Monogamish?

I spent several years listening to Dan Savage give the sage advice to callers that sometimes, they just have to pay a price of admission – AKA, not getting everything they want in a relationship – in order to maintain it.  Every time I heard him say this, I always thought, “Phew!  Glad it’s not me calling in – what a conundrum!”  I was never much for compromise.  If a partner wanted me to make a serious compromise to my needs and desires, I’d just let them go in search of more compatible partners.

Partners. After resisting the label of polyamory for a couple of years – I always insisted that I was barely amorous, so I couldn’t be polyamorous – I fell recklessly in love and realized that not only do I have the capability to love deeply, but that allowing myself the authenticity to explore the possibilities of multiple relationships at once makes me really happy.  I moved from calling myself non-monogamous to calling myself polyamorous, and it felt right.  It still feels right.

My people are perverts and hippies; I surround myself with sex nerds and intentionally choose to date other poly people – or at least, I used to.

The Engineer was supposed to be a one-night stand.  I didn’t expect him to ask me to spend a second night with him – let alone the whole day.  I didn’t expect him to uproot his travel plans to follow me into another country.  I didn’t expect him to uproot them yet again to meet me for two weeks at the end of my trip last year – and I certainly didn’t think on that night we met in Rwanda a year and a half ago that someday down the road, I’d want to move to another country and start my life over again to be with him.  But I do.  His emotional intelligence, his honesty, his generosity, his loving nature, and his willingness to adventure with me blow me away.  Just when I think he can’t be a more amazing partner, he shows up at my door wearing a tux a week before he’s supposed to get here.  Just when I think I can’t possibly feel any more deeply cared for, he learns how to play our song on the piano and makes a video of it for my birthday.  True story!

He prioritizes me and makes me feel valued in a way I’ve always done for other partners.  He means what he says, keeps his word, and intentionally makes time for me.  My relationship with him is one which is worth compromising for.

I knew The Engineer was monogamous when we first met – but because I didn’t think it was going to be more than a travel fling, I didn’t think of that as a deal-breaker.  Even during our first full week together when we were telling people at our guesthouse that we were on our honeymoon, I just brushed it off.  Now, on our way to two years in, it feels like a big deal.  As we’re long distance, we’ve come to an uneasy negotiation about being monogamish.  And when I say “we,” I mean me.  I’m okay with him sleeping with other women.  He’s pretty uncomfortable with the idea of me hooking up.

So I haven’t.  Still – I need to know that it’s not an instant deal-breaker if I meet someone at a bar and want to bang them or develop a crush on someone.  I need to be able to tell my partner when I experience those things without worrying that it’s going to destroy our relationship.  In my early twenties, I cheated on / broke up with a few partners because I developed feelings for other people while in the relationship, and I didn’t think I had any choice other than cheating or breaking up.

I know better now.  Here’s the weird part, though: I’d started thinking that because of my past experiences, a monogamous relationship would never work for me.  I thought that this would be harder, but the fact that both of us have been honest about what we want from the get-go and that we check in about it frequently makes it feel good.  The fact that I’m choosing to be with a monogamous partner who knows I’d prefer not to be feels better than trying to be monogamous because it’s what I think is expected of me.  And maybe I’m actually ambiamorous, much like I’m bisexual: Floating somewhere in the middle, enjoying all the things.

Since I’ve met The Engineer, I’ve had a couple of sexy hankerings and even a genuine crush, but no feelings that I’ve really wanted to pursue.  I haven’t experienced any of the FOMO that I thought I might.  Then again – perhaps I’m being naïve and all of this will change when / if I do meet someone else I develop a romantic attachment to.  Or when / if he does. Only time will tell, I guess – but the same can be said for default mono relationships.  The important thing is that we keep talking and acknowledging that while we may not be the most perfectly compatible partners, there are things that both of us are willing to compromise on to make this work – because holy shit, is it worth it.

We’re planning on visiting a sex club together in January and talking about exploring threesomes (yea!!!) – but for right now, in this moment, I’m quite happy snuggling up at night and whispering “I love you, my nest” into the phone, looking forward to the next time that I get to feel his arms wrapped tight around me.  And then fantasizing about riding him while another woman sits on his face.

Realignment

There’s an infectious axiom that floats around daytime television, self-help books, and yes – blogs: No one else can love you until you love yourself.

Bullshit.

During my darkest hours, I was loved.  For every day I was most full of self-loathing and despair, there was a person in my life who loved me… and probably couldn’t see the corrosive feelings gnawing away at my insides.  Just like I couldn’t see their love.  Like there was an invisible wall between us.

Those people propelled me to start a ten-year journey of healing from a place of self-injury to a deep self-love… and I did it in a way that would make life coaches cringe hard.

Stage One: Build a fortress.

In my late twenties, I met some rebellious and raucous women who inspired me to say, “Fuck this.”  I stopped looking for love and relished just having a good time; I casually dated and never let anyone get close to me for years.  Using this defense mechanism of putting up walls allowed me to do two important things – learn who I was and what I wanted for me outside of relationships, and embrace casual sex.  I’m very thankful for both.

Stage Two: Stop dating men.

I’d had so many excruciating experiences wherein I a) developed Real Feelings for a boy, b) told him, c) had sex with him to get him to like me back, and d) felt crushed when surprise! He didn’t.  This is probably one of the reasons why I just stopped being that attracted to men.  Dating women allowed me to express my feelings in a safe space (for the most part).  They didn’t lie to or mislead me in order to get sex; in fact, if anything, I had to work on my communication skills in order to tell them exactly what I wanted up front and be really honest when I wasn’t looking for a monogamous relationship – before the sex.  Not only did I have relationships (and phenomenal sex) with strong, adventurous, no-nonsense, compassionate, intelligent, and hilarious women – I was surrounded by them in my community.  Dating women taught me that I have inherent value that is not directly tied to my cunt.

Step Three: Allow yourself to fall in love recklessly with someone you know will break your heart.

I started dating men again because I fell in love with a coworker who I knew was going to leave in a matter of months. When I realized a month in how intensely and romantically I loved this man compared to his palpably platonic love for me, I acknowledged it and dove in headfirst.  I allowed myself to feel all of my feelings – the euphoric and the excruciating – and when I made it through the other side, I’d learned not only to survive, but to open my heart completely because I knew I could survive and recover from heartache.

[Step 3.5: Travel to a tropical locale.  Feel the breeze, listen to the waves, self-evaluate, and drink rum.  Have a lot of sweaty sex with someone who makes you laugh hard.]

Step Four: Recognize the value of other people’s love.

I never have to guess how The Engineer feels about me, and he never has to guess how I feel about him; we tell each other every single day earnestly and without prompting.  His emotional intelligence and general smooshiness have made me reflect on my expression of love to friends and family and theirs to me – and I try mindfully not to take a single drop of that love for granted.  When I was in my early twenties and was surrounded by people who loved me, I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.  Or, rather, the tree – the tree being whomever I happened to be infatuated with at the moment.

Lots of people have loved me when I didn’t love myself – when, in fact, I felt empty, worthless, and unlovable.  And their love, whether or not I felt it, allowed my fractures to be re-broken and eventually mend – if not perfectly, enough to make me feel whole in and of myself.

Kiss Me through the Phone

I’m on a public bus

in a hostel common room

in a café

when my phone rings; he’s video calling me.  My heart rate increases, the beat staccato in my chest.  I hastily slide my thumb up the screen, eager to see his massive hand wrapped around his cock, stroking it for my viewing pleasure.  Sometimes I get wet at the thought of someone else catching a glimpse.

He puts a finger to his lips to demand silence before placing his phone against a wall and resuming his wank.  He’s

at a friend’s house

in a locker room

in a department store changing room

and he’s achingly close.  His long eyelashes flutter and his lips part.  His body rumbles and quakes as semen charges, then oozes out of him.  I ache to lick it off him.

I know this isn’t phone sex in the traditional sense, but technically we’re using our phones?  Then how about this:

Two weeks ago, his mates were staying over at his for a night; they’d all gotten blasted, and he was walking home from the chippy when he gave me a ring.  I started telling him all the things I couldn’t wait to do to him when I arrived in the UK.  He kicked a friend out of his bed when he got home so he could have the room to himself.  Lying in the dark, he whispered all the things I wanted to hear: He’d turn my cheeks to apples, pin my arms with his knees so he could stuff my mouth with his cock, continue licking me no matter how many times I urged him to stop so he could fuck me.  It was a hot summer evening on my end; I, too, isolated myself in the cave of my room, hoping I was quiet enough when my body shuddered and I came all over my hands, the phone pressed tight between my shoulder and my ear, listening to his heavy breathing and whimpers.

We need this.

I’ve been with The Engineer for fifteen months – all of them long-distance.  Phone sex, along with other lusty activities like sharing blog posts and sending dirty pictures, keeps us erotically charged and connected over the 4,000 miles that separate us.  We keep our hearts linked as well – but as we’re both people whose hearts are tethered to our genitals, a transfer of sexual energy is a must.

When I hear his deep voice telling me that he’s touching himself, I often have to excuse myself so that I can do the same… or at least to whisper threats and promises.

On Letting Go

When I was young and foolish (Ha!  “When…”), I made a grave error in judgment.  I had a friend with a great dry wit and a masterful use of language on whom I suddenly and out of nowhere developed a crush.  Not Serious Feelings, but a fun crush with a side of pants feelings.  When we started spending more time together and hooking up, I made the assumption that he felt the same way I did.  I was very honest from the beginning about the fact that I was also dating other people and in no position to be attached to anyone.  And while that was a true sentiment, I specifically wasn’t super attached to him.

Over the first couple of months, it became apparent that he had a real, serious, deep, romantic attachment to me that I didn’t reciprocate.  While I earnestly cared for him and felt a lot of intimate affection for him, I didn’t feel the same way he did… but I continued to date him.  I finally asked him to coffee five months in and broke things off with him, afraid of hurting him more than I already had.  He later told me that he was in love with me, and that I had been careless with his heart.  He was right – I had been.  He cut off communication with me, and I lost a good friend.

For years, I never understood why our friendship had to end just because we stopped dating.  I couldn’t see past the end of my nose.  “But we had such a great connection!”  I thought.  “Surely, that’s worth saving?”  Because I hadn’t had the excruciating experience of being in long-term love with someone who was in a short-term relationship with me, I couldn’t truly empathize with the fact that he needed to stop seeing and talking to me in order to preserve his mental and emotional well-being.  Now, I can see how if we’d stayed friends, every time I brought up a significant other who I had a deep, long-term, and loving commitment to, it would have killed him.

Some say that when it comes to exes, you can either be the type to burn your bridges or fortify them.  For the longest time, I tried to be one of those people who could be friends with all of their exes, no matter how hurtful that friendship was to me.  I would put a huge, Frozen Smile of Enthusiasm on my face when meeting an ex’s new partner, even if I felt like an earthquake was ripping through me.  I thought that in order to show how cool and strong I was, I had to push through my panic and self-loathing and try to be a good friend.  The older I get, however, the more I realize: I don’t have to do that.  I don’t have to do things that make me unhappy just because they might be what other people want.

I’ve only recently come to realize that it’s okay to let go of a friendship when it doesn’t feel good.  I am genuinely friends with some exes for whom I have a deep and abiding platonic love.  I like their partners and feel grateful for the value that their friendships add to my life.  With some of them, the transition from dating to friendship was easy; with others, it took the work of giving and receiving sincere apologies, forgiveness, and empathy.  Once in a very great while, though, the most simple and kind thing for me to do has been to release myself from a friendship that’s not working for me – just like my friend-turned-lover did so many years ago.  Each time I have, it’s made me saner, more confident, and more joyful.  Sometimes, letting go is a necessary act of liberation and self-preservation.

 

Side Note: I wrote this after receiving a lovely email from an ex with whom I’d cut off contact; he wanted to send me a piece of post.  I spent an agonizing 45 minutes crafting the wording of eight short sentences telling him that I’d made the right decision, and I didn’t want to stay in touch.  I laughed after I sent it, realizing that the reason it took me so long to write this email is because I didn’t want to hurt the feelings of this boy who absolutely fucking crushed me.  That’s what women mean when we say we’re socialized to please others.

Staring Contest

It worked every time – he didn’t even have to try anymore.  Will strode confidently into a Farringdon pub at the tail end of Friday happy hour; he didn’t need the stumbling desperation of one am to convince someone to come home with him.  He sat at the end of the bar, ordered a brown ale, and scanned the scene.  Some nights he had to wait thirty, forty minutes for an approachable woman to show up; tonight, he spotted her within ten.

She sat at the opposite end of the bar and started scrolling through her phone, looking a bit bored and sipping on a cider.  She was wearing a fitted grey suit, and her hair was tied into a knot at the nape of her neck.  He walked around the edge of the bar so he could approach from behind, then walked up to the bar and sat next to her.  He ordered a double scotch, neat, and took out his phone.  Scrolling through old messages, he sighed loudly.  The woman next to him looked over and asked if he’d had a hard day at work.  “Everything feels hard some days, even when it’s not that bad – know what I mean?” he replied.  She did.  He continued: “Sometimes I think about how easy everything seemed when I was young and the only thing I had to stress about was losing a game or looking stupid in front of a girl.”  She laughed and said she agreed with him; she was having one of those weeks, too.

He continued, feeling the hook slide in, the line go taut.  “What did you do for fun when you were young?” he asked.  “Oh, I suppose we just played normal kid’s games – bulldog, Mr. Wolf, oranges and lemons, -” “The one where someone’s head is chopped off?!” he laughed. “That’s terrible!”  “We loved it!” she said, and laughed even harder.  “What about you?”  “I played thumb war with my brother a lot,” he answered.  “Oh, and I was a staring contest master.”  “Oh?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.  “Yeah,” he continued.  “No one could beat me at a staring contest.  Even when my older brother was beating me at every other game, I always had him in a staring contest.”  “Let’s have it, then,” she said.  “I don’t know,” he replied – “are you in the mood to be heavily defeated after the week you’ve had?”  She grinned and said she thought she could handle it.

Her eyes almost matched her suit – grey, but a bit darker.  “Loser buys the next round,” she said, determined to win.  They turned in to face each other, their knees touching.  “Three,” he counted; she closed her eyes tight. “Two…”  She blinked rapidly. “One!”  She opened her eyes wide and stared into his.  He never knew what was going through their minds at the time; he counted in his head to make sure that enough time passed to make it seem like he was making a concerted effort, but little enough time that it seemed plausible that he would blink.  If he was closing in on a minute, that’s when he would graciously lose.

He remembered them all by their eyes: Carla was the one with the deep brown deer eyes.  Meg was the one with the hazel eyes, a refractory of color.  Sara, the one with violet lenses.  A dozen other women whose names he’d forgotten, but whose irises were imprinted on his brain.  He’d started this years ago when he’d heard that you could make anyone fall in love with you via a series of intimate questions and four minutes of eye contact; while he sure wasn’t looking for love, he thought they might be onto something with the eye contact.  He was right.

“Argh!” he exclaimed, blinking almost imperceptibly.  “Really, I swear – I’m good at this.”  “Aww,” she said sympathetically.  “How will you ever live this down?”  “Please don’t tell anyone,” he replied.  “My reputation will be ruined.”  She laughed.  He started pulling the line.  “What will you have, then?” he asked.  “I don’t need another drink,” she said – “I just needed a good laugh.”  “In that case, may I suggest we take a walk?  It’s a remarkably nice evening, and I can work on my stand-up routine.”  She hesitated for a moment, but then said, “Why not?  It’s Friday, after all.”  “That it is,” he agreed, and stood up, gesturing toward the door.  “After you, miss,” he said.  He saw her dangling now, shiny and dripping with water – a real beauty.  She smiled at him and walked toward the door, sashaying her hips a bit as she walked.  It worked every time.

Over My Head

I’ve been waiting to post this for a long time; it was inspired by this Girl on the Net post.  When I saw that the Wicked Wednesday prompt was “Follow Your Heart,” I thought: it’s time.  It’s non-fiction and not very wicked, but I can’t think of a more appropriate prompt for this piece.

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At the time I met Banger*, I was deep into lesbian territory.  I hadn’t been physically intimate with a man for four years and wasn’t planning on it anytime soon; however, when I opened my door and saw him standing there one cold February afternoon, I felt my heart leap in my chest.  He was my type: Tall, bespectacled, bookish.  At least – he was the type I’d had before I stopped dating men.  I panicked and reacted to how handsome I thought he was by being overly cheerful and energetic.  I didn’t really know what to do with my sudden and strange urges; it had been so long since I’d had them.

Over the next year, I developed a massive crush on him, but never said anything; he was always dating someone, and I was supposed to be gay.  We became close friends and confidants; we worked together, shared an office, and lived in the same building, so I saw him all the time.  We’d go out for kimchi stew or barbecue together and chat; a couple of times we went to a noraebang (private room karaoke), just the two of us, drunk on rice wine, and sang songs late into the night.  He made me giggle.  Not laugh – giggle.  The kind of laughter you share with someone when you have inside jokes or find something hilarious that no one else would laugh at.  We could be silly together and really honest with each other because we weren’t trying to get into each other’s pants.  It was brilliant.  Spending time with him was so easy – a breath of fresh air.

He went home for vacation that summer, and I found myself acutely missing his company.  I could feel a kind of dull ache inside of me at his absence.  When I went home for Christmas, he kept in contact with me the whole time I was gone.  The night I got back, there was already a message on my phone welcoming me back to Korea and asking me to dinner.  We spent the next three nights on his bed, watching 90s movies and drinking boozy hot cocoa.  It felt like those times in uni where you’re trying to be physically close to a crush without admitting you like like each other, because what if the other person doesn’t feel the same?  The second night, I asked if I could put my head on his shoulder.  I couldn’t even remember the last time I had cuddled with someone, and it ignited something in my body that I was wholly unprepared for.  My insides exploded with an unstoppable force, and my panties were literally soaked by the time I got back to my apartment.  The next night, as I was stroking his arm, my brain stopped working and my body took over; I grabbed his face and kissed him, and it felt like everything fell into place in that one moment.  My lust was a champagne bottle uncorked.

I went away for a couple of days after that; when I came back, we spent hours making out and exploring each other’s bodies before falling asleep.  At first morning’s light, I told him that I desperately wanted him inside of me.  I hadn’t had penetrative sex with a man for five years at this point; I thought I would need to take it a bit slow or that it might even hurt, but because I was so highly aroused, it felt so. fucking. good.  Like eating an ice cream cone on a scorching summer day.  Like the first time you try ecstasy and you find yourself floating in joyous spacetime.  Like the first day of spring after a long, hard winter.

He called me; he asked me to spend time with him; he held my hand in public, and that’s when I think I fell.  I moved to another city shortly after we first hooked up; it was hard going from seeing him every day to seeing him twice a month, especially now that we were being intimate.  I found myself feeling lost in the behemoth of all these emotions I hadn’t felt in years – a tsunami of love and desire.  I had a real libido for the first time in forever.  I was drowning in hormones, and I didn’t know how to get to shore.  I felt crazy.  Suddenly I was being cautious with every word I said to him, scared that if I said or did the wrong thing, all of my joy would vanish.  He would disappear like a magician into the void of a magic box.  I tried to stop myself from feeling, tried to put tape over a waterfall, but I had already contracted emotional ebola and I was bleeding out.

Over the next couple of months, we had the most incredible sex I’d had in a decade, and I experienced orgasms I couldn’t even believe were real.  We fucked everywhere in my apartment, cuddled next to each other on the couch to watch videos, and only came up for air to go out to eat and build up our energy reserves so we could make love again.  If oxytocin is sex vodou, he was a houngan and I was ready to dance with snakes.  He brought me back from the dead.

My friends were baffled.  They said:

“I’ve never seen you this happy.”

“I’ve never seen you this way!”

“You’re glowing!”

“I’m surprised at how… mushy you’re being about this.”

“I never expected to hear you being so sentimental.”

“I’m impressed – not because it’s a guy, but because you like him.”

“It’s kind of nice to hear you say that you feel something again.”

And suddenly, I wanted to know what we were.  Not where it was going – I knew he was moving back to England in the summer – but I wanted to know that he had romantic feelings for me like I did for him.  That I wasn’t alone. That I wasn’t crazy.  I told him that I had real feelings for him and that it was freaking me out.  He said he hadn’t had romantic feelings for anyone in years and didn’t know if he could.  I, meanwhile, was feeling ALL THE FEELINGS ALL THE TIME, and it was so completely isolating.  I tried meditation, breathing, yoga, sleeping pills, processing with friends.  Nothing could take away the anxiety of loving someone when I didn’t know how he felt about me.  My pain started to become stronger than my joy, but I held on because the high was so powerful.

When I told him that I felt like I’d changed from someone he actually cared about to someone he was just sleeping with, his response was, “Yeah, I guess that’s just part of the changing nature of relationships, you know?”  When I asked if I could say that we were dating, he responded, “I don’t know.  I mean, you can say whatever you want, but I don’t know.”  When I said that that had hurt me, he said he was sorry I felt hurt.

We kept having these amazing weekends together, but I was in pain all the time.  It’s hard work loving someone who doesn’t love you in the same way; it takes everything from you.  Confidence, dignity, pride, joy, sanity.  Laughter.  Self-worth.  I knew that he cared about me a great deal; he wasn’t good at expressing that with words, but he showed it by doing things like serenading me with a song sacred to my heart that he learned just to play for me, or by choosing to spend his last weekends in Korea with me.  But I was in a different place.  I understood for the first time why people want to give up everything to be with someone.  Why they’ll move half a world away.  I wanted so much to spend my life loving him despite knowing deep down that we probably wouldn’t be compatible in the long run, and that was unnerving.  He told me shortly before he left that he loved me – and I truly believe he did – but continued to introduce me as his friend, which was confusing at best and devastating at worst.

The day before he left, he asked me: “What now?”  I don’t know, I said.  I wanted to say that I wanted to be in a long-distance relationship with him while continuing to date other people here, but the idea of him saying no to that was too crushing to consider.  So I just said that we’d keep in touch, keep loving each other, and hopefully one day down the road we’d meet again and create a second chapter in our story.

We tried to be friends after that, which in hindsight seems like the biggest mistake ever.  His responses to me became less frequent and shorter; we still talked, but it wasn’t the same.  I finally told him right before Christmas that I was deeply in love with him and that it was too painful to try to be his friend.  That I needed a break.  We talked for a long time and hashed things out – then emailed a week later and talked for hours again and hashed more things out – and in the end, he said he was still attracted to me, but didn’t know if that translated into romantic feelings.  That he just assumed I was over him.  That it would be logical to have romantic feelings for me, but feelings aren’t logical.  That he didn’t know if he could be emotionally supportive of me.  I got angry about it all and my anger hurt him; he thought I was diminishing the ways he cared for me just because his feelings weren’t as intense as mine.  He loved me – just not in the way I wanted to be loved.  We left the conversation on a positive note, and agreed that the friendship we’d had before was worth working on.

It took a long time and dating other people (and a thorough reading of More Than Two) to wade through the layers of love and loss I felt… but I made it to the other side, and when I did, I came out stronger.  Not that defensive kind of stronger where you swear you’ll never let anyone in again, which is where I was before I met him, but the kind of stronger where you learn how to open your heart and love completely, accept and really feel your feelings, and vow to work on knowing what you want and how to communicate that.  Where you breathe deeply and let your walls crumble to the ground around you in tiny pieces.  Being that vulnerable and crawling through the darkness that came after were both transformative experiences.

I started writing this blog while I was seeing him because I wanted him to be proud of me for doing something creative; it has since turned into something I’m proud of myself for doing.  I’m grateful for that.  We’re still friends, and the friendship feels easier now.  My heart feels so much lighter when I talk to him.  He lives with someone he’s dating now; that was hard to cope with at first, but a month or so ago I suddenly found myself feeling genuinely and deeply happy for him out of the blue.  We should all get to love in life and be loved in return – even the people who have hurt us.

 

*Not his real name, obvs.  This is what a few of my friends started calling him after I initially and hesitantly told them I was “bangin’ a dude.”

 

Patience

This crazy thing is happening right now, and it’s pretty wonderful: I’m not having sex.

I’ll let that sink in.

I started unexpectedly seeing someone new a few weeks ago; he’s an acquaintance whom I’ve known for years, but have never particularly felt attracted to.  We were sitting in a bar and chatting one night; I mentioned that I was cold, and he took my hands to warm them.  That felt pretty nice, so I just left my hands in his.   A bit later, when I was telling him how lovely that felt, he kissed me out of the blue – which was shocking, as I’ve always considered this guy to be a little shy and socially awkward.  The kissing was pretty nice, too, so I asked him on a date… and then I asked him to spend the night.

He told me that he was happy to stay there, but he didn’t want to compromise his morals.  See – this guy is religious.  Not in a church-on-Christmas kind of way, but in a bible-study-small-town-Baptist-church kind of way.  I’m barely even spiritual, so… it’s interesting.  Making out with him in my bed and not being able to touch his dick was a glorious kind of torture; I was soaking wet all through the night and really relished that heightened state of arousal that I’m so used to curing with release.  This time, it just built and built and built, and I could feel the sexual energy coursing through my body for hours.

That was two weeks ago.

This guy has spent the night at my house three times, and I haven’t seen him naked, and… it’s been kind of amazing.  He asked me to slow dance in my living room and to walk around to look at Christmas lights.  He takes his hat off when he walks in my door.  He went a half mile out of his way a few days ago so he could walk me home, and he kissed me at midnight on New Year’s Eve (the first time in over ten years I’ve been with a date on NYE).  He’s an old-fashioned romantic and I am LOVING THE FUCK OUT OF IT.

We’re not compatible for a million reasons (God is not a fan of my libido, for one), and I’m leaving the country in six weeks – but for right now, being wanted for my company rather than my cunt feels healing, and being with someone who loves slow dancing is even better.

Self-Actualization

I don’t particularly like children.  They demand attention and time, they can be really mean, and some of them seem to be in perpetual motion, which is just too much for me.  I got my degree in secondary education and initially taught high school because I love the rebellious attitude, sophomoric delusions, and “who-the-fuck-am-I?”-ness of teenagers.  So when I moved to Korea, I was shocked at how much I LOVED my kids.  My elementary and middle school students were hilarious, insightful, and creative. 

I have had the great fortune to stay in contact with a few of these students over the years; one of them recently got back from a study abroad semester in China.  Before travelling there, she had told me that she wanted to live with her parents while going to uni because “Why would I want to clean, cook, and pay bills?”  Now, having lived alone for three months, she has come back with platinum blonde hair, an effervescent bounce in her step, and a deep desire to move out.  That happened fast!  She had several conversations with her boyfriend while she was gone about how to best make sure that both of their needs were being met while apart and figuring out how to communicate in a way that was comfortable for both of them.  I cannot imagine having the emotional maturity or confidence at twenty to have a single conversation with a partner about making sure my needs were being met. 

The best part of being a teacher, hands down, is watching young people grow up and into self-actualized humans; seeing them thrive is a singular experience of joy. 

On the same day that I had dinner with the student who went to China, another former student (who’s currently in her senior year of high school) got back in contact with me; we met for coffee, along with her twin brother, whom I’d also taught.  They were suddenly both taller than me and bubbling over with excitement to tell me about their friends, teachers, and preparations for the test they’ll take later this year that will decide their entire future.  We talked about movies, politics, friendship, and language, and I was blown away by their maturity.  They’re applying for universities this year; I started teaching them when they were in fifth grade.  That shit is crazy.

You may be sitting there, thinking: WTF I THOUGHT THIS WAS A SEX BLOG.

This post exemplifies why I started writing this blog.  I am a whole human being – as are all teachers – and part of being human is being sexual.  I date and I have a sex life.  A non-monogamous, unmarried, bisexual, kinky sex life.  And I am a caring educator who acts as a mentor – who stays in touch with her students years after they’re no longer her students.  In fact, I stay in touch with their parents because I think children benefit immensely from parents and teachers working together. 

In the past five years, there has been a litany of teachers being fired for having been an exotic dancer or acting in a porn before becoming a teacher; for dancing burlesque; and most recently, just for having nude selfies on their phones.  All female teachers, by the way.  Pretty sure no male teacher has ever been fired for having a dick pic on his phone – but that’s a rant for another day.

So, yeah – this is mostly a sex blog.  But once in a while, I feel the need to drop a gentle reminder that it’s more than that.  It’s a call to stop shaming (and firing) excellent, hardworking, enthusiastic, and compassionate teachers for being whole human beings.  Teachers are out there in the world sexting, writing lesson plans, talking dirty with their partners, inspiring curiosity about scientific concepts and history, hooking up, and putting band-aids on skinned knees.  Just as your accountant might go home and put in a ball gag after doing your taxes, a preschool teacher might *gasp* go on a date after singing “Old Macdonald” for the hundredth time.

This blog is anonymous because I could be fired for writing about my sex life publicly.  There’s a part of me that worries about this all the time.  All the time.  Teaching is so central to who I am as a person that the idea of losing my job really freaks me out – but I continue to write because maybe it will encourage someone to open a dialogue.  My kids and my job mean the world to me – but so does being able to be a self-actualized person like I encourage my kids to be.  

Rules of Attraction (NSFR)

At the show we were at on Saturday night, he put his hand on my back and I kissed him in the middle of a bar full of my friends.  It all felt very natural, especially considering it was only our second date.  Something about him felt comfortable.  We got off the subway early coming back to my place so we could go for a stroll in the late summer air that had been cooled by rain; while walking, we bounced jokes off each other.  He’s witty, incredibly well-read, and refreshingly imaginative. He makes me laugh really hard. 

When we got into my apartment and I took off my shoes, he said I had cute feet.  SCORE – I know what that means.  He rubbed them as we sat on my couch sipping Jim Beam and talking about Modernists, horror, and blues music.  I can’t remember the entire conversation – we drank a lot of Jim Beam – but I know it sparkled.  He dove across the couch to kiss me, and we sat up so I could straddle him.  We took each other’s clothes off slowly, delighting in just touching each other.

We stumbled upstairs; he tossed me onto my bed, which I love.  Nothing better than being thrown around!  He licked my feet (yesyesyes) and kissed me in secret erogenous zones that most people never pay attention to.  I was thinking, This guy knows what’s up.  Aaaaand then he took my panties off and I noticed that the familiar feeling of heat and that string of clear fluid that normally sticks to my panties from the wetness in my cunt was missing.  Dry as a bone.  We made out a little and licked and nibbled each other’s various body parts; he tried fingering me, which as you can imagine was not extremely pleasant (I know, I know, I should have handed him one of the bottles of lube next to the bed).  I rolled him over and restrained him so I could play with him instead, thinking that maybe I’d just had too much to drink and things would improve in the morning. 

We woke up after not nearly enough sleep; after a bit of kissing and touching, he lightly traced his fingers around my nipples and along my outer labia – good start.  I told him as much – I like to be touched gently in some places.  He put his face between my legs and started eagerly licking my lips… and it felt really nice, but I still wasn’t getting wet.  The only wetness came from his mouth.  I told him that I probably wasn’t going to come because I don’t come easily from oral sex – I’ve made peace with that and don’t want to fake it (which is true).  That sex wasn’t about orgasms, but about pleasure and connection, and I was feeling both / really enjoying the way his tongue felt on me – also true.  What I didn’t say is that he just wasn’t doing it for me.  It wasn’t anything about what he was doing, but just that my body wasn’t responding to him.  I didn’t feel the zsa zsa zsu.

In her book Come As You Are, Emily Nagoski says that among women, there’s only a ten percent overlap between arousal and genital response; I just figured that non-concordance was occurring.  However, the next day when my sister asked me if I were attracted to him, I realized that attraction hadn’t even crossed my mind.  Of course I was attracted to him!  He could write!  We had sparkly conversation!  He made me laugh!  We like all the same things!  When I started saying all of this, she laughed and asked if I were physically attracted to him.  And the honest answer is… no.  He’s handsome.  But I don’t feel that physical pull, that “God I need you to touch me right the fuck now” feeling when I’m with him.  I assumed that because we’re so compatible in other ways the attraction would just be there… but it’s not.  

I’m a lucky gal when it comes to sex; when I’m physically aroused, my vagina responds in spades.  As I’ve come to find out, however, there’s a difference between mental and physical arousal.  All of you are probably saying, “DUH, Jo,” but I’ve always been most physically attracted to people I find mentally stimulating.  My brain is turned on, and my body follows.  This is a first for me, and I’m not quite sure what to do with it.  I’d like to try again, but then I feel like I’m just experimenting on the guy.  Then again, maybe when we spend more time together, my body will decide it’s aroused – feelings change.  It’s a sex quandary.    

              

Under the Rainbow

Switch Studies posted an excellent blog post this week about bisexuality; it struck a chord with me because it’s something that’s been on my mind as well.

When I moved to Korea six years ago, I had been exclusively dating women for a couple of years and publicly identified as gay. No one questioned my sexuality; in fact, everyone I met completely embraced it – even my Korean friends who’d been brought up in a country where homosexuality “doesn’t exist.”  My straight male friends bantered with me about dating women (and said some pretty horrific things to me because they weren’t trying to get in my pants); my lesbian friends accepted me as one of their own and made jokes about wanting to date “real” lesbians and not bisexuals.

Last year, I hooked up with a guy I’d been crushing on for a year and ended up dating him, then falling in love.  It was hard to tell this to my lesbian friends, but they accepted me and were happy for me at the time.  It was much harder to tell my straight friends, most of whom were super confused.  “But… you’re gay,” they’d say (surprisingly, this is the same exact thing my mother said).  “Actually,” I’d reply, “I’m bisexual; I just haven’t dated men in years.”  Even after a year of being aware that I was dating men again, I still had straight friends come up to me after seeing me make out with a guy in a bar and say, “Hey – what’s that about?  I thought you were gay.”  Or worse – they’d assume that now that I was bi, I would fuck anyone.

Public Service Announcements:

Bisexual people don’t want to fuck everyone.

Non-monogamous people don’t want to fuck everyone.

Standards!  I have some!

In the last year, most (but not all) of my sexual partners have been men.  This has more to do with the availability of dating partners than my desire to date men versus my desire to date women; there are just a lot more single straight and bisexual guys where I am than gay or bisexual girls.  To complicate things, I am non-monogamous and really up front about dating multiple people, which a lot of ladies aren’t so down with.  For me, having sex is not as important as being honest.   

I’m feeling a bit confused myself.  There’s a philosophical question that gets posed to Dan Savage every week: If I’m not currently fucking someone of the same sex, am I really bisexual?  (In a similar vein, if I only have one partner right now, am I really non-monogamous?)  The answer is yes, of course… but sometimes I feel like I’ve lost my queer cred, if that’s a thing.  Sometimes I feel like I don’t get to hold the queer umbrella over my head because it’s raining men.

There have been times when a woman expressed interest in me but I wasn’t interested in her (because someone showing an interest in you doesn’t necessitate reciprocation); at these times, I felt like I was failing as a queer lady for not prioritizing being in a relationship with *any* woman over being with someone I was actually interested in dating.  My lesbian friends would actually tell me to date someone in the community simply because she was available without consideration of compatibility.

Where I’m at right now is that I want partners who I’m compatible with.  Other people who already identify as non-monogamous.  People I have chemistry with and share interests with.  And that means that right now, I don’t have a female partner… but I’m still sexually and romantically attracted to women.  On days like this, I miss San Francisco.