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Our Wedding Outfits!

Kate Sloan
All of the beautiful photos in this post were taken by the supremely talented Ashe of Rose Glass Photography, who I would 100% recommend!

Supposedly every little girl grows up dreaming of her perfect wedding, and specifically, her perfect wedding dress. I haven’t found this to be very true in my friend groups, perhaps since so many people I know are queer and/or trans (and thus not prone to heteropatriarchally-rooted fantasies) or just don’t really care about weddings all that much. Personally, as a chronic romantic fantasizer, I was usually more moony-eyed about the idea of my perfect future spouse than I was about the dress I would wear. But I do have a wedding Pinterest board dating back years and years, so I guess at some point I hopped onboard the “dreamily musing about what I’ll wear to walk down the aisle” train.

The COVID-era wedding mb and I threw together was initially so informal that I wasn’t even sure if I needed a specific outfit for it. I figured it would happen at a courthouse and would be more about signing documents and waiting in line than doing a full face of makeup and throwing a bouquet. One of the first nights we started planning it on the phone, I semi-joked, “I guess I probably have to buy a white dress, huh?” and mb said, “Yeah! You should!”

Over the next couple of months, we cobbled together our outfits from various sources. We really like to match each other when we go out on dates, so we already had practice syncing up our color palettes. What resulted is a pair of outfits centered around white and blue, with little pops of red and pink here and there. Read on for all the juicy outfit details!

My outfit

The dress: I’ve always wanted a 1950s-style, knee-length wedding dress with a full tulle skirt, but to get it exactly right would require tailoring and a bunch of money, both things that are kind of tricky during a global pandemic. So I set aside that desire for the time being, figuring I could always splurge on my dream dress for the bigger wedding-y event we plan on having post-pandemic so all our friends and family can come party with us. I started looking at more practical and affordable options.

After scouring various online stores for a few days, I eventually settled on this ’50s-inspired A-line dress by Grace Karin. It’s a really classic fit-and-flare silhouette, the kind of thing I wear all the time, but getting it in white was special. I made sure to read a bunch of reviews before pulling the trigger, to make sure buyers thought it was well-constructed and not see-through (a common problem for white dresses), and the reviews were excellent, including some from people whose body shape and size were similar to mine. (I’m generally a size 10-12 and I bought this dress in a size L, if you’re wondering.)

When the dress arrived, I tried it on, and it fit perfectly and looked exactly how I’d hoped it would. I’ve always loved the 1950s aesthetic and was so glad I’d found such a lovely manifestation of it for my “big day”! It was also fortuitous that I only needed to spend $35 on it (!!), because our wedding was in a kinda muddy park and the waitress at our post-ceremony dinner accidentally squirted hand sanitizer on the front of my dress. I think she was pretty horrified, but I just laughed and said, “It’s totally okay, it only cost me $35!!”

The crinoline: While I used to rock crinolines as skirts in high school, I’m not sure I had ever really worn one the way they’re supposed to be worn – under an A-line dress to help it look fuller and more flouncy. But this dress really called for it, and your wedding is one of the days when you get to be unapologetically fancy if you want to, so I decided to go for it.

I got a pale blue one from the same brand, Grace Karin, for $26. Since this type of item is literally created to be voluminous, packing it in a suitcase was a challenge, but I figured it out eventually. I folded it up as small as it would get, stuffed it into a Ziploc bag, and stuffed that inside one of the packing cubes I had recently bought for just such an occasion. I had set aside one entire cube just for wedding clothes, so as to keep them separate from my regular clothes so I wouldn’t accidentally let mb see them before the day itself.

The shoes: I had bought these pale blue Manolo Blahnik peeptoe sandals almost a year before, and the more that I looked at them, the more I thought they’d be the perfect wedding shoe. My dream pair prior to that had always been Melissa x Vivienne Westwood slingback heels with a red heart detail, but they’re discontinued so they get pretty pricey on eBay. I still think I might hunt down a pair at some point in the future.

The Manolos were a bit impractical, given that the temperature was starting to drop by the time our November wedding rolled around and the event itself took place in a park, where my heels kept sinking into the ground as I walked or stood – but I engaged some muscles I didn’t even know I had, and made it work! However, I did also have mb stash my beloved Frye harness boots in their bag for me to change into after the ceremony. They looked surprisingly cute with the dress too!

The sash: The more I looked at my dress, the more I felt it should have some kind of belt. What can I say – I love a cinched waist! I considered getting this pale blue vintage leather Moschino belt, but it bugged me that it had gold hardware when all the other metallic tones in the outfit were silver. After a while, I opted instead to buy a 9-foot-by-2-inch length of pale blue satin ribbon to tie into a sash.

On the actual day, I looked up some YouTube tutorials on how to tie a wedding sash, but ultimately I abandoned them and just tied a regular bow, adjusting it until it looked right. I think it came out decently cute for a first try! (Should’ve practiced in advance, yes. Definitely.)

The cardigan: Due to the aforementioned dropping temperatures, I began to consider the possibility that I’d be too cold in just my wedding dress to truly enjoy myself at the event. This became even more of an issue once we settled on having a post-ceremony dinner on the patio of a nearby Italian restaurant, because (reasonably so) we and most of our guests weren’t too comfy with indoor dining, given the, y’know, public health crisis.

Just six days before the wedding, I ordered (secondhand through TheRealReal) this Tiffany-blue cashmere cardigan by Autumn Cashmere. I wanted something kind of dainty and feminine, but still warm enough to keep me cozy, and this fit the bill. I took it off for the actual ceremony, but wore it the rest of the time. I’ve worn it a bunch more times since then, too!

The bag: I didn’t strictly need a bag, and could have kept any personal items in mb’s backpack (which they had to bring because it contained the marriage certificate, ceremony script, etc.), but hey, I’m a femme and I love bags. So I started looking around for one that would fit the vibe and color scheme of the event.

I’ve loved Rebecca Minkoff’s designs for years but had never owned anything from her, so I was excited when I saw this pale blue saffiano leather clutch of hers on TheRealReal. I love that it’s made to look like an envelope; it reminds me of love letters! The silver zipper-tooth edging also gives it a bit of toughness to balance out the delicate femininity of the color. I think all that was inside my bag during the wedding was my phone, my vows written out on notecards, some makeup items for touch-ups, and a bunch of Kleenex in case of crying!

The lingerie: I bought a set of white lacy lingerie from Avidlove for $20. The panties are high-waisted (very 1950s) and have a corset-esque lace-up panel in the back, which is why putting on my underwear was actually the part of getting dressed for my wedding that took the longest!

I ended up swapping out the bra for a blue one from Agent Provocateur. It felt more glamorous, gave me way better cleavage (look, we all have our own priorities!), matched my collar almost exactly, and had a connection to our romance because it’s part of a set mb bought me as a financial domination task. I was worried it might show through the dress, because it’s a vivid royal blue, but the fabric was opaque enough that it didn’t turn out to be an issue.

The earrings: I wanted something pretty but very basic and not-cumbersome, since I don’t wear earrings all that often. The ones I went with are aquamarine-colored Swarovski crystals on a sterling silver backing, from an Etsy shop called UniqueGlassTreasures. Maybe one day I’ll get some real aquamarine ones…

The nails: My fingernails were painted with Revlon’s “To the Chapel” topped with Essie’s “Set in Stones.” The night before the wedding, mb painted my toenails with Essie’s “Lacquered Up” while we watched TV. (Perks of having a foot fetishist spouse!)

The masks: Since we knew we’d have to wear masks for at least part of the day, we decided we should get fancy ones. I found these sequinned masks from AvaReignCreations on Etsy and totally fell in love. I got one for me in white and one for mb in navy. Mine needed a little resizing, since I have a small-ish face, but fortunately all I had to do was tie a tiny knot at the end of each ear loop and it fit much better.

The makeup: Two of my fave beauty YouTubers, Jaclyn Hill and Lisa Eldridge, both have bridal makeup tutorials that I took a lot of cues from. For my eyes, I used a lot of different beige, brown, black, and nude shades from the LORAC Pro palette and the Morphe x Jaclyn Hill palette. (The latter has a shade called “S.B.N.” which stands for “smoky but natural,” because Jaclyn says when she was a professional makeup artist for hire, every bride seemed to ask for a look that was “smoky but natural”!) I did my usual black winged liner with MAC Liquidlast (the only thing I’ve tried that can truly stand up to my crying), and finished off the look with Sugarpill Saint false lashes.

I wore a Revlon foundation over a Bite Beauty primer. It was hard shopping for foundation during a pandemic – normally a makeup pro would test a bunch of different shades on your skin, but I didn’t feel comfy with that for hygienic reasons (and I’m not even sure if they’re still allowed to do that), so instead I just brought along my MAC concealer and matched it to a foundation at the drugstore, and it seems to have worked out fine. On top of those, I put some Laura Mercier translucent setting powder (holy grail for mattifying combo/oily skin!), Tarte blush in “Natural Beauty,” and Becca highlight in “Moonstone.” I contoured with NYX blush in “Taupe,” and set the whole thing with an ELF matte setting spray.

For my lips, first I filled them in with a red lip liner from the drugstore, and then I went over that with Tom Ford’s “Cherry Lush.” mb and I both own and love this lipstick, and decided we both wanted to wear it to our wedding!

mb’s outfit

The suit: This gorgeous navy suit is from Suitsupply. They wore it on our second date too, and I remember thinking, as we met up outside a Manhattan coffee shop, that I had never seen somebody look so handsome before! It’s made of wool and is really well-tailored, and it brings out the color of mb’s eyes beautifully.

The shirt: One of the things I love about mb is that they have an appreciation for fancy things, even when the fanciness won’t be noticeable to most people. This white Brooks Brothers dress shirt is exactly that sort of item. It has a really subtle herringbone pattern that’s only visible from up close, and adds a touch of luxury and style to what would otherwise be a pretty basic item.

The shoes: I love these shoes. mb was wearing them on our first date and I commented on how shiny they were; little did I know, they were one of mb’s favorite pairs, and one that they reach for when they want to feel fancy. They’re the Park Avenue oxfords by Allen Edmonds in the shade “Walnut.” Sometimes I wish I could pull off an oxford… Maybe someday!

The tie: mb assigned me a task, a couple months before the wedding, to research some accessories they could wear for their outfit (ties, socks, pocket squares, etc.) and write a little bit about why each one would be a good pick. I had a few ties on my list (any other non-tie-wearing people weirdly love shopping for ties for loved ones?!), but one of my faves was this Liberty tie featuring white flowers on a pale blue background. I love that it’s an unconventional and somewhat androgynous choice, perfect for my offbeat nonbinary sweetheart.

The pocket square: Might be my favorite detail of the outfit! I was trawling TheRealReal and I stumbled across a secondhand silk Tiffany’s pocket square emblazoned with a blue and white map of Manhattan. It seemed like a perfect pick for my love, a long-time New Yorker and (as discussed) a big fan of subtly fancy details. Weirdly, I suggested this for mb fully a month before I even knew my engagement ring was also going to be from Tiffany’s!

The socks: I picked out these navy and pink polka-dotted dress socks for mb from the Tie Bar. They’re so much fun, and I love the way they subtly allude to the trans pride colors.

The pin: Speaking of trans pride… This sweet little trans heart enamel pin is from RisingVioletPress on Etsy.

The makeup: mb kept it really simple – just some Glossier Boy Brow on their brows, and Tom Ford lip liner in “Charge” under Tom Ford lipstick in “Cherry Lush.”

Whew! That was a lot of outfit details. If you feel like leaving a comment, I would love to know what your favorite parts of your wedding outfit were, or what items you’d like to wear to your wedding if you ever have one!

I’m Engaged!!! Here’s the Story…

Kate Sloan
All the photos in this post are by the wonderful Ashe of Rose Glass Photography, who you should definitely hire for any and all romantic or boudoir photos if you can!

I’ve gone back and forth over the years about whether or not I want to get married. At times, I’ve thought marriage was a pointless patriarchal relic, or at least a bureaucratic process that sought to legitimize love through paperwork and ceremonies – none of which sounded very appealing to me. But as I’ve continued to grow, learn, and change, I’ve come to realize that – like many other modern-day traditions – weddings and marriage largely mean a very different thing now than they did at their inception, and that’s a good thing. Creating our own meanings for age-old rituals is one of the most powerful skills I’ve picked up from being a queer feminist.

mb and I started talking about marriage a little over a year ago. I remember we were in a dimly-lit French restaurant, eating dinner at the bar, and they said something like: “Last week I was chatting with the woman next to me at the Gramercy Tavern, and I told her that my girlfriend lives in Canada, and she said, ‘Why don’t you just get married? It’ll make immigration easier.’ And I thought, why don’t we just get married?”

I was so surprised that I started literally crying into my food and mb had to calm me down 😂  It was so affirming to hear this because I’d already basically accepted that me and mb weren’t ever going to get married or be “life partners,” for a variety of life-circumstance reasons – but in my heart, I felt conflicted and sad about it. Of all the people I’ve dated, mb seemed like the best long-term partner for me I could possibly imagine: we “get” each other on practically every level, make each other laugh all day every day, support each other when times are tough, and had already proven ourselves capable of working through relationship issues as they came up. Part of me had started to feel like, if I couldn’t marry the person I really wanted to marry, maybe I shouldn’t/wouldn’t marry anyone at all. That made me a bit sad, but also, as a queer non-monogamous kinky feminist, I felt I should probably just accept it, and continue living my unconventional life.

So obviously, I felt a lot of feelings when they brought up marriage as not only something we could do but something they wanted to do. This was also shortly after they came out as nonbinary, and they asked me later that night – tearfully, over tiki cocktails – whether I’d have any problem being spouses/life partners with “a gender-weirdo.” My answer: Of course not. They are the gender-weirdo that I love, and want to be with.

It was unclear for a long time exactly when we’d be able to get engaged and then get married, because of complications involving borders, work, and family, among other things – and then when the coronavirus hit, everything was even more up-in-the-air. Fearing oncoming border closures between our two countries (which did indeed happen), we spent 4 months quarantined together in my tiny Toronto apartment (along with my excellent sweetheart of a roommate and her two adorable cats), and it confirmed for us what we already suspected from shorter stretches of time we’d spent together: that we were indeed a good match, even in close quarters, even under dire circumstances.

mb went back home in mid-July, and by mid-September we were missing each other so much it hurt. We’d never spent that much time apart in the entire course of our relationship (we’ve been blessed to always live only 500 miles apart, or about a 90-minute flight, which we do not take for granted, knowing that many other long-distance couples are not nearly that lucky). One night, on the phone, mb said, “I’ve been doing research all day, and I have a romantic plan I’d like to propose. Would you like to hear it?” Their voice shook with nerves. I said yes.

They’d discovered a loophole of sorts in the border closure rules. While they were not allowed to fly up to Toronto, I was for some reason allowed to fly to New York (albeit with all the proper precautions, like pre-flight temperature screening, post-flight quarantining, masks, and contact tracing). They could only visit me if we were legal spouses (although this rule has since been overturned, LOL), so they suggested I fly down to see them and we get married. It would be a tiny, COVID-era wedding – just a few guests, socially distanced, with masks on, in a park somewhere. Sometime in the future, post-pandemic (if such a thing exists), we would have a bigger, more traditional wedding, with friends and family and catering and first dances and tossing the bouquet and so on.

I was nervous at first, and took a couple days to think about it – but upon pondering it more, it just made more and more sense to me. We’d wanted this for ages anyway – why not let the pandemic speed it up a little? Why not look the curveball that was COVID dead in the eye and knock it out of the park?

After I booked my plane tickets, we started plotting and planning. Being queer and progressive, we wanted to look critically at the trappings of marriage and decide which pieces we actually cared about and which we wanted to toss out. We talked about rings – I wanted an aquamarine as the central stone, not a traditional diamond (even though diamonds are, weirdly, my birthstone), both because blue has always been a significant color in our relationship and because I just… like blue. We talked about proposals – mb wanted to do the asking, and I wanted to be asked, which worked out well. (We joked that they’re a “proposal top” and I’m a “proposal bottom.”) They asked what kind of proposal I ideally wanted – public or private? Surprising, or not at all? Lavish or low-key?

We both sorta disdained the whole “asking for your daughter’s hand in marriage” tradition, but I wanted to check with my parents incase it was important to them. (I know a lot of these way-old traditions feel important even if you know they’re irrational or even in direct conflict with your ethics.) I called them and asked, and they both said they didn’t care about that tradition at all because I am my own woman and I get to make my own choices, but that they adored mb and knew we’d be happy together.

As I prepared for travel, mb kept dropping inscrutable hints about the plans they were putting into motion. They told me they’d talked to a few jewellers; when they decided on the final ring, they texted photos to several of my friends and sent me screenshots of everyone’s reactions. (My favorite was Brent‘s; he said the ring looked like it had “mythical powers”!) One Saturday, they texted me, “I maybe am standing in the exact spot where I’m gonna propose to you…” I pried for details, but they wouldn’t tell me anything useful. So sneaky!

The day they actually proposed to me was Friday, October 23rd. In the afternoon, we had a Zoom meeting with a New York city clerk, whose job it was to check that we were physically in the same place and had our marriage documentation ready to go. mb seemed super nervous beforehand, which was very out of character, so I should’ve guessed something was up! The clerk issued us our marriage license over the internet; it was very weird. Then mb said, “We should go on a date tonight to celebrate! I’ll make some reservations.” Them handling our plans is the norm in our relationship, and part of our D/s dynamic, so it didn’t seem out of the ordinary to me at all that they were planning us a date without asking me for input or telling me where we’d be going.

It also wasn’t out of the ordinary that they picked my outfit. For the Zoom call, they’d put on a nice blue dress shirt that happened to be the same one they were wearing when we met. The dress they chose for me was also the same thing I was wearing on our first date… Again, I should have known something was going on! They put my collar on me, we applied matching lipstick (Tom Ford’s Cherry Lush, a fave), and then we got in an Uber.

I was a bit confused when we pulled up to the High Line, an elevated public park built on an old railway line, because I’d been under the impression we’d be going to a bar or restaurant. “There’s a bar up there,” mb assured me (reader, there was not). We got into line and there’d been some technical problem with mb’s reservation (they must’ve been SO freaked out!) but fortunately, the staff let us go up anyway.

The High Line is a special place for us because we hung out there the morning after our 2nd date, chatting, laughing, and basking in New Relationship Energy. At one point we were sitting on a bench and this little girl ran by; pointing at the railway, she asked her parents loudly, “Why are there train tracks?” and we spent a few minutes giggling over the philosophical rabbit hole that that question could be if viewed through a particular lens.

Back in the present, we strolled across the park, holding hands and marvelling at art, architecture, and autumn foliage we saw along the way. Eventually we reached a particularly beautiful lookout point, and mb stopped walking. I stopped too, assuming they just wanted to take a moment to admire the view. (Although, honestly, a little bit of me was like, “Where’s that bar, tho?!”)

They asked if they could take off my mask for a sec, and they took theirs off too; I assumed they wanted a kiss. But then they got down on one knee. “HEY!” I yelled, caught off-guard.

Kneeling in front of me, they said, “I don’t know why there are train tracks, but I’m glad they led me to you, and to this moment. I’ve got you, I love you, and I want to be with you forever. Kate Sparkle Sloan, will you marry me?” They took out a Tiffany-blue ring box (I remember thinking, “Huh, that’s funny, that jeweller uses the same color as Tiffany’s does,” never once imagining the ring might actually be by Tiffany’s!) and showed me the ring. It was so completely stunning that I gasped. A vivid ice-blue aquamarine, surrounded by two sparkling diamond halos, set on a shining platinum band. Wow! I started crying, obviously. That’s a lot of information to process at once – that the love of your life not only wants to marry you but also bought you the most beautiful piece of jewelry you’ve ever seen!

Memories of this magnitude are really strange in the way the brain encodes them. I felt simultaneously like the entire image would be burned into my brain forever and like I was missing so many important details because I was just too gobsmacked to process anything properly. It’s funny how, even though I already knew they planned on proposing at some point, the actual event still felt shocking and exciting like it had been a total surprise.

I said yes (of course!!), and they tried to slip the ring onto my right hand, so I said, “Doesn’t it go on the other hand?” and we had a funny moment of confusion until we got it right. They stood up and we hugged and kissed. “Bex and Ashe are here somewhere, but I think they got a bit turned around,” mb said. Indeed, my best friend Bex and his partner Ashe – who is also a pal of ours and happens to be a professional photographer with a lot of proposals/weddings in their portfolio – had come to surprise me! The plan had been for Ashe to photograph the actual proposal, but the High Line is a super confusing place so they hadn’t actually made it there in time. But, by some ridiculous stroke of luck, a woman who happened to be walking by had snapped a few shots of the proposal on her phone, and came up to us a couple minutes afterward to ask if we’d like to have them. She AirDropped them to me and I was so grateful for her kindness!

Ashe and Bex finally caught up with us, and I cried even more when I saw them. Ashe, who is super professional, skilled, and brilliant, directed us through a re-creation of the proposal, which fortunately we were able to pull off pretty well, perhaps because of both having grown up doing theatre…! Then we strolled along the rest of the High Line doing an impromptu engagement photoshoot (well, I guess it was only impromptu from my perspective), Ashe directing us the whole way and making us feel cute as hell.

At some point, a random man came up to us (wearing a mask) and yelled, “Congratulations!!! …from six feet away, of course.” It was so funny. I love New Yorkers.

After that, the four of us went to La Bain – the rooftop bar on top of the Standard High Line hotel, where we stayed on our second date – and got celebratory drinks and snacks. (mb had champagne, I had a dirty martini, we split some oysters, yummm.) I carefully crafted an Instagram post announcing the engagement, and it immediately started to get a lot of, um, engagement. We both called our parents and told them the good news. I also talked to my brother, who told me mb had showed him the ring a while back and that he’d thought it was perfect for me. (It is!)

After drinks, we said good night to our pals and made our way to Upland, the glowy golden restaurant where we had dinner on our second date. It was so special and magical to revisit a place that has taken on such massive mythological meaning in my mind over the years. I felt just as nervous and excited as I did on that date, just in altogether different ways. We spent much of our meal giggling over proposal logistics and swilling champagne that the restaurant thoughtfully brought over for us.

The whole night made me feel incredibly loved and valued – by mb, and by our friends and family. It was such a wonderful evening of closeness and joy in a year that has otherwise been defined (for me and for everyone) by distance and worry. I’m overcome with gratitude to mb for loving me this much and showing me their love so tangibly and frequently. I’m excited I get to spend forever showing them my love too! ❤️

The Women I Like

Kate Sloan

Like most bisexuals (at least, most of the ones I have talked to), my attractions are not equally spread across all the genders I am attracted to. I’m also not always attracted to people of all genders in the same ways. There are differences – not hard-and-fast rules, necessarily, but trends – and for a long time, those differences made me secretly doubt my own bisexuality even as I was yelling on the internet about how all self-identified bisexuals are valid. It’s funny how the things you most believe to be true are often the things you have a hard time accepting are true about you.

Compared to my relatively frequent crushes on men and people whose presentation floats between androgyny and masculinity (insofar as gender presentation can be simplified that way, which ultimately it kinda can’t), my crushes on women and feminine people are rare. This hasn’t always been the case for me – I skewed much gayer in high school, an inexplicable swing of the pendulum toward a side that I’ll probably swing back toward one day – but it’s been this way for several years now. In some ways it’s a blessing: my infatuations with women are uncommon enough that when one does happen, I notice it – hard.

It’s fairly predictable, the way it happens, and the people it happens with. They tend to be brunettes, with bold personalities and excellent boundary-setting skills. They have smoky voices and great laughs. They have strong opinions about whiskey or gin. They’re comfier in leather boots than in luxe heels. Many of them are Jewish, like me – perhaps because I love a broad with a big, strong nose and a commanding demeanor. (#NotAllJews, for sure. But a good number of them!) They love rock music or experimental theatre or arthouse films. They overflow with passion and conviction.

There is something about a dark-haired woman in heavy eyeliner and a leather jacket that just… sends me. I struggle to piece together my sentences like a ruffled ceramicist holding out a broken vase in cupped hands: Is this what will make you like me? The women I like seem to transcend words like “feminine” and “masculine,” embodying one on some days and one on others, and sometimes both at once, side-stepping categorizations and mostly just not giving a fuck.

The women I like are braver than me, more decisive than me, and (crucially) more dominant than me. I’m a submissive through and through, and sometimes it feels so infused into my bones that it feels like it is my sexual orientation. Certainly, a partner’s dominant energy (or lack thereof) is typically more of a deciding factor in my attractions than their gender identity or presentation. The women I like almost always look like they would gladly beat me up if I asked, and would sweetly request bruise pictures the next day. They probably don’t know how to cook a pot roast or sew a button, but they do know their way around bondage cuffs and a heavy wooden paddle.

The women I like are usually well-spoken if you can discount all the curse words (and let’s not forget that creative and colorful swearing can be, itself, a type of well-spokenness). They speak before they think, which sometimes gets them into trouble, but they’re humble enough to apologize when they know they’ve fucked up. They get a little blushy and flustered when they have a crush, but not as much as I do – because I love a woman who can confidently push my buttons and let me feel like the smaller, gigglier, frailer one among us.

The women I like usually self-identify as gay, with that word specifically. There is something about it that piques my interest immediately when a woman uses it, maybe because the first person I ever dated (who then identified as a gender-weird girl and is now, last I checked, nonbinary) called themselves “extremely gay” the first time I ever saw them, and their surety in that sentiment made me feel extremely gay too. It’s a shame that so many gay women see bi women like me as automatic write-offs, but at the same time, I’m glad that the biphobes self-select themselves the hell out of my life.

The women I like have usually seriously questioned their gender identity at least once – and I’m focusing this post on women because many of them have chosen that label after a fair bit of self-reflection and consideration, which I respect very much. My crushes on nonbinary and genderqueer people are a different topic entirely and I don’t want this post to come across as though I’m lumping those folks together with women, because I’m not and I don’t. I do love the self-knowledge and boundless curiosity it takes to examine the gendered label society gave you, whether or not you eventually decide it fits, and many of the women I like have done exactly that.

The women I like will tell you to shut the fuck up if you say something transphobic or racist or ableist or biphobic. They will also not judge you if you call yourself a not-strictly-P.C. term (like “crazy” or “dyke” or “slut”) because they respect your right to self-identify as you wish and reclaim words that feel good.

The women I like tend to pride themselves on their sexual skills, whether that’s oral or fingerbanging or strap-on fucking or all of the above. They pack dildos in their handbags or slide lube packets into their jeans pockets for later use. They ask questions about my likes and dislikes and don’t assume that us having a gender label in common means we enjoy all the same things. They, in fact, relish the differences between us, those electric points of contrast that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

The women I like are chivalrous because they’ve chosen to be, not because society tells them they ought to be, the way it does with men who date women. They may get a bit flustered when they bring me flowers or open my car door for me, but it’s not because they feel silly doing those things – it’s because they like doing those things so much that it’s slightly embarrassing. I try to compliment them all the way through so they can step into their deliberate chivalry with backbone and verve.

The women I like make me wonder what they’re into in bed, in a way I never feel quite as intensely with men, even men I desperately want to fuck. The comparative lack of social and sexual scripts for queer relationships means that my queer infatuations are even more of a blank slate, even more of a choose-your-own-adventure erotica novel, and my lady-crush du jour could just as easily be into floggers or knives or vintage stockings – it’s a mystery I’m always excited to solve.

The women I like are few and far between. But when I meet one, I know it. I feel it in my heart and my stomach and my cunt. I feel it in the way I start sweating, giggling, and trying to seem impressive. I feel it in the way she shakes my hand, or bumps my shoulder with hers, or offers to buy me a drink. It’s a special kind of magic somehow made all the more special by its rarity. I wish, and wait, and wonder what her lipstick would look like intermingled with mine.

Phone Sex Every Day? Sure, Why Not

Kate Sloan

One of the weirdest things about being a sex writer is the cognitive dissonance between the sexual person your readers think you are and the sexual person you actually are.

It’s important to keep in mind, always, as you’re scrolling through your social media feeds and your RSS reader (if you still use one of those antiquated things like I do), that comparing yourself to people you see on the internet is comparing your insides to somebody else’s outsides. You’re never getting the full picture, even if you think you are.

And that’s not as bad a thing as some people would have you believe, either. “Authenticity” and “transparency” are only useful up to a point; y’all don’t need to know about the chin hairs I pluck or the ins and outs of my fibre intake. I mean, maybe some of you want to know that stuff (I know plenty of my readers have unusual fetishes!) but I am by no means obligated to share it all with you. The people who make me the most uncomfortable in this business are the people who insist that my openness and honesty in certain areas mean I’m required to be open and honest in every area. Nope. Fuck that. Fuck that forever.

All this to say: I’m probably not as horny or as sexually adventurous a person as you might imagine. In fact, if not for phone sex, I think these days I’d only jerk off 2-3 times a week, tops, if left to my own (vibrating) devices.

That caveat – “if not for phone sex” – is what I want to talk about today. As you might know, I keep a sex spreadsheet, so I have stats on my IRL sex life for the past several years and my phone-sex sex life for the past year and a half. My partner mb – who is delightfully chill about the whole “recording detailed data on our intimate encounters” thing – recently pointed out to me, as we were totalling up our sex numbers from the 4 months they spent quarantined with me, that despite having phone sex nearly every night when we’re apart, we didn’t have sex every single night we were physically together. We had sex 84 times in the 121 days they were here – so, about 69% of those nights (nice). I had noticed that too, and had been pondering the possible reasons.

When we discussed it, we came to 2 overall conclusions about why we’re more prolifically horny over the phone than IRL:

  1. Sometimes the “point” of sex (or one of them, anyway) is to establish intimacy and connection. When we’re together IRL (especially when quarantining), we’re already getting a lot of that throughout the day – not to mention throughout the night, when we cuddle and touch and kiss and can smell each other and feel each other’s warmth all night. Sex isn’t less appealing, necessarily, but it doesn’t feel like as urgent a need when part of its “purpose” is getting fulfilled elsewhere.
  2. In-person sex takes more energy. Phone sex is comparatively chill.

That second one is really the crucial one for me, I think. As a person with depression and chronic pain + fatigue, sometimes I just don’t have the energy for sex, despite knowing it would almost certainly improve my mood and my pain status. It’s not only the physical motion involved – which can be reduced or almost entirely eliminated when I’m fucking a capable and enthusiastic top, like mb – but also the mental energy involved. No matter how comfortable I am with a partner, it still saps some of my energy to constantly wonder if my sex faces look weird, or if my body is actually as attractive as my partner claims it is, or if my roommate can hear the impacts when I’m getting spanked.

It’s a lot like how Zoom video calls can be utterly draining for me (I’m sure many of you can relate) while audio-only calls are comparatively blissful. I just don’t have enough brain-spoons to simultaneously manage not only the conversation we’re having but also how I look while we’re having it. Let’s turn our video off so I can forget, briefly, just how ugly I secretly worry I am.

Phone sex with mb is so good that I’ve pondered many times whether we can continue having it when we’re eventually living together. And fortunately, they’re the type of inventive, considerate, GGG partner that I honestly feel like we might. I can imagine us residing together in a tiny one-bedroom New York apartment and me saying at the end of a long day, “Hey, I’m super worn out. Can I go to the other room so we can have phone sex?” I’d bring some sex toys with me and slip back seamlessly into that pleasantly agitated headspace I so often inhabited when we had just started dating and our romantic nighttime phone sex sessions were the fuel that propelled me through my difficult, depressed days.

I’ve had a wide range of opinions on long-distance relationships over the course of my life, but I never really thought I would prefer them, or at least prefer elements of them. Maybe it’s a bad sign about my relationship with my body that non-corporeal forms of sex seem to appeal to me more, and rev my sexual engine more consistently, than types involving my actual fucking body – but honestly, the world is a mess right now. “Whatever works.” That’s the phrase I keep saying to friends on the phone and via text when they tell me about some supposedly “weird” coping mechanism or distracting hobby they’ve picked up since the coronavirus swept the world. “Whatever works.” Whatever makes you feel happier and more at ease and more functional is worth at least considering.

I’m so blessed to have a partner who understands and accepts all of my limitations, and not only knows how to work within them but also actively gets excited about finding new ways to work within them. I am so lucky to be in love with someone so good, so kind, so accommodating. And I am so lucky to have access to a type of sex that bridges gaps, raises my self-image, requires very little energy on my part, and makes me feel like a scintillating stunner even when I’m lying in bed with day-old pajamas on and a cavalcade of unsexy pillows cradling my aching body.

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.