The Blog

Posted on

Forget Not, the Bathroom Gods

My washing machine has been leaking. I don’t remember when I first noticed, but I’ve run laundry with a towel on the floor for a few weeks now. I’m a procrastinator, but the accumulation of other maintenance needs finally got me asking for help. Two days later, to my relief, I have a spanking new washer drum to handle a backlog of laundry.

While I am not exactly excited to do laundry, I am pleased with myself at a series of tasks completed today and the prospect of still greater achievement. I have exercised, I have journaled, I have updated my planner, I am early to work, and it’s a duo no less. I know exactly how I will spend my afternoon and I am certain that by the end of the day, my sense of self satisfaction and accomplishment will only have grown.

Imagine my surprise when, freshly showered, anointing myself for my date, relaxed and a bit dreamy, I step into a puddle on my floor.

I’m not supposed to have puddles on my floor anymore. I am annoyed. I’ll have to call maintenance this afternoon. I toss a towel in front of the washer. The towel is immediately soaked. I am no longer annoyed. I am now nervous.

I take one, two, three breaths, watching the floor, realizing that whatever this is, this isn’t my usual leak. The water is spreading rapidly. In several directions.

As I move into action, pulling every towel I have ever hoarded out of cupboard and closet, I think. How do I stop the water? Should I call maintenance now? No way maintenance can get anything done in a half hour. Should I cancel my appointment? When is Phryne supposed to get here? Do I have enough towels? Shit, it’s gone under the wall. If I wring them out in the tub, I think I can reuse them. Should I put clothes on? Oh dear lord you idiot, you can just turn off the damn washer. No, you’re not an idiot, you’re just panicking. Gross! What the hell is coming out from behind my washing machine? Now I have to wash the tub. I hope that’s Phryne knocking on my door. Shit! Shit! Shit! How does maintenance know my washer’s overflowing!!! Thank fuck. They’re here for the other thing.

HAHAyesitsabadtimepleasecomebacklaterthankyou.

Oh dear god. I’m still naked.

Only two minutes after the intended start time, al(most al)l the evidence of my minor maintenance mishap was gone or hidden, I was dressed and made up, and Phryne and I had donned complementary robes. The sole remnant of the emergency was my still racing heart. Our dear gentleman friend was none the wiser.

I was so proud of myself. I had taken control of a situation and solved it, more or less. We had gone on to have an amazing time: a king sized bed full of the three of us and a delightful afternoon. My self assuredness from earlier in the day returned and I patted myself on the back on my way home.

Unfortunately, the bathroom gods, divine creatures of cleanliness, patrons to all who wish for hot and cold running water, saw me.

You see, they have been good to me over the years and, until now, I haven’t really given them their due. I took too much of my success on my own shoulders and failed to offer them my thanks and worship. The lesson of the washer hadn’t sunk in.

So they spit my shower head at me.

The next day, less than 24 hours after the washer lesson, I decided to take a long, hot soak at home. I washed out my tub, added lavender epsom salts to a deep bath, and settled in with a book. I rubbed hair treatments and moisturizers in and let them do their work. I luxuriated in wet heat and my success from the day prior. After the water lost it’s warmth, I turned on the shower to rinse and wash it all off.

My punishment began with a pressurized jet bouncing off the wall directly into my face. Then the hose connecting the handheld shower head to the wall just… fell out. I was left standing in shock with a dribbling shower head in my hand and a sloppy spray facing exactly the wrong way. Dumfounded. All I could think was “are you fucking kidding me?”

This lesson’s silver lining came in the form of a gooey, garlicky, crispy quesadilla from the taco truck outside Home Depot. Instead of curling up with fresh clean hair and the rest of my book, I had to haul my soggy, rapidly chilling butt up Aurora for a replacement shower head to finish my wash. There was a very ling line. It was windy and cold. For that hunk of tortilla wrapped steak and cheese, dunked in fresh guac, it was absolutely worth it.

I am now officially humbled. I will never take a trustworthy washing machine for granted again. I will never gripe about how long the hot water takes to get hot, or begrudge the daily cleaning required to honor their temple. I will thank the bathroom gods for their carne asada gift and hope it’s enough.

Take heed from my story. Do not neglect the bathroom gods during your daily ablutions. Don’t forget to offer them regular sacrifices of drain-o, or the prayer of the drain snake. Otherwise you, too, may be humbled.

Posted on

MEXICO!!

So, uh, yeah. Turns out I am not resort people.

I was invited by my best and oldest friend to be her plus one at a destination wedding. I wasn’t her first choice, but boyfriend and Spanish speaking friend could’t go. I’ve never been to Mexico before. I don’t love spicy food, or tequila, but I do love travel. For a week long immersive trip, I could learn to.

The wedding party chose a resort, one of those all inclusive joints with unlimited food and poolside drinks, to stay at. Turns out they book out way ahead of time and the first agent the happy couple worked with jerked them around. By the time they freed themselves from contracts and loopholes and started working on their own, many places were booked. They chose a quaint little town some hour or so south of Cancun itself and the wedding party piled on. There weren’t many of us, but we made a cute group, and we all wanted to stay together. For some of us, this was the first and last chance at tropical luxury.

What a fucking joke.

There are some things I hate to cheap out on. I LOVE food. I won’t hesitate to drop two hundred bucks on a really good dinner for me and my favorite book. Glittering wine, rich flavors, a tight menu, all can send me into ecstatic revelries. I try to stick to fairly and ethically made clothing (or second hand) and if I can’t get that, then high quality is non negotiable. I have a soft spot for antique jewelry. And when it comes to experiences: I’m an independent soul. I don’t like huge crowds or noisy places (unless that’s the point like in Times Square or a fireworks show.)

But finishes can go straight into the bowels of hell for all I care. Veneers, false enthusiasm, pretenses, fancy counter tops , overlarge shower stalls, and marketing misrepresentation are among the banes of my existence.

To save money, we spent our first three nights at a condo around the corner from the resort. We arrived a day early, walked around town, found the gelato shop, took a small group tour, sat by our private pool, nestled into our cozy little studio and overall enjoyed our privacy. We got acclimated, we did yoga, we had fresh caught local dishes directly from an open grill, and we made our own sack lunches.

Then we checked out and moved to the all-inclusive resort.

Our nightly rate went from 180 to 600.

We lasted six hours.

Hour one: we checked our bags, upgraded to VIP, and got ourselves a drink by the pool. We were accosted by no fewer than five attendants asking us to sign up for this extra or that before we could just relax.

Hour two: After a Pina colada, aware that our sunscreen got checked with the bags and increasingly disenchanted with our fellow tourists, we explored deserted corridors inside. We found the theater and, music nerds that we are, we made friends with the manager. That was the peak of our experience.

Hour three: our room was ready and we went upstairs. The bottle of tequila and our friendly bellhop were rays of sunshine in an otherwise increasingly unsettling atmosphere.

Hour four: we found some other members of the wedding party on the non-VIP side. The beach was white and sandy, but the gravel they used to build the beach wasn’t soft and silky as I had expected. It required shoes. Several party members indicated they’d be swimming with dolphins soon, an unsavory activity to anyone sympathetic to large mammals trapped in captivity. The tiny cages were visible from our hotel room.

Hour five: noise from construction was far less disturbing than periodic concerted shrieking from the pool area. I hate unidentified noises and from my balcony, it felt like some obscene sunburned water-based ritual kept happening just outside my sight line. The resort’s app said “weird game” was happening in the pool. My general unease moved into the realms of intolerable.

Hour six: I video chatted with sympathetic friends. After expressing my rising unease, discomfort, and dissatisfaction, one friend asked what I stood to lose by leaving. The answer: only money. Inspired to reach out to our host from the previous nights, I felt an immense weight lifted from my chest when he replied “the place is already clean, you can come back whenever you want and have it until Monday.”

I struggled not to wake my friend from her nap to share the news. “We can go back. We get to back to our air bnb.” “What? Are you sure” “Absolutely. I’ve already made the arrangements and we can go back whenever we want.” “Amie, that is amazing news! I thought you liked it here and I’m so glad you don’t! I wasn’t going to tell you, but I cried myself to sleep just now and I’m so glad we’re leaving.”

Hours seven to eleven or so we stayed in the resort, but only because just then, the rest of the wedding party messaged us to come have dinner and drinks. Knowing we could leave at the end of the night and sleep somewhere cozy and familiar made staying a million times easier. When we parted ways that evening, we collected our most immediately necessary items (and the laundry our host agreed to wash for us) and walked our happy little asses back to the condo down the street.

The next three days we came and went at the resort (I barely even tried to get my money back. After some other staff interactions, I had low hopes, and didn’t want to explain to the bride that we had left while the rest of them were stuck.) but we slept and cooked and ate at our private little studio with our private little kitchen and our private little pool. It felt like a personal villa. It was us sized, not some mega hotel built for hundreds of people. We made friends with the neighbor and his dog. The pool was quiet and calm. No one brought me my drinks, but the ones I made for myself were perfectly balanced, not too sweet. The air conditioning cooled us off without feeling like an icebox.

While the quality of the food I think was specifically bad at this resort, the sweetness of the drinks, the crowds, and the overall sense of a lack of control I think are inherent to those all inclusive resorts. I found joy in learning about and shopping at the farmers market. I had a half dozen fresh, juicy mangos all to myself, and my friend (who has a lot of allergies and finds restaurant food hard to navigate) ate at least as many fresh, ripe, creamy avocados. I much preferred my tiny backyard pool with its six or seven guests at it’s busiest to the expanse of fake beach and screeching crowded pool activities. The quirky layout of our studio condo was far more charming than the commercial, standard hotel room, despite it’s third floor balcony. Free tequila is great, but priced out, I’d rather buy my own from the shopping center downtown. And if we’d stayed at the resort the whole time, we would never have found Martin’s gelato shop. It became a nightly tradition to stop by and get sorbet and affogato, chat with the owner, and pet the cats.

Dan Pashman’s podcast The Sporkful isn’t for foodies, it’s for eaters. I feel this motto in every aspect of my life. I don’t give a flying fuck what I’m supposed to like. I am well aware of the ironies and contradictions in my preferences: my favorite clothes are as likely to come from goodwill as American Giant, but never from Gucci*. My favorite jewelry includes diamond studs and rocks I picked up on a hike. My favorite foods include Tillamook cheddar and wheat thins, champagne, Dick’s deluxe burgers, and pate. I’d rather go back to the Herb Farm than the French Laundry. And I’d rather linger by myself on the edge of a mayan ruin, where human interference fades into the jungle, than spend any time lounging in that resort.

I think, like Vegas, I will only ever try again when it’s someone else’s treat. Maybe I chose badly and a different resort would have given me the exclusive, tropical luxury I was promised. Maybe there is a buffet line somewhere on that peninsula that offers fresh locally made tamales and succulent, juicy carnitas. Maybe there is a resort that actually delivers gobs of fresh avocado when asked. I am as open to being wrong as I always was. But maybe I’m just not freaking resort people.

Posted on

Substance abuse

On occasion, my friends and I share stories. We vent, we awwwwwww, we smile, and we realize that some things we thought were rare are slightly less rare than we thought.

Turns out, substance abuse is surprisingly common.

Now when I mean substance abuse, I don’t mean hard drugs. That is common in the world, but in my tiny corner specifically, I’m thinking specifically of “sexual performance enhancers.”

Viagra and it’s compatriots can be a marvelous solution to a common problem. Marijuana can be a relaxing and intensifying drug to weave into an erotic experience. Alcohol can ease nerves and there’s a reason they call it liquid courage. Male enhancement tonics can be fun and energizing. Topical lidocaine can theoretically increase the time between arousal and ejaculation.

Don’t do them here.

If you are actually treating ED and you have been prescribed viagra by your primary care provider, try it out during a self love session first to see what effect it has on your body. How long does it last? How easy or difficult does it make arousal and ejaculation? Do you feel increased or decreased sensitivity? Bring that knowledge with you to your appointment with your favorite provider. If you think you’d like to try it for fun: don’t. There are other ways to get and maintain an erection, and recreational use can lead to difficulty orgasming at all.

Marijuana effects everyone differently, and I personally find the smell off-putting. Edibles can hit tremendously hard, and unless we’re doing an overnight, you need to be fit to drive. You certainly don’t want to try it the first time you come to see a provider, and if it’s integral to your erotic experience, I suggest you find another provider.

I very much enjoy a good cocktail or a fine whiskey, and I have a soft spot for gin. But I never drink before you arrive and I suggest you don’t either. While it can take the edge off your nerves, it does that by impairing your good judgement and blunting your body’s sensory input. Whiskey my make you brave enough to make it with the girl at the bar, but it can make making it physically impossible. Not a good way to end any date, but especially one with me.

Energizing tonics marketed at you to “last longer” or “get harder” don’t tell you in the fine print that they make you too wildly jittery to savor your experience. If a five hour energy is part of your usual routine, I won’t stop you, but I don’t recommend consuming anything that will keep you from quiet pleasure right before your visit to my pleasure palace.

Finally, and the precipitating substance for this post, leave the numbing sprays at home. I understand wanting your experience to last so you can savor it. I pace myself and move slowly for this reason exactly. But what good is a prolonged experience when you can’t feel most of it? And how is your provider going to feel when she showers you with kisses only to find her lips going numb?

With rare exception, if I become aware that you have made use of pharmaca to artificially alter our experience and you haven’t cleared it with me first, our erotic interaction will end. I take great pride in my work. I am a patient and willing partner. I am able to pivot as our bodies progress through an erotic encounter, offering enthusiastic persistence, a welcoming lack of judgement, and patience for a variety of activities and permutations. In addition, I have both practical and theoretical knowledge on the physiological function of our bodies from my studies. If you are a long time reader or a regular visitor you will know: I am not often a boastful or prideful person. But in this specific area, I can almost guarantee I know more about your body than you do. When you avail yourself of “enhancement” without my consent, you will have found one of the very few ways you can offend me. Don’t make this mistake with me, and please, don’t make it with other providers.

NEVER do anything harder than a cup of coffee and a cigarette before meeting a provider for the first time. NEVER try new products, legal or otherwise, for the first time when visiting a provider. NEVER do any of these without her freely given and explicit consent. And think really, really hard before consuming illegal substances during a date, even with a provider’s consent. It’s just a bad idea.

My darling readers. I have been navigating the Demi Monde for a while now and, thanks to you, it has taken a decade to accumulate enough of these stories that I felt it right to write on it. I have such pride and respect for you who have arrived, fully in yourselves, nerves jangling, who have come “too fast” and not at all, who have learned your bodies, who have enjoyed what comes organically, who have valued equally your pleasure and mine, who have trusted and loved and enjoyed and taken pleasure without trying to wrench something fake, to fabricate an artificial experience. As has been since I found this world and will be until the day I leave it, I am so appreciative, so grateful to my beloved, darling clients. This feels like a low bar, but thank you for not rubbing lidocaine on my tongue!

Posted on

Book Review: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

This year’s resolution (one of them) is to read. I have two lists and on one of them is the title A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.

I am still trying to decide whether I liked it, or just enjoyed it. 

Dunces is the story of Ignatius J Reilly, intellectual, bachelor, unlucky in many ways, and an absolutely insufferable elitist. He lives with his mother, who believes he is god’s gift to the world, and his “work” is to write a manifesto, work which advances at around a paragraph a month. The opening event is a drunken, low speed car crash (she is driving) that results in a financial burden beyond what the aged woman’s fixed income can cover. She badgers her son into finding work and so we, the readers, follow him from catastrophe to catastrophe.

On the one hand, he is relatively unlucky. On the other hand, he is supercilious, self righteous, overly educated, a pathological liar, obsessed with ruining an abrasive old college flame, puritanical and simultaneously prurient, grandiose, domineering, and would be pleased at the preceding volume of five dollar words. He is a truly awful human and he is not the only one in the story.

If you have ever watched Seinfeld, or The office, or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, you know the characters: awful people, being awful to each other, to differing degrees based on the target audience.

But what struck me was how clearly I saw the author in his main character.

All I had on Toole going in was a photo of the young man, the knowledge that his mother badgered a prominent professor into reading his (very messy) manuscript, and that he killed himself at the age of 36.

While Toole didn’t look like Ignacious, he was able to, within the character, take himself to his potential extreme. I wondered, as I read rants of ire and fantasies of persecution, value judgements on and about everyone in the vicinity, and just general foolishness, if Toole was writing a character that represented what he feared he was.

I have spent the past several years (and will likely spend several more) trying to find the line between overweening pride and false humility. I have a constant low level fear that I am not, in fact, as likable, sexy, interesting, thoughtful, competent, attractive, wise, kind, or intellectual as I think I am. Reading Ignacious’s internal monologues, rants, and the words Toole chooses to describe his actions and mannerisms, I recognize the fears of a brilliant and broken mind, as they look when taken to the extreme.

Immediately after finishing the novel, I read Toole’s wikipedia page. Sure enough, though the physical appearance and eccentricities are borrowed from a colleague at college, many of the life experiences and world views are taken from Toole’s own life. Toole suffered from paranoia, depression, an overbearing mother, and a father rapidly descending into dementia. I can’t imagine what his internal life must have been, to be so perceptive, such a brilliant story teller, and at the same time convinced of the opposite.

Or perhaps, because I’ve read the misadventures of Ignatious J Reilly, I can.

A Confederacy of Dunces is oddly compelling, though I did have to remind myself that the novel was written specifically to lampoon and entertain. There is no deep meaning, that I’m aware of, only a parade of flawed and unsympathetic characters participating in unexamined lives.

I think I enjoyed it. No, I know I enjoyed it. I’m not sure I liked it, but I definitely enjoyed it, and as a romping story where the only wit or skill lies in the hands of the author, I can recommend it.

Posted on

HUMP!

Every year, Seattle hosts HUMP Fest. It’s a short film festival started by Dan Savage in which every film is pornographic. I’ve only been twice now, and despite the discomfort inherent in watching sexually explicit (and often wildly kinky) material in a theater full of strangers, it was a blast both times.

Each viewer gets to vote at the end for Best Sex, Best Kink, Best Humor, and Best in Show. Since it debuted in 2005, it has expanded to cover multiple weekends and it now airs in multiple cities including San Francisco and Portland.

Each film is short, so short that it can be difficult to know how you feel about one until it’s already over.

Crimson Cruising, film number one, was a red tinted homage to gay cruising in a sexy art house lesbian flick.

Body Language made use of body paint to make two people look like one heart, beating together as they fucked. In English and Spanish with untranslated titles, filmmakers made a convincing argument that verbal language plays second fiddle when it comes to coming together.

The Boy With the Tighty Whiteys was a-fucking-dorable. Our young protagonist shares his love for the bum-hugging undies and turns what could have been traumatizing memories of middle school bullying into a niche, and a surprisingly hot, kink. My only disappointment was that we didn’t actually get to see our hero cum, but I’m pretty sure he has an only fans…

Anathema was ridiculous, absurd, and hilarious. Two space cadets wind up on an alien planet a la Captain Kirk and what few garments they had to begin with don’t survive landing. A bubble gun adds the perfect fun foolish gimmick to a charming queer five-some.

Feast of Fantasy confused me: I both wanted to attend the surreal sex and food party, and was terrified by it. Someone popped an olive out of her pussy to garnish a martini. Someone else mashed cake all up in their bits. A plague doctor fucked an I don’t know what and there was a LOT of eating food off of people. I have politely nibbled strawberries and cream from a breast or two in my day, but the sheer magnitude of the licking overwhelmed me.

Shadow Play took a minute to understand. Shadow puppets kissing, then fucking in a variety of poses. Pretty straightforward as to the action, but what’s the backdrop? Is that a leg? Someone’s cock? Oh dear god it’s a scrotum pulled taught! I can’t imagine the patience required to hold yourself stretched like that so someone can make smooching noises and film silly shadow puppets.

No Translation brings Spanish and English speakers together again, but this time their bodies are translated as well. An afternoon at home together invites the audience to enjoy the pleasure his pussy and her cock bring each other. A final shot of the two flipping through his sketch book drew an “awwwwww” from the room at what was arguably the most intimate moment of the film.

Screen/Play gave us all the hits as far as seventies lesbian porn tropes go. Roommates watching TV can’t help but imagine themselves soaping up cars (but mostly each other’s tits), slapping flour in a mixing bowl (but mostly on each other’s bums), and just generally projecting themselves into the screen. Off screen, they realize what’s up and things on the sofa get steamy, too. Cute and hot. What more could you want!?!

The Cannoli brothers introduced me to the term docking, in the style of a (deliberately) badly shopped nineties late night infomercial. If you’ve never heard of docking, it’s…. Well, don’t worry about it. Just imagine a cannoli made by wrapping the dough around a couple cute lil cocks. They do not look delicious, but they do look fun to make.

Grace spent a lot of time off my screen. A few moments in I realized that this was the film to miss if you had to use the ladies’. I’m not into cutting, blood, or piercing, but starlet Grace very much is and for those who love it, it’s got it all. What I did see before excusing myself was a very happy young lady. If all I had seen was her face, I could not have guessed what was happening to the rest of her.

Bloom Room… I don’t… I know this is an indy film festival, but this was too indy even for me. It wasn’t even pornographic! Just weird.

Ronald McDonald for Some McDicken just skeezed me out. The other food related films made me slightly uncomfortable, but still offered something visually compelling. This couldn’t be anything but satire, and not very good satire at that.

State of Mind was, for me, one of the most difficult to watch. I admire the dynamic between a loving dominant and a loyal submissive, but I struggle to watch black people assume roles and postures of fear or subservience with any comfort. Had the dominant not also have been black, I think it would have been impossible. The cinematography was beautiful, and I believe that, because of what HUMP is, the relationship on display must be loving. But without knowing the two men personally, it was hard to get comfortable with it.

For Your Health doubled down on the discomfort, except this dominatrix and her submissive added a heavy dose of medical fetish play. Again, well shot and well edited, the film did exactly what it was going for. Which was not my thing at all.

It’s Me, Mr. Yamface was hilarious. Two dolls go to have sex but can’t find their genitals! At a loss, they are excited when Mr. Yamface bust through the wall kool-aid man style and offers them a plethora of choices. This stop motion film plays a silly game full of vulvas, tits, and dicks of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Truth be told, given the chance for some spare stick-on parts, I think I would be just as excessive as Barbie and Ken.

Cum As You Are tried to make an angry feminist point. Lots of smashing things and yelling. Vice overs about power and witches. I’m not a particularly angry person so I didn’t see the appeal. But whoever made their props did a great job. Real glass beakers won’t break against soft flesh. Their sugar ones were pretty darn convincing.

Get Ready With Betty starred our hostess, Drag Performer Betty Wetter, as she did a simple, brief makeup routine. Drag makeup is not only precise, it’s outrageous. But I never knew they could get such results using people’s cocks for brushes! Charming and exactly a Drag Queen’s amount of farcical, her tutorial made the whole theater laugh.

Luscious was exactly that: Sumptuous fabrics, long slow kisses, elegant lingerie, an envy inspiring peignoir, and two overflowing bodies gently roiling in an 1800’s royal bed made for a sensational short film celebrating big beautiful bodies.

Demon Seed absolutely had to have been satire. It had all of the worst things about porn guys :TM:. Uninspired dialogue, stiff acting, a complete lack of foreplay of any kind, and the money shot didn’t even make sense. If you’re trying to put a demon baby in the guy, why did the demon pull out!? I didn’t get the feeling that any of that was done on purpose, and I have no idea how it made it into a festival so richly populated with quality art house style works.

Color Me Wild was by far the hottest from a strictly sex perspective. What happens when you and your lover dip your hands in UV paint and fuck under a blacklight? This. And when you and your lover are stunners with a friend willing to hold the camera for you? This. Hands down my all over favorite.

A Deep Understanding gave it’s viewers a window into probably one of the most obscure kinks of the night. I did not know until now that watching attractive women “sink into quicksand” is a fetish. I get it, the ostensible helplessness, the viewer’s fantasy that only they can rescue the young lady, and being consumed I am all familiar with. Plus, they writhe and moan and whimper, all of which are sexy visual and auditory cues. But the best part was finding out that the performers who do the sinking love it, too. Not because they find it sexy, but because they find it hilarious.

Menage a Fromage tickled my nerdy bone. Hard. Imagine you’re an amateur cheese maker and want to make a unique cheese. Now imagine you have five or six adventuresome eaters who like to fuck. Add a dude in a hazmat suit wielding q tips and you’ve got it. The yeast sampled from the bodies, lips, bootys, even feet of the orgiastic revelers went into a gallon of whole milk, fermented overnight, and became a fresh, soft cheese. Yes, they ate it. And no, I can’t promise you I would’t at least try it.

Two things I noticed this year: there was, in my opinion, an over abundance of slo-mo shots. I get it, it’s a cheap and easy way to make something look dramatic and give yourself extra seconds of the best shots. I myself have used it when editing my own content. But it’s like salt. Too much ruins the dish. Between that and the wildly popular and headache inducing shaky camera trend, I felt like things were a little more amateur-art-housey than I wanted. But hey, I’m not behind the camera, and for 25 bucks it was totally worth it.

The second thing I noticed was a complete lack of cis/het/white couples. No one likes being excluded from spaces and so I notice in myself a mild sense of feeling left out. I don’t like that feeling. But I am SO glad it was there this time. I live in Seattle, I consider myself pretty socially progressive, the festival is run by a gay journalist. This is nothing that isn’t welcome or expected. Ditto with my discomfort: humans are inherently tribal. Discomfort at exclusion is a survival mechanism we have not yet learned to overcome. But I am doing my best to see it, acknowledge it, and let it go.

As with the Seattle Erotic Art Festival, I am trying to remember to attend these city specific sexy events more often. I’ve been to two HUMPs and one SEAF now, in my twelve years as a Seattle Resident. And I’ve been to zero Fremont Summer Solstice Parades. It’s fun to see what happens when creativity and sex meet in the hearts and minds of a variety of folks. It’s fun to talk with friends about how the products of those creatives make you feel and think. And it’s fun to absorb these events and bring them into the privacy of my bed where I can share them with others who aren’t quite ready to enter the arena of public sexuality.

I look forward to hearing from those of you who have been to HUMPs now and in the past, who can’t see themselves there, or who just haven’t been yet.

Posted on

Book “Review”: The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis

If you have not yet experienced this: you will. Your parents move (or you do) and find another box. It’s not their (your) stuff, it contains relics from a childhood past. Items left behind to wait for the day the child finds their own home, to be retrieved and cherished. Of course, the child has been on their own for a decade or more, and the box of stuff is no longer a series of nostalgic reminders. It’s photos from that prom, a borrowed sweatshirt from an ex no one liked, cheap childhood novelty toys, and for me, books.

The Chonicles of Narnia are among my old childhood friends. There are a few other worlds I revisit fondly as an adult from time to time but it had been a while since I went back to visit Aslan with the Pevensies.

With much of the other young adult literature, the writer’s motivation is simple. Tell a story, entertain, the good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and everyone lives happily ever after (until the next adventure). Well, the Chronicles of Narnia are a bit different. They are full on Christian propaganda, and I had no idea.

In my defense, I was a child, and I tend to read adventure stories quickly, my attention on what comes next, not allegorical intent. It wasn’t until this final read through of my childhood copy, with advanced warning that Aslan isn’t just a metaphor for Jesus, or Narnia’s version of him, he is actually Jesus as he appears in Narnia, that I realized just how obvious it all is.

C. S. Lewis’ obsession with pastoral living is unreasonable. In every adventure, when the good guys win, it means schools are destroyed, bridges are broken, anyone who represents progress, technology, or capitalist interests are overthrown in grand style, and the good, honest woods folk get to go back to partying, which they can only do because food magically appears. They drink wine regularly but at no point do we hear about even small scale production. The beaver has a sewing machine, but where did it come from? It is fantasy, which would be fine, if it wasn’t also propaganda.

I love stories of valor, honor, trust, love, adventure, bravery, redemption, and people being all around kind to each other. I cried many times as people and creatures rallied around each other to preserve life, liberty, and happiness. There are also some very good points made: how easy it is to use fake religion to control people, how greed and imperialism fail to respect the autonomy of others, the importance of honoring your word, and the joy of doing good, simple work with and for others.

When Aslan lays down his life to redeem Edmund, I cried. Not because I believe a historical man named Jesus was born of God and physically died for us, but because I value honorable sacrifice when it makes meaningful change for the good. I cried when the little field mice came and chewed through the ropes that bound him, because I remember the scenes, later, of the mice who, through that kindness, were rewarded with speech, and bigger hearts than anyone else. And I cried when Reepicheep, leader of those mice and fierce warrior, achieved his lifelong dream of reaching the end of the world, and beyond.

But it’s like when I listen to country music, or car commercials, or watch touching moments in a TV show. I can tell when someone is manipulating my emotions and I don’t always consent to it. As I feel tears welling up, I also notice where they come from and what the author’s purpose is in stimulating them. In this case, Lewis’ purpose is to glorify agrarian living. To make Jesus into a magical being that children can more easily be taught to love. To demonize anyone who speaks a different language, or has a different skin color. The neighboring empire, with designs of conquest, is populated by dark skinned people who wear turbans. The irony of a man writing an idealized pastoral England standing up against an evil imperialist nation is not lost on adult me.

When the Harry Potter novels came out, there was an outcry among American christians that this was satanist propaganda, intended to idealize devil worship and teach children how to use magic. Real magic, not just pretend magic and satanic beliefs. I thought it was absurd at the time and fortunately, my parents didn’t quite fall for it. In retrospect, I can see exactly why it was an issue. Generally, when people accuse you of something you didn’t do, out of the blue, it is because they, themselves do or did it. Sudden accusations of cheating, assertions of lying, someone deciding you are jealous or insecure when you yourself don’t feel that way… Voter fraud, human trafficking rings, nepotism… When people fling unfounded accusations, the first place to look for the problem is at the feet of those doing the flinging.

And so it is here. The Chronicles of Narnia are a series of fantastical stories, delightful, propaganda through and through. They were written specifically and deliberately to make contemporary christian beliefs simpler and easier to stomach for children, and to encourage them to forgo higher education and technology. The irony of a man with a liberal arts education and a higher degree writing stories that painted progressive schools as places that breed bullying is no longer lost on me.

As adventure stories, they are delightful, simple, and easy to read. But the next time I revisit beloved childhood friends in the form of talking animals, I’m going to Redwall Abbey.

Posted on

Happy Birthday to me

Good morning, my darling. Beloved reader and ofttimes companion.

How long has it been since I was happy? Suffused with joy for no reason other than I am alive, and life is good. Days? Weeks? Possibly even years.

I am a crier. I inherited it from my mother, though where she got it I don’t know. My grandfather is stoic at best and my grandmother is all love, all light, all the time. I cry when I am afraid, when I am sad, but by far I cry the most often when I am touched by beauty.

I had the incredible privilege yesterday to be present for someone who needed to cry. Men are indoctrinated against vulnerability. Women love their partners to be emotionally vulnerable with them, so this training makes exactly zero sense, but here we are.

And here I am, one of the few people in your life who can bear your fear and sadness free of judgement. I don’t know your mother or your best friend. I couldn’t share your secrets even if I wanted to, and so they are safe here. Your shame, your weakness, your fears… all are safe here and it my joy and my pleasure to hold space for them.

It is also my pride, of which I am not proud. I have been the vulnerable before, but with someone whose joy and pride at being the “safe space” made them unsafe. The experience of crying with someone, on someone, is incredibly private and intimate. That my sadness might bring joy to another makes my flesh crawl.

But one of my favorite mentors is an expert at holding space. The first time we met one on one, she let my mouth run away with me first. For an hour, I spilled detail after detail of what was upsetting me but it only took her one question to break down every careful wall my words had built. For the next hour, I sobbed. She didn’t stop me, or hold me, or try to reason me out of it, she just said “there it is” the way you’d say it to a newborn kitten who found the nipple. Soft. Loving. Joyous without owning it.

I cried like that until I exhausted myself and felt better. We talked solutions to my problem, we have met a few more times over the years, and always with the same structure: I talk, I cry, I feel better. I hope someday to be half as perceptive, half as present, half as thoughtful as she. For now, what I have will do, and I am grateful for it.

Something about today is beautiful. The sun in hidden, I have no work to help me feel productive, nothing really has changed since the second (that’s the last time I had an actual bad day), so why am I so at peace today?

Maybe my efforts are finally starting to pay off. I’ve been exercising daily this year, tracking my moods and habits, journaling frequently, giving myself permission to follow my whims, reading more… something seems to be working, though I don’t know what.

All I know is that, despite setbacks and the vagaries of time, life is pretty damn good.

Happy birthday to me.

Posted on

Which Are You?

Imagine with me, if you will: you’re going to the grocery store. You have a long list, it’s Friday afternoon, and you’re greeted by an irritatingly full parking lot. You spot an empty space. As you round the corner to pull in, you are greeted with… The Stray Cart. One wheel is popped up onto the curb to keep it from rolling away into traffic but it’s butt is in your way, much as you are now in the way of other shoppers. This onerous chore, already packed into a busy day, just got worse. And why?

Because someone else’s time is more important than yours.

Shopping carts are a privately owned community resource. You won’t be arrested, fined, or even shamed really for leaving your cart in a neighboring parking spot, but putting it back is the right thing to do, a helpful thing to do, and a low effort thing to do. Because of this peculiar combination of features, returning a cart makes an interesting litmus test, dividing people into the majority group: those who default to helping others, and the minority: those who can’t be bothered.

I have always been the kind of person who puts their cart away. As a child shopping with the family, I or my brother took on the task, not even really realizing there was the option not to. As a young adult with small shopping, I left my cart at the door and walked my bags to my car (or all the way home, for that chunk of time broke me’s car was busted). Now, I make it a point of walking my cart, and others if I walk past them, back to where they belong. It has become as much about completing tasks and putting things in order as about helping others.

I think about this every time I go grocery shopping. I think about the people who day in and day out do the little things to make the lives around them easier. Better. I think about the people who choose not to complete this incredibly simple, easy task and I wonder why. I wonder what the rest of their life looks like. I wonder if I have any cart-leavers in my life that I don’t know about. And I feel a little smugness, and a little solidarity, with everyone else walking their carts across the lot and back to the door.

Posted on

Awash

Meditation has always interested me. There is a reasonable body of evidence that suggests it helps even one’s moods, improve one’s sense of well being, encourages the brain to rest and repair, and if done long enough, can even open the door to influencing one’s physical body.

Few of the data are strong or conclusive, and I have a private hunch that the placebo effect, long known to the scientific community and more recently, employed deliberately, plays a large part in the positive effects. Our minds are so incredibly variable, and individual practice is difficult to judge; it is difficult to imagine we can, with the tools currently available, prove that it helps.

However, I have had a lot of time on my hands the past month and after finishing The Sacred Enneagram by Christopher Heuertz I supposed there was no time like the present. He finishes his exploration of the nine personality types with guides for a few different prayers popular with catholic monks of various persuasions. These prayers are essentially mindfulness and gratitude meditations performed through a Christian lens, e easily translated into a secular practice. So, for the past six days, I have taken at least twenty minutes each day to let my mind wander and try to gently corral it into something resembling peacefulness.

My mind is not naturally a peaceful mind. One of the reasons I read so much is that I read quickly. Particularly stories that are pure narrative and don’t require much introspection or pause. Part of this is habit, but a big part of it is that my undisciplined mind sucks in information, processes it, and immediately spits it back out again. Speaking and writing both help me slow down and think, but I still think fast enough that sometimes I forget what I’m saying, or what I was going to say, because inside I’ve already moved on.

On the first day, I used a mental image of myself filling with light. It started in my lungs, filled my body down to my pelvic floor, then two columns moved towards my feet. Often I got distracted halfway. Never did the light make it all the way down to the floor. But for twenty minutes, I redirected my wandering thoughts back into the light. When I finished and opened my eyes, I almost felt like I’d gotten stoned or a little drunk. My head felt light and stuffy and I was a little dizzy, and full of a kind of mellow happiness.

It’s only been a week but I am hopeful and energized by the experiences I’ve had so far. One day in particular was almost overwhelmingly beautiful.

I spent last weekend in Portland, celebrating the gradual return of the sun with friends. One of the kids helped me with my yoga practice for the day (meaning she pestered me about it all morning until I did it, then lost interest after 20 minutes) and at the end, there is a brief cool down timer, only three short minutes. I drew breath and light into myself and let it back out again, and for a moment felt like I had zoomed out, like I was watching from above as a light full of love, washed out from me and filled the back yard. Then it overflowed the fence and went into the house, full of people I love, and began washing out into the rest of the world.

I didn’t see it keep going, I was only there for a moment, but when I came back to myself and felt this overwhelming feeling of love.

According to the nine personality types, I and people like me offer acts of service as a natural outpouring of the universal love we create, hold, and share. When we are dysfunctional, the acts of service are not done by choice but by compulsion, are often poorly considered, and can occur so frequently they leave no room for us to love ourselves. The practice I am beginning is to make room for me, to get used to receiving love, and to become more deliberate in my actions so they serve me and my community.

So to feel this powerful surge of love coming from within, coming from my pelvic floor through my heart and so abundant that it seemed it would never run out, made me cry from happiness.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever had to explain to a house full of people that you need a minute to feel the love of the universe flowing through you before you can get your head together enough to start roasting a chicken, but if you do: be prepared for some bewildered and indulgent looks. I am fortunate that my friends are tolerant of experiences outside their own. They didn’t look at me funny or shame me or try to comfort me because I was crying, they just kind of smiled and asked me to let them know when I was done with my universal happy juice and could help.

I’ve tried to recapture that moment a few times since and haven’t managed it yet. Perhaps the presence of people is necessary to spark the connection between a practice and a feeling overwhelming enough to bring on happy tears. Perhaps in time it will come back. Perhaps, even, it will become something I can draw on when I’m angry at an awful driver or feeling fear at the veiled future. Whatever comes, I am pleased already to have felt some of these feelings, and I am looking forward to feeling them again and gaining some facility with them.

I have always been a loving and grateful person. With time, I have also become wiser and more certain of myself. I hope that my future holds a place where I have both, and can share it with you.

Posted on

When She’s a Nerd, Too.

I have said this many times, and will probably say I many more, but I fucking love nerds.

I love the nerd who buys semiprecious gemstones on eBay, tests them for authenticity, and keeps his collection sorted into “real, good fake, and bad fake”

I love the nerd who years ago threw away a black lotus (and the nerd who know why that’s a big deal)

I love the nerd who always wears themed and matching humorous socks and underwear

I love the nerd who stands his ground against me in the Picard versus Sisko debate.

I love the nerd who brought me home grown ribeyes and fresh raspberries from his hobby farm.

Architecture nerds who help hang my art, history nerds that entrance me by weaving the threads of of our past together, gardening nerds who bring me the truly weirdest flowers, emotional nerds who share their fascination with the mind, SciFi nerds that introduce me to new shows, gamers that help me with boss battles, food nerds who share their hidden finds with me, book nerds who fill my shelves… I love you all.

So when I opened up a belated Christmas gift to find this…

I was elated.

I grew up watching Stargate SG-1. My family’s time honored tradition of eating dinner in the den meant many an evening following Carter, O’neill, Teal’c, and Daniel across the galaxy, searching for Sha’re, fighting Apophis, meeting the Asgard, and just generally kicking ass. When O’neill and Teal’c get stuck in the time loop. When Carter’s dad becomes a Tok’ra… Every time I see this, not only the pleasure of watching the show, but the memories of comfortable childhood come back.

Every time I meet a new nerd, someone with passion and knowledge, for the sheer pleasure of knowing things and sharing them with others, I hear in my head a chant. “One of us! One of us! One of us!”

Thank you, dear friends. For the gifts you give me, and the gifts you give yourselves. I wouldn’t be here without you and I so deeply appreciate you.