Category: Metaphysical/Thoughtful

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CuttleFish

I haven’t been to the aquarium in ages so I was delighted when one of my beloved patrons suggested a trip as a way to spend some time between the bedroom and the dinner table.

I have mixed feelings about animals in captivity. On the one hand, the Seattle Aquarium works almost exclusively with rehabilitated animals or those born in captivity, particularly birds and mammals. Their salmon hatchery is small but educational, and they only keep their octopuses for a few months before returning them to the wild.

On the other, the Dolphinarium in Puerto Aventuras had a fully grown sea lion in an enclosure smaller than my apartment. And if you didn’t otherwise need to be convinced that keeping charismatic mega fauna is inherently inhumane, you must have missed the nation’s collective  binge watch of Tiger King.*

But an aquarium is populated largely by invertebrates and otherwise relatively low needs creatures. Their internal worlds, as far as we can tell, are small and so it seems so much less cruel to keep them in (well maintained) tanks. In fact, it seems quite the opposite. In a world full of predators, offering simple prey animals a sanctuary, and feeding predators relatively easy meals, is kind of like offering them an early retirement.

While I did enjoy the afternoon (it turned into a gorgeous day and the outdoor sections became a pleasure to linger in), I felt a snag or two, watching the fur seals and the river otters doing laps, bored off their cute furry asses. I know they wouldn’t survive in the wild, being either rescued or captive bred, and that helps me feel better. It also helps that the staff are dedicated not just to the physical health of the animals, but also to offering them enrichment and amusement, just like we do with our pets at home.

But no amount of sea otters feeding and harbor seals hamming for the tourists** kept me from returning to my favorite exhibit.

The Cuttlefish

Cuttle fish are not fish, they are cephalopods, related to Octopuses and squids. And they. Are. Awesome.

Seattle Aquarium has seven (that I found.) There are two near the seahorses, down low where the little uns can see them, and they are the more colorful ones. Their resting mantle colors are vivid blues and purples and yellows, but they change them at the drop of a hat. They can also change the texture of their skin, smoothing out or projecting spikes to blend in and hide or stand out and threaten.

Though the vivid ones were pretty, they’r tucked into a small corner, and the two were in neighboring tanks, unable to interact with one another.

Moving to the next room, we found a tank with five all together, and at adult eye level. This species is called Sepia bandensis and has a far less vibrant mantle. And their inter… cuttle-al? interpersonal interactions were SO COOL to watch. They mostly hang out under their little rocks, blending in so perfectly that at first I only counted three. While we watched, they came out and slowly, glacially, had a little tiff.

I think it was two males and a female, because one stayed low to the ground, her skin color and texture changing so slowly I almost didn’t notice it, while the other two jockeyed for proximity. They flashed from white to so purple they were almost black, spikes jutting from their skin and then smoothing out. The one in the middle showed his angry black top side to his rival as his underside, the side facing the female, was a reassuring white. As they moved around each other, like a sitcom rendered in silent ballet, their colors strobed, flashed, bled from one to the next, telegraphing meaning in an instant.

The subtleties of color and the speed with which they changed it, slow sometimes, when adjusting camouflage, lighting fast when telling someone else to piss off, are myriad. The color changes are controlled by a special type of cell that (called a chromatophore) they have instant and total mastery of starting at birth. Well, hatching. They come from lil eggs. They’re so cute!!

And how cute are they, anyway!?! Their eyes are at the transition point between their fat, oval little bodies and their short tentacles. Depending on which way they’re approaching you, they might look like they have an enormous fat nose and a teeny tiny little body, or they might look like they have a big round belly while their face is long and skinny. When their tentacles are all together, it looks like a long nose and a slightly disapproving face, but when they open their tentacles for whatever reason, they suddenly become a chibi Cthulhu, their small stature preventing any real scare factor from their tentacle ringed maw. Their motile fin is incredibly thin and encircles their bodies, a gossamer fluttering tutu.

And the best part? When they’re near the ocean floor, they take their bottom two tentacles and use them like little leggies! They’re buoyant, so the legs walk in a kind of astronaut slo mo effect as they wander to and fro.

At the end of our leisurely walking tour, after cruising the mammal tanks and swimming with the whales in virtual reality, we had enough time to revisit one exhibit and I chose cuttlefish.

The love triangle seemed to have cooled off for now and all five little smushy water dirigibles hid in their rocks, indistinguishable from their surroundings.

I don’t know which one it was. Maybe it was the female (I didn’t read until later that you can count their tentacles to discern male from female), maybe it was one of the observers to the delicate dance battle. No matter, one of them broke away from her stony hiding place and slowly, slowly approached the glass. She moved to the opposite side of the window, her little tenticlegs cautiously bringing her my direction. Finally, she settled across from me, mere centimeters of glass separating our noses, and we watched each other.

It’s almost impossible to know, and definitely to remember, what her mantle told me. She was in full camouflage, instinctively hiding her soft, tiny body from potential predators. He skin was mottled cream and brown and almost black, protrusions breaking up her silhouette, blending her into the gravel. And yet, she made small, subtle changes, strobing soft stripes that moved from head to toe, or from eye to forehead? It’s hard to tell what the equivalent would be. Her spikes sometimes softened at the tips, just a bit.

For a moment, nothing moved and no one else existed. I looked directly into her W shaped eye and wondered if she was thinking what I was thinking. What is this creature? This mute, bizarrely sized, caged creature. Did she know she was the one behind bars and not me? Was she wondering if I knew that I am me? Was she observing me, wondering about me, just as I was? And did she have the better life? Ostensibly free of stress, free of wondering about higher meanings or your impact on the planet, well fed and housed with stimulating neighbors, was she happier than me? Was I on the wrong side of the glass?

It’s a hard concept to accord any weight, later, over steaks and wine and gratuitous desserts. Cuttlefish don’t have orgasms, as far as we know, and their tongues are not for tasting, or for pleasure. Their lives are short and fraught, ruled by instincts and unable to know the wider world.

But it’s no harm to wonder, in both senses of the word. To wonder at my assumptions and ask questions of the world, and to wonder at this world of light and color and diversity and pain and majesty.

My thanks are often general, addressed to the many, many people who have helped me craft my life as it is, as I like it. But today I have the privilege of thanking one person. The wondrous gent who shared my joy, watching her watching me watching her, who conjured for me a day at the aquarium without knowing just how perfect it would be.

Thank you.

*To be fair, I missed it, too, but Didn’t miss the messaging.

**The river otters and the fur seals may have seemed kind of bored, but the harbor seals sure looked a lot like they were having fun interacting with visitors. They’d bump up against the glass right in front of someone, or boop face first into it at low speed. They played with each other, and took care to rest where people could see them clearly. Also they are one hundred percent adorable, and they’re a pretty sedentary species anyway.

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The Dentist

I have never had a panic attack before. I’ve watched people have them (both before and after I knew what they were) and Ted Lasso has done a good job of portraying them, but I’ve never myself had that specific experience. My anxiety, when it arises, is more of a slow burn.

I also don’t like needles.

So when a needle full of novocaine slid slowly, deep, up into my jaw, I was prepared to hate it. I did. I was prepared to endure it. I did. I was not prepared to have a panic attack as it set in.

First, my heart rate spiked. I could feel it in my throat and hammering against my ribs. I tried to slow my breathing but it shook and rattled on the way in and out of my lungs. My hands shook, went icy cold and started to tingle. My palms dampened with sudden sweat and nausea hit the pit of my stomach.

I am so fucking proud of myself.

During the last few months of least year, I found myself in a situation that meant frequent but low level stress responses. I spent time learning exactly what adrenaline and cortisol feel like when they hit your system. I learned how to calm myself down and how to ask my body what it needed from me to heal. It wasn’t a fun experience, but it was valuable, because in this moment, when I wasn’t expecting this response at all, I was masterful in my handling of it.

I realized what was going on. I communicated with the staff. I breathed… in for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. In, hold, out, hold. Then for six. Finally, all the way up to a count of ten in each phase.

One of the scariest parts of a panic attack is not knowing what’s going on. The first time I watched someone have a panic attack, neither of us knew what it was or what it meant. We wondered whether it would be worth going to the hospital. We sat, confused and afraid, in the car, hoping it would go away. But without the tools to name and dissipate it, The effects lasted for hours, the fear for years.

When, within the space of an hour, I experienced the symptoms of panic attack, calmed myself down, communicated my needs, and returned to baseline, I was SO proud of myself.

And proud of my body.

At one point, about halfway through (and yes, the dentist and his technician were still going about their work) that nausea I felt in my stomach asked for my attention. In some of my meditations, I have visualized light of several colors rolling off of me, as if I was shedding love, calm, or strength, depending on the color. I put my hand flat, palm down, right over the soft spot under my sternum, applied gentle, sustained pressure, and saw behind my closed eyelids, the blue, cool light of calm coming from my open hand and soaking into my upset tummy. Next, my throat. I slipped my other hand under the little paper chest apron they give you and rested, cool, on my chest, just below my throat. As I cooled off and calmed down, my hands adjusted, finding the spots that needed attention and filling them with calm.

I wonder how things might have been different if I’d known this years ago. Perhaps I could have been more present for myself and my friends. Perhaps I could have found my voice sooner.

Rumination is one of my stressors so I’ll avoid it here. I am only grateful that whatever I’ve been doing, the reading, the meditation, the visualization, and constantly learning from others’ experiences, helped that day.

When I went back to have the other side done, I was ready. It turns out there’s epinephrine in the novocaine. It was likely responsible for my symptoms and now that I knew what to expect, I wasn’t afraid. I got a little shaky and my heart rate went up, but I didn’t need the focus that, the first time, was critical.

I almost cried with joy. Hand on heart, noticing my body, asking it what I needed to do and actually receiving a response, I felt this flood of gratitude. Thank you for telling me we’re in danger. Thank you for telling me how to help you. I thought. You’re doing such a good job, body, and I love you. 

I cry fairly often. It’s normal for me to express love in a flood of tears. I am trying to learn to let them come in the moment and embrace the awkwardness of those around me. However. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to explain to the dentist that my tears weren’t of pain. Particularly since his hands, the assistant’s hands, a bite spacer, and several tools were all jammed in to my incredibly tiny mouth. I had to change my train of thought and put my tears off until later. They still haven’t come. But they will.

There’s no particular point or ending here. This kind of work, learning the theory behind emotional health, practicing it in moments when you’re already calm, and drawing on it in moments of very-not-calm, is ongoing. There are dozens of approaches, each suited for different minds and hearts. For the lucky ones, each approach offers new insight, something useful we can weave into the fabric of our selves. There are no finish lines, but there can be pivot points. Moments in time where the gradual work comes together and, AHA! Something new crystalizes.

For me, this trip to the dentist was one of those moments. I didn’t know what I could do until I did it. Now I know it’s there if I need it, and that’s a powerful tool.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Loving Presence – A Small Ask

Perplexed. Perplexed is the emotion with which I currently struggle, and I’ll tell you why.

Earlier today I welcomed a new friend into my apartment. I lit candles, dimmed the lights, applied lipstick and powder and lingerie, and set the kettle on.

He arrived, stepping through the door as I settled a red velvet robe on my shoulders. I greeted him with a smile.

The next half hour is a bit of a blur. Shoes off, coat hung on a hook, envelope set on the bar, body directly into the shower. Every step abrupt. He’s nervous, I think to myself. It’s not unusual for someone with nervous energy to rush from one task to the next, but once we sit and have time to chat, the nerves will melt away, as they always do, into pleasant conversation, and on into an embrace and those things that follow.

He sat very close. Not unusual. He asked me about my family origins. Not unusual. He reached over to caress my hair. Not unusual, but awfully soon for such an intimate gesture. All of forty five seconds had elapsed.

He asked me what I do, other than this. Not unusual, if awkwardly worded. “I read a lot” I said as he moved my robe to expose more cleavage. Not…. Unusual? But not common. “Mostly for school”

“What are you studying in school?” The question may not be unusal, but that after each one, he shifts his gaze away from mine. Hands now on my thighs, tugging at the tie of my robe. Not unusual in itself, but it’s been barely two minutes since we sat down together and such entitlement so soon is off-putting.

“Is everything all right?” I ask, teasing. “I generally prefer to warm up to new friends and I find it difficult to talk and touch at the same time.”

For those of you who have met me, you know there is both a warming up period, and a reward for it. For those of you who have not met me, now you know. In the case of this gentleman, that reward is now lost forever.

“You work with computers. Do you ever find that the rigid logic of computer language effects your interactions with people?”

At first I thought he was offering an example. He turned 90 degrees to me, planted his feet on the floor, and began “this isn’t working out. This between you and me, it’s just not working.” I waited for him to illustrate the point. I waited in vain. “I’ve been here for half an hour. If I leave now and let you keep half the donation, does that seem fair to you?”

In stark contrast to the rest of that time, this moment stuck with me. I felt my throat, hot. My heart pounding. My hands shaking. I’ve never had this happen before. I don’t know what my feelings are, much less whether that seems fair or not. Take a deep breath. I think I feel sad? Rejected? But also indignant. No one else has ever put me in this position and I am not prepared. Do I think it’s fair? No, I don’t think so.

“I don’t feel like I’ve misrepresented myself.”

“There’s no way I could have know you would force me into conversation like this. I have 25 Oks on p411 and what you’re doing is unusual. I’ve never had anyone do this before.”

“Do you not like to talk to people before you have sex with them?”

“Not like this”

I have nothing to say

“Think of it rationally. You get to keep half.”

“I don’t want to do that, I want to take a moment to see how I feel.”

“It’s fair. You get half.”

I have no time to think, or feel. He’s impatient. He’s not interested in what I think, only in me agreeing.

“You know what? Fine. Go get dressed.”

I sipped tea while he gathered his belongings, marveling to myself at my luck. I’ve only once before had anyone make it through screening, only to screen themselves out after arrival. On that occasion, I had to force him to leave, stony faced, carefully controlled anger simmering. All I had to do this time was ask him to see me as a person before he saw me as nothing more than a mindless whore and he showed himself out.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out. Would you like a hug?”

I’m not sure whether what I saw on his face was horror or incredulity, but he declined. It’s a petty pleasure, but I enjoyed his struggle with my heavy door.

It is difficult not to harbor ill will. The phrase “the trash takes itself out” keeps recurring to me but I will always give people the benefit of the doubt. Most providers are accommodating. We are in customer service and giving our clients what they want is a critical part of that service. Many of my colleagues in fact prefer to skip the small talk and put on their show, leaving the difficult work of feedback for people in their intimate personal circles. That makes sense, and I understand it. What I don’t understand is how someone came to me expecting that, and then left when they didn’t get it.

Had this happened three or four years ago, I likely would have folded. It’s happened before. The pulling, the grabbing, skipping the moment of connection that precedes something more. Then the performance, acceptable to some, transparent to others, humiliating for me. All fake because there’s nothing real on which to build, despite my best efforts.

A core virtue of an excellent entertainer is timing. Tension and the release of it. Trust, respect, pleasure, arousal, climax, release, warmth. These things have their time and their order. You cannot skip one and expect the next to be as good. In trying to force the timing, today’s new friend lost it all. He never trusted, failed to respect, and missed out on the rewards.

I’ve spent all afternoon texting and talking with friends, industry and not. I dislike rejection and needed support. There’s selection bias, of course; my friends love and respect me, but the universal response was disgust. Disbelief. Horror. Bewilderment. Who would put up a thousand dollars only to be deterred by someone asking “See me. See my humanity first and then my full erotic power will come, pounding, in waves on your shore. Only first: see me.”

Today, I verbalized a small boundary that represented a big ask. Seeing someone is no small thing. People practice for years and still have trouble. I have a long way to go before I can do it with ease. But some people don’t even want to try. And in my asking, in my insistence on my humanity, it turned him off, and he left.

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I Am Not Certified

All my life I’ve suffered from chronic insecurity. Testing into the 95th percentile as a teenager, I just assumed that was like a participation trophy: designed to boost your self esteem and make you feel better about your effort. Turns out that was not the case and I was well above average when it came to writing (and taking tests).

Though insecurity can make it difficult for people to feel like they’ve succeeded, it can also spur people into higher achievement and so, I think, it was for me.

When I began offering bodywork to my clients, I felt it wasn’t right to provide a service I had no training in. I went to massage school, passed all the exams, and walked away a proudly certified massage practitioner.

When I started thinking of myself as a sex educator, I started wondering what else I didn’t know, and how to find out. I reached out to a small local university and enrolled in their sex education certificate program. While sex and couples therapy interests me, sixty thousand dollars and three more years of full time school sounded a lot less appealing than a quick and easy certification program.

I started class expecting to enjoy myself, and to learn something.

My expectations were way off.

Previous experiences in school led me to think of myself as a good student. I test well, I write well, I take in information well through text, and I generally do well with externally imposed deadlines. Eight years face to face with people’s sexuality has shown me the enormity of it. As with anyone who knows a lot on a topic: I know enough to know I don’t know that much, so I expected to consume vast quantities of new information.

Previous experiences in school were not at the graduate level. Those externally imposed deadlines are more like guidelines, way less structured than expected. I wasn’t prepared to not only answer questions, but have to write them first. Vague prompts frustrated me and my insecurity (perhaps hubris) kept me from asking for help until it was too late.

I was able to take value from each class, but what was revelatory for many other students was just another day in the life for me. I found myself bored by the content, frustrated at my boredom, then feeling an aversion to the next round of content.

Add onto that distance learning and travel options opening back up and I found myself writing my way into a temper tantrum for my first midterm paper.

My teachers were patient with me, and I was able to salvage the quarter, but it was a sign.

One of the themes that popped up over and over was one of independent learning. Sex workers talked to my class about institutional knowledge, wisdom gained through experience, and the fact that certification doesn’t always mean excellence, and excellence doesn’t require certification. Rogue educators told institutional gate keeping to fuck off and let their work stand for itself.

I knew from day one I wasn’t interested in AASECT certification. Their ethics clause includes a stipulation against touching your clients. While I will strive to maintain safe boundaries for myself and my clients, I believe in the power of touch to teach and transform.

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize the freedom in this realization until halfway through the second quarter.

If I don’t care what they think, I can do what I want, when I want, how I want. I learn through reading and process through writing. If they need a video log or a slide show or an academic paper, and I don’t think that will help me, I just don’t have to do it. What freedom!

It truly felt real when I had to fly and miss half of a one credit class. Pelvic floor health and it’s role in sexual function, taught by an internationally recognized pelvic floor PT? I don’t give a flying fuck whether or not I get credit for class, I just want the information! Someone recorded it for me, I watched it later on my terms, and now I have that in my back pocket when I need it.

For a year, I watched TED talks, read research articles, took notes, wrote essays, put together a book proposal, did a lot of thinking, and I traveled. I spent time with friends instead of filling out forms and took an entire month off to build a garden and take my first psychedelic journey instead of building powerpoints.

I am not an AASECT certified sexuality professional. I did not meet the requirements set up by other people, to teach other people’s classes, the way they think classes should be taught. I gained some excellent tidbits of knowledge and external resources. I gained insight into my own needs and abilities. I gained a better sense for how much I do, in fact, know about sex and sexuality. I gained a greater appreciation for the mutual education my community has done. I gained a healthy skepticism of your average American’s knowledge of sex and sexuality. And oh dear God did I gain an appreciation for guilt-free down time.

So while I won’t be listing my educational credentials here, or in many other places, I also won’t be worrying about whether or not I need them. I’ll keep learning the way I like to learn: slowly, over time, from books and from the people in my community as things arise.

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Comfortable Discomfort

It’s been difficult to find inspiration lately. I started writing in 2013 because I was inspired. Life was so full and beautiful and because of what it was full of, I didn’t have may places to share. Many novelists write best when they’re depressed, drawing inspiration from pain. I don’t do that well. I draw inspiration from beauty and luscious life.

Life hasn’t been terribly luscious lately.

Through the window seeps a sepia light, the modern world driven by smoke back into the forties. My throat stings. I’m hungry but dislike the thought of venturing out to solve the problem. (I ordered a pizza. Gift cards to Tutabella are going over well right now.) Thank modern technology for climate control.

People are my coping mechanism. The pressure to show up somewhere and focus 100% of my attention on the interaction. It’s a hurdle to vault but rarely a difficult one and it has always helped me keep moving forward. Appointments, friend trips, family gatherings… these things both large and small break my inertia. Without them, I can become so settled into place that the effort to move is close to overwhelming.

Fortunately, because I’m an energetic extrovert, that’s never been a problem before. Unfortunately, because it’s never been a problem before, when it did become a problem, when my most effective coping mechanism to battle my procrastination tendencies evaporated into thick and literally choking air, I didn’t really know what to do.

At first I enjoyed the slow down. I had been burned out for a while and an outside reason to slack was welcome.

Then I reacted with my characteristic need to do something to prove that my self identity as a productive person was still true. I made a beautiful artistic offering to offset my guilt at accepting aid.

Then I reacted with anger that life wasn’t moving forward and that there was very little I could do about it.

Once, a few years ago, I was at the Frye with some friends and one room was set aside for the works of Tschabalala Self (https://tschabalalaself.com/current). They were exaggerated black figures, some grotesque in proportion, others in their media. Designed to force the viewer to confront feelings around and stereotypes in black sexuality, they made me uncomfortable. Fortunately, there was a docent available to talk about the artist and her works. We spent a half hour or so discussing and sitting with the art, letting the discomfort do its job. By the time we left, I hadn’t necessarily become comfortable with the images, but I had become comfortable with my discomfort.

That’s how I feel about the current state of the world. The air is poison, our government has lost all credibility in the world, my clients are afraid to see me… I’m not ok with those things. They suck and there’s very little I can do about that.

This morning, a pinched fingertip turned into a primal scream therapy session and it felt so, so, incredibly normal. Like… yes. This is the correct way to handle the shit that surrounds us and the ensuing frustration at one’s complete and utter inability to get things done.

I’m comfortable with my discomfort. I do not feel shame for my fear. I do not worry about whether I’m ‘a productive person’. My anger is perfectly reasonable. This shit sucks, guys.

Not to turn every blog post I write ever into an advertisement, but the only times anything has felt normal this summer are times when we’re here, in my air conditioned apartment, with the curtains drawn to block out the world, music playing, hearts beating, orgasms and laughter echoing off the chandelier. For a moment, the world feels normal. For a bit, things feel clean and safe and mutually supportive. 2020 has robbed me of my illusions of control. When you’re here, for a moment, I have it back.

Thanks to those who have shared these moments with me, and for those who are coming soon. I fucking miss you.

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Does it Spark Joy?

I joined the ranks of the Marie-Kondo-ites. Early in January I binge watched all the episodes and was inspired. I see why she begins with clothes; it’s pretty much all I’ve actually gotten done.

If you’re not familiar with Marie Kondo, she is a tiny, very sweet Japanese lady who tidies. Her show is kind of a reality show where she goes to people’s homes and helps teach them how to tidy up and declutter. It’s a valuable lesson in today’s consumerist world but the lessons I took deepest to heart have to do with respect.

When she teaches you to sort out your clothes, she has you put them all in one giant pile and pick them up, one by one, and see how they make you feel. Does it spark joy? Does it make you smile? Do you use it a lot? Do you feel pretty or sexy or handsome in it? Does it remind you of a precious time? Any of these might be ways the object spark joy for you.

If it does not spark joy, you thank the item for what it has given you, and you get rid of it. That moment after you’ve decided it’s not for you, but before you’ve given it up, that moment of thankfulness for something that doesn’t spark joy really gave me pause. It did two things. It helped me get rid of clothes I felt guilty bout giving away but it also made me think about the way we think about our bodies.

The second lesson I took to heart was that one of the first things she does after touring the home and assessing the damage, she takes a moment to kneel quietly and greet the home. You can see that some of the families are kinda like ‘okay weird lady, you do you’ but a few of them had an obvious shift in the way they thought about their homes. Suddenly, it wasn’t just this messy building, it was safety, respected, welcoming and welcomed. How often do we do that for our bodies?

When people come to see me, they are often ashamed. They can’t or won’t be in a sexually fulfilling relationship or encounter with others, or they think they’re too fat or too thin or too old or too hairy and they worry that I will like them. For years now, I’ve understood without having words for it that I appreciate and thank their bodies. Sometimes I’ll give someone’s cock a chaste kiss and a verbal thank you after their orgasm. But I’ve never asked anyone to do it themselves. The thanking, not the kissing, of course.

It’s been a beautiful revelation to try to remind my clients to thank their bodies. Thank your hands for the work they do for you, writing and driving and touching pleasurable things. Thank your eyes for the joy and pleasure of a beautiful sunset. Thank your feet for carrying you for years and years through new experiences. Thank your skin for the pleasure of a warm room after cold wind outside. Sure, your skin might be dry or hairy, but if you can appreciate it for what it can do, that’s one step towards loving your self a little more. And I want for everyone to love themselves just a little bit more.