Author: Kate Sloan

Monthly Faves: Boy Bands & Black Leather

Kate Sloan

Wow, what a month! Here are some sexy things that kept me smiling in September.

Sex toys

• My pals at Peepshow Toys sent me a new silicone dildo, the Uberrime Night King. They thought I’d like it for A-spot stimulation, and they were right! Full review to come once I’ve tested it some more.

• While I love being collared, I’ve never really had an interest in collaring anyone else. However, my boyf wanted to play with that in a scene this month, so I put my black Aslan Leather collar on him and enjoyed tugging on the O-ring from time to time while I did all kinds of evil dommy shit to him. I think I’m getting more comfortable being dominant!

• Shout-out to my leather bat for being menacing enough to leave wicked bruises but not so menacing as to be disallowed on planes by the TSA.

Fantasy fodder

• I’ve been having some feelings about interrogation scenes lately. I saw a Kink Academy video where Danarama was explaining interrogation tactics, and then I saw a truly excellent episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine that centered around an intense interrogation, shortly after my Sir and I had played with some mild interrogation in a hypno scene over the phone. Definitely pondering how to incorporate this kink into my sex life without tipping over into upsetting unpleasantness!

• Sometimes a new kink just hits you out of nowhere… This month I thought a lot about being kicked, stood on, and stepped on. My Sir, ever a sex nerd, wanted to understand my motivations for this before we did it, and I’m glad we discussed it, because I didn’t want it for humiliation-y reasons like I think a lot of people would assume. I was more interested in the meditative, subspacey, powerless feeling I thought I could access through these acts. They were lots of fun and I want to try ’em more!

Sexcetera

• I was asked to fill in as co-host of Tell Me Something Good this month, and it was so much fun! The people who tell stories at this event are overwhelmingly open-hearted, kind, and sex-positive. It was a pleasure to share the stage with Samantha Fraser and help hold space for all these wonderful stories.

• The lovely Cy of Super Smash Cache invited me, my boyfriend, and my friends Rae and Epiphora to dinner while we were at Woodhull, and she wrote a blog post about the evening. Read this if you’re voyeuristically curious about any of us (or all of us), ’cause, uh, it gets juicy.

• Two exciting honors this month: the podcast I cohost with my friend Bex, The Dildorks, was named one of Uproxx’s 18 favorite sex podcasts, and I was nominated as Best Blogger in the NOW Readers’ Choice Awards. Thanks, babes!

Femme stuff

• My favorite jewelry designer, Tarina Tarantino, a.k.a. Our Lady of Extremely Extra Sparkly Hearts, restocked some colors of the big-ass heart necklaces I love so much, so I snapped up what may have been the last blue one. It is, to say the least, eyecatching as hell.

• Today in “strange and exciting femme news”: remember that custom perfume my boyfriend commissioned Stephen Dirkes to make me for my birthday? Well, Stephen loved it so much that he used it as a starting point for his latest fragrance, Flocked & Gilded. So, if you’ve ever wondered what I smell like 80% of the time, go get thee a sample! The initial reviewers have called it “velvety and delicious” and “a rich velvet and hypnotic dream,” which… yes.

• My brother’s band, Goodbye Honolulu, came out with some new merch recently, and my bro set aside a “Typical” T-shirt for me. It might be my fave song of theirs, so I love this tee and have been wearing it a lot!

Media

• I went to the Toronto launch of Clementine Morrigan’s new book, You Can’t Own the Fucking Stars, and loved what I heard from Clementine, as per usual. Their writing on mental illness, polyamory, kink, and femmeness always feels particularly salient to me. There is so much packed into this book and I think you will find it comforting if you are poly, femme, mentally ill, a recovering addict, spiritual-but-not-religious, and/or (to borrow Clementine’s terminology) a “trauma bb.”

• My fave band, Hippo Campus, has a new album out. It’s quite different from their usual style but I love it: the music is, by turns, lush, jarring, and eminently danceable, and the lyrics are much more personal and emotional than their previous works, touching on topics like mental illness (“I haven’t been much myself, and I feel like my friends are being put through this hell I’m feeling”) and what it means to be committed to a partner (“Love? Is it love? Who can say you’re the one and never doubt?”). I love these boys so much and I’m so excited to see their show in New York in a couple weeks!

• I’m not quite sure if theatre counts as media, and my cursory Google search on the subject turned up unclear results, but let’s talk about it anyway. I’ve been a Soulpepper subscriber for many years running, and this month they staged one of my favorite productions I’ve ever seen there, Bed and Breakfast. Real-life couple Gregory Prest and Paolo Santalucia played a gay couple navigating homophobia and family secrets in small-town Ontario – and they also played all of the other characters in the story, from an awkward closeted teen to an Irish butch lesbian to a gruff contractor. I took my Sir to see this show and giggled and wept all the way through it. I wish I’d had the time and funds to take all my queer friends (and some of my straight ones) to see this!

• I loved Cameron Esposito’s new special, Rape Jokes, which is “about sexual assault from a survivor’s perspective.” If you’re hurting right now from all the sexual violence in the news, a) I don’t fucking blame you and b) maybe this will help you laugh through the pain a little bit. It’s pay-what-you-want and all donations go to RAINN.

Little things

A waiter telling Sir his cocktail order was “very sensible.” Making photoshoot plans. Dorkily premature anniversary-planning. Karaoke and drinks with Dan, Lav, Sarah, and Jason. Big juicy writing assignments. Whiskey on the rocks. Stealing hotel pens. Trinity Bellwoods hangtime with my love. Glennon Doyle. Sir having access to my to-do list so he can keep an eye on me and keep me on task. The Black Walnut cocktail at Northwood (OMG, new fave). Trading tips with other submissives. Celebrating our nine-monthiversary with a thorough spanking. Writing drunk poems on the subway. Thoughtful and compassionate editors. New bedding. Commiserating about long-distance relationships with my cousins at Rosh Hashanah. The underground walkway to the Island airport (and getting excited about small things, like a little girl would). Limoncello and oysters. Being told I am safe, and knowing it’s true.

Protocol Diaries: An Iron-Clad Commitment

Kate Sloan

It’s not an exaggeration to say that kink has improved my life substantially. Not just because I’m having sex that better suits my tastes, but also because the structure (optionally) imposed by D/s can be transformative. (Just look at the #BetterLivingThroughKink hashtag on Twitter if you don’t believe me.)

I’ve had partners before who seemed unenthused about implementing and enforcing protocol – and I don’t blame them: it’s gotta be exhausting to be in control of not only your own life but also significant portions of someone else’s. This gets easier, so I’m told, if you have the type of brain that relishes that level of control rather than shying away from it – and my current partner is, indeed, that type of dom.

When we discussed protocol in the early days of our relationship, we discussed not only things that would be fun and hot, but also things that would be practical. I’m mildly anaemic and thus have to take an iron supplement every day, but I struggle with remembering to do it. Unlike something like a birth control pill, which you can set a daily timer for, my iron pill has to be taken with food – and, as a work-from-home freelancer, my meal schedule fluctuates wildly depending on what I’m up to that day. So, before meeting my Sir, I would often forget to take my iron for days at a time, resulting in dreaded dizziness and lethargy – not good!

During our early protocol negotiations, my Sir asked me what reward I thought would motivate me to take my iron daily. I contemplated the question, and then felt almost embarrassed to answer: selfies from him. It sounds fairly basic, but when you’re long-distance, you never get to see as much of your partner’s face as you wish you could. We were already in the habit of sending each other occasional selfies for no particular reason, but I still wanted more of his gorgeous face, and suspected it could keep me on-track with my iron regimen.

We implemented this protocol, and I immediately loved it. The exchange is simple – once a day, at mealtime, I take my pill, text him “Took my iron,” and he sends back a selfie as soon as he has a spare moment to take one – but it achieves exactly what we wanted it to: it makes me actually want to take my pill.

Not only do I want to see his face, I also want to connect with him throughout the day. As a person who sometimes has anxiety about seeming too “needy” or “bugging” my partners when they’re busy, I like having an excuse to reach out to my love in the middle of the workday, even if it’s just for this small two-component exchange. This anxiety still persists sometimes – I’ve occasionally gotten in trouble for taking my pill but not telling him, because he was busy and I didn’t want to “bother” him! – but it makes it easier overall, and that’s nice.

This protocol is so important to my Sir that he even sticks to it when we’re together in person. He’ll watch me take my pill while we’re having lunch or dinner together, and then pull out his phone, snap a cute selfie, and text it to me. It makes me giggle, because it’s, in some ways, “unnecessary,” but I also appreciate his dedication to this agreement we’ve made. And I like looking back at the selfies later!

One thing we were deliberate about, in creating this protocol, is setting it up so that there’s a reward when I Do The Thing, but there’s no punishment when I don’t. The adverse health effects I suffer when I skip my pill for a few days, though fairly mild, are their own punishment of sorts, as is my Sir’s gentle disappointment when he asks if I took my pill and I say no. Some say positive reinforcement works better than negative, and I’ve definitely found that to be true for me: I thrive on praise and treats when I do well, while admonishment and punishment just makes me recede into myself and feel sad and panicked. I’m glad we were able to set up this protocol in a way that feels good for both of us.

What protocols could you create in a D/s dynamic to make yourself healthier, happier, and/or more productive? Which have you already found work well for you?

Five Fragrances For Kinky Pervs

Kate Sloan

Kinksters talk a lot about headspace: subspace, topspace, dom space, little space, these nebulous moods which result from enacting our deepest desires and also help us enact them better. The way vanilla people talk about arousal or erection or lubrication is also the way kinksters talk about their various headspaces: as a state both desirable and potentially elusive, sometimes spontaneous and sometimes hard-won, and usually best to capitalize on when the mood happens to strike.

Personally, I use many different tools to get into the kinky headspaces I enjoy: sadomasochism, hypnosis, certain sex acts, certain clothing and hairstyles. Scent is one of these tools for me. Once applied, it permeates whatever happens next on a level so subtle yet total that it can’t help but affect the proceedings. The right fragrance can shift your entire mood, the way you carry yourself, the way you view yourself. Here are 5 scents that evoke 5 different kinky dispositions…

“Cuir” by Mona di Orio

What to say about this spicy, carnal leather scent? Fragrantica calls it “ruthlessly chic.” Rachel Syme calls it “leather at its most pure and therefore most dirty.” C. Murphy says it makes them feel “irresistibly seductive” and like they want to “fuck [themself] and rip someone’s head off.”

I don’t resonate much with the notion of a “femdom,” the way that keyword plays out in mainstream porn and the kinky corners of Tumblr. When I take on a dominant role – which is rare to begin with – I don’t deck myself out in bust-emphasizing corsets or treacherous stilettos. I don’t glare menacingly or call anyone a maggot, a pathetic loser, or my bitch. I don’t pace with purpose, wielding a whip.

My dominance is softer, smaller, more a compelling coo than a harrowing howl. But this Mona di Orio scent is the olfactory embodiment of that towering femdom, and so maybe I could anoint myself with it to bring forth a little bossy flair.

The scent isn’t sweet or forgiving, like some fragrances which soften their leathers with vanilla or warm spices. It’s sharpened to a point with rough-and-tumble anise, cardamom, and juniper. It’s the quirk of an eyebrow with no hint of a smile. It’s the dominant persona I will never melt into, but secretly wish I could try on for a day.

“Dark Purple” by Montale (content note for DD/lg / ageplay in this one)

What would the “little girl” of DD/lg fantasies wear, if she wore perfume? It’s easy to say she would choose something over-the-top sexy and feminine (like “Good Girl,” below), but to me, that rings hollow. My inner babygirl isn’t a lithe adult in precise pigtails; she’s an emotionally messy 13-year-old (or thereabouts) who craves cosmopolitan adulthood while still clinging to the comforts of youth. She would, therefore, wear a gourmand. I think she would wear Montale’s “Dark Purple.”

When you imagine this scent, imagine dark purple lollipops, dark purple flowers braided into strawberry-blonde hair, a hint of grape cough medicine or honey whiskey or both. It’s a sticky, syrupy scent that oozes unsophisticated sweetness – like a little girl before she knows the power of being a woman. Plum, orange, rose, geranium, and ambergris combine to create something as rich and saccharine as raspberry coulis spilling off a slice of cheesecake. This, I imagine, is what Lolita would wear if she wore perfume – and it would make Humbert sick to his stomach and haunt his carnal dreams.

“Body Scent” by Leatherstock

On an episode of Why Are People Into That?, artist and award-winning bootblack KD Diamond tells a tale from her perverted youth. She describes sating her burgeoning leather fetish as a child by relentlessly sniffing an Italian leather glove. She would even sleep with it near her nose so she would never have to stop smelling it. Now that’s dedication.

While I don’t have a leather fetish, I nonetheless relate to this story. Some scents really are that good, and for me, leather is one of them. I bought a rollerball of Leatherstock Body Scent while on a kinky road trip with friends: we spent an afternoon at the Leather Archives in Chicago, and later dropped by the Leather & Latte café in Minneapolis. The scent of Leatherstock, while it really is almost identical to your standard leather smell, always reminds me with such specificity of those places: the solemn stained-glass art, the heavy books of Tom of Finland illustrations, the casually-clad kinksters clutching coffee cups, the dim dusty basement filled with ominous mannequins. I spent much of that trip wearing Leatherstock and my first collar, so leather was close to me both literally and figuratively for the trip’s entire duration. It was a comfort and a constant, as I’m sure it is for many leather fetishists.

Leatherstock is for when you want to smell, as literally as possible, like leather. Like kneeling and pressing your face to a master’s boots, or faceplanting prayer-like against your own cuffed wrists during a hard spanking, or secretly wrapping yourself in a mystery guest’s motorcycle jacket in the coat room at a party. In the Dry Down, Rachel Syme writes about how our modern understanding of leather’s scent is really just perfumers’ attempts to cover up the reek of the “bloody, gut-strewn tanneries of 16th-century France” with something more palatable. So to me, it’s a scent that carries that weight, that history, and also the weight and history of queer kinky culture. Leather daddies, drag queens, well-worn chaps, a trusty flogger. I can keep all that near my nose when I wear the right jacket, the right collar, or Leatherstock.

“Good Girl” by Carolina Herrera

This is the trashiest perfume I own, and I mean that affectionately. It just smells like the fragrance you would reach for if you were also rocking a Juicy tracksuit and a blonde blowout and basically saying “fuck you” to whatever bullshit the patriarchy tends to whisper about all of that.

I bought it for its name – I am a good girl, after all – but it actually doesn’t strike me as a “good” or innocent or pristine scent at all. It’s reckless, messy, slutty. I don’t wear it a lot, because it doesn’t feel like “me,” but it’s grown on me, in its own weird way.

There can be a certain kind of power, in a heteropatriarchal world, to reclaiming tropes long used to tamp your people down. Some women get called ditzy, bitchy, dramatic. They’re accused of being “dumb blondes,” cockteases, sluts. “Good Girl” smells like a woman who decided to stop giving a shit about all that and just live her life – even, and perhaps especially, if that means laughing “too loud,” speaking “out of turn,” and blowing hot-pink bubblegum bubbles with hot-pink glossy lips.

Wearing this scent makes me want to embrace my inner trashy trollop, my inner ballbusting shrew, my inner bad girl, whatever the hell any of that means. Lots of people find “bimbos” hot; lots of people find it hot to be a “bimbo.” I don’t want the world to treat me like a silly slut, but I do enjoy feeling like one from time to time – even just for the duration of a rough blowjob.

“Sir” by D.S. & Durga

It is always limiting to suppose that submissives or dominants have to look or act a certain way to be valid in those identities. When I think of my own insecurities as a submissive, I think immediately of Creepy Yeha and pigtail-clad Tumblr babygirls: shapely waifs strapped tight into pastel leather gear, pouting with perfect pink lips and staring doe-eyed at an unseen dominant. These pixies are cold and unsmiling; they exist to be pretty and petite, compliant and complacent. They are not the type of submissive I am. I cackle, and giggle, and whine, and sometimes I smear my lipstick, and sometimes I say my safeword. I am neither as strong nor as beautifully delicate as those girls in the far reaches of Instagram’s #DDlgLifestyle hashtag.

The dominant equivalent of those sinewy submissives, in my mind, would smell like “Sir” by D.S. & Durga. It’s a formidably masculine scent, seductive jasmine layered on top of animalistic oakmoss, peppered with bergamot and patchouli. It smells like burying your face in the tweed jacket of a silver fox who smokes clove cigarettes and drinks too much green tea. Like getting a little too intimate with your classics professor during office hours, or like the exotic comfort of curling up in daddy’s lap once he’s home from happy hour with the boys. This is a “Tumblr-dom” scent: it brings to mind black-and-white photos of faceless men in suits, aiming for stately masculinity but coming off slightly caricatured.

My Sir – a fellow fragrance nerd – asked me to choose a scent for him one day, eschewing his usual faves (Molecule 03 and Tobacco Oud, if you must know). I put “Sir” on him partly for its name, but partly because I wanted the strange synthesis of this polished-dominant scent on my real-life dominant, who – handsome and captivating as he may be – will never be a black-and-white besuited Tumblr dom, because no one really is, not even Tumblr doms. As I’m sure it would please my love to see pale pink fetishistic leather digging into my flesh – the fantasy submissive mingling with the real one – so, too, did it please me to smell the mega-masc absurdity of “Sir” against my Sir’s warm and comforting skin. He is my fantasy, and he is much more than that.

What scents put you in a kinky headspace you enjoy?

5 Myths About Sex Work

Kate Sloan

It’s disheartening that sex work is still so stigmatized in 2018, even after the groundbreaking work of so many sex workers’ rights advocates throughout history. Whorephobic language is commonplace in our media and even our everyday conversations. Stigma against sex workers literally endangers their livelihood and their lives. This has to stop!

I’m not a sex worker (more on that later in the post), but my friends and internet acquaintances in the industry seem to encounter a lot of the same frustrations over and over again. I’ve quoted some of them here, since they would know better than I would, obviously! Here are some common myths about sex work that really need to be busted…

Sex workers are “selling their bodies.”

I mean, in a sense, we’re all “selling our bodies” – or at least renting them out – because our bodies are involved in the labor we do. Coal miners, retail workers, teachers, lawyers, doctors… All of these people use their bodies to do their work. I’m using mine right now, typing this! Sexual labor is labor; there is no moral law that somehow makes sex work worse than any other kind of work.

Sex work is inherently demeaning.

Someone like Marx might argue that all work is inherently demeaning, since you’re exchanging your labor for the human-invented construct that is money… In any case, people who choose sex work often have excellent (and even empowering) reasons for doing so, not that their reasoning is anyone else’s business anyway! If you don’t think working construction or retail (for example) are demeaning, then it doesn’t make any sense to think that about sex work, either. There’s no reason a brothel would necessarily be a worse workplace than, say, McDonald’s or the Gap. And if you do think those other kinds of work are demeaning, maybe your problem is with work in general, in which case you should go lobby for better employment rights and/or basic income instead of yelling at sex workers!

“Cleos on Nile in Brisbane, the capitol of Queensland, is very pro-sex workers’ rights. They provide everything for the ladies to work independently within the venue. The women work for themselves (no pimping) and can refuse service to any client they like. The venue provides everything for the service providers to work in comfort, from cable TV and internet to food and private smoking areas. Condoms, etc. are also provided free of charge, as only safe sex practices are permitted for everyone’s safety. The brothel is owned by an ex-worker who worked for herself for 25 years before saving enough to buy what has become the most successful brothel in the state.” –Lynette Black, owner of Cleos On Nile

Sex work is easy money.

Hahaha, no. I’ve barely dipped my toe into sex work and even I know this one is bullshit. As with any kind of work that relies on building a clientele, maintaining a career in sex work can take a lot of time and energy. Whether you’re crafting and posting ads for your services, filming and editing content for a clip store, promoting the hell out of yourself on social media, or perhaps all three and more, there’s no doubt that sex work is an effortful enterprise. That effort deserves to be recognized and acknowledged!

There’s only one way to do it.

A lot of different activities can be classified as sex work, not just full-service work like what goes on at Brisbane brothels. Cam performers, dominatrixes, phone sex operators, strippers, and porn performers are just a few examples of different types of sex workers. The World Health Organization defines sex work as “the provision of sexual services for money or goods,” which, of course, covers a broad range of transactions. While I have done certain forms of sex work – camming, selling nudes, selling panties, paid sexting and phone sex, and being a sugar baby – I don’t typically call myself a sex worker because I don’t experience sex work-related stigma or oppression to the same degree as many people who do this work on a more full-time basis and/or for survival. All this to say: sex work takes many forms and all of them come with their own challenges.

All sex workers have STIs.

Oh my god, so much to unpack here. So, first of all, having an STI isn’t something we should stigmatize. Many, many, many people have STIs, and many of those people prioritize disclosure, treatment/management, and transmission prevention. But on top of that, remember: sex workers’ sexual health is their livelihood, so of course they take it seriously, and some research has even found sex workers have lower STI rates than the general population (makes sense, if you ask me!). This is particularly true in places where sex work is decriminalized or legalized (just ask escorts in Brisbane) – demonstrating that making something illegal and/or difficult to do just makes it more difficult to do safely and healthily.

What myths about sex work do you wish would just go away?

 

Heads up: this post was sponsored; however, as always, I support and agree with all of the sentiments therein!

Whoops, I Love You

Kate Sloan

I find excuses, at improv practice, to tell the cute boy that I love him.

It’s not entirely on purpose but not entirely an accident, either. One approach to improv is walking on stage and knowing, immediately, who you are to each other – in spirit, in feeling, if not in detail. So when I walk on, and look at this floppy-haired blue-eyed sharp-tongued goofy-grinned boy, the overwhelming feeling that flows into focus is love.

(Okay, maybe not love, but something like it. We’ll get to that later.)

I’m his wife in too many scenes, his girlfriend, or the moony admirer with whom he becomes entangled over the course of a longform set. I don’t know if he notices, but other people do. “I think you should try pursuing more non-romantic storylines,” my coach offers offhandedly at the end of practice one day. I blush, because I know what he means, I know why he’s saying this, and I know I probably won’t take this note. Improv is a wildly careening ship and my love is a tumultuous river pouring downstream toward disaster. Anchors aweigh.

“I love you,” I shriek in improv scene after improv scene, terrified the cute boy knows I mean it.

“I love you” is weighty, a Big Deal, perhaps too much so. But any time I find myself wanting to believe it can be casual, it just means I’m flooded with love and embarrassed about it.

My shame about my lack of chill is sometimes so intense that I could probably talk myself into thinking “Will you marry me?” and “We should be buried side-by-side” are breezy things to say.

But who decided love was embarrassing? Who, like John Lennon, argued we’ve got to hide our love away?

These fears all stem from the root fear of reciprocation or lack thereof. When you Say The Thing, you’ll find out pretty quickly whether the person you’re addressing Feels The Thing too or very much doesn’t. We all want to live in the will-they-won’t-they illusion a little longer, suspending judgment about Schrodinger‘s love, because “I’m not sure if they…” is uplifting, while “They definitely don’t…” is soul-crushing. So even when love seems likely, we still hedge our bets, guard our cards, crunch the numbers before we make our move.

The dreaded “I love you” is a big deal because it signals the end of one chapter and the start of another. The end of plausible deniability and the start of a reckoning. Whether it goes poorly or beautifully, you’ll learn even more than you thought you would.

Polyamory perk: being comforted by one partner about another.

Or maybe the person you’re crying about isn’t even a partner of yours. Maybe they’re just a crush you somehow let fester into love. Maybe your Actual Boyfriend knows what the deal is, and likes you anyway. Maybe your Actual Boyfriend is therefore a goddamn saint, but still not the person you’re devastatingly in love with.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Actual Boyfriend assures me, late one summer night, as I cry in my bed over a man who isn’t him. “I’m here for you.” He’s right; he is. But I wish he wasn’t. I wish he was someone else.

“I’m just scared that when he leaves at the end of the summer, I’m going to have a mental breakdown,” I sob. The object of my affections doesn’t live in my city, so this was always a time-limited endeavor. As if unrequited love isn’t painful and risky enough as is. I’m sick with contrition, my heart inconsolable. If I can’t have him then I just want to be alone.

Yet here is the boy I’ve been dating for not-even-a-month, his warm-but-wrong arms wrapped around me. “If you do, I’ll be here for you,” he promises. “I know we haven’t known each other that long, but I love you and I wanna support you and I don’t want you to feel alone.”

I can tell, from the way his sentence stretches out like taffy, that the “I love you” was an accident. Whether he meant it but didn’t mean to say it, or meant to say it but didn’t really mean it, is irrelevant. It’s between us now, screaming to be acknowledged.

I laugh a little, through my tears. “Did you just…?”

He laughs a little, too. “Yeah.”

This would become a cute, funny anecdote from our early relationship, if indeed I liked him enough to progress past this stage. But I don’t. It’s hard to love someone good and kind when you’re accustomed to love feeling distant and cold.

Later, when we break up over the phone, he yells that I’m clearly not capable of loving anyone but that other man right now, and that I shouldn’t have led him to believe otherwise. He is right. I wish I could have caught his embarrassing leap in a plush net, but instead I just let him shatter on the ground. You can’t save everyone, hard as you might try.

The weight of “I love you” comes partly from our cultural conviction that it ought to be a Special Moment, much like a proposal or asking someone to prom. The right time and place, the right ambiance, must permeate the memory upon reflection. It should live on in our minds like a Tiffany’s catalogue centerfold, sparkling and emblematic.

But of course, first I-love-you’s aren’t always this picture-perfect in reality. Many are whispered against sweaty skin after sex, or cackled in irresistible cacophonies, or lobbed automatically at the end of a phone call. We’d all like our lives to look like a perfect three-tiered cake, but sometimes the yummiest desserts are the crumbly, misshapen ones from an amateur baker trying their best.

We’ve known each other for 35 days when you accidentally tell me you love me. It’ll only be a few more weeks before you say it for real.

We’re having phone sex – a thing we’ve done a dozen times or so, and will do hundreds more times as we fall harder – and I’m a subspacey mess. Unraveled, wanton, slurring my words. I know how this aligns with your kinks, and I know you put me here on purpose, but I’m still nervous: what if you find this messy gibberish version of me unattractive and you’re too nice to say so?

“Sir, do you like me like this?” I ask, uncertain, seeking feedback that will calm my heart.

“I LOVE you like this,” you retort without thinking. There is a split-second of silence. We’re both too smart, perceptive, and overanalytical to have missed what just happened, but we’re both also too polite and socially fluid to make it into the big deal it obviously is. We launch back into dirty-talk as before, like cocks and cunts can overshadow what’s developing between us.

When you really say it, later, in a dimly-lit bar, it’s slower, more considered. I feel like I’m hearing you perform dialogue we’ve been rehearsing for weeks – the words were empty and now they’re full, dripping with meaning. You preface the phrase with my name, so I’ll know you really mean it and you mean it about me, specifically. “Kate, I love you.” I tell you “I know,” because I do, I do, I deeply do. And then I add, “I love you too.”

We didn’t plan to fall in love; we didn’t plan to say it tonight. But it wasn’t an embarrassing accident. It was a perfect surprise.