Book Review: Everything and a Happy Ending

Kate Sloan

Sometimes the point of literature is to give you a glimpse into a world you’ve never known, a life you’ve never led, some feelings you’ve never experienced. But other times, the point of literature is to mirror your feelings back at you, to remind you of what you’ve been through, and to show you that you’re not alone.

I went through that when I read Tia Shurina’s memoir, Everything and a Happy Ending. Though I went into this book knowing essentially nothing about it, I saw myself reflected back to me in its pages. And it felt weirdly affirming to see that the intense unrequited love I’ve experienced over the past couple years is both a common human experience and a valid one.

In her book, Shurina tells the story of her relationships with three men who played key roles in her life: her father, her ex-husband, and (wait for it) actor and comedian Ray Romano. (She refers to him as “Emilio” throughout, a code name, but is open about the fact that Emilio is really Ray.) I was interested in this detail because Romano kinda fucked me up as a kid. On his show Everybody Loves Raymond, a recurring gag shows him trying to initiate sex with his wife, only to be rebuffed with a sardonic “No.” This instilled in my young brain a belief that women are sexual objects to be pursued, not sexual agents capable of desire and initiative. While I don’t necessarily fault Romano for restating an already-rampant cultural trope about sex, I was curious to read about his inner romantic and sexual workings. (Spoiler alert: there’s no sex with Romano described in this book, and what little sex there is is mentioned only obliquely in passing.)

Everything and a Happy Ending chronicles – among other things – Shurina’s reconnection with her dad after a long period of distance, the pain she went through when he died, and her difficult decision to separate from her husband after decades together. It’s a poignant study on how our relationships are all interconnected and feed into each other: when you have a more satisfying connection with a parental figure, for example, it can give you the strength and courage you need to bravely leave a spouse.

But by far, the strangest and most emotional part of Shurina’s story is her romance with Ray Romano. She knew him when she was in college and they worked together at the bank where he also met his eventual wife, Anna. The way Shurina tells it, Romano made a pass at her in the form of a starry-eyed poem he gave her when she quit the bank. Though she didn’t tell him so for many years, his sweet poem boosted her self-confidence at a time when she really needed it. I was reminded of the first boy who ever called me beautiful – a friend of a friend, in an MSN Messenger conversation, when I was about 13 years old – and how much that one small action impacted me for years afterward. It’s funny how our choices can affect other people for far longer than we ourselves even remember them.

Decades after losing touch with Romano, Shurina reconnected with him on a trip to Vegas, by which time he’d risen to fame as a comedian. She describes an intimate, emotional affair they subsequently had via email, sharing their innermost thoughts and feelings on weekly electronic “dates.” Though he eventually cut off contact with her in order to preserve his marriage and remain true to his wife, Shurina fell deeper and deeper in love with him, and came to view this love as a turning point in her life.

I recognized these feelings as I read them. The powerful love for someone who cannot return it in the ways one wishes they could; the aching and hoping for closure that will never come; the irrational and extreme things one does when one is in love. Shurina continued to email Romano and even hand-deliver gifts to his workplace after he ceased contact with her, which frankly is scary and worrisome behavior.

But part of me understood the feelings that might drive that level of obsessiveness, even if I can’t and don’t condone what Shurina did. I remembered the time I bought the same deodorant as a crush because I wanted to be able to smell him whenever I wanted, the time I picked up a receipt a crush had dropped because I wanted a glimpse into the mundanity of his life, the time I kept a dime on my bedroom floor for a year because a crush had left it there and it reminded me of him. Not all the things we do in the name of love are ethical or even forgivable. Sometimes it feels like we can’t help it.

Structurally, Shurina’s book is all over the place: she’s always digressing on mini-monologues about spiritual epiphanies, happenstance meetings, and “winks from the universe.” But it’s charming, in its own way – like listening to your kooky aunt tell you the story of the love of her life. Though sometimes her thoughts felt repetitious or brought out my inner skeptic, I still wanted to keep reading. I wanted to see Shurina get her happy ending.

And happily, she does. As the book comes to a close, its offbeat protagonist has shaken off her toxic marriage, successfully grieved her father’s death, taken at least some steps toward letting go of Romano, and met a man who wants to be with her – in real life, not just in “reel” life. It felt fortuitous for me to read this book at a time when I, too, have just recovered from an unreturned love. It served as a reminder that life can and will go on, and that there are happier adventures awaiting me.

 

You can buy Everything and a Happy Ending on Amazon! This review was sponsored, and as always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Review: Stockroom Cocksucker’s Mirror

Kate Sloan

As amateur porn legend Heather Harmon slurped down her husband’s dick on my laptop’s tiny screen, I turned to my boyfriend and said, “This is weird.”

“Why?” he asked, reasonably.

The porn itself wasn’t weird. In fact, if anything, my inner erotic rhythms feel tuned to Heather’s, after adoring her porn for at least half a decade. I’m well used to the mischievous twinkle in her eyes, the slick facility with which she swallows her man’s entire dick, the pleasingly predictable sounds he makes as she brings him closer to orgasm. What felt weird was sharing this all-too-familiar experience with another person – albeit a person whose dick has been in my throat. “I dunno, it’s just, you’re here, and I’m having private-time feelings,” I attempted to explain.

My darlin’ snuggled a little closer to me and our eyes drifted back to Heather’s eager mouth on-screen. “It’s okay,” he said, over Jim Harmon’s formulaic moans, “because I’m right next to you having private-time feelings too. And later, you’re gonna put that BJ mirror on me and suck my cock.”

A shiver went through me. Had he planned this on purpose? A perfect evening of weed-smoking and blowjob-ogling, all in the service of making me more comfortable with the Stockroom Cocksucker’s Mirror I had to review for my blog? If so, apparently my boyfriend was a fucking genius.

The mirror scared me, you see. Don’t get me wrong, I had requested it to review, because it scared me in the same way as certain edgy kinks like knifeplay do: they’re a little hot and more than a little terrifying. What worried me about the mirror was being literally face-to-face with myself during a BJ, after fearing my own sexytimes visage for my whole adult life. I don’t like eye contact during sex, or being aware that my face is someone’s erotic focal point, or feeling my face twist up into aroused contortions when a partner can see. The whole idea makes me incredibly, inexplicably anxious – to the point that I’ll often wear a blindfold during sex on bad anxiety days, to limit the amount of my face a partner can see, and to free me from being expected to watch them in return.

We kept putting off testing the mirror – me because it made me anxious, and my boyfriend because “the thought of it didn’t do anything for him.” I found this surprising, because, months earlier, he’d told me, “The most intensely arousing thing for me is to force my lovers to do things I know they want to do, and have previously consented to.” I thought it would turn him on to watch me do something he knew made me consensually uncomfortable – in this case, watching myself give a blowjob.

After a few more Heather Harmon scenes and a little more weed, my mouth was sufficiently horny that I did something I rarely do with my mega-dominant boyfriend: I got bossy. “You should take your pants off,” I said, in a tone of voice that was closer to begging than commanding.

“Okay,” he said, laughing. “I can do that.” I watched as he shed all his clothes, smiling at me all the while, all chest hair and strong muscles, my toppy masculine angel.

And then he slipped the hole of the BJ mirror over his half-hard dick and I burst out laughing.

Even after he laid on the bed and I set to work, I couldn’t control my giggles. Sometimes laughter is how my body responds when I’m enjoying myself in bed, and sometimes it’s a nervous response to discomfort; in this case, it was decidedly both. The tactile pleasure of his dick in my mouth, coupled with the visual assault of my own face devouring his cock in up-close-and-personal HD, felt so sinfully sexy to me that I was almost uncomfortable being that turned on in front of another person. These were, once again, “private-time feelings,” and my partner was watching me have them. And I was watching me have them. From inches away.

My boyfriend, who is prone to mid-beej dirty-talk, cleared his throat and began to speak. I steeled myself for a filthy missive, but instead, he said, “If you deepthroated me all the way, you could kiss yourself!” It was more a gleeful proclamation than a salacious jibe. I laughed around his cock until I couldn’t breathe, and then I took it out of my mouth and laughed some more, nose tucked into the warm crease of his thigh. Some doms try to cut you down with critical jeers, and here mine was, essentially encouraging me to love myself. Through BJs.

I eventually caught my breath and returned to the task at hand. It was at this point that I began to notice how much I was drooling. Sloppy BJs are increasingly my jam – especially since I read Aerie’s blowjob guide where they advocate “drooling uncontrollably and making a giant mess” for the lubrication and visual appeal – but this was on another level. I have never gushed this much spit during a beej before. It reminded me of when you see a commercial where someone takes a big bite of a juicy hamburger and your salivary glands immediately kick into gear – except in this case, the burger was a dick, and the commercial was my own fucking face. It was absurd, and delightful, and wet.

It helped that my boyfriend was holding the mirror in place, and moving it back into my sightline whenever it slipped off to one side, as if to demand, “No, seriously, look at yourself.” I imagine that the mirror would stay put better if it was draped over a huge dick – the hole has a diameter of 5.5 centimeters or about 2.2 inches – but it might also dig in uncomfortably if used on a dick of that size. It didn’t bother my boyfriend to have to hold the mirror still, except that he couldn’t fully relax.

I snuck peeks at myself from time to time, but mostly my eyes remained closed, as they usually are during BJs. It allows me to concentrate on the sensations in my mouth, and keeps me focused on the steady rhythm that’ll get my partner off. Every time my eyes drifted open for a moment, though, I felt seized with a strange blend of arousal and guilt: seeing myself give head was unbelievably hot, but it felt arrogant for me to enjoy the sight of myself that much. And it embarrassed me to imagine my boyfriend watching me watching myself, as if he’d think I was being arrogant, too – even though he told me later that it turned him on to see me viewing this act from a different angle than I would normally get to.

The mirror didn’t just induce arousal and embarrassment in me, though – it also made me competitive. With my damn self. Seeing myself give head from the angle at which I’d usually watch porn stars doing the same, I saw that what feels like intense deepthroating to me isn’t actually that deep. That real-time view made me want to do a better job: go deeper, faster, harder, put on a better show for my love (and for myself). I could see I was bringing my A-game, but it didn’t feel effortful – it just felt fun.

When my darling started to come, he grunted, “Deepthroat me,” just like Heather Harmon’s husband does in all the porn clips I like best – and I did as I’d been told. Though it would’ve been hot to watch my own face at that crucial moment, doing so didn’t occur to me; I squeezed my eyes shut with the effort of keeping that dick as deep as it needed to be, and enduring the intense contractions of muscles against my tongue and throat. I swallowed, and swallowed, and kept on swallowing, and I couldn’t breathe for a while but it didn’t matter.

When it was over, I pulled myself up and gently slid the mirror off my boyfriend’s dick. He lay there panting and raised one finger as if he had something to say, but couldn’t get it out quite yet. I curled up beside him and waited patiently for him to catch his breath.

“That was the best blowjob you’ve ever given me,” he said finally.

You know that silly adventure-movie trope where the hero uses a powerful artefact to beat the bad guy, only to discover afterward that “the power was within them all along”? I feel that way about the Stockroom Cocksucker’s Mirror. Like a good coach, it brought out the best performance of my career thus far – but it did so by pitting me against myself, challenging me to meet my own standards. It literally reflected my own capabilities back at me, and made me better in doing so.

And y’all, I looked hot.

 

Thanks so much to Stockroom for sending me this product to review!

Links & Hijinks: Leather, Smoke, & Buttholes

Kate Sloan

• When it comes to sex, you’re doing great.

• “Uptalk” – the classically millennial practice of ending sentences in a tone that suggests you’re asking a question – may actually have a conversational purpose.

• A couple big pieces about Pornhub user data: “Pornhub is the Kinsey Report of Our Time” (what a bold and fascinating claim!) and “What We Learned About Sexual Desire From 10 Years of Pornhub User Data.” God, I love this shit. #SexNerdLyfe

• More sex science: a Canadian researcher is trying to build a better female orgasm by studying what turns women on.

• Advice for a woman whose 49-year-old boyfriend has never performed oral sex before, but wants to.

• Media images of sex and relationships shape the way we understand these things, and the way we pursue them. So we should pick our media influences carefully, if we can.

• The “French girl” as a style icon is a notion with a long and interesting history.

• “Who cares what straight people think?” asks the delightful Brandon Taylor about writing queer narratives.

• Clementine Morrigan explains how to accept emotional labor ethically. Important stuff!

• Could adding kink to your morning routine make it more enjoyable?

• Here’s how Tinder helps people come to terms with their bisexuality.

• Suz has some excellent advice on going to a sex club for the first time.

• Of potential interest to leather kinksters: the ladies of The Dry Down wrote about their favorite leather fragrances. (I am enamored with Leatherstock, ideally worn in combination with something girly like Demeter Raspberry or Tobacco Vanille.)

• Gotta love a tender, romantic story that includes repeated usage of the phrase “cum dump.”

• My friend Caitlin unpacked their smoking fetish. I find it so interesting that they have a negative physical reaction to smoking (as do I, as an asthmatic) but fetishize it nonetheless.

• When you write about sex for a living, you inevitably get flooded with messages from dudes who take your career choice as a personal invitation to be creepy. Sex columnist Maria Yagoda wrote about some of the “bizarre, horny messages” she’s received over the years.

• Is missionary secretly the kinkiest sex position?

• On learning to enjoy receiving cunnilingus after finding it stressful and embarrassing for years.

• Here’s a basic primer on consent in BDSM.

• Is Instagram the new “little black book”?

• A new study found that drinks dates have better outcomes than dinner dates do, in terms of leading to a second date. Sam Dilling explains why drinks have replaced dinner as the go-to first-date activity.

• Here’s a video about why it’s probably silly to worry that you’re “bad in bed.”

• I loved this piece about women who write about the men they date/fuck/desire, and the nuances and ethics of doing that.

• A cultural history of autofellatio. My favorite thing about this article is the 14th-century statue of the Archbishop of Cologne blowing himself. Who the fuck authorized that?! And how can I be their friend?!

• Are people always interrupting you? (Spoiler alert: this is far likelier to happen, statistically, if you are a woman talking to a man.) Here are some tips for dealing with chronic interrupters.

• Writing advice that is also good sex advice. I howled with laughter over this one.

• Eight women helped John McDermott craft the perfect Tinder profile. I agree with lots of the advice therein. “Every time a dude has group photos, he’s always the least hot guy in the group. So I’d steer clear, honestly.” “Take a shower and change your sheets, but also mentally prepare for going home alone. Either way, you’ll have clean sheets!” “Do your best to come up with a conversation starter that will, y’know, actually start a conversation.”

• Holly tried a new kinky dating app and it was terrible. (Where are all the good kinksters hiding?!)

• Speaking of good kinksters… Here are 8 ways to tell if your new dominant partner is consent-conscious and respects boundaries.

• Here’s what a 12-year-old boy genetically predisposed to friendliness can teach you about making good small talk.

• This article about non-monogamy made me burst into tears in public when I read it, soooo… yeah. Feelz!

• Why aren’t female orgasms depicted in movies often enough or diversely enough? (That cunnilingus scene in Blue Valentine sure is fantastic, though…)

• Epiphora reveals the secret truth about sex toy reviewing. This post is so real!!

• I love the way internet culture shifts our use of language. Here’s a piece on the tilde as a sarcasm indicator. ‘Cause linguistics are ~ever-evolving~!

• On insecurities, attraction, and buttholes. “If we have been wildly turned on by you, then we have been wildly turned on by your butthole. If we have loved you, then we have loved your butthole. If we have married you, then by God, we have married your butthole.” (Apparently MEL faced a lot of backlash for this piece and I’m not sure why; I think it’s lovely!)

• A Glamour reporter interviewed a doctor, an astrophysicist, and NASA (!) about what it’s like to have sex in space. Amazing.

• “Psychological halloweenism” – the practice of imagining you’re someone else – can make you more creative.

• Two data-based revelations from the OkCupid blog: weed helps you get off and kink is becoming more popular.

7 Ways to Love Someone Who Needs Words of Affirmation

Kate Sloan

I remember when I first encountered the concept of love languages. I read about it on Gala Darling’s blog, where she hyped this idea as “one of the most useful — and simple — things [she’s] ever learned to help strengthen romantic relationships.” As I delved into researching the love languages, I quickly came to agree with her.

The basic idea of love languages – as laid out by Dr. Gary Chapman in his book on this concept – is that we all have one or two ways we predominantly express love, and that we tend to also feel most loved when we receive affection in our native love language(s). Some people express and receive love in different ways, but in my experience, most people show their feelings for you in the way(s) they would like you to show your feelings for them.

I’ve taken the love languages quiz a few times over the years, and it’s always confirmed what I already know: my two dominant languages are “words of affirmation” and physical touch, in that order. (Incase you’re wondering, the other languages are acts of service, quality time, and gifts.) Touch is important to me – as you might have noticed from all the mushy, starry-eyed things I write about sex! – but words are even more crucial to me. (Hell, that’s probably part of why I’m a writer.) When I like someone, I tell them so – and I don’t really believe someone likes me unless and until I hear it from them, in their own words. Ideally frequently!

When I’ve felt unappreciated in past relationships, it’s often helped to explain this concept to my partner(s). Once they grasp just how important words actually are to me, they can (and often do) adapt their approach accordingly. And I can shift the way I express my feelings to better suit their love language, too.

If you’re dating someone whose love language is words of affirmation and you’re not so good at expressing yourself verbally, don’t worry – I’ve got some suggestions for you! These work for me, and I can’t guarantee they will work for you or your partner(s), but they’re at least a good starting point. Here are some ways a partner can make a person like me feel loved and appreciated with their words…

Tell them what you like about them. You may think it’s obvious and goes without saying that your beau is smart, funny, attractive, and so on, but if their love language is words of affirmation, they need to hear this from the horse’s mouth! Try to use unique, deliberate language, rather than generic compliments that are likely to go in one ear and out the other.

Examples:
“Your lips are so pretty. Every time I look at you, I just wanna kiss ’em.”
“When I first met you, I was drawn to you because of how confident and self-assured you are.”
“I love that you’re so smart. Our conversations are always so interesting and thought-provoking.”

Tell them stories. For a person who values words, stories are often also important. Narratives help us arrange information in our heads and understand things better. You might think it’s pointless to tell your lover a story about your relationship – after all, they were there, too! – but they might find it thrilling and affirming to hear your perspective on something the two of you experienced together. It’ll help them get inside your head and see themselves through your eyes.

Examples:
“God, I was so nervous before our first date! You looked so cute on your OkCupid profile, and you seemed so much smarter than me. I practiced introducing myself in the mirror for like twenty minutes beforehand and changed my shirt three times…”
“Remember the first time we had sex? I was so excited to see you naked for the first time, and to learn how to get you off…”
“I remember the exact moment I realized I’d fallen for you. It was when we went on that date to the aquarium. You looked so stunning in the cool blue light, staring up at the jellyfish…”

Talk dirty to them. I’m not sure if a person’s “love language” is always also their “sex language,” so to speak, but in my case, it definitely is! A linguistically-oriented partner is likely to love it if you whisper in their ear about what you’re gonna do to them later, pay them a vulgar compliment while yanking their clothes off, and monologue filthily at them while you fuck. They’ll enjoy it not only while it’s happening, but also later, when they replay your words in their mind while masturbating, or breathlessly record them in their journal…

Examples:
“I can’t wait til we get home so I can throw you down on the bed and lick your sweet pussy until you come in my mouth.”
“Your cock is so perfect. It hits all my spots and feels so right in my throat. How did I get so lucky?”
“God, your tits look unbelievable in that dress. Bet they’d look even better smeared with my cum.”

Tell them about your dreams and fantasies. This, again, helps them get inside your head and understand how you perceive them and how you feel about them. Whether these are sexy or sweet (or both!), they can give your darlin’ a verbal glimpse into the deep pool of love you have for them in your heart.

Examples:
“Fuck, I had the hottest dream about you last night. You were sucking my cock in an alley, and then…”
“I was just thinking about how nice it’ll be when we move in together next year. I can make you coffee every morning, and we can cuddle in bed every night…”
“We should take a trip to Newfoundland together! You can drive and I’ll navigate. We’ll stay in a little B&B on the coast, watch the sunset every night, and have lots of quiet writing time…”

Give them words they can read and re-read. Texts. Facebook messages. Tweets. Old-fashioned love letters. Whatever your preferred medium, words in a tangible form are nice for a verbally-oriented person to receive, because they can (and will) treasure those words for a long time. As a bonus, this is a great approach if your partner struggles with anxiety or any other mental health issue that messes with their self-worth: when they’re feeling unloveable, they can go back in their screenshots folder or letterbox and read proof to the contrary. (Or you could just say more nice things at them!)

Examples (actual texts from my screenshots folder):
“I like you a lot. You’re very pretty and smart and funny. And you’re a very good girl for me all the time.”
“You’re beautiful, hilarious, have a contagious, sincere laugh, you’re kinky as heck in all the right ways for me (so far as I know), you seem to have an adventurous spirit, and your mind is sharp as fuck.”
“I almost tripped on the sidewalk and cracked my skull. Because of how much I want to sink my teeth into your butt.”

Say nice things unprompted. To a verbally-oriented person, what makes words of affirmation exciting is the knowledge that you wanted to say these things, that you are saying what you authentically feel, and that your feelings were strong enough that you just had to verbalize them. To that end, don’t always wait until your partner compliments you to compliment them back; you’ll take their breath away with spontaneous expressions of love.

Examples:
“Hi babe. Just wanted to tell you how gorgeous you are and how much I adore you. That’s it. Hope your day’s going great!”
“Jesus Christ, your butt in that skirt. Do I get to fuck you tonight? ‘Cause I really, really want to…”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re hilarious and brilliant? ‘Cause you are.”

Tell them how they make you feel. It’s all well and good to tell someone how attractive and wonderful they are, but that stuff’s all about them; your partner wants to hear about you, too. It’s exhilarating to know how you affect someone, and a verbally-oriented person will absorb this information best through words. I love seeing my appearance or behavior elicit a huge grin or a huge boner from a partner, but it’s even nicer if they verbalize what they’re feeling!

Examples:
“I still get nervous butterflies every time we meet up for a date. Hell, my heart’s beating kinda fast right now.”
“Pretty sure that selfie you just sent is giving my dick a heart attack. I need a cold shower. Or a dickfibrillator.”
“When I think about the fact that you’re my boyfriend, I get so happy and grateful, it makes me want to cry.”

What’s your love language? What are your favorite ways to flatter and uplift someone who digs words of affirmation?

It’s Different With You

Kate Sloan

The first time anyone slapped my face, it was because I asked for it, and it was an experiment.

He was an ostensibly vanilla man I’d met an hour earlier, at a sex club. His posh British accent and shy befuddlement set me immediately at ease: this man was no threat to me. He could fuck me, maybe, but he could not fuck me up.

Face-slapping had been on my mind lately. I had no idea if I’d like it. I liked certain types of pain, but getting hit across the face seemed like it’d be uniquely disorienting and extra risky, physically and emotionally.

Normally I like to try new kink things with a safe, trusted, established partner. But I had no such partners available to me. It had been a while since I had. That was starting to feel disheartening. I tried not to think about it too much.

So when this nice English boy had his fingers deep inside me and his lips on my lips, I leaned back and said, “Can you do me a favor? Can you slap me across the face?” His expression, then, was shock muffled by politeness. “Not too hard,” I clarified. “Like, a 4 out of 10.”

To his immense credit, he did not balk. He was vanilla as fuck (or so I assumed from how he later repeated the phrase “good girl” at me like it was a magic arousal spell in and of itself), but he was nonetheless willing to do this for me. Good boy, I thought, as he wound up his batting arm.

The slap landed. It hurt. It shook me. But it did not turn me on.

Huh, I thought. Guess I’m not into that. We did not speak of it again, he did not attempt it again, and the evening progressed in an otherwise vanilla but quite enjoyable way. And that was that. Or so I thought.

The first time you slapped my face, I had also asked for it. But it felt entirely different.

We’d been dating for a few weeks, and having kinky sex in massive quantities. All traces of vanilla had been flushed from my system, it seemed. I thought about going on Tinder dates with other boys, letting them put their hands on me gently and fuck me in entirely standard ways, and the whole idea just bored me to death. Sex with you felt exciting not only because you were rough with me, but also because I trusted you to be rough with me. I wanted to show you how much I could take. I wanted to be good for you. I cared.

We hadn’t talked about it yet, but I felt strongly enough to bring it up nonetheless: “I think I’d like you to slap my face.” You got that devious domly smile on your face I like so much, the one that means you’ve got some mean tricks up your sleeve and I’m gonna like ’em. “I don’t know if I’ll enjoy it, but I want to try,” I added. You nodded and I saw you file this info away for later.

Later came. Long minutes into hard makeouts, you climbed on top of me, straddling my thighs in bed, and grabbed my hair by the root in one hand. “I’m gonna slap you across the face now,” you muttered against my mouth, and I nodded.

My eyes are normally closed during sex; it’s how I process sensations best, and one way I manage my sexual anxiety. But the moment stretched out and I wanted to see. I opened my eyes just in time to see your hand cocked back, ready to strike. A split-second elapsed and you hit me, hard but not so hard it scared me. I felt jolted. Grounded.

My eyes had fallen closed, and after a moment, I opened them again. I did a thing I almost never do during sex: I looked up at you – coyly, through my lashes – and smiled.

You smiled back, and then you hit me again.

Some vanilla people can talk all day long about how romantic their sex can be, how intimate, connective, sweet and life-affirming. That’s fine. I’m glad they experience it that way. But kink can be those things, too. That moment where I’m smiling up at you, knowing you’re about to hurt me, and then you go ahead and do it? That’s the safest and the sweetest. I feel romantic toward you when we’re cuddling or kissing or holding hands in public; I feel it even moreso when you’ve got me pinned and you’re about to leave a handprint on my cheek.

The first time anyone fucked my mouth, it was an accident and I hated it.

He was a submissive boy – which, fine, whatever. Banging other subs isn’t my favorite, but I can deal with it, if it’s only an occasional thing. Submissive guys can still enjoy receiving BJs, after all, so at least there’s some overlap between our tastes.

Reclined on a soft hotel bed, he moaned and mewled as I bobbed up and down on him. I was doing a great job and I knew it. If this was the only fun thing we could do together, I’d be okay with that. It was pretty stellar, as far as BJs go.

But then he started thrusting into my mouth, and I froze.

My gag reflex is off the charts. I have, more than once, accidentally thrown up from scrubbing a toothbrush too far back on my tongue. I like BJs where the recipient is lying on their back, in part because it gives me optimum control over the depth of the dick. When I lose that sense of control, sometimes I gag. Sometimes I panic.

I tried to be chill about it. But after a few minutes, I could not. “Hey, can you stop that?” I mumbled during a pause, pressing my hand against his hipbone to still him. “You’re gagging me.”

“Oh. Sorry,” he said. “I’ll try to stop.” He tried. He didn’t really succeed. I get it; sometimes thrusting isn’t entirely voluntary. But I spent the rest of that BJ trying to get it done, instead of enjoying it for what it was. My throat didn’t trust him anymore.

The first time you fucked my mouth, it was highly negotiated, and I was ready.

A few days previous, I’d mentioned – in one of our many chats about desires and boundaries – that my skittish throat was a frequent buzzkill for me. “It’s why I don’t really like choking or face-fucking,” I said, “even though I’m totally obsessed with deepthroat porn and find it so hot.”

The conversation meandered in a different direction, but a few minutes later, there was a lull, and you mused, with a soft smile: “So no face-fucking, hey?”

The way you say “hey” instead of the more familiar-to-me Canadian “eh” is somehow so endearing to me; it sneaks into your dirty-talk when I fantasize about you, a signature feature of your vernacular that puts an instant smile on my face. With anyone else, I probably would’ve just said, “Yep, no face-fucking,” and moved on. But you – your pressureless demeanor, your easy handsomeness, and that gentle little prod of a “hey” – gave me pause.

“I meeeeean,” I began, in that way I begin sentences when I know I can be swayed. “I haven’t liked it with previous partners. Maybe I’d like it with you.” You grinned. I grinned back.

Later, after embroiling me in subspace in all the pervy ways I like best, you arranged me on the bed so my head hung off the edge. You placed my hand on your warm upper arm and said, “I want you to tap my arm if you want me to stop, okay?” And then you slowly slid your cock into my throat.

There was an ease to it I had never experienced with this act before, an instant and eager facility. I could feel myself getting wet as I thought about you using my mouth, fucking all my holes like I was your personal sex toy.

At some point, I started to gag, and tapped your arm. You stopped immediately, made sure I was okay. But I wasn’t scared or shaken. I was smiling. I wanted more.

The first time anyone choked me, I was fucking furious.

“I told you I don’t want to be choked,” I practically shouted. His hand had snuck onto my neck too many times. He knew what was up. This was the last straw.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he babbled. “My other partners all like being choked. I keep forgetting that you don’t.”

I rolled my eyes. He had used this excuse more than once before. I had no idea whether to believe it. It did seem that his memory was genuinely bad – he’d often tell me a story he’d already told me, or stare at me blankly when I referenced an anecdote I’d relayed the week previous – but it also seemed like a half-assed attempt to eschew my boundaries.

He was the first polyamorous person I’d been involved with, and the whole situation made me doubt that poly was right for me. If mixing up your partners’ sexual preferences was an occupational hazard of poly, could I ever really trust a partner? Could I ever truly enjoy myself, knowing someone could badly fuck up at any moment?

Months after I stopped seeing him, I talked to another former partner of his. She told me he was always “forgetting” her boundaries, too. Maybe that’s not a thing poly people do, I thought; maybe it’s just a thing abusive shitheads do.

The first time you choked me, we had – again – talked about how I’d never liked it before, but thought I might like it with you. You tend to have that effect on me.

“I’m going to put my hand on your throat,” you told me, your face so so close to mine, “but I’m not going to choke you.” You were true to your word. It didn’t scare me. Instead, weirdly, I felt safe.

“When you go home tonight,” you continued, “I want you to masturbate thinking about my hand on your throat. I want you to think about how small and defenseless it makes you feel – and how happy it makes me.” When I relayed this episode to my journal later, I wrote, Damn, he’s good. And indeed, I jerked off thinking about what you’d told me to think about. And it made me really fucking wet.

The first time you actually put pressure on my throat, I squeezed my eyelids shut from the intensity of the sensation. It didn’t feel bad, it was just… a lot. “Open your eyes. Look at me,” you commanded sternly, calling me back to earth. I did as you’d asked. “Hey. It’s okay. You’re okay.” And I knew you were right, and I was safe.

You released the pressure slowly, and I wanted to cry. Never knew I could feel like this, I thought, a love song from Moulin Rouge echoing in my brain. It was a strange thought to have immediately after being choked, maybe, but it was what came to mind.

See? Kink can totally be romantic.