I don’t trust that easily.
But I’m getting better.
growth
A year and two days ago (agh I fucked up this and thought it was the 19th, but it was the 17th ugh), around this time, I took out my cellphone at work, checked my email and found this message from tumblr:
Good to see a fellow [Ivy Universityite] comfortably exploring her kinky side, and consider me impressed by how comfortable and well-articulated your sexuality is for someone our age.
There’s more, I’ve had to cut it because it is too school-specific.
The point is, a year ago Craftsmate came into my life and gave me a fucking heart attack. Like I said, I was at work and I had to walk calmly into the bathroom before having a freaking panic attack. I had just started discovering myself and opening up on here and I was worried that this would not only drive me to have to shut the blog down, but to reconcile the identity I created on here to explore my sexuality as well as all the facets of myself that stayed off the Internet.
I’d been careful and always kept one foot out the door. All my topless pictures only showed one boob, which was totally unintentional but reflected a general unwillingness to be too vulnerable.
So, for those of you who’ve just jumped on board and don’t know how things turned out, here’s everything chronologically.
For those of you who have, I don’t really know what to say without being hokey. But it’s been quite a year (and two days) and I wouldn’t change a thing.
Except maybe that stupid nickname. Sorry I decided to call you Craftsmate, it sounds like a freaking kitchen appliance.
I love you.
I’ve been learning to be flexible.
To not always know exactly what will happen, to not fear the unknown so profoundly, to not be so set in my ways of how I believe things should go.
And so I thank everyone who has been sending such sweet messages of support, advice and empathy over my triumphs and blunders in exploring my poly side. I am so appreciative to see that you all have my back.
And a special thank you to whyexactly for posting this little nugget and making me blush like crazy.
I also just noticed my queue spat out parts two and three of Easing out the Kinks in reverse. Grrrr.
no need to be nervous. you’re in half-bloom. take my warmth. let it wash over you and shed the last of your fears.
Growth can take so much courage.
And yet, sometimes, there’s an eagerness in my reticence.
Fuck Baseball, Part Six
Craftsmate and I determined that I was hung up on the rules of “baseball”. That there was a decided order in which things were done and in which people engaged with each other.
“I can’t help it,” I said, “you ran straight across the field to second base, you probably had to knock over the pitcher.”
“Nah,” he replied, “when I was a kid, I was the catcher. Because I didn’t mind balls flying at my face.”
I laughed. I don’t know why I get hung up on standards prescribed by a society of whose counterculture I seem to belong to in more than one way. I don’t know why I would give in to the obligation to kiss someone when I didn’t want to.
Craftsmate is a play partner. Him playing with my nipples is an expression of a play dynamic and not the progression of a romantic relationship which neither of us have any interest in. Because I’ve never had the BDSM without at least the semblance of a traditional relationship frame, I had a little trouble categorizing Craftsmate and determining what was appropriate.
But I think what’s appropriate is what makes us feel good and what is mutually enjoyed and respectful. And that’s a lot of stuff, but it’s not kissing and it’s not sex, coital or otherwise, which I determined in going over my boundaries with myself.
So fuck baseball. Seriously. I don’t even like the game, so why would I follow its stupid rules? If I want the base to base progression, I’ll do it out of willingness, but not obligation.
Daddy, when is it baseball season again?
swing batter
source needed
Jonathan Leder for Jacques magazine I believe.
This man was extremely formative in defining my sexuality.
I was about twelve or thirteen years old when Songs About Jane first came out and, after hearing a few of its singles bouncing around the radio, I asked for a copy for my birthday. I remember bringing it up to my room that morning after my mother had given it to me, putting it into my boom-box, laying down on my carpet, and listening to the whole album through.
I didn’t understand all of his lyrics. I assumed the phrase “keep her cumming every night” meant to have her continue to visit his house each evening. A ton of innuendos zoomed right over my head. But, somehow, it resonated. I felt it. I understood him without even beginning to understand.
I remember sitting in the back of the car, having the album on in my walkman, and hearing my mother say to my father, “just let her listen to it, they like to have things to themselves at this age”. It was how Songs About Jane felt to me. It was something I had with myself. It was this little secret thing I could listen to over and over as I tried to align myself to the lyrics. I wanted to understand. He seemed so much deeper than the sex ed lessons I was getting in middle school, and he was actually answering the questions I did not realize I had.
I learned lust. I learned sexual envy. I learned sexual greed. I learned what it meant to want. In school, I learned the mechanisms. In his songs, I learned what turned them. And, I learned that I didn’t want to just be the women in his songs, I wanted to be with them, even though he had spelled out their problems very clearly in his songs.
Not to mention his voice is pure sex. That counts for something.