days 15 & 16: paper & endometrium

paper
did i even masturbate today?

i did. this morning. in bed. reading reinaldo.

my new thing is i think about myself while i’m bringing myself to climax.
my new thing is i think about myself.

and i feel my body. i feel i am touching myself.

this is my new thing.

and when i cum, i cum me. i cum outward and i envision plays. i envision my plays coming out of me. i have begun to get off on my creativity.

this is also a thing about confidence. this is also a thing about confidence. in belief that i am sex. in belief that my climax is what i want. in belief that i’m going to feel what i want to feel. that i deserve. no, not deserve and all the self-hating on that word baggages on me. stop it. orgasm and come and ungh for myself of myself about myself isn’t something that gets to me through doing deserving, like i have to work for it, demonstrate so that i might have the privilege.

i do this in my life: i give and then i don’t feel like am adequately appreciated or compensated. i don’t like that game of victim blaming, of i drew the fill-in-the-blank to myself. that’s not where i’m going. i’m saying that when i lay in bed going through reinaldo letting him tell me about his life and i am touching my clit, fingering my clit, feeling my nipples awaken... when i’m rubbing out this orgasm i’m relearning appreciation for myself. i’m relearning that i am not a favor and that i’m gonna get my goddamn yes.

i want to break out of that lens of

crawling on my knees across the

i want to break out of that lens into
this is not a favor
this is not a favor
this is not a favor
this is not a favor

over and over. i am not doing you a favor by doing this. i am
taking care of myself.

am i talking about masturbation? am i talking about music? about writing? about making my way...

endometrium
i bleed out period blood and i don’t want to get my fingers all bloody. i have this conversation:
me: do you not want to get your fingers bloody because you think it’s gross and you hate yourself? you are bad person. your partner gets the blood on his dick.
me: um i think actually it would feel good to still my fingers up in me AND also i just like don’t feel like getting the bloody fingers.
me: you hate your period.
me: that is a nonsense.
me: you think you’re gross and you don’t like the way it smells. you feel bad about the cyst rupturing.
me: well yeah at this point the blood smells kind of ironish and like you know uterine lining! i don’t want to eat it! and yeah the cyst ruptured again and i’m sensitive about it.  why can’t i just want to come this way? why do we have to find the way that this is a bad thing? why are we looking for the shame everywhere? can’t we just stop and focus on WHAT FEELS GOOD?

yesterday while i was asleep i got blood on the new sheets i bought for myself. and i did that thing where i scrubbed down the sheets with some soap and water. i have sheets that are just a mess of blood stains, and that’s okay, right, that’s okay. and AND i would like to make some effort to have these nice new sheets be less stainy. and some how as i am scrubbing up the stain i go through the
me: you are doing this to punish yourself for bleeding
me: maybe i just want to keep the sheets less stainy, plus this reminds me of learning about having my period as a tweenager
me: you are doing this because you think blood is dirty. you think you ruined your sheets. remember that time you bled all over his pants and you were scrubbing them out in the bathtub and he thought you were being nutso or i think he thought that?
me: yeah but like he didn’t know that it was going to like perma stain. you gotta get that shit out quick. like chocolate. plus, and my sheets are so gorgeous though
me: you think your blood is ruining your sheets
me: realistically, stains are what they are, and maybe also.. maybe also just leaving them there is a way to make me feel bad?

I MEAN. i just go. it’s ridiculous. what is all this baggage about the whatever the fuck comes out of my cunt. i mean jesus.

it took effort and fingers to cum on my back reading. cum on my back with my fingers. i don’t want to rub my bloody cunt on a bloody towel on a pillow or whatever. i just don’t feel like it. so i cum about me. i cum my plays. i cum with my fingers. i cum up and out.

and i.
heal a little bit.

i know i am healing. i don’t know what the wound is. it’s probably a lot of wounds. i would like the wounds to cease being defining characteristics. i want the confidence of my orgasm to move with me out into the rest of my day. it is. it is. i want to believe there is a shift happening.

me: that is so woo woo.
me: good for you, judgement pants.

day 14: this is progress

this orgasm, I was reading Reinaldo --
he has a line about a police officer in cuba
in his youth
Reinaldo in the rebels
supposed to be prowling to knife a police, & he is
probably expecting a disaster. then:

I looked at him and he looked at me, but the only sign he gave me was to grab his testicles ... I walked away as fast I could, while he kept on rubbing is magnificent testicles. 

He is full of magnificent lines like this. He was full.

Anyway. This orgasm, I was reading Reinaldo & touching my clit, then, oh,

I really dropped into it.
 I was afraid I wouldn't be able (of course I am able!) to cum.
I just. So.

Sometimes I hold my breath.
Sometimes I hold my breath.

It was the rolodex.
Lips. Fingers. Tongues.
Imagining the intimate touch of which I desire &
w/whom if really pressed (& my fantasy pressed) I would decide to not share my body.

How can I cum if I"m saying no, I wouldn't REALLY REALLY REALLY ACTUALLY spread labia lips & legs for _________. (& dreaming of my partner feels raw & painful tonight, so).

 So.
I recall I've been teaching myself that I'm touching myself.
I am so hot, I decide.
When I cum hard I am
visioning
my play(s) taking the stage.
I just got off.
On myself.

This. Is. Progress.

day 13: refind

I woke up later than usual, having dreamed some sinking boats, some hiding naked in a car, some swimming.

great confident swimming & then I came. Masturbating to the book. I had been touching my clit on & off yesterday & today to no orgasm, but the stakes were lover: this is nat'l masturbation month, not national cum month. Oh. Oh.

I feel I'm reacquainting myself w/my intuitive orgasm. The one that erupts on its own, w/out some particular fantasy yelling at it -- I am ready then I
stop &
go to the
okay let's go over place
& then we do & it is
how it was before
when I was a
kid -- when orgasm & masturbation
didn't equal sexy porn time, or
whatever.
which isn't to say no, which isn't to say...
which is to say

I'm delighted to find or
REFIND
what existed in me
before.

day 10: permission in practice

Oh, I jerked off. And it was just my mood had slipped to a horrible place. You know:

• the WTF is wrong w/me place
• the it's delusional to want grant money place
• the you're no Madison Young place
• the Jews won't help you place
• the you have to get a job and no one will give you one because you haven't called & you shouldn't place

I gave myself permission to cum last night. I jerked for probably like an hour & couldn't get anywhere. The rolodex of reliable fantasizes & pornographic images spun & spun. Alas. So I had a D/s conversation w/myself:

Me: Can I cum? No? No No? Yes? No? Can I? May I? No? No?
Me: Yes.

Slick! I went right over the edge.
Permission. Wow.
I went pee. The promptly gave my cheek to the pillow.

Have I talked about this before? Yes?

Permission as a hangup. It's like I'm a train track I switch away from action and self-acceptance when my inner train is right about to--

days 8 & 9: permission to open the door (i am the door)

Reading again. It was a long slow hump of the pillow when I woke. Then the cum was so... delayed. last night I had a little ripple. Just a little ripple Ripple.

I didn't believe I could do it -- like I lost belief. So... Maybe that's because I buzzzzzed myself to sleep, buzzed over the edge. Oh. I can  vary my routine. Who knew? I want to say something about permission, giving it to myself. Look, last night was the last section of FemSexComm. I didn't miss a one of the sessions. And, I had sort of like, affection friend touch at our afterparty. WE all got long-necked petaly flowers and @ the bar, a few of us got to rubbing them on our faces. Flower touch. And hugs.

I want to honor myself that this... that this is an allowing. Like the masturbation, even if it seems like a a chore or a Wrong. Or w/e. That's part of the self-love practice for me. Believing I'm enough & I deserve.

So. That said.

I rocked on my belly while I read. Did this seem so familiar b/c it is.. then turned down by !cultural messaging! me rubbing out long & slow, no hurry, nowhere to go, turning the pages, the pillow warming, my nipples sensitizing.

Ah. It felt kind.

& outside of hurry sickness time. The judgement I could pour onto 'letting myself' sleep in, 'letting myself' take time for pleasure.

Okay, gate keeper. I'm kissing the door that will open for me, & what is the sweet what if I find the door is just me, all the boards I've hammered, all the locks. B/C of ~experiences~ and cultural messaging.

I____. Look, I've been "trying to get a job" for 3 years. I have a list of concrete actions to get the type of job I've admitted to my career consultant when she's holding a pen. I said the same thing twice a year apart -- I can't ~pretend~  or run from that true desire. What FemSexComm calls "active desire"... the thing, you know, I pushed hard against like

Who am I to dare to have a desire and then actively pursue it?

& so, as I hump-rock on the pillow, as I fulcrum simply.. I reach. Or stop reaching. I just am.
Once recently someone offered me an unsolicited question.
"Why do you think you need to give yourself permission?"

a) OUCH
b) Sure, it's step 1, & guess what? It can take a while, be alooong loop through & over. Not even conscious hump hump.

I bring that brave active active out w/me. Out of my crotch and nipples into the rest of me. If I could bring that out w/me when I go walking --NO, shut your mouth floppy hands lady (you, still?). NO. You & your way do not get to dictate to me how it'll go. Buzz or rock or touch. ON MY BELLY.

I smelled my fingers after.
I smelled my fingers after
Again & again.

day 7: on being a reader

day 7

so i have a friend/reader who grew up with me, reading with me our star wars and terry brooks. as we aged up we talked about how an ideal read is one that we can jerk off to. and i aspire to provide d with work that one day maybe puts d’s sex over the edge. the ideal read, even if like, it’s not sexual or erotic in any sense, so good i’m touching touching touching not even noticing my hand is moving and then, oh, i have to put the read down, arch up over. maybe i pick up the book or maybe i go to bed.

now today reading a book i’m reading* i took the vibrator on my clit’s head and went sloooow reading until i couldn’t bear it and then went slooow reading again until i really couldn’t bear it and let the book fall aside, let my fingers in just a little bit. just a little bit. and rolled the vibe from side to side. i thought of my sweetie and our sex and then about me and my sex. and i felt the tightening of me. eroticizing me. the orgasm was an mmmmmm and then the hearing in my ears fell a little fuzzy as it some times does. i feel great. good. well. happy. glad pleased to be showing up for myself in this way. glad to be hearing my body when she says what she craves in sex and bringing that, arriving for me. 

*ellis avery’s the last nude. which is about sex. another part of the day the day before, i found myself humming the hot air balloon scene music from before night falls the movie, realized i needed support from my Reinaldo, my main man (brautigan is my other main man. or, buddy glass is my other other main man. anyway) -- and that singing from the well wasn’t gonna cut it. i want to write a love poem to the library. to the characters who live inside half a yellow sun to reinaldo’s face on his cover. to the fact that i’m learning (thanks to like a one line about jack spicer -- anti-Semite, too bad ): -- about hanging out with brautigan. oh!), i’m learning books came up out of people, books have authors. authors are writers. i am a writer. i am a.... i slipped into flow with Ray, sat on the front stoop in the sun listening to him, obedient. wanting to put my face at his feet, rest my cheek on his toes.

maybe what i’m getting at now below the * is that through this masturbation practice i’m dragging my goddamn insides out. my fantasy come up and out. my internal out. the bridge between. the bridge between. the bridge between.

day 6: or cry instead

day 6

yesterday I just cried and cried and cried and then rubbed down into sleep. what i want to write about for that is i was able to be present with myself. with the catharsis of tears, the grief of joblessness (blah blah blah) and the sureness that my partner really is in those woods and isn’t coming out of them until the end of september. and knowing the dip after ovulation, before pre-menstrual really drops in on me. it was such a good long cry, full breath and shoulders, and sounds and it rose and dropped and rose and dropped on and on. i mean obvs we know that crying releases chemicals, gets it out. and isn’t that in some way also the orgasmic state. the getting it out. my body working itself, clearing and convulsing and feeling. my mind could wander in my tears, i could lift up: suddenly i am grieving so and so’s dead so and so, and then i’m back to my own here here, the body wringing itself out.

across our blogs i’m seeing similar pieces, that self-love/self-care contains within it the space to of course not jerk off (and not get off!) if the body says so. (also it’s sunday as i add this in, and the a neighbor is straight up playing “easy like sunday morning” !!!) sometimes i try to run from tears, the cry, or make it so small that it’s invisible. that it’s just behind my eyes. but i am so obvious, so visible. i can’t hide that.