In theory, I think we should all face our fears head-on constantly. Every day, we should pick something that makes us nervous and tackle it with full-hearted fury. This would make us better and stronger, day by day by day.
The reality, though, is harder than that. Every fear I confront takes something out of me for a while. It saps me of bravery points. I have to take a beat and let them recharge before I can dive back into the juicy, meaty boldness I ache to embody.
Here are two big fears I conquered this year. There were others, but these were the biggest. They took the most out of me and also gave the most back to me – as conquering your fears is wont to do.
Polyamory. Okay, I’ve been non-monogamous off-and-on for a few years, but this was the first year when it was actually difficult for me. My mid-2016 boyfriend didn’t give me jealousy feelz because I just wasn’t that invested in him; by contrast, I had Primary Partner-level feelings about the dude I dated in mid-2017, and that was not reciprocated. That’s cool – not everybody does the hierarchical poly thing, and I’m not even sure it’s what I want anyway – but it made non-monogamy acutely uncomfortable for me. What had previously felt like a breezy cotton T-shirt now rankled me like an itchy sweater.
I thought, for a long time after the end of that relationship, that maybe its dissolution meant poly wasn’t for me. If I was “meant to be poly,” I reasoned, it wouldn’t have hurt me so badly when my partner pursued another person with the passion of NRE. But in thinking about it more, I’ve come to the conclusion that his way of doing poly wasn’t necessarily the only way or the best way. He started dating someone else two weeks after we met, without even running it by me first, which crushed me and destabilized me before I’d even found my footing in that relationship. I learned from this experience that there are some things I need from my poly relationships, and some things I cannot handle, and those are important things to know.
My current situation is something like what’s known as “solo poly“: maintaining my autonomy, dating several people but not viewing any of them as a “primary partner,” and valuing my own self-care highly. This mental shift has helped me nix most of the jealousy and instability I was feeling earlier this year, because I find that when I don’t view anyone as my main squeeze, I don’t start expecting things from them that they’re unable to give me. The result: a much happier and more balanced dating life, for me and hopefully for my partners as well. Hooray! Here’s to more poly adventures and explorations in 2018.
Polite rejection. Though I’ve been romantically or sexually rejected countless times in my life and it makes me into a teary-eyed mess, I’d rather be the rejectee than the rejector, any day of the week. When someone else did the rejecting, you can blame them, get angry, cry over them, journal about them, rationalize what happened, feel sorry for yourself… but when you’re the one rejecting someone, you only have yourself to blame. It’s not your fault you don’t want to be with them, of course, but it can feel like a deep personal failing sometimes. “Why can’t I just like them?!” you ask yourself in the hollow-hearted dead of night. “Everything would be so much easier if I did!”
The trickiest thing, for me, is turning someone down when they’re completely lovely but I just don’t feel that magical, ineffable chemistry. It feels like punishing a perfectly good person for being perfectly good. it feels like discouraging them from something they should never stop seeking. It feels like the inverse of cruelty I’ve had inflicted on me, and it can be devastating.
This year, however, there were a couple of times I had to put on my Rejector Hat and do the thing. I ultimately came to the conclusion that being upfront and clear is kinder than being wishy-washy and dragging things out. Devising a simple script can help you do what you gotta do; for example: “I’ve really enjoyed our time together, but I’m not really feeling a romantic connection here. I’d still be down to stay friends, though!” If anyone flips out at you for communicating your truth kindly and clearly, that’s on them, not you.
This is the third year I’ve done 12 Days of Girly Juice, and this instalment – the one about my top 3 favorite sexual encounters of the entire year – is always one of the most fun to write, and one of the most difficult to decide on.
This was true in 2015, when my sex life wasn’t terribly robust but each sexcapade nonetheless felt fresh and magical – and it was true in 2016, when my sex life was hoppin’ and each new partner brought something wonderfully different to the table. This year, I had more sex than either of those years, and, once again, it’s been tricky to choose just 3 encounters that stick out in my mind as top-o’-the-charts. But I think these 3 represent the kind of year I had sexually – which is to say, a very, very good year.
Kink Mastery
I had a boyfriend from April to August who became, even in that short timeframe, one of my top-3 lifetime sexual partners by number of encounters – topped only by my previous long-term loves of 3.5 years and 1.5 years, respectively. That he managed to barrel into my top 3 in the few months we dated speaks to what total horndogs we were, both separately and (especially) together. Our kinks aligned perfectly, like lock and key – and when two sexually compatible pervs come together like that, lots and lots of good sex tends to ensue.
It’s difficult for me – even now, months after the breakup that devastated me – to look back on those experiences without sadness and remorse. But I’m getting there. The reason the relationship unraveled was that we didn’t actually have much in common outside of our sex life, a fact that seemed frustratingly inconsequential to me at the time but would’ve become more and more apparent if we’d kept dating. So I’m starting to view that relationship as what it was: a blisteringly hot sexual tryst, the romantic backdrop of which is ultimately forgettable and unimportant. (Does that sound mean? Well, it’s okay, because he broke my heart. As Anne Lamott says, “If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”)
Anyway, we had a lot of good sex, some of which still guiltily hangs out in my autoerotic archives. But one encounter that particularly sticks out to me is this: one night in May, we kissed and groped and moaned together in his cozy bed in a west-Toronto basement apartment. He spanked me over his lap, taking me into subspace sternly and easily. He made me suck his cock while he held my wrists down flat on the bed so I couldn’t use my hands, then fucked my face while holding me firmly by the throat, combining two acts I’d hated with everyone before him but somehow loved with him.
After that, he tied my wrists and thighs together with rope and fucked me, circling my clit with his fingers all the while, in the manner of someone who’s fucked me enough to know how to do it properly. He untied me and went down on me until I came in his mouth, spacey and incoherent, and then he held me down and fucked me until he came inside me, leaving a deep bite mark on my shoulder that I admired for days afterward.
What this relationship ultimately taught me is that I’m willing to put up with a lot of painful complications in exchange for good sex – and that maybe that shouldn’t be the case, going forward. But damn, was the sex ever fantastic.
Casual and Wonderful
In January, I spotted a boy from across a room and immediately thought, “Damn. Who is that?” It was the truest example of “infatuation at first sight” I can remember experiencing in a long, long time. He was geeky, cool, and unassuming. I felt my breath catching and was vaguely aware I had started to sweat. And then he turned, noticed me, and I saw him having what looked like the same reaction to me that I’d just had to him. He walked up to me, said breezily, “I don’t think we’ve met,” and introduced himself. A few minutes later, he was casually saying, “We should go to [local sex club] Oasis together.” It’s emblematic of my social anxiety and insecurity that even then, I didn’t fully realize or accept he was into me. Silly girl!
Over the months that followed, we gradually became fuckbuddies, and then, at some point, actual friends with benefits in the true sense. We’d meet at the sex club once a month or so, have drinks in the heated outdoor pool while catching up on each other’s lives, and then get down to the sexytimes. I found that every time we parted ways, I felt good – uplifted, confident, desirable, satisfied – in a way I’d never really felt when saying goodbye to other previous fuckpals. There was no sense of longing or rejection; I didn’t want any more from him than he was able to give me, and vice versa. It was a kind of casual bliss.
My favorite encounter with this handsome weirdo so far was much like most of the others. We hung out in the pool for a while, chatting and laughing. When I finished my drink and set it down by the side of the pool, my pal pushed me up against the wall and kissed me, fierce yet unhurried. I moaned, as I always do when he kisses me; he’s very, very good at it. He pushed his hardness against me through his swim briefs while we continued to make out and I felt myself get more and more turned on – another remarkable talent of his, given how difficult it is for me to relax into sexual situations in public.
There came a point where the things I wanted to do to him were no longer possible in the swimming pool, unless I intended to drown, so I told him we should go upstairs to the third floor – an area specifically designated for sex, where all men have to be accompanied by at least one woman to dissuade creeps. He pressed me harder against the pool wall, playfully kissing me and grinding against me until I reached a zenith of arousal so intense that I had to say, “No, seriously, let’s go. I want you to fuck me.” His signature goofy grin appeared as he said, “Yeah, that sounds good,” and followed me out of the pool.
Once upstairs, we kissed more, all chlorine-scented and towel-swaddled, and he pushed my towel aside so he could go down on me while I melted and writhed and called out meaningless syllables over the cacophony of other people fucking in the next room. Before too long, he was pushing two fingers inside me, deep, stroking me exactly the way I like it without needing to be told, and I was coming on his hand, feeling unrushed and unpressured. He’s very good, I thought, like I always do with him.
Then he fucked me relentlessly with his absolutely excellent dick, muttering all the while about how tight and hot and wet I was, until we collapsed in a damp heap on the red vinyl.
I treasure our post-sex ritual almost as much as our sex itself: we cuddle casually while watching and mocking the bad porn always playing on massive TV screens around the room. He makes me laugh and makes me feel safe. That night, I stayed until I was too tired to keep my eyes affixed on the porn anymore, and then he walked me downstairs, I got dressed, and we said good night.
The breakdown of romantic relationships always makes me especially grateful for my intimate relationships that are not romantic – their specialness and specificity, the affirmation they provide without demanding much in return, the needs they fulfill for me when more “serious” relationships feel too intense or difficult or unattainable. That hookup on the top floor of Oasis left me glowing, and not hurting. Except for the dull ache in my vag that means I’ve been well and truly fucked.
Sexplorations
This list is about my favorite encounters of the year – which, to be clear, doesn’t always necessarily mean the best sex I had all year. Sometimes the most memorable and meaningful encounters are also clumsy, imperfect, unpracticed. Sometimes sex is good emotionally moreso than physically – and sometimes it’s both.
Last week I went to hang out with a long-time far-away Twitter crush for a planned date. We had negotiated a broad range of activities, mostly including him inflicting sensations to me and exerting control over me, because that, as you may know, is my jam. Usually.
But once I got there, things felt different. I am ordinarily the subbiest sub and the bottomiest bottom, but this sweet pervy man turned to mush any time I climbed on top of him or told him what to do, even with commands as innocuous as “Come here so I can fix the tag on your T-shirt.” My dormant inner domme stirred, as we pushed and pulled each other’s limits and buttons. “I think I want to sit on your face,” I proposed as we laid in bed many hours into a multi-chapter sex-a-thon, and his voice trembled with excitement as he breathed, “Okay.”
Facesitting doesn’t have to be a dominant act, and I’ve done it as a submissive many times. Someone can pull you onto their face and hold you there until they’ve had your fill of you, while they lie with their head on a comfy pillow like a gluttonous monarch. This was not that, though. This time I was the queen… and his face was my throne.
I tugged on his curls to get him exactly where I wanted him, and took from him all the pleasure I wanted for as long as I wanted. When I was done, I brushed my hand along his skin, his chest hair, his belly and hips and the significant swell in his boxers. “Tell me what you want,” I murmured in his ear.
“I… I don’t feel I have the… the right to ask for anything right now,” he stammered subbily. I smiled.
“It wasn’t a question,” I clarified. “Tell me what you want. Nobody said you’re gonna get it.”
He swallowed hard. His words weren’t working so well. “I want to come,” he managed, at length. “I want your mouth on me.”
I purred with pleasure. This was the answer I wanted and he knew it. I crawled down his body and began to tease him with my tongue. A leisurely almost-blowjob, purely for my own tactile pleasure, my own amusement. “Tell me how beautiful I am,” I ordered, and he did. “Now tell me three things you like about my mouth,” I continued, and he did – still stammering, still barely coherent. “Do I need to stop?” I warned, his cock stilled in one hand, when he couldn’t quite get through an answer. “No, no, please,” he protested, and tried to get the words out. Good boy, I thought, but did not say, because my mouth was full of him. A very good boy indeed.
Dominance has always scared me because I anxiously and self-doubtingly believe no one will ever really want to do the things I tell them to do, because I’m not worthy of being wanted that much. But what I’ve learned is that some people do want me that much, and that sometimes the strength of their desire can lend me a confidence I don’t otherwise possess. And that can heal me, a little bit. As I take my pleasure from an obedient cutie, I can also pull some strength from them, some focus, some courage. Kink, as I’ve noted here many times before, is so much more than just a “sex thing.”
Ah, sexuality events! Those saucy gatherings in dimly-lit venues, where I can be my truest self and wear my babeliest outfits. Here were my top 4 favorites of 2017… (Previously: 2016, 2015.)
Spit nights at Oasis. Local indie porno babes Spit put on a bimonthly night o’ magic at Toronto sex club Oasis Aqualounge. I’ve spent more time at Oasis this year than any other year of my life – mostly making out with my fuckpal in the pool, because damn that’s a good pool, and damn that’s a cute boy – and Spit’s events are always my favorite nights to be there. The crowd skews younger, there’s always a live porn shoot to ooh and aah over, and there’s often also a smutty variety show featuring comedians, poets, and musicians. (This year I performed in both a porn shoot and a variety show, because I am a well-rounded individual!)
Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit. This was on last year’s list but I couldn’t omit it from this year’s; it was just too damn good, once again. I made lots more blogger friends, cackling with them in clandestine hotel crannies until the wee small hours. We did a live Dildorks recording in front of a crowd. I learned so many interesting things at the sessions. Mostly, I felt a sense of community and solidarity with other Professional Sex People that I rarely get to feel throughout the rest of the year. Here’s hoping I can make it to this great event in 2018 as well!
Vagic Tricks. I was so excited this year to premiere my new workshop on little-known erogenous zones of the vulva and vagina. I don’t know if in-person sex education is really my medium – I feel like I convey my thoughts better through writing, which also incidentally makes me much less nervous! – but it was a fun challenge nonetheless. I was surprised by how many people came out to hear what I had to say, and I’ve heard from a few of them who told me my lessons have already upgraded their sex lives. Yay!
The Pink Market is a queer/feminist craft market. Yes, it is as great as it sounds, if not better. The booths are jam-packed with embroideries, leather goods, artisanal impact toys, art prints, pinback buttons, engraved pencils, and so much more. It’s the perfect place to stock up on holiday gifts for all your favorite weirdos and queerdos. I hope this event keeps happening year after year, because I love it so damn much!
What were your favorite sex-related events of the year?
This is one of my favorite instalments of 12 Days of Girly Juice each year, because I get to honor the folks who have genuinely changed my life and the way I think over the past 365 days. (Previously: 2016, 2015.) I’m lucky enough to have access to tons of mentors in my field – smart, curious people who are generous with their knowledge and energy – and I’ve soaked up so much wisdom from them this year. Here are 5 of the most important teachers and mentors I’ve idolized this year, even if they had no idea I was viewing them as such.
Mollena Williams-Haas is a tour de force, a badass, a whirling firestorm of candor and insight. I first learned about her at the Playground Conference in 2015, where she and her husband/Master were the keynote speakers, and I was instantly struck by her story. A kink educator and advocate, for a long time she was single and sad about it, unable to find a dominant who complemented her particular style of submission and was also a person she could love. The way she tells it, she had given up on love entirely, when suddenly a mysterious message landed in her OkCupid inbox. The message turned out to be from Georg Friedrich Haas, a German composer with long-suppressed dominant desires. They met, fell in love, and the rest is history.
Beyond just being massively inspirational for a sometimes-lonely and always-romantic submissive comme moi, Mollena is also brilliant and I’ve learned so much from her. She always has a nuanced and clued-in take on things like race play, sobriety, and service. My friend Bex often says they would happily listen to Mollena explain how to boil water, or something equally mundane, and I would have to agree: she elevates and illuminates any conversation she’s a part of.
Dr. Laurie Mintz published a book this year called Becoming Cliterate which would not have crossed my desk if not for an editor I sometimes work with, who emailed me to ask if I wanted to review the book for her magazine. What was supposed to be a short book review turned into a feature story about the orgasm gap, because I was so fired up by what I read in Mintz’s book (as well as Sarah Barmak’s Closer) that I wanted to write more about it. I felt the public needed to hear about what these two people were saying: that gendered orgasm inequality still exists, and that the solution to this problem requires action on both individual and systemic levels.
A lot of “how to orgasm” advice aimed at women puts the onus on the woman to physically stimulate herself, or to find ways to wring a statistically improbable orgasm from penis-in-vagina sex so as not to offend the man she’s presumably sleeping with. What I like about Mintz’s book is that it talks about alternative solutions to this problem – oral sex, supplemental clit stim, sex toys, etc. – and it also emphasizes the communication skills one needs to make the brash assertion, “My orgasm matters, too, and here’s how we’re going to make it happen.” Interviewing Laurie for my story was a joy, and I’m so glad her book exists, so I can gleefully shove it into the hands of anyone who needs a little clitoral bravery!
Reid Mihalko is the first cis man to ever appear on this list in the 3 years I’ve been doing it. Normally I relate better to sex educators who’ve been raised as female, because they grasp the specific struggles I tend to grapple with. But Reid’s wisdom was invaluable to me this year, and I think anyone of any gender or sexual orientation could learn a lot from him.
Reid teaches a broad range of subjects, from sex techniques to dating strategies to advanced relationship skills, but the two things with which he’s helped me the most are flirting and jealousy. His approach to flirting is authentic, confident, and playful, and he’s taught me exciting new tricks in that arena, including meta-communication, a toolbox I pull from all the time. Meanwhile, his “eight-armed monster” framework for understanding jealousy has repeatedly helped me figure out why certain relationships made me feel more jealous than others, and what I could do about it. I’m sure his work will continue to help me in my dating life for many years to come!
Caitlin K. Roberts was essentially the catalyst for me getting involved in my local sex-positive community ~5 years ago, and she continues to shake up my paradigm on the regular. This year she pursued training in sexological bodywork and sex surrogacy work, and upon her return to Toronto, she started hosting little pay-what-you-can educational sex lectures in her living room. I went to a few, took ample notes like the geekiest keener, and left with my brain swollen from new knowledge. Concepts like Betty Martin’s Wheel of Consent and sensate focus are still rattling around in my brain, encouraging me to reexamine how I experience sex and how I would like to experience sex.
On a more personal note, I went for a four-handed erotic massage with Caitlin and her collaborator Cosmo three days after a harrowing breakup, and it was a revelation of pleasurable healing. Caitlin brought so much sex magic to my life this year – and every year that I’ve known her, really – and for that, I’m so grateful.
Girl on the Net is one of my favorite sex bloggers, and actually one of my favorite writers, full-stop. Her writing is filthy, witty, and fearless in the way it probes into all facets of sex: the hot, the sad, the dark, the astonishing. She regularly reminds me of all the reasons I love sex, and all the ways sex can scare me.
When I first set out on this sex blogging adventure almost six years ago, I deeply admired women writers who were able to capture the gross, gritty, often mundane realities of female sexuality. Men can talk about quick stress-relief wanks and everyday horndog leering like it’s no big deal, while our culture often depicts women’s sexuality as sensual and sacred – which had rarely been my experience of it. I loved – and still love – writers like Girl on the Net and Epiphora who present a more casual, everyday picture of what it’s like to be a libidinous lady. It’s not all rose petals, sax music, and Epsom salt baths – nor should it be. I’m grateful to writers who showed me I could write about sex in a different way.
Who have been your sex-positive superheroes this year?
Once again this year, journaling was a core part of my mood management toolbox. It helped me through countless emotional snafus and cognitive difficulties. In conjunction with cognitive-behavioral therapy and good social supports, it’s probably saved my life multiple times this year. I combed through my Moleskine journals from 2017 and picked out 6 of my favorite excerpts…
March 25th
Feeling casually miserable today. I’m sad about C___ in the sense that mild C___-sadness has been a baseline of my mood for the past year and a half. Wanting him feels like a permanent feature of my heart at this point. And it’s not like I want him passionately, irrationally, like I used to – and it’s not like I can’t be around him with wanting to cry or say “I love you” – but it’s still there. It’s melodramatic to say I’ll always be a little bit in love with him; I don’t think that’s strictly true. But it’ll probably be a while before I stop mentally comparing all romantic and sexual interests to him and finding that he invariably wins in all the ways that matter most deeply to me.
April 15th
Went on a dinner/drinks date with that guy T___ last night. He is a mega-dork, very polite and gentlemanly and respectful. We had a good long conversation, but I wasn’t entirely sold on him; however, then we made out in a dark alcove and I felt… swayed by biology. He just feels good in my senses. He smells and tastes and feels good to me, just his skin and his essence. Ungh.
He’s also a gooooood kisser, which I’ve become increasingly aware is an important thing to me over the past few years. I remember how K___’s makeout skillz kept me hooked even though he was demonstrably a bad-for-me weirdo, and how V___’s overzealous tongue was the nail in the coffin of any attraction that might have been. T___’s lips felt thick and soft, and he alternately cupped my face and groped my ass, and he’s tall enough that I feel towered over but not so tall that we can’t get all tangled up and breathlessly close. (I keep having to take breaks while writing this to sigh dramatically and smile like a goon.)
Occasionally people would walk by and he would stop kissing me because he knew I was uncomfortable with the PDA (such a gentleman) but he would still stand so close to me. “They’ll just think we’re having a heart-to-heart,” he said, and I laughed into his suit jacket.
-There are bite marks on my neck, hip, breast, shoulder, and thighs.
-Last night G___ took me to have drinks with some of his friends because it’d be “a good way for us to do a thing together that involves other humans and isn’t sex for a minute. Before we go back to mine and have sex.” I like his friends and we had fun.
-This morning he had me lie over his lap while he gave me a long, thorough spanking. He is really sadistic in ways that I love. It’s so nice to not have to feel like a partner is administering a spanking because I want it, but rather because we both want it. Ahhh.
-We went to the café around the corner, where he made me a soy latte with his impressive and hot barista skillz and then we played Scrabble while occasionally smiling like idiots at each other.
-I was about to get on the streetcar when we started discussing the possibility of making out in a park or an alley somewhere, because neither of us had anything important to do today. We walked by an alley and I said, “This could work,” but he kept walking and said, casually, confidently, “I was thinking we would just go back to my house and I would fuck you.” Uh, he is very very good.
September 24th
Q. What have I gained since my relationship ended?
A. An even clearer idea of how much my friends love me. A print byline in Glamour magazine. My first apartment. A greater sense of independence, and also a greater knowledge of on whom I can actually depend. A new kinda-beau. A new set of nipple clamps. Thousands of dollars, and additional shameless confidence about how much money I make. A huge full-length mirror in which to contemplate my own beauty. More blog readers, Twitter followers, admirers. A ton of smart, funny, insightful writing about what I have just been through. The knowledge, ultimately, that even someone I love breaking my heart cannot really break me; that the things I most fear are never actually that bad. An increased ease of breathing, now that the constant fear of being dumped doesn’t loom over me anymore. Much more time to myself, to write, read, rest, listen to jazz, enjoy my own company, go to shows, go on dates, imagine the kind of life I want. The freedom to ponder, unfettered and unbiased, what degree of non-monogamy I want my future relationships to involve. An increased frequency and enjoyment of masturbation, fantasies and all. Money I would have spent on him, available to be saved, or spent on things that make me happy.
October 11th
It’s been 2 months since my break-up, and over 9 weeks since the last time we had sex. I am plagued by nostalgic sexual fantasies about him. My horndog brain replays all the orgasms and hot encounters ad nauseum and tells me I’ll never find sex that good again, I don’t deserve to. I know that’s bullshit but also it gets all tangled up with nonsexual break-up sadness (of which there is much less than the sexual kind, at this point) and that makes what happened feel insurmountable, still stupidly absorbing, even this long after.
I still – frequently – fantasize/daydream/hope/dread that I will run into him in a public place, that he will be filled with regret and lust and grief and desire, and that we will have sex again and everything will be solved. I know realistically that even if sex with him were to become an option again (which it will not), that I could not go deep into kink and immersively good sex with someone I know I cannot trust anymore with my delicate heart. I desperately miss fucking someone who knew all my buttons and exactly how to push them, but that person can never be him again, and there will be others. I know. I know.
October 18th
Was talking to C___ today about our respective romantic obsessions du jour – his, a cute girl who he fingerbanged after their first date last night; mine, these thus-far fruitless and pathetic crushy pangs toward N___ – and we both kind of cynically half-acknowledged how prone we are to brief, fiery fixations that burn our lives down and then dissolve in a puff of smoke.
This is, I think, one of the core kernels of our enduring friendship: this shared tendency to over-rely on romantic and sexual stimulation for validation and happiness, and a problem staying interested in people once we discover they don’t solve every problem we’ve ever had. It’s hilarious how similar we are in this way. And it’s nice to have a friend in my life who directly understands this quality of mine, unlike people like Bex and Cadence, who (although I love them very much) are too level-headed to really ever take my mega-crushes seriously. (Not that anyone should necessarily take them seriously. I mean, for heaven’s sake, I’m sitting here at the sex shop imagining what it would be like to be used as a footstool by a man I can’t even find the courage to talk to. I am a joke and it’s hysterical.)