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12 Days of Girly Juice 2019: 3 Fave Encounters

Kate Sloan

I had a lot of good sex this year (quit braggin’!), but these encounters stick out in my mind as some of the best and most memorable. Read on for R-rated descriptions of my various perversions and their manifestations!

Bimbo Hypno (Content note: bimboification, ableist language, forced feminization, hypnosis, age play / daddy / DD/lg)

All these years that I’ve been writing 12 Days of Girly Juice posts, I’ve never highlighted a phone-sex encounter as one of my favorite sexual experiences of the year – but phone sex feels to me more and more like real and legitimate sex, and so it would be strange not to include some, especially since it makes up about 55% of my sex life at this point! (Uhh, more dorky statistics like that to come in my year-end Sextistics post. Just you wait!)

My Sir and I had been thinking a lot about “intelligence play”/bimboification/forced feminization, and the intersections therein, when we decided to do a scene incorporating all of these. After extensive negotiation, here’s what we settled on: I laid out a full face’s worth of makeup on my desk and set up my computer there. Sir called me on the phone, put me into trance, and suggested to me that with every item of makeup I applied, I could let go of a little more of my intelligence. I could sink into the bliss of ignorance, set aside my overanalytical adult tendencies, and just be a pretty, childlike little doll. When they woke me up and called me on FaceTime video, I was already feeling spacey, and that just developed further as I began to put my face on, piece by piece.

By the end of the scene, I was slurring slightly on super simple sentences. I looked very cute but could barely formulate a thought. I was deeper in “little space” than I’d ever been before, feeling genuinely like that little girl I so often roleplay as. My daddy took me to bed (by which I mean, we each separately retired to our beds) and fucked me over the phone the way they do almost every night – but this time felt different, because my brain felt dimmed. As someone who’s too often wracked with anxiety and intrusive thoughts during sex, it was magic to be able to just… turn that off. I was always a very bright little girl when I was a kid, but sometimes being a little less astute for a while can be amazingly relaxing.

mb says: This was definitely one of the most memorable scenes we did this year, even though we weren’t in the same room. I remember watching you on FaceTime video putting on the makeup and getting dumber, and getting more and more turned on as you got dumber, and I was struggling to figure out when I should fuck you! I wanted to fuck you from the beginning, but also I wanted to make you as dumb as possible and let you finish your makeup, obviously… so it was a struggle against my own arousal! I was also thinking a lot about what questions I could ask you to confirm and convince you of your dumbness. I asked you about process, like about why you were doing certain things with your makeup, and you had kind of a hard time figuring that out. The hypnosis, I remember a lot; the makeup, I remember a lot; the resulting phone sex, I don’t remember as much. It was like, sex with you-but-dumber, which was great, but it didn’t stick with me as much as watching you get dumber. But I do remember I came really hard, so…

Unprecedented PIV in Portland (Content note: alcohol)

I don’t know why, but I never assume roleplay scenes will lead to particularly good sex. I mean, for me, that’s not the point of them: they’re more about playful exploration, closer to an improv show than a porn shoot. But sometimes, the sex therein can be incredible.

When mb and I spent a week in Portland, it seemed like a good opportunity for a roleplay we’d been wanting to do for a while: we would go to a bar and pretend to be strangers meeting for the first time. We decided on Barlow, a swanky cocktail bar around the corner from our hotel. I went over there, ordered a daiquiri, and sat reading How to Date Men When You Hate Men, the loud title of which further contributed to what we already knew: the beginning of the scene would be tricky for mb. They would have to woo me – a shy, defensive introvert, perpetually wary of strangers’ approaches – into wanting to talk to them. Wanting to talk to them so much, in fact, that I would put my book down to do so. This is no small feat!

mb came in a few minutes after me and ordered a daiquiri as well, which ended up being the catalyst for our conversation (they were damn good daiquiris!). We small-talked about drinks, books, and the conference we were both attending, and then, inevitably, discussing my line of work led us to disclose (some of) our kinks and (some of) our attraction to each other. I agreed to let them come up to my hotel room, saying “Maybe we could just make out” (which is indeed what I would say if I actually met a hot stranger at a bar in broad daylight in a city with which I was unfamiliar). We paid our check, made our way to the hotel, and giggled nervously in the elevator.

I honestly don’t remember much about the sex that ensued, mostly because its conclusion was so bafflingly intense that it probably blew all the other memories out of my brain. We were having good old-fashioned dick-in-vag sex, and I had the Eroscillator on my clit, and before I even fully realized what was happening, their dick felt so good that I came – way sooner and more easily than I normally would from this activity – and felt them coming at the exact same time. A simultaneous PIV orgasm is one of those sexual goals that I’ve never really understood or fetishized, but it felt so perfect in that roleplay – I had the sense that even though we were “strangers,” we knew each other’s bodies and minds deeply, and were instantly, fiercely connected to each other. That’s pretty much how it felt when we actually met for the first time, so it was romantic to revisit that sensation – albeit while having an orgasm so hard and fast that it surprised me and left me breathless.

mb says: What sticks out to me about this scene was how difficult it was for me, because I am not used to “picking up people” in this way. Even though I knew you’re my partner and we were gonna end up at home together, I felt really high-stakes about picking you up. So, from the moment I walked into the bar, I was really nervous about what I would say to you, when I would say it, where I would sit – everything about the whole interaction. I was very calculating about it, even down to our interactions with the bartenders, because they didn’t assume we were together, and then when I tried to pay for us together, that was a whole problem I had to solve… It was this, like, choreographed dance in the bar, and once we were back in “your” hotel room, it was much easier to relax into fucking you. I felt like I had “scored” you, which is a feeling I don’t often get, and I really wanted to impress you with my oral skills and PIV skills and stuff. I felt like the way we came together was beautiful and perfect, and if my character had walked off into the night and gone back to their Airbnb or whatever, it would’ve been this beautiful perfect moment, but then we got to spend the rest of the day together and it was even better.

Cryin’ & Goodbyin’ (Content note: hypnosis, alcohol)

I was only supposed to spend a week in New York in August, but as my flight time neared, mb wrapped their arms around me tight, silently Feeling Some Feelings, and then observed, “I’m not doin’ too good.” I wasn’t doin’ too good either. We rearranged our plans to give me three extra days in New York, which wasn’t very much but seemed like enough. We just weren’t ready to say goodbye yet.

On the night before our actual goodbye, we attended a workshop on hypnosis and sadomasochism, stopped off for some late-night Mexican food, and then came back home. mb wanted to do some trance stuff (naturally) and asked me what I wanted to feel; I was so flooded with love already that my answer came easily: “I want to feel romantic.” They put me into a deep, slightly drunken trance (margaritas are delicious!!) and then talked me through amping up my pre-existing romantic feelings. With my hazy eyes fluttering, I clutched at them and began to cry. Big, hot tears soaked my beloved’s pillow as they talked me through it, murmuring in my ear about love and trust and togetherness.

When they woke me up, they went down on me lovingly and fucked me with the Eleven lovingly and made me squirt lovingly. It all looked very rough from the outside but was actually maybe the most romantic sex I had all year. Kinksters are redefining “lovemaking” and I’m very glad.

mb says: I was so sad that you were leaving, even though we had extended your stay. I was just wrecked. I was so fucked up about it. Watching you spill your tears all over my blue pillowcase in this beautiful, long pattern made me feel better about it, and then I was like, “I want more of that.” So I did this trance scene, and I got more tears out of you, and then I fucked you and got you to squirt all over my sheets, and my sheets were just covered in your wetness and your essence… I felt like I had gotten everything out of you that I possibly could before you left, and that made me feel more okay about saying goodbye. I laid on those sheets for days after you left, like, “She’s still here, in a way.” Fuck. It was the perfect ending to that trip.

What were your most memorable encounters of the year?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2019: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

I didn’t journal as much in 2019 as I usually do, in part because I was super busy and seemingly constantly traveling… That said, here are 6 of my fave journal entries from the year. They’re all, um, mostly variations on a theme, you could say…

January 1st

Late one night I got a bit panicky and started to feel derealization-y, like I might not be real or mb might not be (hello, irrational delusions borne of insecurity, my old friends), and they were so good: they had me tell them the story of how we met so I’d remember we are real, and then they gave me a long, thorough, skillful, cathartic spanking while I wept it all out.

We stayed up until 4 a.m. after getting home from the New Year’s Eve party at 1 a.m., having sex and talking and laughing and basically trying to stretch out the last remaining hours before we had to check out of the hotel and say goodbye. They told me, at one point, that they feel like we “fit” together so well – “sexually, intellectually, emotionally, comedically” – that we understand each other and just “get” each other. “It’s not even blind optimism anymore at this point,” they said. “We’re a year in. It’s real.” I didn’t want to go to sleep. I wanted to stay there, giggling with them in the liminal space that is a hotel bed at 3 a.m. on New Year’s with someone you love in a city that isn’t your own.

Today, close to goodbye time, I cried, and they licked my tears off my face and told me how cool it would be to rim a drink with their submissive’s salty tears (what a perv). I said, “I don’t want to be without you,” and they told me I’m not without them; we’ll still be together even when we’re apart, like always. On New Year’s Eve they ordered two glasses of champagne for us at Augustine and raised a toast to “an amazing year, and many more” – so certain about it, in a way I’ve never been able to be, and it made me cry, just like it does when they sense my fear and grab my face and stare seriously into my eyes and say, “I’m not going anywhere.” I cried in the taxi and said, “We match, right?” – our code-phrase for “We are both feeling these intense feelings for each other, right?” – and they said, “Oh, 100%.”

February 15th

I had the mini-revelation recently that part of the reason I’ve been semi-unconsciously drawn to unrequited love dynamics my whole life might be that they provide me what seems like a socially acceptable justification for my ever-present melancholy. It’s, in some ways, even harder to accept my depression now that I’m in essentially my dream career and my dream relationship, because evidently nothing is causing this sadness but my own damn brain.

May 30th

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why I have such fucked-up abandonment/anxious attachment issues when I wasn’t abused or abandoned as a kid and was actually really loved and sheltered and protected. I don’t remember when exactly these feelings first surfaced, but I know they’re related to S___, G___, and C___. From those relationships, I learned that someone can abandon you:

  • unexpectedly and totally out of the blue
  • very expectedly
  • for things you can’t change
  • for reasons you’ll never know
  • even after promising they wouldn’t
  • even knowing you have abandonment issues
  • even if you’ve known them for a long time
  • for someone else
  • for no one else
  • even if they seemed to like or love you

It feels like there’s not a single condition under which I’m safe from being abandoned. And the work I need to do is becoming okay with that reality, and being able to trust enough to function in relationships even with that possibility being present. My fears of abandonment are just trying to protect me, the emotional thought process being that if I can see the hurt coming before it hits, I can spare myself the heartache. But that’s false because, even in relationships where I constantly suspected I was about to be dumped, the dumping hurt just as bad. It’s going to hurt whether you forecast it or not.

I jump a lot to catastrophizing – “They’re going to leave me and therefore I’m not safe” – and I need to moreso encourage the thought, “What if they’re going to stay with me and I’m safe?” There’s much more evidence of that. It’s just hard to convince a traumatized brain of these things.

August 2nd

I’ve probably written this before but I feel as if my life has been tugging me toward New York since I was about ten years old. I wanted to live there for a long time, first to become a musical theatre performer and later just because I liked it there. But as I got older I came to understand that the immigration process and the expense of the city probably would keep me here. I love Toronto, after all, and my life here, and my friends and family, and the Canadian healthcare system, and this city’s largely positive attitudes toward queerness and kink and multiculturalism. I could stay here and be happy, except that I wouldn’t be with mb.

A person I’m in love with is pretty much the only force that could drag me to another country at this point, and it almost feels like mb was sent to me to (among other things) usher me into that city I’ve half-wanted to live in for so long. They’ve told me that if and when I decide to move there, they will make it their number-one project to figure out how to make that happen.

The problem of trying to get me there is the biggest and scariest thing in my life right now, but it’s a good problem to have. And I know that in mb I have a partner who is willing to go basically to the ends of the earth to unite us on a more permanent basis.

September 2nd

Having kind of a dissociate-y day where it’s difficult for me to grasp that mb is really my partner. They’re so beautiful and perfect that often in the early days of our relationship, and still sometimes even now, I had the sense that my life wasn’t really my life but was actually a movie I was watching, perhaps through the slitted eyes of a mask, perhaps in some kind of virtual-reality simulation that inserted me into someone else’s story like a Mary Sue in a piece of fanfiction. It’s odd to hear someone gorgeous, brilliant and accomplished describe you in those terms too when you don’t, to your core, believe them about yourself. For these nearly 2 years my life has felt sort of like a wrong classroom I walked into accidentally and just never left.

October 18th

It’s 2019 and I have been dating mb for 22 months and I am still sometimes convinced I’m going to wake up from this dream. This life is not dreamy in the idyllic sense – I fight off psoriasis and chronic pain, I struggle sometimes to make my rent, I fight with friends and cry in bed and spend too much time on Twitter – but this one part of it feels like a dream, my connection with mb. I feel like two kids stacked inside a trench coat, pretending to be a competent adult who’s good at relationships, pretending this relationship is just a normal and expected thing and not an earth-shattering inferno that exploded my life into something bigger and better. I keep waiting for my beloved to find me out or leave or disintegrate. But they ruffle my hair and say “I’m not going anywhere, kiddo,” and I can breathe for another few hours.

Together we regularly interrogate the concept of “deserving” love, deserving this relationship. Love isn’t transferrable like money or a contest prize: I don’t have to deserve it to have it. I have mb’s love because they want to give it to me and specifically me, and that’s true even on days when I feel utterly undeserving. Telling them I don’t deserve them isn’t nice, is actually mean: it’s saying I doubt their taste and dismiss their agency, pushing them away, telling them one of their biggest and most central feelings is irrational and ill-informed. I should learn to accept their love like a compliment: say “thank you” and smile, even if you don’t agree, even if you don’t believe. They are entitled to their opinion and their opinion is that I’m worth loving. Somehow.

Got any favorite journal entries from 2019 to share?

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 mb 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 mb 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 mb 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 mb, you want to see them as soon as you possibly can. And the soonest I can conceivably see mb, 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, mb 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 mb 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 mb’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.