journal entries

Crave

(Don’t mind the giant red ink stain on the page before; I knocked over the bottle right onto my journal as I was refilling my pen for this video. First time! It was bound to happen someday.)

Pen: Fountain Pen Revolution Guru
Ink: Diamine Ancient Copper

Video description: a dot-grid notebook with white pages; Sinclair’s hands come into view with a fountain pen filled with reddish-brown ink, and write the following text in script.

I crave things I don’t like to talk about; things they would judge me for if they knew. “They” are always available to pass judgment.

I crave violence, I crave blood — but the sensual, consensual kind where I can be brutal, raw, harsh, and then I am thanked after. I crave surrender, submission, worship, awe. I crave the inhabiting of my body that feels more like channeling a god than truly being myself. I crave spacious afternoons lounging nude, eating whatever is in the fridge, in the sheets, interrupting for more explorations of each other’s bodies. I crave climax, sure, but also the release, the aftermath, the truth that comes with that much vulnerability.

I want to bite, scratch, force, press, hold down, rip something important. Leave a mark.

It doesn’t feel good to write that, except that it is truth. It fills my stomach with dread, it prompts that inner voice to start it’s sayings about safety and risk. You can’t say that, it whispers (never yells). They won’t like it.

Honestly? I’m not sure I like it either. But it is a true thing about how my desire runs in my body. And here, 27 years into my journey of adult, healthy sexuality, I use it like a tool for liberation, for pleasure.

What else would it be for?

This is what I have devoted my life to — liberation and pleasure. What else is there, really? At the end of my life, that’s what I want you to say about me.

That, and how I was so much myself that I encouraged and gave me space for everyone around me to be even more of themself, too.

That will be a life well-lived, a life worth living.

Meanwhile, I must let this sadist out for play, for practice. Soon.

Published by Sinclair Sexsmith

Sinclair Sexsmith (they/them) is "the best-known butch erotica writer whose kinky, groundbreaking stories have turned on countless queers" (AfterEllen), who "is in all the books, wins all the awards, speaks at all the panels and readings, knows all the stuff, and writes for all the places" (Autostraddle). ​Their short story collection, Sweet & Rough: Queer Kink Erotica, was a 2016 finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and they are the current editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica series. They identify as a white non-binary butch dominant, a survivor, and an introvert, and they live outside Seattle as an uninvited settler on traditional, ancestral, & unceded Snoqualmie land.