Tegan and Sara and My First Sort-Of Love

Kate Sloan

Tegan and Sara’s album The Con came out ten years ago, in the summer of 2007. That was a year full of significant events for me: I turned 15, came out as bisexual, and dated someone for the first time, that someone being, notably, a girl. And all of it is linked inextricably in my mind with The Con, because it was the soundtrack of my year. The soundtrack of my first real romance.

This was the era when someone’s taste in music seemed to say something about them, when MSN Messenger away messages and Facebook statuses were peppered with oblique song lyrics, when I’d creep someone’s Last.FM page alongside their LiveJournal if I wanted to know their heart.

That fall, I had the burn-your-life-down kind of crush on a purple-haired girl I’d met the previous semester in English class. I hadn’t really noticed her until, early in my sophomore year of high school, she confessed to me via Honesty Box that she loved my writing, and then revealed her identity to me, sheepishly, but wanting me to know. She was only the second girl I’d ever had tingly romantic feelings about, but I still recognized them immediately. Oh shit, I am in trouble, I thought one day when our eyes crossed from across the hall and I saw her blush as I felt blood rush into my own cheeks.

“I think I have a crush on her,” I confessed to my best friend, the first person I’d come out to earlier that year, in the girls’ bathroom.

“You should ask her out!” my wildly brave and confident bestie suggested. “I’ve seen the way she looks at you. She likes you too.” I feel a certain kinship with 15-year-old me, because a decade has passed and I’m still that girl who refuses to accept anyone could be interested in me until they tell me in their own goddamn words. I just don’t see myself as worthy of that kind of revere.

As I pined over her, summer hardened into autumn and I listened to The Con on loop. It jibed appealingly with my fledgling queer identity, giving me an image of gay women who were neither fully butch nor fully femme, and who didn’t quite fit the stereotypes of effusively romantic women nor stonily reserved men. They existed in an in-between space that felt familiar to me then. And though their love songs were ambiguous enough that they could’ve been about anyone of any gender, I felt the specialness of these being love songs written by women about women. If there is a particular aesthetic or mood unique to sapphic infatuation, I felt that in the songs of The Con.

One day we had plans to meet up at lunch, but my crush had earned herself a lunch detention, probably for being late to class – she was always late. She told me she’d be stuck sitting on a bench in the office at the time we were supposed to meet. I vowed to come visit her. At the appointed time, she snuck out under the guise of using the bathroom, and we chatted awkwardly and grinningly outside the bathroom door. “Kate! Your face is so red! Are you feeling okay?!” a friend of mine asked when she walked past and spotted us. I blushed even harder. No one was supposed to acknowledge my obvious massive crush on this girl; we weren’t at that stage yet, I felt. I just wanted to luxuriate in the pretense of mystery for a while.

Weeks of coy flirtation elapsed. She called me a “pretty girl” in a Facebook message and I squealed with delight as I read the text to my best friend over lunch. I saw the way her friends eyed her knowingly when she talked to me between classes, like they knew the significance of this because she had told them. We rode the subway together after school and a sudden movement of the train threw me against her as we were hugging goodbye, igniting a million fiery sparks in my nerve endings.

I don’t remember how exactly I decided, but one night I came to the conclusion that I needed to ask her out and I was going to do it by writing her a letter. Tegan and Sara are as likely an explanation as any; there’s a verse in “Soil, Soil” that goes, “I feel like a fool, so I’m going to stop troubling you; buried in my yard, a letter to send to you. And if I forget, or God forbid, die too soon, I hope that you’ll hear me and know that I wrote to you.” I wrote several drafts of the letter and eventually gave it to her at the end of a party. To my surprise, later that evening she called me and said, “So… We should date.”

We had talked many times before that night about how “Call It Off” may have been our favorite track on The Con, an especially perfect jewel on an incredibly perfect album. I even quoted it at the top of the letter I wrote her: “I won’t regret saying this, this thing that I’m saying. Is it better than keeping my mouth shut? That goes without saying.” But it’s a song about a break-up, and I didn’t see the dark prophecy of that at the time. It wasn’t until later that I recognized the foreshadowing as foreshadowing.

Our relationship only lasted five weeks, ending in a tearful phone call where she broke up with me for somewhat vague reasons: “I’m not in a good place to be in a relationship,” “I feel trapped,” “I don’t know what I want but it’s not this.” She cried more than I did. It was a small trauma that has informed every other relationship I’ve had since then: whenever I’m dating someone, I live with a constant anxious fear that they will suddenly decide they don’t want to be with me, and will break up with me for reasons I can neither predict nor understand. That was precisely what happened at the end of my last relationship, almost ten years after that initial blow, and it felt almost exactly the same: a shattering and a crumbling and a sense that I would never adore someone like that again. Like O, like H in your gut.

The break-up was compounded by the fact that we remained friends afterward. Immediately afterward. This is the sort of mistake I doubt I would make now; I’m an emotional masochist in many ways but I also know how to set boundaries and I know what will make me miserable. Remaining friends with my first sort-of-love after she dumped me made me miserable. She told me over and over again, in many different ways, that she regretted the breakup, wished it could’ve gone differently, thought we were a good match, wanted to get back together with me eventually, and didn’t want me to see other people. She was 15, so I forgive these ridiculous manipulations now – but at the time, they felt like knives going in.

“I may have done the upbreaking, but to quote ‘Call It Off’ in its entirety, well, I won’t do that because that would be weird and you probably know the lyrics by heart, but you get where I’m going,” she told me in a loquacious Facebook message a month after the break-up. “So really I’m the heartbreaker for breaking my own heart, except not quite to that crazy heartbreaking angst-ridden extent. And then I had a good thirty-six hours of physically restraining myself from attempting to grab the phone and call you and shout, ‘JUST KIDDING!’ or something to that degree but less comical.”

I listened to “Call It Off” in bed every night, sometimes crying, sometimes just numbly staring into space. “Maybe I would’ve been something you’d be good at,” Tegan warbled. “Maybe you would’ve been something I’d be good at.” It was my first introduction to the idea that sometimes what you mourn after a break-up is not the relationship that was, but the relationship that could have been. The idea of the romance you wanted, moreso than the romance you actually had.

It wasn’t until many months later that the spell finally broke. In July – more than seven months after our break-up – I told my ex-girlfriend about the new girl I was seeing, who absolutely, fully adored me and treated me well, both emotionally and sexually. I was excited and wanted to share the news with my ex, who was also one of my closest friends at the time: I’d just had sex for the first time, and it was great! But I worried she was anti-my-new-relationship, and told her as much in the message.

Her reply came back sooner than expected. “I am not, repeat, not anti-you-having-sex. This is because I am very much pro-you-being-happy-and-doing-whatever-you-want-and-not-giving-a-rat’s-ass-what-anybody-else-thinks,” she wrote. “The only reason I tend to shudder and vocalize rude things at points such as these is because I also happen to sometimes be pro-my-own-sanity. But really, who needs sanity? And anyways, do I really have to go into why I don’t like picturing you having sex with people, when honestly you can probably guess?”

It occurred to me then, as an uncharacteristic blinding rage swept over me, that she was holding me prisoner in a relationship that was never going to be a relationship. Seven months after breaking up with me, she was still moping like it had been anyone’s decision but hers. Still acting like she had any right to withhold love from me, even love from other people. It disgusted me. I couldn’t believe I had been stuck on her for so long.

I stopped clinging to the fiction that maybe we could get back together someday. I stopped hoping against all logic that she might someday be the girlfriend I needed. I stopped obsessively checking her Last.FM page to see if she’d been listening to Tegan and Sara, with the assumption that her musical nostalgia would signal romantic nostalgia about me. We remained friends, but I refused to continue “walking with a ghost.” I had better things to do.

On Taking Men’s Money

Kate Sloan

Wednesday night, I get on a Skype call with a man who’s paid me for my time tonight. A few minutes in, he confesses, “I looked at your tweets earlier to see what kind of mood you were in, and I saw you’re not too pleased with men today, so I was worried.”

I laugh out loud. “Oh, no. Those tweets were about men who weren’t paying me to put up with them. That’s completely different,” I tell him, and I mean it.

See, the thing is, cis men are frequently exhausting. They’re not socialized to notice and take care of others’ feelings in the way that folks raised as women are, and what results is – not in all men, but in most of them, from my experience – a habitual trampling on others’ emotional boundaries, talking too much and not listening enough, prioritizing their own opinions and experiences over others’, and lacking appropriate empathy for others’ struggles. These qualities often exist even in men I would otherwise consider good people, so even my deep, fond friendships with cis men usually take more out of me than my connections to women, femmes, and anyone who was raised as female.

There’s been a lot of discourse around “emotional labor” these past few years, and it’s well-known that men tend to demand more of it and be comparatively unskilled at providing it in return. I’ve seen this over and over again: on Tinder dates with dudes who monologued at me about their career ambitions without asking me one thing about myself; in long conversations with male friends who unpacked their latest romantic drama until providing support exhausted me so much that I had to leave early; even while fielding endless questions from male customers while working retail (who usually didn’t end up buying anything, mind you). I’m sometimes willing to put in this type of work – that’s what intimate connections require, after all – but only for certain people, only some of the time, and ideally in exchange for something in return.

That “something in return” might be reciprocal friendship and support. It might be a favor done for me, like bringing me coffee, helping me with web design, or (in the case of some of my tiresome Tinder dates and loquacious FWBs) giving me a killer orgasm. Or it might be money. And that’s fine.

In her essay “The Monetized Man,” culture writer Alana Massey explains that she’s titled her checking account “Male Tears” because so much of her income comes from writing about “how the unrestrained, unaccountable emotional lives of men wreak havoc on women.” In a similar spirit, I have never really felt guilty about accepting money from men, because I regard it as reparations of a sort. They still earn substantially more than women and are taken more seriously in professional environments. Why shouldn’t I accept money from the men who want to give it to me, as a way of levelling the playing field so my life more closely resembles what it would look like in a gender-egalitarian world? (This is also why you should give your money to people of color, queers and trans folks, disabled folks, and other marginalized people when and if you can.)

Every day, I receive at least a handful of DMs on Twitter and Instagram from men I don’t know. Most of them lack any creativity or charm whatsoever: “Hey,” they might say, or, “Hi sexy lady.” On a tip from my friend Bex, I’ve started replying to these messages thusly: “What can I help you with?”

This immediately sets a tone for our conversation. I am not willing to idly small-talk with random men, especially those who lack even the basic courtesy to introduce themselves or explain why they are messaging me. What with my blog, podcast, freelance writing, and two “dayjobs,” plus a social life, I literally do not have the time to engage in the banal banter these men are hoping for – unless they pay me.

Sometimes – not often, but sometimes – these interactions parlay into an actual financial transaction. They might buy nudes, a cam show, or a few minutes of sexting. Some of these guys have even become regular customers of mine, paying for my media or services every few weeks. The “sex work” column of my finance spreadsheet makes up 7% of my total income this year: not a lot, but nothing to sneeze at, certainly.

What’s better, still, is the men who reach out to me already knowing full well that money will be exchanged if we are to interact. These classy customers do not attempt to haggle my prices down, wrangle free nudes out of me, or waste my time with endless chatter; they just want my PayPal address and a list of upcoming evenings when I might be available to chat. Bless their hearts.

When I publicly express my opinion that Random Men of the Internet should pay me if they want to interact with me, I’m often met with accusations that I make men pay for everything in my life and that I’m a spoiled, entitled princess. While I am definitely a princess, the rest of it is false: I always insist on paying my fair share on dates, I’m not conventionally attractive enough to get offered free drinks at bars the way some women do, and at this point my living expenses are all covered by money I earn by working for it.

I don’t believe these men should pay me just because I exist and I’m great (although I am), but because what they are asking me for is labor and labor deserves payment. Titillating random men, supporting them emotionally, entertaining them – these forms of emotional labor are skilled, valuable labor, worthy of compensation.

Come Learn About Vulvas and Vaginas From Me!

Kate Sloan
Illustration of the internal clitoris from Dr. Laurie Mintz’s book Becoming Cliterate.

I’ve always loved teaching. A perpetual teacher’s pet, I used to help out other students in elementary school when they had questions about math curriculum, English texts, or the inner workings of the vagina (#SexNerdLyfe!). In high school, I was a “peer tutor” for a grade-10 history class and a grade-11 improv class, dutifully taking attendance, handing out worksheets, and answering kids’ questions. After I graduated, I coached my school’s improv team for a year, running scene drills and giving notes and cheering for those kids when they performed in improv competitions; the time I spent with that team is still, to this day, one of the proudest achievements of my life.

In recent years, I’ve befriended tons of sex educators – like my friends Bex, Taylor, and Sarah, to name a few – and started to think, “Hey, maybe I could do that too!” Whenever I see a pal wax poetic about blowjobs or kink or Tinder in front of a crowd, it stirs some itchy envy in me. The owner of local sex shop The Nookie, Veronica, kept asking me every time I saw her if I planned on pitching a workshop soon, and my answer was always the same: “I can’t think of any specific topic I know enough about to teach a workshop on!”

That all changed one day on a bus ride home from Hamilton. I’d spent the morning eating breakfast with my friend Suz at a diner, encouraging her to pitch some workshops and helping her brainstorm some ideas. As I sat squeezed into a window seat on a Go bus, staring out at the galloping highway, I suddenly had an idea for a workshop I could teach. And it was a good one.

See, I’m known, in my sex blogger circle, for spreading info on little-known erogenous zones. I’m all about the A-spot, the external G-spot, and the clitoral shaft, to name but a few. Beyond just enjoying stimulation of these spots myself, I also think it’s important we talk about zones like this, so that people don’t feel broken if their enjoyment doesn’t hinge on “typical” things like the G-spot or the tip of the clitoris. Plus, sex isn’t much fun without variety, and learning about different spots can help you achieve that!

I’d long considered teaching a workshop on the A-spot alone, but I wasn’t sure there was enough material there for a full hour-long or 90-minute session. So when it suddenly occurred to me to talk about not only the A-spot but also all the other little-discussed vulvovaginal hotspots, I knew I had my workshop pitch at long last.

I spent the rest of that bus ride frantically making notes, planning and structuring my workshop-to-be. I found that I am bursting with information about these spots, and so excited to share it with curious sex nerds!

So, without further ado: if you’re in Toronto, or can get here, you should come to the debut of my new workshop, Vagic Tricks: Hidden Hotspots of the Vulva and Vagina! It’s happening at The Nookie on Wednesday, November 29th at 8PM. You can buy your ticket online for $25. I hope to see you there, and I can’t wait to teach you what I know!

Monthly Faves: Geeks & Tweed

Kate Sloan

I feel like my mental health picked up a bit this month after being somewhat abysmal since my breakup in August, so that’s been nice! A new job and a new crush are reinvigorating me. Here are some of the sexy things I enjoyed in October…

Sex toys

• I like the new Je Joue bullet more than I was expecting to! It has this great motor that’s rumbly in a different way than I’m used to; it’s hard to describe. I’ll write a full review eventually. When I want a pinpoint clit vibe, lately I’ve been alternating between my Tangos, my ScreamingO Vooom, and this li’l purple bullet. They all have a different quality of vibration, so it’s a good mix!

• I’m also enjoying the Satisfyer Pro Penguin lately. Satisfyer sent me most of their range earlier this year, and to be real with you, my clit is not discerning enough to have a preference between the three (!) Satisfyers I own – but this little pink one wins my heart based on ergonomics and aesthetics alone. The suction-y sensation makes a particularly great pairing with cunnilingus porn!

Fantasy fodder

• There’s a porn company called “Fuck the Geek” which has given a title to a genre of porn I’ve long enjoyed: unreasonably hot woman bangs incongruously schlubby dude. I would imagine the guys who watch this like it because it’s a form of wish fulfilment, much like sitcoms where a Kevin James-lookin’ motherfucker is married to a Leah Remini-lookin’ stunner. But for me, the appeal of these scenes is the dude’s utter incredulity. He can’t believe he’s lucky enough to be getting sucked/fucked by a classically porny starlet – and he and his boner respond with suitable enthusiasm!

• Been thinking a lot about salt-and-pepper daddy doms in tweed jackets (what else is new, right). If a dude looks like a professor from a dramatic teen movie set at a New England boarding school, I probably have a crush on him, and he should really consider spanking me with a wooden ruler. I’m just sayin’.

• This mom-and-son roleplay/blowjob video absolutely fucking delighted me. Mrs. Mischief has such a sense of humor about the whole scene. Plus, she’s a total babe and a dick wiz – I don’t normally eroticize mom/son dynamics very much but this one noticeably turned me on while also making me giggle and applaud.

Sexcetera

• Some of my work elsewhere this month: I wrote about toxic sex toys (including ones containing CHLORINE!) for Glamour. I reported on the orgasm gap for Herizons. I offered some Halloween sexy roleplay suggestions over at Ignite. I wrote some smutty Brooklyn Nine-Nine fanfiction. I discussed ways to introduce a sex toy into your relationship for Peepshow. I talked with Inspirational Songstress about my music, my favorite place to write, and my confidence journey. I guested on What’s My Body Doing? to talk dominance and submission with the ever-adorable Eva.

• Orgasm stats: as of time of writing on the 30th, I’d had 30 orgasms this month, making it an unusually libidinous month for me and bringing my total for the year up to 279 so far. 300 is within reach!! #nerd

Femme stuff

• Autumn always reignites my fondness for dark lipsticks. Lately I’ve been swooning over Sephora cream lip stain in Blackberry Sorbet, MAC lipstick in Fashion Revival, and (the cream of the #SpookyFemme crop) MAC Retro Matte liquid lipstick in Caviar.

• I bought a black crop top at H&M for about $8 and it’s perfect: simple, flattering, easy, and versatile. It pairs well with leggings, skirts, shorts, and even just underwear when I’m loungin’ around the house. I love how it offsets any necklace I wear (including my hot pink internal clit).

• The scents I can’t get enough of this month: Memoirs of a Trespasser by Imaginary Authors is comforting, yet adventurous, like a rugged explorer recounting his journeys to his wife in their cozy house upon his return home. Sir by D.S. & Durga is over-the-top stately masculinity, like I’m snuggled up in the aforementioned fantasy daddy dom’s tweed blazer, sipping whiskey by a roaring fire. Rachel Syme says Cuir by Mona di Orio is the perfume Rosa Diaz would wear, and I am inclined to agree: it’s leathery and fierce and doesn’t care what you think.

Little things

Smoking a joint in the bath while wearing a sheet mask (truly peak #StonerFemme). Big cheap breakfasts at my local diner, where they don’t mind if I sit for hours sipping coffee and writing about kink. The word “yikes.” Being kinky Powerpuff girls with Eva. Spotify algorithms. Improv crushes (fucking always). Merciless to-do lists on pink paper. My dad buying me sushi. Playing sad blowjob songs for Anais on her piano. Attending my high school reunion. My new part-time job at a luxe sex shop! When I told my FWB I kinda wanted to call him Daddy and he reacted with utter nonchalance. Puppy kisses. Sharing pizza, wine, and a huge cookie with Suz in her beautiful apartment. Laura Antoniou’s kinky murder-mystery The Killer Wore Leather. Feeling abundant. Giant donuts at my fave café. Crying with laughter at Catch23. Afternoon naps in my sunny bedroom.

Freelance Friday: Pitching & Procrastinating

Kate Sloan

Q. What are the basics of pitching stories?

A. A pitch is the written equivalent of an audition. It’s you demonstrating not only that you have a great idea for a story, but also that you’re the right person to execute it, at this particular time, for this particular publication.

Pitching was one of the things that intimidated me most when I started journalism school, because it seemed like a code I had to crack. I felt that if I didn’t know the language of pitching, I’d never be able to “make it” as a writer, even if my skills were otherwise solid. This is somewhat true – actors who suck at auditioning don’t book many gigs, even if they’re fabulous once you get ’em on stage or on camera, you know? – but pitching isn’t as difficult as I once believed it was.

Here’s the basic formula. Look up the editor you want to pitch to (I usually sleuth out “sex & relationships” editors, since that’s my niche, but it depends on the piece and the publication) in the outlet’s masthead. (Or, alternatively, reach out to a writer friend who’s worked with that publication before and ask if they’d mind sharing their editor’s contact info.) Check to see if the pub has specific parameters for pitching, and read those carefully. If not, write “PITCH:” in the subject line of your email, followed by a brief headline/title for your idea.

Address the editor by name, if at all possible. Write a quick introduction like, “I’m writing because I have an idea for a story I think would be right up your alley.” Explain your story idea in 2-3 paragraphs. Lay out the main points you’ll make, and how you’ll support them – including anyone you plan to interview for the story. Connect your story to the publication’s particular audience – make it easy for the editor to understand why your story is a good fit for them, specifically. If you can, tie the story to a “news hook” that makes it current (e.g. “I want to write about fisting because International Fisting Day is coming up”). Specify what type of piece you’re hoping to write (news brief? personal essay? longform feature?) and what you estimate the word count might be (although an editor might just tell you the word count they want).

Some publications want you to have already done lots of research by the time you get to the pitching stage, while some are content if you just indicate what research you intend to do if your pitch is accepted. However, it never hurts to do at least a little research in advance, to prove you have access to sources and an understanding of the subject matter. You could, for example, dig up some statistics that prove your central point, interview someone who attended an event you’re reporting on, or reference some other writing that’s been done on the topic you’re tackling (so long as you explain why your story will be different!).

In your last paragraph, give a little context about yourself: explain who you are, what you do, what your credentials are (including a few past publications, if applicable), and why you’re the person to write this story. (Do you have firsthand experience with the subject matter? Are you well-connected with relevant sources? Are you an expert on the subject?) Finish with a nice conclusion (as per advice from Alana Massey, I like “If you’re interested in moving forward with this, let me know your thoughts in terms of angle, deadline, rate, and word count”) and a polite and professional sign-off. (I always include my portfolio URL under my name so editors can check out the rest of my work if they are so inclined.)

While you’re bound to get rejected a fair bit, good pitch skills can take you a long way. Once you get a pitch accepted, it’s just a matter of proving you can actually follow through on researching and writing the piece you’ve pitched!

Q. How do you avoid procrastination? What keeps you so highly motivated?

A. I’m often asked how I manage to crank out 2 to 3 posts a week so consistently. I think the answer is: a blend of caffeine, mental illness, organization, and love.

Let me explain what I mean by each component of that recipe. Love is easy: I have a deep, unending zeal for writing – and writing about sex in particular – that is the core fuel of what I do. Other factors in my life (like the aforementioned mental illness) sometimes obscure my passion for periods of time, but it’s always there, waiting to be rediscovered. If I ever find myself resenting my blog workload or just not feeling as thrilled about it as I normally would be, I know I’m burned out and need to refuel my creative engine. Often I can do that by just taking a few days off from writing (if possible), reading the work of writers I admire (in my genre or not), and then pursuing whatever topics genuinely tug at my curious heart at the time. (Erotic massages? Sex work law? Gloryholes?)

Mental illness is a tricky one. It’s my go-to jokey answer when anyone asks me how I stay so productive – “I’m mentally ill!” I’ll quip with a grin – and that’s an oversimplification but it’s also true. I have bipolar type 2 and my bouts of hypomania are often accompanied by boundless fascination with particular topics or people, more frequent strokes of brilliance, and more energy with which to transform those idea-flashes into fleshed-out pieces. My mental illnesses are a burden but they’re also my superpower. Many times, when Depressed Me was too foggy and forlorn to write a blog post, I’ve said a silent prayer of gratitude for Hypomanic Me and her hours of tireless work: I can often publish a blog post I wrote while manic to fill time while I’m too depressed to write.

That’s where organization comes in: I rely on infrastructure I’ve set up to keep my blog running smoothly, even in times of emotional turmoil. I use the Editorial Calendar plugin to keep all my posts visually organized and scheduled. When I receive a new toy to review, I create a draft of my forthcoming review and add to it whenever I have a relevant thought. When I think of a great idea for a blog post, I make a draft for it and make detailed notes so I can write it later. I work in advance on my regular features, like my Monthly Faves and link round-ups, a little at a time, so the work rarely piles up too much. I keep lists in Evernote and my phone’s Notes app of posts I’d like to write, so I’m never stuck for ideas. Basically, I put in a little work here and there to steadily reduce all the writing-related stressors I can, to make space for myself to actually write.

And when all of that fails me? There’s always caffeine. I get my ass to a coffee shop, order something tall and peppy, sit down with my laptop, and wait for the artificial energy to hit.

Got questions about freelance writing, blogging, or any of my other sexy-scribe activities? Email them to me, or comment below, and I’ll try to tackle ’em here!