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dirty stories, real life

what I would’ve done

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

Since we didn’t, since we couldn’t, let me tell you what I would’ve done.

First, I’d want you on your knees in front of me. I’d want the back of your head in my hand. I can still taste the back of your neck from when you sat in my lap, leaned back into me; still feel your haircut, those short hairs around the edges of your ears, under my fingers.

I’d want to unzip unbuckle unbutton slow and watch you watch me. Like you did on the couch, I saw you. Strawberries in your mouth. Bourbon. The shrimp I didn’t try.

Honestly, I’d want to know what you want. I’m a gracious top that way: my favorite scenario would be the one where you tell me what you’d want done to you, and I’d do it. I’d put my own flare on it, you can bet – but you’d get what you asked for.

So what is your fancy? What do you want? Here this is the quiet piece in me, the one that sits back and watches you, the one that takes photos and sucks the cap of my pen, that is all aflutter to know.

But I don’t know. You know I don’t. We operate communicate with a guise of lust and girl-intuition that takes us along the narrative just fine, but we’ve never had that kink/sex conversation over coffee. Likes, dislikes. Secret fantasies. Perhaps we never will, it isn’t really that kind of thing between us. And though I can have at you through your writing (honestly, what comes – ahem – to mind is cocksucking, something I would oh so happily oblige, you know, if I must) I still don’t really know what you love.

So.

Given that I don’t know, I will do what any top would do: improvise, and take.

It becomes about me, quickly, in this scenario then. But that’s okay (it works for me, at least). And I have found, underneath most fetishes, the underlying desire is often the same: we all want to be wanted.

And you know I’m a top. You know how I seek to take. I said it last night (to you) but I’d (eagerly) say it again: I know how to take you. And you’d want that, wouldn’t you? You’d give me your (eager) permissions, that look in your eyes in your face open willing coy submissive and that’s all I ask for, that’s all I need to set my own desire in motion, that tiny moment of permission and submission.

And oh what would I do to you?

Oh what I would do to you.

miscellany

a nice little tea party

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

I attended a lovely little pervert’s tea party on Sunday.I walked in to a lovely circle of sex bloggers and felt like a minor celebrity; there were familiar lovely faces I hadn’t seen recently, and I met a few new fascinating characters too, had some great conversation.

And the food! Lord, you sex bloggers know how to … put things in your mouths.

I was spoiled by two particularly cute boys, who brought me an avocado. And eventually, the out-of-town guest arrived and the evening got quite a bit more interesting.

Thnaks, Viviane & all, for the lovely lovely time.

reviews

gather ’round, kids, it’s story time

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing in on Internet Sexploration by Audacia Ray
Seal Press, 2007

You know how they say that the first test – and drive – of new technology is porn? Well, we folks who have been around on the ‘net for a while know a lot about all the various aspects of sex on the internet, and there is a lot to tell.

Dacia’s relatively new to the online sex world, by her own admission; in her introduction she gives a brief history of her own path to blogging and the ‘net, which began in late 2003 and took off in 2004. This is not to overlook, however, that she has become a major player in the sex blogger circles, especially here in New York City. And having been on the periphary of those circles for a few years now, myself, I know the kind of pull and influence and impact she has had.

It makes sense, then, that as a social scientist interested in sex and technology and the internet, Dacia would come to writing and researching a book like Naked on the Internet. In it, she chronicles all sorts of online sexual explorations and avenues, gives a history of where the internet has come from (BBSes, telnet boards – remember those?), and even some hints at where it’s going (cyberdildonics come to mind).

For me, the most interesting content were the chapters on online dating and also the sex blogging, partly because that is where I am the most connected, and also because (it seems) that is where Dacia has the most knowledge and presence as well. Other parts of the book were much more of an observed subculture then organized and reproduced for the sake of recording the various aspects of sex online.

This book is unique and singular – since online sexuality is, though extremely common, still quite taboo, there have not been a lot of studies or records kept of what is happening, how people are using this new medium, yet. I have no doubt that it will continue to be explored and we will keep gaining new insight and cultural significance from the online sex world, and that it will have – and already has had – a significant impact on a whole era’s sexual growth and, ahem, sexploration.

Don’t forget to visit Waking Vixen, or check out Dacia’s other recent accomplishment, the film The Bi Apple.

ps … I was interviewed for this book a few months back, and a couple of my quotes are in there, oh, somewhere.

poetry

How to Survive Your First Year in New York City

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

(work in progress) 

I Summer

Immediately in the city everything is just as hard as you’ve always heard it is: the disgusting humid summers. Finding an apartment. Getting a job. Locating friends. But the subways become easy, once you get the hang of it, and Manhattan is comprehensible, once you orient yourself. Be careful not to over-orient: you will change.

Invest in an air-conditioner. August will be brutal.

Distract yourself by going to every Brooklyn roof party you can find. Ask everyone for their New York survival tips. One boy with great hair says “a solid pair of skater shoes” ‘cause they’re so durable to the constant new relationship of your feet to concrete. A German girl who’s lived here ten years says, “an expensive, fancy pair of headphones” that she puts on before she leaves the house and takes off only when she gets to where she’s going. An older woman from the West Coast says “nature shows” remind her of the earth and essential oils give her that sense memory. A young queer boy says “a day bag, a perfect day bag,” with pockets for all the survival tools you need for the city: book, notebook, pens, subway map, Manhattan map, metro card, water bottle, wallet, hand sanitizer, tissues, smokes, cell.

Search everywhere for these tools. Your search will teach you the city. Do not stop until you find them.

II Fall

When the leaves start to become undone and summer’s oppression begins to unravel and the tourists leave, go to the park. Buy a skateboard or roller blades or a bike or a Frisbee. Borrow a dog.  Promenade the West Village with a pretty girl, any pretty girl. Fall in love, that’ll help.  Best if she knows the city better than you and can take you to her favorite Mexican restaurant, dive bar, dance club.

This is good. Keep yourself occupied. But be careful not to get too comfortable in her world: you won’t be there long. Do not assume you will get to keep anything from her, other than the memories. You are still making your own New York. Join some organizations, make some friends, make some art, take up time. There is so much to be done here.

Keep trying to figure out what you’re doing here. Once you figure out what you’re doing here, you will know how long it will take to do it, and then you’ll know when you can leave. But you won’t know until you know. And it always takes longer than you think.

III Winter

By the time the first snow falls, you will have an idea of what your own New York looks like. Re-read Colson Whitehead’s The Colossus of New York and remember that it is only after your favorite Thai restaurant becomes a coffee shop that the city will begin to show you its ghost.

This is a good thing. But winter is a hard time here, and you will loose two of the four of the following: your job, your apartment, your community, or love. It is hard to hold more than two for very long in this city. Watch the New Yorkers, they have these four balls in the air constantly but rarely touch more than two at a time.

You may loose the girl. The one whose hair swirls, whose breath you feel all the way to your toes. This will hurt. That’s okay. Feel it.

The girl you want isn’t in New York anyway, the girl you want would never live in New York. She’s too tender, sensitive to the overstimulation, just like you. But you can take it, for a little while. You can learn to put the armor on, and then take it off again.

This is how New York makes you strong.

IV Spring

When you’ve finally given up on the trees, they will start greening again. It is time for a few more things to hop into place. Your sister will become your roommate and you will learn so much about your childhood. You will begin to watch and understand how what you take into your body effects you. You get a friend, a best friend, suddenly, an instant connection, someone you call when something big happens, someone who is usually free for beers at the pub on the weekends.

This city may exhaust you, but you will never exhaust it.

journal entries

a study of my own character

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

Sometimes we all wonder how things come to be. A chain of events: A leads to B leads to C leads to Z. Each life is made up of big decisions and each day is made up of a million little decisions. What shirt to wear, what street to walk on, what to eat for lunch. Now all of these seemingly inconsequential choices may change your life forever. But who can handle that kind of responsibility? It would paralyze you to think about it. So you have to trust your instinct, what the Greeks might call your character. You better pray to whatever god you believe in that your character knows what the hell it’s doing.

– opening monologue from the 1997 film Playing God

I’ve been thinking a lot about character lately. Not only because one of my long-term goals, especially now that I’m getting back in touch with my own life path and am less preoccupied with throwing all my emotional/mental/creative/romantic/leisure energy to someone else, is to write fiction – by which I mean novels. More than one. And I love character studies, it’s one of the reasons I love writing, reading, psychology, drama, humans, living.

That sounds cheesy, perhaps, but it’s true. Sometimes I realize how much all my interests come together to aid me in what I really believe is my own life’s ‘higher purpose’: writing. And encouraging personal expression. (I have lots more to say about that, but I’ll save it for another time. Most if it is still formulating anyway.)

So, I’ve been reading Getting Into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist can Learn from Actors by Brandilyn Collins, and it’s not just any actor from which to learn these secrets, but the famous Stanislovsky “method acting” approach. Very interesting stuff, I tell ya.

(I’m also reading Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose which I’d also highly recommend. Trying to keep myself inspired literarily. It seems to be working, though I haven’t been generating much work that I would call particularly notable.)

And I think I’ve also mentioned that I’m in therapy, and have been seeing the same therapist since mid-April or so. I really like the idea of long-term therapy, but I’ve never actually been with a therapist longer than a few months. I tend to get discouraged because I’m pretty good at being able to put together a narrative for my life, I’m pretty good at drawing my own conclusions and making my own connections, which I think is what most people get out of therapy. So I’ve been trying to wrap my head around what it is that I could get out of therapy, how to approach it, what the ‘arc’ of the story with my therapist would look like.

Combined with this recent, more serious literary focus of mine, I’ve begun to see therapy as a form of character study for my own self. The point isn’t so much to change myself, at least not at this stage. The point is first to watch my own stories, to listen to my own stories, to notice the patterns and recurrences and sticking points and issues and whatever else might come up. To begin to bring to the forefront some of my unconscious character traits, the ones that I am so far inside of that I don’t notice.

You know, like how you have to leave your home country – or, hell, your home state – to begin to understand and notice what the localized culture was where you grew up? I have to have some new perspective, a fresh glance, at my own self, in order to get an accurate gauge of my character.

I think getting a new perspective on your own character, re-setting or re-defining your own character, is why people like falling in love so much – or, at least, maybe it’s why I like falling in love. I get to tell my best life stories all over again. I get to explore and express my views and outlooks and ideas about life and love and worship and desire in slightly new, sightly refined ways each time. I get to see someone else’s life presented to me in a beautiful way, and get to shine my own life back at her. It’s a personal study of character: mine, and someone else’s, someone who is particularly interesting, and intriguing.

Problem is, I suppose, that sometimes those character studies are terribly inaccurate. What we present is a selective view of ourselves, of course. Sometimes we present ourselves under false pretences. Sometimes we have even fooled ourselves into believing that we are something we aren’t. Sometimes those guises can be kept up for a long time.

And sometimes, someone else can seem so appealing, so shiny and authentic and intelligent and connected to me, deeply, that I begin to believe her, rather than believing myself.

I know, I know: you all have told me that I’ve listened to myself all along. And you’re not wrong, I know I’ve been voicing my suspicions from the very beginning of this relationship. But there’s still something there I can’t quite put my finger on. Because, see, despite my voicing my concerns, I was so high, soaring so high and felt so limitless with Callie. My own character developed in serious, shattering ways, ways that I feel like I’ve been waiting for for years. In some places, I was willingly torn down, willingly built back up. In other places, she attempted to tear me down and I wouldn’t allow it – there we had conflict. Yet other places in me she put a springboard underneath and I flew, I soared, I rocketed up to a new level, felt things I never expected to feel.

Maybe I’m being vague here. I’m talking about sex, and gender. I’m talking about the ways that I felt like such a powerful, strong, capable top with her. The ways that I was able to take control, harness desire, my own and hers. The ways that I was butch. The hundreds of tiny moments in our interactions where she was femme and I was butch, and I made so much sense, I made so much sense to myself, sometimes for the first time. I’ve always done these things – I’ve always taken care of the women around me, my friends and family, I’ve always been the one to open doors and flag down the waiter and refill a water glass, but suddenly it had purpose, it had reason, it had some sort of intense sex and gender play behind it, and it was so, so hot.

I should be grateful to her for all that growth in me, but it’s still hard to actually feel it, not just know that I should feel it. I’m still too angry. It was as if the lenses all came into alignment over the last four weeks or so of our relationship and then everything became painfully clear.

And there’s still something here I can’t let go of. I hate that she continuously bubbles up to my conscious thoughts when I’m doing nothing, walking down the street, reading a book, sitting on the train. But there’s something underneath all of this that I haven’t figured out yet, and so I haven’t let go.

What is it?

Something to do with my own character. Something to do with figuring out who I am in the world, who I am as an adult, a woman, a caucasian queer/homosexual/lesbian/dyke, an American, a butch, a top. She helped me make shifts in my very identity make-up, shifts I’ve always wanted to make, but she changed other things too – and now I am having difficulty navigating the world, making all those millions of tiny daily life decisions unconsciously and trusting my character to pull through, because I’m so skeptical of what she has left me with.

How much of my changing was conscious, and intentional? How much of it was for me, and how much was for her (under false pretenses)? How do I figure out what she has changed in me? Sometimes I fear it has run deep, deep within, where I gave her so much permission to go. Where are the places that I wanted to change, where are the places she changed for her own gain?

So, I am beginning an official character study of myself. Through therapy, through writing. I’ve always done it through writing, really, but now I’ll just call it “official” and maybe it’ll get me somewhere new.

Meanwhile, like the buddhists and yogis say, I’m still trying to remember to breathe into where I’m already at, and accept it.

journal entries

ready to take flight

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

My sister willingly sketched the tattoo out on my shoulder with a permanent marker, and I love the way it looks. This will happen this summer.I have not dreamed of her the last few nights. I barely thought of her today. I did speak about her last night to a friend, but that was partially because I was tipsy (mojitos are so perfect for hot Saturday afternoons) and partly because this friend had seen me through this relationship, from the beginning, and had a lot of useful things to say about love and me in love and what it was like to witness the two of us together.

Here’s the thing. I love being in love. Love it. That seems like a silly thing to say because, duh, doesn’t everybody love being in love? But the truth is, no, not really. Some people run from it. Some people don’t seem to know how to recognize it when they have it. I have the advantage of being a queer woman in this case, since us dykes are known for our u-haul instantaneous declarations of forever, though there are plenty of us who are not like that. I, however … seems like I am one of them.

I’ve been thinking about it, and here’s a bit of my relationship history:

14-19: Serious relationship with a boy, the only boy I’ve ever been with. I think I’ve referred to him as “Mike” here on Sugarbutch (I should make a post to keep track of names). My bisexuality was never a secret; at first, he loved that I was really into women, but as the relationship went on it became less about him and more about me potentially leaving him to be with women, which I eventually did.

19-23: Came out as queer, went back to college, generally single. A few relationships in this time lasted longer than a month, and plenty of scars to show for it. But this whole time I was in love with my best friend. that’s a long story, of course, but the whole time we were in these deep emotional negotiations about how we’d “eventually” get together and “eventually” be perfect for each other, when in fact I was being strung along. I believed her every time.

23-27: With The Ex-Girlfriend, who is a semi-frequent character on Sugarbutch.

27/28: Six months with Callie. Our relationship overlapped with the Ex-Girlfriend’s, as you may remember.

So really, aside from those few first years of my queer adult self (which only half count, since all my emotional/romantic energy was going to one particular girl), I haven’t been single in my entire sexual history.

See what I mean, that I love being in love? I do. I can’t help but be a poet; I am so interested in the inner emotional lives of people, I love to have that access to one particular beautiful person in intimate ways. I am tempering those impulses in me to sift through my phone book, my email and myspace and friendster contacts, and find a date, someone to flirt with, someone I can reach inside of for a while.

I’m beginning to take pictures again. That’s one of the first things that seems to slide off the table when my schedule is otherwise full: spending time with myself, just looking, seeing things, objects, people, places, my own face and skin. I miss that, it’s nice to have it back.

I’m also writing more. This past week I’ve been in a creative overdrive, writing stories and poems that I’ve wanted to write for a long time, years, in some cases, and all sorts of things are coming out of me. I’m remembering my talents. Using them to make sense of things. Thank god.

There is so much more to discover about me. I love what I’m finding when I take myself out, ask myself questions, hear my own stories. I have more ideas and themes and impulses and inner workings in me than this single life of mine can hold. No wonder I felt so much pressure in that last relationship – I had no time for myself, and it takes a lot of time to pursue all of my interests.

poetry

me in a nutshell

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

Related to the Life/Lines post, though not quite the same thing, I’d like to offer up my poem Me in a Nutshell which was an “I believe” poem. It uses many, many quotes from various sources, mantras of mine, inspiration, quotes (it ends with a different Mary Oliver line, in fact).

 It was published online at This I Believe through NPR.

Me in a Nutshell

I believe love is the closest we get to divinity
I believe in waiting patiently on the corner for the light to change
I believe in being kind

I believe that as birds fly, and fish swim, humans create;
it is our ‘natural’ mode of operation
I believe the opposite of war is not peace, it’s creation
I believe creative expression is a way to get to know
what we don’t know
that we already know

I believe in finding common ground and elevating the discussion
in wanting what I have and giving what I need
I believe in asking myself how it is that I will come alive
because that is what the world needs

I believe in keeping rocks in my pockets
to remind me to stay close to the ground
I believe stones and aerial maps of the ocean floor
teach me to fly
I believe to be free is not merely to cast off one’s shackles
but to live in a way
that respects
and enhances
the freedom of others

I believe in leaving everything and everyone and everywhere
just a little better off then when I found it
I believe when we let go of who we are, we become who we might be
I believe in paying my library fees

I believe in psychics, astrology, epigraphs
crossing fingers at cemeteries
lifting feet when going over a bridge
ice cream on the hot days
I believe in swimming at the glacier in the summer
and chomping icebergs like snow-cones

I believe asking for – and getting – someone’s consent is sexy
and knowing the pleasure you want and how to get it
is subversive and revolutionary
I believe gender and power and play is what makes the sex hot

I believe stretch marks and scars are beautiful
because they tell the history of the body
I believe the body is a temple to be worshipped
that we are not separate than the earth, but rather from the earth
I believe it feels good to shit outside

I believe in cranberries, avocados and cashews
in redheads and black ink
in leaving a trail on an unmarked canvas
in drawings on skin
in tiny yellow flowers under the chin to check if I like butter

I believe in watching the media, pop culture, consumerism,
and celebreality with a critical eye
I believe in turning off the TV
I believe in accessories: shoes, belts, bags, scarves, glasses

I believe growth requires the temporary suspension of security
in second chances and red balloons
I believe in wishing on the full moon and faery rings
and dandelions gone to seed and eyelashes
and shooting stars and lovers’ laughter and birthday candles

I believe very few people are actually out to get us
but are rather just distracted by their own
human-drama-bubble of daily life
I believe differences are the only way we learn
I believe intentions do matter
I believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt
but still protecting the gentle red ribbed cage
around my heart

I believe you and I are not mistakes, we are stardust

I believe in unfolding my own mythology
like an origami swan
asking every day:
what will I do with my one wild and precious life?

poetry

“you do not have to be good”

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

The Poetry Thursday prompt today is on Life/Lines, which the Academy of American Poets did a collective project with and defines as such:

We each carry lines of poetry with us. Words that others have written float back to us and stay with us, indelibly. We clutch these “Life Lines” like totems, repeat them as mantras, and summon them for comfort and laughter.

Anytime I think of my favorite poetry, poems that changed my life, significant lines of poetry, I always, always, always think of Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. And while I can think of a dozen – two dozen – more poems that have profoundly affected me (Under a Soprano Sky by Sonia Sanchez, Eating Poetry by Mark Strand, Otherwise by Jane Kenyon, Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich), it is always Mary Oliver that I come back to when I have to name just one, and it is always Wild Geese.

At first, it was the opening lines:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

The simplicity of it. The miracle of letting go of suffering, and only allowing your body to “love what it loves.” Gorgeous. As if Oliver lept from the pages and plucked a diamond from my heart cavity and said, look. Just look what you have inside you.

But lately, it’s been the ending:

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

… that has really gotten to me. No matter how lonely or alone, or scared or tiny or uneffective you may feel, you still have a place in the family of things. You still have one particular little pinpoint of light on the map, on the earth.

I’ve carried this poem with me for a long time.

journal entries

letting go

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

I set a few goals for myself this past Memorial Day weekend, including: spend time with myself, finish the “unputdownable” (and I use that in a tongue-in-cheek way – have you noticed the upswing of use of this term in publishing lately? I think it’s rediculous, personally) book I started, clean up the apartment, go to the park and throw the frisbee around.And, perhaps most importantly: to go through the boxes underneath my bed.

My bed is up on risers, partly, I admit, because I like higher beds (better angles that way) but also partly because in my former three-hundred-square-foot-apartment-with-no-closets, I needed storage space. So when I moved in, much of those boxes that I didn’t have time or space or appropriate fixtures to unpack ended up shoved under the bed. Some of them, like boxes of old journals and boxes of photographs, will probably stay down there, or stay in ‘storage’ in general, but others I knew I needed to go through.

This is what I found:

  • Two boxes of clothes, including three sarongs, sarong pants, two Ani Difranco tee shirts, four spaghetti-strap tank tops with things like “cunt” and “fruit” on them, two Alix Olsen tee shirts, my letter sweater from high school, a sweatshirt from my pre-school (that was a gift after I left home, not from when I was actually in pre-school), and the blue “diesel dyke” jacket I used to wear nearly every day

  • A small shoebox of stuffed animals, small ones, that I’ve collected or been given over the years

  • Two boxes of CDs. This is a problem, actually, because I don’t have any CD storage unit anymore, and I’m not really sure what to do with the hundreds of CDs I have. I should probably go through them and rip them into digital music and get rid of them, at least half of them or so, the ones that I don’t really care to have, but my desktop computer is on its last legs, and needs a serious upgrade, so that has to happen first.

  • Hats – five baseball caps, one cowboy hat, one top hat from halloween years ago. I don’t really wear hats.

  • Two boxes of electronic chords and gadgets, including two (dead, I think) CD players, a landline phone (will I ever need one of those again?), CAT cabling, various power chords for who-knows-what devices …

  • Three shoe-boxes, what I tend to refer to as “memory boxes,” containing things like ticket stubs for concerts, movies, and plays; birthday cards and letters; notes from friends and lovers; notes-to-myself scraps of paper when I didn’t have my journal with me, likely scribbled at concerts, at museums, or bars; photographs; nametags or laminated passes for when I was a volunteer for theatre or film festivals … you get the idea. All sorts of scrapbook-type bits of paper, things I wanted to remember that I did.

Why do I save these things?, I asked myself. Partly, it’s for exactly this experience of going through them, remembering those fun events and moments of my life that were significant. I consolidated those three shoeboxes of memories into one larger hat-box sized box, and it overflowed a little, so I went through some of it, throwing enough of it away that it would fit. I’m kind of sad to throw them away, actually, because that act of going through the box is exactly the reason to keep it. But will that stuff ever be of value to anyone but me? Does that matter? I’m not much of a scrapbooker, but I suppose I could be, or perhaps I should be, if I want to keep all of this … stuff. Is that necessary, though? Do I need to keep my ticketstub for Ocean’s 11 and Border/Clash and Ami Lagendre’s dance performance from 2002? If I can’t remember that I went, were they really all that significant?I also ran into all kinds of notes from past loves, really sweet cards and thoughts and moments from those relationships. Why do I hold on to those things? Do I really want to go back to them, relive them later? I only feel sad, they make me ache a little. Do they really have a purpose, is there a need for them in my life? I’m not sure. I can’t really think of why I might need them. But somehow, I can’t quite let go of them either.

My impulse is to organize all this data, take the fragments and put them chronologically into a book, a scrapbook, and construct a life from them. I guess that’s what I always thought I’d do with them. But do I really want to spend time doing that? Obsessing over and organizing my past? What would that really do? I’d end up with a book, a creative scrapbook of some of the things in my life that mattered. Who would look at it, besides me? Would I even look at it?

I took some of the boxes down from the shelf in my closet, too. There is still more work to do with the boxes under my bed, but I compiled a few boxes, sorted through half the clothes, have two boxes now to give away or donate (if I can ever figure out how to do that here in Brooklyn).

poetry

a new place to visit

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith
Poetry Notebook is a new project of mine (I know, I know, all these new projects. We’ll see which ones stick). Point being, I put the first poem up there, a prompt from Poetry Thursday to write a poem in dialogue, and I really like the result.

At first there was too much feeling so she
cut out her heart and fed it to a crying lion
cub. She meaning you. Yes. But the lion cub
was really her new kitten. She didn’t have
enough milk. Is that all? No, there were
other things she never had enough of:
greens, window blinds, validation. She isn’t
ready for summer to begin. She likes the way
the branches make fractal designs in shadow
on her front door. More than the sidewalk?
Yes, and she likes the sounds her shoes
make on pavement. She likes the empty
space surrounding her to be wholly without
meaning. She wants to be alone. That sounds
overly isolationist. Sounds like freedom. And
her hands? Her hands keep turning into
birds and flying away from her.

…. keep reading “the ending you don’t want to hear”

miscellany

for a good cause

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

So, the Masturbate-a-Thon is this weekend – Saturday, in fact. Why have I completely missed that May is (annually!) Masturbation Month? Usually I am well aware of this fact ahead of time. I have in fact participated in the Masturbate-a-thon three times in the past. I’d love to do it again.Also? On the Masturbate-a-Thon webpage is a fabulous little musical ditty by the Wet Spots: “masturbation, it’s okay, we all get to do it in a special way …” which then goes on to describe the different ways various animals masturbate … porcupines, a lioness, a spider monkey …

The Wet Spots – a “sophisticated sex comedy” duo – are somewhat infamous now from their YouTube video Do you take it (in the ass)?, so I was happy to run across their webpage & their other work.

But. Back to the subject at hand: masturbation.

I’ve actually been feeling somewhat scared & traumatized about masturbation lately. Don’t get me wrong – let me explain. Not to get too into my own private … um, practice, but I usually don’t really have any hangups or issues or blocks when it comes to getting off. I just do it, it’s pretty easy (I do know what I like, after all) and that’s that.

But lately? Since the breakup. I just haven’t been able to do it. Haven’t been “in the mood”, no, which is fine, I’m not rushing it, but sometimes I guess I kinda have been in the mood, or at least, I’ve been at home alone for multiple hours, which in a usual case scenario would involve me getting off, at least once.

But now … when I get turned on, I think of her. I still have so many bodily memories of her, of us together, especially when it comes to sex, which is where she was at her most raw, and where I was at my most … perfect. Everything snapped right into place. Jigsaw pieces. I knew exactly how to read her, how to respond to her body, her eyes, her movements, how to shift myself, how to take, how to give. I’ve never had anything like that, I miss it.

It’s hard to write that, actually. Hard to feel that grief well up in my chest. Impossible to feel it, when I’m also simultaneously trying to get off.

Her fantasies wove themselves deep in me. She tapped into so many things that I wanted, so much of my desire. It’s hard not to think of sexy things when getting off, and sexy things, right now, for me, are, well, her.

I’ll unlearn that, right? I’ll find other women attractive again, someday, somehow?

I used to walk down the street and just swoon, fall in love with every third girl, and it’s summer now, god, the strappy sandals and swirly skirts and bare legs … I have been so easily influenced by the sidewalk parade of femininity the last two summers I’ve spent here in New York City.

But this time? Barely. An occasional redhead catches my eye. An occasional perfectly shaped ankle, or swishing skirt. I even worry that if – when – I get back into bed with a girl, I’m going to freeze up, thinking of her (or saying her name, lord).

There really is a very small, small percentage of the population to which I am attracted. Femme women, yes, but even more specifically: poise. Legs. Posture. The way she looks when nobody’s looking at her.

I guess this comes back to a new resolution of mine, which is to date myself. For a year, approximately. I will be in an open relationship with myself, which means I am free to date other people too, but I am going to be my primary partner. I am going to focus on my needs, emotionally, creatively, sexually. I am going to take myself out to fancy dinners on occasion, to films, to museums, to days in the park. If there’s one thing this relationship has taught me it’s that I am good – good – at seduction, at courtship, and I am going to turn my own charms inward and see if I can sweep myself off my feet.

poetry

the ending you don’t want to hear

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

At first there was too much feeling so she
cut out her heart and fed it to a crying lion
cub. She meaning you. Yes. But the lion cub
was really her new kitten. She didn’t have
enough milk. Is that all? No, there were
other things she never had enough of:
greens, window blinds, validation. She isn’t
ready for summer to begin. She likes the way
the branches make fractal designs in shadow
on her front door. More than the sidewalk?
Yes, and she likes the sounds her shoes
make on pavement. She likes the empty
space surrounding her to be wholly without
meaning. She wants to be alone. That sounds
overly isolationist. Sounds like freedom. And
her hands? Her hands keep turning into
birds and flying away from her. Her being
you. Yes. Do you love yourself? I don’t have to
answer that. It should matter. She has two
dozen different black shoulder bags, but
none of them are the right size. She is still
searching. She buys one every week, just in
case it is the one. It should matter. She has a
diamond stud in her nose but it doesn’t
matter. She wrote ten poems yesterday but
it doesn’t matter. This is how she stays alone.
Everything is red and newspapers are printed
on the soles of shoes, the backs of hands. You
miss the point: bookcases are only
bookcases when they hold books. All of the
letters are lost and scrambled. Like the time
the pages flew from the car and got lost at the
ocean shore? Yes. Pages flying floating until
they turned into birds. What’s with the birds?
Everyone nests, then everyone leaves.
There is truth in migration. If you make it.
What else? She cannot see her hands in the
dark. They disappear under the shelter of
the moon even when the moon is lifted in a
pirouette. She meaning you. And you.
Everyone leaves. Every relationship must
end, it is the nature of us. We are
impermanent. Even stones. What else would
stones be? Immortal. Bounded. Discovered
on the backs of glaciers, in the hollow of
trees. Birds don’t need stones to nest. No, but
I do. Where are your hands now? Turned to
feathers, feathers, turned to down, stuffed
into pillows. Place your head here, carefully.

[After Richard Siken’s poem ‘Unfinished Duet’ from his book Crush. Also inspired by Poetry Thursday’s prompt to write a poem in dialogue.]

journal entries

getting ready

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

I think this will be the bird tattoo on my left shoulder, this summer. Or it will be something quite similar to this. I also want a red balloon (for an anti-oppression symbol) on the inside of my right ankle, and a white star (an old queer signal) on my right wrist. But. One at a time.

dirty stories, real life

the prettiest girl in the place

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith
“You,” I said, lips right next to her ear, the gardenia scent on her neck more tangible at such close range, “are the most beautiful girl in this whole place.”

The music thumped, colors from the lights fluttered. I’d been watching her for half an hour, since I got here, and had danced next to her for the last two songs. I couldn’t hear my own words but trusted she could.

She could. She flushed, bowing her head a little, looking up at me through her lashes. Tossed her thin, long blonde hair.

“Can I buy you a drink?” I asked.

She nodded, still shy, eyes flashing. Interested. “Vodka cranberry?”

I smiled – that half-smile-smirk with the soft eyes, perhaps my most handsome look – and returned to her with her drink, red, in one hand, my drink, Jameson on the rocks, in the other.

She sipped hers slow through a straw. Lips carefully placed. We drank. We danced more. Hands on her hips, watching the way her body spun and quaked. Such elegance in the slow curves. I spun her around the dancefloor and she followed. Brilliantly. Blue eyes on my face all night.

Wrists in my hands and her back up against the wall, mouth open. Open. Anything could happen here. The wall is sticky, the floor acts like it hasn’t been swept in years. Crushed under the bottoms of too many feet. Push her legs apart before she realizes I’ve cornered her. Take her by the hand and lead her outside the bar.

She follows, wordless. I light a cigarette.

“So,” I say.

“So,” she says, kicking at the brick building with the toe of her flat silver ballet shoe. Dark capri jeans folded nearly to her knee. A loose blouse, soft yellow, thin, revealing everything.

I smoke. Breathe. I’m not particularly interested in the cigarette. It’s just something to do with my mouth, instead of …

She leans against the brick wall and shifts her hips. Shifts her weight from one leg to the other. She doesn’t look at me. She waits.

Oh, god, I’m terrible at this part. Just stay calm. No expectations. Just me, and the prettiest girl here.

I say something (anything) witty. She laughs, a delightful sound. A reward for my efforts and I try again, which becomes again, which becomes dominoes and her eyes shine as she gazes smiling at me. She bites her lip, parts her mouth. Breaths in.

I flick my cigarette with my thumb and forefinger, sparks against the sidewalk. I take a step closer to her and gently let my hand touch her hip. She breathes into the touch, deep and sharp, breathes into the place where my fingers are touching skin. I circle her waist with one arm, she’s tiny, shorter than me, delicate. Her arms fall back from her shoulders like her hair, gravity pulling them down and against me who is pulling her another way, against me, to me, and her back arcs and I lean over her as she tilts her head.

I hesitate. Feel the space between us electric and alive. Then kiss her, light, a whisper of a kiss, air and spun sugar and she tastes like gardenia.

The thick blossoms of summer.

And it hits me: I’m single. One. Only me. There is only my own desire, my own life path, my own choices. There is only my needs, my intentions.

This is not to say I do not want someone, I do. But I am picky now. I know what I don’t want.

This girl, this lovely girl, the most beautiful girl in the whole bar, looks back at me and says, “Ready to dance?”

Oh, am I ever.

poetry

where I am

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

Love After Love
Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

journal entries

a request

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith
I’m pretty sure she reads this place. She never told me outright, but I’ve had hints. She could probably pretty easily find it, given the clues. I wish I could ask her, now, to stop.

If you are reading this, please don’t visit any longer. Let me go through this without your eyes.

poetry

four-chambered heart

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

for sunday scribbling: wingsI have said that she gives me wings.

I have said that, though I have been collecting feathers my entire life, downy and sweet, flight and contour and semiplume feathers, even occasional bristle feathers and filoplume feathers, it was her who gave me the map, the blueprint, for the abilities to soar, to take off and land, to catch a ray of wind and float.

I have said she takes me to such heights, takes me to the peaks of mountains, looking down over valleys where everything below is neat and organized, small, managable.

I could continue with the bird metaphors, hollow bones and unfolding; flying, nesting, cracking open; a four-chambered heart, ruby breasted; flocks and migration and hovering and perching.

But what I really want to say is that I was not raised to believe in pride. I don’t know what it’s like for others to take credit for my accomplishments, no matter how much my accomplishment was helped by your maps, your tender caresses, your careful slices of leather cut around the outlines of my feet for my landing.

This flight is my victory. And while you are calling to me from the clifftop, yelling claims to my own soaring moments, the air is so clear and still that all I can hear is the beating of my own wings.

poetry

inevitable winter

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

sunday scribblings, rooted

I want to get to the root of this. Dig it up, look at it, dip it in water to wash the imperfections clean, to give it a fresh start. Find the source of the root ball and strip away the dirt. Strip away everything that isn’t root.Sometimes trees seem so deeply rooted in the ground that their trunks seem like arms, their branches hands, their roots hands gripping the soil. And sometimes it seems the soil grips back, tightens, tenses around the tree to hold it firm in place.

In New Orleans, after Katrina, the trees that were left standing had protected the house next to which it was planted. The trees that fell often damaged more than the storm.

And it was the native trees, the ones who had been interacting with that particular land for the longest, that didn’t fall.

I want this with you. I want to dig my roots in and feel you grip me. I want to discover where I’ve come from by creating somewhere to go.

Right now, I can only see the trunk, can only see the leaves, and they are budding, they are quivering with blossom in the ready, they are tiny young leaves so baby-green and fresh, ready to burst into something grand, ready to spread and open and course chlorophyll through the veins of it until it courses its last green and turns to yellow, orange, red.

It’s beautiful, my darling. The way things grow and change and come forth in spring.

But if it is not rooted it will not last through winter. And winter will come, yes, the seasons change, the cycles go on, and we are nothing but animals on this miraculous circular ecosystem, after all.

journal entries

"Lesbians found guilty … "

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

I don’t usually post about news or current event type of things, but I’ve been following this story since it started and I’m really sad about it today:Lesbians found guilty of attacking a straight man: their lawyer said, “These are seven decent and nice young women who came into the city to have a good time. They were hit upon by an abusive homophobic man. Now they’re all going to state prison.”We are, still, not safe.

If you do click through that link – which I thought to be a rather sympathetic telling of the sentencing, on the girls’ side – watch out for the comments at the bottom. I am actually really shocked: “They deserve what they got.” and “They deserve to go to prison for a long time. Good riddance.” and “guess what, you poor little girls, you can’t stab people!” and “why weren’t they charged with hate crimes?”

Oh, god, it’s just heartbreaking.

They weren’t charged with hate crimes because hate crimes are intended to protect minorities. It goes along with the argument for “reverse discrimination” – such a thing, in my opinion, which does not and can not actually exist, because the consequences to descrimination against someone in the majority are very, very slight, are not institutionally implimented into society, and have very little to do with systemic disadvataging of the marginalized.

Homophobic attacks on the street are terrifying, and have real, serious, current, deadly consequences. These slurs that the man was yelling to the group of women, they were not “just words” and “harmless,” they have serious consequences, serious reprodcussions in a homophobic, heteronormative society such as ours.

Queers need protection, and sometimes need – NEED – to fight back. I don’t think they should have stabbed that man; I am a pacifist and believe seriously in non-violence, but we weren’t there – we don’t know – he could have been so threatening that they needed to physically defend/protect themselves.

I am really sad for those girls. It makes me want to take action, act up, do something in a way that few events in the gay activism realm have recently.

This is why I watch Boston Legal. I haven’t kept up with this season (I wait for the DVDs), but if they haven’t already, I really hope they use this incident.

I won’t even begin to mention the whole partial-birth abortion/Supreme Court news, or the Virginia Tech shooting, or that CNN released all the videos and letters of the shooter, that has also been hitting the fan in the past few days. Any god, anywhere, help us all.

poetry

as yet untitled

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

We want
each other. Want to crawl
inside the space between us
like a mine shaft, an air duct
we use to escape. You
always were a catalyst. Placed
your hands on my heart like
a difibrulator, electrified me
alive. I seek to cool.
Seek to calm, solidify
like lava into pahoehoe.

I can’t ask you to take
your hands away. We
are in the midst of unnatural
acts, recreating ourselves
cellularly so we will
eventually grow wings, find
levity, learn to fly, prove
Daedalus wrong. I hear the fire

signs are in trine which
actually lessens Earth’s gravity.
I hear you saying my name eight
avenues and a dozen streets
across the city. Your breath
smells of lavendar and the Z –
my Z – in your mouth feels
like crushed cherries, a glass
mirror held next to a crystal
a blue bowl of water, unsung.

poetry

secret identity

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

for sunday scribblings

I keep myself separate.

When I began the project of myself, I created a separate me for all of you to see. So many untruths, especially in the beginning. Of course, like all self-projects, it morphed into just one particular thread of truth, the bright silver-purple shining thread that I usually keep hidden in the center of all my cords and wires and ribbons, occasionally allowing a glimpse of its shimmering color but mostly it stays hidden, close, closed.

You have such slender fingers. You can easily pick the silver-purple thread out of the bunch and smooth it, soothe it, detangle it from all the rest and point it out to me, show me the places where the edges are frayed and breaking, thin, where things need repaired, where my old repairs of electrical tape and wood glue aren’t holding anymore.

Don’t look at that. Don’t shame me by seeing the pieces underneath what I am ready to show you. Those are my secret threads of light, the ones that make up my very core, the ones that I caught on a moonbeam and tightrope walked and strung up to make holiday lights in pine trees and the lifelines I caught every time I threw myself overboard to drown. Don’t look, don’t see.

I keep myself secret. Sometimes I don’t mean to, it’s just the core of me is so spiderweb thin and glistening, delicate, so easily damagable with even the slightest of breaths, the slightest of soothing caresses. And you want your fingerprints all over it, you want to leave marks, to rearrange and untie carefully knotted holding places and you want to touch the scars with your own fingers and pretend like you understand where they came from.

I don’t even know how you got inside of there. Did I let you in? Did I give you the key, the combination?

There are places in me no one gets to go. The caves of me, dark and damp and dank and full of refuge, where I drag everything back inside and sort through it all, discard what I don’t need and store the rest.

I choose how much to reveal and where. I choose when to show myself. You don’t get to show up and sort through the mush yourself. I know I’ve asked you not to.

Go ahead, tell me I’m not integrated. Tell me I’m living in secret, in hiding, in shame. This is the only way I know how to do this, and it is all I have, for now.

journal entries

small update

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

Damnit, I just went to work on the “weekend update” entries I’ve been working on and discovered that I didn’t save them yesterday. I hadn’t finished – not even the first part – but that’s annoying.Having a frustrating day, actually. I believe people tend to get weird around their birthdays, it kind of depends on the year and the person and the circumstances what kind of “weirdness” it is, but there’s always something a little bit off and strange about the weeks around that particular date. Thanks, much, for all the birthday wishes & greetings, it was terribly sweet and wonderful of everyone and I feel loved & blessed. :)

I’m still trying to finish my submission for Best Lesbian Erotica 2008 (it was due 4/1, I only had a YEAR to finish it) and that’s stressing me out too. Lucky for me, I’m heading home after work and will have lots of time to myself tonight!

poetry

hemlock

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

I am delicate. This tough guise
comes along with the collared shirts –
briefs – jackets in mudpuddles –
but it is only a performance.Do not mistake it for the same gauge
of pressure it takes to bruise
the skin of my heart. Purple

gives way to red gives way to pink.
Even the strong language I take in
too deep because I have no wall up
between me and you. I have no wall

up but you can’t tell how transparent
I am when I have cried, when I have
asked a question, turned a doorhandle

so you did not have to. I want to take
care of you. I want to take care of
myself, so invisibly that you won’t notice,
then take care of you. But that is not

realistic. I know. I am sensitive,
affected by all the madness marching
around me. I cannot get away from it

some days. Some days I am eaten alive
by the bees in the hive, some days I am
the hive through which everything flows.
I carry around words like brutal and

punished in a notebook and touch the
letters when I need a reminder of
the damage that can be done, can not

be undone. Phrases yielded like
knives. I refuse to use my words
as weapons, though I could, I could
cause hurt, could leave scars. Instead

I choose to swallow, don’t let it out,
don’t let things go, there is no way
to know what the words will become

once they leave my tongue. Possibly
dandelions, possibly stinging nettles,
possibly a poisonous cup of hemlock.
I drink it all down myself instead:

then there can be no misinterpretation.

journal entries

pure possibility

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

There were a couple of interesting comments on that post yesterday, related comments, specifically about “just being” rather than working so hard to change, especially as related to gender.First, I want to clarify something. I was born female, socialized a girl, raised to be a ‘woman.’ Granted, I grew up in a somewhat small, live-off-the-land West Coast town where even the feminine women lean toward butch (boots and carharts rather than heels and skirts, that kind of thing) as well as with parents who dismissed many aspects of traditional gender roles, seeing the dichotomy as restrictive and limiting. But I was never the tomboy, never the one-of-the-boys girl. From the time I was about three or four up until second grade, I only wore dresses. As I got older I wore less and less female-specific clothing, but still was generally feminine. It took a conscious choice, conscious intention to develop my butch identity.

Let me say that again: this butch identity of mine is the result of hard work, because that is who I wanted to be. For the most part, I see it as something I perform on my body – the way I move, the clothes I wear, the way I cut my hair, the shoes I choose, the undergarments I choose. There are other aspects of it, behavioral aspects, primarily in the form of chivalry, opening doors, walking on the outside of the sidewalks, letting my girl order first (or ordering for her), the way I feel desire, flirt, and have sex (though that has a lot to do with my identification as a top, too). I don’t necessarily align certain personality qualities – i.e. writing, cooking, working on cars, interest in verbal processing, caretaking – to one particular gender identity or expression.

Of course, the reason that I wanted to adopt this identity at all was partly because of the way that I felt that it fit me, my body, my sense of self, the way I move through the world. Explaining my choice to develop a butch identity is fairly complicated (of course it is), but it also relates to the anxiety and depression that I felt as a teenager being completely paralyzed by the idea of being a fairly intelligent, articulate woman in the world, as I began to understand how women are treated, devalued, sexualized, used, and damaged. (Which is also why I pursued gender and oppression studies as an academic discipline.) My choice to become butch was related to my own sense of the ‘feminine’ as dangerous, in our society.

BUT: don’t get me wrong, I have done a fuck of a lot of work on my internalized sexism, and I understand – I REALLY UNDERSTAND – the value in femininity. But it took me a while, which is why it took me longer to admit (and understand) my attraction to and begin dating femmes than it did to figure out that I was/wanted to date women, and be butch. The third wave feminist movement has done some work on reclaiming “traditional” expressions of femininity (domesticity, Barbies, the color pink, glittery girly things, etc) but I think that hasn’t quite come to full fruition. (That’s another topic, I won’t go into it, though it’s related.)

So: when I decided that I wanted to intentionally adopt this butch identity, I also decided that there was only so much of it that I wanted. I didn’t want those stereotypical masculine traits that I see as damaging, limiting to the masculine gender (those that I mentioned yesterday – lack of emotional expression, inability allow help or ask for help, anger as the only acceptable emotion, valuing violence or the objectification of women).

Which is why I talked about cherry-picking my gender yesterday. And it isn’t as though this choosing of gender just happens once, and then is over – I’ve been developing this identity for five or six years now, made a serious study of it, a hobby, and I am still refining it, remaking it, reworking my performace of it on my body, the feel of it in my emotional inner life, the way I experience and express desire and am recognized by other butches (and femmes, and dykes) because of it.

Gender is policed socially – I constantly watch myself, or others do it for me. Other butches, other femmes, even other folks who refuse to limit themselves to the heterorestrictive gender binary system – at various times all sorts of people have said that I wasn’t “that butch” or “butch enough” or “really butch,” or they’ve pushed me to objectify a woman, tell me jokes about violence and sex and sports and cars assuming that I’ll get it and like it and laugh, as a form of bonding.

Somehow it is incredibly easy when developing a butch identity to adopt all those masculine traits that I would rather reject and not incorporate. I saw it happen with my group of young dyke friends as we were developing out of that awkward baby-dyke stage: we were all on the butch side of the gender spectrum, but they wanted to stare at pretty girls from across the bar, make lewd gestures, tell stupid (offensive!) jokes. I quickly developed the reputation as The Feminist, which of course meant “not butch,” as if the two things are mutually exclusive. I was teased constantly – one girlfriend of my best friend used to do things like slap my friend’s ass, and then glance at me sheepishly saying, “oops, sorry Sin, I didn’t mean to objectify her …”

Sigh.

I never could quite articulate the difference between sex and sexism, the difference between playfulness and objectification. I still grapple with all of this, but I feel much more confident in my understanding of my own personal gender identity and expression, and in gender in general.

Back to the comments, though: I’ll ignore the mention of my “gender identity issues” and just pretend that means “gender identity complexities” or something (’cause issues is a bit of a triggering word for me, I guess, implying that there are problems or negative behavior as a result).

I am actually very interested in the study of Buddhism in general, especially the concepts of a beginner’s mind, of staying clear and open, of calming the self and allowing things to flow through our bodies and minds. So “I just am the way I am” and allowing myself to “just be” really resonate with me, and my initial reaction is to be a little outraged: “of COURSE that’s how I address things!” But clearly, that’s not so true, not when it comes to Callie.

This is a place where Callie and I differ greatly. She is constantly remaking herself in opposition and reaction to what others around her need. She is always in flux. In some ways, she has very little self-definition and needs someone else to give it to her. That is not how I am, nor do I really understand it in its entirety.

This particular issue that I’m facing – of consciously working to get into and maintain an emotional space where I can have access to what I’m thinking and feeling, and what I need, and feel confident and safe enough to express that to Callie consistently – was one of the conditions upon which Callie and I got back together. She said she would work to make that space safer for me, and I said I would work to express my needs more often, so I wouldn’t go along like everything is fine when things aren’t, and then pull away seemingly suddenly (and cause her great pain, because of her great fear of abandonment and rejection).

So, I suppose the question of whether or not we’re going to be able to make those changes remains. I told her I would try it, and I am. The rewards of being with her are great, seriously great; I’ve never been in love like this before, I’ve never felt such great heights, I’ve never had this kind of physical connection with someone. This mini-crisis has reminded me that, if I want to keep her, and stay in this relationship, I need to keep this skill at the forefront of my mind a little more consciously, otherwise I am going to explode with anxiety and resentment.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I can’t “just be” in this relationship – yet. She needs more from me than my own default and ingrained behavior can provide. (Just for the record, she is working really hard changing herself to better accomodate my needs too, in many very successful ways – she’s not only placing demands on me. I will write in depth about that another time.) I’m not used to that in relationships, but I love how much I am growing as a person, and I still suspect that it is going to be worth it, if we can sharpen our skills, sharpen our tools with each other, we can reach a serious state of bliss that will be sustainable, possibly for the rest of our lives.

And I’m not willing to give up that possibility just yet.

Interviews

In Which Viviane Interviews Me

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

Questions from Viviane over at the Sex Carnival

When did you start blogging?

in 1998 I started the only feminist blog there was called Feminist Media Watch. it was collaborative, and got extremely popular, at one point we had about twenty-five authors and had very high traffic. I’ve had a personal blog here or there since about then too, which has moved around.

What do you like about blogging?

my most successful blog projects have always been deeply personal, semi-anonymous explorations of my relationships, sexuality, and personal dramas. I’ve met some fantasic and wonderful people through my blogs, many of which have stayed in my life for many years.

Is blogging a major or minor way of connecting to other people for you?

Both, I suppose; it is a major source of deep connection for me, in that I am often sharing serious and intimate information about myself, but I do a lot of socializing in my peer groups in person too. So though it is major, it is not my only source.

Where’s your blog? Do you use a free hosted service (Blogger,Wordpress, Livejournal, AOL, Google Pages, etc.) or do you have your own domain and web server?

Both; I have four domains, and accounts at blogger and wordpress. I primarily blog at a blogger account at the moment, the others are more stagnant.

What do you do to promote your blog or your writing (using tags in your post, blog roll, del.icio.us, Digg, Pingoat)?

very little, actually. I always visit my commenter’s websites and try to link to them, to encourage them to come back and comment/write more, and I go to their sites and comment on their writing too. so I guess I’m more into individual advertising than any sort of major site promotion. Every once in a while I get on a kick and try to make my profile on technorati or feedburner fancy, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. I contribute to sugasm sometimes, that always enhances my traffic. Other than that? I try to write every day, so people will visit every day, but that’s about it.

miscellany

naming, like eden

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith
S. will now be known as Callie. I’m still going through the archives to change her name in all those different places (what a pain), but new posts will use Callie. Sorry for the confusion!

This post will self-destruct as soon as the archives are updated, or when it drops off the front page, whichever comes first.

poetry

burst(ing)

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith
I am currently exploding in tiny nebulae (nebulaes? plural?) behind my eyes under my fingerprints inside my bones where the marrow makes blood. sometimes it is impossible to do anything but sit still.

has spring yet arrived? now that we are saving daylight things seem impossibly bright and warm. sun for many extra hours a day. illusions, all of it.

last night I dreamed I was walking, walking, wandering somewhere, all of that is so hazy and unclear, and then eventually I ran into that girl I’m dating and she reached up, took dark dark glasses off of my face, and everything was bright and clear. though I’m glad my subconscious thinks this makes sense, I feel little more than a vice-grip in my chest where my heart used to be.

what are you today? are you nebulae? are you full of marrow you cannot make into blood? are you loving, and loved?

identity politics

"Queer butch" does not equal "lesbian"

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

I’ve mentioned this before, I think, but: I am a performance poet. I write, and perform around New York City usually a few times a month; I’m involved in a writing group and a book group. I take this pursuit very seriously.So, as such, I have a bio that I use to describe myself; the first line describes me as a “queer butch writer,” specifically.

A few weeks back, I was asked to be a judge for a state-wide performance poetry competition for high school students that is happening this Thursday. I’m not going into the details (not that you probably couldn’t find it, or that this won’t totally reveal myself) but that they are high school students is relevant, because the coordinators for this event asked me, after receiving my bio, to “tone down” the language so as not to be potentially misunderstood, potentially inviting problems from the “upstate and rural” New Yorkers who are “not as tolerant as we are down in the city.”

One woman actually said, I kid you not, “I mean, I don’t have a problem with it – I have LOTS of gay friends.” Which, though she was trying to comfort me, is a really horrible thing to say. Of course! It is never YOU who is oppressing ME specifically – it’s all those other people, ruining the fun for everyone.

Plus: she is implying that, if I called myself a queer butch, and IF someone was offended for whatever reason, there would be reason to be afraid. That that person would be RIGHT to be offended. That they could create a LEGITIMATE complaint that would potentially damage the organization.

If that’s not true, the organization would be strong enough to stand up and say, no, actually, this isn’t a problem, there is nothing wrong with someone calling themselves a queer butch, and if you have a problem, that’s your fucken problem.

But: I really want to participate in this. I really want to go, network, be a visible queer butch for these high school kids.So I agreed to change the word “queer” and emailed my revised bio back, leaving in the word “butch” – i.e. “self-defined butch lesbian writer” – explaining that gender identity and sexual orientation are two different things, that I’ve worked hard to claim this word and that I feel it is integral and important to my identity and my self-definition.

But, no go: “we are still really afraid that [the word butch] has the potential to be misinterpreted by some of the attendees. We completely understand that the word has significant and special meaning for you, but we’re afraid that it won’t mean the same thing to others and that it might have the potential for causing a backlash from a parent or teacher.”

I sat on it over the weekend, and toyed with ways I could be subversive and still participate in this competition. Wear a work shirt that says “butch” on the patch. Get “butch” tattooed on my foreheard. Include “marginalized freak lesbian writer” in my bio.

“Queer butch” does not equal “lesbian” — and that is exactly the point. Exactly one of the reasons why I call myself those words. POWER.

And? It’s a POETRY competition. This entire event is all about words, and they are asking (telling?) me to change mine. To choose words that are less scary so their homophobic uptight audience and participants don’t have to be shaken in their little privileged suburban worlds. That is the entire point of my poetry, of my artistic fucken mission even.

I suppose, under all the frustration and hurt cracking feeling in my chest, this is reminding me why I do this kind of work, why I want to be visibly queer, why I want to use words like butch and dyke and cunt and queer, words that have power. This is exactly why I need to go to that competition, to walk in and LOOK like a queer butch dyke and then talk and sound like an articulate, emotional, thoughtful POET.

Because I seek to be a bridge. I want to become suspended between worlds, create new pathways over which to travel.

And, actually? THAT – being a bridge – may even be my more powerful, stronger artistic mission than what I just mentioned about shaking things up. Those two things do go together, I think, despite seeming to contradict, and I seek to do them both.

I’m working on a formal letter, conceding the point because I want to participate but officially stating my position in protest, but meanwhile, I have agreed to let my bio be changed to describe myself as a “lesbian writer.”

I hope they won’t be disappointed when I, a queer butch, show up.

miscellany

written conversations

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

A conversation with Morgan. In print, it seems so long! It didn’t feel that long when we were chatting.I have more to say, especially on the subject of the New York poetry competition I am judging next week that asked me to edit my bio and omit the words ‘queer’ and ‘butch’. but that’ll have to wait until later.

journal entries

Fill in the blank

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

my favorite way to come is: strapped on & fucking, missionary style, while she whispers in my earthe way I come the hardest is: when she goes down on me

what I think about to tip myself over the edge: easing my big cock into her mouth or cunt

what scenario I imagine when I’m alone: most often? a threesome; my position in it varies, and I’m kind of everybody. A is strapped on and standing, B is sucking her off. B is kneeling over C’s face. C is lying on her back, sucking B’s cunt and masturbating, until A stops the blow job and begins fucking C, sometimes in the ass. I read it in one of Nancy Friday’s ‘women’s erotic fantasies’ books when I was a teenager. (I suppose I should write out this story.)

what I crave: blow jobs, fucking her strapped on, feeling her come while I’m on top of her, hearing her cry out from pain & pleasure

… and you?

miscellany

twenty five thousand

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith
Sugarbutch Chronicles hit 25,000 hits just now.

Thank you, everyone, for reading my writing, for commenting, for sharing your ideas, for interacting with my ideas. It’s really a lovely process. I highly encourage (semi-)anonymous blogging.

miscellany

fluffer femme spy

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

I got my very own Fluffer Femme Spy this week, a good femme friend of mine in Seattle who has given me all sorts of useful tips & advice as we’ve been talking about my relationship. (I’d like to think my butch perspective is useful too, but who knows.)Really, I highly recommend every butch have one of these. She goes up there with my handkerchief and my boots as butch necessities. (And I mean that in the greatest way.)

As she put it:

Job duties include:

  • Pumping up the egos of fragile, doubting butch friends
  • Flirting, subtly, but just enough to get noticed and stroke said egos
  • Giving helpful hints about where to get the good, cute, not too expensive, meaningful jewelry
  • Providing advice about where/when/how to pop Important, Lifechanging Questions
  • Offering Femme Insight during Relationship Crisis
  • Giving guidance on effective apologies
  • Reassurance before/after sending scary emails
  • Other duties, as assigned

We were talking about Valentine’s Day when this all came up, well, among other things. And just for the record? There are some things I would really like to receive for Valentine’s Day (or any other holiday/present-receiving activity, really) – things that I wouldn’t really buy for myself, but that I would love to have. Such as:

  • silver flask, very plain
  • nice bottle of scotch that I’d bust out for (very) special occasions
  • a men’s accessories case
  • monogrammed handkerchiefs (yeah right, but hey, a butch can dream … )

Though some elaborate sex scene – a fantasy of mine brought to life? – would probably top everything. Although really, as long as I get laid I’m pretty satisfied. Wow, and now that I’m looking through Red Envelope online, there are a whole lot more of the men’s things that I’ve never seen. These hidden message collar stays are badass. And a monogrammed brander? That’s hardcore, and kind of makes me uncomfortably turned on.

When I asked Callie what it is she would want for Valentine’s Day, ideally (though I did mention that I’d already gotten her something and so it wouldn’t probably change what she was getting, I was just curious) she mentioned lingerie (“whatever would turn you on, ’cause that’s what it’s about, anyway”), and jewelry.

Speaking of lingerie … I gave Callie a copy of the story I wrote about our New Year’s Eve encounter. She … liked it, very much, to say the least. She said she’d forgotten about unbuttoning my shirt, and loved reading what the night was like for me. She’s never been with someone who was so into her femme role before, so that I am turned on by lingerie is kind of a novelty that she is really enjoying. So much, in fact, that she went out today and bought some new lingerie, that I am informed I will like, very much.

And, uh, hell, I’m enjoying it too.

Okay, one more thing, just in case I’m the butch spy for some of you femme readers: call me handsome, and I’ll seriously melt for you.

And speaking of you so-called femme readers: what would you just melt for, this Valentine’s Day? What do you always wish someone would’ve given you, but never have received?

miscellany

it’s all about content, anyway

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith
Did I mention that you can subscribe to Sugarbutch Chronicles via Feedburner? Well, you can. And in fact, it’d be awesome if you did (or if you are currently subscribed via some other feed, if you switched over to the feedburner version), ’cause then I could tell how many of you readers are out there. Which would give me a good sense of whether I should change over to a WordPress domain …

One of the reasons I ended up on blogger here is because lots of the folks that I admire are hosted through blogger, and I was seeking to become part of their circle. And I have, somewhat (even if they didn’t invite me to Madame X’s on Monday night ;).

There’s really nothing exactly wrong with blogger, it’s just not as fancy as WordPress …

This all started with my upgrade to the new fancy blogger features, where I have categories and widgets and such over on the side, which made me want to start designing and playing with the layout. And while that’s great and fun and all, really it’s unnecessary – it’s the difference between treating the writing of the blog as the hobby, and the designing of the blog as the hobby. And both of those things are hobbies & interests of mine, but it does seem to be that I will get distracted by the latter at the expense of the former, at times.

So maybe that’s a reason to keep Sugarbutch simple, hosted on blogger: it’s not about the design, it’s about the content.

… And as long as I’m writing a post that isn’t about sex, gender, or relationships (which is STRICTLY what I’d like to keep this blog to, and not just personal musings about whatever), I want to mention that I picked up the new Patty Griffin CD yesterday and it’s fucken brilliant.

(So, did you subscribe to Sugarbutch Chronicles via Feedburner yet?)

journal entries

note to self

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

Dear Sinclair,When winter finally sets into New York City, and it’s precisely eight degrees outside NOT INCLUDING THE WIND CHILL, and you finally decide to get the hat out of your bag that you’ve been carrying around for months and hate to wear, and you put it on, and wear it all the way to work, then when you get to work, you MUST CHECK YOUR HAIR IN THE MIRROR before eleven am, because you look like a doofus.

Sincerely,

Sinclair

ps: at least the rest of you looks goooood today. ;)

poetry

from the inside

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

Sunday Scribblings

This is how it went.

I wanted to say a red goodbye. A crystal goodbye. A goodbye hanging from the rafters of an old cabin in the woods, smelling of cedar and damn rainforest. A goodbye echoing off the silence of an underpass. Goodbyes the size of snowflakes, goodbyes the color of air on a hot day.

I wanted to say goodbye, and again, and again. You didn’t let me.

Instead, you fought. Brought me candles with flames, tall, and bright as the moon. Brought me mirrors in which to see myself. There are no goodbyes in moons and mirrors. Goodbyes in flames are flippant, final, but goodbyes in glass are generous. Giving.

This is how it went. But it didn’t have to go this way.

It could have been a brutal goodbye. The kind that tears up lungs and throats and insides and then wrecks your paper heart. The kind that tosses aside apologies like confetti. A party on your back. Chipping off bone from your spine like roots pushing up a sidewalk made of brick. From the inside.

That’s what you do. From the inside. A crystal goodbye echoing cedar smelling of rafters the color of someone leaving. Someone. Anyone. As if there is some definition of what that is: leaving. Left. Going. Gone. As if I can write these words and let you know what I mean when I say them. As if we have some sort of understood meaning between the times that my brain decides these words, my fingers tap these keys, your eyes scan these letters. There is no way to know what words are sparking what colors of goodbye inside of you. Only inside of me.

Only goodbyes are the color of goodbyes, and very few of us will ever know what it’s like to have the roots of a tree set us free.

miscellany

you want inappropriate?

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith
Sugarbutch got a bit of a facelift today. When I was attempting to take down the Google ads (I was asked to take them down, as have ‘inappropriate content’ – label: sex was cited), I broke my code somehow and couldn’t get the sidebar to be in the right place. While messing around with the Blogger control panel stuff, I upgraded my template (Blogger 2.0) and hey! there’s those cool drop-down archive links. I’ve been wondering how other bloggers were doing that. Never really liked the garamond font either. I’m not sure about the labels list in the sidebar though – seems silly to have all of those with only one post in them. Anybody know a way to only display lables with 1+ posts?
miscellany

claiming wholeness

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

Today is Imbolc, Christianized as Candlemas and Americanized as Groundhog’s Day. It marks one of the turning points of the wheel of the year, this point being when the seed begins to sprout and become visible. “Imbolc is considered a traditional time for rededication and pledges for the coming year,” according to some wiccan practices.Naturally speaking, it is the time of year when the light is beginning to win. To gain control and power. From Summer Solstice to Winter Solstice, daylight fades and darkness takes over. Winter solstice marks the darkest time of year, and the time when each day becomes longer, brighter. And Imbolc, the first turning point of the wheel after the Winter Solstice, is the crescent, the baby sprout, the crack of light, time when hope abounds.

We tend to forget we are animals on a fragile planet. These turnings of the year, these celebrations of nature remind me.

[Brigid’s] association with fire also pertains to the creative life. Finding passion in our work is a major achievement. Handling our energies well requires maturity. It takes effort to find a balance where we have vitality without being consumed.

Brigid is said to have invented the fervent Irish mourning wail called keening. Part of her presence resides in the faerie spirit whose keening can be heard at night in times of grief. This link reminds us to respect our losses. Experiences of renewal often include bereavement. We continually suffer losses, especially in the moments of passage. Claiming our wholeness includes valuing the sorrow for that which is no more.

via Imbolc folk story… emphasis added.

This article also says Guidance through life’s difficulties could be drawn from [myths] symbolism. Yeah, no kidding.

I will be lighting an orange candle tonight, and thanking the sun for its return.

poetry

ungrateful: a faery tale

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

I am not your
prince fucking charming
despite what you might

have heard. I can slay
blue fire breathing
dragons, save kingdoms

but princesses? I rescued
too many of those bitches
one after another

slinking off with my nemesis
to go to some rock concert
while my armor

smoulders. can’t they
at least
have gotten me

a glass of water?

poetry

waiting is my favorite part

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

If I had it my way, I would take back every time I said not I love you, but I adore you, my admiration palpable and thick as the silver tightrope between us. I would take back the times I needed you. Would take back the times you pried open my ribcage and I relaxed to let your fist close over my heart. Take back the revealing of my thin underbelly, every time I rolled over to show you how soft and small I was, a creature of defence, an animal with simple needs like adequacy. Not so hard really.

I would take back the times I launched myself into you like a pilgrimage, like an exhibition of discovery. Yes, I am an explorer. I seek to understand before I dominate.

Take back the love notes and red paper hearts sent special delivery. Take back the mornings I woke satisfied. Take back the days of shoving myself into a corner and letting you insert word after careful word onto my tongue like communion from a priest: the body of Christ. I took you as seriously.

If I had it my way, I would take back the longing, the pining, the days of anticipation. Really that was always my favorite part: waiting for you to arrive, because before you were there you would only be who I wanted you to be, which was exactly the problem, because while I woudl dream you one way and observe you another, you would rewrite my DNA to better match the way you dreamed me.

I would take back the times I let you rewrite me. As though you are the novelist (and not me). As though I am a character and you have a chart where you can fill in my attributes: likes. Dislikes. Coping mechanisms. Compulsions.

I would take back the times I told you what I want, because I should’ve known it wasn’t you and left it at that. But who knows that when you are a master at shapeshifting, at chameleoning to become what those around you need?

I am still waiting for your thin, soft underbelly, to see you roll onto your back, sit calmly and hold enough space still that I may walk right into it and unfurl my arms, uncurl my fiddlehead ferns. I am still waiting.

I am still waiting
for someone
who isn’t you –
no wonder the waiting was always

my favorite part.

poetry

vice grip

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith
If she asked me the state of my heart, I would say: the barbed wire is built up thick, a little too tight in places, squeezing, prickling, where the blood escapes in trickles with every pump of the muscle.

I would do it differently, now, again, after this last time that I offered up my messy red heart on a shined silver platter, her name gleaming, freshly engraved. I would not go back to her apartment. I would not accept gifts of wings on a necklace chain when her heart leaps from her chest to my palm – involuntarily – and she forgets to ask for it back. I would keep our courtship in dark bars with indulgent mixed drinks, dance clubs where I stoop to knee-level and come on to every girl with heels higher than three inches.

I would not say ‘I love you’, not eagerly, would not hold the words on my soft palette like a marble, a pearl made from sand, from too much grinding. I got me a mouth guard. A machine to stop the optimism from forming sentences beginning with ‘I have never felt’ and ‘you are so’ and ‘I can’t believe’ and ‘I love.’

If she asked me the state of my heart, I would lie and tell her it is crushed in a vice-grip of regret. Of longing. But really, it is rebounding like a glacial valley, too long crushed by thousands of tons of frozen water, and she was the vice-grip all along.

journal entries

standing up

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith
I went to see therapist for the second week in a row last night. I relayed the story of this weekend, which I’m not going to get in to here because … it’s long, and personal, and seems like it would require a lot of backstory which I don’t have the time or energy to go through.

She said, and I quote: you need to stand up for yourself.

And, see, this is what I’m not comprehending about myself right now. This relationship has brought me a very different view of my own self than I’ve ever had before. For example, I would have said that I was articulate, good at communicating, appreciated conflict and dealt with it well. That I was extremely loving and doting and caring. I’ve never had anyone tell me otherwise.

I hate to shift the blame to her – it takes two people to have a relationship, all that, I know. But she has something happening deeply in her that I can’t reach, can’t heal.

And it isn’t my responsibility to do so anyway. Is this really what I want in a relationship?

poetry

sunday scribblings: fantasy

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith

She is the fantasy, and I am the dreamer. Or perhaps it is she who is the dreamer: she is the one who is always creating meaning from metaphors and analyzing the superstitions that are coming between us: bread and butter. Knocking the tree spirits awake and away we beg for forgiveness for being so presumptuous that we would know what is to come ahead of us. What nausea will pass and what we will be doing to ring in the next new year. How much of this will we weather? I already know how and where our great downfalls will come: flattery. Consumption. The great flaw of sunshine on a winter’s day.She is the fantasy, and I am the dreamer. She is the dreamer, and I am the magician with the magic hat who watches from the edge of the room after she cries herself back to sleep, never knowing which magic spell will bring her back into herself.

I have created a swirling romance around her. Sweltering inside a coil of smoke, a glass wall such that I cannot reach her. But that I did not place around her. Did not choose to erect such a barrier between us. She did, when she chose to dream me. I did, when I discovered the fantasy of her was more real than the real skin touch of her hand, her thigh, her kiss.

Is it only the dreamer who comes up with such fantasies? Perhaps I would rather be a writer than a dreamer, so I can write myself into something as solid as stones.

poetry

dark scribblings

Posted on by Sinclair Sexsmith
I’m afraid of the dark. Surely I’ve told you this. In the city really this doesn’t matter so much, the constant illumination of even the smallest streets and most insignificant buildings brightens the dark enough that it isn’t dark any more. But at home, in the little town where the mountains meet the sea, where there are forty miles of roads and one hundred thirty miles of hiking trails, the dark looms around lamppost corners, in arched doorways, under decrepit metals staircases, ready to slither and seep into all my open wounds, those unsealed places in me that still welcome the dark, still wish for the solitude out there in the black.

Maybe it’s because my name never had a home, a culture, a story in which to rest, that I seek out narratives like I seek black-inked fine-tipped pens: compulsively. Maybe my dark places just need their own language in which to confess the simmer and scratch of nibs on parchment, on velum, on cotton, on wood.

This is how my body sought to become paper, this is how blades sought to become pens. There is no canvas greater than the back. No skin or hide or substance that seeks pigment, marking, branding, scarring like the epidermis, layered, regenerating so often one must lay the ink deep for it to stick.

Like the dark, the ink runs deep in me. The doom of the millennium is nothing compared to what lies within, those secrets of shame and pain and homelessness we all refuse to share, or even see.