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How Being a Sugar Baby Helped Me Get Over Some Old Insecurities

Kate Sloan
Pictured in November 2017, during my very brief foray into sugar dating

One of my biggest fears, when I was growing up, was that no romantic prospect would ever be able to see past my looks and love me for my personality. Popular media had hammered home the idea for me that appearances mattered more than anything else, and I considered myself to have a mediocre face and a mediocre body at best, so it seemed impossible that I would ever be loved or desired in the ways I wanted to be.

Of course, I grew up and discovered that the reality of dating was a bit different than I’d been led to believe. Not only do personalities matter as much as, or more than, looks for many people, but it turns out that plenty of folks actually think I’m hot and pretty. Who’da thunk!

That being said, the hangups that plague us at a young age often stay with us for a long time, even if life experience and self-reflection have both taught us that those hangups are unhelpful and based on falsehoods. So it still surprised me, well into my twenties, when someone I thought was attractive would express that they also found me attractive. Hell, even now, at 31, I sometimes still narrow my eyes when someone cute expresses desire for me, like, How do I know you’re not lying, though?

I still vividly remember the moment I received an initial email from the man who would become my short-lived sugar daddy, because it soothed these insecurities like an ice pack held to a bruise. I was at my optometrist’s office, of all places, sitting in the waiting room.

The email was wordy and polite, explaining that he had heard my podcast and read my blog and followed my Twitter for quite some time, but had only just learned that I offered audio-chat sessions for a fee. (I don’t think this is something I’d still do now, BTW, unless the remuneration was significant, but back then I still had the time and energy for such things.) He was interested in setting up a phone chat to discuss “our relative perspectives on sexuality,” and also to do some phone sex-type stuff if I was up for that. He lived in New York and I lived in Toronto, so our dynamic would be limited to the phone for the time being, though the possibility of in-person meetups was later floated, provided we hit it off via audio.

He’d included some photos and personal details and I found him quite handsome and impressive, in a way that awakened my impostor syndrome from its intermittent slumber. This man wanted to pay for my time? Seriously? I wasn’t a smoking-hot porn performer, or a finessed escort like the ladies at https://www.toronto-escorts.com/, or one of those slim, blonde, well-manicured women you might see on a sugar-dating website. I was just… me.

And here we arrive at one of the central lessons I took away from my time as a sugar baby, which ended up lasting only about a month before he called it off due to jealousy about my other partners (a bummer at the time, but ultimately for the best). I learned that not only was I desirable, but I was desirable enough to be worth spending money on.

That may sound like a weird distinction to make, but money is, in many ways, far more tangible than much of the other attention I’d received from suitors in the past. That’s not to say it’s better – I’d generally rather receive a well-tailored, flirty compliment from someone cute than a crisp hundred, although frankly it depends on the day – but I found it more believable, because money is… well, it’s currency. It’s cold hard cash, and it tells the cold hard truth. Someone might give a compliment they don’t really mean; people do it all the time. But if someone decides to pay me money for the privilege of spending time with me, or seeing photos of me, or whatever, then it’s extremely unlikely that they’re faking their enthusiasm for any reason. Money, as they say, doesn’t lie.

There’s a lot of Discourse™ about whether sex work is “empowering,” which I generally think is ridiculous. Few other professions are held to that standard, of needing to be ~empowering~ in order to be valid, respectable, and worthy of rights and protections.

But at the same time, few jobs I’ve ever had have felt as actively empowering to me as being a sugar baby did. I was being paid to be myself, being paid because someone liked who I was, inside and out. Not much else was required of me, besides the emotional labor of being in a relationship-type-thing, which I’d long given away for free to Tinder fuckboys and Twitter crushes who didn’t necessarily deserve it. During our phone calls, I could wear the things I liked wearing, and tell the jokes I’d normally tell, and be as nerdy as I’d normally be, and get paid for that. I could even get paid to receive pleasure, paid to listen to a handsome man describing in detail how he would touch me if we were in the same room. I felt high on the attention, the flattery, and – yes – the money.

I’m very good at talking myself into the belief that no one actually wants/likes/loves me, even when there’s ample evidence to the contrary. I mean, for fuck’s sake, I’m married to the love of my life now, who courted me relentlessly even while we were living 500 miles apart (they incidentally also live in New York – actually I met them on the trip that was supposed to be my first meetup with my sugar daddy, planned and booked before he ended things with me), and even now, I still have times when I feel deeply undesirable and can’t understand why anyone would ever want me.

But I know that someone did want me, because he was paying me hundreds of dollars a month to make me giggle on the phone. And that means that I could be (and, in fact, am) wanted by other people – not only now, but in the future. And it’s hard for me to explain that away, even on my most insecure days.

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

So I Gave My First Footjob…

Kate Sloan
Sneakers by Converse, clogs by Lotta From Stockholm.

For reasons unknown, I’ve dated an above-average number of foot fetishists. I guess it makes sense if you consider that I mostly date other kinksters, and feet are one of the most common kinks. But when I think about the kind of person who would date multiple foot fetishists, I think about someone who has beautiful, soft, elegant feet, and I’ve never really thought of myself as that kind of person.

I think a lot of us grow up with feet-related insecurities, which may be part of why feet are fetishized so often. We worry about sweat, smells, dirtiness. We hide our feet away under socks and shoes much of the time, so that displaying them openly can feel almost as vulnerable as nudity. Still to this day, I feel weird in sandals, like I’m cosplaying as a type of girl I’ve never really been.

I’ve certainly never felt confident enough about my feet to want to model for fetish sites like Love Her Feet. But over the course of a few relationships with foot fetishists, I eventually got a little more comfortable taking foot pics when requested. (If you’re interested, I have an all-feet photo set available for purchase. That link is the only place on the internet where you can get sexy pictures of my feet!)

That being said, confidence in photos is a bit different from confidence in real life. When partners would want to do things like sniff my feet, massage them, or suck on my toes, I’d freeze up. Sometimes I’d enjoy these things when they would happen, but only if I was able to get over my near-paralyzing anxiety about it, which was rare.

Recently, my partner requested a footjob. They’ve requested one several times before but I’ve always felt too nervous to do it. I was worried not only about my feet but also about the contorted position I’d probably have to get into; I don’t have a lot of flexibility in my hips, knees or ankles due to my fibromyalgia, and a lot of the footjobs I’d seen in porn had involved someone’s legs being splayed wide open with their knees deeply bent to stroke a dick between their soles, a shape I knew my body just wouldn’t be able to get into. Hell, I can barely sit cross-legged on the floor for more than a few minutes before every joint below my waist starts throbbing with pain. On that note, I was also nervous about how I’d look while trying to bend myself into the right shape.

However, one of the skills I’ve picked up from therapy is being able to break down an anxiety-provoking situation to look more closely at the specific anxiety triggers it contains, in order to figure out if I can do anything about them. When I thought about each of the individual pieces of the puzzle that were fueling my footjob fears, I saw a few potential solutions, which could be used alone or in tandem:

  1. Get a pedicure prior to the footjob.
  2. Find a comfortable position that works for my body.
  3. Blindfold my partner so they can’t see what I’m doing.

I ended up doing the latter 2 things from this list. One night I had my partner lie on their back in bed and put a blindfold on. I laid on my side next to them and lubed up their dick and the sole of one of my feet. Then I bent my knee enough that my sole could rest on the underside of their dick and had just enough range of movement to slide up and down the length of it in a teasing manner.

And yes, my hip and knee joints started to ache after a few minutes, but I knew that wasn’t the end of the world. I kept up some low dirty talk in their ear while holding onto my leg with my arms, so that my arm muscles could take on some of the strain and give my leg a break. As the action crescendoed, at certain points I had to use my arms to physically move my leg up and down because my leg muscles and joints were just done. But, as often happens, the yummy neurochemicals of being in a sexy situation with a hot person were enough to make the pain mostly feel like part of the experience, rather than antithetical to it.

Eventually they came, and it was hot. I think I had them lick some of their own cum off my foot, possibly while still blindfolded. Overall, a positive experience – and one I definitely didn’t think I’d ever have, prior to being in this relationship.

The moral of the story is: In the realm of sex, as in other realms of life, you will encounter things that scare you but that seem worth doing anyway. Self-knowledge can be even more important than courage in these cases, because it is your knowledge of yourself, your body, and your brain that will enable you to approach the situation in a way that works for you. And when you do it your way, courage comes much more easily. Dip your toe in and see what happens.

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2022: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

Dear friends, I didn’t write in my journal much this year; one of the occupational hazards of being someone who writes for a living is that sometimes you don’t have enough time/energy to write for yourself. A lot of the writing I did do in my journal was the many many pages of notes I tend to take during solo shrooms trips; usually I put on a movie (or sometimes 2-3 in a row) and sit in front of it with my Moleskine and pen, noting all the thoughts and feelings that come up as I watch Hercules or A Bug’s Life or Cats Don’t Dance or whatever.

So, some of the journal entries I’m sharing in this post are extremely condensed/curated excerpts from those trip notes, and some are just regular journal entries about thoughts and feelings I was having at the time. A lot of these entries also contain reference to the trauma healing work I’ve been doing this year in Internal Family Systems therapy. I hope you enjoy, and that you’re having a good December.

 

March 12th

Some notes from a solo shrooms trip:

All of us (all the “parts” of me) can rally together inside. Working collaboratively on a big task (like healing trauma) inherently builds intimacy. And hopefully trust. Like how Chuck Nolan (in the movie Cast Away) needed to be the guy looking for rope and also the guy who sent him to look. It can save your sanity to be multiple selves.

No one’s there to care for you if you’re just alone. You have to be able to split yourself, see yourself and your life from two angles at once, yours and hers (your inner child’s). It’s the only way you both can be cared for, protected and healed. The way I “trip-sit” myself is such good training for being simultaneously the passenger and the captain. It needs to become almost instinctual, like psychological muscle memory, for me to separate from and care for my inner bbgirl like this.

The hardest part is realizing: as a kid, you thought adults had all the answers and were never afraid, but in reality, you can be afraid and only know what you know and still decide to helm the ship. Having to calm her helps summon the most adult, nurturing parts of me to the surface. I never need to worry I’m a bad “parent” to her as long as I am listening to her, affirming her feelings, and helping her do what she wants to do next.

I spent a lot of time alone in my room as a kid because I wouldn’t trigger myself, wouldn’t monitor my own behavior for badness, or yell at myself. It was very resourced of me to be in my room alone with books, journals, dolls/teddies/stuffed animals, music, my tape recorder, my cute clothes. I found peace in solitude. But crucially, this strategy REQUIRES that I only be nice to myself, and not be the exact kind of terrorizer that necessitated my self-regulating alone time.

 

April 14th

Free-writing because Matt told me to:

[My high school] was a place where queerness of all definitions was accepted and encouraged. It was in some ways a culture shock after 2 years at [my middle school], where social hierarchy mattered so primally, so fundamentally. What is it about middle school that brings out the meanest, darkest streaks in young people’s psychology? Is it the underformed prefrontal cortex, the impulse control issues, the lack of emotional experience that turns pimply dweebs into monsters?

There are two girls I regret having shunned and gossiped about rather than befriended in middle school. One was [N.], widely regarded as the sluttiest girl in school. We were all 12-14 years old, and there were constant rumors that [N.] dated men in their late teens or early twenties. I wonder now if she was okay, if those men were taking advantage of her; any way you slice it, they almost certainly were.

The other girl we were mean about was [K.]; she was meek but deeply funny when you got her going. She was into anime and other “nerdy” stuff like that. There were also constant rumors that she was a lesbian, and the popular girls would sometimes claim that she had been staring at them or making them feel uncomfortable. In retrospect, the homophobic anxiety was off the charts at that school, which made [my high school] seem even more utopian by contrast.

[My therapist] says it makes sense that I would latch onto the structure of “popularity” in order to prop up my damaged self-image after the emotional mistreatment I’d endured elsewhere. We naturally look for ways to feel more empowered when we go through a disempowering trauma – that’s how shame first evolves, as a way of coping with unpredictable dangers by positing that we can theoretically protect ourselves from those dangers if we behave a certain way because the problem is that we are bad – to believe otherwise would be to have to accept the terrifying truth that danger can strike at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all.

So I can see why I got so obsessed with winning/maintaining the approval of [B., the most popular girl at my middle school] and her cronies, even though I didn’t even like them that much or want to be their friend for reasons other than social status and avoiding loneliness + ridicule. There were rules I could follow – I thought – that would help me stay safe: wear this brand of clothing, carry this type of purse, talk this way, mock these girls, express derision toward the “right” things (gayness, nerdiness, fatness, etc). I was trying to follow all the protocols and even that wasn’t enough, ultimately, to keep me safe from having my social status destroyed. But it was a lesson I needed to learn.

 

July 27th

Part of why this songwriting challenge has been so good for me is that I always wanted to do more gigs but so much of my best material (especially the more crowd-pleasing stuff) was from when I was in high school or my early twenties, and I feel like a pretty different person now, with different things to say and different feelings and stories I want to express (though some of the same ones as well). I’m really proud of the songs I’ve been cranking out this year and excited to have so much more stuff I can perform whenever that becomes a possibility again.

I’ve also loved observing how naturally well-suited my brain is for songwriting: little melodic, lyrical or conceptual ideas come to me all the time, like a tumbleweed blowing on down the road, and my job is to pick them up, examine them, shine ’em up and make ’em sparkle. My songwriting process now is much more adult and fleshed-out than when I was in high school, because 1) I’m a better writer now in general and 2) my spiritual beliefs around creativity now are less about accepting and reproducing exactly the rudimentary or strange ideas I hear in my head and more about using them like whispers from the universe, as a jumping-off point, an improv scene suggestion, a nudge in the direction I need to go in. I’m fascinated by the process of honing a metaphorical block of marble into a beautiful, compelling sculpture.

 

September 10th

Some notes from another shrooms trip:

3:07 p.m. Have to once again remind myself: you don’t need to narrate this or explain/describe your experience to ANYONE later, just enjoy it – BUT if imagining a future audience/listener is useful as a framing device or narrative theme, of course you can still use it when and if you want to.

3:15 p.m. Keeping grounded during scary scenes [of the movie I’m watching, Hercules] by writing about them. But is this always what I do? Distancing myself from the experience by documenting it? The loss of control/connection to reality that many people fear from drugs (myself included) is noticeably lurking around the edges but I am comfortably holding it off – the movie and writing about the movie are both pleasant.

3:26 p.m. Reality is bending and becoming less sure to me but in a way that’s still comfortable. Indeed, narrating this as if for a future reader (even if it’s only me) is a helpful organizing principle but also something I wouldn’t even know how to turn off in myself. What notes am I supposed to make in a NOTEbook if not for a future reader? Why am I shaming myself, bullying myself for a natural human impulse that has existed since the beginning of time itself? I am a creator, that is very core to who I am, and so parts of everything I do will be done creatively or as if they are meant to function as fuel or fodder for further creation. To pretend otherwise would be kidding myself.

4:12 p.m. Literally have no idea how many pages I’ve written this trip. The writing is less about its output and more about the actual action of it – it’s a guiding principle, a way of steering the ship, but also it is the ship.

 

October 29th

Some notes from yet another shrooms trip:

5:47 p.m. Watching [the YouTuber QuinBoBin] play Twilight Princess. I love him he’s so funny and wholesome. I’m laughing so hard that there are tears rolling down my cheeks.

Quin has taught me a lot about HOW TO ENJOY PLAYING VIDEO GAMES! This connection to my nerdy childhood. It’s like I was too scared of social self-judgment for being nerdy and I didn’t even let that path of my life develop. Reclaiming video games and other nerdy shit I was shamed out of. Being that nerdy boy I always wanted to impress and connect with.

5:57 p.m. VERY emotional. Shrooms is not easy or passive; do not expect it to be. But nothing is scary when I know Quin is here with me and we’re fighting the big boss together. I have to let the gay nerd inside me out. How much of my personality and style have I let [my middle school bully] shape? Who would I be without her laugh aimed at me in my own head? I’m mourning wasted time and who I could have been.

In the game Link transforms and I can transform too. I can be anything I want. My life is mine to craft now. Slicking my hair back with my tears lol.

I always used to run from Lynels [a difficult enemy in the game Breath of the Wild] or chip away at their ankles and Quin showed me I can fucking mount them and slap their cheeks til they’re dead. Nerdy boys showed me a way out of the hell of social hierarchy and I chose to swim away. I chose the hierarchy. Every mean thing I’ve ever done has been in service of trying to look cool and disaffected and like I had the upper hand. That was all an act, a crutch. I know that now.

6:21 p.m. What a wild drug, lol.

 

November 21st

Was just looking at some of Gaby Herstik’s incredible selfies and felt a strong sense of wanting to lean back into the side of me that would post provocative thirst traps on Twitter, dress slutty and weird every day, flirt with randos, etc. I think I have lost touch with that girl partly for reasonable reasons (fibro, pandemic, concerns about being kicked off PayPal/Instagram etc. for being too porny) and partly for dumb reasons (wanting to “seem more professional” and “be taken more seriously”). The disembodiment of trauma has also played a role.

But I wonder how much of feeling embodied and deliciously sensual is about making the effort to feel sexy by any means necessary: wearing lipstick and perfume to bed, posting late-night lingerie pics, upping my heart rate by telling cute people they’re cute.

Through therapy I have become aware of the aspects of my former sluttiness that I felt pressured into by society and people I’ve hooked up with, or felt lured into by my own trauma-borne desperation to be liked and wanted. But I wonder if now it’s time to let the pendulum swing back in the other direction a little, in the hopes of finding a happier medium. I want to feel even sexier in my thirties than I did in my twenties, and when I do, I will have earned it. This body, this confidence and this proud sexuality were hard-won for me and I intend to enjoy them. But in a way that respects my demisexuality, my trauma history and my boundaries.

During fibro flare-ups I feel so disconnected from my body even as the pains and discomforts of my body are all I can think about. I want to feel in touch with my body again and that includes being in touch with its softness, its sexiness, its allure to others and to myself.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2022: 7 Bangin’ Selfies

Kate Sloan

Would you ever do something so self-indulgent as to write a blog post about your favorite selfies you took over the past year?! No, me neither.

Wait, that’s not true. I’ve done exactly that for several years running now. Whoops.

Anyway, without further self-effacing lampshading, here are 7 of the most meaningful selfies I took this year, with a bit of context for each. Look, I’m cute!

 

January 1

Despite writing a song around this time called “Alone on New Year’s Eve,” I was not, in fact, alone on New Year’s Eve. I went to spend it with my parents.

There was a time when that last sentence would have made me feel like I wasn’t cool enough or social enough to line up other plans. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become less and less interested in listening to the “mean popular girl” voice inside my head that judges me for such things. A girl like that hasn’t had power over me since I was a preteen, except within my own mind. Instead of taking her criticisms to heart, instead I can just ask myself in any given moment: What is it that I most want to do? And then I can do that.

And truth be told, it’s been years since I’ve wanted to spend New Year’s out at a dance club, bar, or party. I’ll swig some midnight champagne and yell a countdown at the TV, sure, but from the comfort of my own (or a loved one’s) home. New Year’s is a hugely self-reflective time for me (as this blog series makes clear), a time when I like to think back about who I’ve been that year and who I want to be in the coming one, and I find it easiest to be introspective when I’m operating from home base.

Anyway, I chose this picture because my mum and I look super cute in it, and because she’s so sweet and funny and delightful and a really important part of my year every year. Love you!

 

February 3

To the extent that I had any kind of defined personal style this year – which is dubious – a lot of the time it fell into what could be termed “lovecore.” This is a style of dress in which “romantic” colors like pink and red are emphasized, and in which the (non-anatomical) heart symbol plays a big role.

I truly would dress like this nearly every day if I had the energy to do so. And frankly, maybe that just means I need to transition my loungewear and sleepwear wardrobe into a more lovecore-y vibe by gradually phasing out all colors but red, pink, and black. Who knows what the future may hold for my look.

In scouring the internet for lovecore-centric inspo images, I kept stumbling across pictures of this heart-print sweatsuit. Megan Fox famously wears a jacket like this one in Jennifer’s Body, and it’s a showstopper. After going back and forth on it for a while, I eventually sprung for a duplicate of the full sweatsuit made by a random Etsy shop.

It’s certainly not what you’d call sophisticated or understated. It is LOUD, and it hugs my curves in ways that would have made me feel uncomfortable and insecure just a few short years ago. But I love it. When I took this selfie the first time I wore it, I actually liked the photo so much that I put it into my Tinder profile almost immediately. It’s always been important to me to be fully forthcoming about what my body looks like in my online dating profiles, because I don’t want to risk ending up on a date with someone who isn’t chill about me being adorably chubby, and this photo feels like one of the best ways to do that. It’s where romance meets sexiness, baby.

 

February 13

When a reader of mine asked me to write a blog post about her jeans bondage fetish, it occurred to me that I’d need some photos to go with the post. Originally I was just going to take some normal arm’s-length selfies wearing jeans in bed, but I tried that and they just didn’t come out looking the way I’d hoped.

It was then that I realized I needed to do something I’d only done one other time before: a solo photoshoot in the corridors of my building, complete with tripod and self-timer. The risk was high – a neighbor could walk out at any moment and witness the whole denim-clad scene – but I knew the pictures would be much better than those I’d half-assed in bed.

The lighting in those hallways is creepy, and the whole vibe is very The Shining, albeit with less glamour and less blood. But I liked how the photos came out, not least because they were meant to emphasize the tightness of the jeans moreso than whether the jeans were “fashionable” or “flattering” or any other such dirty word. I saw the denim squeezing my thighs and hips and, instead of feeling ashamed or like I needed to fire up Photoshop, I simply thought about people who are into jeans bondage and how much they’d relish the constrictive look of this pair of skinnies.

I also like that there’s something a bit lonely about this photograph. Standing alone in a long hallway, with a KN95 mask underlining my hopeful upward gaze. It has a “trapped” feeling that makes it feel very 2022-appropriate.

 

February 16

I think my Honni Music electric baritone ukulele might be my favorite thing I bought this year. I was debating between this custom-made instrument from Australia and a much more generic, off-the-rack acoustic baritone. I asked my spouse and my brother what they thought, and they both said roughly the same thing; in mb’s words, “I think the electric one will bring you more joy and spark more creativity.”

I don’t know how or why, but the artisanal luthier behind Honni Music only charges about $300 (CAD) per instrument, despite the fact that he makes them all by hand to the specifications of each customer. But I decided to treat myself, and ordered one. It didn’t even take very long to arrive all the way from Australia!

I took this picture the day I received the uke in the mail. My face here is genuinely reflective of the excitement I was feeling. There is something so special about an instrument that has been hand-crafted from scratch. This one is stunning.

I had never owned an electric guitar or electric ukulele growing up, because they were too loud with an amp and too quiet without one, and they didn’t really fit into the style of music I was interested in making then. But I always secretly sorta wanted an electric guitar, because they were the epitome of cool, and I thought that owning one could usher me into a whole new way of making music.

So it felt deeply nourishing to my li’l music-lover heart to buy this for myself, and to play it, plugged into a tiny practice amp I bought from some rando on Facebook Marketplace. It felt like a gift to my younger self, the one who’d stood in front of her bedroom mirror playing air guitar to Aerosmith and John Mayer. And it’s inspired me to write a lot of great songs since I got it, too.

 

July 9

My roommate Sarah and her boyfriend Dan (who I’ve actually been friends with for even longer than I’ve known Sarah) have been two of my closest pals for years, but especially so during the pandemic, when we made a regular ritual of gathering in Sarah’s room to play Jackbox games and Use Your Words over cocktails and ciders. It felt so important and healing to have an outlet for the kind of casual socializing we lost out on when self-isolation became the new normal.

I took this photo with the two of them on the night we went out (yes, went out! To an actual bar patio! Wow!) to celebrate Sarah’s birthday. She is a mega-femme whose signature color is pink, so I always wear pink for her birthday festivities, whatever and wherever they may be.

While writing this just now, I couldn’t recall the name of the bar we went to, but remembered that all the drinks were themed around various nerdy, sci-fi and/or cult-y media properties (Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, Beetlejuice, etc.) so I googled “nerd bar gay village Toronto” and the name of the place popped right up: Storm Crow Manor. Gotta love any place where the drinks glow and the waiters wear short-shorts.

Shout-out to these two pals for being there for me in a major way these past few years!

 

September 19

Matt and I are both so accustomed to posing for selfies that it can be hard to take “candids” of either of us. So I love that this picture captures us genuinely laughing together in a way we do constantly but not often on camera. I don’t know what we were laughing about, but we look cute and in love.

The night that this was taken, we headed out for a drink at Martiny’s, a very dark and serious bar that serves (as you’d expect) fantastic martinis, among other things.

I don’t have much more to say about this one except, like, look how adorable we are!

 

October 29

Appropriately to its almost-Halloween date, this is probably one of the weirdest and most chilling selfies I took all year. But it’s kinda great, too.

I did solo shrooms trips several times this year, partly recreationally and partly for the drug’s potentially trauma-healing effects. (One day I’ll write all about how shrooms are helping me heal my inner child, but I don’t think the time for that is right just yet.)

This picture was taken around 5 p.m. after a full day of shroomy goodness. In glancing through my trip notes for that day (which I think I’ll be diving into more in my “favorite journal entries of the year” post later this week), it seems that some of the things I did during that trip included watching Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, drifting in and out of trance, and weeping profusely while watching a funny video of a guy playing Zelda games. (It’s a long story, idk.)

After being high for around 6 hours – by which time I’m usually feeling somewhat sober-er but reality still feels a bit fuzzy at the edges – I opened up the camera on my phone and looked at myself in the selfie-cam. There was something about this sight that seemed almost mystical to me – the way my hair was arranged like a peacock’s tail or a lion’s mane in a Renaissance painting, the way my slip dress’s spaghetti strap sagged off one shoulder, the way my makeupless face told a tale of peace and tranquility that was somehow also haunted. I snapped a few shots. This was the best one.

 

It’s been a weird year – although I probably say that every year – and I’m glad that I have these photos to remember it by. What were some of your fave selfies you took this year?

Why I Love the Ukulele

Kate Sloan

Ukulele, small and fierceful
Ukulele, brave and peaceful
You can play the ukulele too –
It is painfully simple
-Amanda Palmer, “Ukulele Anthem“

I’ve been writing songs since before I knew how to play any instruments; it’s baked into me how yeast is baked into bread. But instruments are a big part of how you bring music into the world, and convey to listeners the way you’re hearing your songs inside your head, and so I always wanted to learn to play an instrument, long before I ever did.

A year or more into piano lessons (which I enjoyed, though I begrudged having to practice my Bach and Chopin), I started listening obsessively to indie folk artists on a website called PureVolume (it was sort of like the MySpace of the music industry at the time) and, in particular, found myself drawn to songs written on acoustic guitars. I had an old violin, inherited from a relative and missing a string, and I would sit in front of the family computer plucking out simple chords on this creaky old instrument and sing over them into a USB microphone. Once, my dad walked by while I was doing this, and he remarked aloud, “We gotta get this girl a guitar.”

Playing my first guitar, circa 2008

He did, and it’s still one of the most meaningful acts of love I can recall in my life. He took me to Long & McQuade, arguably the best music shop in Toronto, and I told the salesman I wanted an acoustic guitar. (Electric guitars weren’t really on my radar; the artists I cared about then were all writing on acoustics.) The salesman asked me if I wanted a steel-stringed guitar or a nylon-stringed one, and I didn’t know, so he grabbed one of each. “Nylon-stringed guitars are usually used for classical music,” he explained, playing a bit of fingerpicked flamenco on the one he’d chosen, “whereas steel-stringed guitars are used in folk music.” He played a few bars of music that sounded like folk-rock to me – like the music I’d been listening to on PureVolume – and I said, “That one, please.” My fate was sealed.

I loved my guitar, and took lessons for a few years from a chill-as-hell Irish hipster named Eoghan (pronounced like “Owen”) who was getting a degree in jazz guitar. One December, my mom sent along a box of cookies for me to give him as a Christmas gift, and he was so surprised and flustered by this that he gave me a huge book of jazz standards he happened to have in his guitar case that day. I treasured that book, and still have it.

No matter how many guitar lessons I took, though, it just never felt as natural to me as singing or playing the piano. My fingers weren’t strong enough to play barre chords, or nimble enough to swap quickly between different chords. True, I could have (and should have) practiced more than I did, but it felt like I was hitting an insurmountable wall, limited by my level of physical ability.

My guitar teacher worked out of a music school on top of a music store, and so I would walk through their rows of instruments every time I went to a lesson. And sometime around age 16, I began to notice the ukuleles hanging adorably in a back corner. One fateful day in 2008, I took a couple friends with me to the shop and picked out a bright green Beaver Creek ukulele, paid approximately $40 for it, and walked out holding my musical future in my hands.

It was just so clear to me, so quickly, that I was meant to play the ukulele. I fell in love with it the way I fall in love with human beings: quickly, obsessively, and all-consumingly.

See what happens when you muzzle a person’s creativity
And do not let them sing and scream
And nowadays, it’s worse, ’cause kids have automatic handguns
It takes about an hour to teach someone to play the ukulele
About the same to teach someone to build a standard pipe bomb
You do the math!
-Amanda Palmer, “Ukulele Anthem“

If you’re not familiar, the ukulele differs from the guitar in a few key ways. It’s smaller, and tuned higher; it’s cheaper, and has a thinner but more playful sound. And, crucially, it has only four strings instead of six, so chord shapes are simpler, requiring less nimbleness and coordination of the player’s fingers. Its strings tend to be made of nylon or similar materials, so it doesn’t require as much strength as pressing down on steel guitar strings, which can bite into your fingertips like knives if you haven’t formed callouses there yet.

I wasn’t diagnosed with fibromyalgia yet at that time, and who knows when I actually developed that illness – but the struggles which led me to prefer ukulele over guitar have only deepened over the years, in large part due to my fibro. My hands are weaker than I’d prefer, and often sore. I’m clumsy and prone to dropping things, stumbling, hitting wrong notes on the fretboard. I’m frequently frustrated by an inability to translate the songs I hear in my head into an audible, tangible result that I can share with others. The ukulele, therefore, is perfect for me.

With the barrier of insufficient hand strength removed from the equation, I’ve gotten much better at ukulele than I ever got at guitar, even though I took guitar lessons for years and am mostly self-taught on the ukulele. I can play complicated chord changes from jazz or musical theatre, and never (okay, almost never) get so frustrated that I want to throw my instrument across the room. I can strum chords or finger-pick, write songs or learn other people’s songs. It feels easy and natural to me in a way that guitar never did.

There’s a term I love, “access intimacy,” which I learned from some kink workshop at a conference long ago. (I can’t recall who introduced me to this concept, or I would credit them.) It refers to the intimacy you can have with people who recognize and meet your access needs – whether those needs are related to physical disabilities, such as requiring ramps and access to handicapped bathrooms, or mental-emotional issues, such as needing to avoid certain PTSD triggers or needing a slow approach to task-switching due to ADHD.

I genuinely feel that I have “access intimacy” with the ukulele. It meets me where I’m at. It enables me to make music, write music, and feel like I’m a part of the music-making community, even though virtuosic guitar-playing is beyond my grasp.

The cheapness and accessibility of ukuleles is also highly democratizing. As singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer points out in her “Ukulele Anthem,” beginner ukuleles are usually pretty affordable (you can find ’em for $20-50, although I’d recommend spending at least $40 if you want a decent-sounding uke), and the chords are simple enough that you can pick up many of them in just an hour or two of practicing, especially if you have some music knowledge under your belt already. I love knowing that even if I suddenly needed to spend a lot of time away from home – as Amanda Palmer did when she got stuck in New Zealand toward the beginning of the pandemic – I could walk to a local music shop and be reunited with my favorite instrument for less money than a meal at a mid-tier restaurant. It makes me feel safe and secure, knowing I can take my music with me anywhere I go. One of the deepest and truest ways I know my spouse really loves me is that they keep a ukulele in the corner of their living room, even though they don’t play any instruments, simply because they know I’m calmer and happier when there’s a ukulele nearby that I can pick up whenever the whim strikes.

Nowadays, even as I’m mired in seasonal depression and fibro pain and general 21st-century millennial malaise, I keep a soprano ukulele on my bed so it’s always there when I feel like reaching for it. Not next to my bed, not near my bed, but on my bed. It’s small enough that I can do that. And many days, having it there is the difference between feeling sad and listless, and playing songs until I find my smile again.

I’ve taught ukulele lessons, I’ve bought ukuleles for friends, I’ve evangelized about ukuleles to all who would listen – and the reason for all this is simple. The ukulele has changed my life, made it brighter and bolder and easier and more fun. It has made music feel delightful instead of soul-sucking and painful. Every time I hold this little instrument in my arms, I feel grateful to be able to pluck its four strings.

So play your favorite Beatles’ song
And make the subway fall in love
They’re only $19.95; that isn’t lots of money
Play until the sun comes up
And play until your fingers suffer
Play LCD Soundsystem songs on your ukulele
Quit the bitching on your blog
And stop pretending art is hard
Just limit yourself to three chords
And do not practice daily
You’ll minimize some stranger’s sadness
With a piece of wood and plastic
Holy fuck, it’s so fantastic, playing ukulele!
-Amanda Palmer, “Ukulele Anthem“