improv

Yep, I’m doing a Girly Juice throwback post and sharing 10 of my actual journal entries from my actual journals this year… Here’s some juicy stuff about my sex life, love life, romantic philosophies, creative adventures, etc. in 2025!

March 11th

One of the ways I know these [musical improv] classes actually WORK is that I literally didn’t feel nervous at all for the entire show tonight. At no point was I less than certain that I could make something up in the moment. That’s so fucking crazy, considering that I was pretty damn nervous for my first beginner CLASS, let alone the showcase. I felt in control tonight. I felt like there was time to think of what I wanted to sing next and how to sing it. Whatever neural re-wiring happens when you start to practice improv regularly, it literally changes the way you experience the passage of time.

The things giving me the most joy and comfort in these bleak times all have to do with creativity and connection. Part of me still doubts as to whether I “deserve” to or “should” spend time, energy and money on these classes. But they feel like church and the gym and high school and university all rolled into one; they feel like where I go to be my bravest, best, most open self; they feel like a direct pipeline into connection, fun and laughter with people who somehow just understand me, despite barely knowing me, because we share this passionate, goofy interest in making up songs together on stage.

May 3rd

In any case, this feels notable: When I think about what I would do if I found out that I had [a terminal disease], the things that immediately come to mind are that I would sign up for as many musical improv classes/troupes as possible (and probably even some non-musical ones) and I would tell all my crushes that I think they’re cute, because WHO CARES.

I would also want to organize a concert where I could play all my favorite songs of mine and/or have my loved ones cover songs of mine. I would dress weird every day, unless I didn’t feel like it. I would go see comedy and theatre and live music any nights I was free. I would haunt Civil Liberties (…meant that in the alive-haunt way, but also it would be fun to dead-haunt Civ Lib too). Might give some money to Rosedale if I had any. Or for CB Pro scholarships. And I’d kiss as many cuties as I felt like (with their consent, of course) and masturbate and have sex up until I couldn’t anymore, and still try to find pleasures even after that. Cura te libitum; memento mori. Both.

May 17th

…Anyway, idk idk idk, but it kinda seems like my improv crushes might be into me, which is CRAZY. It really speaks to the way that this art form makes me into my best self. I remember the wild sense of transformation around grade 10-11 when Rosedale helped me come out of my shell in a big way, and how it suddenly seemed that everyone and their mother was attracted to me and was secretly confessing their limerence via Honesty Box or broadcasting it with their big gushy eyes. It was not just that so many people were into me, but that I could see/tell and usually even BELIEVE they were into me. I was so regularly and deeply in touch with the best and most attractive aspects of my me-ness (not to be confused with “penis”) that it seemed plausible that folks could like me. I liked myself. Hell, I finally WAS myself, period, and not an amalgamation of all the shy-meek-sweet-good-girl things I had terrifiedly striven to be until then.

I feel similarly now, like I have rediscovered the parts of myself I like most and am wearing those parts on the surface of my skin every day like glitter body paint. It’s interesting that so much of improv training is about learning to “get out of your own way” mentally – which I largely take to mean, reduce your anxiety/self-criticism/self-censorship to a point that your improv flows directly from your weird brain and is thus more organic and just better overall – and I am feeling similarly about my own attractiveness-or-lack-thereof lately, in that I actually MAKE myself less hot and more invisible when I let myself act like an anxious shy little kid in the corner – whereas, even though I have the same face and body (well, more or less) as the times when I act more confident and gregarious, people respond to me TOTALLY differently in those two states.

I used to think it was like, if maybe 20% of the population would find me attractive based on my looks alone, then maybe another 5-10% might start to find me attractive as they got to know my personality. But I think it’s significantly more than that, actually, especially the older we get. Conventional physical hotness fades, and also it just isn’t enduringly interesting (at least not to me). I want to know if we can make each other laugh until 3 a.m.

May 30th

Kind of beautiful to show up in a new setting as the best, brightest, most new-and-improved version of yourself, and to get to be witnessed and noticed and liked by someone who is similarly in their newest and most exciting form yet, and you see each other the way you each most yearn to be seen, which just adds to the eroticism and safety of the connection, and you’re both obsessed with and committed to this shared crazy art form which cleansed you both alive again from the inside out, and the wonderment and gratitude you both carry about that still burns within you and sometimes gets messily (but not inaccurately) aimed at each other, and you are exploring a body that’s new to you from WITHIN a body that’s new to you, and you are still learning to pilot a brain drunk on dopamine fumes, and you carry middle school like concrete in your bones and high school like glitter in your blood, and you know how you used to kiss and you know how you want to kiss now, and you know how you used to fuck and you think you know how you want to fuck now, and having a crush in your improv class is like finding a diamond tiara mixed into your lottery winnings: you quite literally cannot believe your luck, and you didn’t know this was a possibility, because why dream of delights beyond those that already saved your life?

October 8th

Strange to fly away from Toronto feeling sad to be away from improv friends and my mom for 10 days, as if that were my “real” life, only to be welcomed open-armed by New York City once again… [Most] pressingly to me currently is the date I went on last night with the person I refer to by the moniker “hot they/them Q___” when talking to mb about them. They are this devastatingly hot nonbinary heartthrob from L.A. who is a long-time listener of The Dildorks and a big D&D nerd… They were wearing a red velvet/corduroy blazer that they’d just gotten recently for a friend’s wedding, and I was in a red dress (also incidentally bought for a wedding), so we matched, which I remarked on: “We look cute together!”

We had good conversations for hours, about all kinds of nerdy shit – Mel Brooks, the Adventure Zone, comics, musical improv, etc. They were touching my leg a lot under the table (and earlier at the bar, stepping closer to me every so often) and I suspected it was starting to make me wet – which honestly has been hard for me lately… [Some experiences] had made me feel so enduringly “meh” about the prospect of sex with anyone other than mb. It just didn’t seem appealing/exciting/like it would be any good. But this self-described dom and top (as per when they filled out my Date Me form about a year ago) was touching me under the table and it was turning me on.

Eventually I asked if we should find somewhere to go make out… [Then, outside on the sidewalk] they suddenly stopped, shoved me against a wall, and kissed me right there. Once again, I felt myself getting so turned on. It really is strange how much self-doubt/impostor syndrome I still feel about being a bottomy submissive, as if it’s a fake identity that just disguises fundamental sexual selfishness/laziness or something, but it is laughably obvious how submissive I am when the ways doms kiss me, touch me and talk to me make me so goddamn wet.

Anyway, they were a really good kisser. Like I was moaning and melting and sighing and starting to drop into subspace already… [Later they fingered me and] they gave me a lot of pleasure and made me feel a lot of things… Then they sucked their fingers clean and said, re: my flavor, “I’ve been wondering about that for a while,” which made me blush harder than I’ve blushed on any date in a long time. I asked them if they’d maybe wanna leave a mark on me, which is like… pretty damn romantic, from my perspective. They said they would’ve liked to bite my ass, but in the position and location we were in, it was easier for them to just bite my neck where it meets the shoulder, one of my favorite spots. (OMG, I am getting wet as I’m writing this!! Yikes!) They gave me a mark that I love, a wine-dark hickey right in the spot where my bag strap sits, so I was reminded of them for much of today.

Then they walked me to the subway, holding my hand for some of that time and guiding me with their hand around my waist for some of it, as I teetered in and out of subspace. I felt really taken care of and safe. Never once did I get that cold stab of adrenaline like “Oh god, I’m in a compromised state, alone, with a stranger.” I just wanted to stay longer, to keep kissing them, but I was getting tired. So eventually we just made out in front of the subway like horny teenagers. It was really kind of wild. It is so rare that I feel this kind of attraction for someone these days. And it wasn’t just sexual but romantic too. I felt close to them and it felt safe to open up and let my walls down, which has been so hard for me lately. I felt nervous and starry-eyed on the subway home, and the whole next day, feeling (as I sometimes do after an important first time with a new person) that somehow my body was all new, renewed, remade afresh by the experience. Like my own body felt unfamiliar to me because it had been transformed by the way they touched it, the way they wanted it. Oh god. I might be in trouble, huh.

October 9th

Oh hi, it’s me again, the pain slut who gets fingered on park benches. I am crush-brain garbage today and yesterday, meaning I felt hassled and haunted by my own intrusive romantic fantasies. It’s tough sometimes being both a chronic romanticizer who aims to find delight wherever and whenever possible, and a pragmatic bitch with a kintsugi‘ed heart who believes it’s a dumb waste of time to fixate on, as one random example, a nerdy nonbinary heartthrob who lives across a continent from me.

I mean, both can be true. It can be dumb and potentially painful while also being fun and worth doing, like drinking too hard on a school night at your buddy’s going-away party, or dancing for 3 hours at a wedding even though you have fibromyalgia. There is no “right way” that things are “supposed” to go. I can have a big dumb long-distance crush if I want to, dammit!

November 26th

Me: Just really wanting you to leave so many painful marks all over me and fuck the shit out of me but in a romantic n cute way, ya know
Them: Oh absolutely. brutally but romantically
Me: I want that so bad 🙁
Them: Meeeee toooo

Thinking a lot lately about what “romantic sex” even is to me, because it sure ain’t vanilla missionary in the dark or what [my dommy ex-boyfriend] F___ referred to as “slow stuff & eye-looking,” and yet some of that stuff is at least somewhat appealing with the right person…

I think to me, romantic sex is sex where you both bare some of your soul by pursuing and reacting to the things you authentically desire with each other… sex where you feel absorbed/immersed in sensation and connection and it gets you out of your own head and into someone else’s… sex where you feel strong sensations both physically and emotionally and it feels safe and celebrated for you to feel those feelings… sex where you feel able to truly be yourself (or at least a significant part of yourself), and you know you are not judged or disliked for that but in fact desired for it… sex where your partner seems focused on your pleasure not just because they find it hot but also because they think you deserve a more pleasurable existence because of who you are as a human being… sex where trust acts as an aphrodisiac… sex where effort is a currency of caring… sex where you are both on the same page about what it means and what it feels like… sex without the need to censor yourself, your desires, or your reactions… sex that feels deeply informed by the non-sexual knowledge you have about each other… sex that feels like a shared playspace where your souls can touch and merge for a time… sex that encourages play, fun, and getting what you really, really want… sex that feels like a great conversation… sex that helps you remember you deserve pleasure and are hot… sex that is intentionally scheduled, skilfully practiced, and consistently prioritized… sex that scares you a little with the heights it takes you to… sex that leaves you wanting to say “I love you” when the pleasure overflows out your mouth.

December 9th

I put up a carefully crafted but admittedly lengthy personal ad on the [redacted] subreddit, honestly probably because all these sweet polite shy Canadian monogamous boys are making me feel frustrated, lol. I think I got about 20 responses, with maybe 5-8 being so short/low-effort that I deleted them immediately, 4-5 being decent but not compatible with me in some key way (e.g. they’re not dominant, or they really want me to sit on their face – I am seeking the pillow princess treatment in this case!), 3-5 being good enough that I’d consider messaging back (and I did message some back)… and the remainder were very obviously ChatGPT-generated, at least partially if not in full.

What is UP with men and outsourcing delicate, intimate human connection to a fucking LLM! It makes me blindingly angry! Part of me feels compassion for their struggle, especially the neurodivergent ones, because men really don’t have social skills drilled into them from birth in the same ways… I would understand if they wanted to consult the robot for advice on how to approach a particular piece of tricky communiqué (and I have even done that myself before), but to copy-&-paste the hollow words of a text generator into your texting app and hit ‘send’… I don’t know how they live with themselves. If you’re that desperate to avoid human connection, why are you nonetheless play-acting at pursuing it?

Some women would vehemently argue that the reason is simple: men only want sex from women, and will do everything they can think of in service of that goal, including lying, misrepresenting themselves, and even stupider shit like expecting women to be too dumb to notice these men are not nearly as articulate or sensitive IRL as they are in their suspiciously verbose messages. I don’t think I believe that the average man is that simple-minded and singularly focused, however. I am of the controversial opinion that men have feelings, longings, and needs in relationships which go beyond the sexual, and that sex is often at least partially the outlet and analogue for their deeper emotional desire for connection and closeness. But one also wonders why these men are constantly shooting themselves in the foot by refusing to learn basic conversational skills and lazily allowing a famously shitty robot to pick up their slack, which it doesn’t do believably or well.

December 15th

I’m low-key disappointed that I probably won’t get to make out with any of my comedy crushes before I leave, because it’s honestly a demisexual’s wet dream to suddenly/finally get sexual with someone you’ve done one zillion improv shows with. Like, I’m hard-pressed to come up with something I’d find hotter and more exciting, both emotionally and sexually. They’ve seen your most embarrassing blunders and your most thunderous successes. They’ve co-created silly art with you night after night, both contributing in total earnestness to this shared ship we all sail together. They’ve seen you when you get dolled up and when you’re just bumming around. They know what makes you laugh and maybe even what makes you scream. They still like you even though they’ve seen you laugh so hard you snort.

To then add the layer on top of that that they additionally want to kiss you, that they have indeed broached that line despite it being unprecedented in your connection, despite the fear that you’ll mess up this thing you really value… It’s just such a sexy proposition to me. There haven’t been many times in my life when someone kissed me for the first time AFTER they already knew me decently well, knew me enough to know they really liked me and wanted me, specifically me. It’s such a hot and validating thought.

And it doesn’t hurt that I’m sure some anxiety and dissociation would be prevented by doing these things with someone you already feel safe with, someone you can relax around, someone your body has a lot of practice feeling relaxed around. I wonder if the kissing would accordingly feel different temporally, in the way that improv scenes seem to give you more time to think of your next line the more that you practice, because your bloodstream is no longer pumping with breakneck adrenaline every time you step on stage. Would kissing T___ or C___ have a certain naturalistic slowness to it, unlike the frantic and forgettable nervous-AF kisses I’ve had on first dates etc.? Would I have time and space, mentally, to marvel at who I was kissing – perhaps even to smile and laugh about it together? Would that laughter be sexy in its own way because it’s an expression of intimacy, of both being simultaneously shocked and delighted by the same thing, almost like the intimacy of watching (or doing) a great improv scene together?

December 20th

Current baseline requirements for a romantic partner:

• Treats me well and respectfully, always.
• We make each other laugh a lot.
• Asks me questions, is intrinsically curious about me, and inspires that same type of curiosity in me. Can carry a conversation.
• Feminist, leftist, vehemently pro-LGBTQ+ rights.
• Kinky, communicative about sex, into a lot of the same things I’m into, entirely chill about sex toys and period sex and sometimes having non-penetrative sex.
• Nerdy and enthusiastic.
• A good flirt. Makes me feel liked and desired.
• We share an undeniable mutual attraction on every level that matters to us.
• Good manners, good hygiene, basic life skills.
• Smart enough to keep up with me.
• Polyamory-competent, emotionally intelligent, and in therapy if they need to be.
• Entirely chill about my line of work, including being written/talked about publicly (anonymized is fine).
• Creative-minded and interested in the arts.

Part of me thinks these requirements are too stringent. Another part of me thinks they’re not stringent enough.