journal entry

12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

Where my fellow journaling fans at?! I flicked through all my journal entries from the entirety of 2018 (phew!) and picked 6 of my faves for you…

January 30th

I’ve been in love 3 times before and here’s what happened those previous times:

E___ told me after about a month and a half, which I thought was surprisingly early, and then I told him about 2 weeks after that, if I recall correctly.

It took me about a year to even be comfortable conceptualizing my feelings for C___ as love in my own head, or calling it that out loud. I don’t think I ever actually told him to his face that that’s what I had been feeling, though I’ve certainly used the word many times when I’ve written about him online.

I told G___ at about 11 weeks, which is the closest I’ve ever come to hitting the mythical 3-month threshold I’ve somewhat arbitrarily set for myself as a reasonable minimum before saying it. (We said it on July 10th. 3 months would’ve been July 18th or 25th, depending on how you count it.)

I don’t know why I’m obsessing over these numbers like they contain any kind of answer to the questions I am implicitly asking, which are: 1) Am I in love with Matt? and 2) Is it too soon to tell him that, if so?

I have a feeling he would say it’s not too soon and it’s okay to say it whenever you feel it, but I have objections to that, namely:

-How do you even actually know you’re in love? I don’t want to say it until/unless I’m sure, because you can’t really take that shit back. In the past, when I’ve said it, it’s been after a period of at least a few weeks where I consistently found myself thinking it and wanting to say it, and eventually reached a point where it felt like it bubbled over and I had to say it.

-I think it is perhaps irresponsible and premature to say it before you establish adult shit like “Do we have actual long-term potential?” and “Do we even actually like each other, once NRE has worn off?” and “Do we fit functionally into each other’s lives?” because, while “I love you” is technically just a statement of feelings, it is also, to some extent, a statement of intent and commitment and devotion, etc., and I would rather we figure our shit out before jumping to that.

-I would rather say it to him in person, because it’s so weighty and I just think that would be the appropriate and right way to do it. But of course, life happens, and feelings are intense and unpredictable. Who knows what’ll happen. (I do have a lot of romantic feelings about the idea of him putting my collar on me before the Hippo Campus show, though, and I have a feeling an emotional outpouring could take place when that happens.)

-Part of me is afraid to fall in love again (god, what a clichéd sentiment) because the last two times it’s happened have been probably the two biggest heartbreaks of my life and they happened within a year of each other and it was just… a lot. I’m hesitant to give someone else that much power over my heart again, although, let’s be honest: I already have. (Wow, this journal entry is getting REALLY REAL, huh!!)

-7 weeks is probably too short a time to have really fallen in love with someone… maybe… probably. We are still squarely in NRE territory, where everything about a person seems perfect and adorable and even your conflicts are kind of cute and quaint. I would feel more secure calling a feeling “love” if the smog of NRE had cleared and love was still visibly in the picture. But what is the distinction between NRE buzziness and love, anyway? What does any of this mean??

-There is also a self-protective, superego-y part of me that wants to carefully weigh and consider the idea of getting into a long-distance relationship before I wade this deep into it, but tbh, love is not controllable in that way (at least not this late in its development) and I, in particular, have never been good at moderating my feelings in that way. I remember friends suggesting to me, when I was in painful heartsick love with C___, that I take a step back, stop seeing him, at least stop fucking him, and that was utterly unthinkable to me. It literally did not feel like an option. I loved him, therefore, I needed his presence in my life to continue, to any and every extent possible.

-Re: it being fast – Matt and I have talked on the phone for so many hours that we essentially fast-tracked our relationship. I’ve honestly probably spent as much time talking to him as I spent talking to G___ in our entire 3.5-month relationship. So there’s that. Maybe that makes it less insane and more okay, I dunno.

I feel practically ill with emotion today. Having a heart is hard.

March 13th

Been dating Matt for 3 months today. Grateful for long phone calls full of intimacy, vulnerability, orgasms, and laughs. Grateful for emotional support that stretches across national borders. Grateful for a dependable smiling face so handsome it still makes my head swim. Grateful for a daddy/Sir who understands my kinks so fucking perfectly somehow and makes me feel so small, submissive, and taken care of. Grateful for gentle, loving pushes toward productivity, assertiveness, achievement and self-advocacy. Grateful for hot hard kisses in hotel rooms that make me feel adored and desired from the inside out. Grateful for emotional safety like a big comfy net to catch me. Grateful for impeccable cocktails in low-lit opulent establishments. Grateful for big blue eyes staring into me with a want and wonderment I’m always ecstatic to see mirrored back at me. Grateful for nerdy musical theatre references that make my heart soar. Grateful for silly giggles at 2AM. Grateful to feel so close even when we’re far. Grateful for his effort, his attention, his love.

April 15th

I wonder often what my therapist would think about Matt – she who witnessed my hero’s struggle to get over C___, my almost-compulsive hunt for a primary partner after that, my happy early days with G___ and then my utter brokenness when he changed his mind about me so suddenly. I think she would be very happy for me, but in the early days of our relationship she would’ve warned me to be careful, to modulate my level of investment, to keep my heart safe for a while before handing it over to someone else.

I tried to do that. It was hard; I’m not built for romantic reservation, not used to it. Both H___ and Matt have told me they admire my openheartedness and were surprised at my willingness to pour my soul out to them so quickly; I think this quality is a large part of why I’m so susceptible to ruinous heartbreak but is also what enables my relationships to frequently be so deep and electric and juicy. I feel things strongly and I don’t want to tamp them down once I feel them. It’s at once a blessing and a curse.

Despite the speed, I feel like we fell in love in slow motion – maybe still are falling – because of not having as much physical access to each other as most couples have. It was like one of those orgasms where you teeter on the precipice forever, dangling helplessly, until finally you tumble over the edge and it’s so sweet and delicious all the way down.

May 9th

Happy one-year anniversary to the day G___ first slept with someone else and started the slow, cruel process of breaking my heart! LOLOL. I think I’ve done a lot of useful emotional processing since then, in therapy and with friends and partners, to the point that it doesn’t sting anymore. And it helps enormously that Matt always affirms the validity of my reaction to that. “Non-monogamy” doesn’t mean “no rules.” It means you set rules, talk about them, mutually agree on them, and then follow them. It means you take your partners’ needs and feelings into account. It’s not a free-for-all.

I recognize, too, that I have been guilty of what he did – being too cavalier about boundaries and partners’ feelings on my sextracurricular activities – in, for example, my relationship with B___. It’s interesting how these past couple years have repeatedly shown me both sides of a particular interpersonal conflict or mistake, almost as if to give me greater empathy for someone who hurt me or to help me understand how I’ve fucked up and how to avoid making those mistakes again.

I think at this point, I’d definitely check in with Matt a lot before doing any sexy and/or date-y things with a new person – because our relationship is of foundational importance to me and no new thing, no matter how exciting, would be worth upsetting or alienating him or making him feel unconsidered. There are no such opportunities on my horizons right now, but I know they will come up whenever they come up and we will navigate them by communicating with each other as kindly and thoroughly as we always have.

June 4th

My mental health is predictably kind of tanking in response to Matt being at the nerd convention and being too busy for me for a few days. I mean, before he left, he said, “I love you and I will make time for you,” and I see him trying to do that – instating a protocol whereby I have to send him a daily nude, because he knows our protocols usually make me feel closer to him; calling me last night to say good night; texting me occasional updates – but it’s interesting how my brain is still responding by feeling rejected and like the safest and best thing to do is to pull away, act unaffected and uncaring, front like I don’t miss him and am not even thinking about him.

This is a conditioned response developed in former relationships where I wasn’t sure the other person liked me as much as I liked them – or I KNEW they didn’t – and I’d respond to their coldness and distance by mirroring it, instead of clinging, because I’d learned over the years that unreciprocated clinginess feels unimaginably horrible. It makes me feel pathetic, like the worst of the worst, impossibly unwanted, fundamentally undesirable. So I learned that the safer thing to do was to match their distance exactly, so that if anyone were to accuse me of caring, I could say, “Who, me? Nah. You must have me confused with someone else. I’m chill and casual and could take or leave this. Just like you.”

I recognize now that when this defense mechanism kicks in at the wrong times – i.e. with people who actually do care about me and are maybe just temporarily too busy to give me their usual level of attention and focus – it makes me come across as callously uncaring. I can see how I could actually sabotage relationships this way, backing up so hard to stay safe that I back my way right out of the relationship by mistake. That isn’t me; that isn’t what I want to do here.

The trouble is that fighting that knee-jerk defensive response feels as absurd and dangerous as fighting any instinct – like sticking your hand in the fire, touching your tongue to the outlet. It feels like I am literally endangering myself and the relationship, even though I know the opposite is true. To express love, and not have that expression returned for a while or in kind, feels too close to nauseously revelatory heartbreaks I’ve endured: the sudden (and sometimes stupidly repeated) realization that I thought I could be loved by this person but I actually was not. I’m in deep enough with Matt, I suppose, that that realization would crush me massively, so I get even more defensive than usual when it seems imminent. Maybe I even get mean. I’m sure it’s confusing for him. I’m trying to fight it but it’s hard.

My CBT training tells me to remind myself constantly of how much he loves me, to review the evidence of that until I believe it again, to do this myself instead of relying on him for constant reassurance. But then I just think about all the people were so into me until they suddenly weren’t. I don’t know how to believe that he won’t have a sudden change of heart and decide I’m too much work, too much effort, too much.

October 11th

Some climate scientists announced a few days ago that we don’t have much time left to avert the creeping disaster we’ve brought upon ourselves; that true chaos and destruction will be upon us by 2040 if not sooner, unless we change a lot real fast. And we won’t, because Republicans and big corporations believe in saving their bottom lines and their own asses more fiercely than they believe in saving the world, and the only thing that could really do any good now would be the total overthrowing of capitalism from top to bottom, and who the fuck knows how to do that? Not me.

I’m scared and depressed and everything seems so futile. But at the same time, this news is putting life into perspective. There have been times, in my current and past relationships, when I’ve wondered what the point is of staying in a relationship that has no conventional “future” – no hope of marriage, living together, or even living in the same country, probably – but this is making me reflect on how none of us are actually guaranteed a future anyway so we should cling to the things that make us happy NOW. It’s not possible to do this in all cases – for example, I can’t exactly quit my job and spend this planet’s last years making only the art I want to make, because getting through these years will require money and shelter in the meantime – but I should prioritize my happiness in the present whenever possible. And I am in love with Matt and he makes me happy even though there are things I want that I know I can’t get from this relationship. Happiness is a valid criterion. It’s maybe the only one that matters. Maybe I’ll be able to find those things with someone else someday, but there might not be a someday. This exists now and it’s very good and I want it, even if it’s not all I want.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2017: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

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.

May 3rd

A New Relationship Energy vignette in point form:

-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.)

10 Years of Moleskine Journals!

Kate Sloan

The other day, I was lovingly stroking my stack of Moleskine journals – as one does – when I noticed that the first one was dated June 2007. Oh my god, I thought. Have I really been writing in these things for TEN YEARS?!

Apparently so. I bought my first Moleskine in a local bookstore when I was 15, influenced by bloggers and Flickr friends whose nerdy glamour I revered. My first entry muses, “I paid $22.95 plus tax for this notebook, so I hope the price will be returned to me in the form of emotional and historical investment.” While Moleskines are still probably overpriced (the type I use goes for about $24 in Canadian bookstores today), I do think they’ve been worth their weight in gold to me, for the experiences I’ve documented therein.

The thing about fancy notebooks is that they make you want to write in them. (Once you get past that scary, first-blank-page, don’t-wanna-fuck-this-up feeling, at least.) When you shell out for pricey stationery, there is a certain sense of obligation to actually use said stationery. The smooth, creamy paper used in Moleskines is a joy to write on (especially with my pens of choice, Pilot V5s), and that tactile pleasure is what initially cemented my journaling habit. The sensual joys of journaling introduced me to its psychological joys soon thereafter: I’d always feel better after an exhaustive journaling session, even if my hand ached from writing.

I wanted to collect some excerpts from my decade of journals, but there are just too many good ones, so I decided to limit myself to excerpts about sex and love. (That’s still way too many, to be honest with you.) Here are some oft-embarrassing musings from my past ten years in Moleskines…

June 14th 2007. I read somewhere that if teenagers don’t fall in love at least once during their formative adolescent years, they may completely lose the mental capacity to do so for the rest of their lives. I used to find this merely interesting, a notable thought that was nonetheless nothing to worry about. I was always positive, growing up, that I would acquire a perfect boyfriend shortly after entering high school – as if every girl was paired up with a boy in grade nine because those romantic relations are expected of teenagers. Now that I’m actually in high school, I know it’s not like that. Not everyone has someone by default.

Many of my friends are desperate for boyfriends. They feel they would be happier with a boy in their lives. Oddly, I have no interest in high school boys. High school boys don’t bring you soup when you’re sick, or stroke your hair, or take you out for romantic hillside night picnics, or ask you to marry them. They like computers and the Beatles; very few of them like Sondheim or blueberry scones.

I guess I’m desperate for a boyfriend too, but not the kind my friends want. I want to spend my nights with a mature adult male who can talk culture and isn’t afraid to tell me I’m beautiful and he loves me.

June 19th 2007. Just had a thought: is it at all possible that I am a full-out lesbian? The feelings I have for women are so very different from those I have for men, possibly even more intense. It’s hard to tell, though, because it seems to go in phases. One week or month I want the tenderness, soft lips and pussy; the next, I want roughness, hard muscles and cock. And yes, I realize that girls can be rough and guys can be tender, but that’s often not how it goes in my head.

February 27th 2008. Half the class was away in English, so we opted to have a class discussion. It moved to the all-consuming, omnipresent topic of love/crushes/relationships. Mr. M. asked us to visualize the person we most wanted to be with, and then asked: “WHY do you like this person so much?” (No generic answers allowed.) Julian talked about deep blue eyes; Kaiya talked about mystery and intrigue; Giordie talked about immense comfort; I talked about never getting bored of E___, never getting sick of her, even when I fucking hate her I still want to talk to her, and it’s like there’s this endless ocean of future conversations and experiences stretching out ahead of us, waiting to happen. I need to stop talking so highly of her, because it’s only reminding me of all the things I can’t have – but I can’t help it, she’s the only person I feel this way about, the only person I’ve EVER felt this way about.

July 23rd 2008. It’s rather terrifying how grown-up I’ve become. Like, I’m no longer a virgin (in a sense). When I think or say that, it just feels like I’m pretending. Like I’m in some story, a soap opera maybe, where the sex is good and the stakes are high.

September 18th 2008. I often wish I had some interesting identifiable sexual fetish to match my sexually open-minded nature – but I realize, I do kind of fetishize being begged for sex. (Maybe we all do? Maybe it’s just part of the human condition to want to be wanted?) This is why I can never decide if I’m a dominant or a submissive – I like to be taken fully, but I also like to hold the keys to my own castle, and to be seductively coerced into giving them up.

Like the other day on my porch, when I was pinned against the doorframe, and D___ kept getting closer and closer, and began fondling my breasts, and I tried to get her to stop for the sake of potentially nosy neighbors, but she just couldn’t keep her hands off me (so hot). When it wasn’t my breast, it’d be my waist or hip. After a while, I told her maybe she should get going, and she replied, coolly and confidently, “Or I could have sex with you.” I kind of knew, even before I knew, that I was going to say yes.

November 5th 2008. In drama class, we did a Method Acting exercise involving envisioning an object that brings up intense memories of joy, and I chose my rippled glass dildo, which proved to be embarrassing when Mr. B. asked me what my object was. I lied and said “a love letter” to spare myself from total humiliation.

March 14th 2009. I’ve been thinking a lot about polyamory lately, and considering whether I’d ever be interested in delving into that lifestyle. It intrigues me in theory, but I’m pretty sure that if I ever actually entered into an open relationship, I’d become intensely jealous very quickly. I mean, I’m not even attracted to D___, but I get jealous if she blows me off to hang out with her MOM. It’s totally absurd, and makes me question my ability to be poly.

But at the same time, I feel like, once you agree that your relationship is open, you’re kind of giving yourself permission to be jealous, and telling yourself that it’s okay, it’s natural, and it’d best be ignored.

For years I’ve been reading this blog called We Sleep Together, which is written by a geeky, sex-positive guy in an open marriage. He just seems SO happy, and so does his wife. He goes on dates, getting to have the thrill of meeting and being with someone new, and every time he gets home from an external sexcapade, he tells his wife all about it, and often the story turns them both on so much that it prompts sex. They have threesomes and stuff too. It honestly seems like a pretty sweet life, but obviously it’s all hinging on good communication.

December 20th 2009. This has officially been the weirdest day of my life… I found out that T___ had sex with D___ (!!!!) after my caroling party the other night. No use dwelling on this now but I was SO pissed at D___ because she KNEW that was an asshole thing to do (T___ didn’t, necessarily). I spent much of the day, after that little revelation, teetering between hysterical laughter and full-out weeping. Called Max, burst into tears, took the subway home, ate a brownie, Max held me a bit.

About 15 minutes after I got home, while I sat checking my emails with a brownie in hand and a tearstained face, there was a knock at the door. It was T___. He said, “I really like you. I gave up drugs for you.” I thought he was joking, pulling a prank, trying to embarrass me… I kept saying, “Really? Seriously?” He said, “Do you want to go out with me sometime?” I said, “Yes! Yes.” I hugged him tight. He said, “Are you doing anything right now?” I said, “Just eating a brownie and crying…” Then I said, “Let me get my coat.”

Then T___ and I walked out into the cold. I was so disbelieving that I became incoherent and felt like I was going to puke and/or have an asthma attack (he kept asking, “Are you okay?”). We walked to a café. I said, “I feel like I should call Kaiya… but that would be rude.” He told me to go ahead, so I did, and said, “Umm, I am on a date right now… with T___,” and she freaked out.

January 16th 2010. Why am I doomed to be dumped on the 15th day of winter months by bisexual genderqueer brown-eyed Jewish improvisors who love drugs and don’t deserve me?

Spent much of the morning moping, playing ukulele songs, lying in Max’s bed inhaling his comforting scent, emo-tweeting, eating, and just generally being a drain on society. I am wearing the same clothes I wore yesterday and slept in – it seemed somehow blasphemous to cleanse myself just yet. I will tonight though – lunch at Bubbie and Zaidie’s tomorrow. Pretending to be cheerful and well-adjusted. Hooray.

People were commenting on the relationship status switch on T___’s Facebook profile. They all seemed to assume that it was ME who had dumped HIM. “You don’t deserve that,” etc. One girl even offered herself up for him to “confide in” if necessary. He replied that he’s alright, he hopes I’m doing okay, and he’s going to take a break from “relationshipping” for a little while. I kind of wanted to punch him. What a fucking martyr.

March 6th 2010. Sexuality stuff I’m pondering lately: I am definitely attracted to men and boys in a romantic way. I look at someone like V___ and concoct fantasies about cuddling, kissing, holding hands, spooning, him opening doors for me, buying me lattes, calling me, saying my name, smiling at me, etc. Thinking about sex with men, however, almost always leaves me cold, unsettled, unnerved, and even afraid. I have occasional moments where I crave it (or think I crave it?) but 98% of my sexual fantasies are about women.

I can imagine having sex with a woman and feeling comfortable and safe doing it. I wouldn’t be very scared if I were to go down on her or vice versa, if I were to fingerfuck her or vice versa. The task of making another woman come does not seem hugely daunting, terrifying or invasive, the way the prospect of heterosexual relations does.

But I have no desire to do any of those gooey, romantic, relationshippy things with women (with the exception of an occasional boyish/butch lady). So I’m pungently unattracted to penises and going on dates with femmes, but potently attracted to clits, labia, and snuggling with boys in coffee shops. It would be a really difficult life to be a heteroromantic homosexual. I hope I’m not. Ahhh, confusion!!

May 18th 2010. Secret confession: throughout my relationship with T___, I continued to have very explicit sexual fantasies about V___. I told T___ this, during a conversation-bordering-on-argument about how he doesn’t get jealous and how that pisses me off. He didn’t care. Maybe he would’ve if I’d gone into detail… like about how most of these fantasies have to do with blowjobs, VERY uncharacteristic for me.

I’m kind of embarrassed that I just wrote down on paper that I basically want to make V___ come repeatedly in my mouth… but at the same time, it made me think about it, and want it (still). Ugh.

January 22nd 2011. I looked at pictures of V___ today – new cute ones from a trip he took with his girlfriend – and my heart didn’t snap in two. In fact, I felt pretty detached. It was like the pictures were from a quantum alternate reality, a potential life I never led where V___ was my boyf, but I wasn’t especially sad about it. I think, to get over a person, fully and totally, you have to be convinced that the two of you are wrong for each other, and you have to allow yourself to be distracted for a little while – just long enough that you have time to regroup, to rediscover what your heart feels like without the weight of dissatisfaction weighing down on it – and then you can get your life back and cut the cord that’s tethering you to these old issues and this old person.

What I have learned about unrequited infatuation, primarily, in all my field research, is that a little bit is a deliciously exciting propeller of euphoria, but a lot is a troublesome weight to bear. The trick is to avoid progressing to the “longing” stage – you have to keep it fun and light and happy, by maintaining the belief that it’s OKAY that it’s not going to go anywhere. Once you start blaming yourself for the painful stagnancy, or hanging your hopes and self-worth on the fictional attainment of this person, you are wading into dangerous territory. Though, of course, escaping from that sort of situation is easier said than done.

May 16th 2011. E___ AND I HAD SEX and I decided I needed to journal right away, to process my thoughts. Congratulations, journal – you are officially my number-one confidante.

It was like nothing. It was like a dildo pushing inside of me, speeding up and slowing down sometimes. I didn’t feel anything break; maybe I don’t have a hymen after all. It lasted maybe 3 or 4 minutes – I didn’t mind his lack of stamina, though he was very apologetic and offered to go again (I said no, politely).

I don’t feel that anything has really changed. Those weird “violated/used” feelings I had feared are here somewhat, even though I know they’re irrational as fuck. I feel overwhelmed. I feel worried that I didn’t enjoy it more than I did (although first times are supposed to be awful). I feel heteronormative. I feel like I want to talk and talk and talk about how penetrative sex is basically how I imagined it but didn’t really Feel Like Sex to me – it felt like I was lying there and something happened to me and afterward I got all confused and conflicted and speechless and wide awake.

There is a naked man in my bed and I am no longer a virgin. I really don’t know what to make of this.

November 2nd 2011. Here’s what’s interesting about allowing myself to have small, transient crushes on people outside of my monogamous relationship: The feeling of infatuation tends to refresh anything it comes into contact with. That flutter of crushness brightens my mood and further motivates me to put more time and energy and love and passion into my relationship. Limerence is a massive renewable resource with no drawbacks, so long as it’s understood and accepted from the beginning that nothing will come of it.

March 26th 2012. Tonight I had the brilliant idea to start my own sex toy review blog. Immediately registered “Girly Juice” on Tumblr (after finding that “Sugar Cunt” and “Lady Juice” were both taken) and began scheming and dreaming. So far I’m only working with EdenFantasys to acquire stuff to review (they mailed me a book of spanking erotica today for free, YAY!) but I’ll probably branch out to other stores in due time. Could be my summer project!

January 28th 2013. I have severe doubts about my ability to stay monogamously committed long-term, and yet I haven’t encountered any situation in which I had an opportunity or even a temptation to cheat. I talk about needing the freedom to kiss and flirt with other people but I don’t actually do it, I just feel good about being allowed to. Sometimes I think I’m bored of sex with E___ but then we have sex and I’m reminded that our sex consists of things which matter to me and make me come and leave me satisfied, such that I don’t really ever have a desire to fuck other people because I just know they wouldn’t be as sexually compatible with me as he is – maybe they wouldn’t like giving oral, maybe they’d hate my labia, maybe they’d want marathon sessions with acrobatic positions, maybe they’d be perplexed at my needing clitoral stimulation to get off.

But if I don’t want to fuck other people, and I don’t particularly want to date or pursue other people, then the only remaining options are E___ or being single, and since he’s nice to me and we have good sex and we go out for nice dinners and he keeps me warm in bed one night a week, I see no reason to pick singleness over him even if I no longer have any burning desires for any aspect of him anymore.

Maybe this is what long-term relationships are supposed to feel like: somewhat static, more like a room’s wallpaper than the things in the room. There are people who seem constantly challenged and delighted by their partners, ecstatic every day even after years, but I have to wonder if those people are faking it.

June 16th 2013. I have a lot of complicated thoughts and feelings around the idea of sexual monogamy. I HATE the whole concept of my body being “possessed” by someone just because we are in a relationship. It grosses me out to think that there are expectations and limitations placed on what I can and can’t do with my own body on my own time. Why is it okay for me to be naked in a body image workshop but it somehow becomes problematic if I’m naked on GoneWild? People can jerk off to the mental image of my body either way. Hell, they could do that even if I always remained clothed.

There is something to be said for emotional fidelity, in that sharing your life and your deepest self with someone can take a lot of trust and sometimes you only want to share that depth with one person at a time. But I don’t see why that should be mandatorily connected to sex. Sex is touch and fun and pleasure and exploration and it doesn’t always require commitment or emotional intimacy or love or anything. Sex can just be sex. And since it is something I do with my body, it’s strange to me that our culture mandates I can only do it with the body of the one I’m emotionally committed to. Ugh.

August 29th 2014. I have to rip the band-aid off and break up with E___. I have to. It’s awful to both of us that I’ve let this drag on so long. I’m not happy; my head and heart aren’t in it and I don’t have the time or energy or desire for a relationship anymore. It has to end. When am I going to do it? Soon. It has to be soon.

September 11th 2014. One of my professors is totally foxy in an older-man sort of way. While listening to him talk about courtroom publication bans tonight, I couldn’t help but fantasize about him giving me stern instructions while smacking my ass with a paddle and slowly inserting a lubed butt plug as “punishment.” It feels good to want people again, to experience desire, to imagine possibilities.

April 3rd 2015. B___ told me two things I already knew about F___: that he has a big dick, and that he’s on the submissive side. That’s not a great omen for our potential sexual compatibility but I’m also still kinda unclear on how subby I really am. Sometimes I wonder if it’s one of those things I enjoy in fantasies but wouldn’t be that into in real life. In any case, during our drunken interview last week, he mentioned to me that he is “orally inclined,” so we’d at least be compatible in that way. (And let’s be real: that’s more important to me than dom/sub stuff anyway.)

Max and some others have suggested to me that it would probably be best to just come out and ask F___ whether his intentions are romantic or just friendly, but I’m scared to make things explicit because I really do like having him as a pal and it feels nice to have made a new friend, and I don’t want to mess that up. I really don’t know how people date out in the real world. Is it normal and expected to have casual friend-hangouts for a while first? Is cuddling in a bar a normal-ish thing to do with a platonic opposite-sex friend? These questions sound stupid when I write them out like that but I genuinely don’t know. There are so many variables.

August 9th 2015. It is 7:05 and I am meeting C___ for coffee at 8!!!!!! I tweeted earlier about being sad that I’m so so celibate, and he asked me a clarifying question about the tweet, and I cackled like a loon and thought about how funny it would be if that dumb tweet led to us meeting up. And then I took a nap, and when I woke up, I had received a DM from him, just as I had in fantasies I’ve had about this possibility, and we chatted back and forth a bit and eventually decided to meet for an evening coffee tonight. OMG, OMG, OMG. I texted feverishly with friends while choosing an outfit, doing my makeup and cleaning my room in preparation for possible imminent sexytimes. I don’t know how casual dates/casual sex work at all. I’m very freaked out and very excited and ahhh!!

LATER (past midnight)… We met up and ended up talking for ~4 hours. He is sweet and smart and charming and makes me laugh. A lot of what we talked about was movies and sex and nerdy shit. He is more-than-passingly familiar with my blog and my tweets. He is also cute and significantly older than me and talks a LOT but it’s all interesting. He said we should hang out again sometime. OMG, OMG.

August 30th 2015. Holy shit… Last night. LAST NIGHT!! H___ had told me he’d be working and would have to arrive at the party late, but it turned out his work ended ahead of schedule so he was already there when I got there. I walked in wearing my floral-print AA skater dress with babely hair and makeup and he turned around from his seat at one of the tables and said, “You look gorgeous.” It was exactly what I wanted to hear at that moment.

I’d been invited to perform so I clambered onto the tiny stage and played “Addressee” + “Jump Your Bones” for the extremely appreciative, supportive crowd. I explained how “Addressee” is about my frequent inability to tell if someone is flirting with me… Afterward, a bunch of people came up to me and complimented me on my music… Then H___ was like, “Can I compliment you now? Now that everyone else is done complimenting you?” He told me he likes that my songs are so honest, that it’s “arresting” and “disarming.” He gives really good compliments, and I told him so.

In response to my song, H___ told me, “For the record, I am always flirting with you.” (!!) He kept trying to get me to dance, because dancing is fun and whatever, but dance-club party atmospheres make me feel really anxious and weird… We got around to talking about his ex and my ex and my weird ambiguous situation with F___, and he said he doesn’t like wasting time on people who are ambiguous (not in a mean way, just matter-of-factly and sympathetically to my situation), and I said, “Well, just to be clear, I’m really into you,” and he seemed surprised but happy and told me he’s into me too, but that he hoped I wasn’t just saying that because of being drunk (I wasn’t).

And then – like the universe was standing up to applaud our bravery – the Carly Rae Jepsen song “I Really Like You” started playing, and because H___ and I have a shared love of Carly Rae, our heads whipped around and he said, “Okay, let’s go,” and we sprinted to the dance floor and got down to fucking “I REALLY LIKE YOU” just after admitting we really like each other. Holy shit.

January 17th 2016. Last night I had an impulsive late-night sex-date with L___. I was apprehensive and unenthused about going over there because I’m just not attracted to him and that has become increasingly obvious lately. But I think some part of me feels like I should take sex where I can get it. Like good sex is a rarity, especially for someone like me, and I shouldn’t turn my nose up at it. That’s such bullshit and not true and I deserve better than someone who doesn’t turn my crank, but good heavens, these deeply internalized beliefs are so hard to unlearn sometimes.

I was already feeling vulnerable and insecure and inadequate and unsexy in general, and should’ve known better than to do something like kink that would require even more vulnerability. But alas, live and learn. I went into L___’s bedroom and he started spanking me, and it seemed like he was going harder than he typically does, and eventually I started crying. Not brief sobs of sexy pain – actual crying, with tears and shuddering breaths and a deep sadness. I could feel L___’s uncertainty about how to proceed, but he asked if I wanted more and I said yes. I just felt so sad. And it felt like all of my obsessive, anxious, self-doubting thoughts were being whipped out of me, like I was being punished for them, but it wasn’t working.

L___ cuddled me and told me I’d been a good girl, and that was a nice gesture but it still just didn’t feel right. He isn’t the right person to be my daddy dom. I don’t have the romantic feelings I’d need to have in order to want to please him, to be a good girl for him, to change my behaviors and habits and patterns to make him happy. It’s like, he’s saying the right things, but he can never be the kind of person I wish would say those things to me.

February 12th 2016. So yesterday was completely wacky. Bex left at noon and I spent the whole afternoon and early evening feeling kinda gloomy, because of “Bex-drop” but also because I wanted C___ to invite me to hang out again but didn’t want to initiate this myself for fear of seeming “un-chill.” But then at night, I was lying in a bubble bath, half-heartedly trying to masturbate while unable to stop thinking about blowing C___, and I happened to have brought my phone into the bathroom with me, and I impulsively decided to send him a DM saying I had been thinking about going down on him and would 100% be down to do that again sometime soon. After some hemming and hawing about location, he eventually invited me over. I got dressed, did my makeup, and got on the streetcar. It was cold as fuck outside but I was motivated.

When I got there, he was all freshly showered for me and smelled good and we went into a cozy room where he had dimmed the lights and put on an internet radio station of “ambient groove” jams. We sat on the couch, talked a little, made out a bunch, and then I got on my knees between his legs and blew him. YUP, still as good as I remembered. He told me later that he could’ve come in like 15 seconds, but we were both trying to savor it. I know I have written this about 800 different ways here in the past few days, but he is honestly my Ideal BJ Recipient. I told him to let me know if he wants one any time and that was an honest offer.

After, we decided to go to the brew pub for some beer and food. It was really nice and date-like and I felt very heart-eyes-emoji toward him. We talked about sex and video games and our careers and music and all kinds of stuff. He indicated (without saying so, really) that he doesn’t have romantic feelings for me and doesn’t want me to catch feels, and I said, “I have caught mild feels but I have made peace with that,” and he said he knew. Sigh. I know he’s never been destined to be my boyfriend or anything, but I’m very struck by how much he’s almost my ideal partner on multiple levels so it’s still a bummer. Oh wellz…

July 24th 2016. This morning C___ had set his alarm early enough for us to sit and have coffee and hang out a bit before he had to go to a brunch date with some new girl from the internet. It continues to hurt my feelings that he is seemingly so desperate to get into a relationship but inexplicably doesn’t consider me a contender to fill that role for him. But regardless: we always have a good time together, and I adore being around him.

Because my days are so empty now, and because I’ve been so depressed lately, I mentally sort days into “days I’m seeing C___” and “days I’m not.” This is ridiculous and unhealthy for so many reasons. I should have more in my life, so it doesn’t feel like he is the centre of it. And I should feel this way about B___, if anyone, because he’s the person who actually has romantic feelings for me and wants to date me, not C___.

With B___, I sometimes (okay, often) find myself wanting to skip the small talk and get straight to the sex, because he irritates me less when we’re banging instead of talking. With C___, I hang off his every word and want to ask him all the questions in the world so I can absorb his opinions and wisdom. The sex is great, but so are the makeouts, the cuddling, the just being near him, the conversations, the solemn silences as we listen to meaningful music together, the being on our phones in the same room, the aimlessly deconstructing our respective romantic lives, the casual being around each other while the mundanity of life plays out. His very presence captivates and uplifts me no matter where we are or what we’re doing.

January 26th 2017. This trip has been hard because, as per usual, travel stresses me out and also I am wont to experience “C___-drop” after seeing him. It’s gross and makes me feel bad. I only want/need/love him when I’m depressed and/or extremely anxious; that’s when my brain reverts to believing he is the source of all my comfort and the solution to all my problems. It is embarrassing to have done all these months of processing and “getting over him” and to find that it can all unravel, or seem to, so quickly and suddenly. But I need to remember that healing is not a linear process; there will be setbacks and backslides and fuckups and falters. I am doing my best and it’s okay if sometimes that’s not very good.

May 3rd 2017. I am soooo New Relationship Energy-hazy. Nothing fucking matters. My emails and deadlines and unreturned texts are utterly insignificant and I will get to them when I get to them. All I want to do is flirt and fuck and cuddle and touch and talk about Feeeelingz and smile at each other like a couple of goons. It’s ridiculous. Somebody save me from this silliness. Except actually don’t; I’m happy.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2016: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

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April 11th

So here’s what I learned from this break-up:

Firstly, sex and feminism are two hugely important issues for me and they need to be ironed out with a partner before we get serious, put labels on each other, make promises, etc. I can’t date someone who denies or perpetuates the patriarchy, and I can’t date someone who’s not as libidinous, sexually adventurous, and communicative as I need them to be.

Secondly, I need to stop rushing into things. I jumped on this opportunity because I desperately wanted a boyfriend and S___ seemed (through my rose-colored glasses) to fit the bill. My mind filled in the blanks and paved over some problems to round him up to boyfriend-worthy material, when he is so clearly not a good match for me. In future I should give people a trial run of at least a month before we jump to labels and/or commitments, because that’s how much time I need to get a sense of compatibility and problem areas.

Thirdly, like many people in our sex-shaming culture, I have internalized the notion that sex problems aren’t a “good enough” reason to break up with someone. As if sexual resentments don’t bleed into the rest of the relationship. As if sex isn’t an important mode of expressing affection, attraction and adoration. As if sex isn’t vital to my career, my community, my identity, my happiness. I should not let anyone bully or slut-shame me into de-prioritizing sex, because it is important to me and that is not a bad or unreasonable thing.

Fourthly, maybe I am not as desperate for an emotionally committed partnership as I thought I was. Being emotionally intimate with someone is work and it requires time, effort, emotional labor, and vulnerability. I will be ready to go there again when I meet the right person and when my mental health steadies a bit more, but at the time being, I’d kind of rather my sex life be primarily fun and flirty and light and breezy, rather than weighed down with partners’ feelings and baggage. (Cruel, perhaps, but true.)

Fifthly: my friends and family’s opinions on my beaux are of great importance to me and color how I perceive said beaux. For the most part this is good, because they have my best interests at heart. But I should be careful not to introduce beaux to the other people in my life too early; it makes it even harder to end things if I need to. They feel so entangled in my life.

 

August 20th

This morning C___ and I talked over a Sneaky Dee’s breakfast about how I think I have to break up with B___. I lamented to C___ that I fear I’m too picky – I never seem to stick with anyone lately, no one’s good enough for me – but he told me that a lot of unhappy marriages and nasty divorces could be avoided if folks were pickier. He also said (I’m paraphrasing hugely) that every relationship has a cost attached to it – time, energy, etc. – and if it doesn’t replenish/uplift you, then the cost may not be worth it.

It’s amazing how C___ can be such a wise mentor to me at times, despite often being a key source of my emotional distress. I started to feel nauseously heavy and sad while discussing B___ with him and it was partly because of the words at the back of my throat that I couldn’t say: “No one is as good for me as you. I’m scared that no one ever will be as good for me as you. I’m sad that you still don’t want me.”

The way in which I like him is dumb and all-consuming.

 

August 31st

I am constantly and newly amazed by the ongoing discovery that the way I think about a thing – the words I use to describe it, the mental categories I sort it into, and so on – can have such a huge effect on my perception of that thing. See, for example, how drastically my opinion of blowjobs changed when I sort of just decided I liked them. See, too, how these past couple days I’ve sort of just decided that C___ isn’t my crush anymore, and it seems to be working.

Granted, things may be different when I see him in person again. But I’ve been so good. I haven’t looked at his tweets. I haven’t texted or sexted or snapped him, though I’ve wanted to. When songs of his have come up on shuffle, I’ve shouted “NOPE!” and skipped them. The times he’s crossed my mind, I’ve felt less smitten and more annoyed, disillusioned.

And interestingly, I’ve felt sane, even lacking the anchor of a central focus on this man. I’ve been reflecting on how, for a literal year, this crush has felt like the biggest thing in my life. Nothing else has received so much gossipy dissection, creative unpacking and mental energy, so many tears, journal entries and hopeful daydreams. A year is a long time to be that singularly focused on something that was never going to lead to anything. It feels like I’ve – at least for the moment – broken the spell, escaped the thrall, untangled the web and stepped out of it. It feels like such a relief. It feels like I have so much more love to give and so much more emotional energy at my disposal now that I’m not actively spending it on some insensitive dingus who doesn’t deserve it.

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September 2nd

Reflecting a lot lately on the patriarchal myth that the romantic and sexual attention of men is a scarce resource for which women should clamber and compete. It’s such bullshit. “Dick is abundant and low value,” as Alana Massey would say – and also, the abundance (or lack thereof) of dick in my life is not a reflection of my worth as a human being.

This past year, a year of sluttiness, has taught me many things, including that I am more than capable of attracting dudes – and now that I know that, I can kind of relax. I don’t have to constantly prove my desirability to myself or to the world. I can be pickier in my romantic and sexual decisions because I know I have options. Good dick isn’t a resource I have to desperately grasp at whenever scant handfuls of it appear ephemerally in my vicinity; it’s a free-flowing river, and I can dip into the constant cascade any damn time I want.

 

September 4th

T___ was flirting with me on Twitter last night, and I was into it, and it made me ponder my own (limited) gayness. I still don’t really have a sense of how much of my vagina-reticence is an actual lack of attraction and how much is just anxiety and uncertainty. After all, there was a time, just a few short years ago, when the idea of sex with dudes held very little appeal for me, because it scared me – and now I’m like, GIVE ME ALL THE DICKS! So I wonder if I would take to pussy like a fish in water if I were to dive in and try it out already. Frankly T___ is a total babe and I would be DOWN. Hmm.

What I’d really like is a situation I briefly talked about with C___ earlier this summer: I want the two of us to threesome with a pretty lady (N___ or T___, ideally) and for him to watch over me and give me advice/direction as I do stuff to her. I don’t know what it says about my kinks or my “daddy issues” or my concept of C___ that I want him to play a watchful-mentor role in my sexytimes, but to me that just sounds so lovely and comforting.

(I know, I’m not supposed to be writing about him or thinking about him, etc. but this is in a mentor capacity and not a person-I’m-in-love-with capacity, soooo…)

 

October 24th

So, I don’t feel especially romantic or sexual toward C___ anymore, but I do still feel emotionally fixated on him, and it’s weird to parse and process that distinction. Every moment I spend with him feels critically important and worth memorizing, and once I say goodbye to him, I typically enter into a mini-depressive episode that lasts 12-48 hours or so. I keep trying to figure this out. I think it’s for two reasons:

1. My brain is just used to responding to him in this way, like how alcoholics probably get a little boost of dopamine when they see or smell booze. Habit and conditioning and all that. Bex compared this to how my iPhone thinks I mean “duck” when I type “fuck”; there’s nothing for it but to keep gently correcting its mistake until it learns. And likewise, I just have to keep gently reminding my brain that C___ is not the perfect, everlasting source of comfort, happiness and rightness that I once believed him to be.

2. We have almost the exact same sense of humor; he is really funny and smart in a way that just jives with my brain – that’s not my dumb crush talking, that’s just factually true, unfortunately (?) – so the emotional “drop” after that intense level of joy and amusement can be rough. But I guess I just have to reorient my thinking around that. When I go see an improv show that makes me laugh a lot, I don’t mope around afterward because the show is over and I’ll never get to see it again; I just appreciate that I DID get to see it, and I pursue yet more things that will make me happy. Life is a processional; you can’t stop or look back. It doesn’t work. You trip and fall and get trampled and hurt yourself. Keep walking, ya dummo.

12 Days of Girly Juice: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

It was a big year for self-reflection and forward motion! Here’s some of the sexual and romantic events of my year, summed up in journal entries…

 

January 31st, 2015

I have a bad habit of blaming my relative lack of suitors on the way I look, when deeply and truly I know that the main reason for it is that I’m shy and don’t go out very often. I know plenty of women who are chubby or otherwise less than conventionally perfect-looking but who nonetheless capture the attention of men regularly, and without exception these women are outgoing, socially active, warm and friendly. I think in some ways I cling to weight loss as a magic pill for loneliness because I believe it would actually be easier to lose 40 pounds than to ditch my shyness. How silly.

 

April 8th, 2015

When _______ and I were in Montreal, at one point we talked about how I wish I had a fuckbuddy who I actually trusted and liked, and she asked me if there was anyone in my life who I would want to have sex with. I said ____ and ___. It’s not so much that I’m intensely attracted to either of them but more that I know them, feel safe with them, feel respected by them, and find them cute. It’s weird that when I said it, I thought there was literally zero chance of anything happening with either of them, but now one of them is actively flirting with me. It feels like the universe heard what I said and got the wheels turning for me.

 

April 20th, 2015

It has been literal YEARS since I have had a CRUSH on someone in the way that I would now consider a baseline prerequisite for entering into a relationship. The kind of crush that hits you without any effort on your part to cultivate it – just, BAM, DAMN, that person is cute, and you get blushy and giggly whenever you see them, and you find yourself going out of your way and making excuses to be around them, and you notice and fixate on all their many good qualities, and you are absolutely lit up by their presence or even the briefest of online correspondence with them.

I haven’t really felt that way about anybody in the past 5 years, and I don’t know why. Am I not getting out enough or meeting enough people? Am I suppressing any romantic feelings out of self-protection, insecurity, or fear of rejection? Have I internalized conventional attractiveness standards to an unhealthy degree? Am I on the asexuality spectrum? Who the hell knows?!

 

August 31st, 2015

I have been thinking a lot lately about my view of men/boys and how radically it has changed over the past few years. I used to be so distrustful of them, concerned that all they wanted from women was sex, that they were cold and calculating and unemotional and unloving. I was scared of their aggression and forwardness, their ability and willingness to identify a desire and then just pursue it. And penises made me nervous, those hard, unyielding outcroppings of flesh that seemed to demand attention and respect and reverence, wanting just to plough into a vagina with no attention paid to that vagina’s readiness or the feelings of its owner.

Obviously not all of those qualities are forgivable, but certainly not all men behave or think that way, and some of those qualities that scared me are now things I treasure in men. I admire their forwardness, how they’ll often cut straight to the chase when there’s something they want. I love that they’re easier to read than women. I love that they appreciate skills and competence and intelligence and humor; the stereotype that men only care about women’s looks is so not true.

And for all my teenage fretting about how men would be sexually selfish, that hasn’t been my experience AT ALL. ______ and my current trio of beaux have ALL been (or at least claimed to be) very concerned with their partners’ pleasure, to the point that getting a partner off makes up a significant portion of their enjoyment of sex. And I have met many men on the internet who say they feel this way too.

 

September 21st, 2015

I want to remember always how _____ looked at me and said, “I think you’re nervous, and you have no reason to be,” and I agreed that yeah I was nervous, because he’s cooler and more famous than me (“More famous? Maybe. Cooler? Not so much… You’re way cooler than I was at your age”) and I said, “I’m fond of you,” and he said, “I’m fond of you too!”

I want to remember always that I am worthy of having, and capable of capturing, the attention of men who I not only LIKE but who I initially perceive as being “out of my league” in one way or another: too cute, too cool, too mature, too internet-famous, too conventionally attractive, too sexually experienced to want someone like me.

This year I’ve been pursued by ___, ____, ______ & _____, all of whom are highly “cool” and desirable in their respective social spheres – even though they’re all total fucking nerds. Aww.

 

November 11th, 2015

If I have sex with one more new person before the year is out – and it seems likely that I will – then I will have tripled my previous number of sexual partners in 2015. It feels a bit like a dam has burst; finally, a torrential downpour of people who want to fuck me. I’m still not having nearly as much sex as a lot of people in my communities seem to be, or as I would like to be, but it feels like a lot. Although, I wish that I had had a repeat encounter with at least one of the people I fucked this year. (____ barely counts; that threesome was, by _______’s own admission, mostly about her and me.) I like when you’ve banged a person a few times and you get to know each other’s bodies and tastes. I like that better than firsts.