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12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 3 Fave Encounters

Kate Sloan

Welcome to what is always the filthiest entry in my 12 Days of Girly Juice series: the one where I write about my favorite 3 sexual encounters of the entire year.

Moreso than being the best sex of my year, these are usually more like the most memorable, emotional, and/or ground-breaking encounters of my year. But yeah, sometimes they were also the best.

Predictably, this year all three of these were with the same person: my boyfriend/Sir/daddy, who I jokingly-but-not-at-all-jokingly refer to variously as my “dream dom” and a “sex god.” The only time this has happened previously was in 2016, when I guiltily chose 3 encounters with the FWB I was in unrequited love with, and he mimed affixing a badge of honor to his chest when I told him about it. But this time, it’s not embarrassing, because my BF not only knows I love doing sex and kink stuff with him – he works hard to make that the case. Aww. So without further ado, here are the 3 most memorable sex sessions of my 2018…

High Line First Time

I’m sentimental about first times. Many of us are. It’s a particularly useful trait for a sex writer, though, because first times are often juicy and exciting and strange and interesting and worth writing about. This can be true even if the sex itself is straight-up bad, as it often is when you’re learning a new person’s body.

However, my first time with my partner wasn’t bad at all, and I imagine that’s because at that point we’d spent many dozens of hours discussing and dissecting our kinks, sexting voraciously, and having phone sex in the dead of night. As a sex educator, I often advise people that sexting and discussing sex before the actual event can make it a lot better, but I think I didn’t fully realize that in practice until this year, when a boy I’d only spent about 2 hours with in person ever somehow fucked me better than… well, let’s just say… probably everyone I’ve ever met on Tinder, combined.

It happened at the Standard High Line, truly one of the most beautiful hotels I have ever seen, let alone stayed in. After checking in, we rode the elevator up to our room; he pressed the wrong button twice before finally getting us to our floor, because he was nervous, though he seemed otherwise as cool and collected as ever. The room had floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows all along one wall, so I stared out at the city while we talked and giggled and took our coats off and laid out all our sex toys on a table. When a lull fell upon our conversation, he growled and pounced and shoved me up against that windowed wall, its coldness pressing into my back while his warmth pinned me there. He kissed me breathless and then started peeling my clothes off while looking up at me with utter reverence, like, “I can’t believe this is happening; I can’t believe I’m this lucky,” and that’s how I felt, too.

What followed was about 6 hours of sex, so things get a little blurry here. I remember feeling nervous and comfortable all at once, and crying out in pain while he scratched and bruised me in our big white bed. I remember that he hypnotized me in person for the first time, and I felt astonished all over again by his competence and the depth of perversion that matched my own. I remember that he bent me over his lap and spanked me with a paperback copy of Bluets – the first gift he ever got me – while intermittently reading passages from it aloud, which seemed to me then (and still) like the most goddamn romantic thing I could imagine.

When he held me down with one hand and pushed the Eleven into me over and over with the other, I thought about how this very dildo was the first thing we ever talked about, in a quirky and casual exchange on Twitter – and how it felt like things had finally come full-circle. And inside that circle was a lot of goddamn orgasms.

Melting in His Mouth

Speaking of orgasms… The gendered orgasm gap is still a rampant issue culture-wide, with countless factors contributing to its existence. In my own life, where this gap has existed, it’s usually been due to two main factors: the men I was fucking weren’t very good at touching vulvas, and I wasn’t very good at telling them how to touch mine. (If these problems sound familiar to you, please read and/or ask your partner[s] to read She Comes First and Becoming Cliterate, stat!)

This pattern explains why I’ve grown so blasé about new partners going down on me: they’re often not great at it, and it’s rare I feel brave enough or even invested enough to want to give them a crash course. But if someone makes it clear that they want to stick around in my life – and I want that too – I’m much more inclined to put the work in so they can learn how to get me off, especially if they’re appropriately enthused about this prospect.

My partner told me in some of our first explicit text conversations about his passion for eating pussy, but unlike many men who brag about this, he dropped some words and phrases that displayed a deeper-than-average understanding of cunnilingus, such as “stamina,” “enthusiasm,” and, uh, “Ian Kerner.” (Sex nerd in the haus!) My interest was piqued, though I remained skeptical.

The first time he made me come with his mouth, we had been dating for 6 months. I’m confident it would’ve been sooner if we weren’t long-distance, but even local partners usually take a while to figure it out. We made out for a long time, him grinding a thigh firmly against my vulva (a mutual fave) and biting and spanking me. He told me I’d been so good that I could choose how I wanted him to get me off, and I requested the Eleven and Magic Wand – but we didn’t even get that far, because in the midst of him warming me up with his mouth on my clit and his fingers pressing into my G-spot, I realized I was quite possibly going to come that way. I managed to choke out, “I’m getting really close, Sir,” and he knew just what to do, staying the course until my whole body tensed, spasmed, and finally relaxed.

He kept pounding me with his fingers afterward, because he knows I like that and is a gem. Hot tears poured out of my eyes. I know orgasms aren’t a dependable measure of love, devotion, or even attraction or skill, but it felt to me in that moment like he had found yet another way to prove how much he loved me. Figuring out how to make me come is hard, and actually executing the process is hard too, but 5 of my 30 lifetime sexual partners (!!) have managed it. In each case, they were people who really, really cared about me, and who made me feel comfortable and safe. What a beautiful thing.

His eyes sparkled with emotion when he crawled up my body to lie beside me. I asked him what he was feeling and he said, “You just came in my mouth. That’s really fucking intimate.” I had to agree.

Woodhull Wonderment

A friend-who-shall-not-be-named was able to procure me some marijuana-spiked edibles at the Sexual Freedom Summit (shh), and it led to some of the best sex of my year. Thank you, anonymous and resourceful friend o’ mine.

Prior to meeting me, my boyfriend had never tried weed, but under my careful stoner tutelage, he waded into high sex this year with me. While I’ll gladly smoke up and bone down any day, there is something special about sex on edibles: the high is (in my experience) slower, trippier, and more all-encompassing. True, you can overdo it more easily with edibles and it’ll take longer to come down from your fuck-up if you do, but if you get the balance of intoxication just right, it can be some of the best sex ever.

That was the case, this one fateful night at Woodhull. We each munched half a weed cookie, and by the time it hit us, we were on the balcony of our hotel room, kissing and pawing at each other in the stupefying heat. I’d paid extra for a room with a balcony, wondering when I booked it whether we would even use it – and because of this night, I’m glad I did.

Our makeouts got intense on that balcony, the way they can when inebriation strips away your self-awareness. I was craving pain, as I often do when high, so I asked him to slap my tits; he slipped them out of my dress, standing in front of me so no onlookers would get an eyeful, and smacked me around until I was panting. Then he switched to slapping my face, bringing me down full-force into a deep and disorienting subspacey state.

We wandered back inside and partook of what would soon become one of our favorite activities: high facesitting. Though we’re both fans of facesitting in just about any state, weed really amps up our enjoyment. The time dilation and disinhibition of a good high helps me relax into riding a partner’s face without worrying that I look weird, sound weird, or am taking too long. Meanwhile, I am sure the sense-heightening effects of weed help my BF enjoy tastes, smells, and sensations even more than usual – and in a reclining position, he can enjoy them in lavish repose. Ideal.

I fucked his face for who knows how long. Time didn’t fucking matter. When we were done, he told me, “You sat on my face for the perfect amount of time,” although neither of us could say with any certainty what that amount had been. As with most good sex, in retrospect I don’t remember many details – just the overall sense of hotness, closeness, and wild abandon.

What was the best or most memorable sex you had this year?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

Where my fellow journaling fans at?! I flicked through all my journal entries from the entirety of 2018 (phew!) and picked 6 of my faves for you…

January 30th

I’ve been in love 3 times before and here’s what happened those previous times:

E___ told me after about a month and a half, which I thought was surprisingly early, and then I told him about 2 weeks after that, if I recall correctly.

It took me about a year to even be comfortable conceptualizing my feelings for C___ as love in my own head, or calling it that out loud. I don’t think I ever actually told him to his face that that’s what I had been feeling, though I’ve certainly used the word many times when I’ve written about him online.

I told G___ at about 11 weeks, which is the closest I’ve ever come to hitting the mythical 3-month threshold I’ve somewhat arbitrarily set for myself as a reasonable minimum before saying it. (We said it on July 10th. 3 months would’ve been July 18th or 25th, depending on how you count it.)

I don’t know why I’m obsessing over these numbers like they contain any kind of answer to the questions I am implicitly asking, which are: 1) Am I in love with Matt? and 2) Is it too soon to tell him that, if so?

I have a feeling he would say it’s not too soon and it’s okay to say it whenever you feel it, but I have objections to that, namely:

-How do you even actually know you’re in love? I don’t want to say it until/unless I’m sure, because you can’t really take that shit back. In the past, when I’ve said it, it’s been after a period of at least a few weeks where I consistently found myself thinking it and wanting to say it, and eventually reached a point where it felt like it bubbled over and I had to say it.

-I think it is perhaps irresponsible and premature to say it before you establish adult shit like “Do we have actual long-term potential?” and “Do we even actually like each other, once NRE has worn off?” and “Do we fit functionally into each other’s lives?” because, while “I love you” is technically just a statement of feelings, it is also, to some extent, a statement of intent and commitment and devotion, etc., and I would rather we figure our shit out before jumping to that.

-I would rather say it to him in person, because it’s so weighty and I just think that would be the appropriate and right way to do it. But of course, life happens, and feelings are intense and unpredictable. Who knows what’ll happen. (I do have a lot of romantic feelings about the idea of him putting my collar on me before the Hippo Campus show, though, and I have a feeling an emotional outpouring could take place when that happens.)

-Part of me is afraid to fall in love again (god, what a clichéd sentiment) because the last two times it’s happened have been probably the two biggest heartbreaks of my life and they happened within a year of each other and it was just… a lot. I’m hesitant to give someone else that much power over my heart again, although, let’s be honest: I already have. (Wow, this journal entry is getting REALLY REAL, huh!!)

-7 weeks is probably too short a time to have really fallen in love with someone… maybe… probably. We are still squarely in NRE territory, where everything about a person seems perfect and adorable and even your conflicts are kind of cute and quaint. I would feel more secure calling a feeling “love” if the smog of NRE had cleared and love was still visibly in the picture. But what is the distinction between NRE buzziness and love, anyway? What does any of this mean??

-There is also a self-protective, superego-y part of me that wants to carefully weigh and consider the idea of getting into a long-distance relationship before I wade this deep into it, but tbh, love is not controllable in that way (at least not this late in its development) and I, in particular, have never been good at moderating my feelings in that way. I remember friends suggesting to me, when I was in painful heartsick love with C___, that I take a step back, stop seeing him, at least stop fucking him, and that was utterly unthinkable to me. It literally did not feel like an option. I loved him, therefore, I needed his presence in my life to continue, to any and every extent possible.

-Re: it being fast – Matt and I have talked on the phone for so many hours that we essentially fast-tracked our relationship. I’ve honestly probably spent as much time talking to him as I spent talking to G___ in our entire 3.5-month relationship. So there’s that. Maybe that makes it less insane and more okay, I dunno.

I feel practically ill with emotion today. Having a heart is hard.

March 13th

Been dating Matt for 3 months today. Grateful for long phone calls full of intimacy, vulnerability, orgasms, and laughs. Grateful for emotional support that stretches across national borders. Grateful for a dependable smiling face so handsome it still makes my head swim. Grateful for a daddy/Sir who understands my kinks so fucking perfectly somehow and makes me feel so small, submissive, and taken care of. Grateful for gentle, loving pushes toward productivity, assertiveness, achievement and self-advocacy. Grateful for hot hard kisses in hotel rooms that make me feel adored and desired from the inside out. Grateful for emotional safety like a big comfy net to catch me. Grateful for impeccable cocktails in low-lit opulent establishments. Grateful for big blue eyes staring into me with a want and wonderment I’m always ecstatic to see mirrored back at me. Grateful for nerdy musical theatre references that make my heart soar. Grateful for silly giggles at 2AM. Grateful to feel so close even when we’re far. Grateful for his effort, his attention, his love.

April 15th

I wonder often what my therapist would think about Matt – she who witnessed my hero’s struggle to get over C___, my almost-compulsive hunt for a primary partner after that, my happy early days with G___ and then my utter brokenness when he changed his mind about me so suddenly. I think she would be very happy for me, but in the early days of our relationship she would’ve warned me to be careful, to modulate my level of investment, to keep my heart safe for a while before handing it over to someone else.

I tried to do that. It was hard; I’m not built for romantic reservation, not used to it. Both H___ and Matt have told me they admire my openheartedness and were surprised at my willingness to pour my soul out to them so quickly; I think this quality is a large part of why I’m so susceptible to ruinous heartbreak but is also what enables my relationships to frequently be so deep and electric and juicy. I feel things strongly and I don’t want to tamp them down once I feel them. It’s at once a blessing and a curse.

Despite the speed, I feel like we fell in love in slow motion – maybe still are falling – because of not having as much physical access to each other as most couples have. It was like one of those orgasms where you teeter on the precipice forever, dangling helplessly, until finally you tumble over the edge and it’s so sweet and delicious all the way down.

May 9th

Happy one-year anniversary to the day G___ first slept with someone else and started the slow, cruel process of breaking my heart! LOLOL. I think I’ve done a lot of useful emotional processing since then, in therapy and with friends and partners, to the point that it doesn’t sting anymore. And it helps enormously that Matt always affirms the validity of my reaction to that. “Non-monogamy” doesn’t mean “no rules.” It means you set rules, talk about them, mutually agree on them, and then follow them. It means you take your partners’ needs and feelings into account. It’s not a free-for-all.

I recognize, too, that I have been guilty of what he did – being too cavalier about boundaries and partners’ feelings on my sextracurricular activities – in, for example, my relationship with B___. It’s interesting how these past couple years have repeatedly shown me both sides of a particular interpersonal conflict or mistake, almost as if to give me greater empathy for someone who hurt me or to help me understand how I’ve fucked up and how to avoid making those mistakes again.

I think at this point, I’d definitely check in with Matt a lot before doing any sexy and/or date-y things with a new person – because our relationship is of foundational importance to me and no new thing, no matter how exciting, would be worth upsetting or alienating him or making him feel unconsidered. There are no such opportunities on my horizons right now, but I know they will come up whenever they come up and we will navigate them by communicating with each other as kindly and thoroughly as we always have.

June 4th

My mental health is predictably kind of tanking in response to Matt being at the nerd convention and being too busy for me for a few days. I mean, before he left, he said, “I love you and I will make time for you,” and I see him trying to do that – instating a protocol whereby I have to send him a daily nude, because he knows our protocols usually make me feel closer to him; calling me last night to say good night; texting me occasional updates – but it’s interesting how my brain is still responding by feeling rejected and like the safest and best thing to do is to pull away, act unaffected and uncaring, front like I don’t miss him and am not even thinking about him.

This is a conditioned response developed in former relationships where I wasn’t sure the other person liked me as much as I liked them – or I KNEW they didn’t – and I’d respond to their coldness and distance by mirroring it, instead of clinging, because I’d learned over the years that unreciprocated clinginess feels unimaginably horrible. It makes me feel pathetic, like the worst of the worst, impossibly unwanted, fundamentally undesirable. So I learned that the safer thing to do was to match their distance exactly, so that if anyone were to accuse me of caring, I could say, “Who, me? Nah. You must have me confused with someone else. I’m chill and casual and could take or leave this. Just like you.”

I recognize now that when this defense mechanism kicks in at the wrong times – i.e. with people who actually do care about me and are maybe just temporarily too busy to give me their usual level of attention and focus – it makes me come across as callously uncaring. I can see how I could actually sabotage relationships this way, backing up so hard to stay safe that I back my way right out of the relationship by mistake. That isn’t me; that isn’t what I want to do here.

The trouble is that fighting that knee-jerk defensive response feels as absurd and dangerous as fighting any instinct – like sticking your hand in the fire, touching your tongue to the outlet. It feels like I am literally endangering myself and the relationship, even though I know the opposite is true. To express love, and not have that expression returned for a while or in kind, feels too close to nauseously revelatory heartbreaks I’ve endured: the sudden (and sometimes stupidly repeated) realization that I thought I could be loved by this person but I actually was not. I’m in deep enough with Matt, I suppose, that that realization would crush me massively, so I get even more defensive than usual when it seems imminent. Maybe I even get mean. I’m sure it’s confusing for him. I’m trying to fight it but it’s hard.

My CBT training tells me to remind myself constantly of how much he loves me, to review the evidence of that until I believe it again, to do this myself instead of relying on him for constant reassurance. But then I just think about all the people were so into me until they suddenly weren’t. I don’t know how to believe that he won’t have a sudden change of heart and decide I’m too much work, too much effort, too much.

October 11th

Some climate scientists announced a few days ago that we don’t have much time left to avert the creeping disaster we’ve brought upon ourselves; that true chaos and destruction will be upon us by 2040 if not sooner, unless we change a lot real fast. And we won’t, because Republicans and big corporations believe in saving their bottom lines and their own asses more fiercely than they believe in saving the world, and the only thing that could really do any good now would be the total overthrowing of capitalism from top to bottom, and who the fuck knows how to do that? Not me.

I’m scared and depressed and everything seems so futile. But at the same time, this news is putting life into perspective. There have been times, in my current and past relationships, when I’ve wondered what the point is of staying in a relationship that has no conventional “future” – no hope of marriage, living together, or even living in the same country, probably – but this is making me reflect on how none of us are actually guaranteed a future anyway so we should cling to the things that make us happy NOW. It’s not possible to do this in all cases – for example, I can’t exactly quit my job and spend this planet’s last years making only the art I want to make, because getting through these years will require money and shelter in the meantime – but I should prioritize my happiness in the present whenever possible. And I am in love with Matt and he makes me happy even though there are things I want that I know I can’t get from this relationship. Happiness is a valid criterion. It’s maybe the only one that matters. Maybe I’ll be able to find those things with someone else someday, but there might not be a someday. This exists now and it’s very good and I want it, even if it’s not all I want.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 7 Bangin’ Selfies

Kate Sloan

Today’s 12 Days of Girly Juice post highlights the 7 selfies I took this year that really tell the story of my 2018, which was… a difficult call, to say the least. Also, yeesh, it was hard not to make these just 7 great pictures of me with my boyfriend, BUT I REFRAINED. (Partially.) Enjoy…

I spent many, many hours on the phone with my Sir this year. If we conservatively guesstimate 2.5 hours a night, every night – keeping in mind that most of our phone calls last about 4 hours, but we skip nights here and there – that adds up to over 900 hours on the phone. But, as I reasoned to myself every time I wondered if this is excessive: if we weren’t a long-distance couple, it’s likely we would have spent at least that many hours together over the course of the year. So. Maybe it’s slightly less ridiculous viewed through that lens.

In any case, this is a photo I took while on the phone with Matt, and it captures a joy I rarely manage to depict in my selfies. I’m relaxed, I’m subby, I’m collared, I’m little, and I’m talking to someone I love. Last year’s selfies roundup also included a gleeful moment on the phone; I guess long, intimate, giggly calls with beaux have brought out some of my happiest times in the past year. And I’m fine with that. Some naysayers criticize technology for encouraging social detachment and isolation, but for me this year, technology – like FaceTime and Apple Calendar and Google Docs – served mostly to make me feel closer to my loved ones, not further away from them. Any technology that brings forth a smile this gleeful can’t be all bad.

The most important aesthetic decision I made this year was getting a new tattoo. Big, beautiful flowers framed by a bold, unmissable message. Shout-outs once again to Tender Ghost for the original idea and to Laura Blaney for bringing my vision to life in her signature gorgeous style; I’m happy with this beaut every time I look at it.

I took lots of selfies in the days and weeks after getting this image inked on me. Like all the best tattoos, it helped me feel more connected to my appearance, like I had more of a stake in it and more control over it. Even on days when I otherwise felt unattractive, seeing this art on my arm made me feel like I was, myself, a work of art. So I took selfie after selfie, showing myself – proving to myself – just how deeply pretty I really am.

Another moment of unadulterated glee. We snapped this on a sunny day in July, during one of Matt’s many visits to me in Toronto. We had just done an impromptu hypno scene in a nearby parkette, hence the mutual post-kink glow. I love looking for hints of our D/s dynamic in photos of us: the shyness of my submissive smile, the “watchful proud daddy” vibes in his face and his posture.

Also notable: our matching outfits. A mantra in our relationship is “We match”; I like to say it when one or the other of us is worried that our feelings are excessive, unprecedented. If one of us is feeling “too” in love and panicking about it, or missing the other “too” much and feeling guilty about it, it’s helpful to be reminded that we’re almost always on the same page, feelings-wise. We love each other a lot. We have no chill. We match. It’s for this reason that Matt started choosing coordinating ensembles for us when possible, and I love it. Especially when we’re both in blue, because, well… we have a history with that color.

It’s impossible to write about my 2018 without writing about travel, since I did so much of it – and it’s impossible for me to write about travel without complaining about it, because travel stresses me the fuck out. (Extremely #FirstWorldProblems, I am well aware.)

This is one of those photos taken automatically by a machine in the customs area of an airport – “Remove your hat and sunglasses; look at the camera; we are now taking your picture” – and, while they’re never very flattering, this one takes the cake. I had never before seen a photo of me that so perfectly captures how I feel about traveling.

It’s strange that someone with so many airport-related anxieties, someone prone to fainting on buses and crying on trains, would end up in a long-distance relationship. But maybe it’s actually perfect. Maybe being reunited once again with my beloved is one of the only things capable of pushing me through those fears to the other side.

That said, I definitely prefer when he comes to visit me and I can just meet him in the arrivals area and then go home. There are, after all, no TSA agents or grumpy entitled men or bureaucratic nightmares in my home – and there is a comfy bed where I get to kiss my boyfriend and don’t even have to show anyone my passport in order to be admitted.

This photo was taken impulsively during a jaunt to a local sex shop with a few other sex-blogger babes, just after the Playground Conference here in Toronto. I was, and am, stunned that this career and this community have enabled me to make friends from literally all around the world: the ladies pictured here come from areas as wide-reaching as Hamilton, New England, and (wait for it) FINLAND. Amazing!

When I was a baby sex nerd reading erotica anthologies in my childhood bedroom and illicitly listening to sex podcasts in math class, I never dreamed that one day my sex-nerdiness would lead me not only to an incredible career but also to friendships that cross national borders and lift me up every day. What a beautiful life I’ve carved out for myself, and what wonderful people I’ve found to share it with.

No post like this would be complete without a selfie taken with Bex, my best friend. We didn’t take many this year, but hopefully that just means we’ll take more next year.

This smiley selfie was snapped at a sexual science symposium. (I like alliteration!) We got together with my ex-sugar daddy and his wife – quite an odd crew, to say the least – and went to this big gorgeous science center in New York to chat with dildo-makers, sexual psychologists, strap-on experts, and more.

When this photo was taken, Bex and I were extremely high from some pre-event tokin’ and smokin’. It was around Valentine’s Day so the whole joint was littered with little heart-shaped candies, which we kept munching because weed. With Bex giggling next to me, asking the speakers pertinent questions, and occasionally producing candy from their jacket pocket to appease me, I knew that he was truly the best friend I need and deserve.

I’ll close on another happy note. Matt took this picture of us in our hotel bathroom on our first night at the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit – one of the first events we’d ever attended together as a couple, and the first time I was introducing him to many of my friends in the blogging community. I’m visibly proud to be at an industry event, representing my business and my brand, with someone I love so much.

And once again, we match. Blue and pink: my blog-branding colors, my two favorite colors, and also two of the bi pride colors (we’re both queerdos!). Someone noticed our coordinating outfits, and asked Matt, gesturing at his shirt, “Did you do that on purpose?” He smiled a proud-daddy smile and replied, “Of course.” I felt as brightly happy as the pink flowers bursting open on my dress.

Protocol Diaries: To-Do, Ta-Da!

Kate Sloan

It started – as many of our protocols do – with a more unofficial version, before either of us could acknowledge with confidence that we wanted something more.

Throughout the early months of our D/s dynamic, I would sometimes text my Sir a frazzled list of my various tasks for the day: finish dayjob work, write blog post, take photos, wash dishes, do laundry, and so on. I did this because I wanted him to press me to actually do those things, which, fortunately, he did. There are few things more disappointing, as a submissive, than hinting that you want some measure of discipline and receiving, instead, an oblivious nothing.

As time progressed, I took to copy-and-pasting my to-do list from my Notes app directly into a text to him – not every day, but sometimes. And then its frequency crept closer to daily. He said he enjoyed knowing what I was up to, on a granular level, at any given day – that it made him feel closer to me, even though we’re long-distance.

One day in September, after weeks of this, I tentatively texted him: “I wonder if my daily to-do list should be a shared note with you. Or is that too hardcore DD/lg for us?” We already had several shared notes – most notably, one that lays out our rules, protocols, and relationship boundaries, like a D/s contract for the digital age – but I was concerned that this one would be placing too much responsibility on him. Having everyday access to my to-do list would implicitly come with the duty to keep an eye on my tasks and my status, and to reward or perhaps punish me accordingly.

It took him fifteen minutes to get back to me, because he was swamped at work, but those minutes felt interminable because I was so worried he would say no. Instead, when he did respond, he said, “Oh my god. How did you read my mind? I thought about that all day yesterday.”

As we discussed it more, it came out that both of us had been wanting this for a while but had felt guilty about wanting it. This has been a recurring theme in our ever-evolving D/s negotiations. I’ve learned to trust, at this point, that if I want something, or have thought about it, odds are good that he wants it or has thought about it too. Some would say we’re in sync because we’re profoundly in love and an uncommonly good match; I would add that we’re also both total pervs, in many of the same peculiar little ways.

We’ve gone several weeks now with me making a to-do list almost every day (every weekday, some weekends), and we talk often about how much we both love it. He loves it because it makes him feel more closely entangled in my daily life, it gives him a sense of how much is on my plate on any given day so he knows whether he can safely assign me additional tasks, it supplies information he needs to support and encourage me properly as a dom, and it’s an incredibly intimate window into my brain (always a selling point for a hypnokinkster). I love it because it feels like a deep sign of mutual trust, it helps me feel more accomplished when I get things done, and it makes me likelier to actually do the things I need to do.

I felt guilty about this at first, and spiralled into self-doubting thoughts. Why is it easier for me to stay on top of my tasks when a man is supervising my progress? Shouldn’t I be self-sufficient, driven, and motivated all on my own? Isn’t it unfeminist, unevolved, or psychologically lazy of me to rely on someone else to fuel my motivation?

But in thinking about it more, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that there’s nothing inherently wrong with pursuing externally-imposed structure and validation. We all do it, to some extent. It’s part of why we post things on Facebook, dress to impress when we go out, and curate our life’s aesthetic to be more Instagram-friendly. My friend Bex once told me that he sometimes goes on wild adventures just so he’ll be able to say he did on social media, and that if it takes an external force to get him to do something fun (like pose for kinky pictures with Santa), so what? He still did the fun thing, so everyone wins. In this case, I usually complete every task on my to-do list and I deepen and intensify my connection with my partner, so… what’s really the problem here?

I think our culture is over-invested in the myth of total self-sufficiency, of “independence,” when what we should really be focusing on is interdependence and how we can support each other and lift each other up. No man is an island, as the saying goes. D/s just makes those connections more explicit in how they function and what’s expected of them – and makes them hotter, in the process, to those involved.

My partner has told me that he wants me to eventually become more self-sustaining – and I’ve already seen that happen in some of our other protocols. Sometimes, for example, I take my iron pill and forget to text him about it, because the daily habit of texting him about it has also instilled the daily habit of taking the pill. Maybe one day I’ll feel as fired up about plowing through my to-do list solo as I do when I know my dom has his eye on it. This is yet another way kink makes me a stronger, better, more fulfilled person.

When Your Partner Comes Out As Your Partner

Kate Sloan

It all started when a friend kept referring to my boyfriend’s other partner as his “primary partner.”

Granted, this friend isn’t super schooled in the technicalities of non-hierarchical polyamory. He didn’t fully grasp, I think, that it’s possible to be equally romantically devoted to more than one person at once – or that it would be hurtful for me to hear myself implicitly referred to as the secondary partner. The less-important one. The sidepiece.

See, this type of language just fanned the flames of fears I already harbored. Despite my boyfriend always treating me as a priority, and making it clear that I wasn’t less-than in any way, I still felt like the “side” girlfriend moreso than the “main” one. As we discussed this in a tearful phone call, it became clear that there were three factors contributing to this impression: I felt inconsequential next to my partner’s other relationship’s longer history and future plans; they live together, while he and I live 500 miles apart; and they each publicly acknowledge their partnership, on social media and elsewhere, while he and I do not – because I am a sex writer.

“Well, the last one’s the easiest one to fix,” my boyfriend said, “so let’s fix it.”

I was floored, though I shouldn’t have been. He had been telling me for a few months that he eventually wanted to be “out” as my partner – which meant, in turn, being “out” as kinky. He’d already come out to friends, family, and colleagues as bisexual and polyamorous over the years – so why not this, too?

As we talked, it suddenly occurred to me – like the lid being ripped off a paint can and spilling bright pigment every which way – that I’ve never really had a partner publicly acknowledge being my partner for the whole time I’ve been a sex writer, except for those who also already worked in the sex industry. A couple of short-term boyfriends didn’t mind being associated with me on Twitter and such, but usually they had nothing in particular to lose, and sometimes they even had something to gain: they were porn or camming hopefuls, and I felt that they wanted to use my following to help launch those ambitions.

Needless to say, it provokes a pretty creepy-crawly feeling when the people who will happily admit to dating you are mostly people for whom doing so would be a tactical advantage more than an intimate celebration. All these feelings spilled out of me during that conversation with my boyfriend: I’d realized, in one fell swoop, just how much damage had been done to my psyche over the years by partners wanting to hide in the shadows, deny our connection in public, and treat me essentially as the “secret” girlfriend. Of course I always felt like the least important one when my beaux had multiple partners; I was usually the only one conspicuously missing from their Facebook posts, their Instagram selfies, their smitten tweets.

The thing is, I completely understand why someone wouldn’t want to associate themselves with me publicly, even if they love me. Being as loudly pervy as I am is a risk not everyone can afford to take, and I’m immensely privileged to be in a position where my absurd kinks and sexcapades don’t (usually) harm me or limit me. This is my career, this is the life I have chosen, and not everyone who dates me or fucks me has made that same choice, nor should they necessarily have to. My boyfriend owns a company, so in managing his own public image, he’s making decisions not only for himself but potentially also for his business partners and his employees, not to mention the other people in his life who might be affected by this disclosure. We all deserve privacy, and no one should have to give that up just because of who they’re dating.

But I also know now, after much reflection, that I don’t think a serious relationship is sustainable for me if I’m made to feel like my partner is ashamed of who I am and what I do. It may be kinder to them to downplay my own needs and insist they can hide behind a veil of anonymity, but it is, in the long-term, gravely unkind to myself. It digs me deeper into a preexisting negative self-image, and furthers my feeling that my relationships are somehow illegitimate or unimportant to the other people in them, no matter how big and beautiful they may feel to me.

It was difficult to phrase this to my partner in a way that didn’t make it sound like an ultimatum – which it isn’t really; I could keep dating him if he wanted to stay anonymous, albeit not altogether happily – but fortunately he didn’t take it as such. He understood immediately why it would be painful for me to publicly pretend my partner is a Man of Mystery, instead of acknowledging the marvelous man he is in reality. Like me, he grew up on the internet, so he grasped that if something doesn’t exist online, in some ways it doesn’t fully exist at all. It has always been hard for me to see my non-sex-industry friends posting cute selfies with their partners, or tagging their sweethearts in tweets about date nights and romantic adventures, believing I would never be able to do that. I am so grateful that my boyfriend understood that particular pain and decided it wasn’t worth putting me through.

He is careful and thoughtful in everything he does, and this endeavor was no exception. He spoke to his therapist, his business partners, his other girlfriend, his friends, and even some casual business acquaintances, trying to get a read on whether coming out as a kinky sex blogger’s boyfriend and dom would be a disastrous error. Most of them knew he’d wanted this for a while and seemed surprised he hadn’t done it sooner. Few of them expressed any reservations, and the few they brought up were risks he had already considered and decided he could accept.

I kept telling him, whenever we discussed this, “You know you don’t have to do this, right?” – to which he would always say, “I know. I’m not doing it because I have to. I’m doing it because I want to.” Invariably I would start crying so hard as to become unintelligible. Being a loud-and-proud sex writer, I’d sort of just accepted that no one would ever want to be linked to me by anything more solid than a false name or a censored selfie. I’d assumed that no one would ever love me enough to be visibly mine, and that belief was slowly poisoning my self-worth from the inside out. And here was this man, telling me that not only did he love me, but he wanted to shout it from the proverbial rooftops.

Though he got all his ducks in a row a few weeks ago, we agreed we should wait until we were together in person to actually pull the trigger. “I’m going to want to touch you after that,” he told me, which is the same thing he said when we discussed whether we were ready to say “I love you” for the first time. In a way, it feels like the same act, just shifted and magnified: this is him showing me he loves me in a way that feels even more impactful than the words themselves. He’ll dash off a tweet, casually-but-not-casually mentioning that I’m his girlfriend, and it’ll change our relationship and our lives. I can’t think of anything more romantic.

All this to say: my Sir’s name is Matt. He wanted me to let you know.