Friday, July 30, 2010

just because.

So. I can say this because you won't see this, at least not any time soon.

I think you're pretty damn cute.

Call me when you get out of a relationship.




(I'm not telling you this because after three years of being single, if you're happy with whomever you are dating, I'm not going to be the one to fuck with it....especially since I'm not interested in dating anyone right now. But I'd sure fuck you in a heartbeat.)

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Us versus Them.

Got a call from the LGBT political organization I have been working with, FFE. My boss told me she had plans to go out of town this weekend, but the organization wanted to send someone to Baton Rouge on Saturday to talk with people in the bars about the a recent resolution that was shot down. The resolution, a loosely worded statement on the importance of diversity and the city’s support for people of all races, religions, abilities, and sexual orientations, was on the table for the Baton Rouge City council to vote to pass this week. Currently, no state or city protections exist for Baton Rouge LGBT people in any capacity. FFE wanted to pass a local ENDA, but felt the first step would be to pass a non-binding resolution celebrating diversity as a way to test the waters. The resolution was already sponsored by a coalition of Baton Rouge groups, so FFE was simply invited to join. Though FFE’s board likes the idea of the organization as a “statewide” group, the truth is, it’s a NOLA-based group who has some very specific ideas of what they think the rest of the state should be doing. They’ve had turf wars with several Baton Rouge-based groups and political organizations, so their track record on collaboration is pretty low.

To put it nicely, this resolution resoundingly backfired. First, an advocate for imprisoned LGBT youth wrote an article on Bilerco skewering FFE for not including gender identity in the resolution. Granted, FFE didn’t write the resolution; they were only asked to join in support AFTER the resolution was on the table. But, still not an excuse – they should have said no on the grounds that gender identity wasn’t included. Well, FFE’s managing director and political director wrote a resounding letter on why they chose to support the resolution even though it wasn’t inclusive. Dumb move for an organization that has a) no trans board members (or board members of color), b) possibly no trans members, and c) a history of ignorance bordering on contention toward trans people. Way to further divide the community and claim you are an “LGB-T” organization when really, you’re a “LG” and sometimes, possibly “B” organization that thinks “T” is sort of unnecessary.

Next, the Family Forum, a right-wing org, decided to get a group of pastors together and take out a huge ad in the Baton Rouge newspaper including the usual language about protecting children and not endorsing alternate lifestyles. You know how it goes. Well, that, along with some robo-calls and a nice PR campaign, sparked the council to drop the resolution before voting and the mayor to issue a statement against the resolution.

So, here we are now. A lot of LGBT people are pissed in Baton Rouge, understandably, and probably feeling very unsafe and alone right now. FFE decides they want to use this opportunity to pick up members and talk to people and get a better accounting of what the calls and PR said, which is what they need to be doing. BUT no board members want to commit to driving a fucking hour and giving up their Saturday night on short notice to do this.

So they call me. And offer up some money.

A part of me wants to be there to listen. I remember feeling that way when Shreveport, my own hometown, had the same reaction to LGBT issues. It is horrifying to feel alienated and hated in your hometown. It sinks to the bone to realize your neighbors are the ones who don’t really care if you get fired from work for being gay or trans. It’s awful. I want to be there to comfort, to connect, to listen.

But I can’t justify why gender identity wasn’t included in this resolution, whether it passed or not. I can’t justify why gays and lesbians feel justified in their anger at being excluded when they have just excluded others. I can’t justify being a member and a spokesperson for an organization which thinks trans people should take a backseat to gays and lesbians.

Amid my thoughts about whether to go to Baton Rouge this weekend or not, I saw a Facebook post by our lovely Southern Political Director. He posted, out of the blue, “Oh, you are just so progressive with that "Q" on the end of your LGBT. You are just so damn special. Aren't you so goddamn fashion-forward?” Underneath, the comment trail was just as divisive and offensive. I wanted to scream back… I AM THE Q.

And that’s when I realized, I’m done. I can’t. I won’t. I won’t be a part of any group that feels division is more important than inclusion. I won’t stand next to people who see trans people and people of color as tokens, side items, back seat passengers, or break-out groups. I want nothing to do with a group that sees queer, trans, and genderqueer people as ridiculous and messy and unimportant. There is no “they” and there is no “us.” It’s all us.

I can go to Baton Rouge, and I can comfort, and I can listen. But I won’t represent FFE. I’m learning to carve my lines in rock and not draw them in sand.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

High Gender Theater: On Marriage, Kids, and Being a Big Fat Queer

I saw a comment on a blog the other day calling marriage “high gender theater.” It was like someone had put the words right into my mouth. It was the best three-word explanation of how I’ve felt attending a mess of weddings over the last few months. Six couples that I am close to have gotten married between November 2009 to July 2010. One wedding was for a gay couple, and in another wedding, I was a bridesmaid (see: commitments I will never make again). And those are just the weddings I was invited to… that’s not taking into account the mess of high school and college acquaintances who have become engaged or hitched in the last few years of my life, whose relationships Facebook has now made me privy to.

I used to really like weddings. Ok, I still do. I love getting dressed up. I like watching two people who care about each other celebrate their love. I like cake and dancing, I like free food and open bars. I like the spectacle of flowers. I like meeting up with people I haven’t seen in awhile. I like the joy of celebrating love.

But there is a lot about weddings that has made me increasingly uncomfortable. Where to start? Well, there are a lot of fucking dichotomies in weddings. Do you catch the bouquet or the garter? Do you sit on the side of the bride or groom? Are you there to pick up a bridesmaid or go home with a groomsman? Are you bringing a date – and if so, is your date going to be acceptable to the Catholic brides’ parents?

I realize that there’s no fun in dancing if your partner can’t come and dance with you – because who wants to watches queer dance at a wedding? (Besides me.) I realize that, especially as a bridesmaid, I have no interest in catching the bouquet. I don’t want to find a hubby. I would rather be caught pulling a girl’s panties down in the closet than chasing after a potential new husband.

I’ve begun to see that most weddings I attend are a series of rituals, shoved back-to-back, and put on fast-forward. Cue music. Cue attendants. Cue bride. Parents give her away. Vows. Possibly some churchy blessing stuff. Walk out. Photos of everyone. Cue eating. Cut cake. Smash it in someone’s face. Toast. First dance. Father-daughter dance. Groom-mother dance. Everyone dances for a minute, or stands around awkwardly staring at each other. Garter toss. Bouquet toss. Then… either everyone gets drunk and has a great time, or everyone gets bored. Inevitably, someone asks when the bride will get pregnant, if she isn’t already… just in case the couple forgot that the next step is to reproduce. Then there are bubbles or rice or whatever. Someone has decorated the car so that it looks like a mess. Then goodbyes. Cue honeymoon.

And when they get back, cue a whole lot of when-we-have-kids or we-plan-to-have-kids-soon conversations.

There are some variations on this, of course. And what I described is pretty reminiscent of my own white, middle-to-upper-middle-class upbringing in the deep South. But though there are variations, this is the “ideal” – the ritual most begin with, and many mimic to the detail.

I am an outsider at these events. As I see when I look at photos of many of my queer friends – there we are, posing as bridesmaids or groomsmen, friends or family. We are stuffed into a dress or a suit befitting our sex, but often not our gender identity or expression. We are expected to keep our partners in the closet (metaphorically and/or physically), or at least not “flaunt it” too much. We are expected to talk politely about the couple’s history, their love, their deep spiritual/emotional/metaphysical/legal bond through marriage (and often, a church), and their future reproducing more little breeder brats. (Just kidding)

Often I find myself getting drunk, pulling out my camera, and documenting these events to keep myself from having to actually participate in them. My camera is a safe shield which protects me from explaining my lack of a male date, why I don’t plan to get married soon, or why I don’t really want a marriage and 2.2 kids. I might have on a dress, but I don’t fit into the smattering of women chasing their own brood, fingering their diamond engagement rings, silently coveting the bride’s dress/shoes/man, or dreaming about their chance to be the life of the party. I fit into the camp of radical feminist queers who probably aren’t present at this wedding, but spread across hundreds of weddings, all thinking the same. I think parties don’t need rituals – just a whole lot of really great people coming together from my life, drinking, eating, dancing, and celebrating for no good reason at all. I don’t think love needs social legitimacy, or that marriage is “the logical next step” in every relationship lasting over 2 years and taking place between my 19th year and my 30th year on this planet. I don’t think commitments are between men and women only. I don’t want my parents giving me to anyone, and the thought of my deserted father walking me anywhere or trying to dance with me is horrifying.

But that’s gender theater, folks. It’s the compelling notion that a) gender is a biological phenomenon we can’t change, and b) gender is the reason we are compelled to be attracted to the opposite sex/gender, and c) straight folks meet each other, get hitched, and have kids. There are roles we are expected to play, and these roles are defined by the genitalia we were born with (or should have been born with, according to doctors who try to "fix" intersex children). And weddings are ALL ABOUT gender, gender rituals and roles, and legitimizing a straight relationship so that your kids don’t end up as bastards and your property can pass onto them without being taxed. Yep.

Don’t get me wrong. I think love can be an important part of a marriage. Love doesn’t factor into every marriage license, but love factors into many of the marriages I’ve witnessed. I think many people do now get married because they love each other… and I think many feel that BECAUSE they love each other, the only way to show that love is to get married. In other words, I think we conflate love with marriage, even though we’ve all see love-less marriages and loving relationships without a piece of paper.

We’ve all seen kids whose parents weren’t married, but did a great job raising them. Or marriages for convenience, for money, for green cards, for Pell grants, for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Marriages for pregnancies. But we still idealize marriage as a ceremony ultimately about Love.

I’m sure when countries and states began letting queers marry, the same things happened – some queers got married for love, others because they felt it was the logical next step in their journey of life. Some got married because they didn’t know what else to do. Some got married for privilege or money or kids. Queers are no different, after all. We grew up in the same society – a society which prioritizes couples, state-sanctioned marriage, and procreation as important life steps. We grew up exchanging wedding “bands” with our neighbors in private, childish play in the backyard. We grew up knowing that Barbie and Ken are together (even though, secretly, we might have thought differently about Ken). We saw Princess Di’s dress and galloped our way down an aisle as a junior bridesmaid (I thought I was a horse at the point in my life that my aunt and uncle married). We grew up with heterosexual ideals and gender theater.

But now, in my 20’s, with my gender identity firmly entrenched in confusion and my sexuality bordering on messy and radical, I wear my grandmother’s (first) wedding ring as a reminder of my family’s history. My history, though I remember carefully that she and my grandfather had a miserable, Catholics-don’t-divorce-but-just-drink-and-yell, kind of marriage. I watch my friends walk down the aisle, and I wonder what their lives will be like in twenty years. I see my best friends becoming pregnant, popping out squirmy toddlers who grab onto my heart as I rock them in circles, and creating new families. They reconnect with their blood relatives, while mine push me further away. They fit their names neatly into wedding albums and baby books, under “husband” and “wife,” “mother” and “father.” They go to weddings and don’t explain why their date isn’t the same sex. They walk down the aisle as a bridesmaid without feeling like an imposter stuffed into a bright orange dress, blessing a couple who will have a house and a dog and a marital bed and a kid as I’m going out on Tuesday nights and taking girls home from the club. I realize these couples will have social legitimacy in a way that I will probably never have in my relationships.

I don’t want to trade. Not for a minute.

But I do remember, most acutely at weddings, what it means to be queer. What it means to realize my dreams and my reality will always (legal gay marriage or not) be different, because I grew up in a society that says I’m an outsider. Real women get married. Real women have children. Real women have dinner on the table at 6pm. Real women juggle their career and familial responsibilities. Even gothic women, women with tattoos, women with Ph.D.’s, women who have shattered glass ceilings, women who adopt, women who marry late in life… they’re still women in a way I can’t be, because at the end of the day, I live in a society that conflates “female” and “male” with heterosexual roles… not a society which respects that gender, sex, and sexuality are fundamentally different.

Friday, July 23, 2010

a quick stop at a bar

She leans across the bar, and I look up at her, too quickly, startled by the way she has invaded my space. The loose strap on my heels had distracted me, but now here I am, my nose inches away from hers. She has short, spiky black hair and I read her as queer immediately. Her face is frozen, and her brown eyes are hard. She doesn’t read me, probably assumes I’m just another straight girl…at best, cruising for a science experiment; at worst, wishing for a male bartender to have some fun with. John’s is usually a breeder crowd, with the occasional queer. Tonight it’s spotted with straight couples and a drunk guy or two.

“What’ll it be?”

I look at her, too long, just long enough to settle my flustered feeling. She doesn’t drop my gaze.

“A jack and coke. And a maraschino cherry, if you have one.”

She’s thin but stocky and all attitude. It’s hard to tell in the dark if she’s packing or just likes her cargo shorts a size too big. When she turns to pull a new bottle of Jack down off the wall, I find myself glancing down at her ass. Can’t help it. It’s Sunday night and God knows I have more important things I could be doing. But I crave the feeling of a hard oak bar and open French doors ushering in twilight. I want small, dark places, and some attitude. If I have it my way, I’ll be leaving this bar with scratch marks tracing down to the small of my back.

“Here you are…. Ma’m.” I laugh as I hand her my cash.

“Please. Don’t call me ma’m. I’m not older than you, and I don’t have you down on your knees…” I wait to see her expression change. “Yet.”

I can’t help but laugh.

I watch her collect her jaw off the floor as she puts my money in the till. She grabs a rag to wipe down the bar, and I wonder for a moment if she’ll come back to talk. She comes my way, nonchalantly, after a few minutes.

“So what do you do when you’re not here?”

“School, mostly. I guess.”

“You guess? Undergrad, Master’s? Tulane, Loyola, UNO?”

“Massage school.” And…there’s my in.

“Really? Who do you practice your homework on?” I’m taking a chance. Too aggressive will run her
off, but I like the chase.

“Um….” I back off quickly. She’s not biting.

“What’s your favorite class? My good friend just graduated, she’s teaching a tantric class now, keeps trying to convince me to go.” I try a different way.

Her eyes spark a little. “That’s pretty cool. Our school doesn’t really do tantric – too sexual for their taste. But I’ve always wanted to learn more.”

“She taught me some small stuff… it’s not much, but something. Can I…?” I reach toward her hand, taking her palm into my hand. I rub the pressure point in her palm slowly, then stroke up her forearm. I can’t help but smile at her. Her eyes soften, and I can tell she isn’t sure what to make of me.

“What about you? Where do you work, what do you do?”

“I’m in school, too, getting my Masters in gender and sexuality studies. I work in community outreach and education for a civil rights non-profit. I help coordinate a resource website for queer women in Louisiana. And sometimes, I even find time to sleep and eat.”

She laughs. “You’re a busy woman.”

“I suppose.” I’m still holding her palm. “I’m not busy right now.” It’s her lucky day. Or mine.

“We close up in twenty or so. Stick around.” She pulls her hand away and starts toward a man sitting at the other end of the long bar.

“Why so early?”

She glances back. Finally the spark stays deep in her eyes. “It’s Sunday. Always close early.”

Perfect.



The other customers wander out and she shuts off the TV’s and the background music in the bar. She locks the three sets of French doors, but I can still see the night sky rising above the houses across the street. She walks by me as she circles the bar, moving in almost too close, and I can feel the light rush of air between us. The bar has sunken almost completely into darkness, table candles blown out, only four accent lights on the fourteen-foot ceiling shining down the back wall behind the bar. The shelves and bottles lining the back wall cast long shadows, some glowing eerily.

She makes herself a drink. I think it’s something with gin, but it’s hard to tell in the light.

“What are you up to tonight?” I can’t tell if she’s nervous. I can barely see her face. I wait till she has come closer, almost leaning over the bar, before I reply. I hook a finger in the collar of her black tank top, stare deep into her eyes, and pull her toward me.

“You.”

I pull her lips to mine and bite softly on her bottom lip. She shivers. I pull back, push my rocks glass down the bar, and climb up. The wood is worn and feels almost soft beneath my knees. I swing my legs over to her side of the bar, letting my heels hang down. I’m sitting, propped on the bar, and she pulls my knees apart, slides her hand up my neck, and pulls me in for a kiss. I wrap my ankles around her waist, my dress sliding up around my thighs, and I can feel her whole body against mine. She pulls away to kiss my neck, and when her teeth scrape against my flesh, I can’t help but let out a low moan.

“Fuck me,” I whisper in her ear. I’m over being subtle tonight.

She pulls her mouth away, but I tighten my thighs around her waist before she can step back.

“On the bar?”

“Where else.”

I pull the edges of her tank top up, scratch what’s left of my nails in her lower back, and pull the shirt right over her head. I catch the cleavage in her black sports bra and the tone in her stomach from the faint glint of the lights over the bar. I lean in to bite at her nipple through the thick cotton, tracing up her chest and neck with my mouth. She doesn’t miss the hint. Her fingers push my dress up around my thighs, catch on the lace in my panties, and I lift my hips so she can pull my panties around my ankles. I almost fall of the bar, but laugh and catch myself instead.

“You ok?” She stops.

I laugh and moan at the same time. “Of course. Don’t stop.”

My panties dangling around one ankle, she slides two fingers in my cunt. Right to the point. My eyes roll back, involuntarily, and I take a deep breath and moan it out softly. I catch my heels on a shelf sticking out from the bar and lean back, arching my back and letting my head fall back. Her fingers curl in me, and I can feel the warm, wet juice drip on the bar.

“Harder. Please. Please…” She obliges me, kissing down the inside of my thigh as she pushes in and out and in again, deeper into me. She bites the soft, sweet skin inside my thigh, and I can feel my muscles tense and roll. I’m riding her fingers and I can’t help it. She pulls two maraschino cherries out of nearby jar, drops one in my open mouth, and drops to her knees behind the bar. She rolls her tongue across my clit and the lips of my cunt, and I can feel the cold, almost hard cherry and the rough patch of her tongue slide across my exposed skin. She bites the cherry, and the juice slides down my cunt, and I’m crying out in pleasure, my moans becoming higher pitched and louder, echoing and echoing in the empty bar. I can feel my toes curling against my sandals. Her fingers still sliding, curling, pushing, pulling inside me, and the walls of my cunt tightening with each movement.

I can barely hold myself up on the bar. My tailbone is planted deeply into the hard wood, but the rest of my body might as well be floating.

Just as I’m getting closer, closer, and my moans have almost turned to screams, she stops. What? Stopping? Don’t stop now. I look up and she has a shit-eating grin on her face. “What are you doing?” It’s more of a statement than a question. “Hold on a minute.” The attitude is back. She unzips her cargo pants and pulls down a hidden pair of boxer shorts. She’s packing. This time it’s my turn to laugh.

She looks up, quizzical.

“I figured. I was right.”

“How’d you…?”

“I just pay attention, I guess.” I pull her back in for another kiss. I can taste my own cum, it’s salty on her lips, but I don’t really care. Cherry juice still lingers on my lips. She spreads my legs wide, but she’s too short – her hips fall below mine.

“Stay still.”

“What?”

She leans in closer, licks her right index finger, and slides it in fast. She pulls out slow, and a gasp escapes from my lips. “Stay still, ma’m. Don’t fucking move.” Her tone is hard and fast, and I smirk in the dark.

I deserved that one.

She comes back with a short step stool, perfect height. I like resourceful women, what can I say. She pulls a condom from behind the bar, slides it down her dick, pushes me back down across the bar, and slides inside of me, almost in one motion. This time I am screaming, I’m calling out for God, and I’d probably call her name if I knew it, but I don’t have time to care. My body convulses as she pounds her hips into mine, sliding her cock in harder and harder. I wrap my legs around her, catching my heels together, and pulling her deeper into me. I’ve lost all control of my body. My voice is hitting the ceiling, bouncing, echoing, bouncing, again. The walls of my cunt contract and expand as she fucks me and I can feel the heat rising, expanding, spreading through my body. I’m warm to the tips of my toes.

She slows, almost pulls out completely and pounds back against my hips, one….two….three…and on four I feel the heat explode in my body, waves of exposed nerve endings reverberating toes to fingertips and back. My body is seizing from beginning to end. Wave. Wave. Wave….

She stops and I can’t move. I am sucking in air and my nerves are spasming. “You ok?” I bite my lip and nod. “Yeah.” A few seconds pass, and I pull myself up on the bar. “I think I’m better than ‘ok.’”

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Dear New Orleans

"I feel like in a lot of ways I haven't invested in this city the way I want to. and I miss my sexuality. That's a part of my life I really haven't connected with in a long time...Which is a fun and dangerous and creative and interesting process." I swirled the Jack and coke in my hand. The clinking of ice against a rocks glass is the sound of family, of my childhood, and now... of my life in the Big Easy.

"You and New Orleans need to start over." She looked up at me from her beer, cigarette still danging in hand over the ash tray. The last of the light caught on the glass, reflecting down the table. My eyes still had not adjusted in the darkness of the bar. My city. I can't help but fall in love with dark neighborhood watering holes, bars sandwiched between the rows of Creole shotgun homes.

"How does that conversation go? It wasn't you. It was me." I giggle. "That's a conversation neither of us have had before..." Her eyes shone in the darkness. She smiled at my sarcasm. Cat-like.

"She's like a book you never read, because you bought it at a time when you had way too much to read."

I like a woman who can speak poetry. I smile. I don't have a choice -- she's right.

"Or a chapter that I haven't begun yet. We have some beautiful history. But I think there is more to come."

"Definitely." So much more, I hope.

Love.

"No matter how much New York and I fight, don’t get me wrong—I do like big, swirling cities; I do like lovers who push me with more than I can handle, all the while saying, “I know you can handle this. Be bigger than yourself, be more, explode, be bold.” I do like to be shaken out of my comfort zone and pushed into being somewhere, someone new. I do like to be held by the constant creation of chaos and art and activism around me, ever-present and always growing, moving, changing. It feels like a living, breathing entity. But as such, sometimes we disagree. Sometimes we fight. Sometimes I sleep on the couch for a week." -- Sinclair Sexsmith, Sugarbutch Chronicles

In the beginning.

I can feel my spine starting to arch. Her body is tucked safely under mine, my thighs wrapped around her hip bones, making it so easy to squeeze. There is a power in climbing on top, wrapping my thighs around, pushing her down squarely by the shoulders, and holding her there… It is a delicate movement, sliding over her, but when she tries to buck against me, I throw the weight of my hips down. I pull away from a kiss, and her eyes become fierce. I know this stubborn woman isn’t going to let me take her down so easily. But in her own bed, squarely in her own comfort zone, I am tempted to push her limits.

“So,” she whispers into my ear when I bite her neck. “What is it that you like?”
I seek to quell the question with a kiss. Her lips are much softer than I would have expected.

But I can’t cop out on this one.

I pull away and bite my lip. It’s my standard thinking response. Oh, fuck. It’s been years since someone directly asked me what I like, what I want. What do I like?

She takes advantage of my temporary dissonance. Gently she flips me, and I find myself laid out flat, sinking into a mess of down and cotton. Such a clean, white bed for this woman who plays with pinwheels and knives.

She has spread my thighs apart, my long dress now swirling around my hips. If she was packing right now, she would be in the perfect position to fuck me so hard my head would go through her wall. But instead, she is pinning me on a question.

“Tell me, Elle, what do you like?”




I like long cotton dresses. I like piercings. I like my hair long enough to graze my shoulders.

I like foreplay. Foreplay in the form of dark humor and sarcasm, teasing, and intellectual banter. Foreplay in the form of wet kisses. Grazing my teeth across her bottom lip. Smooth hands sliding across my thighs, nails dragging down my back.

I like my clit licked softly so that I can feel every rough patch of her tongue.

I like to be fucked from behind with a big strap on. I like to top on kitchen tables. I like to masturbate on my couch.

Strappy sandals. Especially the four-inch, black satin kind. Garter belts, though you’d never catch me in stockings unless I knew someone would be taking them off. Corsets – the real ones, not see-through-cheap ones, but the kind that bind my waist. Heavy necklaces. I have a thick black cross, hung on a black ribbon, that is just enough symbolism to get me wet. I like the sacred, the profane, the grotesque. I like the way my moans would echo in a church.

I like challenges. A lot.

Women with curves. The sparkle in the eye of a flirty girl. History – social history, personal history, sexual history, memory. I like beginnings, and sometimes endings.
I like to pound a woman with her arms and thighs wrapped so tightly around me that I start to lose circulation.

Penetration. Heat and cold. A cold Maraschino cherry on the tip of her tongue as she licks my clit.

I like seduction. But I like seduction as a slow process, an intellectual and sensual and sexual process, a teasing dance that mirrors burlesque. I fucking love burlesque.

I am a dancer at heart. I like to watch the movement of steps – slow, quick quick, slow. Spin. Stop. Dip. Slow, quick quick… pin her against a wall.

I like dripping wet and messy. I like feminist sex shops and playing with new toys.

Watching her masturbate. Pulling her into my lap, sitting up against the wall, touching her as she gets herself off. I like to feel her buck against me as she rides her vibrator, and when she comes, I can feel her whole body shudder.

Feathers.

I like to be restrained, tied down, held back, pushed and pulled. Handcuffs. I like resistance, but I am not a passive participant. I am strong and stubborn and, at times, controlling. I like to play with those power dynamics sexually, just as I love to play with gender.

I like pressure bordering on pain. It’s a fine line, but a fucking fantastic one.

I like experimenting. I’ll try most anything once. There are a few exceptions – turn offs that will never become turn ons, if you will.

Queer theory. Feminist theory. Destroying sex roles. Fucking with gender roles and expectations.

Music. Dancing – take your pick. Swing dancing, two step, line dancing, swaying. Though I have to say grinding on the dance floor can be one of the best forms of foreplay.

I know these things. I love these things. I know what makes my heart race, my mind focus, my toes curl. But I have become rusty in my expression. I have not forgotten what gets me off…just how to explain what I want. What I like.




I don’t cop out.

“Tell me… what is it that you like?” I gently close my thighs around her waist and swing her down. She complies, and slides down to lay on the bed next to me, propping up on her side.

I’m not shifting the conversation away from me. Well… that’s an added bonus. I’m genuinely interested in her. We’ve talked toys and general thoughts about sexuality, but never specifics.

“I’m easy. I like everything.”

Now there’s a cop out.

She leans in to kiss me, but I pull away and sit up, barely out of her reach.

“No, seriously. What do you like?” I’m challenging her, gently. I stop myself from physically restraining her, too. I don’t want to push too hard. I want to pull.

“I’m malleable.” Her eyes turn soft steel. “It changes with each person. I like to play with whatever gets them off.”

Even the most “malleable” have desires. The wheels are spinning in my head. I’m often attracted to strong women who like to keep other people happy. I respect that pleasuring someone else – whether sexual or otherwise – can be a genuine desire. But
I don’t want the surface, the easy answers. I don’t want you to get me off. I want you to get me off while I get you off. I like to give and to take and to give and to take and to… I get off on making someone else happy, too.

I’m not content with her answer, and she knows it. “I won’t be that easy.”

At least, not in the beginning.