Ball and chain

Very few things in life get me as limp dicked as going to weddings.

 I feel sort of bad about this, because if I've been invited to a wedding, it's usually for people that I sort or care about. And then everybody else whose been invited is tearing up during the vows or honestly laughing at the stupid shit the wedding party is doing when they're announced at the reception, and I'm this asshole with an insincere smile plastered on my face like, "aww, man this is just great." It's like that thing that straight girls do where they're all, "omg I'm sooo happy to see you!" but you can hear it in their voice that they're really not and they're not fooling anybody. It's that sort of game. Now-hubby and I went to a wedding this past weekend. I spent time internally commenting on how the church lights sort of had the Mortal Kombat symbol on them.

 Then I just spent the rest of the time being fidgety and antsy because I get like a stupid little kid in situations like that where I just want to leave. Then the people kissed and Now-hubby elbowed me and said, "can't you just clap?" and this is all I could manage.

 
In the grand scheme of things, it's the artifice of the whole wedding business that I'm opposed to. I'm honestly very happy for people when they find love, and are happy with another person (or persons). I just go to very few weddings where it's about that, and instead it becomes this carousel of opportunity for people to spout culturally approved trivialities. A reading from Corinthians is always a good start - you know, "love is patient, love is kind..." blah blah blah

 
For reference, 1 Corinthians is also the chapter in the bible that has a lot to do with the idea that it's actually better to stay a virgin and never get married, and marriage is only supposed to be a last resort for those who can't control the urge for fornication. Which, speaking of, I lasted just long enough this weekend to get to the point where somebody was making a hilarious innuendo to the bedroom shenanigans that were going to happen between the newly Mr. and Mrs. before I finally had to get out.

And so this entry isn't all piss and vinegar: http://www.explosm.net/comics/2938/

For fuck's sake

Sometimes I will watch or read something for the pure reason that I know it will make my face go all like this.

It's not necessarily masochistic behavior, I tend to like to think about it more in the vein of "knowing thine enemy." It's also a healthy alternative to just sort of sputtering angrily at people in public when they decide to loudly discuss their views on the world (lady at the bar who was loudly discussing how Rihanna was asking to get beaten because she's into, "that BDSM stuff," I'm looking directly at you).

Tonight's example was Discovery's "The Science of Sex Appeal." which I had put specifically on our Netflix queue for those nights when I wanted to finish off some Shock Tops and just generally be angry about how sex has to be defined by two people's completely heteronormative ability to make babies.

I thought about doing a reaction gif play-by-play of this episode. For example, "the first time 'sexual economy' was brought up" and then post a reaction gif like this.

Then just do that for the whole episode. But then I realized that there might possibly not be enough reaction gifs indicating disgust, disbelief, or just general "what the fuck did they just say?"

So I'll leave with what's here already, and won't bore you with the details of how facial symmetry and smell and such are important, but not as important as how much money a man makes. Because, you know, ladies be all unable to navigate the "dangerous waters" of sex (an actual phrase from the show. I almost did a spit take

but also thought of salsa shark, because that's where my mind goes when left unattended),

without having access to a guy's bank statement.

Polishing the pearl

In the words of Samantha Jones (Season 4, Episode 8), "When I RSVP to a party I make it my business to come."

I've never been exactly clear on where exactly the difference lies when I talk to other women who do the whole, "sex as a marital duty or a necessary evil of sexual economics" approach to orgasms. It came up recently at work because one of my coworkers is getting married soon, and we were discussing whether or not she was going to do a bachelorette party or not. We were tossing around ideas that didn't involve going to a banana hammock strip club

(That gif has nothing to do with anything except it makes me laugh and involves bananas).

The suggestion was raised of possibly doing a sex toy party, and then another female coworker was all, "I've never owned a sex toy before." At which point my reaction was this, which it usually also is whenever I hear women use the line that they have a vibrator or some other sex toy but it's only for, "when I don't have a boyfriend."

 
Somehow I missed out on the bullshit that a lot of other women apparently received when growing up about masturbation being some horribly shameful thing that you shouldn't ever do. I tend to have a lot more in common with men I talk to when we talk about masturbation. (Hey, sometimes it happens. You know, once you've gotten past all the small talk about the weather and such.) At some point around middle school, it was a mind blowing realization like, "hey, that feels really good if I press things up against my genitals. I wonder what would happen if I kept doing that."

After that, I spent a lot of time figuring out what felt good and what didn't as far as my genitals were concerned. Results were: most things felt pretty good, but some things felt a lot better than others. I also learned an important lesson on clearing ones Internet browsing history, especially when sharing a computer with the rest of ones family. But ultimately realized that it was possible to give myself pleasure, and that I could do it fairly effectively by myself, and repeatedly if I wanted to. 

When I eventually started having sex with other people, I had a solid 5 or so years of masturbation already logged in. There were all sorts of new fun things to experience and try with other people, but I knew the basics of what I liked and what would work to get me off. Maybe that's a bit where the Domme thing eventually came out, but even in more vanilla situations it's been very helpful to be able to sort of orchestrate sex and the positions I'll be in and the type of penetration or stimulation I'm getting.

Getting there

This morning a little thread popped up on Reddit sex about whether or not sex can be enjoyable for women if they don't orgasm.

Firstly, the definitive use of the word "sex." If I had to guess, OP is talking specifically about p-in-the-v intercourse. I'll insert (hehe insert) the obligatory stats about how something like 15% of women orgasm from p-in-the-v intercourse, while 85% can orgasm during masturbation. (Side note: I don't like using phrases like "only 15%," because that makes it sound somehow dysfunctional or sad, instead of just a freaking number, which is what it is.) I think it carries a bit through the thread where "sex" doesn't mean the amazing variety of things that can happen when people get together, and is more closely aligned with "when a man puts his penis in a woman's vagina" version of sex, which is disappointing.

Secondly, the top comments being all about, "sex is like a day at the amusement park. Cumming is like going to the amusement park and also getting your favorite food!" sort of depresses me. It's kind of indicative that women should just be happy with what they're getting. That even if they know how to get themselves off, they somehow shouldn't ask for it, or advocate for themselves to get it. They should just sort of enjoy the other nice things that are happening and be quiet. Maybe it's the primalist in me, but that's bullshit. To take the metaphor too far, I understand if you go the amusement park and only have enough money to get in the gate, so you just sort of browse the attractions and enjoy the smell of your favorite food. But if you freaking have enough money for your favorite food at the amusement park and you want a taste, why should you have to sit there like, "oh well, it was fun just to be here I guess." Also, it's sort of shitty if you've voiced your desire for your favorite food, and the person you're with gets to buy their favorite food and eats it in front of you the entire time being all, "gee, we have enough money to get you your favorite food too, but I don't really know if I want to walk all the way back to the area where your favorite food was."

Standard programming

A friend on Faceyspace recently posted a video of one of his friends getting engaged. You know, the standard fare where a bunch of people are around and then the guy gets down on one knee and the girl is all like, "omg of course yes!"

 
and then she starts crying and all the people applaud and are like, shitting rainbows of happiness.

(For those curious, yes, I do have a few gifs of people and animals actually shitting rainbows, but I figured we'd leave those for some other day.)

I wonder a lot of the times what is wrong with my brain parts that I don't think stuff like that is awesome.

Not that I think people shouldn't be allowed to do it, I'm not that militant. It's just sort of a self-curiosity to me. Where did my wiring step off to the point that I'm just sort of meh about the whole thing?

Ordered to specifications

I was spending time yesterday being a sub during my alma mater's football game. We played terribly, so I wound up being quite sore by the end of the game. For clarification, the football team played terribly - the actual D/s play was fairly alright (by "fairly alright" I of course mean I had about a thousand orgasms and it was fantastic). I also got to experience my speaker wire flogger firsthand (I've used it on subs before, but haven't had it used on me yet). That fucker hurt like a bitch.

Between my team sucking their own dicks and me being punished for it, we wound up comparing sex stories. These are the best types of D/s relationships for me, where I can be all bent over the footstool getting paddled at one point, be called a dirty little whore while getting fucked and cum harder than I have in awhile because of it. But also just sort of hang out and have fun with the other person. That's amazing.

The question came up about my "type." i.e. if I have a specific sort of person that makes me all like this.

You know, that gives me a Bill Paxton sized boner all Big Love episode 102. (I couldn't find an actual picture of it, so enjoy this gif instead.)

And I replied that I don't necessarily have a "type" so much as I have "specifications." Not to say that the physical specifications of somebody like James Deen

 or Jessie Sparkles

doesn't rev my motor.

But I also realize that those are sort of the Holy Grail as far as my vaginal arousal are concerned, so I'm not going out in everyday life with unrealistic expectations.

So, yes. There are certain things I look for in a potential fuck. (We were speaking purely in that sense, not of what constitutes relationship potential, which is sort of a different matter altogether.) For me it has a lot more to do with intellectual capacity and a general rating on the crazy scale than any actual physical accoutrements. As an aside, I tend to be a lot pickier and more exacting when it comes to the intellectual capacity and crazy scale rating of ladies vs. gents. As I explained it to my friend and to Now-hubby, men tend to get stupid when they think they're going to get laid. You never know what is going to come out of their mouths. But women tend to just be crazy and capable of verbal diarrhea from the get-go. This is just personal experience.

What a twist

Having recently started a new job, the paperwork came in the mail today so I could name beneficiaries. If I die in some freak accident they can decide who gets to dry their tears with dollar bills instead of tissues. Part of this paperwork asked me to write down the exact date that Now-hubby and I got married. Since I'm not really the type to keep track of such specifics, I asked if he knew.

He pretended to be offended until I pointed out that he didn't remember either.

At which point we both laughed like Santas at opposite ends of the scale.

Frisbee came up at work recently. In the way that we were having a discussion about what we were doing on the weekend and I got asked a question that I couldn't honestly answer without bringing him up. At which point everyone made this face, which is pretty typical whenever people think they know me and then I spring the whole, "oh, also I have these other people I sometimes have sexytimes with."

Anyway. Both of those things together, also connected to a conversation I had with the German recently about M. Night Shyamalan, got me thinking. For those people I meet in traditional relationship land, the mental gymnastics have to be interesting when I divulge information like I don't remember the day I get married or have other partners besides my husband (not that those two things are correlated in any way). I feel this way sometimes when somebody I wasn't expecting to be particularly religious ends emails or phone calls with "God bless" - I have to sort of take a step back and readjust to how I interact with that person.

Like riding a bike

Whenever I do my online domination thing, I sometimes get questions outside the sessions from people who find links and think I am somebody qualified to give advice about things. Call me the kinky Ann Landers, if you will. (For those on reddit, I've considered doing an AMA a few times, but never really thought there would be enough general interest for one.)

I recently got a message from a guy looking for sex advice. These are some of my favorite messages, because I get to reply in the most disappointing way possible. Which is to say, I shrug my shoulders and say, "I dunno, why don't you talk to the person you're with about it?" I tend to get baffled looks (figuratively speaking, of course, as the majority of these happen online - although I have had a few people ask me these type of sex advice questions in person, and then I do get the actual facial expression). It's as though I should somehow have the definitive answers when it comes to sexual prowess, and I don't really understand where that idea comes from.

To state it for the record, sometimes I have terrible sex. Mostly this happens with people I am just getting to know, and we're still figuring out how our bodies work together, what type of things we're both into, etc. etc. It's awkward and bumpy and weird. But sometimes even with somebody I've been fucking for awhile things just won't click, even if we're doing things we've done before and had some rocket large times to.

I have general tips and things; an arsenal of sexual acts if you will. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. And as with a lot of things in life, willingness to participate is half the battle. I tend to be really good at cunnilingus not because I have the best way to eat a woman out, but because I freaking love to do it and so I take it very seriously.

Sex generally is like riding a bike. A totally unpredictable, crazy transformer of a bike that is always changing and that you never quite adapt to.

Calling it

Before we properly begin this entry, can we just take a moment and reflect on how crazy as balls the new season of ANTM is? Seriously - what the fuck is happening there.

There, I feel better now.

I mentioned having to describe my definition of "straight people" in a previous entry.
This weekend I happened to be in close encounters with a few of them, so it reminded me I still had to come over and tell you guys.

When I say "straight people" it's sort of a general indicator that something about a person is annoying me. I don't mean it in the exactly definition-based sense where I believe the person is heterosexual. I call one of my friends and her wife straight people. It has more to do with a person being a "should" type - somebody who follows the standard universal script. It has to do with expectations in relationships, and the way that they can be rigidly defined and followed, even if the people involved in the relationship dislike it. It's the idea that if your significant other so much as looks at another person, there must be something wrong with you or with the relationship. The idea that getting married somehow certifies or changes a relationship into something more authentic. Even the annoyingly simple things like the idea that men and women are completely different species. You mean to say that women and men might have similar ideas about something? Say whaaat that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

An easy indicator is this "in an alternate universe" comic.

 
Get it? Women don't like to have sex and men just want to fuck constantly? Right? Right? *jabs you with an elbow* If you, in any sincere way, laughed at the above comic and thought something along the lines of, "yeah, that's a different way of looking at things," you might be a straight person.

I'm not asking everybody to become these ultra-sex positive pansexual polyamorous individuals (let's hear it for that alliteration).

I'm not saying my life is ultra awesome and that everybody needs to make the relationship decisions I have. The only thing I'm asking is for people to consider the relationship decisions they're making and know why they are where they are. Be able to go beyond the standard line as their only justification as to why they're in the relationship they're in. Be about the other person (or people) specifically, not just a little one-liner like quoting advertising copy. Don't just read a copy of The Ethical Slut and then vomit up things about the "naturalness" of multiple love.

Counting time

This weekend was a bachelor party for a friend of mine. He's an interesting friend, because really our entire relationship is based on 2 incredibly inebriated days when we went to [adult swim] campus rep training. (The program has been disbanded now for a long time - we came around just as good things like Harvey Birdman

and Squidbillies

came on.

Also lesser things like 12 oz Mouse or Stroker and Hoop. Seriously, I won't even gif link to the second two because they are not worth the time.) We've stayed in touch over time, which is definitely odd but I also enjoy it because he's a cool guy to be around.

In any case, the bachelor party was a fun time. We wound up taking a trolly thing around Chicago, which was cooler than I had originally thought it would have been. Invariably the discussion turned to marriage, because this was one of those "hang out with friends and be responsible adults" bachelor parties and less of a "let's get sparkly tits put in our faces and pretend we don't all have boners around each other" type of party.

Mostly it just reinforced for me how much I actually leave out about my life when I'm talking to people I don't know. I tend to answer a lot of questions sort of by lying by omission. I don't have to specifically bring up being in more than one relationship right now to answer this question, so I won't. There's a part of it that's about convenience, that I don't want to do the inevitable round of follow-up questions. Seriously. Hanging out with a bunch of straight people (perhaps at some future date I'll write a clarifying entry about what exactly I mean when I say that) - it's just...difficult enough to try and explain why I got married in a court house. Or why I don't really keep track of how long I've been married. The fact that I kept my last name. Those things are mind-blowing enough. As therapy lady is fond of telling me, I can be part of a community without having to be the representative for the community to everyone I meet and still be authentic. I'm still working on how I do that - the line between answering questions honestly and having to answer all of the questions is a difficult one.

The revolution will be televised

I recently decided to check out Polyamory: Married and Dating, which is on Showtime. I've only watched one and a half episodes so far, so here are my thoughts on the whole thing at this point.

Firstly, a bit of back story for those of you who haven't seen the show. It's two couples - one is a triad (MFF), and the other one is a quad (MFMF). The triad is a younger married couple and their girlfriend, the quad is two married couples (one of which has a child).

Secondly, I'm watching the show really only because it features poly. I didn't really go into it with high hopes or any expectations whatsoever. It's a bit like being in any other minority, and grasping for any representation of your culture in popular media, regardless of what it might be. Also, you have to at least be aware of it, because chances are some dickweed somewhere is going to be like, "oh, you're poly? I've seen x, y, or z cultural representation of poly, so let me now inundate you with horribly wrong ideas about how it's 'supposed' to work." Then you have to patiently and calmly explain to them how just because they've seen one TV show or movie does not mean that they actually understand a culture. My personal favorite (read: makes me almost grind my teeth into powder with annoyance) is when they have a friend, or roommate, or best of all "knew somebody in a class once" who was of the same minority as you. Because then they like, really get it.

For opinions. I think the premise is actually quite interesting, if not a bit disappointing that they fell into the ultimately inevitable storyline when it comes to poly. "We can't just have it be about their everyday lives - they do things 'normal' couples do like buy groceries and go to work. Nobody wants to see that! Let's make at least half of each show about how they fuck each other, because that's what people are really interested in." So, yes, a large part of the first episode and a half I've seen has been spent talking about bedroom politics. Which is another interesting thing when talking about poly with people who aren't. I don't ever feel that I get more sex than monogamous people in any quantifiable way, or that the sex I have is somehow so outside the bounds of what "normal" sex is supposed to be like as to be almost completely unimaginable (in order to get into that discussion, we have to introduce the kink aspect, and then heads figuratively begin exploding). So it was nice in the first episode and a half that in addition to the whole "omgz they like fuck each other all at the same time lulz" aspect, they also had cut-away interviews with the people involved to add that little dose of, "it's just sex, essentially the same sex anybody else would ever have, we just talk and negotiate about it more."

Which brings us to rules. They've really only defined them loosely so far in the show, so I'm not sure if they're going to go more in-depth. I would certainly  hope so, because the triad's rules at least sound fucking stupid and not very well thought-out at this point. The first two are "honesty" and "safety." That's pretty much it. Not any real definition of what that means or how they physically make sure that the rule is being followed. Just some nebulous vocabulary concept that could be interpreted in any multitude of ways. (As an aside, there's a decent little blog entry on rules vs. expectations here.)

My favorite part so far has been that they took a minute for both couples in the interview portions to be like, "yeah, the sex is 'weird' by society's standards. And a lot of people think that poly is an excuse for cheating, or some way to just get laid in an indiscriminate fashion. But really, there's a lot of work and communication and self-awareness that goes into it." That was nice.