Activity Prompt: Are faith and belief the same thing? Can someone believe in god without having faith in god?
Alone or with partners: Me and bestie, back in action
Drink and snack with activity:
Physical activities log
Morning ab routine
5 ab roller rolls: Yes
Blogilates morning abs: Yes
Quarter mile walk every hour on the hour, 10-5:
10: Yes
11: Yes
12: Yes
1: Yes
2: Yes
3: No - Driving
4: No - Shopping in Springfield
5: No - Shopping in Springfield
5PM Two Mile Walk: STARTING IN MARCH
Weighted walking: I CANNOT FIND MY FUCKING WEIGHTED VEST
Shoulder shrugs during the day: Yes
MON, WED, FRI
45 minutes of PB: Yes and I hate it
TUE, THUR
45 minutes of cycling:
45 minutes of weight lifting:
Macros
Carbs:
Fat:
Protein:
Calories:
Are faith and belief the same?
No.
Can someone believe in god without having faith in god?
No.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
I told Amber I was done a minute after writing all of this up, and it only took me that long because I had to fill out my dailies first. She laughed, and I said I would write some more because I felt bad for not putting in any effort into having a long explanation. I will say from jump that a long explanation isn't necessary...the answer is no.
When I first went to college, I took a philosophy class on a wim during my first semester, and was surprised to find that I truly enjoyed it. From then out, I took at least one philosophy course per semester. I ended up with a double minor in philosophy and sociology. I was a co-founder of the philosphy club at my school. I have read philosophers for fucking leisure.
I mention all of this as a preface:
Could I quote philosophy here and show off? Sure.
Will I, though? Hard pass.
I don't think the god follow up is necessary, the question stands on its own, but to the god point it is a definite no. Faith is the primary tenet of god. The big Abrahamic ones, anyway. You have to have faith in god if you believe in god, even if that faith means being disappointed when your faith that god will deliver something that you want or need doesn't go your way. So can you have faith in god without believing in god? Why would you do that? It is fucking dumb no matter which way you present it. Can you believe in god without having faith in god? No.
The other bit is trickier, and I actually think you coud have a longer, but still very short conversation to discuss the finer points of it. Are faith and belief the same thing? Still no, but you don't have to pretend to get into the deep weeds by bringing up god to make your point. Do I believe that humans are capable of unshackling themselves from capitalism and saving ourselves from destruction? One thousand percen. Do I have faith that humans will do it? Not in the least.
Faith and belief sound synonymous, but they are not.
Oh no. It's been a tough few days. I am not keeping up with my shit.
Activity: Blogging with the bestie!
Activity Prompt: Do you have to be happy to live a fulfilling life?
Alone or with partners: Me and bestie!
Drink and snack with activity: Just water. I had vegan halal cart chick'n and I am stuffed.
Physical activities log
Morning ab routine
5 ab roller rolls:Yes
Blogilates morning abs: No - Starting Dec. 30th
Quarter mile walk every hour on the hour, 10-5: I didn't do any of these today, it was raining
10:
11:
12:
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
5PM Two Mile Walk: STARTING IN MARCH
Weighted walking: No -Starting Dec. 30th
Shoulder shrugs during the day: Yes
MON, WED, FRI
45 minutes of PB: Starting Dec. 30th
TUE, THUR
45 minutes of cycling: Starting Dec. 30th
45 minutes of weight lifting: Starting Dec. 30th
Macros
Carbs: 20/23
Fat: 103/144
Protein: 75/116
Calories: 1374/1850
Reflecting on forty years to find long stretches of happiness leaves me coming up empty. I think I was about 13 or 14 when I was admitted to the psych ward for the first time? I asked Amber if that was before or after we became friends, and she said it was after. And that question just...derailed our blogging.We ended up talking instead for 6 hours.
But we didn't talk about the answer we would give to this question.
I've lived with chronic depression for almost 30 years. I was medicated off and on throughout my teens, and nothing I was prescribed worked. I have described almost all of my antidepressants as making me feellikeI was walking through sticky cobwebs with a head full of foggy, dusty clouds. I never felt any more like me when I was on antidepressants and anxialytics, which is a weid thing to say when you've lived your whole life depressed. Did I even know what being me felt like?
Yes? I think I did. At the very least, I know the way I felt WASN'T me. There was a me feeling out there, somewhere, but the many rounds of meds never helped me find it.
I got kicked out of my house for the first time when I was 14, to go live with my dad in Vegas. My dad was married to a wretched woman named Cheryl at the time, she was intensely abusive to me, and perhaps those horror stories will be written about another time, but the most important part of this is how much it ignited my desire to be nomadic. It was thrilling to pack up my day to day normalcy and move that somewhere else. When my parents divorced and we moved from New York to Maryland and finally landing in Florida, I was pretty young and I have no real recollection of how that sat with me. But I do remember getting on planes o go visit my dad back in New York before he moved down to Florida and never feeling scared to travel for a single moment. I loved travel. I loved to see new places and being able to move to a new place was even more exciting. I was crushed when Vegas didn't work out the first go around, for reasons I won't go into but also because Vegas was new and exciting and I wanted to explore it. But Vegas worked out the second time I got kicked out. I lived there for a few years and traveled the surrounding states. Arizona, Utah, California. A boyfriend and I drove out to the salt flats so I could learn to drive, and I fell even more in love with the desert. I went hiking with my dad into mountainous terrain, saw hidden rivers I never would have noticed if I hadn't explored the area. My dad taught me how to climb without equipment because we couldn't afford the permits and we both took the exciting attitude of, "if we die here, at least we die HERE" because Red Rock Canyon was our sanctuary. I have done every single hike in that area, and it made me hungry for more adventures. I picked up and moved in the midde of the night to California when I found out I was pregnant with my oldest, and while I was depressed and unhappy, I was excited to be somewhere new.
I kept moving round, different cities in Northern Cali, back to Florida when my oldest's dad and I split, back to Vegas when I was trying to be close to my oldest, was homeless for awhile, moved to Colorado when I got pregnant with my daughter, and after a thousand crusty relationships, I met my husband.
I am staunchly ani-militry, and it brings me no joy to be married to someone in the military at all. It is a conflicting, painful part of my every day life that I wrestle with on the regular. It makes me unhappy in ways I think I would be hard pressed to keep brief, and this unhappiness weighs on me. But I love my husband passionately and deeply, it's the only way I know how to love anybody. Since being with Derek, he has not just scratched my travel itch, he has given me a joy with travel that I didn't have before. I used travel to escape things, and as exciting as it was to be picking up and mving all the time, I wnted internal solitude more than anything. Under all of my long car trips and decisions to pick up leave was a desire to set roots somewhere because maybe then I would be happy. Maybe stillness meant something good instead of something boring. It was a desire I never ever ever spoke out loud.
Derek and I have traveled little pieces of the world together, we have had so many adventures that I needed to start blogging them to keep all of the memories collected because my brain will ditch them.
When we're not traveling, Dererk understands and supports my need to care for community and be involved in making things more tolerable for others. He supports my participation in the organizations I am part of, he gets excited for me when I find some new cause I can add to my list of things I've thrown myself into, he doesn't even really tell me to pull back when I take moral umbrage with places I work and it weighs so heavily on me that I need to quit. He knows I have to stay true to my personal moral compass, and while he will occasionally remind me that I always say "morality is for the rich", he never stops me, despite our financial struggles, from being aligned with my spirit. I have spent the last few years working to sow good, and build community, and work outside of myself and my family.We have traveled. We cook together, I hyperfixate on a food and I can't rest until I make it and Derek goes with me on these food journies (I've learned canning, fermenting, how to make booze, foraging, gardening, chicken tending...it's been a ride!) and seems delighted by them.
I am fulfilled.
But I do not think I'm happy.
I am happiER than I've ever been, this much is an undeniable fact. I am as close to true happiness as I think I can feel, whatever happiness can mean when we live in the word we live in. I feel the weight of everything fairly constantly. I cry over genocides daily. I weep at the apathy of the world daily. I am angry about my own complicity in these things, how the things I consume are born of violent exploitation. I want to live on a piece of land with a community where we all fill each other's cups and there is an ease and lightness to life where we can enjoy the smell of the air after rain, and the sound of chickens scractching a the wet earth through fallen leaves. I know these are things humanity is capable of, and I feel a deep unhappiness tthat we are colletively choosing to speed run the death of ourselves in the name of capitalism and consumerism. Did you know there's a name for the smell after rain? It's petrichor. A chemical release from the ground that humans are veery very good at detecting. And the sunbeams you see when the sun is rising or setting, the ones that poke through the clouds? Those have a ame, too. Crepuscular rays. I am unable to be happy at the thought of all of the things I will never know because we are all choosing violence.
I am not trying to paint myself as a saint here, and I feel like here will be some sense of judgment at expressing the idea that I cannot be happy because there are things that are happening elsewhere, not to me, and it keeps me from happiness. But I would ask how anybody holding that thought has allowed themselves to become so disconnected to the rest of humanity that the suffering of others isn't carried as personal suffering. Hyperindividualism is moving us toward our demise, where am I meant to be happy there?
I think that joy and happiness are two very different things. I can say that I am fulfilled, and largely this is true. I feel fulfillment at not just wringing my hands at the state of things, but being an active participant in fostering change. I feel fulfillment in talking to people about anarcho-communism and trying t mve the needle oward class consciousness. I take in cats that have been dumped by their previous caretakers and I provide warmth and safety for them, and I feel fulfilled. I have my children, I have my husband, I have my hobbies. I am fulfilled, and I have joy. I experience joy daily. I fall in love with everything, and I am so in love with the way the wind moves, and the laughter I hear from my oldes talking with a friend, and the way my daughter loves to draw, and the way my husband throws himself into projects both for himself and for me, and I daydream about being across the universe who I imagine are daydreaming of me, and I am moved to tears consantly because I am so joyful about these little intricate moments that mean nothing in aggregate and are readily forgotten but as monumental as they happen. I am joyful and ful of hope.
I am fulfilled.
But I am unhappy.
And I do not think unhappiness is a dealbreaker for fullfillment. The two are not synonymous.
Alone or with partners: With my amazing, beautiful family
Drink and snack with activity: I had water and some toast, everybody else had pastina. Derek had a white russian at the end of the drawing session.
Physical activities log
Morning ab routine
5 ab roller rolls: Yes
Blogilates morning abs: No - Starting Dec. 30th
Quarter mile walk every hour on the hour, 10-5:
10: Yes
11: No - shopping
12: No - Shopping
1: No - Shopping
2: No - food prepping
3: No - Food prepping
4: Yes
5: No
5PM Two Mile Walk: STARTING IN MARCH
Weighted walking: No - Starting Dec. 30th
Shoulder shrugs during the day: Yes
MON, WED, FRI
45 minutes of PB: No - Starting Dec. 30th
TUE, THUR
45 minutes of cycling: No - Starting Dec. 30th
45 minutes of weight lifting: No - Starting Dec. 30th
Macros
Carbs: 23/23
Fat: 110/144
Protein: 91/116
Calories: 1553/1850
Yesterday was a really busy day of shopping, and I can tell you I was irritated about havingto be around the holiday crowd. I'm an atheist and an anticpaitalist, so I don't celebrate shit, and I kept being so confused about why it was so god damn busy everywhere we went, and Derek would remind me that people were doing last minute holiday shopping. I would frown each time and go, "oh yeah".
Rhynn had work yesterday, Alex had group, and Allen and I had family therapy, so Derek puttered around in the garage while we waited for the kids to be home and ready for our drawing time.
Derek and I really love to cook, and a few weeks ago we were laying in bed together and he mentioned something about wanting pot pies, so my brain was like OH! I should make everyone steak and ale pies! It's been a few days of getting everything ready...it also meant talking to a butcher to get beef fat trimming so I can make tallow (which I should have done yesterday but I couldn't because dishes weren't done because Rhyann doesn't feel well, more on that in a moment) for the crust, a method I've never done but am excited to try. Being a vegatarian in a home where nobody else is vegan/vegetarian is a non-stop emotional roller coaster. I have difficulty telling people I love them, something something something avoidant relationship style and childhood trauma...but I cook for people instead. I love people through food in a major way.
Case in point: Rhyann is not feeling well. And while I have every suspicion they picked something up because they are not good about their mask wearing in public if I'm not there to force them into it...and that makes me fucking frustrated....I still don't want my baby to feel yucky. So I was like, oh, I'll mke them pastina instead of my regular chicken soup. Which is what I normally make when someone in my house feels terrible. But I don't just make pastina. Or soup. I make ALL OF IT. So I had to buy a whole ass chicken to make a whole ass chicken stock to make the whole ass pastina. And like...fuckin' nobody carries pastina anywhere, so I had to sub pastina for ditalini. Which is ok, really, because pastina is just....little pasta. Ditalini is a little pasta. Not as small as actual pastina (I'm gonna have to order that shit online if I'm working at nonna realness, and it is ungodly expensive, so like...fuck them kids, I guess. Ditalini it is), but Rhyann actually ended up loving ditalini as a shape, so I think it all worked out in the end.
Anyway. I made a big ass vat of chicken stock which yielded about 12 cups AFTER I cooked the off brand pastina in a few cups of it, shredded the chicken into a separate bowl for everyone to have on the side, and I had...uh...I think I had cucumber salad with halal cart white sauce on it. I will have to blog about that in my other blog, because that was an edible miracle.
Am I losing the plot? Yes.
When Alex finished group, Rhyann finished smoking and eating their pastina, and we were all ready, we randomized our prompts and landed on:
Wild Cat
The only rule was that you had to be able to explain how your drawing matched the prompt. After last night's activity, Derek and I have come up with one more rule: the drawings cannot be digital. Alex went digital yesterday, and I think she phoned it in. We also agreed on a two hour time limit to complete our drawings.
Without further ado, here they are:
We'll start with mine, as I was done first:
I realized about halfway through that someone in my family was going to do something in a similar vein. My money was on Derek or Rhyann. It ended up being Rhyann, though Derek did say he wanted to do that first but then changed his mind.
I invitet you to check the details of the drawing. There is a dead bird behind the bag of 'Nip (the bird and its cage and the falling feathers were an afterthought as I was bored while Derek and Rhyann were finishing their drawings). The alcohol bottle is empty and the last cup of it has spilled on the floor. There is an empy bag, and a few scattered pills around. There is a mirror with cocaine, a rolled up dollar bill, and a razor blade. There is a poop outside of the litter box (an afterthought because I was bored while Rhyann and Derek were finishing their drawings). There are scratch marks all up and down the chair. Snowball the cat is smoking a cigarette indoors (is it a 'Nip cigarette? Tobacco? WHO KNOWS, SNOWBALL IS NOT OK), showing off their many nips and their little kitty butthole. Snowball is a wild cat.
Up next we have Alex, who actually drew TWO things, but only sent me the second one:
Alex drew a CAT digger gone rogue. Very unexpected, but very fun and silly. I will say, Alex is an extremely talented artist, and I was disappointed that she didn't show out for this. Derek and I discussed it later and agreed that digital is not the way to go, and Alex will have to move to physical paper next time.
Derek finished next:
I think Derek's was my favorite. It's the eyes for me, I am a sucker for silly eyes.
And finally we have Rhyann, who matched my energy and I'm here for it:
Billiards, poker, AND strippers? Wild cats indeed!
I am so excited for our next family drawing night on Thursday!!!!
Well. Today I did not do very well with my body house duties:
Today
Activity: Blogging with the keyboard
Activity Prompt: Write about the best sex partner you have ever been with. Descibe a favorite time with them
Alone or with partners: I ran super duper late, but I'm here! And we're together!
Drink and snack with activity: I just finished a halal cart style vegan chicken with cabbage and a cucumber, pepper, tomato salad. I am STUFFED. But I'm having a Polar Pink Apple and Lemon seltzer.
Physical activities log
Morning ab routine
5 ab roller rolls: Yup!
Blogilates morning abs: No - Sarting Dec. 30th
Quarter mile walk every hour on the hour, 10-5:
10: Yes
11: No - Driving
12: No - Driving/shopping
1: Shopping
2: Shopping
3: No - Driving/Shopping
4: No - Driving
5: No - Cooking
5PM Two Mile Walk: STARTING IN MARCH
Weighted walking: No - Starting Dec. 30th
Shoulder shrugs during the day: Yes
MON, WED, FRI STARTING DEC. 30th
45 minutes of PB:
TUE, THUR STARTING DEC. 30th
45 minutes of cycling:
45 minutes of weight lifting:
Macros
Carbs: 17/23
Fat: 86/144
Protein: 81/116
Calories: 1237/1850
I did not come from a sex positive household. My mom and step dad were pretty adamant that I stay away from boys, and I'm sure if I h ad been openly queer when I wanted to be, I wouldn't have been allowed to hang out with girls, either. My mom didn't talk to me about sex, it was very clear that sex was not meant for me to have.
But like.
Everybody knows about sex. Most people want to have sex, and even ace people, I would hazard a guess, are curious about the mechanics of sex at the veery least. I was more nervous about the ideaof sex than excited at the prospect of it. I had crushes on people....my crushes on boys I logged as crushes, but my crushes on girls I logged as envy...but it didn't translate into sex. All of sex made me nervous. Kissing made me nervous. I could not fucking BELIEVE that people put their tongues into each other's mouths and moved them around. What as the point of that? It couldn't possibly feel nice. And after kissing, then what? Someone was going to touch my boobs? Maybe? I had no idea what I was doing. The first time I even saw porn in a way that my brain could properly log it as sex was one of the first times I ever went over to Amber's. She asked me if I wanted to watch a porn with Ron Jeremy in it. I assumed I was supposed to know who that was so I was like, ok, of course! And then I was just...very aware of my entire body. Don't look too long, stay still, but not too still, do I look like someone who is seasoned at porn? How do you look nonchalant when there are people doing THAT on tv and your new friend is watching you? I don't even remember how I responded or what I did. I think it must have been way too awkward to keep in my memory.
I went from sexually shy nerd that couldn't imagine a world where she made out with ANYBODY let alone touched a bare weiner to complete fuckin' whorehound in under five years. I had sex for the first time at 14, it was terrible, I didn't have sex again until I was 16, it also was not great, but then I figured out that sex could be awesome, and I wanted to experience THAT. So I made myself very very VERY available. To almost everyone I could. For decades. Most of the sex I had was fine, nothing to write home about. Or even write in specifics in here about. No small number of sex partners were bad, but only a small few were really and truly great. If I had to guess, I am VERY close to having had sex with 100 people, if not definitely at the 100 mark. If we were to assume I am at 100 to make the numbers nice and even, I would say that five percent of my partners have been really and truly great.
Of that five percent, there is no contest at all over who my best sex partner is. It is Derek, hands down, he wins every time. Was he initially the best sex partner of my life? No. He was probably in the top 25% initially, good enough that I was definitely enthused about the idea of continuing to have sex with him, but Derek and I were not exclusive. When he asked me a few weeks in to label our relationship, how should he define us to people, I was like, bruh. Slow your roll. Date other people. Let's figure out if we actually really like each other before we try on labels and monogamy. I was very lazily seeing a few other people, but I was mostly waiting for Dan to realize that I was an immaculate cach an he loved me exactly as I was. Dan was not what any accurate historian of my life would call "good at making sex to me", and he also treated me like disposable window dressing, so. While I was waiting for Dan to come around, I got pretty bored with just about everybody I was seeing.
Except Derek.
The longer Derek and I hung out, and the more often we had sex, the more we understood each other sexually. Maybe this will cause a stir, but I am not like, a huge foreplay person. It's fun and all, but for a limited time. I am also not "let's have sex for hours" kind of girl. I top out at about ten, MAYBE fifteen minutes, but that is really pushing it. I have ADD pretty fucking bad, and my mind will wander and pull me right out of the moment, an hen I have to start all over again, so sex actually starts to get a little frustrating for me if it ttakes too long. No frustrating because I'm not enjoying myself, but frustrating because I want to stay in the moment and it is legitimately impossible for my brain.
Derek and I have been together for almost 11 years (in just a few weeks, we hit the eleven year mark! I think our first date was January 14th), and where we are now, I would say he is without a doubt the best sex of my life. He knows my body, he knows exactly what I like, he understands how my cycles impact sex, he listens, and like....I do not think I could have ever fathomed this in he days of being a hardcore slut, but I am not in the least bit bored.
I've been trying to think of the best sex time we had, and I stopped writing to tell Amber that it is criminal that Derek and I do not have any sex in exciting locales (we have had sex in just about every place we've everbeen, which means we've had sex in kingdoms AND countries! Which I suppose counts as exciting locales?) to recount as an exceptionally special or great sex moment. I have had all manner of sex in all manner of places with all manner of other people, and the thing is, I would still rather have sex with Derek at home. Every single time.
I do find myelf occasionally wishing that Derek was a bit more about the like...oh, we're out for a day of errands, but let's pop into this super remote area to fuck in the car really fast, but even that isn't an indictment on how good or bad our sex is. It is top tier. I have never felt more sexually understood in my entire life. Derek says that the same is true for me, that I am the best sex of his life, but I wonder sometimes if that's a lie. It isn't like I haven't told people that they're excellent at sex when they just weren't. I would like to know if it were not the truth but I would not want to know if it was a lie.
So. It's Derek. Derek wins.
AND I finished my blog before Amber!!! First time ever!!
Activity Prompt: What are your five sexiest songs and why?
Alone or with partners: With my bestie!!!
Drink and snack with activity: Polar seltzer and key lime pie baar. No booze today!
Physical activities log
Morning ab routine
5 ab roller rolls: Yes
Blogilates morning abs: No- Starting Dec. 30th
Quarter mile walk every hour on the hour, 10-5:
10: Yes
11: Yes
12: Yes
1: Yes
2: No (shopping)
3: No (driving)
4: No (Driving)
5: No (driving)
5PM Two Mile Walk: STARTING IN MARCH
Weighted walking: No - Starting Dec. 30th
Shoulder shrugs during the day: Yes
MON, WED, FRI
45 minutes of PB: No - Starting Dec. 30th
TUE, THUR
45 minutes of cycling: No - Starting Dec. 30th
45 minutes of weight lifting: No - starting Dec. 30th
Macros
Carbs: 18/23
Fat: 161/144
Protein: 92/116
Calories: 1966/1850
When Amber picked this topic, I was so fucking excited to talk about the songs that crank my yearn button up to a twenty. I have so many songs that I either find exceptionally sexy, or associate with great sex, that I immediatly assumed this was an endless well I could tap without diffiulty.
Cue difficulty.
I asked Amber if we should rank these and she said she was going to, but my struggle is how to rankthem. They are not on an equal playing field of sexiness, and aside from my top song, I have no fucking clue how to rank these. Well. I will give it the ol' college try.
At the top, there is no other way to start this list than with the song that I think is, bar none, the fucking sexiest song in the entire fucking world.
Duran Duran's Come Undone
Amber and I are sitting and listening to our respective songs with our headphones on. he second this song started, I broke out in goosebumps. This song is not a slow burn in the slightest sense, it is instantly fucking hot.The synthy slinkiness runs over me like ink. I is slippery, tactile, and sexy. Simon LeBon has this...I don't know how to describe it....desperae lilt to both the lower register he sings in for the main verses, then he escalates during the bridge, and pushes into what I can only describe as a crescendo of desire. There is something so fucking full of desire about the way he sings the lyrics "who do you need/who do you love/when you come undone". There is every possibility that this song has nothing to do with sex, but I have always associated it with sex. When I talk about wanting to be desired, the feeling that fills my body when I hear this song is exactly how I want other people to feel about me when they see me. It's needy, it's desperate, it's angsty, and it makes me want to fuck everything in sight.
I used to have this teal and black lace thong. It was my favorite thong to wear when I would take sexy pictures for anybody. I used to put on that thong, put on Come Undone, and get in the most intensely sexy mood.
It is worth mentioning that not all of my memories of this song are sexy. When Allen and I were together, I was telling him about how I sang the lyrics incorrectly for a really long time...the girl who sings backup vocals sings a line, I have no fucking idea what she's actually saying, but in my ears, she's always been saying, "cannot believe you're breaking my heart/at the seams/cannot believe you're taking my heart to Egypt". Allen and I would sing that each other, loudly and with zero seriousness, all the time. Which in and of itself is very sexy.
I suppose next we'll go with:
Portishead's Glorybox
What is there to even say about this song except it fills my vagina with sexual ennui? It is exceptionally hard to marry frustrated sadness with incredibly silky sensuality, but Portishead fucking nails it. There is something about the way Beth Gibbons sings this song that makes my heart ache and my clit tingle, what the fuck. I have spoken at length about how Dan and I were not sexually compatible, and largely this is true.
However.
There were a handful of times where dude laid shit down RIGHT. I was at Dan's apartment, we were watching something together, there had been no touching, no kissing, no anything as a precursor, we were just sitting next to each other on the couch. I got up to get something, I can't recall what, and I heard Dan come up behind me, he said, "babe" and then he grabbed me by the waist, gently but forcefully pushed me into the wall, and started kissing me. We fumbled our way toward his bedroom in a tangled mess of limbs, removing as much of each other's clothes as we could manage without interrupting our lips touching hatever skin of ours was bare enough to kiss. We never did make it to his bedroom, we ended up fucking right in the hallway between his kitchen and the bedroom. There is no sexual encounter I've had that matches the raw urgency and the pure lust of that hallyway sex, but I remember reflecting on it later and being inundated wih such a profound sadness that I was so deeply in love with someone who would never, ever, ever love me back. That feeling...the lust and the grief and the ache blending into one strange, desperate sensation that hid behind my ribs like a thief resonates through every single note of this song every time I hear it.
It makes my vagina confused.
This next song is a different kind of sexy, and I swear I can fucking hear the judgment, but hear me out.
Dave Matthews' Band - Say Goodbye
My journey through my own queerness is something that makes me wistful. When I talk about my experiences with femmes, I am very sure to make sure everyone I'm talking to knows that I am not unexperienced with femmes, but I AM unexperienced with femmes for me in a way that's honest. Every single sexual encounter I've had with a femme has been couched in pleasing a man. "Straight men think it's so hot when straight women are sexy gay, right? So if this really hot blonde and I go fingerbang it out in the bathroom at Tony's real quick, it's for men." I have had at least a dozen interactions with femmes that wen down exactly like this. A threesome for my friend's birthday at the Imperial Palace and cumming twice when she ate me out was for the eager ears of my male lovers to fantasize about, it wasn't actually about wanting her or being queer. The really cute girl I made out with at Phantom Canyon wasn't cute to me, right? She was cute for stories that would make men think about me with another woman while they were jerking off.
I never let myself be with femmes for me, and I think that is one of the great travesties of my queerness. I engaged with it under cover of fantasy, just not my own. Interestingly, this is part of why I am so closed-lipped now about my sexual interactions with femmes. I am keeping them for me, because I want to take ownership of them back. I am so proudly queer now, and my only regret is not being able to be louder about it from the second I understood my attraction to all genders, at age 14. And also my full on secret girlfriend.
I had a friend that I spent a lot of time with. She and I lived a few hours from each other, we hung out once a month and we would spend the weekend together. She had a boyfriend at the time, but he was long distance, and their relationship was primarily over zoom. Not zoom. What were we using at the time? Vonage, I think. Video calling with Vonage. One of the first times I went over to her house, we were doing a video call with her boyfriend and he asked if we eveer had like, cutesy little make out sessions. Like girls do at sleepovers. We were like, girls don't do that at sleepovers. And he was like, well you should! And he asked us to kiss, so we were like, yeah, ok. And just gave each other a quick peck. He begged us a little bit tto kiss more passionately and for longer, so we kind of giggled nervously and she was like, I'm game if you are. And I felt somehing surge in the pit of my stomach for her right in that moment. Something that had maybe been there all along, and I didn't notice, or I ignored it, but it was suddenly very present. I nodded quietly and then we were kissing for quite some time under the watchful gaze of her long distance boyfriend. I don't remember who pulled away from who, it isn't really important, but I remember the way she looked at me when we were done kissing, and I had never longed for another girl like that before. It is a deeply bittersweet memory, because all of the shyness and joy and excitement in that moment was so shimmery and beautiful, and I buried it under a deep shame. Later that night, we snuggled together and ate homemade empanadas, and laughed about how long we had kissed each other. She told me I was a really good kisser, though, and I remember buzzing over the compliment. I wanted to kiss her more, so I said anytime she wanted to impress her boyfriend, we couold always kiss again. So she kissed me again and it was youthful and sweet and strange. I was 19, and while I had secretly known I was queer, somewhere deep in my heart, I had never acted on it because I was afraid and ashamed. And our next few weekends wn kind of the same way. We would take sexy photos of each other, we would make out for hours, and then we would snuggle together to go to sleep. I was with my oldes's dad, and she had her boyfriend, but I do think there was something far more intimate to our relationship than friendship. And while I would argue now that relationships wihout friendship cannot possibly reach intimacy, I cannot possibly just call what we had friendship.
I hear this song and it fills me with that deliciously tense feeling of desire for someone that isn't allowed, and I think of her. It is sad and sexy and full of yearning, and if there is anything that queers do better than anybody else, it is yearn. She may not have been my girlfriend...I mean, I know she wasn't, but this really was my first instance of understanding that my sexuality was expansive, I wanted to have sex with women in similar...but ultimately different...if you know you know...ways that I wanted to have sex with men, and that mayb there is no going home again if you fuck your friends.
This song...oh my god. I don't have anyhing sexy to recount here, but this song drives me absolutely fucking bonkers.
Hozier's Movement
How is anybody supposed to function like a normal human being when this song exists? This song makes me want to have the hottest, steamiest affair in the world. The kind of thing that, long after I die, my children find letters from me to my forbidden lover that teeter between romantic, religious, and pornographic that make them clutch their chests ad go, "our mom was a stone cold sloot, bu she could get it. Damn." and then they have to spend tens of thousands in therapy to forget that their sweet mother gave voracious blowjobs to someone not their step dad.
I don't know what it is about Hozier, but this dude knows how to make fuck ballads. No sex ballads, FUCK ballads. I want to fuck illicitly when I hear this song. Not myy husband, nothing so common and allowed. I want to fuck someone in secret. In shame. In unadulerated, desperate need. Sweaty, vulgar, forbidden. The kind of sex that would crush everyone close to me, the kind of sexual affair that shatters families. This song is meant for a primal longing that spans eons. EONS.
We're at the penultimate song, and honest to god, I've had to stop several times to exclaim to Amber that I was a little too worked up and needed a break.
Glas Animals' Black Mambo
I don't really know how to explain why this song is so fucking sexy to me. Maybe it's just the entire vibe? Maybe I see Dave Bailey in this video and I'm like...yes please. Maybe it's a miz of both? There's a cheeky sensuality to this song that just says like...sticky, sweaty sex under a cabana.
And finally, here we are. The last song. I struggled to come up with song after knowing my first two immediately, and then I was flooded with songs and I was like, WE NEED TO DO MORE THAN 5!
But Amber has finished her blog before me....again...and I feel guilty. Now, I am not rushing like I did last time, but I am still taking forever, and I still feel kind of bad about it. But here we are. Last song.
Muse's Undisclosed Desires
I am relatively certain that I stayed with Allen for far too long. I've spoken about staying with him longer than I truly wanted to because I really did love him, but our romantic love had worn out its welcome ad had changed into something wholly platonic. I have defind myself as "checked out" for about a year ad a half before ACTUALLY breaking up with him, and it's accurate.
When I worked at Action Appliance as the office manager, one of my weekly tasks was to do the bank drop. I walked into the bank one day, and the teller who helped me was just absolutely fucking GORGEOUS. So gorgeous that I was nervous to talk to him. Did I look ok, did I smell ok, if I flirted would he think I was ugly and laugh at me, or would he feel it, too? One weekly bank drop turned into two. I did chat him up. He DID feel it too. I would put on outfits especially for him on days I ha to go to the bank...my ighest skirts, my most low cut shirts, and my highest heels. I walked ino the bank hoping I looked like a sex kitten, and I lived for making him blush.
Amber and I used to blog together, way way back. I had a weekly section of my blog called Wicked Wednesday, and I featured my scandalous wantings as vaguely as I could in that blog, for fear of Allen reading it and finding out I wanted to fuck some rando at the bank instead of him, but he never did.
Bank rando asked for my number once, it was actually he last time I ever saw him. I hadn't been lucky enough to have him as my teller, so I was annoyed that my sexy outfit was for almost nothing, but as I was leaving, he came out after me and asked if I wanted to hang out with him during his break. I had to get back to work, but yes, yes I did want to do that. About three minutes into him lighting his cigarette, he was like, I probably shouldn't do this, but would i be ok if I asked you for your number? I told him it absolutely would be ok, he said he had to go back inside to grab his phone, he had fogotten it, and then he...just...never came back out. My office moved to a location across own unexpectedly literally over that weekend, and it didn't make any sense for me to go back to his bank. I didn't personally bank there, so I never went back. I've wondered if he thought that like, I actually was repulsed by his ask and I left the state to get away from him? I wonderd if he thought about me any more after that. In my secret little self centered heart, he pined after me for ages, dreaming of the sex we coud have had, and this song made me think of him the second I heard it.
It isn't like I still lust after him, I have long forgotten what he looks like, and he was really little more than a notice that I was so done with my relationship that I was ready to cheat. And I did cheat on Allen, a day bfore I broke up with him. I wen up to FoCo and stayed with my friend Matty, we had sex all fucking weekend, and I immediately went home and told Allen we were done, and it had been a long time coming. I listened to this song the entire two hour drive home, on repeat, and I didn't feel remorseful or guilty, I felt emboldened and sexy. I fucking love this song.
Alright. There they are. The six sexiest songs I have on my playlist.
