not always rosy

One of the things I've thought a lot about while writing this blog is the potential feeling of imbalance that might come from writing all these wonderful things about my relationship and my awesome, blossoming sex-life. I've been conscious that a time would come when I would need to provide some balance, so I decided to sit back and wait for things to take an inevitable turn for the pooper, and here we are.

Maybe it's just my imagination, but it seems like most people put up a big, happy face when talking about their relationship and you never really see the yucky stuff that's underneath. Like it's taboo to admit that you're having problems or arguing or whatever. I read blogs by people with girlfriends and I rarely read stories about fights or issues or dramas. I believe sharing is good almost all the time, and that goes double for sharing about relationships. We could ALL do better in our relationships, and knowing what other people are doing can be really helpful.

Anyway, all this is a big lead up to telling you that me and Mera had a rough weekend. I'll spare you all the details, but the bottom line is that we've hit that point when the honeymoon is over and we have to get back to living our actual lives. When we first got together (three short months ago) we were both blown away by our super-intense connection. There were all these crazy synchronicities and similarities and we had so much chemistry: it was like we were each designed specifically for the other. Unreal.

That means we ended up spending as much time together as we possibly could. It meant that we sacrificed sleep to stay up talking and fucking almost every night of the week. It meant we sacrificed laundry and housekeeping and personal space and yoga and meditation and schoolwork and writing and hanging out with other friends. All we wanted to do was hang out with each other. And that's normal in the beginning of relationships. That's just what you do sometimes.

But it seems pretty obvious that a scenerio like that can't last. At some point you have to crawl out of your hole and start paying attention to the rest of the world. Mera's in grad school and her studies are suffering. And I'm suffering because I need a lot of alone time to maintain my mental health, and my alone time was one of the first things to go when Mera and I got together.

Now we're struggling with the reality that we have to shift some priorities and possibly do something really counterintuitive: scale back a little. It's painful. We both have lots of baggage from childhood that colors the way we see things. Sometimes when we talk, it's like we're standing in a fun house and all the images come back to us distorted. She hears things I don't believe I said and vice versa.

It helps to realize we're having communication difficulties. At least we can name it and know how it impacts us. But it's still a tricky place to be and we're both struggling with the next steps. Right now we're both taking the rest of the day to assimilate the last few conversations we've had. We'll see where we're at tonight. A few couple's sessions with a counselor will also help. And also remembering to be kind and take care of the whole process. Problems come up. That's ok. Problems are not the end of the world or the relationship, but it's no use ignoring them or pretending to the world like everything's rosy. The rest of the world has problems too and if you pretend you don't, you just confuse people.

So what's that got to do with sex? Well, if you're having problems, you might not be having sex. I know I'm not. Another day, in the not too distant future, I'll write another post in the when-things-aren't-hunky-dory vein all about good and bad ways to communicate with a lover about sex. For now, I'll leave you with this very simple poll about sex affected by conflict.

and then sometimes...

... you have a shitty weekend because you're all stressed out about whether or not you're going to get the job you applied for and you start getting a little depressed and feeling kinda weird, and you end up mostly not getting laid at all and then unintentionally alienating your girlfriend who unintentionally alienated you first and then... well... then you go out for beers after work with your friend and forget about it all for a little while.

Then you get back up on that horse tomorrow and start all over again...

so... what IS sex, anyway?

Reading over the comments to my last post, and rereading the post itself, I realized that your attitude towards the "your-turn-my-turn" issue actually depends a lot on what you think qualifies as sex. That's a classic conversation I think I've had a hundred times with different groups of lesbians. Just what IS sex between women?

In reality, most of what lesbians do in bed is considered foreplay (or the sexier "heavy petting") when straight people do it. As Zuhn pointed out in her comment, there are so many things we can do with each other sexually, how do we distinguish between "sex" and "making out" or "fooling around?" And does it matter?

When I was a freshman in college, I took a very touchy-feely humanities class called "Relationships," and one of our assignments was to create a "lips list" on which we were instructed to list each person we'd ever kissed in our lives, and to look for patterns, unfinished business, etc. At 18, my list was short and contained almost all boys, but the assignment itself had a huge impact on me. Turns out, I LOVE to quanitfy things and list-making is right up my alley. once I had a taste of listing my partners, I couldn't stop. Since then (fall of 1993) I have been keeping a running, written list of all the women (I shaved off the boys because I don't really care about them) I've kissed, including a sublist of the women I've had sex with. Which means I had to decide for myself what qualifies as sex.

It seems every lesbian has her own definition and here's mine: for me, it's sex when there is prolonged touching of the genitalia (either digitally or orally) with the goal of orgasm for one or both parties. Orgasm is just a goal and not a requirement, and this separates "sex" from "heavy petting" in my little world. I've slipped my hand down someone's pants before, enjoyed the wetness, felt the engorged lips, and then pulled my hand out again: that wasn't sex. But if I'm touching someone in that focused, building, intense way that naturally tends towards climax of some kind, that's sex whether she cums or not.

Of course an orgasm isn't dispositive. Just because one party has one, the act itself isn't necessarily elevated to "sex" in my mind. Example: I made out with a woman once who came while I sucked on her nipple and she ground her (fully clothed) mound against my (fully clothed) knee: not sex, at least not in my book. It was fun. It was hot. But she's listed only in the "kiss" column. Too much clothes, not enough direct contact with her cunt. In my mind, it just didn't rank.

I also don't count "dry humping," although sometimes "wet humping" can count. I'm a lot more likely to think of it as sex if both parties are naked and fluids are getting smeared around, regardless of where they're getting smeared. I think my definition of sex is heavily influenced by my own inclination to have a one-at-a-time sexual experience. I appreciated Zuhn's comment that there is no such thing as "my turn, your turn" because your turn WAS my turn. Meaning: the person doing the fucking can often get off just as much as the person getting fucked. That's certainly how Mera operates, but it's definitely NOT how I operate.

I definitely enjoy doing the fucking, but I don't cum while I'm fucking someone else. My body isn't stimulated in the same way when I'm fucking as when I'm being fucked. It's like a whole different set of sensors and reactors are activated. I go into a completely different head-space. This means that I'm a lot more inclined to have one-sided sexual experiences, which also means I'm more likely to end up in those "your-turn, my-turn" situations. And I have to admit, I've been in a *lot* of relationships where the sex was all your-turn, my-turn. I know I seemed to disparage that style in my last post, so I should clarify that I don't so much mind the one-sidedness, it's the obligatory flip that I can't stand.

But that's just me. What about you? Start with this very inadequate poll and please, please add comments. I'd love to know what everyone else is thinking about this topic. It opens up lots of other areas for exploration too, as far as I'm concerned. I'm especially interested in whether different sexual styles are fluid or fixed and whether people identify their styles with roles or labels, but that's a topic for another day.

more on topping, bottoming and the your-turn-my-turn issue

I just had a few more thoughts on the idea of topping/bottoming. Grumpy Granny mentioned in a comment that she'd always thought of topping as something that might occur within an S/M dynamic (to paraphrase GG), something that might occur in conjunction with bondage, for example. This is probably a common perception, very close to accurate, and I held it too for awhile.

It wasn't until I became friends with a few gay men who talked openly about sex to me that I started to understand the concept differently. I'm not a gay man and can't speak for gay men, but what I understood from them is that many gay men identify as either a top or a bottom, ie: they are literally on top (doing the fucking) or on the bottom (getting fucked). Of course, some are switches and some gay men don't like to engage in anal sex at all and prefer to get each other off in other ways.

Talking to those guys, I realized that topping or bottoming doesn't have to occur in the context of some big S/M scene. Around that time, I started using "top" or "bottom" as verbs to describe whether I fucked someone, or whether they fucked me. In that sense, I was also using this language to describe a position only and not a power dynamic.

Now, however, after years of reading up on S/M and a few stabs at experiencing it, I understand these terms (and sex) from a slightly more subtle perspective. S/M, behind all the leather and handcuffs and other cool accoutrements, is about power. The consensual taking and handing over of power during sex. People who practice S/M (or BDSM, if you prefer: Bondage, Domination, Sadism and Masochism), bring the power dynamic inherent and buried in sex up to the surface and explore/exploit it for pleasure.

Many of us ignore that power dynamic and many people (especially lesbians, whose sex can be orchestrated in a very egaletarian manner) can have perfectly yummy sex without ever even feeling a power differential. However, for some of us (maybe lots of us) it's the power differential that adds the spice to sex. It is possible to explore/exploit the power dynamic for sexual pleasure without being "into" S/M in the traditional sense. Mera and I haven't yet bothered to get out the wrist restraints or the leather flogger, yet the power differential is what drives our sexual passion.

Mera would tell you she's a "psychological top." And that's what makes her a true "top," even when she's technically bottoming. I, on the other hand, am *not* a psychological top. So even when I'm fucking Mera, I'm not really "topping" her. Is that confusing? Sorry. I know it sounds convoluted, but it makes sense to me. Mera gets off on control, which makes her a true top, while I get off on being controlled, which makes me a true bottom. Even though we both like to fuck and be fucked, how we experience the power is different.

I may have made the water even more muddy with this explanation, but hopefully what I've said makes sense.

Now let's move on to another interesting, if not a little disturbing, topic: balance (a.k.a. "your-turn-my-turn"). Sometimes, lesbians can fall into a very rigid routine of "I fuck you, now you fuck me." Sometimes this happens naturally: we start making out, we both get really hot, the action moves towards sex and eventually one of us takes over and starts fucking the other, the one getting fucked has an orgasm, everybody's still turned on, the mood stays hot, so the roles reverse and the one who got fucked now fucks the original fucker. That can even go back and forth for awhile.

In my mind, that's the best case scenerio for balanced sex. Worst case scenerio is when the one who originally got fucked feels guilted or pressured into returning the favor when her heart really isn't in it for whatever reason. Here's an example from my own life: I used to have a girlfriend who wanted to have sex a lot more than I did (not so unusual for me, actually). And she figured out the exact right way to seduce my body. Rather than propositioning me head-on, she learned that if she started out offering to tickle my back (which is my favorite thing on the planet, by the way), within minutes I'd be putty in her hands. While I was putty, she would fuck me and then immediately roll over like a dog and wait her turn. I hadn't wanted to have sex, I hadn't wanted to fuck her, but she got me every time and I started to resent her and we eventually broke up.

I personally hate your-turn-my-turn sex. But that's probably because I have a heightened awareness of and interest in the power dynamic. I don't want someone to fuck me just because I fucked them. I'm happy to carry the whole experience, as it were, if that's what feels most comfortable. And I hate to fuck out of obligation. Sometimes you just want to pass out afterwards, not muster up the energy to return the favor.

So what do you guys think? To jump start the discussion, here's a poll. Oh my god do I love these polls. But people, come on! Only a fraction of you are actually participating! What's up??? These polls won't bite, don't worry. And they won't automatically take you to another website, or plant a virus in your computer or send your name and address to a government website or ANYTHING bad. Don't fear the polls, just participate. Practice for November.

foliage

I had a comment recently asking how I felt about the very important issue of pubic hair. What a great question! Given the state of things in most male-oriented pornography, I think I can safely assume that men prefer little-to-no pubic hair. Of course, there are a lot of layers to that assumption. I mean, do men *really* prefer that, or is that just the way sex is being sold to them these days?

But I haven't been asked to discuss men's interests, so let's leave that for another time. Here's the comment:

"Pubic hair: What do you prefer in a partner, for yourself, stories, proper equipment for trimming and landscaping ideas. I don't have any experience with women, so I'm actually very curious about what women like (for future reference.. lol)."

I personally have no preference at all. As I have mentioned, Mera is as furry as a wild animal and I love it. However Gully, the woman I fisted last year (that's a whole topic unto itself) was bald as a cue-ball "down there" and that was hot too. I'll basically take it however it comes.

Sure, there's something to be said for a little landscaping. A little bit of trimming can make all the vital bits more accessible, especially during oral sex. I personally don't mind the literal "muff diving" required to get to all of Mera's bits, but it certainly can be simpler to suck on someone's clit when it's not buried in a thicket. It's a very personal, subjective sort of thing.

For my own body, I prefer to keep my hedges trimmed back a bit. In fact, I recently bought a beard trimmer to do the job. I must say, I was disappointed with the kit I got. The clipper came with guards ostensibly for men to keep their beards trimmed neatly to certain lengths, but the longest guard is still very, very short. Shorter than I really want my pubic hair to be. I still use the trimmer, but I just hold it in such a way that it leaves a little more hair than it would otherwise.

Why do I leave more hair? Because I like to leave a little something for Mera to tug on. That was Mera's request, and it works out pretty well for me too, so I'm happy to comply. Tugging, or gently pulling, on pubic hair can be really hot and is something you might want to take into consideration if you're thinking about shaving and/or trimming.

As for shaving: beware. It itches and feels awful as it begins to grow out. I made the mistake of shaving once and I vowed never to do it again. I have to admit, there was something really hot about it as I did it. But it wasn't something I wanted to maintain and the growing out period was miserable.

That's another thing to consider: landscaping your muff isn't just about the finished product, you can also get a lot of pleasure from the act of landscaping itself. For me, there's something sexually charged about getting out the clipper and knowing that I'm trimming my bush in anticipation of sex. For those of us who like ritual, it's a great sexual ritual to help set the mental tone. It can also be a fun thing to do together with your partner. And let's not forget the element of control. If control is a prominent feature in your relationship, you might find it really hot to tell your partner (or be told) how to trim your bush. "I want you shaved bald by the time I come over tonight..." -- those words could be the beginning of a beautiful evening.

Those are my thoughts. What about you? Like I said, this is a totally subjective topic and I don't think you can universalize an answer. There's no *one* thing that girls like. Please leave comments and share your own feelings about this topic. The more info the better.

And on that note, I've created another poll! A jumping off point for the pubic hair discussion. Please take a moment to let us know your thoughts on this very important matter. And thanks, Jet, for the question. I hope this has been helpful.

switch

I wrote at length in a previous post about Mera's identification as a top and my growing role as a bottom. As time passes and our relationship develops, our top/bottom roles develop as well and I'm excited to watch the progression and to go places with Mera that I've never gone with anyone else before. Going further and further into a role can free you to experience things you could never experience otherwise.

However, as I mentioned before, these roles aren't completely rigid and Mera isn't *always* a stone top. For those of you who aren't familiar with this term, a "stone top" does the fucking and doesn't get fucked. Stone tops like Mera also don't want to be touched sexually while they're fucking. I can't speak for Mera, and I could write a whole treatise on the subject of *why* a stone top doesn't want her tits touched while she's pounding her bottom, but I will share my own experience: I *also* don't like to be touched sexually when I'm fucking someone because I find it to be distracting. I have found that it turns a lot of women on to touch me while I'm fucking them, and so, for the sake of these lovers, I have learned to tolerate it, but it's never my first choice of experience. I'd much prefer a nice, clean topping experience without the mix-up of energy.

But I digress. A true stone top would never get fucked, but Mera isn't a true stone top. It's a dirty little secret of hers, she's not proud of it, but she likes to be rolled over occasionally. In past relationships, she's told me she often makes her partners wait months if not a whole year before she feels comfortable letting them touch her sexually. She says that by the time she's finally ready to be fucked, her lovers are often so sexually intimidated by her that they're actually *afraid* to fuck her, afraid they won't be able to do it well enough. This doesn't speak to how scary Mera is, it speaks to how good in bed she is. After working her magic on someone for months, they start worrying that they'll never measure up.

That's a shame. Needless to say, Mera and I did not have this problem in our relationship. Because, as the truest example of the magic of our relationship, I TOPPED MERA FIRST. I know. It was a miracle and I couldn't quite believe it was happening that second night we spent together, but boy was it awesome! You want details? Can you handle details? Ok, here you go...

Of course Mera started out in charge and after a few minutes of the basic warm-up, she asked me to sit on her face. I've never been much of a face-sitter but I was happy to comply with whatever Mera wanted. I got myself into position and found myself clutching at the wall as she worked her magic down below. I don't know about you, but I can only sit up on my knees balancing precariously on someone's face for so long. After awhile, my thighs started to cramp up and I relaxed and let myself down a little. I ended up sort of sitting on Mera's stomach and suddenly, before I even knew what was happening, my hands were reaching around behind me, stroking her thighs and heading into the danger zone of her muff.

I expected, knowing her identification as a top, that she would push me away at any moment. So I braced for the push-off, yet forged ahead into this new territory. Much to my surprise, no push-off ever came and I ended up topping her in about 100 different ways for the next two hours. I never expected her to erupt into such a pillow queen! When it was all over and the dust had settled, she opened her eyes as though coming out of a deep trance or a coma and said, "Oh my god, I can't believe I let you do that!"

I was afraid there would be a backlash, and there was the first few times I topped her. Being topped, especially so early in the relationship, is something that Mera had a hard time incorporating into her identity. She likes it, but it doesn't fit with the way she understands herself. Those first few times, she would wake up the next morning feeling vaguely unsettled and a little distant. She worried that if she lost her status as top, she wouldn't have anything unique to offer anymore and she wouldn't be able to hold someone's attention for long. She probably had other more complicated reactions that I can only guess at. As our relationship evolved, though, I learned to manage these switches a little better. Now I spend more time stroking her top-ego and I tell her that even when I'm topping her, she's still *really* the one in charge. That's basically bullshit, but it makes her feel better.

in the spirit of the elections...

Huge thanks to Roro for the idea to start including POLLS!!!! Who knew such rad software existed!?!? (I guess Roro did...)

I don't have much time tonight, but I just thought I throw one out there and try and get a baseline on everybody. This is an easy one, but maybe a little scary to actually contemplate, depending on your circumstances... I'll refine these as time goes on, and maybe add them as a special weekly feature. They just seemed so cool on Roro's blog, I couldn't resist.

So here you go. One simple question you can answer:

not all it's cracked up to be

One topic I'd definitely like to address on this site is toys. I think talking about toys can be really helpful and can give people ideas about what they might like to try and what they might like to avoid. And on that note, let me tell you about the Nexus double-headed dildo.

A few years ago, in a previous relationship, my partner and I started playing around with the strap-on and decided to try out one of these here double-headed dildos. We were both into experiencing the penetration and this seemed like a great way for us both to be stimulated at the same time.

For those of you unfamiliar with this contraption, I'll explain. Most harnasses have a patch of padded material behind the O-ring (which is what holds the dildo in place) to protect the wearer's bits from getting squished against the pressure of the pouding. To use the double header, you remove that material so that the O is completely open. Then you slip the pointy-outy side of the dildo through the O to penetrate your partner (the receiver), leaving the pointy-uppy part in a prime place to penetrate you (the wearer). Harder to explain than to show, but I think you get the picture.

Anyway, we bought it right before our "honeymoon" (yes, we were married -- that's a long story I'm not going to tell right now) and we saved it for that "romantic" weekend in a cabin in the San Juans. Pretty much everything about that romantic weekend was a bust, including this toy. It sucked. The angles were all wrong for both of us, it didn't feel good to be the giver or the receiver, and it was otherwise just deeply disappointing.

Unfortunately, it was also expensive and for almost four years now I've been holding onto this pricey but useless piece of silicone, waiting to find some good use for it. Well I finally did. Yesterday I put it on the kitchen counter and sliced it in half with a butcher knife. Where there was once one monstrosity, there are now two somewhat small but perfectly useful cocks. The slice-job I did wasn't perfect, it's a little crooked, but I think it'll work fine in a harnass if we choose to use it, not to mention the slender, straight one could be perfect for anal.

But we'll talk about anal later.

P.S. Thanks for stepping up with the comments! As I suspected, you guys ROCK!

P.P.S. Sorry for the shitty quality of that dildo image, I couldn't find a larger file to steal off the internet. This was the best I could do.

a quick word on trust

I was just rereading that last post on control and domination in the context of strap-on sex, and I realized I left out something very important. Without trust, none of what I wrote about would be possible. All the throwings down and poundings, etc -- those are all powered by trust.

I trust Mera with my body completely. She's proven herself to be a good steward of my body, but deeper than that, there's something powerful in our chemistry that seems to hold us in a magical place of mutual trust that has been there from the beginning. I don't quite understand it, I just appreciate and enjoy it.

I think it's this level of trust that allows me to relax, to open my body up, to hand myself to her on a platter and say "here you go, I'm all yours." Despite the dominance, I know she'll stop if I say stop, she'll slow down if I say slow down. I know she'll listen. And that's the secret behind her so-called dominance: she only dominates me with my permission. Dominance and submission between us is a kind of play that we only take seriously because we want to.

Regardless, none of it would be possible for me without trust.

And by the way, what happened to all the comments??? You guys were rocking on those first two posts, but now it's nothing but crickets and tumbleweeds! Doesn't anybody have anything to say about any of this? Even an "ewwwww," or a "wow," or a "boooooring?" Nothing? Really?

control

The irony is that I finally got around to starting this sex blog during a dry spell. Things had been hot and heavy between me and Mera from day one, but the past two weekends had not been so fruitful. Fortunately, the dry spell ended last night (woo-hoo!) and even though I'm a little underslept today, my soul is feeling a lot more peaceful.

So, with good sex still lingering in my mind, I'll begin. I mentioned this in my last post briefly: Mera and I have a role-oriented sexual relationship. It isn't *totally* rigid, but it's pretty clear. Ever since Mera started fucking women (about 14 years ago, give or take) she's been a top. She was trained by her very first female lover to top and to fuck almost exclusively with a strap-on. Mera's first sexual relationship with a woman (which lasted almost two years) was so heavily dependant on strap-on sex, Mera had no idea that many, many lesbians never use them at all. She assumed strap-ons were the way of the lesbian world.

As for me, I've always had a tenuous relationship with penetration. My body has never seemed structurally compatible with the concept and I was fortunate enough to skip the "fucking men" portion of life. Never fucking men has given me the freedom to avoid penetration as much as I want. And that's just what I did for many years, until I met a woman in Ohio who was into S/M and who was the first to fuck me with a strap-on.

Wow. I was 24 and had been fucking women for six years, but I felt a whole new world open up that first night. It was a little uncomfortable at first, but the sensation of being open and entered -- well it was new for me. And it was awesome. I remember running home and journaling about how amazing it had been. We tried it once again a few nights later and the magic was somehow gone, it felt weird and painful and that was the end of it for us.

I had a few more brushes with the strap-on in my next few relationships, and I liked it more and more each time, but something was missing, something wasn't quite right. Strap-on sex never became a steady feature of any of my sexual relationships, although I felt a pull towards it, a pull towards a new kind of exploration.

Enter Mera. With Mera, I realized that the missing element in all the other relationships was dominance. I almost had it with the woman in Ohio: she identified as a top and I felt a strong natural inclination towards being a bottom. I was powerfully drawn to it. I longed for that top/bottom relationship I'd read about (because I've read a lot more about sex than I've had it, it seems): the trust, the bond, the care and control of the top and the love and submission of the bottom. It felt like a safe kind of relationship, where the roles were understood and everyone was protected and nurtured.

Unfortunately, the woman in Ohio didn't really have the follow-through and our top/bottom relationship never took off. With Mera, it was there right from the beginning (albeit nascent) and has been evolving very organically ever since. Mera's not (always) a stone-top (more on that in another post), and her dominance doesn't extend to other parts of the relationship. It's just there in the sex. And it's hot.

Maybe you're wondering what's so hot about being dominated? Or maybe you're wondering what that means exactly? Well I'll tell you: it all starts with my slow-coming orgasms. Getting me to cum is no easy feat and hats off to all the ladies who have persevered and attained the goal. My body is this complicated maze of erogenous zones, and it all has to be navigated in the right order, at the right speed, in exactly the right places or else: nada. If you're fucking me to make me cum, you might get bored waiting and trying, and I've learned that no amount of coaxing and directing can really help. I'm the only one who really knows my body well enough to pull it off in under five minutes.

The thing about Mera's dominance that's so hot is that she isn't fucking me for me, she's fucking me for HER. She cums about 150 times while she's fucking me, she's selfish, she grabs me and squeezes me and holds me down and fucks me harder and she just cums and cums and cums. She will never, ever be bored while fucking me. I will never have to worry about whether her arm is getting tired or whether she's secretly resenting me. Her selfishness allows me to relax and enjoy the experience. And do I cum? YES! Not 150 times like Mera, but at least once and that's more than enough for me, thanks. The whole thing feels so incredibly awesome, I wouldn't care if I never came.

I recognize that I'm unique. I've never fucked men and penetration has been something I've totally controlled from the beginning. Even now, despite Mera's dominance, I can obviously still say no, and I'm the one picking out the cocks we use. I don't have any bad baggage about enduring the hours of redundant pounding by sweaty, grunting men (or boys). I'm more or less a clean slate here and it just happens that I love Mera to take charge, throw me down and give it to me like there's no tomorrow, as much as she wants, as hard and fast as she wants, whatever. I'm in fucking heaven. Literally.

There's so much to write about all these subjects: penetration, dildos, roles, power dynamics, etc, etc. Way too much for one post. But this is just a start. Thanks so much to everyone for commenting on the underwear post. This is exactly the kind of exchange I was hoping to start. You guys rock. I'd love to read comments on this subject as well and ideally would love to see the comments in this blog take on as much importance and hold as much info as the blog posts themselves. It's good for all of us to share.

how the gender binary system complicates my life

Two weeks ago, I put on my first pair of girl underwear (I think they call them "panties") since 1994. In 1994 (one year after coming out and beginning to "do it" with chicks), I briefly dated a woman who is now still a good friend of mine, Bec, and she introduced me to boxer shorts. I remember the first time we undressed together. She unzipped her jeans and instead of some girly blight on her tomboyish presentation, there were white cotton boxers. Brilliant!

I went to K-Mart the next day and bought some for myself. I was 19 at the time and up until that point, I'm pretty sure my underwear had all been purchased for me by my mom or grandmother when either of them decided that whatever I was wearing was too ratty to be allowed to live. I never gave any thought to it until that night and, once I discovered boxers, I never thought I'd go back.

That is, until I met Mera. Mera is my new, hot girlfriend. (Mera is known as Mahavira over on my other blog, but I'm quite sick of typing all those letters and Mera is close enough to her real name to satisfy me.) Mera has worked a one-woman sexual revolution on my body and Mera has got me wearing girl panties.

Mera is sort of a miracle -- she's a mystery and a conundrum and she's completely harmonious in all her inner diversity. Mera is the first woman I've ever been with who wears make-up. Daily. And it's hot. But she's also the most sexually masculine lover I've ever experienced. She exists outside the butch/femme spectrum, yet she holds it all in balance inside her. Her body is a perfect blend: waist up she's voluptuously female, with her mane of curly hair, her huge green eyes and sexy, full lips, her succulent tits and goddess belly. From the waist down she's a centaur, she's Pan, she's literally furry like an animal from the navel to the ankles. She's incongruous and harmonious, masculine and feminine, smooth and course all at once. And I love it.

But back to the underwear. Mera wants me in the sheerest girl underpants on earth. Mera is not impressed by my boxers, boxer briefs or straight-up men's Y-fronts. When Mera fucks me, she's the guy. She's never naked, never reminded of her own tits as she's manhandling mine, never thinking about her own woman's body as she's entering mine. Me in panties helps. And if Mera wants me in panties, I'm in panties. Like, yesterday.

Which brought me two weeks ago to Fred Meyer where I anxiously approached the girl's underwear section (called "intimates" -- which makes me cringe). I was so awkward and uncomfortable I ended up with a security tail, I'd evidently triggered the suspicion of the in-house "loss prevention" agents with my false starts and aimless wandering, working up the courage to actually walk up to the table full of Jockey "seamfree comfies" and pick some out.

There wasn't much to think about, I was just buying myself three more pairs of the exact same underwear Mera had already gotten me, I just couldn't stand to even approach the department itself, much less the table with the underwear. Gah. I'm a boyish looking dyke, especially on that day two weeks ago, with my oversized mechanics jacket and my slouchy jeans and my knit-cap. Even when I don't look like a little ragamuffin boy out of Oliver Twist, I still feel like the fox in the henhouse whenever I get myself into straight-girl territory: ladies rooms for sure and definitely any area of a store selling women's intimate apparel. Gah... again.

Gah.

I always feel like the other women shopping for their panties and bras feel uncomfortable with me around. Like I'm a guy getting some voyeuristic pleasure from watching them -- but worse than a guy because once they realize I'm a chick who looks a bit like a guy ("probably a lesbian," some voice in their heads will say), then they'll assume I'm that much more creepy and perverted. Of course, this is all my own internalized homophobia and neurosis and it's very possible that nobody (except the "loss prevention" people) are ever paying any attention to me, but I'll tell you: it doesn't matter. I still felt uncomfortable and slightly ashamed as I walked through Fred Meyer towards the checkout holding three pairs of black "seamfree comfies" balled up in my hand.

And did I go through the regular checkout where some creepy cashier would touch my new girl underwear and possibly look up at me with suspicion? Of course not, I went through the self-checkout, and it was only after I'd completed my transaction and taken my receipt that the Fred Meyer employee who had been not-so-subtly following me around finally walked away and let me leave the store in peace.

When I first started buying boy underwear, I felt awkard too and never wanted to imagine any stupid cashier sizing me up and diagnosing me with gender dysphoria or general freakishness. In the fourteen years I have been buying myself boxers, I have never felt completely comfortable handing them over at the register and letting them pass through someone else's hands before leaving the store with me. I've always chalked that up to the gender thing, but now that I'm buying girl underwear again, I realize it's more complicated than that.

Sure, it's still the gender thing, but the gender thing itself is more complicated. I'm not just a girl buying girl underwear now, I'm a boyish looking dyke buying girl underwear. And underwear (as the sign over the underwear at Fred Meyer will tell you) is an intimate sort of thing. And I guess, when it comes right down to it, I don't want anybody in Fred Meyer (from the other customers to the cashiers) looking at or thinking about the intimate details of my gender expression as evidenced by the type of underwear I happen to be buying on any given day. It feels too private.

Sorry this is rambly, but I want to push myself a little further to explore why it feels so private. I know why, I just want to drag it out slowly. It feels too private because it gives people to much information about gender expression, which feels vulnerable. Why does that feel vulnerable? Because having a gender expression that doesn't conform to the gender binary system is dangerous. Gay-bashers don't bash gays for who they fuck: they bash gays because they percieve gays to be thwarting the confines of the gender binary system. It confuses and then pisses people off when they can't figure out "what" you are. I don't know the "why" to that one, though. That one's a mystery.

So even as Mera and I act out these fabulous binary gender roles in our sexual relationship, I perceive myself to be in some kind of nebulous danger when I go to Fred Meyer to buy the panties necessary for me to transform into the girl that Mera likes to fuck. What is up with that?

welcome

In a culture that swims in sexual images -- where everything from beer to chewing gum is advertised by half-naked women, where our ten-year-old girls wear make-up and midriffs -- we're still a sexually repressed culture. This isn't a political blog, it's personal, so I won't get on a soap-box about puratanism and hypocrisy. I'll just say this: as much sex as we see all around us, we don't talk about it enough.

I like to talk about sex. My sex, your sex, anybody's sex. I have another blog over at another address where I pretend to be a "lady" who doesn't share details, but that's bullshit. I *love* to share details, I'm *dying* to share details. The problem (as Zuhn aptly identified last summer) is my audience. After two years of blogging and building up a small but loyal readership, it just seems inappropriate to spring something so different on them. One day I'm whining about my career crisis or cracking wise about the politics, and the next day I'm talking in graphic detail about fisting someone? Really? I mean, I can imagine coffee shooting out of people's noses all across the country and into Canada. (Perhaps I have an inflated idea of my popularity...?)

Anyway, I started this blog so I could talk about sex. No, this is not a porn blog. I happen to like porn myself, but I'm not planning to use this as an opportunity to entertain you with my stabs at erotica. I want to write about my own sexual experiences and exploration. And I encourage you to post comments about your own sexual experiences and explorations. I'd like to turn this into a fabulous sexual dialogue where nothing is considered too personal to share and no question is considered dumb. The more we share, the more we'll all know. And, hopefully, the better sex we'll all have.

What do you say?