Bex

12 Days of Girly Juice 2020: 7 Bangin’ Selfies

Kate Sloan

Every December, I write about some of the most significant selfies I took throughout the year. Despite the fact that I spent most of 2020 sitting on my couch in my pajamas (anyone else?!), I nonetheless managed to take many photos of special moments with special people. Here are 7 of my faves!

January 13th

This was taken while Bex and I were on a work trip to Burbank, California. We had been provisionally hired to helm a sex magazine which never ended up happening (thanks, COVID) and had to spend a couple days chatting with fellow sex-industry professionals at ANME and learning about the latest innovations in the sex toy field.

They have legal weed over there, so we got a little silly. I snapped this selfie on our way back into our hotel after a smoke break in the parking lot; I had gotten wayyy too high on that legendarily strong California kush, and my childlike glee started to break through the veneer of polished adulthood we’d had to project all day at the tradeshow. Bex, sensing my over-intoxication, helped me plan my next steps, and when we got back to our room, he encouraged me to get into a hot bath and call my partner so they could take care of me over the phone.

I love this picture because it captures so much of what I love most about my friendship with Bex: our ability to make each other howl with laughter. It’s the reason our podcast has remained so fun to do all these years, and it’s one of the things I missed most about my normal, pre-pandemic social life while everything was up in the air this year.

January 17th

It’s still so wild to me that I wrote a book. It’s not coming out until September 2021, but at this point it’s been so long since I actually wrote the thing that sometimes I forget what my daily routine was like during that process. My calendar archives make it very clear, however, that I was surprisingly disciplined and productive for a chronically fatigued person, generally writing 2 short chapters every weekday for about 3 months. I’m proud of myself!

This photo was taken the night of my official book deadline. I’d submitted the completed manuscript a couple days earlier, because I have way too much anxiety to leave things like that to the last minute, but it still felt like a momentous day. My partner and my friends encouraged me to get dressed up and go out for a solo date to celebrate. I put on one of my favorite dresses and a full face of pretty makeup, and walked down to the Fairmont Royal York hotel, which contains the Library Bar, an ornate and auspicious salon filled with good books and excellent cocktails. It’s the same place Matt and I went when I ceremonially signed my book contract and had some celebratory drinks, so it made sense to return there when the book was finished, albeit by myself.

I have a lot of trouble acknowledging and celebrating my own achievements, even big ones. Part of me always believes I didn’t quite earn them, or that something will go disastrously wrong and I’ll embarrass myself somehow if I actually take ownership of what I’ve achieved. But it felt good to sip a dirty martini by myself and write in my journal about how proud I was to have written a whole goddamn book.

February 22nd

Doing shrooms for the first time was one of the oddest things I did all year. I took them (in tea form) in the early afternoon, and what followed was basically a full day of laughing, crying, dancing, marching, hallucinating, joking, and singing. Fortunately my trip-sitter and friend Brent willingly put up with all of it.

I think I took this selfie when Brent had stepped out of the room for a few minutes. His presence had been an anchor to my floaty mind, and I’d gotten mildly panicky every previous time he’d tried to step out, so this time I picked up my phone (even though my phone had been unofficially off-limits to me all day because of the loopy things I might tweet) and texted my partner so I could make it through the duration until Brent got back. But in classic “me” fashion, I also needed to take a selfie.

This picture really captures the childlike giddiness I felt for much of my shrooms trip. While I didn’t necessarily have any of the “epiphanies” many people report from psychedelics, the experience did lead me to reflect on the artifice and malleability of (some aspects of) identity – and truth be told, I like the part of me that’s silly and happy-go-lucky, whether she shows up in an age-play scene or during a shrooms trip. This photo shows a side of me I sometimes ignore or repress, but I’d probably be much happier if I let her out to play more often, like I did on that day.

March 8th

This picture is important to me because it was taken at the last big event I went to before the coronavirus shut everything down.

My mom and I went for dinner at Insomnia – y’all, I miss their kale salad with grilled chicken so much that my stomach made excited anticipatory noises as I was writing this sentence – and then we walked across the street to the Bloor Cinema, where Drunk Feminist Films was holding a screening of Cats. I had thus far avoided seeing Cats even though everyone was saying it was the most outrageously goodbad movie in decades, but I knew Drunk Feminist Films would be the best possible setting in which to see it, and I was right.

As far as “last major outings before a global pandemic” go, this one was pretty excellent. I was wearing pink sequinned cat ears. I was quite tipsy. I was with my mom, who I love and who makes me laugh a lot. There were whispers about “that coronavirus thing” but I wasn’t all that concerned yet. And I got to scream at the screen, along with hundreds of other raucous feminists, about Judi Dench breaking the fourth wall and Ian McKellen drinking milk from a bowl. I have a few coronavirus-related regrets from this year, but attending that screening of Cats is not one of them.

June 20th

After months of staying at home, the case numbers finally started to decrease to a level where I felt comfortable visiting my family, who had also remained at home except for essential trips to the grocery store or pharmacy. My mom picked up Matt and me and drove us to her house, where we drank martinis in the back yard with my mom and brother, told stories, and joked around.

I know I’m not alone in feeling that this year really emphasized the importance of family and togetherness (to the extent that such things are possible and enjoyable for you – I know not everyone is lucky enough to have a family they like, who likes them back). You can see in my face in this photo that this was no ordinary “sitting around drinking and chatting” kind of night – this was special, even though the tone was casual. I was so glad to finally get to see these people again who had seemed hundreds of miles away even when they were just across the city from me.

September 15th

This photo represents two of the major kinks Matt and I played with together this year: chastity and financial domination. While they were locked up in chastity, we decided it would be fun to do one of our long-distance “phone dates” – wherein we each go to a restaurant or bar in our respective cities and talk on the phone throughout – but for them to foot the bill for the entire evening, because sometimes it turns them on to spoil me.

I put on the set of blue Agent Provocateur lingerie Matt had bought me as an earlier financial domination task, and added (of course) the necklace on which I keep my key to their chastity cage. On top of that, I wore a blue dress and a yellow cardigan, and walked to a restaurant Matt had chosen for me in swanky Yorkville called Sassafraz. (I sat outdoors, away from other guests; me and the staff had masks on whenever possible; there was ample hand sanitizer available; etc. etc.) We chatted on the phone during dinner, and they paid for my whole meal and my Uber ride back home.

I like this photo because I look powerful in it, even though you can’t see my face. Being dominant doesn’t come naturally to me, but this year I’ve enjoyed finding new ways my dominance can manifest, and how those newer routes can help me access different sides of my dominance that feel authentic and restorative. Here’s to more kinky adventures in 2021 (hopefully also in gorgeous lingerie)!

November 14th

A wedding-day selfie was a necessary inclusion in this post, of course!

As I explained on a recent Dildorks episode about weddings, although it’s common for couples to avoid seeing each other before the event so as to preserve the surprise, Matt and I decided not to do it that way for our tiny COVID wedding. It just made more sense for us to both get ready at their apartment and then walk over to the wedding location together.

I had thought this might feel disappointing when we actually did it, but it was totally fine, and even kinda fun. On such a potentially nervewracking day, it was nice to be with the person who alleviates my nerves most skilfully – and also to share in our excitement together.

We took this selfie just before heading out to Madison Square Park to get married. We look happy, calm, and excited to continue our lives together. ❤️

 

In the comments, feel free to tell me about a favorite selfie you took this year, and what made it so special!

12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 7 Bangin’ Selfies

Kate Sloan

Today’s 12 Days of Girly Juice post highlights the 7 selfies I took this year that really tell the story of my 2018, which was… a difficult call, to say the least. Also, yeesh, it was hard not to make these just 7 great pictures of me with my boyfriend, BUT I REFRAINED. (Partially.) Enjoy…

I spent many, many hours on the phone with my Sir this year. If we conservatively guesstimate 2.5 hours a night, every night – keeping in mind that most of our phone calls last about 4 hours, but we skip nights here and there – that adds up to over 900 hours on the phone. But, as I reasoned to myself every time I wondered if this is excessive: if we weren’t a long-distance couple, it’s likely we would have spent at least that many hours together over the course of the year. So. Maybe it’s slightly less ridiculous viewed through that lens.

In any case, this is a photo I took while on the phone with Matt, and it captures a joy I rarely manage to depict in my selfies. I’m relaxed, I’m subby, I’m collared, I’m little, and I’m talking to someone I love. Last year’s selfies roundup also included a gleeful moment on the phone; I guess long, intimate, giggly calls with beaux have brought out some of my happiest times in the past year. And I’m fine with that. Some naysayers criticize technology for encouraging social detachment and isolation, but for me this year, technology – like FaceTime and Apple Calendar and Google Docs – served mostly to make me feel closer to my loved ones, not further away from them. Any technology that brings forth a smile this gleeful can’t be all bad.

The most important aesthetic decision I made this year was getting a new tattoo. Big, beautiful flowers framed by a bold, unmissable message. Shout-outs once again to Tender Ghost for the original idea and to Laura Blaney for bringing my vision to life in her signature gorgeous style; I’m happy with this beaut every time I look at it.

I took lots of selfies in the days and weeks after getting this image inked on me. Like all the best tattoos, it helped me feel more connected to my appearance, like I had more of a stake in it and more control over it. Even on days when I otherwise felt unattractive, seeing this art on my arm made me feel like I was, myself, a work of art. So I took selfie after selfie, showing myself – proving to myself – just how deeply pretty I really am.

Another moment of unadulterated glee. We snapped this on a sunny day in July, during one of Matt’s many visits to me in Toronto. We had just done an impromptu hypno scene in a nearby parkette, hence the mutual post-kink glow. I love looking for hints of our D/s dynamic in photos of us: the shyness of my submissive smile, the “watchful proud daddy” vibes in his face and his posture.

Also notable: our matching outfits. A mantra in our relationship is “We match”; I like to say it when one or the other of us is worried that our feelings are excessive, unprecedented. If one of us is feeling “too” in love and panicking about it, or missing the other “too” much and feeling guilty about it, it’s helpful to be reminded that we’re almost always on the same page, feelings-wise. We love each other a lot. We have no chill. We match. It’s for this reason that Matt started choosing coordinating ensembles for us when possible, and I love it. Especially when we’re both in blue, because, well… we have a history with that color.

It’s impossible to write about my 2018 without writing about travel, since I did so much of it – and it’s impossible for me to write about travel without complaining about it, because travel stresses me the fuck out. (Extremely #FirstWorldProblems, I am well aware.)

This is one of those photos taken automatically by a machine in the customs area of an airport – “Remove your hat and sunglasses; look at the camera; we are now taking your picture” – and, while they’re never very flattering, this one takes the cake. I had never before seen a photo of me that so perfectly captures how I feel about traveling.

It’s strange that someone with so many airport-related anxieties, someone prone to fainting on buses and crying on trains, would end up in a long-distance relationship. But maybe it’s actually perfect. Maybe being reunited once again with my beloved is one of the only things capable of pushing me through those fears to the other side.

That said, I definitely prefer when he comes to visit me and I can just meet him in the arrivals area and then go home. There are, after all, no TSA agents or grumpy entitled men or bureaucratic nightmares in my home – and there is a comfy bed where I get to kiss my boyfriend and don’t even have to show anyone my passport in order to be admitted.

This photo was taken impulsively during a jaunt to a local sex shop with a few other sex-blogger babes, just after the Playground Conference here in Toronto. I was, and am, stunned that this career and this community have enabled me to make friends from literally all around the world: the ladies pictured here come from areas as wide-reaching as Hamilton, New England, and (wait for it) FINLAND. Amazing!

When I was a baby sex nerd reading erotica anthologies in my childhood bedroom and illicitly listening to sex podcasts in math class, I never dreamed that one day my sex-nerdiness would lead me not only to an incredible career but also to friendships that cross national borders and lift me up every day. What a beautiful life I’ve carved out for myself, and what wonderful people I’ve found to share it with.

No post like this would be complete without a selfie taken with Bex, my best friend. We didn’t take many this year, but hopefully that just means we’ll take more next year.

This smiley selfie was snapped at a sexual science symposium. (I like alliteration!) We got together with my ex-sugar daddy and his wife – quite an odd crew, to say the least – and went to this big gorgeous science center in New York to chat with dildo-makers, sexual psychologists, strap-on experts, and more.

When this photo was taken, Bex and I were extremely high from some pre-event tokin’ and smokin’. It was around Valentine’s Day so the whole joint was littered with little heart-shaped candies, which we kept munching because weed. With Bex giggling next to me, asking the speakers pertinent questions, and occasionally producing candy from their jacket pocket to appease me, I knew that he was truly the best friend I need and deserve.

I’ll close on another happy note. Matt took this picture of us in our hotel bathroom on our first night at the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit – one of the first events we’d ever attended together as a couple, and the first time I was introducing him to many of my friends in the blogging community. I’m visibly proud to be at an industry event, representing my business and my brand, with someone I love so much.

And once again, we match. Blue and pink: my blog-branding colors, my two favorite colors, and also two of the bi pride colors (we’re both queerdos!). Someone noticed our coordinating outfits, and asked Matt, gesturing at his shirt, “Did you do that on purpose?” He smiled a proud-daddy smile and replied, “Of course.” I felt as brightly happy as the pink flowers bursting open on my dress.

Long-Time Listener, First-Time Collar

Kate Sloan

I didn’t want to buy my own collar. I was a single submissive, unowned, unneeded, and unmoored. As much as I might want a band of evocative leather around my throat, buying one seemed as gauche as buying one’s own engagement ring before even meeting a person one would like to marry. But I wanted one nonetheless. (A collar, that is; not an engagement ring. Although, for some kinksters, that’s a distinction without a difference.)

My best friend Bex bought me my first collar. They presented it to me on my 24th birthday, in the front seat of their car, while we zoomed from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin on the middle leg of a road trip. It was exactly perfect: the Aslan Leather Nicki collar, made of berry-pink leather banded with black.

I gasped. I cried. “I can be my own daddy,” I mused, clutching the leather to my chest.

“Exactly,” Bex said, and I knew they understood me more deeply than any best friend I’d ever had.

Later that day, somewhere in Cleveland, we pulled over on a side street and got out to go scavenge for lunch. “Do I have to take my collar off because we’re going to be around vanilla people?” I asked, tugging self-consciously on the metal ring at my throat.

“No,” Bex said.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive, little one.”

We strolled along that sunny side street and our glamorous friend C. added, “If anybody catcalls you or says anything about your collar, I’ll hit them with my parasol.” Thankfully, they didn’t have to.

Sometimes you don’t know how badly you want something until you almost-but-don’t-quite get it.

My first daddy dom told me five days after we met that he was available to be the primary partner I wanted, then told me weeks later, by which time he was juggling three partners, “I don’t remember saying that, and I don’t think I would have said that.” He promised to turn an old telephone table into a spanking bench painted my favorite colors, but only got as far as sanding before giving up on the project and on me. His idea of love and care was “I thought about bringing you chocolate, but I ran out of time.” “I almost texted you, but then I got distracted.” “Really? Did I say that? That doesn’t sound like something I would say.”

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when he promised to make me a collar and that never happened either.

I was so excited when he made this offhand vow. I went home and started Googling collar pictures: collars with chainmail, collars with filigree, collars with hearts. I wanted one with a heart, I knew. There was never any question in my mind.

There was never any question, either, about whether he was the right person to put my first capital-C Collar on me, the first person to have that degree of power over me. “Fuuuck,” I wrote in my journal. “How have I known this person less than two weeks and already I want him to own me?” He wasn’t even “boyfriend” yet and already I wanted him to be Daddy, Sir, owner. How like me, to give my heart away with the force and velocity of a six-year-old playing a game of Hot Potato.

One hot July night, he cancelled our plans to go to Tell Me Something Good together at the last minute, playing the “tired” card – another broken promise – so I went with a gaggle of pals instead. I got up and told the crowd a story about a spanking gone awry, and garnered scores high enough to win a prize at the end of the night. My eyes swept across the prize table, trying to select my reward, when I saw it: a silver heart-shaped padlock, glittering with rhinestones. I seized it in my eager paws, daydreaming already of the chain he would thread it onto, the words he would say as he clasped it around my neck.

The next time I saw him, I intoned modestly, “I’ve got something to show you,” and produced the lock from a drawer. I thought he’d know immediately what it was for, but instead he just looked at me quizzically. “It’s pretty,” I think he said, unsure what I was getting at.

“I thought you could use it when you make my collar!” I finally explained – and even then, his eyes did not light up. I wonder now if he’d changed his mind about wanting to own me; if perhaps I had already lost my lustre, the way shiny new possessions inevitably, eventually do.

He ended our relationship two weeks later. For months, I couldn’t look at that heart-shaped lock without comparing it to my own heart: given unreservedly but unwanted; relegated to a sad, dusty drawer.

In December of that year, I met a boy in New York. Nine days later, I was calling him “Sir” and asking him which collar I should wear to the theatre. What can I say; when I fall, I fall fast. It’s a character flaw. Or maybe a superpower.

I texted him a selfie from my seat in the Young Centre, my hair tumbling over the turquoise suede he’d told me to wear. “Hiding your collar!” he replied immediately, to which I retorted – drunk on one beer and new-relationship adrenaline – “It’s there, I promise. Reminding me of whose I am.”

Alarm bells sounded in my head even as I typed the words. Too fast too soon too much. Remember last time? But I wanted the risk, the rush. I wanted to believe.

“Fuckkkk. That ownership language makes me feel very fucking special,” he thumbed back in a blur, and I felt the internal stirring and whirring of a hope blossoming into a wish.

He asked me to wear the turquoise choker again the following day. I did, to a nearby café, pulling nervously at it the whole block-long walk. “Maybe next time I see you in person, we should go buy a collar together,” I suggested. A test. A dare. I didn’t want us to keep using collars I already owned as symbols of our burgeoning power dynamic; they made me feel dirty with past associations, like going on a first date wearing an ex’s sweater that still smells of heartbreak.

“What makes you think I won’t have one in my hand?” he replied. I nearly dropped my phone on the icy sidewalk. Too fast too soon too much, I thought again. And also: I want more.

Sex nerds, kink nerds, and psychology nerds all like to talk about their intentions and motivations. Both of us are all three. We talked a lot.

“What does a collar mean to you?” one of us asked the other, and we each threw out phrase after phrase, “yes” after “yes,” ascending a tower of assent. It’s an intensifier. A motivator. Ownership. Affection. Pride. A solidification, a sign of safety, of commitment. (We weren’t even ready to call each other “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” – and yet. Love is absurd.)

I listened to him over the phone while he made the purchase: a royal blue suede collar we’d chosen together. We giggled resolutely, and then I heard nervousness creep into his voice. “I want to make explicit,” he began, wavering, “that I don’t want you to wear it with anyone else.”

It had never occurred to me to wear it with anyone else. It was his collar. His gift to me, and mine to him. His symbolic hand wrapped around my throat. I’m staunchly non-monogamous, so there are times when my lips and my cunt and my submission are for other people. But that collar was not for other people. Only for him.

We wrote the rules of the collar together, in our shared note of protocols entitled “Sir and little one.” There are only a few rules, but each is important.

  1. Whenever Sir and little one are together, he will collar her. She will not use their collar with anyone else, put it on without being ordered to by Sir, or allow anyone else to touch it.
  2. When ordered to wear her collar, little one must continue wearing it until she completes any assigned tasks or work and receives permission to remove it.
  3. Little one may temporarily remove her collar without permission if necessary to protect herself or the collar.

I swooned as he drafted the phrasing for each decree. The care and love he poured into this exercise – even before we were calling this thing between us “love” – was so evident, so huge. No romantic symbol can really mean anything unless you’re certain it means the same thing to both of you – and I knew that this one did. It was as clear as the words in our respective Notes apps, black text on a backlit screen.

He put it around my neck on a February night – the same night he kissed me in the lineup outside Brooklyn Steel, and danced with me to my favorite band, and told me he loved me for the first time. Every time he looked at me, all night, his eyes dipped to the collar around my neck, then narrowed as his expression hardened into what I can only call “the dom face.” Every dom has one. His makes me shiver and bite my lip.

He would get distracted and trail off mid-sentence when his eyes caught on the collar. “Sorry, it just… looks really good on you,” he attempted to explain each time. He meant, I knew, not so much that the collar looked good on me but that submission did. Being small and compliant looked good on me. Being his looked good on me.

We’ve talked a lot about our collar since before we even picked it out, and we still talk about it. What it means. When I should and shouldn’t wear it. What we would do if I dropped it down a subway grate by accident. What we would do if we broke up.

There’s a lot in this world of which I’m uncertain, and a lot that frightens me in its uncertainty. But this collar – for all the time I spent hoping for it and wishing for it – feels certain to me, fixed, decided. I know what it means; my love and I swing this shared meaning between us like a tether.

If I can’t know anything else for sure in this world, at least I can know that I’m owned by someone who loves me; that he loves me enough to have put a piece of sacred suede around my neck; that he loves me enough to go all dark-eyed and dom-faced whenever he looks at the collar that means I’m his.

Links & Hijinks: Murder & the Mona Lisa

Kate Sloan

• Sarah says pleasure is a form of political resistance. “Queer intimacy is revolutionary. Joyfully reveling in ourselves, each other, and our pleasure is revolutionary,” she writes. “For marginalized people, our pleasure shouts, ‘I see your violence, but you do not get to take THIS from me. My pleasure is mine, and mine alone.'”

• Carly has some great thoughts on money and abundance.

• Men discuss which women’s beauty products they use and love.

• Here’s how sexual satisfaction changes over the course of long-term relationships – and here’s how to keep passion alive.

• My friend Taylor is a delightfully brash flirt.

• Men, here’s how to listen when someone discloses their sexual assault to you. Quit #NotAllMen-ing all over important sexual assault discourse, and start actually being part of the solution.

• Interesting, scary, and sad: the shower murder scene in Psycho kickstarted a long-standing trend of sexual violence in horror movies.

• Who knew so much thought and work went into crafting Mona Lisa’s perfect smile?

• First times often suck and that’s okay. (This post also contains a li’l checklist of sexual compatibility + chemistry signs to look out for during a first hookup with a new partner, which I found super interesting and useful!)

• “These days, a good handjob is rare but delightful,” reports MEL. I love giving HJs on intact cocks, but still haven’t quite figured out how to do as good a job on circumcised ones…

• Bex wrote about their spanking birthday party, which was a damn good time.

• Have we reached peak pegging culture?

• This one hit close to home for me: how do I stop obsessing about finding love?

• Tina Horn wrote a beautiful essay on queer culture, bravery, and glitter.

• There’s a new Hollywood film about polyamorous people and it might be poly’s watershed moment.

• Lunabelle reviewed the Teddy Love vibrator (which I’ve previously reviewed) and naturally, it’s hilarious. “Normally I’m at least a little excited to try a new sex toy, but NOPE,” she writes. “Slurpy McBuzzyface and I regarded each other in awkward silence…” This piece is worth reading if just for the utter ordeal Luna endured trying to take her Teddy Love through airport security!

• Merritt wrote about fake boobs and it certainly gave me a lot of boob for thought! Er, I mean…

• A male sex worker answered some questions about his line of work (and made me want to hire a male sex worker).

• Not having as much sex with your partner as you used to? Emily Nagoski has some evidence-based suggestions.

• Some interesting writing about how trans folks’ sexual desires change when they transition.

• Bex has some tips for taking better nudes. “Having dinner with my best friend often means reporting on the selfie lighting in the restaurant bathroom when we get back,” they mention at one point. Can confirm: last time Bex was in town, we got ridiculous BBQ at a place near my apartment, and I took some lovely nudes in the bathroom on Bex’s recommendation.

• A lot of men are bad at fingering and could stand to learn some new tricks.

• Some research on where fetishes come from – a question that has haunted me the entire time I’ve been a sex nerd.

• The great Tina Horn wonders: what do we expect from sex workers on social media?

• Taylor has some advice on flying with kink toys.

• Suz is a major role model of mine when it comes to casual sex and confidence in general. Here’s her advice on how to vet a potential hookup for sexual compatibility before you have terrible, lacklustre sex.

My Best Friend Bex: A Dildorky Love Story

Kate Sloan
Photo via Clitsta Anne.

If you listen to Erin Pim interviewing me on the Bed Post Podcast, you’ll hear her ask me: “Do you have a primary partner?” And you’ll hear me stammer through my nervous answer: “Not right now. Probably my steadiest sexual relationship is a fuckbuddy who doesn’t even live where I live, and is occasionally visiting. He’s my favorite person to bang. But like, right now, I’m not dating anybody.”

It’s a deflection, a half-truth. At the time, I was deep in unreturned love with said fuckbuddy, and struggling with the lack of a romantic label on our relationship – or on any of my sexual relationships.

In contrast to this noncommittal answer, though, toward the start of the podcast, Erin asks me about my friendship with Bex – and I elaborate with enthusiasm. “They’re my best friend in the world,” I declare. “Our friendship is, weirdly, one of the great love stories of my life.”

I have never had trouble defining my relationship with Bex. We’ve been best friends ever since we threesomed with a mutual friend at the Playground Conference in 2015. I’ve never felt so certain about a friendship so fast. It’s their 26th birthday today, so here are a few of my favorite moments from our almost-two-years of best-friendship thus far.

December 30th, 2015. Bex makes the impulsive decision to drive all the way to Toronto to spend New Year’s Eve with me. I scream.

At the New Year’s party at Round Venue, we dance up a storm, drink too much, make out with drag kings. As the clock ticks midnight, someone pops a balloon full of silver confetti over our heads, and we hug – like the platonic (and, frankly, superior) version of a romantic New Year’s kiss. This bodes well for the year ahead.

I ride a bus for 3 hours to go see a boy I have a crush on. We spend that night in his bed, drinking red wine, giggling, and kissing. The next day, I while away my entire 3-hour-long return trip texting Bex every detail of what happened.

The following week, that same boy comes to a party I host, and we flirt all night long. He invites me to have dinner with him the next day. We kiss goodnight, and I panic at the friend who co-hosted the party with me: “Is he going to ask me to be his girlfriend?! Doesn’t it seem like he wants to date me?!”

She thinks so, yes, but she isn’t sure. I grab my phone and type some all-caps concerns at Bex, who’s away from their phone because they’re at work. I know they won’t see my messages for hours – maybe not even until tomorrow – and that feels unthinkable. I need to know their take on this.

“I feel like half my brain is missing,” I whine miserably at my friend. She’s one of my best pals, and I love her. But she isn’t the other half of my brain. Bex is. I need Bex.

On our way to Caitlin‘s house to watch the new Spit porn scene, Bex and I stop in at Starbucks for coffee and snacks. “What are you two up to today?” the barista asks us brightly.

“Uhh, we’re going to a friend’s house,” I hedge.

“Oh yeah? What are you gonna do there?”

Bex and I look at each other nervously. “We’re going to watch a movie.”

“What type of movie?”

We laugh. “We don’t know yet,” I lie. “We’ll decide when we get there, I guess.”

I watch my best friend practically giggle half a scone out their nose, and we shuffle out of the Starbucks, barely containing our guffaws.

I attempt to double-penetrate myself with two giant dildos – while livetweeting, obviously. Bex coaches me through it via text, reminding me when to put a vibe on my clit, add more lube, or move on to the next warm-up toy. Meanwhile, we’re also carrying on a side conversation about movies we love and TV shows we recommend. None of this feels unnatural. All of this feels on-brand. This is true love.

We go out for lunch at 7 West with my new boyfriend. I know he’s kinky, but I’m not totally sure yet how kinky, or in what ways. In the midst of a theoretical discussion of kinks, Bex rattles off some examples: “Teacher/student roleplay, or doctor/patient, or Daddy Dom/little girl…” Boyfriend doesn’t say anything, but noticeably perks up, like an eager little dominant puppy.

Later, I comment, “That was funny, how he reacted when you mentioned DD/lg.” Bex scoffs, “Oh, I 100% did that on purpose to test his reaction, and he 100% passed the test.”

I wish everyone could have a best friend who wants a fulfilling sex life for their friends as much as Bex wants one for me.

In one of our many, many, many conversations about our various internet crushes, Bex and I decide we’re going to have a four-way wedding someday. This seems like the natural conclusion of our strange, incestuous-yet-nonsexual relationship.

It’s a slow day at my customer service job, so I muck around on my iPad and manage to calculate the exact average location between the four cities in which Bex, Bex’s current crush, my current crush and I each live. I scroll around the map and notice the magic spot is right near a town called… Dorking. “It’s settled. We’re getting married in Dorking,” I announce, sending Bex a link.

“Holy shit. Yes. Perfection,” they reply.

Bex never calls the men I kiss/fuck/date by their names – only by nicknames, which are often a bit cruel. Men don’t get names until they’ve earned them by being not-terrible, which most don’t.

The guy I’m interested in around the time Bex and I first become friends is called Good-Dick Garbage Human, because, well, his dick is great but he’s kind of awful. This naming convention becomes a recurring motif in our nicknames for boys: we are both forever questing for the fabled Good-Dick Good Human. Occasionally we meet a Good-Fingers Good Human, or a Good-Dick Okay Human. One step at a time.

We go to visit my fuckpal-du-jour at the store where he works. After some pleasantries and semi-flirtations, we say goodbye, and he shouts after me, “Don’t be a stranger!” We’re barely three steps out of the store when Bex turns to me and says, “That means he wants his dick in your mouth again.” That particular fuckpal is known simply as “Weird Dude” in the Bexicon forever after.

When I start dating a 5-foot-tall dominant, Bex christens him Napoleon, “because he’s short and thinks he’s in charge.”

Bex and I start using a hashtag in some of our text correspondence: #ThingsIdOnlyTellYou.

Some of the secrets chronicled therein: TMI missives about butts and vaginas, petty complaints about my metamours (#Pettymour), arrogant self-praise, suicidal ideations, creepy shit about crushes, slutty accomplishments, and stuff like this: “Help! I sucked off a Mustang while jerking off today, and it helped a lot with BJ cravings. #ThingsIdOnlyTellYou #INeedToGetLaid”

We joke that these confessions should be published in a book someday when we’re both dead, but dear god, no, don’t do that.

As I’m getting ready to go visit sex shops in Minneapolis, my phone buzzes. It’s a text from Kidder. I burst out laughing, a high-pitched giggly shriek.

From two rooms away, Bex calls, “What did Kidder say?”

“How did you know it was him?!” I inquire, mystified.

I can hear the self-satisfied smirk in their voice. “That was your surprised/funny/turned-on sound,” they attempt to explain. Best-friend mind-reading on point.

I find out Bex has never smoked weed before, and offer to guide them through their first time. One night on one of their many trips up to Toronto, we hole up in my bedroom with a vape, a grinder, some bud we just acquired at a dispensary, and a few blowjob porn scenes on tap, because we will need entertainment once we are blazed.

Bex isn’t much of a lightweight when it comes to booze, so they’re not sure how weed will affect them. “I don’t think I’m high,” they say, wrinkling their nose at me quizzically.

“Touch your leg,” I suggest, drawing from my own experiences of what being high feels like. “See if your skin feels weird.”

They run their hand along their calf. “Oooh, furry! No, I don’t think I’m high,” they chirp, and I laugh. They are definitely, definitely high.

Bex and I smoke a bunch of weed before heading out to see a show at Comedy Bar. On the way to the subway station, we both hear – clear as a bell – the sound of a coin dropping. We spend five minutes looking around on the ground, trying to find the missing coin. We never find it, and reach the conclusion that we must just have both hallucinated the same exact sound at the same exact moment. As best friends do.

At Comedy Bar, we run into my ex-boyfriend, a comedian. We’re both way, way, way too high to navigate this interaction, so it goes horribly. After he leaves, I turn to Bex and say, “Did that actually just happen?”

They look just as bewildered as I feel. “I think so,” they say. We laugh nervously.

Trying to come back home from New York in January, I miscalculate my subway route on the way to the airport, and accidentally miss my flight. Rather, I get there an hour before takeoff, but that’s too late – they won’t let me fly.

I break down in the departures hall, leaning against my suitcase for strength, crying, hyperventilating. I was already descending into a post-travel mental health drop, and this development just kicked it into overdrive. I panic. I freak out. I want to die. I text Bex.

They calm me down, like they always do. Slowly and carefully, like they’re addressing a child (because right now, they kind of are), they talk me through the process of investigating other ticket options, finding out what can be done about my situation. When the answer is “nothing,” they go online and buy me a ticket for the following morning. Then they text me detailed instructions for how to get back to their house on the subway, and insist I update them regularly as I go along.

Suicidal ideations gnaw at me even harder as I drag my suitcase back into the subway system. I feel like a senseless failure, a pointless waste of space. I’ve long since exhausted the limited supply of tissues I keep in my purse, and I text Bex, amid scary confessions and depressed rambles, “I want to go to the CVS and buy more Kleenex. Like, so much that I will never run out. I want my next boyfriend to be made of an absorbent material.”

Dissociating from my body a bit, as I often do when severely depressed, I tell Bex, “I might be a ghost. A wet ghost.” Always witty, even at the toughest of times, Bex calmly responds, “Then you can haunt me and make me a better writer.” I write back, “This sentence is too woooordyyyy!” They quip, “Use less commaaaaas!” I laugh a little on the subway and type back, “Fewer commaaaaas!”

When I finally, finally reach the subway station closest to Bex’s apartment, I lug my suitcase down the endless stairs, hollow and empty and dead inside. At the bottom of the stairs is my best friend, my angel, my knight, wearing a Batman pajama onesie and a leather collar, and holding a brand-new bright yellow box of Kleenex just for me.

They put their arm around me and we walk to the CVS, where they make me buy some food I don’t want to eat, and then we go back to their place, where they make me eat the food because I need to. Then they set me up in front of their computer and let me watch whatever YouTube videos will make my bone-aching depression lift even the slightest bit: McElroy brothers clips, Goodbye Honolulu music videos, John Mulaney stand-up. I feel a little better.

Early early early the next morning, Bex wakes me up and helps me to an Uber. I get to the airport hours early for my new flight. I sit in the departures lounge silently, profoundly awed that I have found such a wonderful friend, of whom I often feel unworthy but without whom I simply cannot imagine going through life.