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My Favorite Album is a Decade Old (& Absurdly Romantic)

Kate Sloan

It’s funny how falling down an internet rabbit hole can lead you to opportunities, people, and art that will later change your life.

That’s what happened to me with the Fort Christmas 5-song EP titled Feathers, way back in 2011. I was an occasional follower of Rock ‘n’ Roll Bride, a wedding blog for “alternative” brides. They posted an engagement photoshoot of a couple, Jeremy Larson and Elsie Flannigan (now Elsie Larson!), whose quirky, Wes Anderson-esque aesthetic I was immediately intrigued by. When I googled them to find out more, I stumbled upon this blog post by their photographer, who mentioned that Jeremy – a musician, songwriter, and music producer – had released an entire album all about his relationship with Elsie. As a diehard romantic, of course I clicked the link. And I promptly fell in love.

Feathers clangs and clamors right off the top, crashing into my headphones with instantly cheery 1960s-style instrumentals (every part performed by Jeremy, by the way). The opening song, “The Leave Behind,” tells the story of Elsie and Jeremy’s maybe-first date – hanging out with friends on New Year’s Eve, feeling a connection, but not sure yet what to do about it. (I make a point to play this song every year on December 31st, if I’m near a piano or a ukulele, because it just makes me so damn happy to do so.)

Though later in the album he’ll sing about long-term love, getting engaged to Elsie, and wanting a future with her, the first track sparkles like freshly-fallen snow as Jeremy sings about what it feels like to realize you may have just met your future spouse:

Everyone’s eyes are on the TV in the room
But my eyes are fixed on you, and they don’t stray
Because I know that this is the beginning of
The best years of my life
The first years of our life
Starting now
With you and I tonight
-Fort Christmas, “The Leave Behind“

I think the main reason this album struck me as hard as it did was that I was looking for, hoping for, wishing for that kind of love at the time. I was about to graduate from high school, and my relationships during those tumultuous years tended to be brief, surface-level, and unsatisfying. As I walked out into the wider world of adulthood, I sensed there was big big love waiting for me somewhere out there – and the lyrics and guitars and jubilant drums of Feathers felt like the musical embodiment of everything my heart ached for.

I had a relationship with this album that I’ve had occasionally with other songs and albums throughout my life, one of total and complete obsession, self-soothing by repetition. Maybe it’s a bipolar thing, or maybe my brain just latches onto certain music in a way that is slightly abnormal. In any case, before too long I had Feathers playing in my ears at almost all hours of the day. I’d slip my headphones on as I walked to school; I’d transcribe the songs’ words in my school notebooks in spare moments during math class; I’d take solo lunches, leaving my friends behind so I could wander around outdoors under the guise of “getting food” while actually just feeding my brain with gorgeous melodies. I struggled to explain to everyone in my life why these 5 songs were literally all I wanted to listen to anymore (and why I had to play them on loop on the shared family computer when my mom was trying to watch Grey’s Anatomy in the next room). These songs had come to feel like an integral part of my mental and emotional functioning. They felt like food, or water, or air.

At some point I even set Feathers as my alarm, so I could be blasted awake every day not by blaring beeps but instead by Jeremy Larson’s joy. Sometimes I put it on when I went to bed at night, too – though the album made me buzz with happiness so profoundly that I often found it hard to sleep when it was playing.

It’s useless to pretend
You’re not in love with your best friend
On nights like these, it’s fairly evident
-Fort Christmas, “Story Telling”

Two or three months into this Feathers-mania, I met my first serious boyfriend. He was a mild-mannered, good-hearted, goofy nerd from OkCupid, and although I’d had severe anxiety about dating cis men until that point, he ushered me into that world with unfathomable patience and care. (He also encouraged me to start this blog and faithfully cheered me on for years after I did, but that’s another story.) I began to fall in love for the first time.

The songs of Feathers, which are largely about NRE (New Relationship Energy), were the perfect backdrop for this era in my life. It was almost like they had been written for me to listen to at this time – or, more likely, listening to them so much had ushered circumstances into my life that could readily create the same feelings I conjured in my body and brain every time I listened. For the first couple months of our relationship, I kept accidentally calling my new boyfriend “Jeremy,” which was not his name – not because I would rather have been dating Jeremy Larson (my esteem for him has always been mostly limited to musical admiration), but because over my hours and hours of looped listening, his name had crept into my head as the one most associated with crushiness, romantic excitement, and love – and that’s how my boyfriend made me feel. (I’m sure I tried to explain this at the time, and I hope he took it as a compliment!)

I survived the worst night of my life
It went long, staggering 26 years strong
And you arrived to save me, just in time
A new light, morning light, and here we are together
-Fort Christmas, “Newbie“

I think what has stuck with me most about this album is the way it showed me what I find romantic. Or maybe it helped create my sense of what is romantic. I honestly could not fathom, at age 18, that anyone would ever love me enough to, say, write and record and produce an entire album about how much they loved me. I already had inklings that this type of creative effort impressed me, turned me on, and made me swoon (the enby ex who penned me love poems in scrappy zines; the saved voicemail of a girlfriend breathily serenading me), but this album clarified for me that those wishes weren’t just fantasies. People like that really existed somewhere out there.

That first serious boyfriend was a game developer, and during our relationship, he made games for me, like little digital interactive love notes. He also sketched portraits of me, took cute photos of me, cooked me meals, and wrote me beautifully effusive messages on special occasions. His love-borne creativity may not have manifested exactly like Jeremy Larson’s did when he wrote Feathers about Elsie, but that album had broadened my romantic psyche enough that I could see these gestures for what they were: deep, devoted love.

I still listen to Feathers a fair amount. In fact, pretty much whenever it crosses my mind for any reason, I pull it up on my phone and put it on. Even just hearing those opening drum beats makes my entire body relax – because these songs remind me of a time when I believed in and wanted love more than I believed in or wanted anything. And that’s a good feeling, even 10+ years and 5+ partners later. The contours of my heart would be different today if I hadn’t clicked that fateful link in 2011 – or if Jeremy Larson hadn’t picked up a guitar and thought, “I’m going to write some songs about the person I love.”

Here’s a promise I can keep:
I’ll never find another like you
We will stay together
Will you make a lucky man,
An honest man, a better man
For not allowing you to slowly slip away?
-Fort Christmas, “Engaged“

Sextistics 2020: An End-of-Year Sexual Stats Breakdown

Kate Sloan

As odd as it may seem, keeping a sex spreadsheet again this year (going strong since 2015, baybee!) helped me make sense of the chaotic mess that was 2020. I may not have been able to fuck at my favorite hotels and sex clubs, but I could sure keep my data up-to-date and color-coded.

Here, as per tradition, is a post enumerating and analyzing some of the key stats from my 2020 sex spreadsheet. Strap in!

 

Overview

  • In 2020, I had partnered sex 200 times. (Wooo, nice round numbers!)
  • That works out to an average of 16.66 times per month, 3.84 times per week, and 0.55 times per day.
  • I had 181 orgasms from partnered sex (not counting phone sex, which has its own section below).
  • My partner had 178 orgasms during sex with me. (One of their goals, after we started playing with chastity kink, became to give me more orgasms during the year than they had themselves, and they succeeded.)
  • An incomplete list, in alphabetical order, of kinks that were part of my sex life this year: biting, bondage, chastity, choking, cock and ball torture, cuckolding, DD/lg, electrostimulation, face-slapping, financial domination, forced feminization, humiliation, hypnosis, intoxication, kicking, punching, rimming/analingus, roleplay, sadomasochism, scratching, sensory deprivation, sleepy sex, spanking, squirting, temperature play, trampling, wax play.

 

Compared to last year…

  • I had 1.96% less sex, i.e. almost exactly the same amount (204 vs. 200 times).
  • I had an orgasm 90.5% of the time when I had sex, as opposed to 85.3% last year. Improvements, yay!
  • My partner had an orgasm 89% of the times we had sex, as opposed to 103.4% last year, due to our forays into chastity play.
  • I had 2 partners (depending on whether you count a one-off blowjob porn shoot), same as last year when I also had 2.

 

Locations

  • I had sex in a total of 4 locations this year, as opposed to 9 last year. Obviously the pandemic had a lot to do with this!
  • These locations included my place, my spouse’s place, and two hotels: the Conrad, where we stayed on our wedding night, and the Wythe, where we stayed for our little “staycation” honeymoon.

 

Highs & lows

  • My most sexually active month was November (31 times). There were several months this year that we spent entirely together, but many of those were super stressful due to global news; I think by November our pandemic stress had mellowed slightly so we were fucking more often.
  • My least sexually active months were August and September, the only months this year when I didn’t see mb at all.
  • The day on which I had the most sex was January 26th, at 3 times. It was the Sunday of one of mb’s weekend visits to me in Toronto, so it made sense that we were trying to “cram it all in,” as it were.
  • I didn’t have any sessions containing multiple orgasms on my part this year, which is the first time that’s happened to me maybe ever? Orgasms are getting trickier for me as I get older!

 

Correlations

  • The sex acts most highly correlated with orgasm for me were being fucked with a dildo while using a vibrator (152 times) and receiving oral sex (18 times).
  • Less common ways I got off were using a vibrator while being fingerfucked (9 times) and being fucked with a dildo while receiving oral sex (2 times).

 

Sex toys

  • My most-used vibrators during partnered sex this year were the Eroscillator Top Deluxe (155 times), the Magic Wand Rechargeable (28), and the Hot Octopuss Amo (2). Notably, many of the times I used the MWR this year, I was using it on my partner and not myself. What can I say, I really love my Eroscillator.
  • My most-used dildos during partnered sex were the Njoy Eleven and Vixen Creations Bandit (tied at 32 times each), the Fucking Sculptures Double Trouble (18 times), and the Njoy Pure Wand, New York Toy Collective Carter, and Uberrime Night King (tied at 15 times each). My dildo usage was less diverse this year than some previous years because I spent large swathes of time in New York this year, where all I have access to is mb’s collection and whatever I can fit into my suitcase.
  • My most-used kink toys with partners were a good old-fashioned blindfold (16 times), the Neon Wand and its Power Tripper attachment (5 times), and my custom purpleheart Weal & Breech mallet (3). My RodeoH harness also got more use than usual (3 times) because my partner used it to fuck me with a strap-on while locked up in chastity sometimes.
  • The “pervertibles” I used this year included a cucumber, tweezers, and a pair of cowboy boots.

 

Phone sex

  • In 2020, I had phone sex 122 times, versus 246 last year (i.e. about half as much). This is because mb and I were physically together for 62.8% of the year (we extended visits for weeks/months at a time, both for pandemic reasons and because we were “practicing” cohabitating to make sure it would be a good idea to get married).
  • That works out to an average of 10.2 times per month, 2.3 times per week, or 0.33 times per day.
  • If you calculate the averages based only on when we were physically apart, we had phone sex 26.9 times per month, 6.3 times per week, or 0.9 times per day, which is much more in line with our usual (i.e. non-pandemic year) phone sex numbers.
  • I had 119 orgasms from phone sex, meaning I orgasmed 97.5% of the times we had phone sex. mb, on the other hand, came only 85 times or 69.7% of the times we had phone sex, again due to periods of chastity.
  • Comparing our phone sex numbers to our IRL sex numbers, phone sex was only 37.9% of my sex life this year, versus 54.7% last year.
  • The total amount of sex sessions I had this year (IRL sex + phone sex) was 322.
  • That works out to an average of 26.83 per month, 6.19 per week, or 0.88 per day. Woof.

 

Did you keep a record of your sex life this year? Notice anything interesting?

 

Additional resources if you’re curious:

12 Days of Girly Juice 2020: 2 Fears Defeated

Kate Sloan

We all do scary things all the time, whether we consciously notice it or not. Hell, even getting out of bed each morning when the world is so chaotic is a brave-ass thing to do.

Each year I write here about 2 major fears I conquered over the course of the year, as a reminder to myself and to others that (as Glennon Doyle says) we can do hard things. There’s always more to learn, more hurdles to jump, and more courage to call upon. Here are the 2 big fears I defeated in 2020…

 

Cutting my hair short

All the way back to middle school, I read a lot of magazines aimed at women and girls. This had some upsides – allowing me to explore nascent interests in sex and fashion, for instance – but a lot of downsides, one of which was that I grew very self-conscious about so-called “flaws” like my pear-shaped body or my large forehead. The proliferation of these types of “teachings” may have been reduced in recent years due to the body-positivity movement (not to mention the many many fat babes who spearhead it), but the damage was done. I and many other women had come to view fundamental parts of our physical selves as something to be covered up and worked around.

Because I have a round face and a big forehead, the conventional wisdom is that my hair should be shaped a certain way to de-emphasize those traits. For a long time I wore it long, with sideswept bangs, to conceal the true contours of my face. But who was I kidding? And, more importantly: why did I care so much?

It’s taken me literal decades to get to a place of relative comfort with my appearance, and even that still comes and goes depending on the day. One decision I’m proudest of in that realm is cutting my hair to chin-length last December. I was sick and tired of my long frizzy curls, which had felt more cumbersome than joyful for a while. I also wanted a haircut that said something about who I am, rather than just allowing me to blend into the background. I used to dress unremarkably when my social anxiety was at its height, because I didn’t want anyone to look at me or notice me – but that was no longer the case! Now I wanted to be seen – and not only that, but to be seen for who I really am: a queer, kinky, feminist, clever, accomplished, professional, foxy lady.

My long-time hairdresser Paul at Avalon Hair Design looked at the reference images I’d collected for him and knew exactly what to do. He gave me a short, asymmetrical haircut that’s a bit longer in the front; it’s modern, unusual, and works well with my natural curls. I’ve loved it all year, and have felt much more visible since getting it, both as a queer person and just as a person. Thanks, Paul!

Photo by Ashe of Rose Glass Photography

Getting engaged + married

I can think of few other things in life that have simultaneously attracted me and terrified me the way the idea of marriage does/did. I’m a huge introvert so I had trouble conceiving of a life where there would always be another person around – but, more pressingly than that, I worried I didn’t have what it took to be loved in the long-term. My past relationships had often fizzled when I or the other person lost interest and ended things, and it seemed risky as hell to make a public, legal commitment to stay in a relationship when there’s a chance it could fall apart at any time.

But in multiple chats with both my therapist and my now-spouse, I uncovered the ways in which these fears were largely based on my own insecurities and traumas, and were therefore not super relevant to my current (healthy, communicative, loving) relationship. Sure, it’s normal to want to tread carefully when making a big life decision like getting married, but that doesn’t automatically mean it’s a bad decision.

Getting married to mb was actually one of the easiest and most right-feeling things I’ve ever done, once I managed to set aside the trauma-borne negativity that nagged at me when we first started discussing it. I’ve never met anyone else I felt as compatible with in a long-term kind of way, nor have I ever felt this unconditionally, unendingly loved in a relationship before. I have no doubt that there will be struggles and setbacks in our married life, of the kind that every couple encounters, but I know with certainty that I am with someone who will patiently face those struggles with me and do what it takes to work through them.

It’s wild to be writing this here. I wonder what my teenage self would think if she could read this. Starting this blog at age 19, I don’t think I ever even considered the possibility that I would one day chronicle my engagement and marriage here. But it makes sense that I would: mb and I met through the sex-blogosphere, and our relationship has blossomed in the public eye. It’s been so wonderful to get to share my happy news with you during this hell-year; thank you so much, as ever, for your support and positivity, and for celebrating our joys with us. ❤️

 

What fears did you conquer this year? (I’m proud of you!!)

12 Days of Girly Juice 2020: 3 Fave Encounters

Kate Sloan

This has been a more difficult year than usual for me to keep track of memorable sexual experiences in my mind. Not because I didn’t have any good or great sex this year – I had a lot! – but because normally I have some situational or locational markers to help me remember specific instances better. In 2020, there was no “that time we did watersports after a night out at a cocktail bar” or “that time we used a new toy we’d just picked up at the local sex shop” or “that time we fucked immediately upon finally arriving at our hotel after a cross-country flight.” There was, however, a lot of “that time we had sex in bed after hanging out in bed all day.” 😂

As a result of these circumstances + the way my brain organizes sexual experiences, I don’t remember the exact dates of every stellar rendezvous I had this year, despite (still) keeping a sex spreadsheet. But I remember the feelings, and the vibes (so to speak), and the highlights – which is sort of how I feel about 2020, too. So today I’ll tell you about some of the best encounters I do remember.

I’ve also thrown in a little write-up from mb about each of these, like I did last year, because it’s fun to hear both perspectives sometimes. Enjoy!

 

Non-reciprocal (but surprisingly reciprocal) oral

My very first sexual partner, back in 2008–2009, could have orgasms from going down on me. You can see how this experience might lead a person to be disappointed by subsequent relationships where that didn’t happen!

Of course, I know how uncommon and unrealistic this is for most people. It makes for a great fantasy – that someone could find your pleasure and your genitals soooo hot that it could make them come, basically untouched – but it just isn’t how most people’s bodies work. And yet, somehow, a decade after that first sexual relationship, I found myself dating (and eventually married to) someone who happened to have the same talent.

Some of my most satisfying sexual experiences this year were times when my love went down on me – slow, gradually escalating, dedicated, and reverent – and brought me to an orgasm so intense that it made them come against the bedsheets in the same moment. Sometimes this happened while they were in chastity, which makes sense, what with their sensitivity being amped up and orgasm threshold lowered – but sometimes it was just sorta random.

I am very lucky to have a sweetheart who loves giving oral sex that much. It feels powerful to me every time, and affirms that I am actually hot, even at times when I severely doubt that to be true. Some people chase and fetishize the elusive simultaneous orgasm during PIV – but I prefer a simultaneous orgasm during oral, tbh!

mb says: I’ve always been a little embarrassed with past partners when I’ve come from going down on them, because of what culture tells us about “premature” ejaculation. The fact is that eating pussy is one of my all-time favorite sex acts, so of course it turns me on. And sometimes tasting someone come in my mouth is enough to push me over the edge. The first time this happened with you, I was shy to admit it at first, but when you reacted with a loving giggle and a beaming smile, I knew you were into it. This is also the most frequent way I experience simultaneous orgasms, with my orgasm almost always beginning just as you start to come and peaking as I work hard to maintain the rhythm of my tongue on your clit and ride out the waves of pleasure. It’s definitely worth the cleanup. 

 

Slapping their cock to orgasm (content note: inflicting pain on a penis)

One of the kinks mb and I explored more this year was CBT (that’s cock and ball torture, not cognitive-behavioral therapy!). While many people with dicks are scared to death of any pain or injury befalling that area (and reasonably so), personally I think it’s nice to mix a little pain in with my pleasure – and fortunately, my spouse agrees.

We had experimented with occasional cock-slaps here and there, but one night in June after they’d already made me come with my Bandit and Eroscillator, we got into some dick-slapping that was much more purposeful and concentrated. After a few minutes of teasing slaps, I realized that it seemed like they could come from the hits I was raining down on their dick. (One of the benefits of being in a long-term sexual relationship can be developing the ability to sense such things.) I kept up my rhythm, the slaps becoming gradually more firm and fast, until eventually, they came hard, whining and whimpering.

Though I’m not much of a natural domme, there is something thrillingly powerful about being able to give someone a totally new-to-them type of orgasm. I’ve subsequently improved my CBT skillz and can now make them come with slaps pretty easily and consistently. Cool!

mb says: I don’t remember exactly how we started doing CBT together. But I definitely remember the first time I came from it. I was in a subby, trancey headspace and every one of your slaps was making my cock harder. I felt myself beginning to leak precum against your hand and craving release. I didn’t know it was possible for me to come from slapping alone, but I felt myself getting closer as your hits became more rhythmic and focused on my frenulum. I asked for permission to come, and had one of the most intense orgasms of the entire year. It’s amazing to learn a new way to come, and we’ve had a lot of fun playing with it since.

 

Wedding night sex

Of course, there are traditionally a lot of expectations heaped onto the night of one’s wedding, sexually speaking – and though we wanted to make it special, we also knew it was just one night of many, many, many nights we’ll spend together as a married couple, so there was no need to put undue pressure on ourselves.

After our post-wedding dinner with a few friends, we checked into the Conrad Hotel for the night, where they had set up champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries in our suite (aww). After some kissing, cuddling, and decompressing, mb fucked me with the Njoy Eleven – the dildo that indirectly led to us meeting in 2017, because they mentioned on Twitter that they liked my review of it – while I used the Eroscillator on myself. (I remember the way their brand-new wedding ring clinked against the metal of the Eleven…) Then we had good ol’ PIV. Classic.

It surprised me to notice that despite wedding night sex being considered “special,” an anomaly, in real life it actually felt pretty similar to great sex we might have on an average day, save for the location (and the fact that we had to peel off our formalwear beforehand!). I reject the idea of waiting until marriage to have sex (for myself, anyway – you do you), because it prevents you from assessing your sexual compatibility with the person you plan on tethering your life to – and the flipside of that coin is that I already knew I love fucking mb, and that I could be happy doing so for the rest of my life. That night just confirmed it.

mb says: Romantic! We were a little drunk and a lot exhausted, but we weren’t going to waste a beautiful hotel room and our wedding night by going to bed early. After some champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries, I fumbled around trying to figure out the complicated lighting system and went down on you in the dark for what felt like the perfect amount of time. I knew I wanted you to come on the Eleven, like we discussed. And I knew I wanted to come inside you. So that’s exactly what happened. It couldn’t have been more perfect. And then we fucked once more in the morning, for good measure.

 

Hope it was a wonderful year in your sex life, too (if that’s what you want/enjoy)!

12 Days of Girly Juice 2020: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

Ages ago, I read an article which mentioned that donating personal journals to historical archives can be really helpful to historians of the future, because it gives them a sense of what daily life was like for average people during a given timeframe. I thought about that almost every time I put pen to paper this year, because 2020 will certainly be written about in history books (to the extent that history books are still a thing in the future!).

Here are 6 entries I pulled from my journals this year. Hopefully next year we’ll have many more cheerful things to write about!

Jan. 31

mb asked me recently to what degree I want to be surprised with a proposal. I said, “I don’t want to know exactly when it’s going to happen, but I do want to know when we are entering a period of life in which a proposal might occur.” They said, “So you want to know when I have a ring,” and I said yes. I love that we have, and have always had, these meta-conversations about important relationship milestones – it’s so different from the traditional Cosmopolitan model of relationships where you never talk about anything and always have to guess what your partner is thinking and feeling.

March 3rd

Everything is really scary right now because a pandemic called the coronavirus is spreading globally and there’s no vaccine for it yet. That sounds so dramatic and crazy but that is what’s happening. People are stockpiling flu meds and face masks and hand sanitizer, and some affected people are self-quarantining for weeks at a time. My immune system sucks so I feel like I will probably get it, but who knows. Currently I am coping by leaving the house as little as possible, washing my hands a lot, distracting myself with podcasts and movies, and drinking homemade martinis.

March 15

Existing in a pandemic reminds me of a feeling I get in the days and weeks following a really brutal breakup. You walk through the world in this daze, unable yet to process that your entire reality has shifted on its axis. Periodically you find minutes or hours of respite in the form of distraction, or perspective, or positive social connection, or just a random feeling of unusual optimism and shrugging resignation – but always, at some point, your mind skids squeakily like a record being scratched as the remembrance of your true situation hits you afresh. Being alive through COVID-19 is like that, except everyone is going through it now, all the time.

It’s fucking surreal how fast everything has changed. No aspect of life can be the same now. Nine days ago I saw fit to go to a crowded karaoke bar. Today I wouldn’t dream of such a thing. We are staying home and moving all our appointments online, or canceling them. We are afraid even to walk around the block or pick up groceries. We don’t know how long it’ll be until we can safely gather in crowds again.

May 13

I’m having a lot of episodes of… feeling triggered/having a trauma response/having an extreme nervous system response/not sure what else to call it… lately. Mostly triggered by stressful things in my relationship (we worked some things out yesterday so it’s okay now) but sometimes basically random. I’ve noticed that I often go into a shut-down dissociative mode when I feel like I’ve disappointed or upset someone I care about – the world slows down like I’ve done a lot of drugs, and the inside of my mind and body feel helplessly, scarily sluggish – and I think this must be related to all the many times my dad yelled at me until I cried, for both justifiable and unjustifiable reasons, when I was a kid/teen/young adult. I remember feeling so frustrated and sad that I could never seem to articulate myself well enough to provide a decent rebuttal to whatever he was bellowing at me – but of course I couldn’t; my nervous system was under attack and I was essentially paralyzed, with nothing to do but stand there and take it. Often I wouldn’t even be allowed to go to my room and cry in private to feel safe and calm again, because that would be perceived by him as “sulking” and he hated that. I think he mostly just hated the guilt of knowing he had upset me that much, after his obvious glee in hurting me had faded.

I asked mb why they think all these trauma feelings and emotional flashbacks have been coming up so much for me lately – mostly ex-boyfriend stuff and dad stuff, I think – and they said it’s likely due to the stress of living through a global pandemic. Which, yes, that is true. I reached out to several therapists who specialize in trauma/PTSD as well as non-monogamy, because that is really what I’ve needed for years, I just haven’t been able to afford it. But now I finally can, and I want to work on myself and my dumb brain.

May 29th

Increasingly I feel like human civilization as I know it will end within my lifetime. Increasingly I find that tuning out the news and the world for periods of time is the only way I can even function. Increasingly I worry that dismantling capitalism is both the only solution to our major problems as a species and one of the only things we will never do.

July 17th

mb went back home a couple days ago after living with me for 4 months of coronavirus lockdown. It was really hard for both of us. I cried a lot and they told me that my deep emotionality is a catch-22 because it makes the hard things extra hard but it also makes the good things extra good.

My days now are much more quiet, still, and unstructured without them here. I guess this is what quarantining alone would have been like. I’m not sure it’s all that great for my mental health but it’s also an opportunity to pursue any projects I feel like, read a lot of books, and play a lot of video games. I miss mb but I like being alone, too. And I’m very very privileged and lucky to be able to do so safely, in such a hellish year.