposed to be writing about sexual autonomy and freedom – so let me tell you this: I cannot untangle gender from sex from power. They are all the spiraling sugar-phosphate backbone in the DNA of my sexuality, and it wasn’t until I unlocked my gender that my sexual liberation truly lived in my body, that my sexuality was truly realized and in practice. It wasn’t until I had a cock – no: it wasn’t until I had a girl who knew what to do with my cock.

My gender is the language of my desire, my attraction. The ways I communicate physically.

Say gender is a drag, but also say this: I wasn’t me until I discovered my own gendered space. Butch – but not just butch, high butch – but not just high butch, capital-H High capital-B Butch. My body has never made as much sense as it does, now, in button-downs and ties, in sweater vests and cufflinks, hell, even tee shirts and jeans feel right now that I buy them in the department that cuts them to fit my body, square, even lines, corners, dark colors.

It’s not that I want society at large to treat me as male. It’s not that when I put on men’s clothes, I liked the way I was subsequently treated differently – though I was. But the difference was greater than that: I gained autonomy. I gained agency. I gained my own voice, my own stride, my own body, my own control. And I love the disconnect that most people see – female body, masculine presentation – I love witnessing the subtle struggle of random passers-by.

Just by living in the world, walking down the street, I set out a challenge. I work hard to make this masculinity, this presentation, an acceptable way for a woman to live.

Say gender is constructed, but also say this: something in me lines up and sees clearly when I get to express myself just the way I want to. I know how to deconstruct – I know how to break down and examine and look from various angles and research and consciousness-raise and bounce ideas around. And I’m learning how to construct, how to create, how to make myself anew from the inside, all the way out.

miscellany

What happened in December

I’m way behind on the end-of-the-year stuff. I want to do a 2009 roundup, too – that is, hopefully, coming.

Meanwhile, here’s what happened in December:

Sex & Relationships:

Gender

Community

Personal

  • Letter to a friend was about my own personal power, and is password protected.
  • Probably my favorite piece of writing from December was My Father’s Son, a prose-poem about my relationship with my dad and my gender.

Semantics

Colophon

Reviews

And that, as they say, was that.

reviews

Review: Pink & White’s Champion

To all of you who just complained that there are no butches or real sex on the L Word.

To all of you who don’t have a favorite porn star.

To all of you who think that lesbian porn is hetero-made and consists of two pretty girls with French tips tongue-kissing.

To anyone who likes hot butches, bois, trans guys, femmes, and other genderqueers.

Watch this film.

Buy it, and watch it, and tell your friends about it.

Watch it, and praise it, and buy and support the other amazing things that Pink & White does, too.

Queer porn director Shine Louise Houston’s new indy flick CHAMPION was released on DVD by Blowfish this week, and last night I sat down and turned it on.

I twittered some of my immediate reactions:

  • oh my god, the noises that Madison Young makes. oh. my. god.
  • what cock is it that Syd & Madison are fucking with in this second scene in Champion?
  • I am loving the original score on this Champion film.
  • @blowfishtwitter oh I <3 you.
  • :O what is that behind-the-knees spreader bar used on Dylan Rion?!? oh I so need one of those.
  • shit – it’s a golf club? and rope!? jesus, note to self.
  • why isn’t there more dirty talk in porn? just lots of moans & grunts … that’s sexy too, but c’mon, let’s hear some good words.
  • I actually had a dream that crash pad series #4 was already out and published. dammit. at least there’s #3 and Champion!

Toward the end of the flick, my jaw still hanging open in awe and having barely moved from the spot where I sat down, I realized: no one but Syd Blakovich could’ve played the lead role of Jessie. I imagine it was made for her – she’s worked with Houston in the past, and so Houston must know about Blakovich’s MMA and Ultimate Surrender credentials, plus precisely how skilled Blakovich is as a top in scenes.

I loved the training sequences, Blakovich’s punching and kicking at gym equipment with hard, concentrated looks on her face, muscles straining and rippling. Especially juxtaposed with the sex scenes – almost all of which feature Blakovich – the bodily similarities were heightened and the fighting sequences were amazingly erotic.

Speaking of sex:

Blakovich pairs with an amazing cast of porn stars throughout. Her real-life partner Jiz Lee makes more than a few appearances (as Jessie’s ex), and it is so obvious that they know each other’s bodies.

The scene with Blakovich and Madison Young is amazing. Amazing. If Champion had a spine, I would surely break it right at that scene. Young has orgasm after orgasm, and I actually wondered at one point if she was going to be torn apart from the intensity – Blakovich does not let up, and oh my god what Young can take as a bottom blows my brain. The power and strength with which Blakovich was pounding away at Young’s inner thigh, at one point – and Young just opened and took it, gasping, and holy fuck it was hot.

Morning after, Blakovich delivers my favorite line to Young: “No one’s keeping you here, honey.” I gasped at the screen. Did she just kick Madison Young out of bed?! Shit.

(Remember that time I wrote about Avah fucking Madison Young? Yeah, me too.)

Blakovich is also, eventually, paired with her character’s rival, Dallas (playing Violet), at the end of the film (not to, ahem, give away the plot or anything). The scene is more tender than others, but still very hot. I really love the way Dallas makes noise, very low-pitched and incredibly hot.

Blakovich is not the only one who gets to fuck – Dylan Rion gets her chance with Javier, in a hot hot scene in a van involving an impromptu spreader bar at her knees made of (I think?) a golf club and rope. She’s one of my personal favorite bottoms in all the porn I’ve seen, so that scene definitely sticks out.

And plus? Rion leaves her heels on.

Even Houston makes an appearance, briefly, as a reporter.

Pink & White – Houston’s production company – and Houston herself – have been hailed again and again as innovative, cutting edge, and authentic, and though it is starting to sound redundant, I can’t not praise her vision: she directs real genderqueer porn, with butches, femmes, bois, and trans folks, in real scenarios with real sex that both inspires and reflects my own sex life. I never saw myself reflected in porn until I started watching Houston’s work – and for that, I will pick up every DVD Houston releases, to support her.

Buy the DVD from Blowfish or from your local women-owned sex-positive sex shop.

Watch the NC-17 version of the trailer, or the PG-13 version, below:

reviews

Review: Gee Whiz, the Hitachi Upgrade

(It’s actually a little challenging to write about vibrators … seems very personal, which is weird, compared to all the rest that I write about. But how I get off in private, alone, is not something I usually share.)

I was in college when I invested in the Hitachi Magic Wand. It is the Grandmother of All Sex Toys, and unless your clit is super super sensitive (in which case the VERY strong vibrations will simply be too much), I recommend one for every toy box.

The first time I brought it home and used it, though, I just couldn’t get the pointed stimulation I was used to or liked. I like the strong vibration, but I still wanted more concentrated focus in … certain spots.

I was complaining about this with some of my fellow Women Studies students, and one friend of mine said, “The attachments are where it’s at. That’s what you’re missing.”

“Huhwhut? But I don’t really want internal penetration …”

“No, no. Use it on your clit. It’ll just be more … gathered attention this way. Trust me.”

I did. She was right.

The Hitachi and the G-spotter attachment (shown left … I guess Babeland doesn’t carry them anymore? I can’t find it on their website) have been my nightcap for many years now.

I’ve seen the other attachments – like the Gee Whiz, silicone, a little fancier, more sculpted – at Babeland ever since, and while I was somewhat curious, I wasn’t sure it would be worth it. They seemed more made for penetration and I didn’t think I wanted that. The

Alright, Babeland: I stand corrected.

The best part about this innocent little attachment is that it’s got this nub on the underside of the cap that is perfectly situated for clit stimulation.

Time will tell if this attachment will stay at the top of my toybox or get buried, but for now, I’m damn excited about it. And considering this review is done, and I have a little time before I have to grab a shower and get going with my day, I think I might just get back into bed. Mmm yeah.

(If you don’t have a Hitachi yet, you can get the Hitachi & Gee Whiz together and save some money.)

miscellany

L Word Serenade

By comedian Rebecca Drysdale, aka Beck D. Posted in honor of the L Word’s last season, premiering today.

I am one of the many dykes who has a love/hate relationship with the L Word … sometimes the sex sure is hot (Sherry Jaffey, Carmen) but oh my god the drama (Jenny) and the ridiculous characters (Jenny) and the horrible character arcs (Jenny, Max, Shane, Tina, and uh … everyone else) make me want to throw things at my TV. Yet, like many of us, still I watch, mostly for the cultural references and the community knowledge. It’s all we’ve got, I guess.

But then there’s spinoff art like this rap video, above, and I am so glad I get at least most of the inside jokes.

miscellany

Call for Contributions: Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom & Autonomy

The Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy, edition #14 is up at Silent Porn Star, and Sugarbutch is hosting the next Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy, edition #15, here.

That means, I am on the lookout for links about sexual freedom and autonomy. Email them to me to submit your site to the upcoming Carnival, which will be posted – here! – on Monday, January 26th.

That gives you almost TWO WEEKS! to write something. Get crackin’.

UPDATE: Deadline for submissions for the January 26th Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy #15 is this Friday, January 23rd. This’ll give me the weekend to read and compile the posts. Thanks!!

So, I am thinking about sexual freedom and autonomy. What does that really mean? How does that apply to feminist butches and femmes, to queers in this particular time (and place), to this community that I’m involved in of lesbian feminists exploring gender within the sexblog community?

I’m into words, so I have to start with what these terms mean.

Sexual Autonomy

Google helps me out with the definition of “autonomy”: personal independence; the capacity to make an informed, un-coerced decision; a person’s ability to make independent choices.

I’ve thought a lot about autonomy and choice, especially in terms of gender roles, of butch/femme, and the ways that exploring these gender dynamics often appear to be reproducing a compulsory gender hierarchy. One particular thing about choice that I want to reiterate is that I believe that all options have to be empowered and equally valued in order for it to be a real choice. The consequences to both choices have to be comparable.

If someone says, “Either you can eat this pile of dog poo, or you can eat this pile of carrots,” uh, that’s not really a choice.

So, sexual autonomy has to do with the ability to make choices based on all options being empowered, instead of having sexuality dictated upon you by cultural or gender stereotypes. Sexism is rampant, and androgyny is somewhat required in queer communities, so butch/femme roles are misunderstood, mistrusted, belittled, seen as archaic, and dismissed.

But autonomy in choosing to explore gender can come through 1) deconstructing the cultural expectations, identity alignment assumptions, and compulsory roles, especially regarding the ways that those things are destructive, hierarchical, and marginalizing; and 2) reconstructing selective parts in ways that have inner resonance, that “just make sense,” and are empowering.

I’m talking about gender autonomy here, I guess, not so much sexual autonomy – sexual autonomy would more be along the lines of … what? Choosing your sexual partners? Coming out? Claiming a kinky sexuality? The concept of autonomy automatically calls to my mind questions and issues about gender development and identity, perhaps because I feel that is more fragile than sexual autonomy – I think there is more discourse on sexual autonomy, claiming your own sexuality, learning yourself and your own sexual needs, etc.

Sexual Freedom

What does this really mean? What does it mean to be “sexually free”? The stereotype that would perhaps come to mind is someone promiscuous, sexually “liberated,” who has a lot of sex. And hey, that person might be sexually free, sure, but that’s not necessarily true, and definitely not the only way to look at it. What other ways are we able to exercise our “sexual freedom?”

So, considering these two concepts – sexual autonomy and sexual freedom – I have some questions for you:

What does “sexual autonomy” mean to you? What does “sexual freedom” mean to you?

Are there any particular stories you want to tell about gaining (or losing) your own sexual freedom or autonomy?

How does your knowledge of feminism play into the concepts of sexual freedom and autonomy?

How does your sexual autonomy or freedom conflict, interact, or engage with your feminist beliefs?

Any other questions or ideas you might have about these concepts?

I’m open to all sorts of posts – your submission to the Feminist Carnival does not have to specifically answer these questions. In my ideal dream world, here’s a list of folks who I would hand-pick to contribute to this conversation. Please consider writing something on these questions – or, at least, submitting something that you’ve worked on during the month of January.

Leo McCool
Freedomgirl
Butchtastic
Green Eyed Girl
Natt Nightly
Packing Vocals
Femme is my Gender
Queer Fat Femme
Fatgirl Femme
Just Like Jesse James
Ladies in Waiting
Miss Avarice
Femmeinist Fucktoy
Lesbian Dad
Jess I Am
Tina-cious
Don’t Let’s Talk
Essin’ Em
When or If
The Femme Show

(These are some of my favorite blogs, if you didn’t get that, so if you aren’t reading them already I highly recommend them. These folks keep me thinking, engaged, and conversing about sex and gender in ways that make my head twist in knots and light up and feel alive. Send my love to ’em all.)

Let’s queer (and butch/femme) up this Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy.

dirty stories, real life

Rocking Chair Blow Job

To our right, on the futon extended down into a bed, there was a spanking scene with a small black paddle. To our left, on another extended futon, a threesome.

Kristen sits in my lap in a low chair that rocks.

“I could do it right here,” she suggested, lowering her eyes a little.

When asked earlier what she wanted to do tonight, she bent one knee a little, her tiny plaid skirt tilting, over-the-knee socks hugging her thighs. “Suck some cock,” she answered.

“Yeah?” I search her face a second but feel my butch cock jump to alert. Her mouth on it. Sucking. Her eyes. Yes. When I took this seat, the same thought had occurred to me.

“Do it.”

I use my hands to push her off of me, not that she needs the encouragement. She kneels between my legs and I unbuckle my belt, unzip my slacks, pull out the cock I’d brought.

“Go on, suck it.”

She does. Swallows the head and presses her lips down the length of the shaft. I shift it, keep my hand wrapped around the base so it is in place over my clit, my little dick.

I can feel it when she sucks.

“Harder,” I say, fisting the hair at the back of her head, pulling but not forcing, adding resistance. She gulps a little and her cheeks go taut as she pulls me into her mouth harder, and I feel it, groan, “Oh yeah, oh fuck yeah.”

She’s good at this. Head bobbing up and down on my lap, I lean back and take in the view, concentrate on the feel of this girl’s lips wrapped around my dick. I can see the whole room, her back is to them; people shifting to watch us and shifting away to watch other scenes. She wanted to be watched. She looks so pretty with my cock in her mouth.

Her knees are splayed a little and I am hard, getting harder. I pull her head off all the way by her hair and shove my fingers into her mouth, two of them, in and out, pressing against her tongue gently, so she can feel it, so I can remember what it’s like to have a dick against a wet tongue.

“Again,” I say, and withdraw my fingers, shove her mouth back down to my cock.

Those little noises, gulping, panting, breathing through her throat, mouth watering and swallowing.

“That’s right baby, suck it.”

I lean back again and my dick swells, puckers when she sucks hard and fast. She keeps it deep in her mouth and pulses and I cry out. Fuck.

I pull her up again and lean forward to kiss her, mouth swollen and red, opening for me as I keep my hand on the back of her head, on her cheek, on her jaw, holding her just where I want her, tongue in her mouth and she sucks that too. I reach my other hand down between her legs and push the thin fabric of her panties aside, enter her easily with two fingers and swirl them over her clit. She gasps.

“I like the way you suck me off,” I say, low, into her ear. “Your mouth feels so good. Oh god you’re so wet,” I trace my fingers along her lips and flick her clit, swollen, thick and sensitive. She moans.

“I want you to stand up, bend over, pull off your panties and hand them to me. Understand?” I pull back and remove my hand and she nods. “Do it then.”

She does. Stands and this chair is so low that her thighs are right in front of my face, that little strip of skin between her socks and her short, short skirt. She pushes black lace undies down over her legs and I help her keep her balance as she steps out of them. I hold out my hand. She gives them to me and I put them in my back pocket.

“Down.” I say, and grab her hips with both hands, moving her back to her knees.

(“Are your knees okay?” “Yes, for another minute.”)

Her thighs splay on the floor between my legs and I’m at a perfect angle to cup her pussy and slide my fingers in, now unhindered, open, exposed. “Damn, you feel so good,” I murmur, hand in her hair again, across the backs of her shoulders, around her waist holding her close and in contrasting leverage to the pressure of my hand between her legs. She moans, gasps, mouth open, blue eyes shining.

I want to fuck her. Want my cock in her, want to feel her come and pulse while I’m inside. I look around. I want her bent over something, want to leave her socks on and push her skirt up over her hips, grab her hair. There’s no free space except a piece of wall. Fine.

I get her up and lead her over there, press against her at the wall. She is so sensitive already and I work my fingers in her easily, hard, fast. “I want you to come for me, here, in front of everyone,” I start whispering into her ear, holding her arms above her head with one hand, pressing her legs apart with my thighs, hand working against her cunt. “Come on, do it for me.”

She does. She comes gasping, shuddering, knees going weak. When her eyes meet mine her face is open, shining. I wrap my arms around her and kiss her, deep and sweet.

cock confidence, reviews

Review: Simply Sexy Leather Harness

The reviews for toys that I loved aren’t a problem – I just write, hey, I loved this, and here’s why (with lots of detail).

The reviews for toys I didn’t like are so much harder. For one, I always feel that I didn’t adequately give the toy a chance, and if I just used it better, differently, again, warmed up to it, then I’d like it. Or, at least, I’d see it’s full purpose and write huh, it’s really good for this and this function, but that’s not a function I’ve ever needed or have ever anticipated reading.

gv_harness1But, nonetheless, I try to report what it was like for me to use any given toy, my observations, how I think it would be useful and how it didn’t work for me, with the hopes that it is a lot of data and not as much opinion, so you can make your own decision.

So, given all that:

Good Vibrations sent me the Simply Sexy Leather Harness, a one-strap harness with leather straps and a leather panel behind interchangeable O-rings. And I was not impressed. Let me tell you why:

  • The back piece is too big and thick, and felt, when I had it on, like I was wearing underwear or a shield (which perhaps some people would like, but I don’t)
  • The O-ring is a problem. A big one. Because of the way it attaches with small leather straps to the back piece, there is very little room under the O-ring. This means cocks with a particularly thick base (like, say, oh, the Silky, which I think we all know is my cock 75% of the time) does not fit. At all. Making the harness practically useless to me.
  • Okay, so maybe I can use it for another cock, right? This is what I was thinking. Just because it is a no-Silky-zone doesn’t make it useless. But no: aside from Silky, my next go-to cocks are much larger in girth and need a larger O-ring. This harness’s O-rings are interchangeable, so I just get out a bigger one, right? No … the same O-ring problem again. The straps that hold the O-rings attach to the leather triangle backing at a fixed distance, not to the harness straps themselves, and it is near impossible to fit a 2″ O-ring comfortably. It will fit, but it doesn’t sit right and it isn’t tight enough or comfortable. It also feels like it’s going to snap off.
  • The straps are also a slight problem. The center between-the-legs strap is nylon, but hte around-the-waist straps are leather, and very hard to tighten or loosen as needed. Maybe that’s a good thing really – once you get them where you want them, they won’t move – but as a packing harness, where I don’t want it biting into my hips all night but I want to be able to tighten and go when I’m ready, it wouldn’t work.

It is rare to find a solid one-strap, and I do like those; I also like the combination of leather and nylon, and I like that the O-rings are interchangeable. I had high hopes for this Simply Sexy Leather Harness but I can’t imagine it being useful – especially not when I have harnesses like the Jaguar, the Barely There, and the Joque in my sex toy arsenal. And this is not to say that Good Vibrations doesn’t have other fabulous harnesses to buy, too … it’s worth checking out what they’ve got available, they’re a great feminist sex-positive sex toy store.

dirty stories, real life, starred

A Quick Fuck in a Shadowed Corner

The club is dark enough that no one can tell Kristen is on her knees in front of me. She found a particularly shadowed corner. Her back is to the wall, my hands up against it, trying not to leave my head dipped down to watch her lips close around the shaft of my cock.

Her skirt short pushed up on her thighs. I run my hands through her short hair on the back of her head and straighten out my neck to see a friend approaching me.

“Sinclair! I haven’t seen you in … ” she stops a few feet away and I twist my head, but not my body, keeping my hand on the back of Kristen’s head. She hears my friend and starts hesitating, but I keep my grip firm and catch her eye, just for a second: don’t you stop.

She doesn’t. Swallows me even deeper and brings her hand up to my thigh for leverage. I keep my hand on her jaw so I can feel her open and full. I try not to groan.

“Uh, hi,” I manage to say, looking back to my friend. “Can I find you later?”

Wide-eyed, she chuckles a little, “Sure, man,” and backs off, glancing over her shoulder as she disappears back into the crowd.

“Good girl,” I say, caressing her hair and cheeks with my fingers. She’s taking me deep, looking up every so often, her lips closing around me and sucking. She takes me almost to the base, deep, then slides it out of her mouth and lets her tongue lap all the way down the length of it. My hips are moving, grinding against her gently, I want more, want to pull out and fuck her up against the wall, bend her over the pool table on the other side of the room, I can see other butches with sticks hitting balls across felt in precise angles by the lamp swaying. Everyone going along with their Saturday night, not noticing this dark corner we’ve found.

“I want to fuck you,” I say quietly, fisting her hair for grip. “You get me good and hard, and I will.” She buckles a little, a jolt goes through her body and she ripples, I can feel it. She wants it now, but she’ll have to wait.

She flicks her tongue around the crown, then wide on the underside of the shaft as she takes the head in her mouth again, keeping her mouth open, and I rub it against her tongue with a little shift in my hips. She lets me slide it all the way in, pressing her shoulder against the wall with my shin and holding the back of her head again, filling her mouth up.

Kristen knows how. She’s damn good at this. Sometimes she goes too deep and it gets hard to breathe, she pulls out and gasps, then goes in to swallow me again, deeper, tighter. I feel her throat close around my cock, tongue pulsing, and I thicken in her mouth, hips start tensing and that’s it, I have to have her, here, now.

I pull out fast. Pull her up with my hand still on her jaw, kiss her hard against the wall as I push her skirt up, shove the fabric aside and find her slit. I keep her pinned between my body and the wall.

“Oh please, I want it so bad,” she whispers next to my ear. I keep a tight grip on her shoulders, my forearm against her clavicle, gripping her thighs, my knee bent and under hers, holding her legs apart. “I want your cock in me,” she gasps.

“Damn right you’ll get my cock. After you made me all hard like you did? With that sweet little mouth of yours? You’re going to get it.”

Tiny moans from her mouth. She’s waiting, hands clawing at my shoulders, hips writhing. I find her slit with my fingers and tease her lips. She’s so wet, so wet, I can feel it just on the outside, stickysweet and I can’t stand the wait, it’s making my eyes blur and head spin. I grip my cock in my fist and circle her lips and opening with the head.

She moans, louder.

“Shh,” I say. “Someone could come over here any second. We’re barely concealed.” I should be faster, this should be just three thrusts and it’s over, we’re in public for goodness’ sake, in a room full of people, barely concealed by shadow.

But I’m waiting, again, now. I want to hear her beg. I want her tongue working again with language like it was just working against my cock.

“Oh, baby, I want it so bad,” she breathes in my ear, pressing with everything she’s got against me. “I need you to fuck me, come on, you fuck me so good.”

I keep circling, teasing the open hole of her cunt with my cock, and bring my thumb up to her mouth to circle and tease her mouth the same way. She gasps, gulps, tries to take it into her mouth but I won’t let her.

“You know I’ll do it. I’ll fuck you right, right here, against this wall, with all these people watching,” I growl low against her neck as I bite, a little too hard, and she gasps, gives in. “You don’t even care that they can see, do you. You need it so bad.”

“Please,” she says, and looks me right in the eyes, that look bordering on desperation, eyes wide and open, lips parted, a hint of a smile and so much wanting. “Please,” she says again, drawing out the vowels, and I give in.

I murmur, “Yes, yes,” soothing, and slide inside her slow, so slow, but strong, and all the way, tip to balls.

The first stroke takes the longest and she’s moaning already, a long low sound that corresponds, and she breathes in when I get to the base, both of us tight, clenched, pulsing. She wants it hard, she wants it fast, and I know just how she likes it, but I’m taking my time, taking every delicious inch, thick, just how I like it.

I can feel her everywhere.

I pull almost all the way out, a little faster, and she gasps. I cover her mouth with mine in more of a controlling move than a kiss, to quiet her a little, but I don’t really care if people hear, or see, anymore. My hands are on her hips and I control how fast she moves against me, she’s writhing, trying to ride me faster, but she can’t, I keep her inches away from me, keep her shoved against the wall, hard, and control the depth and speed.

“Fuck, oh fuck,” I mutter. She squeezes me tight in resistance and desperation, and it gets me so hot, so hard, I start building up faster, harder.

I place my hand over her mouth as she gets louder. I’m groaning too, fucking harder, and I just can’t keep her quiet when we get to this point, I can’t, she starts moaning and gasping and a few heads turn, but we’re oblivious to where we are. People steal glances over to our dark corner, squint, try to make out our figures, shifting their angle a little to get a better view, tapping their friend and nodding over toward us. I’m hoping my pants won’t fall down past my ass any further, hoping her skirt is concealing us a little, her leg up and wrapped around my hip. I can only see the room from my periphery vision, but Kristen has a good view and she wraps her arms around my shoulders and looks out at the room as if for the first time, makes eye contact with someone, just for a second.

She shivers. Runs her fingers through the hair on the back of my head, grips my shoulders.

I can’t stop, I’m working in her harder, again, and again, getting all worked up, and we lose ourselves in it. We forget where we are.

Suddenly she’s close. So close. I can feel it, her legs shake and open in a different way. I wrap my arms around her strong, shove inside her hard, fast, and she’s coming, suddenly, it washes over her without anticipation, just suddenly unleashed, muscles quivering and she’s gasping, trying not to yell, in my ear, clawing at my shoulders. Her cunt grips so hard when she comes I have to work to stay inside, grunting a little, I can feel sweat on my neck and lower back from the physical exertion, and I press hard into her, I don’t let up, and she keeps coming, gasping one more time, surrendering, then releases against me with a long sigh.

We stay wrapped in the bliss of it all for a minute longer when we notice a waiter approaching, doing rounds. Kristen straightens up a bit, smooths her hair, her skirt, I step back and zip.

“You two okay here?” he asks, as he does his drive-by.

Kristen picks up her gin gimlet, catches my eye as she sips on it.

“We’re great,” I say, and swig the rest of the melted ice in my glass of Jameson.

miscellany

Blog for Lesbian Health Day

nlhs_smallLet’s talk about our health.

Personally I am extremely grateful to have grown up in a culture where the women’s health movement had already had significant effects and waves. I went to teen-positive health centers for my first annual exams and birth control prescriptions, I went to queer-positive centers after I came out who didn’t blink twice when I checked “lesbian” on the forms.

And, honestly, Lesbian Health and Women’s Health are big – huge! – topics on which I am not so well-versed. Breast cancer, cervical cancer, HIV prevention, the myths around lesbians being less susceptible to STIs, safer sex practices, gender discrimination, transphobia … these are huge topics, each of which are worthy of their own examination.

And lucky for us, there are many wonderful people working within these fields to make it more lesbian-inclusive, queer-inclusive, gender-inclusive.

Today is Blog for Lesbian Health Day in honor of the upcoming National Lesbian Health Summit taking place March 6 through 8, 2009, in San Francisco. It’s only $30 registration for both days.

(Anyone have any plane-fare hookups? I’d love to go, but can’t afford to actually get there. Note to self, get an airline sponsor.)

I’ve been in touch with Cat, one of the organizers of the conference, and she writes:

Instead of it being just a boring conference, we want to use it as a place to build grassroots, community-based conversations on our health and what health issues affect us. AND most importantly, how we can be leaders in championing our health and getting TPTB to pay attention to our health. This is a critical moment in our nation’s history and we want to make the most of it.

The thing that is probably #1 on my list about health, as a, ahem, sexually active queer person, is STIs and safer sex. It’s something that I always intend to write about more here, to address issues how to keep your toys clean, reminders to wear gloves and use dams and condoms, but it’s a topic that – again – is HUGE, and I tend to feel like I need to do a whole bunch of research on something before I write it up, and I can’t seem to make the time to do the research. (I do practice safer sex, and I try to include it in my write-ups … but that’s not quite the same as opening up a specific dialogue about it.)

So let me take this little opportunity to say: EDUCATE YOURSELF ABOUT SAFER SEX. There are many ways to do this. I recommend Scarleteen – though it is geared toward teenagers, the information is clear and straightforward, basic, and in-depth, and I often use it as a resource when I come across health questions that I can’t answer.

So, instead of writing about my own experiences with the healthcare systems (which have been mostly positive, actually) or speculating too much about the community questions, I want to ask you:

What health issues are you concerned about? For yourself and for your community?

What information do you need to make better decisions about your health?

And what experiences have you already had with your health and the healthcare world (the good, the bad, the ugly)?

What do health issues do we need to take on and how?

How can we better grapple with how we form who we are (allowing for all of the ways we see ourselves) and let that lead our conversations on health?

What do you want to see this summit address?

Do you want to take them to task for calling it the Lesbian Health Summit? Is it welcoming to your particular identity?

If you’d like, leave your stories in the comments, or write it up on your own blog – and please do leave a link to what you write here.

Register online for the Summit now, or visit their website for more information.

dirty stories, real life

I woke her in the middle of the night

Kristen spent the night in my bed on Saturday, and by five am, after waking up every half-hour or so half-hard and wishing it was morning so I could fuck her again, I give in. Shifting against her, I roll us both from our lazy sleep-embrace to her back, one of my legs between hers, right hand on the soft hair between her legs, fingers on her lips, pressing gently, caressing, opening.

I’d asked her about waking her up to fuck her – I wouldn’t presume to do it without permission. Not only did she agree, the shift in her eyes and near imperceptible movement of her hips betrayed that she would very much like it if I did so.

Her body responds immediately, swelling and cresting, though she can barely open her eyes. My mouth at her ear: “I can’t resist you any longer.”

She moans sleepily, little murmurs, body beginning to writhe, not awake. Little nips with my teeth on her neck, just enough for her to feel, not enough to wake her fully. I like her bodily responses, what her animal brain let her do while most of her cognizant self is still off.

She starts moving her thighs apart, hips circling and pulsing a little, pressing against my hand. She is so responsive. I work my fingers inside, slowly, finding the angle, finding that spot she loves, finding the sweet O of her mouth with mine.

Those small, thin moans every time she breathes get inside me like smoke. No comprehensive sound, just small ohs and mmms as her body moves.

Sweet nothings in her ear as my fingers are slick, in and out of her: “Those little noises you make get me so hard … the way your hips move when I’m thrusting against you … I want my cock in you again …”

She gasps, thickens, swells in response. I don’t let up. My mind is racing and I nearly keep talking, but she’s still practically asleep, barely hears me. I let my fingers trace a V along her lips to her clit, sticky and slick with the wet of her. She gasps, shudders, tenses at the stomach and thighs, pulses and shakes, moans louder.

Again, I flick my fingers over her clit, a little harder, steady, steady. Her arms come up around my neck. I bring my mouth onto hers again, she kisses back this time, deep and hard, and I bite her lip.

I pull away to better focus on her clit which is hard and pulsing under my fingers and she gasps, eyes wide open, wide open, as she comes, shuddering, moaning, gasping.

She wraps herself around me when her body calms, humming in low satisfied tones, her eyelids already heavy, closing again, laying back on the pillow as my hands trace her skin.

I sigh too, shift my weight off of her and she turns with me to snuggle against my shoulder, arms pulled in close to her body between us, mine around her.

We slumber a few more hours. Resting, until I wake around ten and cannot resist any longer, must have her again.

reviews

Review: Leather Paddle

leather-paddleNew Year’s Eve has inspired me to revive this review of the Spartacus Leather Paddle, which somehow slipped through the review cracks this past year. I think I got this in the late summer last year, and I’ve had very few opportunities to try it out, which is why I’ve been waiting to finish the review.

The paddle itself is lovely – 16″ long, thin enough that it bends easily but still solid enough to make a very satisfying smack.

I don’t really like the handle … it’s a little uncomfortable to grip, since it’s so flat. The edges dig into my palms a bit. Someone suggested I wrap it with something (tape? fabric?) but I haven’t done that yet. I may do, especially now that this paddle and I are getting along quite well, and I’d like to spend some more quality time with it.

I recently took my wooden paddle to a birthday party, and I’d nearly forgotten how completely hard and stiff the paddle is – I can’t hit as hard as I’d like because it doesn’t absorb the blow at all, unlike the slightly-bendy leather which bounces a bit more, so I can hit harder. And, yeah, I like that.

Spartacus Leathers, in case you haven’t heard of it, has a store in Portland, Oregon in addition to their online store. Aside from being a retailer of various products, they create their own leather products … and oh they are beautiful. This paddle is sturdy and luscious, and I very much look forward to using it more.

(Surfing around on the site I’ve just found that you get your very own Mistress Bear with orders over $100. That is really tempting, they have way more than $100 of gear that I am coveting.)

The paddle also comes as a black and blue frat paddle (but I think they’re the same other than color). And did you see everything on clearance?

miscellany

I Love LDN Girls too

I Love London Girls has also released their 2009 Calendars, and this time there are three: the traditional I Love LDN Girls, the new I Love Film Girls, and the new I Love Drag.

I’ve got my I heart Brooklyn Girls femme pinup calendar AND my New York City Sex Blogger Calendar up – hey, it’s 2009! Didn’t you notice?

If you were one of the people who complained to me that both the Brooklyn Girls calendar and the NYC Sexblogger Calendar didn’t have enough butches in it, well, the LDN Girls Calendar might be the one for you – there are couples, ladies in masculine drag, and all sorts of range of gender explored in beautiful photographs. (Well, I don’t actually have any of these calendars, but from what I can tell, the shots are great.)

reviews

Review: The Pleasure’s All Mine (book)

pleasureI picked up The Pleasure’s All Mine by Joan Kelly a month or so ago, and it was a pleasing, quick read. Perhaps my hopes were high, thinking she might add to my understanding of being submissive or bottoming, but unfortunately it was moreso a big of a glamorized account of being in a generally dominatrix-dominated field and being submissive.

When I first heard of this book, the idea sent a jolt through me – a professional submissive? Really? I love the idea of a formal study of the skills of bottoming, and I definitely wanted to read that kind of analysis and those kinds of stories.

The memoir, unfortunately, read as a fairly naive linear narrative of her time from discovering that she’s kinky, to working in a dungeon as one of only two submissives on staff, then becoming “freelance,” if you will, and taking private clients. It is incredibly breezy, almost effortless, moving in and out of one place to the next with no change in tone or depth of emotional weight, so I never got the idea that one place was harder or easier than another – even though she’d write “I was happier there than at the first place” for example, there was no emotional connection on my account with the difference between those experiences. She never recounts the problems with professional submission, either – she vaguely hinted at it, and, toward the end of the book, relayed a particularly scary account where she was tied to a shower curtain and seemed terrified. I was very uncomfortable for her, for example, and nothing in the writing told me that she was actually having a good time – I was expecting a few pages of “this is how I recovered from that situation” and “this is what I learned, and I never got myself into such a bad scenario again.” But the situation, once the description of it was over, was barely discussed.

This book got me thinking, too, about the difference between a “sex worker” and a “professional submissive.” I’m not so up on the world of sex work, so do correct me here, but I would guess that sex workers don’t necessarily figure kink or BDSM play into the mix, and professional submissives are more skilled at the various ways to bottom and receive in those scenarios of sensation play or power play. And yet, I went away from her memoirs feeling like she lacked explanation for these deeper BDSM bottoming techniques and consciousness.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh. It was an easy, fun read, and I was quickly absorbed in it. But the writing wasn’t anything special, and her selling point – that she’s a “professional submissive” and ooooh isn’t that such an amazing, wild, sexy thing to do – felt underanalyzed and naive by the end. I would’ve loved to see some analysis that was more intentional and conscious, in a greater context of the kink and BDSM communities.

Have you read this? What did you think?

poetry

Gloaming

I want you in the gloaming, in the grey
light of near-dusk, anxious to fade
the brightness of morning, midday,
the tragedy of sunset back into the
dim tones where we no longer strain

to see. I want to trace lines on your
skin until I find my fingers touching
paper, want to grip your hair until
it is all fallen. No twilight trysts,
though we do continue on through midnight,

through constellations, through antique
blue at five am before the sun remembers
itself an idea again. I want you without
shadow, without sun, without brilliance,
without cover, without cost, and there

we will soil crisp sheets, turn sugar
and heat into salted caramels, discover
the perfect angle of shoulder that becomes
landscape. I’m no cartographer, but I could
be; I long for a protractor, walking stick,

compass, to explore hidden openings to wet
caves I never knew I fit inside. Your eyes
glow willing in the gloaming. Your fingers
on my forearm, the grey light is pause,
poised, darkening, as fireflies begin

to rise from the ground. As we spin away
from the sun I want you, still, not reaching
or retracting, simply motionless with
anticipation, one singular breath at a time.

Partially inspired by Alice Elliot Dark’s beautiful story “In The Gloaming,” partially by the song Living in Twilight by the Weepies which I’ve been listening to on repeat for many days.

miscellany

Babeland’s Best Sex Toys of 2008

Celebrate the New Year by indulging yourself at Babeland’s retail-wide annual four day sale. From January 1 through January 4, almost everything in the store will be 25% off, with many toys marked down up to 40%. Warming refreshments will be served. Stop by a Babeland store in Seattle, New York or Brooklyn.

So if you’ve always wanted to pick up that Here’s some of my PERSONAL favorites that are on sale:


SaSi (Sensual Intelligence vibe)
On Sale for $138.75 (Save $46.25!)

Form 6 (designer luxury vibe)
On Sale for $128.00 (Save $50.00!)

Rabbit Habit (Sex and The City fame)
On Sale for $67.50 (Save $22.50!)


Liv (luxury vibe)
On Sale for $81.75 (Save $27.25!)


Jock O Harness (versatile harness)
On Sale for $63.75 (Save $21.25! )

Outlaw Dildo (silicone dildo)
On Sale for $91.50 (Save $30.50! )

Curve Dildo (G-spot dildo)
On Sale for $60.00 (Save $20.00!)

Share (double dildo)
On Sale for $89.25 (Save $29.75! )

Hitachi Magic Wand + Gee Whiz (electric vibe + G-spotter)
On Sale for $84.45 (Save $21.50!)

Babeland Nubby G (thermo-plastic rubber vibe)
On Sale for $18.75 (Save $6.25!)

And last, but not least …


Pure Wand (stainless steel dildo)
On Sale for $81.00 (Save $27.00!)

Thank you, Babeland, for being an affiliate this year, for the fantastic toys that you’ve sent me to review, for the promotions, for the knowledge you share, for your education and activism, for your safe-sex gender-forward queer-forward progressive policies and staff, for the support of the sexblog communities.  Happy New Year!

miscellany

Shared Items – December 26, 2008

essays

Define: “butch in the streets, femme in the sheets”

I ran across the phrase “butch in the streets, femme in the sheets” (again) the other day, and it bothered me (again, still). So I started thinking:

It generally means – and correct me if I’m wrong – that this supposed “butch in the streets,” once taken to bed, liked to or wanted to get fucked.

This is operating on an identity alignment assumption: that butches are tops.

This notion comes from old-fashioned sexism: that if you are a man – or masculine – that therefore you are dominant. Period always end of story.

But come on – we know this is not always the case. We know butches can be – gasp! – bottoms.

It may be statistically most likely (even if by a small margin) that masculine folks are tops, it may be a stereotype (which, let’s be honest, often exist for a reason), it may be quite possible. But it is an assumption based on identity and presentation, not based on an individual’s personality and interests and unique manifestation in this body, on this planet, at this time, in this life.

Don’t let sexist stereotypes dictate how you see another person. Can we please move beyond that? Can we please work a little harder to obliterate these sexist assumptions in our own radical, progressive communities?

miscellany

Sugasm #155: Top Three!

This Week’s Picks

More Sugasm | Join the Sugasm | See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.

My other favorite pick of the week:

dirty stories, real life

In response to what you want

I would love to watch you dance.

From the way that you fuck I can imagine how your body would move, all sweet s-curves and slow gyrations: there is such precision in your physicality, such openness. I can see the way you’d raise your arms to float at shoulder-height, eyes heavy to the floor or on the bodies around you, so tuned in to the music, the beat, the rhythm. You’re aural that way, I can feel it in the ways you speak with your body, a language all to itself I am just learning to interpret and read under my fingertips like braille, waves of energy rising falling.

There is so much you can tell about the way someone fucks by how they dance, and the way someone dances by how they fuck; but I’ve never seen you dance. Still, I can imagine how your torso slides and arms carry out the movement, how you can pop your hips to accentuate strong moments.

I would try to keep up with you on the dancefloor just as I try to keep up with you when we fuck – you carry me high and I follow your guidance, despite that I am making the choices. It is your body that dictates my choices, your breath, your responses, the precise way you gasp “oh god” and start to shake. In dance it is the same: I take your lead and match your rhythm until we are so synchopated that I can move you, can create variations on a theme and read you well enough to know you’ll follow where I lead.

It’s all energy. Building and releasing, swirling between us.

More literally:

I will sit at a table sipping whiskey while I watch you. Gently finger the shaft of my dick through my slacks and remember the last time I made you move like that.

You take a break, breathless, and come over to sit on my lap, straddle me, your short skirt hiked up, my hands on your thighs, you can feel my cock against you and let yourself grind up and down for a minute, your arms around my neck, mouth on mine.

(Just the thought makes me harden.)

This is maybe when you say “I gotta pee,” or “please baby, fuck me now,” or I say “I need some fresh air,” or “goddamn you,” and I’ve had enough waiting. I take you out back to the alley or to the filthy club bathroom – the men’s room. On your knees on the dirty tile. Cheek against a brick wall as I make you moan.

I’ll whisper things against your jaw, your neck, that make you squirm. Look at you, all ready for me. All wanting. I can take you wherever I want to, just how I want to, can’t I.

I want to hear you breathy in my ear again. Feel your hands grip my shoulders, thighs grip my hips as you cry out, scream, come.

miscellany

How to Read Sugarbutch

Welcome to Sugarbutch 4.0! I’ve made some changes around here in the past two months, and unless you’re a purely RSS reader who never comments, you’ve probably noticed. It’s no longer a typical blog layout with the recent posts displayed chronologically on the front page of the site – the layout is more magazine or newspaper style, with the most recent post for each of the categories displayed in different sections.

Here’s a breakdown of how to navigate through the front page of Sugarbutch Chronicles 4.0:

ABOVE THE FOLD:

First & foremost, there’s the heading, search box, and the top navigation. This is part of the grey site navigation areas and is included on every page and post within this site. It includes About, Archives, Community, Contest, Definitions, and the FAQ.

The featured post will now be the first thing you see when you visit Sugarbutch.net. This is a weekly (or so) polished piece that I am particular proud of, or that I want to get maximum exposure, so it gets top billing until I write the next featured piece. This could be from any of the categories, but will probably most often be gender theory. The featured post area also includes tabs you can navigate through the most recent smut, In Praise of Femmes, or On Butches pieces of writing, which are my personal favorite categories on this site, so I decided to give them a little extra exposure by highlighting them “above the fold.”

FULL RIGHT COLUMN:

Areas shaded in grey are for site navigation, and this includes the bar at the top of all pages. In the right-hand sidebar, first there is the greeting, then – after you skip that green stuff – comes the links that will help you navigate the site. This includes a list of recent posts, most popular posts, recent comments, and tags, as well as the et cetera which includes RSS links and a space for you to sign up on the mailing list.

Ads & affiliates areas are shaded green. This includes occasional sponsors, and my affiliate programs, which are websites whose products & services I recommend highly enough to give them advertising in exchange for a tiny kickback when my readers sign up or purchase products from their site. Explore them all in the affiliates area.

The leeeettle green area at the very bottom of the right-hand bar is (well, currently) a place for you to order the Sugarbutch Star chapbook or donate to my “send Sinclair to Dark Odyssey!” fund. Support and donations are greatly appreciated. (Plus, don’t you want to read about my stories of fisting girls in the woods at winter camp? I thought so.)

LOWER LEFT COLUMN:

Stories to turn you on is the entire tan lower left-hand column. This is either fiction stories, stories from the Sugarbuch Star Contest, or aspiring stud stories from my personal life. The most recent 5 hot smutty stories are displayed here.

LOWER CENTER COLUMN:

Product reviews are pretty straightforward; the most recent product review is contained in this area. I review sex toys most frequently, but also films and books, and who knows, maybe occasionally other stuff.

Semantics is the category for exploring language, words, and definitions. We are not necessarily taught the language of marginalized sexualities, so a lot of language we have to either make up for ourselves, appropriate, or reclaim through linguistic techniques and word explorations. Using a common language is a huge way to build community, too, by creating a common dialect. I love exploring this stuff.

The community category includes Public Service Announcements, events, activism, guest posts, interviews, and then all sorts of other random miscellany, including contests and give-aways.

The aspiring stud stories are from my dating life; it’s kind of the “Mr. Sexsmith’s reality show” category, and often includes recaps of dates or sex play, musings on

The writings I include under the orange personal category are often password protected and under the category of “omphaloskepsis,” aka navel gazing. Not that this entire site and every category could also serve as naval gazing – certainly they could. The personal category also includes occasional poems or prose-poems.

Last, but not least, in the center column, is colophon which is a word for the pages in books with publication information on it, such as the number of copies printed, printing or type information, and copyright information. I use it to gather things about the site. The main thing I post in Colophon these days is the monthly roundup, which highlights the important writings each month.

Okay, that’s it!

If you wish you could see a list of what is most recent, I’m working on a tab in the featured area at the top which will display the most recent posts, but am not finished with the coding yet. For now, check the sidebar (in grey) for a list of the most recent posts by title, or subscribe to the RSS feed and read Sugarbutch in your feed reader.

If you’re looking for the category or monthly archive list, those are under “Archives” on the top navigation bar. I’m trying to figure out a way to put them back into the sidebar, but still working on that coding as well.

Any questions? Does this breakdown help? Are there features that you are missing, and you wish I’d bring back? Do you like this new navigation, or hate it? Is it easier? Are you wondering where something’s gone? Ask away.

miscellany

Catherine Opie Exhibit at the Guggenheim

Oliver in a Tutu

Oliver in a Tutu

I spent Sunday afternoon wandering through the Guggenheim, visiting the exhibit of the Catherine Opie retrospective for the second time.

I’m not sure how much of it I can really put into words, which is why I haven’t mentioned it yet, here – I’ve wanted to write up just how powerful it is to see images of queers hanging in a museum gallery. How powerful, but also how strange and revealing, how vulnerable. I stood in the portrait galleries, tears streaming down my face, reaching for my handkercheif, attempting not to notice the way that other galleryviewers were watching me interact with the photographs.

There were moments when I felt like I too was on display, walking by the straight-laced folks who regarded me with their museum gaze as they held their hands behind their backs and clucked their tongues while examining the photograph’s informational card.

There were other moments when I caught the eye of another queer – there seemed to be an extraordinary amount of dykes wandering through the four galleries of Opie’s work – and it was an intimate, knowing look, a bit of reverance, a bit of support, a bit of an acknowledgement of how amazing it was to be in an incredibly fancy museum looking at images of ourselves reflected.

I highly, highly recommend the exhibit if you are able to visit the Guggenheim here in New York City. I’m including a couple of images that I’ve pulled from various places on the web here in this post, but there are many, many more that I didn’t include, her series on cities and series on freeways are both phenomenal and worth seeing in person for the scale and richness of the photos.

Catherine Opie: American Photographer
Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue, New York
212-423-3500
September 26, 2008 – January 5, 2009

Since the early 1990s, Catherine Opie has produced a complex body of work, adopting genres such as studio portraiture, landscape photography, and urban street photography to explore notions of communal, sexual, and cultural identity. From her early portraits of queer subcultures to her expansive urban landscapes, Opie has offered insights into the conditions in which communities form and the terms that define them. All the while maintaining a strict formal rigor, working in stark and provocative color as well as richly toned black and white. Influenced by social documentary photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and August Sander, Opie underscores and elevates the poignant yet unsettling veracity of her subjects. [Text from Art Tattler.]

Opie’s Self-Portraits

So stunning. I don’t even know if I can write about these, there is just so much emotion that comes up in me just looking at the images.

   

Opie’s Portraits series

The Portraits series may be my favorite. You’ve probably seen some of her shots around in queer community events or galleries or homes before, I certainly have. There is especially a lot of exploration of gender celebration. Many folks have made note of how the portraits use portrait painting techniques, and the subjects become nobility in their rich colors and stature.

 

Opie first came to prominence with her Portraits series (1993-97), which celebrates the queer community in San Francisco and Los Angeles, including practitioners of drag, transgendered people, and performance artists. Set against brilliantly colored backgrounds, these figures confront the viewer with intense gazes, asserting their individuality and destabilizing conventional notions of gender. Opie describes these sitters, all of whom she knew personally, as her “royal family;” by adopting a style inspired by portraitists like 16th-century German painter Hans Holbein, she offers an affirmative and tender portrayal of a subculture rendered invisible by dominant cultural norms. [Text from Art Tattler.]

Icehouses & Surfers

Also particularly stunning was the gallery of Opie’s Icehouses series and Surfers series, set across from each other on opposite walls. They are visually stunning, huge photographs. The surfers especially explore waiting, the moment of solid grey where sea and sky are undifferentiated and there is just infinite patience. Icehouses, in contrast and in similarity, explores temporary communities. I love how the (somewhat absent) line of the horizon mimic each other in seeing both series across from each other.

   

If you’ve been to the exhibit, what did you think? Do you have other queer photographers you’d recommend? I’m not too terribly familiar with the world of visual art, I’d love the recommendations.

dirty stories, real life

We’re just getting started

I spent the day alone in my room, recovering, remembering.

Her skin in the morning, golden, glowing. Her eyes as they increasingly tired last night. Her hips as they hinged open. The ways I held back, the ways I gave in.

My mental recap is increasingly romantic, but really it is raw desire. How does she do this to me?

I won’t tell you much about this date. There is no scene to report, no interesting beginning-middle-end with links to the toys I used (though I did go through three cocks). I won’t speak of the ways I took her, the ways she opened and clenched tight. The tender places we both touched and from which we backed off (too too fragile). I won’t speak to her mouth, her mouth, her near-perfect mouth and the way she tosses her head back, mouth open, this half-circle arc, when she comes.

I am starting to understand her tells, the signals that her body is poised on the edge of orgasm, the ways I can slow and prolong the explosion. I have felt her come dozens of times now, I have completely lost track. She counted six the last time we were together. Last night, I counted one in the bathroom at the club and one against the door of my apartment before we even got to the bed, then two this morning, despite her swollen cunt and aching hips’ protest. What happened in between was a blur, and clear as the winter blue sky that greeted us when we woke.

She told me this morning (open, open, so open) more of what she’d like. To be hit across the face. My cock in her mouth again. More of what I did the first time, more power, more dominance. And I felt suddenly self-conscious: it’s true, last night, though I was in charge and in control and calling the shots, I took the vanilla route, barely moved out of missionary position once we reached the bed except that one time on her stomach, more fucking and less dominance, out of fascination in the exploration of her body. And she is just so goddamn receptive: everything I did, she told me exactly how it felt, what was working, how to go deeper, with her body and moans and breathing. I couldn’t resist that, couldn’t tear myself away from the simple singular act of getting her off, making her come, hearing bliss escape her lips again.

With someone new it is always a challenge to understand the way they like to be touched, to be taken, what will unravel them at the last minute, so that is what I spent the night learning.

And she never stopped me. That turns me on in ways I cannot describe – that every time I went for her thighs, every time I worked my hand or cock between her legs she was wet, open, wanting. Even if she’d come just moments before – why would I stop when she could do it again right now?

So I allowed myself the indulgence of getting her off, over and over and over again.

But I won’t forget that she wants more power play, more sensation play. I won’t forget she wants to be hit, wants my palm on her face (how could I), wants my cock in her throat.

She’ll learn, too, that struggle brings out the force in me, that she can push me to take more by giving less, now that we both know how she wants to give over. Now that we both trust our impulses to give in. It’s harder to force when there is no resistance. She’ll learn how to play my power as I’ve learned to play her body, like an instrument, like a tool that could be a weapon in the right hands.

We’re just getting started.

reviews

Review: Alumina Revolve

revolveAs of 2/8/16 This product is no longer available at Babeland

Um … woah.

This is the Alumina Revolve, one of Tantus’s new line of aluminum toys, called Alumina, and there are four – all of which unscrew at the center so you can mix-and-match the handles and shapes.

I want the whole set.

This is the fantastic affordable substitute to perhaps some of the Njoy toys, like the Pure Wand, which, though they completely amazing and current gods of the sex toy industry, are completely out of my (and most people’s, I imagine) price range. But the new Alumina line from Tantus is not – though the pricetags on their various Alumina items are not cheap, at least they’re under a bill and not over a hundred bucks like the best Njoy toys.

So, the material: the aluminum is really the selling point of these toys. It’s heavier than I expected, has a great heft to it that most wand-style toys do not. Not as heavy as the stainless steel toys of Njoy, no, but still, much heavier than most plastic or even silicone cocks. Plus it’s smooth. Sleek. And aluminum cleans up easy – soap & water to maintain, then a quick wash through the dishwasher and you’ve sterilized it completely.

Since it’s metal, it’ll conduct temperature. Currently my toybox is housed near the windows in my room, and since it is winter in New York City this week, it’s freezing and the toy is ice cold when I first pick it up. It warms quickly – and would retain some heat, too, if you were to submerge it in warm water for a while before pulling it out for use.

Extra bonus points for sensation play.

The Revolve specifically is made for G-spot stimulation, it’s a little more bulbousy (ew, that is NOT a sexy word, but how else to describe the shape?) than the other toys on the longer end, then the “handle” side is wonderfully tiered for some anal play. It’s narrow too – 8-1/4” x 1-1/4″ – not good for size queens, but plenty big enough.

The Alumina Pace is a butt toy, the Alumina Flow is sleek and would be great for PC exercises (uh, right), and the Alumina Motion has more taper to it, which would be perfect if you are particularly tight. If only I’d asked Babeland to send me one of each!

miscellany

Shared Items – December 19, 2008

giveaways

The two Crash Pad memberships go to …

#5, Becky
and
#22, Bettina!

Thanks, everybody, for commenting and starting this discussion about our favorite porn stars. I know it was a completely informal poll, but I may make up a list from it so we who are very unfamiliar with queer porn can do a bit more, ahem, “research” …

You can always head over to Hot Movies For Her and download 20 minutes of hot queer porn — that’s 10 extra minutes than you usually get when opening a new account at HMFH. I don’t know how much longer that special link will last, so get in there while ya can!

Also: still two more give-aways to come (and then NO MORE for a long time): sex toy cases from For Your Nymphomation, and a gift basket from Come Together.

reviews

Two Crash Pad Series Website Memberships – For You!

Oh, Crash Pad. Oh, Shine Louise Houston. How do I love thee, let me count the ways.

… What’s that? You’re not familiar with the original Crash Pad DVD, or the subsequent THREE DVDs of episodes compiled from the Crash Pad Series website? If only someone would give away a membership for the lonely, cold month of January!

Oh hey! That’s exactly what I’m going to do!

The Crash Pad is the hottest porn I’ve ever seen. Hands down.

I mean, I’m not actually an expert on visual porn – when I came out about ten years ago, I started renting lesbian porn and was incredibly disappointed (with perhaps the exception of some s.i.r. productions films, like Hard Love/How to Fuck in High Heels and Sugar High Glitter City), and I kind of lost interest in the genre.

Well … until it became increasingly obvious that dyke-made-dyke-porn-for-dykes was booming, and butch/femme queer porn was, uh, the hottest thing I’d ever seen. In my wildest dreams I hadn’t fathomed someone could videotape something so goddamn hot.

Uh, yeah.

(I’ll be in my bunk.)

Ahem.

The fabulous folks over at Pink & White (thanks to a suggestion from Jiz Lee) have offered up two Level Two (video!) membership to the Crash Pad Series website for the month of January for me to give away.

Whatcho gotta do:

Leave a comment answering who is your favorite porn star and why? If you don’t have a favorite star, make it your favorite porn film. If you don’t have a favorite porn film, well – you really need to win this contest! Leave a comment anyway.

Two winners will be chosen randomly on Thursday morning, 18 December.

miscellany

Holiday Ideas for Butches

I know it’s a bit late for this, but here’s five (fairly traditional) ideas for the masculine-leaning butches and bois and boys and transfolks in your life:

1. Belt Buckles

A good solid belt buckle is an essential butch accessory, in my opinion. I’ve always liked belts, but it took me way to long to graduate from regular buckled belts to belts with detachable and interchangeable buckles – they’re heavier, for one, and they look amazing, plus there are so many styles.

Etsy is amazing for buckles – do a search and include a keyword of one of your butch’s hobbies (like bikes or birds or beer) and it’ll turn up some amazing vintage or handmade results, many for less than $20.

(Belt buckle shown from Lucybluestudio’s Etsy store)

2. Cufflinks

I kind of hate to give it away, but Cuff Daddy is my current favorite place for cufflinks. They have everything! I haven’t even searched through all of their little figures and all the fun categories. They have cufflinks that are watches! Levels! Compasses! I’m currently coveting the Superman emblem cufflinks, myself.

Don’t forget Etsy for cufflinks, too. Ditto to the belt buckles, put in a couple key words – pinup, Obama – and you’ll get all sorts of great results.

If she’s already got some cufflinks, and probably doesn’t need more? Consider this cufflinks box in black leather.

(Betty Page cufflinks from Bellamodaartist’s Etsy store)

3. Ties

Uh, okay, Etsy for-the-win of #1 and #2, I should probably say something else for #3, right? Well, you already know that you can search Etsy for vintage and handmade ties – add a keyword and you’ll come up with awesome skull ties, striped ties, butterfly ties, whatever your butch happens to like.

If that’s not quite fancy enough for ya, perhaps consider a Tie of the Month Club. J Crew is doing one now (it’s a 888 number to sign up, I can’t seem to link to it on their website directly). They’ve got some great ties.

4. Pocket knife

Consider a Vintage pocket knife, and perhaps a pocket knife sharpener too.

Or if a knife isn’t really her thing, what about a pocket watch?

5. Shaving Kit

Even if it’s occasional, or for gender play, how hot would this fabulous shaving kit look on her dresser or in her bathroom?

Maybe you can recreate the famous k.d. lang and Cindy Crawford 1993 Vanity Fair photo shoot.

If that’s not enough good ideas for ya, take a flashback to the 2007 Butch/Femme Holiday Gift Guide that I wrote last year, maybe some of those will pique your interest.

Femmes … what would you absolutely love to receive from your friends & lovers this year? C’mon, help us out with some ideas.


A few friends and fans and readers have emailed me about sending me something, and in the spirit of the holidays, here’s a few things you can do for me, if you feel so inspired … Continue reading →

dirty stories, real life

“I’m kind of … insatiable.” My First Date with Kristen

I could’ve fucked Kristen for a few more hours at least. Was just hitting my stride, just beginning to feel confident in the ways her body turns on and gets off. Like how when she gasps more she may actually mean more friction – how she has the type of orgasms that means she can squirt.

Which is why I kept going for orgasm number two, three – because I wanted to feel her do it. I suspected she could.

(I was right.)

I hadn’t planned to take her back to my place, but that didn’t stop me from cleaning my room on Saturday before the date. Unlikely is not impossible. And if my room is not presentable, it isn’t even an option. I like to have options.

I could fist her, I think. She opens in a way that makes it seem possible, makes space inside. I would like to throw her around more, too – she’s small, and so receptive. She went where I put her, stayed, made space for me to enter, to take. My favorite kind of bottom, surrendering.

*

At dinner:

She’s wrestling a little with a femme identity. “Femme and feminist sometimes conflict,” she started to explain.

“I understand that. I saw butch and feminist as conflicting when I started figuring this out for myself too. I was a feminist first, and most importantly. And when you take misogyny out of masculinity, what’s left? Societal roles teach us those are one and the same.”

In case it needs reiteration, I firmly believe that femme and feminist can be simultaneously occupied. In fact, in some ways I think intentionally choosing femme is inherently feminist – as I think Leah said at the Femme Conference, femme is a way of making “girl” not hurt. Femininity can be inherently painful under societal hierarchies and rules, and to recreate it in ways that actually buffer the hurt instead of deepen it is so incredibly powerful.

She talked a little about the ways femme is misperceived, especially as an invitation to men. This is definitely a huge difference in the development of the butch and femme identities.

We barely scratched the surface of these conversations.

This was foreplay.

*

After dinner:

Suddenly Kristen stopped walking and back-stepped.

“Did you just lose your shoe?” I laughed.

She gave me a small smile. “Uh, that’s embarrassing.” I held out my hand so she could balance on one foot, slip her high black heel back on.

“Nah, not embarrassing,” I said, hand against her back as we started to walk to the bar again. We’d just come from dinner and needed a darker, more comfortable place to make out. “It happens to me all the time.”

She shot me a questioning look. “Really?!”

“Uh, no. Not really.” Too deadpan. I turned to face her, stopping her from walking forward, took hold of her jacket at the zipper with both hands. “No, sorry, that was trying to be a joke but it really didn’t work.” I pulled her a little closer. Even in heels she was still shorter than me. “Do forgive me …” I held her gaze and pulled her toward me. Immediately the kiss was electrifying. Delicate and wanting, full of desire. I’d barely touched her yet but now wanted my hands on her, on her waist in that secretary pencil skirt, her legs in those seamed black stockings.

*

At the bar.

A gin gimlet for her, another Maker’s on the rocks for me. Chatting. The topic was activism, mostly – educating those around us. I feel increasingly bold, be it the good conversation or the drinks or the chemistry or the ways she opens her eyes to look at me. My hand finds her waist, her back, and her nerves are electric and so receptive, her body curls every time I touch her.

She gasps a little. I keep talking. “Uh, I’m sorry – I’m not hearing a word you’re saying.” She looks at me with her eyes half-lidded. “But keep talking, please.” I pull her toward me and we kiss again, sparking at the mouth, at my fingertips where our bodies connect.

*

In the car on the way to my place.

She’s got her legs in my lap and if she wasn’t wearing full stockings I would already have my fingers in her. Her ankles are small and my thumb and forefinger close around one, then I take her instep in my hand, grip her heel. Run my hands up her legs and don’t stop, cup her cunt with my palm, catch her gaze with mine and she leans forward to kiss me again.

Every time I touch her she lets out a moan, quick, with her breath. “You have to be quiet,” I say, nodding toward the driver. I’ve known dykes who were kicked out of cabs for kissing.

“I’m not quiet,” she tells me earnestly, giving me that under-the-eyelashes shy look.

“I can tell.”

And she’s not. At my place I throw her down onto the bed, hold her down when she tries to get up. Peel off her sweater and skirt, shove my hand in after I’ve pulled her stockings and underwear down to her thighs. She’s gasping already. Each breath a moan, each touch connected to the noises she makes. She is so responsive.

It is wonderful to hear.

I don’t know exactly when I pulled out my packing cock – sometime in the beginning – but then switched to my hands when I figured out she comes that way, gspot orgasms, one after another and I love to feel it inside when that happens. Love the way she thickens and shudders, her whole body twisting, so I hold her down, forearm over her chest, my knees holding her thighs open.

I don’t know when it was that I took off my bondage belt and waited for her to slide her wrists through it. I took hold of the loose strap and curled it around my hand for grip, twisted it a little, her arms over her head, on her back again, just so she could resist, just so she could feel the pressure, my other hand between her legs and shoving inside, fast, hard, or slower, massaging and tender, as she thrashed against the pillows again.

Gorgeous.

*

We lay together and I catch my breath, flex and stretch my fingers. I run my palm along her hips, the sides of her body, and she is all nerve endings and sensitive skin, writhing under my touch, rubbing her feet against the blanket on the bed. I could take her again. Could roll her into her back and listen to her breathe and moan.

I like the way her moaning becomes practically laughter as she gets closer. How she turns her head to the side and strains with every muscle like she’s trying to press all the edges of her, like she’s going to tear her way out of herself, la petite mort indeed.

She shifts next to me, I balance on my elbows on top of her again. I still have my tee shirt, my slacks, on. She’s stripped bare.

“Did I mention I’m kind of … insatiable?” she asks, a little embarrassed, a little shy, a little excited.

I grin. So am I.

My hand between her legs again, my mouth at her neck. “You’re wet.”

“Yes,” she breathes in my ear.

Yes, yes, yes.

*

I could’ve fucked Kristen for a few more hours at least. Was just hitting my stride, just beginning to feel confident in the ways her body turns on and gets off. There is so much more I know I could do to her. I barely got to smack her. Barely used force. There was very little restraint or bondage, very little sensation play, and she could take it, I know she could.

We could’ve kept going. Two hours wasn’t quite enough.

What a wonderful feeling to have coming away from a near-perfect date: that raw potential for more, more, more.

miscellany

What happened in November

Ah, November 2008: forever famous for THE ELECTION OF BARAK OBAMA as the President of the United States. Oh, rejoice, liberals of the US and the world. Except … then there was that pesky little thing about gay marriage amendments in three states, and the amendment that makes it illegal for unmarried folks to adopt in Arkansas.

But that wasn’t all. There was also the New York City Sexbloggers Calendar offical release party.

So even though I was attempting to take time off in November (betcha didn’t know that, huh), there were still many posts.

RELATIONSHIPS

ACTIVISM:

  • Post Election: On Love – and about my disappointment in the 2008 election, despite the fantastic nomination of Obama.
  • Letter to myself: Enough Moping – we took the temperature of the country by seeing how these anti-gay amendments passed so easily. Stop dwelling on the giant blow of the election and channel the hurt energy into activism. Buck the fuck up.

COMMUNITY:

REVIEWS:

In November, I also relaunched Sugarbutch into this new layout – if you’re reading via RSS, come on by and check it out. I’m still working on a “how to read this new layout” type of post, I know it’s rather difficult to tell which posts are new, but I’ve got some plans to fix that and I’ll iron that out in the near future.

reviews

Special extra minutes for you from Hot Movies For Her

Uh, did you see the photo in that ad? It comes from one of their films, Post Apocalyptic Cowgirls, and no I am not kidding.

Fabulous reviewer for HMFH, Ms. Debauchery, describes it thus:

Ever since I was first given the heads up about this latest Bleu Productions movie, I’ve been super excited to check it out. Two tattooed, gritty post apocalyptic cowgirls dressed in leather, boots and bad attitudes cross paths on the Arizona highway and fuck wildly in the empty desert.

Uh, for reals? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and this year, that would be me, the man with the bag: thanks to Hot Movies For Her, Sugarbutch is passing on 20 minutes of anything you’d like over at HMFH where you can watch Post Apocalyptic Cowgirls, Good Dyke Porn, Turn Me Up Over & On, any number of flicks with trans man Buck Angel, Sappho’s Girls #1 … Hot Movies For Her really does have a great selection. Check out their new queer films section too – not just lezzzbian, but queer! Awesome.

Here’s the deal: sign up for an account through this link and it’ll give you twenty minutes FREE. You do have to enter your credit card information (to verify your age), but you do not have to give up anything else.

Post Apocalyptic Cowgirls isn’t your boyfriend’s lesbo porn film, though, beware.

I might not recommend this hardcore lesbo flick to someone looking for a soft focus lens and romantic tribbing, but for all us down and dirty dykes, I say this one is for you!

Check, please. No more talking over dinner, no more making eyes across the table: I’m taking this one home with me.

So … what’d you download? Any good recommendations?

giveaways

and the winner is …

The envelope please:

Thanks to the random number generator, the winner of the DVD of Good Dyke Porn is … samantha!

Bevin Branlandingham, fabulous host of the FemmeCast: Queer Fat Femme’s Podcast Guide to Life, came up with the idea of asking y’all what your 2009 sex goals were, and as all the responses (54 of them!) came in, she and I kept talking about how increasingly moved we were. “I was overwhelmed at their commitment to visualizing and actualizing their sexual goals,” Bevin just chatted to me. “The first step to good sex is to know what you want, or at least know what you want to try. Then to communicate that.”

And she wanted to throw in a little extra sumthin-sumthin: a fabulous comedy CD Almost Pretty by butch comic Kelli Dumham! Kelli is the Butch Dyke Comedian in Residence for the FemmeCast and performs all over the country.

Hope you enjoy them both, Samantha!

Samantha’s shared with us her Goals for 2009:

1.) Do NOT fuck any clingy/needy people. This is an absolute, and must be followed. More of a rule, actually.

2.) Fuck a girl that actually knows how to top. You might think this would be simple, but D.C. is severely lacking in the dykey, top department.

3.) Get restrained. I’ve done the whole multiple-uses-of-a-handcuff thing. Now im extremely interested in being tied up with rope, and being a complete submissive. Pushing the pain/pleasure bounds.

4.) Lastly, watching more porn….preferably with a partner. I normally don’t watch porn, nor do I own any….this is where this whole video thing would come in handy Mr. Sexsmith ;)

Damn good goals, if you ask me.

Samantha, I hope you very much enjoy the Good Dyke Porn and the fun dyke comedy. If you feel like writing up a paragraph of your review of it, I’m sure other Sugarbutch visitors would love to know how you find it!

December is now unofficially the give-away month, and I’ve got a few more things for y’all in the next few weeks. Hey, it’s a dark time of year, we need a little extra lovin’! Keep an eye out for locking sex toy cases from For Your Nymphomation, two subscriptions to the Crash Pad Series website, minutes for video-on-demand downloads at Hot Movies for Her, and Come Together Gift Baskets!

miscellany

Giving away Good Dyke Porn

Want some Good Dyke Porn? Of course you do.

Bren Ryder’s dyke porn is quickly becoming widely celebrated around the queer dyke sexblog circles, and you’re really want to get your hands on her first DVD selection of seriously hot sex.

I’ve got a full review coming, but meanwhile, it’s the holidays! What better way to celebrate than to send some fun gifts away to the folks who follow this writing project (that would be you).

Bren actually sent me this DVD in connection with the 8 Against 8 campaign, and I was going to give it away at the end of the fundraising, but with the election and my vacation in November, I didn’t ever get around to it.

So, today I was chatting with Bevin Branlandingham, infamous host of the FemmeCast, and she suggested this little idea for a give-away …

Here’s what you gotta do:

(Legit email address required, real name optional.) Leave a comment sharing a sexual goal for 2009. What do you want to do? What do you want to try that you’ve never done? Who do you want to fuck? Where do you want to be fucked? What toy have you never tried that you’d like to?

Who what where when why? Visualize it. Dream about it. Maybe then it’ll really happen.

It’s like The Secret meets smut.

Winner will be chosen by the Random Number Generator, so you won’t be judged on how you answer. You must be willing to send me your address so I can mail you the DVD!

miscellany

Milk: In the Footsteps of Gandhi and King

After You Cannot Live on Hope Alone, the folks at Causecast.org have made a second short film about Harvey Milk.

The life of late San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk in the context of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. This animated documentary charts a time-line of the life of the first openly gay man elected to public office in between events in other civil rights struggles. Produced by Causecast for Focus Features, the piece celebrates the release of the film MILK, in theaters November 26.

I haven’t seen Milk yet – or read many reviews, because I’m waiting to see it for myself first. Hopefully I’ll go this week.

Have you seen it? What’d you think, what were your reactions?

essays

Define: Courtly

Back in September, I asked for a word for someone who accepts chivalry. We had a lively discussion in the comments about what that person would be called.

It’s a very specific skill, really. Not everybody knows how to move when someone else is pulling out your chair, slipping your jacket onto your shoulders, how to navigate a door being opened for you, how to wait until the car door is unlocked. It takes a lot of consciousness about what is happening around you, and between you and the chivalrous person.

Many folks liked “gracious” as a word to describe those who receive chivalry, but I feel like it’s not specific enough. It has another definition and commonplace usage in our culture, so the word wouldn’t stand out as being used with this intentional meaning in conversation.

Which is why I really like the word “courtly.” (Thanks to Femme Gender for suggesting it!)

Court·ly: adjective.
Receiving chivalry and politeness with graceous skill.
Example: “That sub boy I went out with last night was really courtly, it was fun to have the foreplay start with chivalry.”

Court·li·er: noun.
A person who receives chivalry with politeness with graceous skill.
Example: “When the courtlier rises from the table, it is customary for the chivalrer to also rise.”

Here’s why I like this word:

  1. Courtly is uncommon in daily speech, so it stands out. If used in conversation with someone who isn’t familiar with it as a term for receiving chivalry, it will be different enough for that person to be able to ask, “what do you mean, ‘courtly’?”
  2.  It has an archaic quality, yes; it reminds us of the royal courts (and reminds me specifically of the historical stories of British knights and kings and queens). But I like that, especially because many people see chivalry as archaic as well, so they kind of match. Plus, I think there is some reclamation of these terms that has to be done and explained in order to use them consciously.
  3. Definitions of the term “courtly” relate mostly to manners, elegance, refinement, and politeness, which isn’t specifically what I mean, but it’s definitely related. Much of chivalry is about manners and awareness, and I think being courtly is too.
  4. It also relates to the term “courtship,” that dance that we do when we’re interested in another person, courting each other into a relationship. I like the connection of chivalry and courtliness to courting and courtship.

This also pulls a little on the idea of chivalry as consensual – I think it’s important to have enough awareness over chivalrous acts that you stop opening doors, holding umbrellas, rising when the courtlier stands at a table, if the person in question does not like to be treated that way.

“Hey, I’m not courtly,” s/he can say. “I don’t like being treated that way. No offense, but knock it off.”

Having a word for the position of accepting it, aside from the acknowledgement that accepting chivalry is a skill that, for most of us, must be studied, acknowledges that some folks may prefer not to be in that position, may prefer not to be courtly.

reviews

Excellent Queer/Lesbian Films

Hey Janet – thanks to the Random Number Generator, you are the winner of the copy of She Likes Girls 3 from Wolfe Video!

Everybody else, She Likes Girls 3 comes out on December 2nd – preorder your own copy, it’s going to be great.

Janet writes at Mid-life Clarity. Congrats! I’ll be in touch with you via email.

In this completely informal poll that wasn’t even really a poll, here are some of the queer films that you all answered when I asked what is your favorite lesbian/queer film of all time?

Top favorites:

Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love (7)
But I’m a Cheerleader (6)
If These Walls Could Talk 2 (5)
By Hook or By Crook (4)
Better Than Chocolate (3)
Bound (3)
Fried Green Tomatoes (3)
Imagine Me & You (2)
High Art (2)

One mention each:

All Over Me
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Itty Bitty Titty Committee
Little Darlings
D.E.B.S.
Paris is Burning
Tipping the Velvet
Boys Don’t Cry
The Alley Cats (by Radley Metzger – “1960s lesbian sexploitation at its finest”)
Derek Jarman’s “The Garden”
Puccini For Beginners
Show Me Love (aka Fucking Amal)
Saving Face
Fire
The Gay Bed and Breakfast Terror
Go Fish
Antonia’s Line
Aimee & Jaguar
Kissing Jessica Stein

Films that weren’t mentioned (but probably should’ve been):

Desert Hearts
Chutney Popcorn
When Night is Falling

Perhaps you know some young gay folks who might just love to have their little queer worlds rocked the way ours were when we first saw some of these films, when we first saw ourselves reflected on screen, given that it’s the holidays and all.

And speaking of the holidays – want to be a Gay Santa for Sylvia’s Place, homeless queer youth services?

—please forward widely–

Expand Your Shopping List This Christmas – Be a Gay Santa MCCNY/Homeless Youth Services is seeking volunteers for our “Gay Santa” program. Gay Santas respond to letters written by the LGBT youth in our program requesting gifts. Gifts are mailed or dropped off at the shelter so that each young person has a gift to open Christmas morning. Interested? Contact: kate_barnhart@yahoo.com

miscellany

Butch women celebrating their Inner Princesses

Inner Princess, three butch women celebrating their inner princesses, is playing a show on December 11 at Sugarland in Brooklyn with Bitch and some other folks. myspace.com/innerprincess or innerprincessmusic.com for clips, photos, and more information.

Inner Princess
Thursday, December 11
8:00 at Sugarland
221 N. 9th St., Brooklyn, New York 11211
Cost: sliding scale

Photos borrowed from innerprincessmusic.com. Thanks to M for sending on the concert information!

miscellany

Shared Items – December 5, 2008

miscellany

Win a copy of ‘She Likes Girls 3’

Want to win a fabulous collection of lesbian short films, thanks to Wolfe Video?

Yeah, I thought you did. Who doesn’t like free stuff? Especially when it’s funny, sad, romantic, and dramatic lesbian short films. Aw yeah.

Tell ’em what they’re gonna win, Sin …

She Likes Girls 3

The girls who like the girls are back in this jam-packed installment of the most popular lesbian shorts DVD series of all time. Enjoy the eye-candy and prepare to be entertained by these funny, sad, romantic, dramatic lesbian short movies from today’s top talents including: Guinevere Turner (Go Fish, The L Word), Julie Goldman (Big Gay Sketch Show), Cassandra Nicolaou (Interviews with My Next Girlfriend, Show Me), Roberta Munroe (Dani and Alice), and others.

Available on DVD at fine retailers everywhere on December 2nd. Ask for it by name – or buy your copy right now from WolfeVideo.com!

So what do you have to do to win? Leave a comment in this post and tell me: what is your favorite lesbian/queer film of all time?

If you want to say something about why it’s your favorite, too, go for it. I’m sure there are a lot I’ve missed out on – I only recently saw Puccini For Beginners, for example (which, though I was skeptical, I quite enjoyed).

The winner will be picked on Monday morning, December 8th.

reviews

Review: Liv vibrator

As of 2/8/16 This product is no longer available at Babeland

I’m not a vibrator connoisseur, I’ll just go ahead and disclose that right now. I couldn’t really tell you just by turning on a vibrator if it is more or less strong than another one from memory, I find it challenging to give them a number based on how strong their buzzing is. It’s even hard when two of them are right next to each other – unless one is the Hitachi Magic Wand, pretty much, which is of course the Grandmother of all vibrators.

And I do like my Hitachi, I do. It is a fairly standard go-to for quick-and-easy jerk off sessions. My nightcap, if you will.

But …

When my roommate is home, the Hitachi has quite the vroom-vroom-vroom engine that is really not so subtle. Especially at three in the morning when my whole building is quiet.

So I’ve been vaguely searching for a decent vibrator which would be very quiet, but strong enough still to get me off fairly quickly and easily.

I reviewed the Laya Spot vibrator a while back, and that’s been a pretty good one on this quiet-but-powerful scale, but now that the Liv vibrator by Lelo has come along, I haven’t picked up the Laya Spot once.

Liv is smooth. Sleek. It doesn’t hurt that it’s black, and silicone, but the silicone doesn’t really separate from the plastic/electric pieces, so aside from just soap and water I don’t think there’s a way to boil it in order to sterilize it.

It’s got three speeds, and a couple different variations of sensations too, including a short-quick-bursts and longer, rolling pulses. It is not too strong, or too big either, but if you like something easy that can be inserted and that buzzes quite nicely, this may just be perfect for you.

The battery for Liv is rechargeable, which in theory is really great but in practice has proven to be a little bit of a pain in the ass, as it seems to lose its charge fairly easily (or maybe I just get off a whole lot more than I realize?) and the last few times I’ve grabbed for it, it has been dead. It’s dead now, actually, and will take a full two to four hours to recharge, and because I want to finish and get this review up immediately (while I am feeling inspired to do so), I’m not going to describe the pulsing as accurately as I would if the vibrator was pulsing away in my, uh, hand, right now.

So that’s a little annoying. It’s great, though, that there will be no awful AA batteries accidentally leaking battery fluid inside my vibrator – which I have had happen.

The price tag on this little bad boy is kinda high, $109, but it is such a high-quality toy. It’s no silver bullet (which was my go-to vibrator for years, and I would go through one every six months or so. Those suckers just don’t last). I haven’t had it for all that long, but it feels like the kind of technology that is built to last, not to be replaced.

The elegance is particularly lovely. It comes in a very nice box with a little silk bag in which it gets nicely stored – and hey, presentation and packaging counts for something. All the more bonus that it delivers so nicely.

Thanks, Babeland.

poetry

My Father’s Son

The GoatWhen I saw him in September we camped in his family’s cabin. My grandfather built it with his own two hands and gave it to his children; now his own two legs, the prosthetics he got after both were amputated below the knee from diabetes, are the legs of the cabin’s kitchen table.

My two younger sisters and I slept in the cabin’s only room on pillows and dusty weathered couches as Dad woke and stoked the fire. Mornings at the lake are chilly, even at the peak of heat in August when the summer has been baking the water to its depths and swimming is the best. I watched him add kindling and logs and sometimes dozed off. He spread another blanket over me. When I woke I saw a forlorn gaze in his eyes I’ve never seen. What was he thinking? Was he wondering how his oldest daughter evolved into this boy? This big-city dapper masculinity that is too faggy to fit in with him and his brothers and all my older boy cousins as they discuss elaborately the latest football game, the way they fixed their trailers and trucks, what they caught when out fishing, how to clean the geoduck, how to make a perfect sausage-and-egg breakfast for ten, how to put on a wedding, how to give away the bride.

Dad, are you wondering how I got here? How I went from that tree-climbing skinned-knee ragamuffin girl to this prettyboy? From that girl who worked through her teens in your sports card shop, flirting with the boys as my girlfriends came in to seek sanctuary from the juvenile delinquent park hangout across the street when their feelings were hurt, when someone dumped them (again), when they got caught smoking, when they were being sent tomorrow to rehab or summer camp or anorexia camp or gay camp or bible camp.

I never was your tomboy daughter, never got in fights with the boys in the neighborhood, never stood up to the bullies of my younger sisters. I was the artistic one, moody, on my own. Studying my peers as we metamorphosed into our adult bodies.

We used to go on drives sometimes. After dinner restless, this was when neither of us wanted to be home, neither could stomach my mother’s depression. We’d go on drives and this was when you first told me, “I want to open up a store, right there maybe,” pointing at the empty corner lot that used to be a restaurant bar, at the mall on the wharf. “But my dream space,” he whispered, leaning in, “is right by Foodland.”

That was back when we shared our dreams with each other.

It was on one of those drives, too, where he saw a little silver Saab for sale and said, “that’s the kind of car I want to buy you.” I was fourteen and wouldn’t have a license for nearly ten more years. I couldn’t see myself as a driver, just as I couldn’t see myself as a grown woman, a wife, a mother, a panic that plagued my teens.

Recently on a road trip I saw a blue 1970s GTO and remembered some photos from my mom’s college album. “Hard top, 1964,” my dad emailed back. “Midnight blue, the original muscle car. I got it up to 100 easy on the road out to the cabin. I called the car my “Goat.””

Once, I told a lover that I was considering taking T. She had a string of baby trans guys, she knew how to break us in over her knee. “You won’t turn into Cary Grant,” she warned me, and stopped at a photo of my father in the hallway. “You’ll turn into him. Look. Is that what you’re thinking you’ll be?”

I didn’t grow up in my father’s footsteps, but suddenly I’ve found myself standing in his shoes.

And now, fifteen years later, he moved his store right next to Foodland, the only grocery store downtown. A prime spot for retail. He has all but retired from the environmental engineering business upon which our family was built and now sorts sports cards, comics, coins from his father’s collection, from when the store opens at noon – so he can sleep in – to six pm, every day except Monday. “I’ve worked enough Mondays for a lifetime,” I’ve heard him say.

Now, fifteen years later, I don’t drive much; I take the subway and taxis but I still miss the stick shift in my hand and the dance of the pedals, just like you taught me. Now fifteen years later I can imagine myself as my father’s grown daughter, this “man” I’ve become, your son.

Three daughters and your wife, our mother, all in one house for nearly half of your life. Did you ever wish you had a son, Dad?

I wonder what he’s thinking, as this fire, his fire, warms our morning. He smiles at me with a look I’ve never seen.

“I sleep just like that,” he says. “With my arm over my eyes. You look just like me.”