Bragging On A Dare

I had a divine, beautiful evening tonight.

Today someone requested a “clit pic” from me. I’ve never heard of such a thing and was immediately reactive;

Gross

How would I even?

That wouldn’t be fun

My camera sucks

So reactive that I decided-who cares whether I send it to anyone-I get to assign this challenge to myself.

So when I got home I sipped a little bubbly kombucha, lit a few candles, put on a playlist, and I had a photoshoot with myself.

And it was super fun! And I even liked a few of the pictures I took! I was shocked!

Then I decided to up the ante. I reached out to a few other goddesses I know and told them about my night.

Oh, yeah, we send those to each other all the time! Here are a few of our favorites!

I’m in awe. I brag that I dive into things that make me uncomfortable.

I brag that I surround myself with people who impress and push me every day.

I brag that I’m sexy and I know it.

Sometimes It’s Just So So Good

I met a man and had a touch that exists without frame, without reference points, without time before or time after.

The day I arrived I saw him and couldn’t stop noticing him. The way he walked and smiled, hugged people, smiled. Those teeth like perfect pearls, making me smile for absolutely no reason. Like a painting that tickles you every time you see it. Why? Who knows. But I’d rather have the feeling even if I can’t explain it than not have it at all.

It became apparent that he had been seeing me the way I was seeing him. Wanting to speak, wanting to touch, Wanting to uncover the mystery; why can’t I stop noticing you?

Walking alone under an open and unjudgemental sky I told him,

I want to touch you with curiosity. Just run my hands on your skin without shame or fear and see what I find.

That sounds amazing. I’d love to connect with you that way.

After years of thinking the same thought in relationships and situations where it’d not come true my brain was flooded with anticipation. What would it be like to get what I’ve always thought I wanted. Really though.

I tossed and turned imagining luxuriating in the temperature of his chest, grazing my fingertips along his lips, those lips that smile like he’s about to tell me a secret. By the time the time came I was high on my fantasies, vibrating, embarrassed to have passed a whole day with this elevated awareness of self, of color, texture, grinning stupidly about someone I don’t even know.

Reality was different of course. Curiosity means listening, responding not to what you had imagined but to what actually presents itself. What I found more intoxicating than the skin I’d wanted to caress was the muscle beneath it and the intention it held. Like a lionness stalking her prey, he put his hands on my arms and moved me through space, enjoying the way we walked like waltzers, hands full of information, structure, satisfaction.

Enjoying each others willingness to lead and be led, see and be seen.

Before I learned about the mechanics of sex this is what I thought it would feel like in my chest, the tightness and release in my throat, the tingling all over and inside my head, the freedom. He ran his hands down the sides of my torso like a builder looking for warp to address, stopping to notice muscles, ran his hand to the space just below my belly button and collapsed his weight into me, enjoying the roundness and warmth of the intimate no man’s land right above my underwear band. Not sexual, just private, pleasurable in it’s own rarely-noticed right.

Tell me some thinking or feeling words.

This is such a wonderful destination. Just itself.

He held my arms out to my sides floating in space,

Keep them there.

And I did, in the chilly night air, luxuriating in his palms scampering from fingertip, across the soft insides of my elbow, glancing off the lump of my shoulder, skateboarding across my collar bones, and out the other side and back again, breathing and watching his face gleam with joy at my skin.

Not long after that I put my shirt back on and we rejoined the world.

Heading back towards other people with all their eyeballs and opinions I remembered who I was, who he was. This was not the new couple, triumphant, announcing themselves, inviting the tribe to rejoice at their starting a journey as a pair. Just two people who shared a moment in the woods returning, ever so slightly changed, to their own lives. The idea of having to back away before being noticed, to not be seen as some romantic leech clanged around inside my chest.

I’m important to this person! I swear it, you should have seen how he worshiped the shape of my neck just a moment ago!

The knot rising in my throat at the inevitable “she’s not with me” implicit in the return to society. This person is allowed to be important to me, but not in a way I can ever adequately describe, and that makes it feel un-respectable.

The shame trapped me under it like a waterfall, the flow locking me in. Then I got what I’ve always wanted. In a room full of people, an unselfconscious arm around me.

Thank you for not making me feel like something to be ashamed of.

You aren’t something to be ashamed of.

I Wanted To Take A Bath

So I took off my clothes and started filling the tub.

I set out a few candles around the bathroom; the sink, the window ledge, the toilet tank. I turned off the overhead and lit a match, moving from one candle to the next enjoying the rushing sound of the filling bath.

I turned my back to the sink with its three evenly spaced candles to pick some music for my soak and my gaze was met by curves descending like vines from the ceiling. When I moved they moved. My body, my hourglass, my S curves in triplicate, projected larger than life onto gleaming white tile.

I threw on something slow and watched my body in kaleidoscope. Twisting and turning, one curve turning into another, coming to a point, revealing itself to be a shoulder, a nipple, a hip.

I moved around the room and saw myself on all walls. Here, looking like three backup singers in impressive synchronicity. There, looking like one body as seen by a drunk three-eyed observer, gently rolling in and out of focus with herself.

A non-strip non-tease for an audience of herself plus water and fire. A sister goddess indeed.

I Love My Body

This is very effective advertising. I will be watching this show.

I’ve Got A Beautiful Head

I shaved my head. Here’s why.

Last year I worked with Eve Ensler, stunning, smart, she wrote The Vagina Monologues and I met her because of her new piece, partially about her battle with cancer.

For purposes of comfort and the show she kept her hair short after her recovery. And you couldn’t get away from her beautiful face, like her eyes took up her whole head. She would jokingly say “I have no hair” and I kept thinking “of course you have hair, I’m looking at it right now. And it’s lovely.”

It was around the same time that I was falling in love with my haircut. I think each person has a perfect cut if they pay attention. Something that makes them feel like themselves and requires the right amount of care. With my undercut asymmetrical bob I found that. It made me feel fancy. I thought,

“Well great, I just need to maintain this forever!”

And then immediately vomited in my own mouth.

I kept thinking about this podcast about lawn maintenance in america, how we plant grass and we don’t let it live, keeping it in an unnatural life cycle, we mow it and mow it and mow it, keeping it in adolescence forever.  Michael Pollen wrote “Lawns are nature purged of sex and death.”

Hair grows. That’s all it does. Maintain this forever? What a chore!

I’d rather use the fact that it grows rather than run from it.

That’s when I started running the idea by a few friends and co-workers, “Is this crazy? Should I stop thinking about this?”

“Well you’re thinking about it a lot, so it sounds like you really want to do it and you should.”

Then the final straw.

My hair finally made it into a ponytail for the first time in years. I looked in the mirror and realized;

I’m going to look beautiful.

And that’s when we got out the clippers.

And I was right. I do look beautiful.

Head Space

You know that moment in magic-y, thriller-y , sci-fi-antasy movies where the guy is like

Bend the spoon with your mind!

And Neo is like

Are you crazy? I can’t bend a spoon with my mind!

And the other guy is like

Don’t tell me you can’t do it. Don’t think about it, just do it!

And then he does it!?

That’s how I feel in a really good yoga class. If I stop thinking about how or why or whether I can do it then suddenly I can do things that are otherwise impossible. It’s magical, that feeling when you get an instruction and then your body does it without having to consult your brain. That reminder that your body is a thing that you can run around and play in, stretch and bend. The form of it isn’t bound by anything, not even your brain. Not even your imagination.

Your body can run off in the playground of someone else’s fantasy too.

The world is full of people who can tap you into that subspace where your body leads and your brain follows. Go find them!

Menstrual Cups and Self-Ed

I would really like for my menstrual cup to be good at catching blood.

It was sold to me as “12 hours, no leaks!” but my experience so far has been a non-stop stain-a-thon. Every once in a while I emerge from the bathroom “This time it’s going to be different. This time I finally figured it out!” but it never seems to stick.

People keep asking me why I’m still trying to make it work after 5 years of constant failure.

Answer number one is simple and true “I really would like my period to be a carbon neutral event. I don’t like constantly buying and throwing away tampons. I need a better solution.”

But the deeper answer is something I didn’t expect.

This month in trying to get the damn thing to work I discovered that my cervix is more conical than the donut shape I always imagined it as.

And you know how in books they say your cervix will “feel like the tip of your nose” [x]

It totally does! It feels exactly like the tip of your nose!

How cool is that?!

So, my menstrual cup might suck at being a menstrual cup, but it’s pretty great at making me think about bodies in a new way. And so for that I’ll be grateful. And that’s even better.

STI Check

Just in case you’re nervous you have something.

Get tested.

Being worried you have something is hard.

Actually having something is usually treatable.

Women Wipe Front To Back

Let’s talk about a very different kind of self-care: If you have a vagina, you should be wiping front to back.

A friend of mine was getting a bunch of UTIs and she got some great advice from *ahem* a friend:

You wipe front to back right?

What?

When you use the bathroom and you wipe, you wipe front to back?

No, how do you even do that?

I called my mom.

Can you imagine? She didn’t know to wipe front to back.

Yes, I didn’t know either.

What!? But I remember dad reminding me when I was a kid. The only memory I have of being potty trained is him telling me “your plumbing is internal so you wipe front to back.”

Yes. I didn’t know, I got a lot of infections, a doctor told me to wipe front to back. So when I had a kid I told your dad that we were gonna teach you that.

Every time I see a Gyno for a yeast infection we have this conversation:

Do you wipe front to back

YES! WHO DOESNT?!

So there you go. If your plumbing is internal you wipe front to back. You don’t want any fecal matter in those delicate ecosystems.

 

A History Of The Condom

Because I love you and I didn’t post yesterday, here is a history of the condom.

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