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12 Days of Girly Juice 2019: 7 Bangin’ Selfies

Kate Sloan

Ah yes. It’s time for what is possibly the most self-indulgent instalment of 12 Days of Girly Juice: the one where I highlight some of my favorite and most meaningful selfies of the past year. Read on for lots of my cute face, and the cute faces of people I adore…

December 18th, 2018

Is this my favorite picture of me and Matt ever? Quite possibly!

This was taken in the Fairmont Royal York hotel the morning after we did a roleplay scene in the hotel’s beautiful Library Bar. Our room had excellent selfie lighting, and we, as Very Online millennials are wont to do, opted to take advantage of that.

I love how much this picture captures our genuine excitement and joy to be together. Long-distance relationships remind me a lot of my bipolar disorder, in a way: there’s so much euphoria during dates, and then sometimes periods of melancholy and despair when you’re apart.

It’s often difficult, but just the same as my mental health issues, I usually feel that the lows are worth enduring for the highs. It’s a relationship style that sort of forces you to really focus on your partner and be present when you’re with them, inviting you to take no moment for granted. This isn’t always easy in a world of smartphones and the capitalist grind, so I appreciate that my LDR provides me with an opportunity to live (and love) this way!

I also love that our outfits match… We’re obnoxious like that.

February 14th, 2019

Let me tell you a not-so-tall tale…

When placing an order from JetPens early in the year, I took a look at the rulers section, purely because I am a pervert and frequently enjoy the transgressiveness of using office supplies for impact play, à la “teacher/student punishment scene.” What can I say – I’m an ageplay fanatic through and through. I hurriedly chose one that seemed heftier than a standard ruler – even potentially thuddy?! – and threw it in my cart, alongside the fancy pen and ink refills I was also buying.

When the package showed up, however, I took the ruler out and immediately started laughing hysterically. It was SO MUCH TINIER than I had expected. (“What is this, a ruler for ants?!”)

It was especially hilarious because, as one person on Twitter pointed out to me, a ruler is the one object whose size you can easily tell just by looking at it in a photo online. EXCEPT… I had misread the description and thought the ruler was laid out in inches, when it was actually marked with centimeters. Tooootally different ball game!

Anyway, I love this selfie because it captures my genuine, laughing-out-loud amusement at my own fuck-up. I could barely hold the phone straight for giggling so hard. Moments like that are rare and worth savoring!

February 14th, 2019 (yes, again!)

On Valentine’s Day, I did one of my very favorite things: took myself on a solo date.

Both of my partners were spending the night with their other partners, which, y’know, happens sometimes in poly. I had foreseen this as a potential problem for my emotional stability (how many Valentine’s Days alone can one person endure??) so I’d bought myself a ticket to a musical for children, because I know myself pretty well, evidently.

The night of, I got thoroughly dolled up and then schlepped across the city to the Soulpepper theatre. It’s down the lane from this “Love Locks” installation, a common destination for Valentine’s, weddings, and other romantic milestones. I couldn’t help myself, and posed for a selfie in front of the word “Love,” neon and unignorable.

I look bewildered, in the way one does when one is self-conscious about taking a selfie alone in public. But I love this picture because… I went on this adventure even though I was bewildered. I sat in the front row and drank a beer and laughed and cried and then took myself home on the subway and took good care of myself. You don’t need a partner to be present – or to have a partner at all – to feel loved, and to be loved.

July 18th, 2019

This is a sad one. *takes a deep breath*

My parents moved out of their house this year, after living there for 26 years, i.e. my entire childhood and then some. It was a big, sprawling house, which was one of the things we loved about it, but its bigness had also grown redundant what with me moving out in 2017. So we begrudgingly began the process of putting nearly 3 decades’ worth of stuff into boxes, in preparation to move them to a newer, smaller house.

On our last day at the old place, we ran around cleaning and inspecting and corralling. I walked through the whole house taking pictures and videos of the details I most wanted to remember. And then I found a quiet moment to myself up on the third floor, in the now-empty bedroom I’d grown up in.

I’d lost my virginity in this room, started my blog in this room, said “I love you” to a romantic partner for the first time in this room. I’d cried and laughed and gasped in this room. I’d written thousands of pages there, and read thousands more. I’d stared out the big window at the lonely lights in the apartment buildings opposite, in the middle of the night when sleep wouldn’t come. I’d written songs on 4 different instruments in this room and then sang them for hours, warbling and raw. Every feeling I’d ever felt had been felt first and most intensely in this room.

So I laid on the floor, and snapped a sad selfie, and soaked it all in one last time. And then I walked out the door and said goodbye.

July 30th, 2019

My brother Max is one of my favorite people on the planet. On this night, we went out together to attend a John Mayer concert at a big stadium, after munching hot dogs in front of Union station. We’ve both loved JM for many, many years, through many, many missteps and weird musical choices. He’s still, I think, one of the best songwriters in the biz.

After the concert, Max insisted on walking me home, because he’s a good brother and a good pal. We encountered a bike taxi that was blasting Michael Bublé’s “Haven’t Met You Yet,” a song we love, and we started walking faster to try to keep up with it, all while singing along with the song at top volume. No alcohol had been consumed but we were still sort of high from a night of good music and good company.

We snapped this selfie in the middle of downtown Toronto at an hour when I would’ve been too freaked out to be there if I was by myself. It’s my fave selfie of me and Max from the whole year ’cause we both look so happy and silly. He’s my best bruddy and I’ll love him forever!

September 21st, 2019

There was a Bi Arts Festival going on and I invited my friend and roommate Sarah to attend the arts and crafts fair portion with me, because that kind of event is extremely our shit. We walked all around the ballroom of the 519 community centre, cooing at handmade leather kinkwear, embroidered patches, enamel pins, queer-as-fuck paintings, and other masterworks. I spent far too much money on gifts for various bi babes in my life.

Afterward, we wandered through the Village back toward the subway and happened upon this very queer wall mural; I’ve walked past it a zillion times but I don’t think I’d ever taken a selfie in front of it! So we took some happy smiley femme pics in front of all these powerful symbols of queer history and queer causes.

I feel really grateful to live in a city where there are such vibrant queer communities – and I’m also super grateful to have pals who make me feel free to be myself. 💖

October 14th, 2019

My friend Bex did something really difficult and meaningful this year: he got top surgery!

He asked me to be with him on the big day (what an honor) so I flew down from Toronto and we left at Extremely Early Morning O’Clock to meet up with Bex’s dad at NYU Tisch hospital. (Much coffee was drank that day. By me, I mean. Bex doesn’t like coffee and also probably would’ve been too nervous to drink it even if he did!)

This selfie was taken on the subway on our way downtown, and the excitement is palpable! Later, after surgery, a hospital employee who was wheeling Bex’s gurney into a different room looked at our happy faces and asked, “You were getting a good surgery, right?” We nodded. Yes, very good.

It’s been a pleasure to watch Bex grow and change as a person over the 4+ years we’ve known each other, and I’m honored to have him as a friend (and a podcast cohost). Here’s to lots more years of friendship and growing up together!

 

What were your fave selfies of the year and why were they so meaningful?

I Have Psoriasis… and I’m Still Hot

Kate Sloan

When my dermatologist diagnosed me with psoriasis, she stared sadly into my eyes and intoned, “There is no cure. This is a lifelong condition.”

Her grave demeanor made this skin condition seem like a death sentence – and indeed, for many psoriasis sufferers, managing symptoms is a daily struggle, as is managing people’s feelings about those symptoms, as well as your own. But my own case was relatively mild. I had a flaky scalp, some red and irritated spots on my face, and a handful of other unsightly zones scattered around my body. I wasn’t sad to receive my diagnosis – I was glad I finally had an answer, and some potential treatment routes to take.

In the years since, my psoriasis has gotten a bit worse but mostly stayed the same. My scalp still plaques and flakes; there’s a seemingly permanent red spot between my eyebrows that I cover with concealer when I can be bothered; my ears and butt and nose and hands all occasionally flare up with flaky bits. I use medicated shampoo and prescription ointments and they help, a little, sometimes. I’m doing okay.

For me, the worst thing about having psoriasis is the way it makes me feel like people are judging me and think my flakes are gross. I have no idea if they actually are thinking that, and no sexual partners have ever even said anything to me about it, except to occasionally point out an errant piece of dead skin I needed to pull out of my hair. But even the idea that they might think it’s gross is enough to make me want to stay clothed and celibate forever, sometimes.

For years, I’ve stopped partners from kissing or otherwise touching my ears, one of my grossest zones. Having my scalp scratched or massaged is a no-go for me, even though I like the way it feels, because I get too self-conscious about cascading flakes. I sometimes decline spankings (I love being spanked!) because I don’t want a partner to look at my butt. It’s sad, all the various ways this condition has impacted my sense of my own desirability.

It’s only really in my current relationship that I’ve begun to loosen that shame’s stranglehold on my sex life. I once asked Matt if they still think I’m cute when I’m flaky, and they said, “Of course! You know what else is flaky? Croissants. And everyone loves those.” It was a funny joke, but nonetheless, I cried when I heard it, because no one had ever said anything positive to me about my psoriasis before. I stopped instinctively tensing up when they would kiss close to my ears or hairline; I stopped needing to keep my underwear on during spankings. I just… let them see my body. Let them see me.

Around this time, I also began reading the writer Clementine Morrigan’s musings on her own psoriasis. She wrote about her own feelings of shame and worthlessness, and the ways to chose to combat them, including by incorporating her psoriasis into sex. She describes watching a partner kiss her reddened skin, and hearing another partner gasp, “Your psoriasis! It’s beautiful!” I was, and am, grateful as ever to people who share the stories of their struggles in an effort to make others feel less alone. That’s what I’m trying to do right here, right now.

I haven’t yet figured out how to make my psoriasis sexy for myself, the way Clementine has. But I’m luxuriating in the love I feel from my partner whether I’m flaring up or fleetingly flakeless. While I don’t believe in the concept of “unconditional love” – you are allowed to have conditions, to set boundaries, to maintain standards! – this is the closest I’ve ever come to feeling that from a romantic partner. I know now that when they flip me over and see my scaly skin, they’re not going to leave me – they’re just going to love me harder.

Protocol Diaries: The Airport Pickup

Kate Sloan

Protocol – that is to say, agreed-upon routines and traditions – has been important to me in several of my kink-tinged relationships, but has become especially so in my current long-distance relationship. It often feels like the glue that holds us together when we’re apart, the fuel that helps us power through our long absences from each other’s physical lives.

I am a person who enjoys routines and traditions more generally, as well. I love that my mom makes the same nostalgic dishes on Christmas every year; I love watching fireworks in the park on annual holidays; I love kicking my writer-brain into gear with the same familiar coffee and muffin at the start of every deadline day. These repeated actions lend some structure and purpose to my life, giving me something exciting to look forward to and something comforting to reflect on. So of course I feel that way in my relationships too.

When Matt first started coming to Toronto to visit me, I would always wait dutifully for them at my apartment until they arrived in an Uber. As they neared my building, I would come downstairs and stand outside, glancing nervously at their location on the live map on my phone every few seconds, until they rolled up, got out, and kissed me, suitcase in tow.

But at a certain point, I just couldn’t wait around anymore. Finishing my work early and pacing around my apartment in anticipation often left me feeling agitated and powerless. When you miss someone as much as I always miss Matt, you want to see them as soon as you possibly can. And the soonest I can conceivably see Matt, when they come to visit, is in the arrivals area of the airport.

It gives us the chance to be almost cinematically romantic. The dramatic full-hearted kiss at the airport is such an iconic scene; I can’t help but smile when I see couples reuniting in this way. I notice people smiling at us when we do it, too, as if we’ve reminded them that wholesome true love still exists (though, in private, we’re not exactly wholesome).

At this point you might be wondering, “Kate, why are you calling this a ‘protocol’ like it’s a kink thing, when it’s actually just a romantic tradition?” Fair point, my astute friend. There are three elements that make this activity kinky. First of all, Matt always specifies in advance a particular item I should have ready for them when they arrive, like coffee, candy, or gum. Secondly, sometimes there is some secret sexiness going on under my clothes, in the form of lingerie, a butt plug, or an insertable vibrator I’ve been ordered to wear. And thirdly, anything can be kinky when viewed through a kinky lens. Every time I show up to greet my beloved at the airport, I think of it as not only a romantic gesture but an act of service I am doing for them as their submissive.

I’ve repeated this tradition so many times that my body has started to recognize it at almost a cellular level. When I walk to the subway station, get on the train, and then get onto the airport-bound bus at Kipling station, my brain and guts both know exactly what’s about to happen, and the excitement builds in my belly like the good kind of pre-show jitters. Even though Matt and I have been dating for nearly two years, I still get just as excited to see them in person as I did for our first few dates, and I think this ritual is part of the reason why; it creates a Pavlovian response that puts me into an eager, enthusiastic brainspace, receptive to love and affection.

By the time we get into an Uber that’ll take us back to my apartment, and I lean my head on Matt’s shoulder, I’ve been through an entire emotional journey. This process elevates the mundane aggravation of a long-distance relationship into something almost ceremonial. Love is worth celebrating and getting excited about, and this is one small way I’ve found to do that.

Every Time I Wanted to Give Up On Love

Kate Sloan

2004. A girl I sort of know is sprawled out on the grass next to me in a park on a sunny afternoon. We’re barely friends, but we’re whiling the day away by playing a game together anyway. The game is this: we pick someone in our sixth-grade class and rate their attractiveness out of 10. How do preteens pick up the concept of reducing people to numerical scores in the first place? Who knows; our culture sucks.

Eventually we run out of subjects and decide to turn our harsh spotlights on each other. I give her what I think is a charitable 8 out of 10, because frankly, rating someone lower than a 7 to their face is unspeakably rude. But then she tells me my rating, and it’s a 4, and I am floored.

Is this why none of the boys in my class have ever seemed interested in me, except for the shrimpy nerd who aces all his English tests (who I secretly would kiss if not for the social stigma)? Am I really that ugly? And am I therefore banished to a loveless life? Will my big nose, big forehead, and wide hips curse me and deprive me in perpetuity of what I want more than anything – love?

I laugh it off, like I’m taking it in stride. But the truth is I can’t take it at all.

2006. The man I think I love is 23 years older than me. And he’s gay. And he’s about to move to New York.

I have a well-developed tendency of obsessing over people I see in plays and musicals, but this is the worst it’s ever been. I paste photos of his face dutifully into a scrapbook; I set up a Google alert for his name; I comb YouTube and Vimeo for any sign of him. I crowd all my romantic hopes onto him without him even knowing. When we say hello at the stage door during the run of his last Toronto show, I blush hard and my guts feel like disco balls shattering. How can someone mean this much to me and not even know who I am?

He isn’t the first gay man who’s swept me up and bowled me over; he won’t be the last. Part of me believes this is how it’ll always be: I’ll fall over and over for people who don’t know me, don’t want me, don’t even want anyone of my gender. Maybe love, to me, will always be lopsided. I carefully resign myself to this until it feels a little less sad. After all, being in the presence of someone who lights you up is a pleasant experience, so long as you can divorce yourself from the hope of them ever noticing you, let alone loving you.

2008. The purple-haired gender-weirdo I call my ex-girlfriend is distracting, vexing. They send me a piece of confessional writing in which they converse with a fictional god, trying to convince the deity to “get me back” for them even though they ended our short relationship – but, they’re careful to add, they don’t actually want me back. We made a terrible couple, and we’d make a terrible couple again. I’d be inclined to agree if I wasn’t so goddamn hung up on them that my grades are actually starting to suffer.

It seems – as it always does when you’re in this situation – that there is no one as smart, as funny, as perfect as my ex in my entire world. Every face except theirs in the sea of students bores me; classes we don’t share are easily forgotten and classes we do share are spent staring at them to the detriment of my studies. Nothing feels as important as this love that could have been.

This, my first real crush on a non-dude, is world-opening in ways I’ve never felt before. It’s easy to suspect, in the wake of such glorious wreckage, that no one will ever be this wonderful and wantable again. And so I lean into my misdirected lust and limerence, and when other people try to get close, I only push them away. This non-love feels realer than anything else that could develop if I only let it.

2014. Predictably, I cry, ending my first serious relationship on a street corner. Three and a half years in, I’ve simply fallen out of love: poof, whoops. My once-beloved is holding me; it’s hard to imagine letting go of such a steady presence. But eventually I do, and I get into a car and never see him again.

Established love began to feel so itchy and insular; I ran out of energy to wrestle my doubts into submission. So I gave up, cut ties, let go. But now I wonder if this means love is out of reach for me in general. Do I alienate everyone who cares enough to get close to me? Does devotion raise my hackles, or worse, bore me? Am I an emotionally stunted oaf who deserves for fuckboys to never text her back until one day she dies alone with nary even a cat to keep her company?

I take some time to myself, solitary, single. I learn what it feels like to breathe in my own body again without someone else breathing down my neck. I think: I just want to be alone for a while. And then, one day, months later, I think: Okay. I think I’m ready to be not-alone again now.

2016. Drunk, I spill my guts to my fuckbuddy-turned-crush on my couch after everyone else has left the party. It, shall we say, doesn’t go well. He knows I like him. He probably knows I love him. I wish he didn’t know. I wish I didn’t love him. I wish a lot of things.

“I feel like you have this crush monster inside you, and seeing me awakens it and makes you feel terrible about yourself,” he says, brow furrowed in a concern I can’t help but find touching. He’s embarrassingly right; seeing him always feels like an illicit high, and always ends in a catastrophic crash. “I think we should just be friends for a while,” he offers, and I nod as tears slide down my cheeks.

The question that has plagued and haunted me for months is: Why doesn’t he love me? I’ll never get an answer that feels satisfying, because the answer is as simple and as awful as it always is: He just doesn’t. I know neither he nor I can force him to love me. I know it’s time to stop trying. Maybe one day we’ll actually be friends.

2017. My oldest friend makes me a gin and tonic and I cry into it until it’s closer to a briny martini, because I’ve just been through the most traumatic breakup of my life. “It’s okay,” she says, “you’ll get over it,” but I can’t imagine how I will.

He was my first daddy dom, the first person I trusted enough to let into that sector of my sexuality. He told me he loved me, treasured me, wanted to be with me for years. He lied.

I lock away my heart in a metaphorical box and tuck it into a metaphorical attic; it’s of no use to me now. But I do that with my kinks too, pushing them away self-protectively. If I never want, need, and enjoy anything that deeply again, I can never be this devastated again when it’s taken from me. I take another swig of my salty G&T and tell my friend, “I don’t know how I’m ever going to trust anyone again.”

But 4 months later, I go on a first date with someone whose daddy-dom vibes are off the charts. My inner submissive little girl stirs and stretches, but I shush her. It’s not safe for you out here, little one. Go back to sleep. She won’t. She’s starry-eyed. She wants to play.

So little by little, I let myself fall in love. I let myself open up. I let myself feel hope and safety and comfort and all those dorky feelings I thought had been smashed out of my heart. Love grows back like a stubborn seedling. I water it, and wonder if this time it’ll finally take.

How They Fuck Me

Kate Sloan

Gender is a sex toy. That’s not all it is, but it can be that.

I remember the first person I dated telling me they’d always been gender-weird and sort of wished they’d been born a boy. I remember their backwards baseball caps and baggy cargo shorts and strong, angular fingers. I remember my heart swelling, like a classical music sting in an overwrought rom-com, every time their boyness pressed up against their girlness. They could be flirtatious and dapper and charming, and none of these things felt gendered to me, or if they did, they felt multi-gendered, a prismatic rainbow of light they cast all around them. We both referred to them then as my “girlfriend” but that word seemed inadequate and small next to the bursting gradient I felt them to be.

In the coming years, several friends and partners came out to me as trans or non-binary, and each time, it felt like a shimmering gift. The trust they placed in me was so powerful, so surprising. I took it seriously. I did research, and asked questions, and said thank you.

And sometimes one of the questions was “How would you like me to affirm your gender during sex?” and sometimes the answers were very, very hot.

I remember my high-school FWB’s admission that they thought they were genderqueer, or genderfluid, or trans. We spent hours on a baby names website together, scrolling through androgynous names, until we found one that fit. They tried it on like a suit jacket and I saw them glow when I used it. That made me glow too.

I took them shopping for smart vests and vintage ties. Thus kitted out, they looked – and looked like they felt – handsome and whole.

The way they fucked me changed. Their approach became more confident, their touch more sure. One day after school, they had me pinned against my front door, hands roaming all over me; I said, nervous about curfews, “Maybe you should get going soon,” and they deadpanned, “Or I could have sex with you.” I felt the shivers of gender euphoria-by-proxy; we felt more aligned with each other now that they were more aligned with themselves. I tugged on their tie and they smiled like a wolf.

There have been other flitting hints of gender variance throughout my love stories, sometimes overt, sometimes covert. There was the high school boyfriend who tried on my red lacy bra and panties on a dare at a party, and loved how he looked in them so much that I bought him a bra for Christmas (to the chagrin and mystification of my mom, who accompanied me to the mall). There was the college boyfriend who told me he’d feel just as at peace in his gender if he’d been born a girl. There was the beardy beau who scoffed at my admission that I’m attracted mostly to masculinity; “I’m not very masculine,” he said, and I saw him suddenly through new eyes. Almost everyone I’ve ever loved, or passionately liked, has stepped outside their appointed gender box in some way. It’s my privilege to have seen these people how they hopefully wanted to be seen. I’m always searching for ways to do that better.

When Matt first told me they were questioning their gender, we were sitting in an ornate, empty bar in Montreal, cocktails in hand. “I’ve been having some… gender feelings lately,” they said, “like really enjoying it when you call me feminine words.” This hadn’t been purposeful on my part – I calls ’em like I see ’em, and what I always saw when I looked at my partner was a person who at once embodied handsomeness and prettiness, beauty that transcended gender lines. We’d played before with dressing them up in my clothes, adorning them with lipstick and eyeliner, for scenes that then portended only power exchange and not a shift in identity. This revelation wasn’t a surprise; it hit me in the gut with a thump of Oh. Okay. Of course.

“What resources do you think I should look at?” they asked next, and I recommended My New Gender Workbook, Kate Bornstein’s seminal text, which I’ve gifted to many a gender-curious friend. I can’t advise directly on these issues but the other Kate can, and I trust her to. She did.

It was a few weeks later that Matt breathed into the phone late at night, “I think I’m non-binary.” A few weeks after that, we went shopping – first for eyeliner and lipstick, then for shirts and bags – and I very nearly cried each time they emerged from a fitting room in something sweetly feminine or starkly androgynous. I couldn’t, and can’t, fathom such bravery. Every coming-out is a feat and a blessing.

The next night, we got sloshed at a Toronto tiki bar, and they asked me, voice shaking, if I had any reservations about dating a gender-weird person long-term. If perhaps I had envisioned a more binaristic trajectory for my life story. I wiped tears from my eyes at the very thought that anyone would reject such a gorgeous, wonderful person for something as unobtrusive as their gender. I told them I love them and that’s what matters. When you love someone this deeply, the fleeting states of what they are never seem as important as who they are, that seed at the center of their heart that stays the same even as the outside changes. Gender variance never scared me away from someone whose hand I wanted to hold. They could still hold my hand, as we walked through life together.

Once again, I saw gender confidence translate into sexual confidence. When my beloved murmured at night, “Daddy’s gonna slide their cock so deep inside you,” or “Do you like it when daddy makes you come in their mouth?” nothing felt different, and yet it all felt even better. When they kissed me roughly until our lipsticks mingled together, or let me put their eyeliner on them before they put my collar on me, I felt assured again and again that nothing had been lost. My Sir, my daddy, my partner, is still all of those things. They simply embody those roles now with truer self-expression and more gender-fuckery – two things that have never scared me and have always pulled me closer to people, wanting to bask in their bold beauty.

Love and lust can take many forms and can flow in many directions. I feel lucky every day to be with someone I love this much – no matter what or who they are, what I call them, what they wear, or how they fuck me.