Coming Home: Day 30— my body is more than a crime scene
2008)
where her body ought to be
She wants to put her body where her words are, fully into the flavor of sex, stunned with the liquid of meaning and possibility, and the most hostile vulnerability.
This is the skin I settle into, the girl behind the screen, the safely ensconced in pixels or pencils / and yes, writing is an embodying affair / it sloshes your stones with hopes / it asks your nerves to show up for the aching / but I can forget how to breathe today / and I would almost always rather write than fuck / because behind the skin of my page, I can just be that free woman / the one with no safety torn and scabbed beneath her nails / the one whose triggers are taxidermied and mounted on the wall for all to see / they are quiet behind glass when I am writing and cannot startle or snare anybody — not there. When I am writing, my triggers become works of art / almost admirable / almost:
Coming Home: Day 29— perhaps
On this near-last day of this month of transformative work, I’m hearing all the censor voices, the voices who don’t want this writing to happen, the voices who think this work is useless/indulgent/perverted/dangerous/stupid/non-revolutionary. I am hearing the voices of shut it down. I am hearing the voices of you are doing harm. I am hearing the voices of the perpetrators, the afraid, the lost, the broken — all those voices that still live in my skin.
Here I am writing anyway. All of that might be true: here I am writing anyway.
Read the rest here.
Our advice? Give yourself permission to really explore your mind and body during masturbation. Let go of preconceptions of “wrong” or “right” and just be, just feel. We think many of us spend (waste) too much energy judging our own desires, wondering what other people would think about them. We spend so much time wondering if we are “bad” or “wrong” (what does that even mean, and by whose standards?); wondering if we are doing it “right” that we are stifling our desire. The really important thing is to allow ourselves to have - to own - our desires; give ourselves permission to feel them to whatever extent we are comfortable. There should be no judgement within our own heads, that is where we really can be fully ourselves. This is of course, not easy for many people - to be fully present and “naked” (emotionally and/or physically) with ourselves. It can take work to really love ourselves, but we assert that it is work worth doing.
Coming Home: Day 24 - all open-mouthed hunger
In my dream, I am both intensely hungry and eruptive, bursting out of my very skin. I can’t remember much of it at all, just the feeling, just the sense that I am consuming everything and releasing, pushing out, emerging.
In this month, this year so far, I have met the layers and depths and nuances of my hunger — and it scares the shit out of me. We’re not supposed to admit that we’re as hungry as we are: for food, yes, and for desire, for success, adventure, family, love, creative expression, sex, sensation, books, words, color, sound, texture, travel, people, bodies, skin, poetry, flame, performance, space, freedom — it’s all open-mouthed hunger here, which is not necessarily a safe/protected space from which to meet the world. Yet, here’s this May-me, walking with my tongue hanging out, wanting to lick everything.
Read the rest here.
Coming Home: Day 23— dissociating (to) orgasm
This morning, as I settled in under the water, I was thinking about dissociation and masturbation (how’s that for meta?) — the truth is, I don’t always fantasize about sex when I’m masturbating; in fact, when I first get started, I think about almost anything but sex: plans for the day, how sweet it was to play w Sophie out in the park, what I new to add to the shopping list, what I’m going to write here. After learning to fully dissociate while also experiencing extreme clitoral stimulation (as with a vibrator), I know how to both feel the pound of the water against me and keep it at a distance — it’s quite possible for me to have a vibrator on my clit for an hour or more and not be any closer to actually coming than when I started, if I don’t really pay attention. I have to focus, as with a kind of meditation, if I want to be in the rise to orgasm.
Read the rest here.
Coming Home: Day 19- using all of it.
Once again it’s the end of the day before I can blog — it’s a workshop Saturday, and so after a morning orgasm (big and upending — more about that in a minute), it’s rush to eat, get Sophie to her playdate and get back to set up for the writing. After an workshop filled with excellent words and gorgeous community, I went with a friend to another friend’s and we made incredible food and played music and with kids and were generally California and fabulous and laughed and maybe cried a little inside and out and got to just be in these lives of ours. Who gets this?
These are my questions today (just two of very many more, actually): what does it mean to get to have orgasm be a routine part of my day? (Today’s was not routine, but still.) And: what does it mean to have writing and workshops just be a regular part of how I spend my time? (That is, not set apart, not special, not anxety-provoking — just… my real life.)
Read the rest here.
Coming Home: Day 18- can orgasms be romantic?
Today, I’ll tell you, I was in a movie.
Sometimes having the radio on can do that, make me feel like I’m right in the climax— and not the orgasm-y kind, necessarily, though those played a part in today’s imaginings. No, it’s more like pushing into that part where the heroine is finally experiencing her big change, is swelling all the way into the kiss or getting the big phone call from a publisher or agent that will change her life or she gets in the car, finally finally, and you can see that she’s really going to go this time— she’s going. She’s going.
What if the movie gets to be your real life?
Read the rest here.
Coming Home: Day 16 - getting caught up
Ok— back home, and I’m getting caught up. Two orgasms in five hours (just hush up if that sounds slow/easy for you — it’s a big deal for this girl here) — one I got to go to sleep after, one complete with sobs.
This morning, now, I feel full and raw, wide open, stripped, visible, vulnerable — and just right.
On legs like those of a newborn foal. You know that kind of wet and shaking, the newly borne thing just learning to bear its own weight? That’s where I’m living these days.
Read the rest here
Coming Home: Day 15 - (guest post!) Lighting a candle and keeping it real
Words today from my friend R_. He invites us to consider how we can use masturbation as a way to care for ourselves when we are depressed— and how, too, that can be so terribly challenging (So much gratitude to you, R_, for these words, this writing, your practice.)
It’s so good to have someone like Jen in the world, isn’t it? Lighting a candle, putting on the music we love, and keeping it real for us. This space we create together invites us to go to places within ourselves that need us as much as we need them. In this comfortable place we can tell each other stories of how it is. And how it is, is not always how we want it to be.
