Personal

Social Media-Era Romance in 5 Vignettes

Kate Sloan

My unrequited love has changed his Twitter avatar, and just like that, I feel less in love with him. Poof. Pow. Wow.

The old picture was heavy with associations for me, months of misery tempered by sparse endorphin rushes when he would slide into my DMs. It was never the love confession for which I kept hoping and grasping; you’d think I’d learn by now not to expect anything from him but dawdling, awkward friendship. But no; I still want more. More than I’m ever going to get.

The new picture is an instant shake-up in my psyche. It takes a few moments, each time he messages me, for my brain to register that it’s him. Those moments aren’t much but they’re enough to distance me from my knee-jerk love reaction, a pause that is a prism, refracting my crush into questions to be pondered: How much do you actually like him and how much of it is just habit?

Maybe love is always a habit. Always just an addiction you have to kick. Maybe there are tricks that make it easier, like nicotine patches and impotent cloves. Maybe a Twitter avatar is no small thing after all but actually the big thing that kicks off a seismic shift, blessed and unexpected.

The bartender is fumbling with coins, pitchers, and a misfiring computer system. Unhappy customers crowd around the bar, waiting for their drinks, waiting to even be acknowledged. Welcome to Friday night at the Cavern.

“I wonder if we’ll ever get our drinks,” a British accent bemoans beside me. This stranger turns his good-natured smile on me like highbeams, and now I have a face to connect with the warm tweed that’s been rustling against my arm for the past five minutes. He looks like Prince Harry and Fred Weasley’s charming lovechild. Oh, hello.

We strike up an easy, tipsy rapport, and he pulls out his phone to show me a song on Spotify that he can’t get out of his head. My eyes sweep over his playlists, taking in the names. There is something so intimate about peering into someone’s music organization system, digital or physical. You’re seeing the soundtrack of their brain in the way they’ve chosen to arrange it, the way that makes most sense to them. It’s like resting a palm against the slickness of their coiled brain, feeling it pulse with private electricity.

Later, he comes to find me again, weaving through bar crowds to tap me on the shoulder. “I’m getting on a flight back to Britain in the morning and figured I’d seize the day and ask: want to go smoke a joint?” he proposes, and I do. “Great! I’ll be right back. I’m just going to change my outfit.” I nod, and he goes, but he’s gone about an hour before I decide he must’ve fallen asleep in his hostel room, and decide to leave.

I find him the next day by searching some of those Spotify playlist titles. I didn’t even have his name, but I had those. As I scroll through his tightly curated music selections, I feel the echoes of awkward hostel sex that could have been. Swing and a miss. Maybe I’ll meet another Weasley another day.

My habit of fantasizing too far forward about online dating suitors is exacerbated when they’re polyamorous. The way some folks compose their OkCupid profiles, I can creep not only my potential partner, but also my potential metamour.

On late nights with nothing better to do, I comb through these women’s compatibility questions, seeking the places where we touch and the places where we differ. I try to parse what it means that a man is into both me and her, what it says about him, what it says about me. I stack myself up against her obscure favorite bands, the outline of her lipstick, the cool candor with which she speaks of sex and food and Arrested Development.

The sore spots that ruffle my feathers are the spots tainted with internalized misogyny. When I’m burningly jealous she’s prettier than me and think, At least I’m smarter than her; when I hate her pink hair because it renders me a boring brunette; when I snort derisively at the pretentious Wes Anderson movie she’s chosen to quote, I know the patriarchy is whispering bitterly in the back of my brain. I rarely really hate another woman. I just hate the opportunities for which I’ve been told she’s my cruellest competition.

When I’m feeling happier and lighter, sometimes these metamour-creeping sessions turn into fantasies of their own. If I was dating her partner, we could go shopping together, get manicures. We could gossip over burgers and fries about his secret fantasies, his favorite blowjob tricks. We could be best friends who shared everything, and I do mean everything. It would be so cute, so sweet.

But I never quite follow through, both because online dating is exhausting and because I am too awkward and insecure to pursue friendships with metamours without reservations. I hope one day I work through this, because I still dream of that girl beside me at the nail salon, sharing the weight of my heart.

The new boy I’m flirting with asks-without-asking: “I had a crush on you, but I didn’t think I was being that obvious about it. Apparently I was wrong.”

He was wrong. But he probably doesn’t know the exact moment I realized he like-liked me. It was when he left a comment on an Instagram photo of me in lingerie: “I unhearted this, just so I could heart it again.”

He must have written this so that I would know. And I did know. Because people don’t write Instagram comments like that unless they like you. They just don’t.

When my last serious boyfriend first introduced himself to me via Twitter DM, he provided a list of links to his other social media. An Instagram profile, an alternate Twitter handle, a full name so I could Google him. “I don’t use Facebook, though,” he wrote, “because Facebook is the devil.”

He meant this in an anti-capitalist, anti-surveillance-state, anti-terrifying-algorithms sort of way, but Facebook is the devil in a different way, too. Facebook lets people linger in your life who haven’t earned the right, simply because unfriending them feels too aggressive, too unwarranted. What he did was bad, but it wasn’t UNFRIENDING-bad, you know?

What he did actually was unfriending-bad, though, in that he ended our relationship suddenly and unceremoniously, after reassuring me for four months that he had no intention of doing this. But as he didn’t have Facebook, I never had the chance to unfriend him. I had to settle for deleting the messaging app I’d used to communicate with him and unfollowing him on Twitter. (What he did was unfollowing-bad, but it wasn’t blocking-bad, you know?)

What’s nice about his Facebooklessness is that there wasn’t much damage to undo when things went sour. No unfriending to attend to, no photos to untag myself from, no relationship status boxes to uncheck, no mutual friends to bicker over. He never got entrenched in my digital life, so when he left my physical life, he dissolved from the digital, too, like a ghost. Poof. Pow. Wow. And that was all.

Slow Burn

Kate Sloan

There is no sex hotter than the sex you almost had.

We almost had it. But the timing wasn’t right. Time was not on our side. Out of time. Time to go.

So we took to our phones and made up for lost time.

There is no sex hotter than sex you picture for weeks before having it. Months, even. In slow-unfolding sext-a-thons and wandering phone calls. In café daydreams and bathtub reveries. In subway imaginings too carnal for public consumption.

Do they know? Do they know I’m thinking about you?

Do you know?

I’ve considered your body. A body I don’t know well. I’ve considered its weight.

I’ve been crushed beneath you in my mind a thousand times. A myriad of melting me’s, acquiescing in sequence. I’ve looped the mental tape like a well-loved song. Your kiss is catchy. Your eyes, an earworm. Your heart, a hook. And I’m hooked, and I’m helpless.

They say a memory’s not just a memory. It’s stacked with neural residue from each time the file’s been reviewed. Date Modified: Today.

So the image of your touch isn’t really your touch; it’s the ways I’ve remembered it, the ways I’ve reshaped it by remembering it. I wish I’d made duplicates. I wish I had the pristine originals, tucked away in a lockbox deep in my limbic system. But even those, I would take out too often and muck up with dust.

A few days after our first date – that blazing conversation over coffee, and the rough kisses that unavoidably ensued – I texted you, “I wish I had paid more attention, even though I was paying very close attention. I wish I had it memorized.”

“I wish I took notes,” you wrote back. “I wish I had it recorded somehow. I wish I could rewatch it.”

So we replay it in micro-detail, a back-and-forth volley of “Remember when…?” and “Then you…” and “I thought…” We layer and re-layer memory engrams, like neuropsychological Jenga. We fill in every blank for each other until our first date becomes not just a story but a legend. Not just an anecdote but a prophecy fulfilled.

Sometimes you think you know tiredness, because bleary-eyed yawning is part of the fabric of your life – but then one day you come up against exhaustion, and it’s a different beast entirely. Its maw opens unendingly and draws you down, down, down. Habitual tiredness is not exhaustion. You know exhaustion when you feel it.

Just like you know desire when you feel it. You can go through life developing quaint crushes, flirting with people in elevators and bars, and spouting wink emoticons like an addictive currency. But those things are no more desire than a handful of potato chips is a meal. You know desire when you feel it. It knocks you over like a truck smashing through glass.

You know it because you can’t ignore it. There are so few unignorable sensations in the world, so few experiences we can’t tune out if we press our brains to the grindstone. Desire gnaws and needs and needles you. It chases you down neural pathways. It whirls pointlessly in your periphery. Stop, you say, and it laughs and says, Naaah.

I’ve considered your body. A body I don’t know well. I’ve screamed into my pillow while considering it. I’ve grasped uselessly at places where you weren’t. I’ve dragged more orgasms out of me than I thought possible, clinging to the notion of your face. And still it’s not enough. And still I desire. And still, I can’t be still.

I hope to find my mind again someday, when the smog of want has cleared. When this slow burn snuffs into smoke. But I hope – my secret, darkest hope – it stays alight a little longer.

Sextistics: An End-of-Year Sexual Stats Breakdown (2017)

Kate Sloan

Look, what was the point of keeping a sex spreadsheet and an orgasm spreadsheet all year if not to eventually put together a big, ridiculous post like this?! Here’s a round-up of some relevant stats on my sex life this year. Maybe we’ll learn something from it. Maybe.

Overview

• In 2017, I had 333 orgasms. (My Sir wanted me to hit this number because he found the repeating digits satisfying. Smart man.) That works out to an average of 27.75 per month, 6.4 per week, and 0.91 per day.

• 23.1% of my orgasms (77) happened during partnered sex; the remaining 76.9% were the result of masturbation (256).

• I had partnered sex 82 times in 2017. That’s an average of 6.83 times per month, 1.58 per week, and 0.22 per day.

Compared to Last Year…

• I had 64% more sex.

• I had 148% more orgasms from partnered sex.

• I had 8% more partners.

Partners

• I had a total of 13 partners this year, 3 of which were romantic partners, 3 of which were ongoing casual bang-buddies, and 5 of which were short-term hook-ups. (The other 2 were a pair of people who gave me an erotic massage, and I’m not entirely sure whether to count them!)

• 12 of my partners this year (92.3%) were new additions to my life this year, bringing my total lifetime partners thus far up to 29 (that’s a 70.6% increase from this time last year).

• The partners who made me come the most were, predictably, romantic partners and longer-term FWBs. My sex life benefits greatly from having partners who know my body and make me feel comfortable.

• My partners this year were, on average, 5.6 years older than me, with my favorites tending to be 8–11 years older than me. The youngest person I banged was 24 and the oldest was 36.

• 76.9% of my partners were cis men, 15.4% were cis women, and 7.7% were nonbinary folks.

• The most common methods by which I met my sexual partners this year were OkCupid (3), Twitter (3), and Tinder (2). (The methods resulting in my highest-quality partners, if “amount of orgasms they gave me” is our only measure of quality, were Twitter and… meeting them at our mutual workplace. Whoops!)

Locations

• I had sex in a total of 14 different locations this year.

• The top 5 locations in which I most frequently had sex were my old bedroom at my parents’ place (26 times), my most serious 2017 boyfriend’s new apartment (19) and his old apartment (11), the Oasis Aqualounge sex club (9), and a long-distance beau’s Long Island home (4) – but I also notably had sex in a spooky Long Island City hotel, a fancy Marriott in downtown T.O., and an alley behind a restaurant in the Annex.

• The locations likeliest to result in orgasm for me were my own home (96.4%) and various hotels and apartments where I boned boyfriends and long-term bang-buddies (100%–300%) because those are places I felt comfortable and able to relax.

• The locations least likely to result in orgasm for me were Oasis (55.6%), the aforementioned alley, and the apartments of people I didn’t know well, because – hey, wouldja look at that! – it turns out I need to feel comfortable and relaxed someplace in order to reach orgasm there.

Highs and Lows

• My most sexually active month was May (24 times), because I was deep in New Relationship Energy with my first daddy dom and our mutually-unlocked perviness was off the charts.

• My least sexually active month was January (1 time), because I was trying to take a conscious break from dating/hookups at that time. I made a concession for a hotel sex-date with my long-term fuckbuddy because of course I did.

• I had the most orgasms in October (32) and the fewest in November (21). The whims of my libido are a mystery to me.

• The most orgasms I had in one day was 3, which happened on January 23rd, March 12th, March 31st, May 15th, July 21st, August 7th, August 24th, and October 1st. Whoops, I’m a horndog.

• The most orgasms I had in one partnered-sex session was 3, when me and a highly sexually skilled FWB holed up in a New York hotel room in January and fucked for several hours with excellent toys. Multiple orgasms are pretty rare for me but there were 9 other occasions throughout the year when someone managed to give me more than one in a session.

Correlations

• The partnered sexual acts most highly correlated with orgasm for me were receiving oral sex (22 times – all with the same person), a vibe on my clit + a partner’s fingers inside me (21), my own fingers on my clit + a partner’s fingers inside me (18), and my own fingers on my clit + a partner’s dick inside me (4).

• The factors likeliest to lead to me not coming were moderate-to-heavy alcohol consumption (it stunts sensitivity and, for me, often indicates I’m not comfortable), a location where I couldn’t relax, and a partner I didn’t know well enough (I have a ton of anxiety around “taking too long”!). Less of these in 2018, please.

• I notice that my most memorable encounters of the year tended to involve bondage (rope and under-the-bed restraints especially), good sex toys, extensive oral sex (giving and/or receiving), spanking, and PIV. This tells me power exchange and pain are pretty important to my enjoyment of sex (understatement of the year!) and in 2018 I should get even better at a) asking for what I want and b) bringing toys with me when I think I might be having sex.

• I noticed in years previous that sometimes my highly sexually active months would also be my highest-income months. That didn’t seem to hold true this year, with my horniest month (May) being my second-lowest income month, and my far-and-away most profitable month (November) being my least horny month. It’s almost like my brain can focus on making lots of money or having lots of sex but not both at once. Gulp.

Toys

• My most-used toys with partners were the We-Vibe Tango (19 times), S-Curve (6), and Magic Wand Rechargeable (5). Kink-wise, my Lexan paddle and Weal & Breech paddle both got a lot of love.

• My most-used vibrators overall were the We-Vibe Tango (93 times), Magic Wand Rechargeable (83), and Doxy Die Cast (30).

• My most-used dildos overall were the Standard Glass S-Curve (65 times), Fucking Sculptures Double Trouble (26), and Fucking Sculptures Corkscrew (14). Interesting that they’re all glass! I guess I know what I like.

• My most-used other toys were the Liberator Jaz (so useful!), Njoy Pure Plugs, and under-the-bed restraints.

Fantasy Fodder

• The sexual acts I most often fantasized about during masturbation were PIV (47 times), fingerbanging (42), and receiving oral sex (38). Preeetty predictable.

• The dirty-talk phrases I most often fantasized about were variations on “come all over my cock” (we discuss the whys of this in a recent Dildorks episode), being called a “little girl” or a “good girl,” “I’m not gonna stop until you come,” and thinking of partners as “Daddy.” (No surprise there.)

• The types of porn I most commonly jerked off to were blowjob porn (51 times), specifically Heather Harmon blowjob porn (25), cunnilingus porn (28), and PIV porn (16). I favored a lot of amateur stuff this year. Gloryholes and forced/”involuntary” orgasms were also big themes.

• The real-life people I fantasized about most often were people I’d been in love with or could see myself falling in love with, and local theatre actors. Whoops.

 

I hope you have an amazing New Year’s Eve and an even more amazing 2018, babes! Are you going to track your sex life in a nerdy way next year comme moi? Let me know in the comments!

12 Days of Girly Juice 2017: 2 Fears Defeated

Kate Sloan

In theory, I think we should all face our fears head-on constantly. Every day, we should pick something that makes us nervous and tackle it with full-hearted fury. This would make us better and stronger, day by day by day.

The reality, though, is harder than that. Every fear I confront takes something out of me for a while. It saps me of bravery points. I have to take a beat and let them recharge before I can dive back into the juicy, meaty boldness I ache to embody.

Here are two big fears I conquered this year. There were others, but these were the biggest. They took the most out of me and also gave the most back to me – as conquering your fears is wont to do.

Polyamory. Okay, I’ve been non-monogamous off-and-on for a few years, but this was the first year when it was actually difficult for me. My mid-2016 boyfriend didn’t give me jealousy feelz because I just wasn’t that invested in him; by contrast, I had Primary Partner-level feelings about the dude I dated in mid-2017, and that was not reciprocated. That’s cool – not everybody does the hierarchical poly thing, and I’m not even sure it’s what I want anyway – but it made non-monogamy acutely uncomfortable for me. What had previously felt like a breezy cotton T-shirt now rankled me like an itchy sweater.

I thought, for a long time after the end of that relationship, that maybe its dissolution meant poly wasn’t for me. If I was “meant to be poly,” I reasoned, it wouldn’t have hurt me so badly when my partner pursued another person with the passion of NRE. But in thinking about it more, I’ve come to the conclusion that his way of doing poly wasn’t necessarily the only way or the best way. He started dating someone else two weeks after we met, without even running it by me first, which crushed me and destabilized me before I’d even found my footing in that relationship. I learned from this experience that there are some things I need from my poly relationships, and some things I cannot handle, and those are important things to know.

My current situation is something like what’s known as “solo poly“: maintaining my autonomy, dating several people but not viewing any of them as a “primary partner,” and valuing my own self-care highly. This mental shift has helped me nix most of the jealousy and instability I was feeling earlier this year, because I find that when I don’t view anyone as my main squeeze, I don’t start expecting things from them that they’re unable to give me. The result: a much happier and more balanced dating life, for me and hopefully for my partners as well. Hooray! Here’s to more poly adventures and explorations in 2018.

Polite rejection. Though I’ve been romantically or sexually rejected countless times in my life and it makes me into a teary-eyed mess, I’d rather be the rejectee than the rejector, any day of the week. When someone else did the rejecting, you can blame them, get angry, cry over them, journal about them, rationalize what happened, feel sorry for yourself… but when you’re the one rejecting someone, you only have yourself to blame. It’s not your fault you don’t want to be with them, of course, but it can feel like a deep personal failing sometimes. “Why can’t I just like them?!” you ask yourself in the hollow-hearted dead of night. “Everything would be so much easier if I did!”

The trickiest thing, for me, is turning someone down when they’re completely lovely but I just don’t feel that magical, ineffable chemistry. It feels like punishing a perfectly good person for being perfectly good. it feels like discouraging them from something they should never stop seeking. It feels like the inverse of cruelty I’ve had inflicted on me, and it can be devastating.

This year, however, there were a couple of times I had to put on my Rejector Hat and do the thing. I ultimately came to the conclusion that being upfront and clear is kinder than being wishy-washy and dragging things out. Devising a simple script can help you do what you gotta do; for example: “I’ve really enjoyed our time together, but I’m not really feeling a romantic connection here. I’d still be down to stay friends, though!” If anyone flips out at you for communicating your truth kindly and clearly, that’s on them, not you.

What fears did you face this year, my loves?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2017: 3 Fave Encounters

Kate Sloan

This is the third year I’ve done 12 Days of Girly Juice, and this instalment – the one about my top 3 favorite sexual encounters of the entire year – is always one of the most fun to write, and one of the most difficult to decide on.

This was true in 2015, when my sex life wasn’t terribly robust but each sexcapade nonetheless felt fresh and magical – and it was true in 2016, when my sex life was hoppin’ and each new partner brought something wonderfully different to the table. This year, I had more sex than either of those years, and, once again, it’s been tricky to choose just 3 encounters that stick out in my mind as top-o’-the-charts. But I think these 3 represent the kind of year I had sexually – which is to say, a very, very good year.

All rumpled in his bed the morning after.

Kink Mastery

I had a boyfriend from April to August who became, even in that short timeframe, one of my top-3 lifetime sexual partners by number of encounters – topped only by my previous long-term loves of 3.5 years and 1.5 years, respectively. That he managed to barrel into my top 3 in the few months we dated speaks to what total horndogs we were, both separately and (especially) together. Our kinks aligned perfectly, like lock and key – and when two sexually compatible pervs come together like that, lots and lots of good sex tends to ensue.

It’s difficult for me – even now, months after the breakup that devastated me – to look back on those experiences without sadness and remorse. But I’m getting there. The reason the relationship unraveled was that we didn’t actually have much in common outside of our sex life, a fact that seemed frustratingly inconsequential to me at the time but would’ve become more and more apparent if we’d kept dating. So I’m starting to view that relationship as what it was: a blisteringly hot sexual tryst, the romantic backdrop of which is ultimately forgettable and unimportant. (Does that sound mean? Well, it’s okay, because he broke my heart. As Anne Lamott says, “If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”)

Anyway, we had a lot of good sex, some of which still guiltily hangs out in my autoerotic archives. But one encounter that particularly sticks out to me is this: one night in May, we kissed and groped and moaned together in his cozy bed in a west-Toronto basement apartment. He spanked me over his lap, taking me into subspace sternly and easily. He made me suck his cock while he held my wrists down flat on the bed so I couldn’t use my hands, then fucked my face while holding me firmly by the throat, combining two acts I’d hated with everyone before him but somehow loved with him.

After that, he tied my wrists and thighs together with rope and fucked me, circling my clit with his fingers all the while, in the manner of someone who’s fucked me enough to know how to do it properly. He untied me and went down on me until I came in his mouth, spacey and incoherent, and then he held me down and fucked me until he came inside me, leaving a deep bite mark on my shoulder that I admired for days afterward.

What this relationship ultimately taught me is that I’m willing to put up with a lot of painful complications in exchange for good sex – and that maybe that shouldn’t be the case, going forward. But damn, was the sex ever fantastic.

Casual and Wonderful

In January, I spotted a boy from across a room and immediately thought, “Damn. Who is that?” It was the truest example of “infatuation at first sight” I can remember experiencing in a long, long time. He was geeky, cool, and unassuming. I felt my breath catching and was vaguely aware I had started to sweat. And then he turned, noticed me, and I saw him having what looked like the same reaction to me that I’d just had to him. He walked up to me, said breezily, “I don’t think we’ve met,” and introduced himself. A few minutes later, he was casually saying, “We should go to [local sex club] Oasis together.” It’s emblematic of my social anxiety and insecurity that even then, I didn’t fully realize or accept he was into me. Silly girl!

Over the months that followed, we gradually became fuckbuddies, and then, at some point, actual friends with benefits in the true sense. We’d meet at the sex club once a month or so, have drinks in the heated outdoor pool while catching up on each other’s lives, and then get down to the sexytimes. I found that every time we parted ways, I felt good – uplifted, confident, desirable, satisfied – in a way I’d never really felt when saying goodbye to other previous fuckpals. There was no sense of longing or rejection; I didn’t want any more from him than he was able to give me, and vice versa. It was a kind of casual bliss.

My favorite encounter with this handsome weirdo so far was much like most of the others. We hung out in the pool for a while, chatting and laughing. When I finished my drink and set it down by the side of the pool, my pal pushed me up against the wall and kissed me, fierce yet unhurried. I moaned, as I always do when he kisses me; he’s very, very good at it. He pushed his hardness against me through his swim briefs while we continued to make out and I felt myself get more and more turned on – another remarkable talent of his, given how difficult it is for me to relax into sexual situations in public.

There came a point where the things I wanted to do to him were no longer possible in the swimming pool, unless I intended to drown, so I told him we should go upstairs to the third floor – an area specifically designated for sex, where all men have to be accompanied by at least one woman to dissuade creeps. He pressed me harder against the pool wall, playfully kissing me and grinding against me until I reached a zenith of arousal so intense that I had to say, “No, seriously, let’s go. I want you to fuck me.” His signature goofy grin appeared as he said, “Yeah, that sounds good,” and followed me out of the pool.

Once upstairs, we kissed more, all chlorine-scented and towel-swaddled, and he pushed my towel aside so he could go down on me while I melted and writhed and called out meaningless syllables over the cacophony of other people fucking in the next room. Before too long, he was pushing two fingers inside me, deep, stroking me exactly the way I like it without needing to be told, and I was coming on his hand, feeling unrushed and unpressured. He’s very good, I thought, like I always do with him.

Then he fucked me relentlessly with his absolutely excellent dick, muttering all the while about how tight and hot and wet I was, until we collapsed in a damp heap on the red vinyl.

I treasure our post-sex ritual almost as much as our sex itself: we cuddle casually while watching and mocking the bad porn always playing on massive TV screens around the room. He makes me laugh and makes me feel safe. That night, I stayed until I was too tired to keep my eyes affixed on the porn anymore, and then he walked me downstairs, I got dressed, and we said good night.

The breakdown of romantic relationships always makes me especially grateful for my intimate relationships that are not romantic – their specialness and specificity, the affirmation they provide without demanding much in return, the needs they fulfill for me when more “serious” relationships feel too intense or difficult or unattainable. That hookup on the top floor of Oasis left me glowing, and not hurting. Except for the dull ache in my vag that means I’ve been well and truly fucked.

Sexplorations

This list is about my favorite encounters of the year – which, to be clear, doesn’t always necessarily mean the best sex I had all year. Sometimes the most memorable and meaningful encounters are also clumsy, imperfect, unpracticed. Sometimes sex is good emotionally moreso than physically – and sometimes it’s both.

Last week I went to hang out with a long-time far-away Twitter crush for a planned date. We had negotiated a broad range of activities, mostly including him inflicting sensations to me and exerting control over me, because that, as you may know, is my jam. Usually.

But once I got there, things felt different. I am ordinarily the subbiest sub and the bottomiest bottom, but this sweet pervy man turned to mush any time I climbed on top of him or told him what to do, even with commands as innocuous as “Come here so I can fix the tag on your T-shirt.” My dormant inner domme stirred, as we pushed and pulled each other’s limits and buttons. “I think I want to sit on your face,” I proposed as we laid in bed many hours into a multi-chapter sex-a-thon, and his voice trembled with excitement as he breathed, “Okay.”

Facesitting doesn’t have to be a dominant act, and I’ve done it as a submissive many times. Someone can pull you onto their face and hold you there until they’ve had your fill of you, while they lie with their head on a comfy pillow like a gluttonous monarch. This was not that, though. This time I was the queen… and his face was my throne.

I tugged on his curls to get him exactly where I wanted him, and took from him all the pleasure I wanted for as long as I wanted. When I was done, I brushed my hand along his skin, his chest hair, his belly and hips and the significant swell in his boxers. “Tell me what you want,” I murmured in his ear.

“I… I don’t feel I have the… the right to ask for anything right now,” he stammered subbily. I smiled.

“It wasn’t a question,” I clarified. “Tell me what you want. Nobody said you’re gonna get it.”

He swallowed hard. His words weren’t working so well. “I want to come,” he managed, at length. “I want your mouth on me.”

I purred with pleasure. This was the answer I wanted and he knew it. I crawled down his body and began to tease him with my tongue. A leisurely almost-blowjob, purely for my own tactile pleasure, my own amusement. “Tell me how beautiful I am,” I ordered, and he did. “Now tell me three things you like about my mouth,” I continued, and he did – still stammering, still barely coherent. “Do I need to stop?” I warned, his cock stilled in one hand, when he couldn’t quite get through an answer. “No, no, please,” he protested, and tried to get the words out. Good boy, I thought, but did not say, because my mouth was full of him. A very good boy indeed.

Dominance has always scared me because I anxiously and self-doubtingly believe no one will ever really want to do the things I tell them to do, because I’m not worthy of being wanted that much. But what I’ve learned is that some people do want me that much, and that sometimes the strength of their desire can lend me a confidence I don’t otherwise possess. And that can heal me, a little bit. As I take my pleasure from an obedient cutie, I can also pull some strength from them, some focus, some courage. Kink, as I’ve noted here many times before, is so much more than just a “sex thing.”