Category: Metaphysical/Thoughtful

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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.

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“For Us, The Living” By Robert Heinlein

Robert Heinlein and I often agree. I felt he took it a little far in the case of Lazarus Long and the dissertation on why incest is totally fine and not weird at all. That said, his entire argument is to prove that an ethical code dictated by feelings is unjust and ineffective.

In “For Us, The Living” he outlines his very first set of thoughts and ideas. I remember asking my father once why the economy had to grow? Why, exactly, was it necessary to grow instead of reaching equilibrium? His answer was unsatisfactory but I was only around ten at the time so I didn’t think much of it. Now, I have a better sense for at least some economic ideas.

Heinlein’s ideas around sex have always jived with mine. He is a live and let live type, a proponent of the kind of free love I’d like to see in the world. He feels that uncontrolled jealousy is a symptom of an imbalanced and insecure individual, that relationships come and go as people desire them, that only when sexual relationships are truly free will women truly achieve equality, and many other currently peculiar ideas around sex. I say currently peculiar because they are only really well accepted in communes, large cities, and the occasional enlightened couple here and there. The free love and 100% consent movement is popular both in Seattle and in my political circles so it’s not particularly unusual to me, but it is to a lot of other people.

For Us, The Living, is a novel only in the loosest sense. It’s done far better than Atlas Shrugged but runs along the same lines: plot and characters are there to provide a platform from which the author espouses their ideas. Things happen once or twice but mostly people sit and talk. They are also, of course, impossibly successful and happy, despite what we know of human nature.

I am a proponent of a universal basic income and universal health care because wouldn’t it be incredible if those content to putter in their gardens didn’t fear for their lives and those who wished to take huge risks to benefit their communities weren’t risking life and home? Wouldn’t it be a better world if people didn’t go hungry and have to live on the streets? Sure, some people would choose to do so, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was a choice and not circumstance?

These things become more personal to me in the context of my work. It is important to most of my clients and I’d say a minimum of half of all clients that their provider enjoy their work. One argument against sex work in general is that it’s not truly chosen work, it’s forced by circumstance. I have many thoughts on that idea but the relevant one is this: wouldn’t it be nice if we knew that our provider didn’t have to be there? She wasn’t going to lose her home or her kids or her freedom if she chose not to see you as a client or chose another line of work because her universal basic income was enough to pay for food, clothing, and shelter. Therefor, you can be very sure that she wants to be there, with you, and could walk away at any time. That’s one of the reasons people come to me, I think. Because it’s clear that I am happy and healthy and that I have other options and that if I was unhappy in the moment with you, I could safely leave.

Of course sex isn’t the only thing Heinlein covers in his first novel. I mentioned economics earlier. I’m not a student of economics other than one class my Senior year so I didn’t always follow his arguments. They all sound reasonable on the surface and I would love to have someone who was an expert in current economics give me some thoughts because I just feel that I’m missing something. There must be a reason why we don’t do more prosocial economic engineering other than ‘rich powerful people keep us from doing it.’ That’s too easy. But Heinlein’s arguments, made through the mouths of his characters, make enough sense that I need someone to come walk me through them.

Economics, sex, and social responsibility. In the 2089 of Heinlein’s United States, no one hits anyone else, no one goes to jail, no one is so angry or jealous that they harm another and it all seems to work out ok. They treat violence as a mental health condition and sit you down to discuss and educate your way out of it. Not in a Clockwork Orange type of reeducation but in a sit down with smart people and chat with them kind of way, which I love.

One of his characters, near the end, says “It’s the United States in 2089, not a utopia” but any reader knows that a system that works that well for EVERY member of its society is, regardless of flaws, a utopia. That said, it’s one I’d love to try.

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Art. Lol.

I had the chance today to do something fun: share high English tea with a friend, talk for the first time with her about my unorthodox career, and visit the local art museum.

I don’t recommending outing your sex working friends to mutual friends without permission. However, it was nice to have the call of “tell or don’t tell” made by someone with a more intimate knowledge and better prediction potential. Friend E found out when she was talking about how she and her boyfriend handled a situation with what they thought might be an underage sex worker. In order to more heavily weight my advice and also because I’m always straining to tell all, I confessed my intimate connection to this young stranger they tried to help. So E has known for several years now. K, another book club member, is much closer friends with E than I am so when E drunkenly told my secret one night, they knew it would be met with curiosity, not condemnation. It turns out that K had, off and on, considered trying out my profession but, as with many folks looking into it, didn’t know where to start and had other fish to fry so never tried to find out. Now most of book club knows which brings interesting light to stories and characters involving the world’s oldest, and my, profession. I kinda dig it.

Anyway, E and K are interested, as am I, in expanding out cultural consumption so we like to go the the free and cheap museums around the city. Not as often as I would like, but more often than I would on my own.

The Frye art museum has an exhibit going now (and not for much longer) all about mental health, current and past treatment methods, an examination of the commercialization of self care, and some werid experimental silliness. Primal scream therapy felt fake. Which makes sense, because it was actors on a screen being actor-y. If you’ve ever know a middling actor who takes themselves very seriously, you’ll know what I mean. I felt the same way about the ecstatic dance exhibit and likely would have felt the same if the tarot reader had been there. I tend to prefer a certain amount of not-taking-yourself-too-seriously in my modern art so the whimsical and absurdist room full of short films was more to my liking. I liked the monsters and their periodic table, found the sound bath meditative and pleasant, had to send a link to the anxiety exhibit to a friend, and was disappointed that the guided meditation soundtrack was malfunctioning, but the most fun I had was the word-item association exhibit.

I’m deliberately being vague, because art is hard to share if you haven’t seen it and also because I’ve been feeling awfully capricious lately. I want you to wonder what the heck ecstatic dance is and how I saw it if it’s an art museum, not a performance platform. I want you to fill in your own ideas when I tell you which Items I associated with which words, and if any of you have a background in psychology and find this interesting, I encourage you to book an extra half hour because I would LOVE to hear what you think, ha!

The word prompts are on the left, my items are on the right.

The cradle Weird marble baby. Lol. Its junk is showing
Mother Mother theresa/mary/sant
Father Gumby
Grandfathers Pink stone pyramid
American Flag
Grandmothers I forget
German doll
Playspace (shrinkin) Toy whistle
The classroom (growing) Marble bust of weird old guy
Experience Shiny gold poop
heart break or heartbroken Headless silver skeleton
Finding my way Tape measure
Partner Explorer figure with dynamite
I am a “____” cat(s)
work/love dilemma Eviscerated innards model
Money maker Silver weird boob bust
Seven year itch Marvin the Martian
The legacy Busted arm statue of liberty
Family Acupressure map hand
A career Chattering teeth toy
Death Medicine bottle
Aging Dirty barbie
Descent Rubber Centipedes
The key Water cooler

 

I like having fun with culture. I like not taking things too seriously. I like chatting about my unconventional life with folks who have no idea what my world can look like. I like laughing at myself and I like surprising myself. I got a little of each this afternoon.

 

P.S. There is some jewelry for sale in the gift shop at the Frye. It’s frivolously priced, a vain purchase if made for oneself, but if someone wanted to help make me a very spoiled young woman…. Standing at the counter looking down, displayed on the right hand side, There are four pairs of earrings, simple gold strands with white or blue stone accents. My preference even conveniently goes from top to bottom: smaller blue, triangular white, longer blue… There’s a lovely necklace to match, but the earrings bring me more pleasure. Ha!

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Two for One

It finally happened!! I saw my first couple!

It’s all too common to hear from a lovely gent that he would like to hire me for a three way with his wife or girlfriend. This was the first time that she agreed to meet me beforehand so I could make sure she was as excited about it as he was. From the moment she agreed, it just kept getting better. Well dressed, brilliant, incredibly sex work positive, and as professional and informative about her sexy experiences as I was, she ticked all my boxes. After a coffee date to assess and plan, we agreed to meet that Friday so we could tease her sweet boyfriend until he exploded.

Ladies intimidate me a little so, though I had met her and had a reasonable idea what I was getting into, I was trembling with nerves. Many of you know I’m a big nerd so finding out they had a game room nearly made me swoon. A few deep breaths later and we three were in the living room, trying to decide how to get started.

First times are always a bit awkward. I had a bit of an idea of the dynamic we were looking for, what with our coffee date and a few hints from the orchestrator but I never pull it off perfectly the first time. We began in my comfort zone: on a massage table. Training and repetition mean I can do lovely things with my hands while reserving my mental space for observation and planning. If you’ve gotten a massage from me before you know I sometimes climb up onto the table so I can use my knees on you. She seemed to enjoy the deep pressure and I can’t imagine he disliked the visual, haha!

When it was his turn I gave her some ideas for gentler touch but it didn’t take long for our poor boy to get far too handsy and need a good tie-down. Fortunately I brought a little sturdy tie-down gear with me, ha! Between the two of us ladies we managed to arrest his naughty hands and render him incapable of taking what he wanted. He would have to wait for us to deem him ready.

Oh and she was wicked fun. Between gifting him a taste of me and making him watch me pleasure her, she pushed his every button while I followed along, getting meaner and meaner as we went. ‘If you can keep from coming from this amazing blowjob, then maybe you might earn a taste of me. Wouldn’t you like that?’

The details blur together but we wound up on the bed, taking our pleasure from such a nice, selfless, obedient young man until we decided we were done. I’ll never forget the sensory overload: her loud climax and his tension, sight and sound and scent and sense, heat and pressure and so! Much pleasure.

I wanted to come for them so much. I tried everything I knew to do but I just couldn’t manage it. Even the sight and sound of her coming right next to me… it’s DEFINITELY helped since then, but in the moment there was too much too fast.

Sigh. Oh well. Better luck next time.

They gave me the most fun and funny visual memory as I was getting ready to leave: her in a sheer robe, eating the chocolate I brought as a gift, him in pajama pants eating a bowl of breakfast cereal. In that moment I felt that I had reached my apex. I’ll never stop growing and learning, but as an escort, I feel that moment will forever shine as a highest point. A couple of fuckin hot as shit nerds invited me over to entertain and pleasure them. I can’t even.

Sigh.

Addendum: I said I had reached my escorting apex but to my great surprise, I found myself enjoying yet another fantastic moment just the other day. I was able to bring my experience and curiosity to its best use; offering advice and techniques to strengthen a lover for their beloved. What a privilege to constantly find a new way to make someone’s life a little better.