Note to Self

When taking self-portraits to send to online lover, do previous research to discover that most cyber pics show women in some form of "come hither" or "bedroom" or "I'm a hot tough butch" or "I'm a sweet, cute young thing" or "I'm a lot of fun" look or pose. It's the visual language of online chasing.

One should try not to send a bleak photograph of oneself that looks rather remarkably like the author's pic on the dust jacket of an obscure book of poetry. Pensive, intellectual, serious, mature has not yet become a hot look in internet chasing. Though remember to save that photo for when you finally find a publisher for your book of pensive, intellectual, serious, and mature poetry.

Crazily, the intense, beautifully cocky, sizzling butch top actually manages to find pensive quite quite sexy.

HQ1426 (Part 2)

Part of the reason I decided to write this post was because of something I read on the remarkable blog Femmeismygender.blogspot.com. If you haven't read her blog, you should. Femme, who is of a similar age, mentioned some of her recollections as a young lesbian feminist about the then popular concept of penetration during sex as an embrace of a male heterosexist orthodoxy. All good lesbian feminists rejected any sex that, it was believed, mimicked male-female fucking. As I recollect, we didn't even use the word "fucking", it was always "making love" at best, or "having sex" at worst.

I have always seen myself as willing to question my own beliefs and assumptions. Perhaps that has been true to some extent, but clearly I have failed in a critical area of my life, and that is around my own path to intimacy - sexual and emotional intimacy.

So for years, I had none, bad, okay, good, and great sex with women, none of it consciously penetrative. None of it consciously exploring the nature of power-sharing, none of it consciously examining how in this most intimate act, we physically manifest trust. None of it falling outside the orthodox lesbian feminist bounds of feminist sex, feminist relationships. I never realized or even considered that I might be missing out on something that might be a more intense and more profound path to intimacy than what I knew and had repeated time and time again.

Until I was in my late 30s, I had only slept with one woman who could be considered a butch top. And what a butch top she was. Her dress (jeans, leather jacket, boots, short hair) and an intense swagger and attitude would have gay men in Newtown rush to cruise her for sex, assuming that she was some hot boy. She enjoyed this kind of gender fuck and was quick to laugh at these poor horny guys when they realized they had just solicited a smirky butch dyke. I liked sex with her, she was very direct about telling me she wanted me, wanted to fuck me (though I insisted on the silly pretense that she use the word "make love" even though she clearly wanted just to fuck me), and she was very good at it. She was the first lover who tried to physically restrain me, and she clearly wanted me to bottom to her top. She liked the fact that I enthusiastically ate pussy. We had sex in all kinds of places, and she liked to push the envelope on discovery. She also had a long-term girlfriend and I was her fling, and this added to the intensity. I loved the sex with her, we had sex often, she had a way of initiating sex and "taking" me that resonated with me, almost against my lesbian feminist sensibilities but we never explored much farther, I dumped her in a public restaurant (much to the amusement of the gay men around us) because she was a bit too cruel, insensitive, extremely narcissistic and I was tired of being the "other woman". This relationship, unfortunately, led me to believe the stereotype of all top/bottom relationships as inherently unequal, selfish, and unhealthy. The concept of trust and willing surrender was never part of that relationship, and thus never part of my understanding of the butch/femme top/bottom dynamic.

In retrospect, I realized I never applied the same blanket stereotype of inequity, selfishness and unhealthiness to all those androgynous "lesbian feminist" relationships which were as equally disastrous to me as my failed relationship with W. but in those relationships I simply blamed myself and the other woman, never the strict 50/50 mirroring lesbian feminist model of relationship.

Let me be clear, it is not my interest to call the traditional lesbian feminist sexual dynamic a fraud or a failure, some seem to find it works quite well. But I seek to understand how my game hewing to a particular one-size-fits-all sexual orthodoxy stunted my ability to find the kind of intimacy that I seek. I am interested in rethinking my earlier feminist interpretation, based on my now 35+ years as a lesbian feminist, of the butch/femme top/bottom dynamic as inherently anti-lesbian feminist, inherently unhealthy, unequal, or as simply a poor rote mimic of oppressive heterosex.

It seems a lot of younger quite brilliant lesbians have already been exploring this ground, and exploring it thoughtfully and well, but I, as a contemporary, was struck by reading FIMG's comment, and I realized how interested I am in reading and hearing the reflections and experiences of other lesbians in mid-life who are now rethinking their path to intimacy, trust, and our relationship to power.

I'm going to stop this post here, I would love to hear any of your comments, all views, whatever your age, or gender identification. I intend to pursue this topic further, but I don't want these entries to be so long as to be unreadable. And they are almost that.

HQ1426

I thought I'd share how I became a lesbian. Unlike most coming out stories, mine begins not with a hot girl, but with a number. HQ1426. I came out because of that number. A Library of Congress Classification Number. I read a book. At age 12. In 1970. An anthology. Sisterhood Is Powerful.

I have often wondered if there are any other lesbians who came out because of reading a book. Because of reading that book. And if you are one of them, I would love to hear from you.

At the time I read the book, I hadn't had any significant romantic inclinations toward girls or boys, but I did read a lot, about politics, history, and then, feminism. And it seemed pretty darn clear to me, after reading that book, and a few others, that lesbianism was the ultimate expression of feminism, and feminism resonated with me, therefore, I should be a lesbian. Logical.

This always puts me in a slightly awkward position when there are discussions about whether or not queerness is genetically determined, like race (though we could have a discussion on the social construct of race), or an after birth choice, like religion. I have often heard the phrase "I didn't choose to be gay, I was born gay." Which I think is true for the majority of LGBT, but I am not so sure I can say so with such certainty. I may be genetically queer (yes, my ring finger is just a smidgen longer than my index finger), but I did make a serious and conscious choice to identify as a lesbian when I was 12, before I had had any conscious interest in sex with, or strong affectional attractions to, anybody.

It is also true that my subsequent experiences of sex with women have been absolutely consistent with a genetic determination of my sexual orientation as a lesbian. I adore sex with women, I have zero interest in sex with men. So perhaps I was just prescient about my sexual orientation at age 12. Perhaps just dumb luck that I have never had any cause or desire to consider "going straight" after 38 years of being a self-identified lesbian, and I have never had to wrestle with whether or not I made a "lifestyle" choice based on lust or the love of a particular woman who did or didn't let me down.

The fact that I came out at an early age because of a book, because of an intellectual choice made as a young person (my reading list in the summer of 1970 included: The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich, The Arms of Krupp, the complete works of Rudyard Kipling, the annotated Robert Burns, The Once and Future King, The Odyssey, etc, you get the picture) has made me less conflicted about some of the issues that affect other lesbians. My choice as a lesbian was never made based on men, on a desire or dislike for them, or on positive or negative sexual experiences with them. Men are personally irrelevant to me vis a vis sex. But as a lesbian feminist, I did make some decisions about sex, the nature of the dynamics of sexual relationships with women, once I became sexually active, that I now find I must reconsider.

Reasonable Mind

The voice in my ear is my good friend L. We have just reconnected after a long family trip for her. I break the news about my recent and engulfing attraction to M. There is that familiar silence that accompanies the swirl of her mind before the reproach. She is thinking "How can I say this?" She is trying to shorten the pause between the end of the trail of my words and her thoughts without rushing her emotions. Sometimes she wins that battle and sometimes not. Not. "Are you nuts?!" she says trying to say this calmly, her voice rising. "You know I love you, but are you nuts?!"

She knows me well enough not to attribute my behavior to all lesbians though she has her suspicions of all poets. She is older than I am, and an actual happy straight. It must be that we are both femmes, unreasonably optimistic, and share a long-term commitment to volunteer work with the elderly poor. We have been friends for years.

"I'm not going to even tell you why, because you know why, but you have to break it off." For her, the line between the rush of lust and practicality is stronger and more defined than I seem to be able to find, at this moment. "Men and women fall in love with you all the time, though god help me I can't figure out why, and you never notice it or ignore it, because you know better." She knows I can be overwhelmingly, blissfully and sometimes still painfully ignorant of my impact on others. In my silence, she hears me trying to figure out what to say next.

Her voice quiets, "You know what my life is like, I haven't been a saint, but I know you, and if this is meant to be something deeper, it will wait."

For M

I did not know that I was looking for you
until I found you
and in finding you
the whole of my life made sense
each wayward turn, each broken promise
filled in as pieces of a puzzle
I could not see
until this single moment

If you would have me
I would be yours
Not because you desire me now
But because you have always desired me
without knowing
why
without knowing I existed
Gravity wandering in search of its planetary object

And when tomorrow comes
and this planet turns on its axis
and shifts in an inevitable arc
pulled by forces we cannot control
We will have existed
Desire and passion joined
if only in passing

RunningawaywiththeSpoon (c) 2008

All rights reserved. This poem cannot be reproduced or copied in whole or in part without the expressed written permission of the author.

Fireworks

I have been walking five miles each night for the past few months. I walk when it is dark and cool and quiet, and I can be alone with my thoughts and with the night. For the last few evenings, there have been loud displays of illegal aerial fireworks in some part of the sky. The fireworks last less than a minute, just long enough for a brilliant and exciting display, and for whomever is setting them off to run away before the cops show up. Kind of an apt metaphor for my own life these past few days.

After I made my last post, I ended up in, dear god, do I say it, a private online chat. I had been conversing for the past few nights with another woman (one assumes a woman), another femme, about art and poetry and the emotional wrack that takes place as you seek publication or exhibition for your work and find mostly rejection. So I popped in, late my time, hoping for a little more art talk.

Well, the first girl never showed up, and I had been there for about 3 minutes and another woman shows up. Butch top. And there was talk. Nice, peaceful talk about life and relationships. Our five hours seemed like five minutes. And it was calm and soothing, and we agreed to meet the next night to talk a little more, and move to a private room.

I wonder if it's a given that private online chats between magnetic opposites invariably lead to talk about fucking. And talk we did. Talked about it for days. The attraction was instantaneous, combustible, powerful. The epitome of what I adore in butch tops, she sees her role as pleasuring her femme. And perhaps as powerfully for her, I see my role as surrendering myself in willing trust to her desires. What pleases her, pleases me. When I am pleased, she is satisfied. And luckily for me, she is not a stone butch, she likes to come both by her femme coming for her and by what I consider the sacred act of clit sucking and cunt eating. Perhaps I'll write more about my thoughts on the joys of giving and receiving oral sex at another time.

Writing and talking for me are intense forms of foreplay. Since I write, I love all the things language can do. Its transformative nature, its ability to move directly from what I think to you, not impeded by physical clues or other physical senses. Of course, sometimes physical clues may be (very) important. But online chats are a very modified form of a monologue. And monologues are, by their structure, very self-indulgent. We can expound and hold sway, we can share our innermost fears, thoughts, and desires. Without the immediacy of judgement.

So I am online getting fucked by this very hot younger, beautifully cocky, butch top with a sizzling desire for me. And I have to say, I adore her. Is it cheating? Is it fantasy cheating?

Being lesbians, however, we don't just do sex, we become emotionally entangled. And being butch/top-femme/bottom the energy is intense. She wants to do to me all the things that I want. I want to do what pleases her, to trust her desire. To push myself, to allow myself to open up to her and to all she desires. And because, as lesbians, this whole interplay has an intense emotional component, this has fallen faster and deeper than my rational mind tells me is sensible. Because, the rational voice says in my head, I am in relationship of many years with G, and we are separated but not separate. Because I love G still, as I love all my exes, and our practical lives are intermeshed - we own a house together. Untangling and separating will not be an easy task, emotionally and logistically. Perhaps M will be more sensible about this than I am, and end this before we get too much farther than the far we seem to have already gone. I confess we have already used the "L" word and if you think I'm talking about "licking" you 'd only be half right.

I suspect some of my behavior in the last few days has been part of my natural preference for "talking out loud" to work problems out. And I have learned a lot about myself in this so far short romance. It becomes clearer to me what I want in my partner. She must identify sexually as a butch top. Because that sexual dynamic, that structure of interplay, allows me to release myself, to be free, in a way that no other type of sexual dynamic does. It remains missing in my current relationship. And I suspect it will never be there. I remain surprised at how essential the butch/femme top/bottom dynamic is for me, not simply as sexual role play but as central to how I seek safety and sanctuary in the world. I feel a little silly that the great fear and great joy of discovering this given about the necessary structural manifestation of intimacy for me, comes in mid-life. But c'est la vie.

Who knows what other fireworks the night will bring, and if I will need to start running?

Hope

We have been separated now for over a year. I am here and you are thousands of miles away. I ostensibly came to help my aged mother, but it was a welcomed reprieve for us, a break from the near constant fighting, the perpetual misunderstandings and slights, the inescapable stress of two planets in constant collision.

We were not always this way, but mostly always this way from our very beginning. I always said our relationship was never legato, always staccato. I chose you because I wanted someone strong, someone who could withstand the intensity of my personality, my over-confident intellect, the drilling and penetrating nature of my judgements. Because I wanted to release myself from being that person, if only for a few hours each week, with someone who was emotionally and intellectually strong enough to take the burden of my nature from me. To lift it from me, to give me a sanctuary from myself. Perhaps this was always too much to ask of anyone. Everyone else has their own demons, their own insecurities, their own search for safe harbors.

I have lived most of my life unaware of how powerfully I impact others, however unintentionally. I am very small femme woman, never physically intimidating. I have simply done as I chose. Since I am late to this self-knowledge I often forget how others experience me. At my worst and most negative, I have been told that I can be intimidating and overwhelming, a kind of powerful inescapable intense force. I know I have eviscerated very powerful people at times easily, and wielded more power to affect outcome professionally than others in my orbit. Just by dint of personality. At my best and most positive, this same intensity and focus can make me very warm, charismatic and charming, a natural, enthusiastic, and visionary leader, and a confident and inventive problem-solver. People have always been attracted to these traits in me. And at my best I provide safe harbor for others, I am optimistic, eternally hopeful, and can lift up others who are in my universe.

But for me, these traits are a blessing and a burden. I like being able to help others. But there are times when I tire of being the strong one, the smart one, the brave one, the caring one, the one who eviscerates the powerful wrong-doers on behalf of the powerless, the one who is never afraid, the one who reassures and comforts, the one who will always make things right, the one you can trust with your soul.

I wanted you to be the one to take that burden from me. To shelter me. But you have your own demons, your own intense insecurities, your own burdens. I worried that I could not trust you to (or perhaps I just never let you) take care of me, in the most intimate way. This way that manifests for me through sex. There is a reason I like to be fucked, to be taken, to be over-powered by my lover. To bottom to her top. To trust her to care for me when I am weak, and afraid, and lost. To be completely vulnerable to her, to be naked to her. These are not simply metaphorical musings but literal ones, I manifest my vulnerability in my nakedness to you. I give you what I do not give others, I give you the presentness of my self, no past, no future, only what exists in this moment. I am not here to fix anything or plan strategically or tactically for a future action or to analyze a problem, I am just one naked body, existing only to respond to your touch.

But the anger and fighting have left us separate broken planetary bodies, without contact, except though passing words. It's hard to see this as an improvement over collision, but it is where we are. This has been our relationship for years. And while our state recognizes marriage equity, you have never asked me. And I have never asked you.

I have been away now for more than a year. I thought it would be good to finally come home, though we have fought on the phone, like nothing has changed. I thought we could try to connect again through renewed fucking, you might like it, you might want it. You might like the power to make me come for you. I bought you a new cock and harness for your birthday, hoping to inspire you. But you were suspicious of me. You had earlier pulled out the estrogen implant from your cervix to replace that lost through your hysterectomy, and you told me you decided not to take vaginal estrogen supplements. Your sex drive has disappeared. "I don't know," you said "it's hard to feel any interest in fucking (you) anymore." The words were plain and hit me squarely.

I am not sure what to do. I wasn't so sanguine that renewed sexual intimacy would allow us a base of closeness that would buffer the distance that comes with the clashes in our styles and personalities, but I had hope. Now I have none. And I don't know what to do.

In Praise of Young Butches

There you were, legs spread, sitting on a low wall, lean body relaxed, eating a snack, watching me as I loaded groceries into the car. I glanced up, and saw you, a slight smile on your face, your eyes boldly meeting mine, staring frankly at me. You were in jeans, a t-shirt, your hair short, your eyes dark, a clear and beautiful face, in your early 20s. Having had a bad last few weeks full of insecurity about my sexual desirability, I didn't quite believe you were looking at me, a middle-aged femme, dressed casually in black t-shirt, khaki shorts, and black sandals, keys hanging around my neck, bouncing just below my tits. I loaded more groceries, and looked up again, and there you were, still watching me, you openly eyed my body, stopping at my tits, then moved back up to look me squarely in the eyes, still smiling. Cocky, I thought, and sexy.

I wheeled the empty cart back to the cart station, 15 feet from you. I moved the cart closer, a smile pressing at my lips, I glanced back at you. Our eyes met, and lingered, we smiled, and I turned and returned the cart and walked back to the car, knowing you were enjoying my ass.

As I drove away, I turned to see you, and there you were, cocky smile still on your beautiful face, watching me. You stretched your neck and turned your head, so we could hold that gaze a little longer.

Ah, young butches. Thanks, baby.

"do u eat pussy"

I was chatting online about jobs or sick dogs or the weather, when an IM popped up and a new visitor to the room sent me this IM. I clicked on her profile and she appeared to be a single 40-ish rough-looking femme who claimed to be a secretary looking for "whatevas".

"do u eat pussy"

I thought this was a peculiar question to ask a lesbian in a lesbian chatroom, since our stereotype is that we eat pussy, munch on the carpet, muff dive, and can summon the eternal divine with our tongues (I just made that last one up).

"do u eat pussy"

Taken aback, my answer was a typical one for me "Sorry?" I need to work on this, since it doesn't seem to work well. This is, however, my typical answer after working years in the dreaded and evil Human Resources field, which taught me to muzzle the instincts in my own head to respond thusly: "Are you fucking nuts? Are you a man? At least when you are blindly asking someone to fuck, could you not capitalize the first letter in a sentence, and end the sentence with a tiny fucking period? Do bad manners and bad grammar go together? Did you not notice how I chat, and perhaps, if you are looking to fuck me, you ought to at least notice how I write? What makes you think I would fuck you? Do you know anything about me? Here's a hint: Turn Ons: Intelligence, humor, wit, the ability to clearly articulate a thought or a feeling, empathy, sensitivity, butch tops, butch cock, wooing, courting, strength, confidence, emotional equanimity, charm, charisma, respect, sexiness, erotica, progressive politics, art, and literature. Turn Offs: "do u eat pussy"

Her response?

"do u eat pussy"

Dear god, why do I try?

UN Ministry of Lesbian Realism

I wonder who I file this with?

I ended up on Dailymotion, a YouTube-ish site where a lot of the lesbian vids banned from YouTube end up. The DM site itself seems less puritanical and homophobic, and the viewers seem less so as well. I did notice that a lot of vids are posted by the French. At least the ones I ended up viewing.

But here's my complaint, a general complaint about "lesbian porn": False advertising and bad acting. I understand that the girls who appear in porn in general are no Oscar caliber or Oscar Meyer caliber actors, but couldn't they even get into the sex parts well enough to make it more convincing? Perhaps it's a bit too much to ask for Method acting, but geez...

Here are my primary complaints:

Closed mouth or pinch mouth kissing: When you are making out with someone you want to fuck, and you allegedly want to open your pussy to, why not open your mouth?

Dry kissing: If you want your partner to stick her tongue on your clit or in your pussy or your ass, why the reticence to use your tongue when you mouth kiss?

Excessive tongue: It's almost as if some porn guy decided that tongue play in the mouth is just as good as tongue play "down there". It's good, but it's not.

Spit: I have kissed a lot of women in my life and I don't really recall getting into spitting into each other's mouths as foreplay. Spitting elsewhere as lube, okay, but gobs of drool? I think not.

Polite kissing: It's okay when you are meeting someone for lunch, but when you are allegedly hot for some girl you want to fuck (you) and you are both naked, a little fierce passion is never inappropriate.

Upturned fingertips: I've notice this a lot in straight male "lesbian" sex fantasies. They hire girls with long fingernails or girls who uncomfortable with the role, and so when they stroke each other's skin, they lift up their fingertips and almost gingerly "touch" this person they are hot to fuck with what amounts to the palm or side of the hand, avoiding the use of fingertips. As a real lesbian, I use and expect the use of my lover's fingertips - fingertips are very sensitive and can elicit reactions in very sensitive places. It would be the equivalent of a man touching a woman with his bio dick but avoiding using the head of his dick to do so... pretty weird, eh?

Breast avoidance (visual): What's with that? In most instances, in these fake lesbian vids, the women don't even look at the tits of the other woman. Part of the reason I like sex with women is because we have tits, hello. Part of the thrill of first sex is having her look at, admire, touch, kiss, suck, and fondle your tits, and you, hers. But these girls rarely even give them a second glance.

Breast avoidance (tactile): I've noticed a trend in mainstream lesbian fake sex where a woman moves from kissing the lips and neck to the chest, and then slides her hand (with up turned fingertips) down between the breasts and starts kissing the stomach. It's as if the breasts weren't there. That's like eating a sundae by starting with the nuts, skipping the whipped cream and ice cream, and going straight to the fudge pooling at the bottom. If you're going to fuck another girl, it's okay and generally expected that you to touch, kiss, suck, squeeze her tits, it's called foreplay for a reason.

Breast pecks: The other common giveaway is to give a perfunctory peck to the top of the breast or a real quick peck on the nipple. What!!! I'd be yelling "Suck me, baby, harder". Some women have sensitive nipples (sadly) but they usually say so as you near the nipples with your mouth, or they tell you by their body reaction. We don't just usually assume so and skip it.

Polite hands: If you are ready to fuck, you should assume your hands can wander all over the naked or semi-naked body of the person whom you going to fuck. You don't have to keep them on the top of the shoulders at all times. This is fucking, not fucking 5th grade ballroom dance class.

Nipple play: sigh. I love nipples, so maybe I am just biased. I love sucking and kissing girls' nipples and I adore it when mine are so adored. I swear I can come by nipple play alone, so it makes me nuts how nipple avoidant these uh "lesbians" are.

Flaccid nipples: Hello! It's like a flaccid limpy bio dick. I can see she's not really into it.

Skin: When we are sexually excited our bodies flush in certain places. This lack of flush along with limpy nipples is a dead giveaway.

Wet: Since women don't usually have bio dicks, part of the way we determine a state of arousal is by wetness. Though this does change with age, (I have yet to see a lesbian sex scene involving post menopausal women though one would think this would be a rising viewing demographic), it would be normal for your new lover to take a read on how aroused you are (and ready for fucking) by how wet your pussy is. This is a wonderful moment when your girl reaches between your legs and discovers her prize. Usually accompanied by a moan on one or both party's parts. The vids seem to have the girls reach right for the clit and start to rub. I personally think a little lube on your clit before heavy friction is an excellent idea and a quick dip into the pool is usually a good way to start.

I wonder who should get my complaint? Is there a UN Ministry of Lesbian Realism I can file a complaint with? Any suggestions?

O Goody

The Thanksgiving holiday has passed, and I have finally managed to either eat or dump the lot of leftovers my sister-in-law placed in my lap as I was trying to speed off. The best part was the stuffing which was suitable for eating cold, microwaved, heated in a pan, or mixed with other leftovers to make them more appetizing. Unfortunately the stuffing to non-stuffing leftover ratio favored a trash dump yesterday.

This SIL is married to my older brother. I haven't gotten along with my older brother since we were kids. He had "issues" which have seemed to mellow with age, but he still manages to irk me by questioning my knowledge base or my abilities to make decisions. But recently we bonded. Because his wife picks on him on a regular basis. And I stuck up for him on his birthday. Really, all I did was add to the meal order a few items that he had wanted but his wife said she didn't like. I figured he's still paying for all of our meals (at a very expensive Zagat rated restaurant) he should get what he wants for his birthday, and she doesn't have to eat what she doesn't like. (Me, I ordered the fois gras, delicious.)

This brings me to the point of all of this. Straight women are meaner and seem to hate straight men more than all the conventional wisdom of men-hating dykes. I can't tell you the number of straight women who have expressed extreme hatred for men. Certainly some men deserve hatred from all quarters for their acts or words, but straight girls seem to really like to go all out on the men-trashing. I have often remarked that I seem to like men more than my straight women friends. They, of course, invariably say, "It's because you don't have to live with them." Perhaps. I don't usually give them much thought.

Of course I've had my share of rotten gfs (of the lying cheating can't keep it in their pants or out of some other girl's pants variety) but I've never sworn off girls because of it. Straight girls seem to give up on finding a bf after a certain age, because "men only seem to want younger women". Luckily this has not been my experience of the lesbian world, there are always available attractive women, even after 40. And most straight women who are getting sex seem to make do with the bio dick that's stuck to the end of the lucky guy whether or not that cock really suits the girl. Or straight women and men collude in the fiction that the size, shape, and skill in use of a cock doesn't matter or, worse, that the woman coming doesn't really matter. So my big question is: why in the world do straight women remain straight? It doesn't seem like a particularly happy lifestyle.

Glamour and Sex

Waiting for another new home health aide to appear to help with Mom overnight, so I can get some sleep. Well, I never sleep the first night someone is here, in case they need some help learning the ropes or Mom freaks out because there is a stranger in the house. So tonight and tomorrow will be a training day. Kinda like that movie with Denzel and one of those young kid guys that all the girls gush about, where Denzel is the corrupt cop training the idealist young cop to come into his web of corruption. Only my web involves Depends, thickened liquids, pee pads in the bed, bed alarms, a baby monitor, and a wheelchair.

My older sister schedules the home health aides to come in, and sometimes she forgets to give me all the details. I started to think she has some kind of brain injury or brain disorder because she is still relatively young to be as scattered as she is. Her son thought so too, so he gave her a mental status test (he is in medical school) and was shocked to find out that she has all her full faculties. I guess my nephew and I think alike and so there are at least two idiots in the family. I am not saying which two, but you can guess.

Quite a change from gay porn, eh? Well, who said my life was all glamour and sex.

Mr Limpy

Okay, back to gay porn. I watched a fascinating vid of a bunch of Brit "footballers" sucking and fucking each other. What was interesting to me was how difficult it was for some of the guys to get really hard. Mr L, shall we call him, after an intense bout of having his otherwise very pretty and nicely shaped dick thoroughly licked and swallowed and then using it to force fuck Mr X's throat sideways (to get in deep) down to the bottom of his shaft, he still was kind of limpy. Kind of sad, actually.

A different guy took over and sucked Mr Limpy with great enthusiasm, and another guy rimmed his asshole, but still, Mr Limpy. I wonder if he just wasn't that into it. But he was clearly very popular with the mens, perhaps because he had the prettiest dick. Finally another guy, Mr H, with a really hard dick that practically stood up to his belly, turned him over and fucked him in the ass. Mr Limpy's dick was still semi-hard but still mostly limpy. Mr H pulled out and turned him over and dribbled his cum on Mr still Limpy's pretty mouth and upturned face.

So, straight guys wonder why femme lesbians like to be fucked by butch lesbians? or by other femmes? One reason, lesbians never fuck you with a limpy dick, except on purpose. And depending on mood, any thickness or length of beautiful hard cock is available, and a girl can get fucked until she comes. And the whole cum thing? Shooting out of a bio dick? Not really that exciting. Mostly over-hyped dribble.

Is this too harsh? Sorry. Luckily there are gobs and gobs of straight girls and gay guys who love bio dick. Isn't the world a wonderful place?

A Temporary and Transient Crush

I have a temporary and transient crush on the French Finance Minister, Christine Lagarde. I saw an interview with her on PBS and she is beautiful. I also love the turnabout that has the French advising Americans on the future of capitalism. I think the intersection of this irony and the fact that Mme Lagarde looks hot in a boyish white shirt and suit jacket has given rise to this temporary and transient crush. Irony plus hotness will last just long enough before I remember that she is part of the conservative Sarkozy government and I am a devout pinko.

Okay, but she is beautiful and unmistakably sexy. I have no idea if she is queer but who cares, it's my fantasy, not hers. Plus she is French, and well, that has to count for something (subtract for conservative Sarkozy government). I love that she has left her hair in its natural salt & pepper state, since I have been grey since the age of 14, and I refuse to color my hair. Mme Lagarde is very self-assured, clearly smart, has a sense of humor, and she moves beautifully. I looked her up in Wiki and found that she is, oddly, a champion synchronized swimmer, perhaps why she moves so well and comfortably in her own body.

I admit I am easily crushed out on beautiful, powerful, smart, confident women. And yes, I did fantasize about how incredibly hot it would be to be endlessly slow and hard fucked by this gorgeous and uber-confident French Finance Minister wearing a sexy strap-on ("Oh yes! Fuck me baby, Please, baby, please fuck me, my French Finance Minister, hmm, O god, harder"), but then that whole Sarkozy conservative government thing managed to intrude into my delicious daydream, and I am back to being on the trailing edge of this temporary and transient crush.

Identities

I comment regularly on a political blog under a male identity. I didn't plan on this, I am just bad at coming up with names and my male cat was sitting on the desk batting at me, and so I used his name. He is a lovely boy, btw, and I adore him. But here I am, stuck with a decidedly male identity, so I just decided to stick with it.

I keep all the relevant facts of my life experience intact when commenting, I just, and others just, assume a male persona. So I am a gay man on that blog. A femme gay man. Whoosh. So I have a bf, not a gf, and okay, I sometimes talk about fabric.

What surprises me is how easy it is to assume a different gender identity, and how much more respect I get from other (assumed) male bloggers as a man. When I write one thing on one blog as a man, I get disagreement but respect. When I write the exact same thing on another blog as a woman, I get some trashing for being "too emotional". Who says sexism is dead?

I sometimes flirt sweetly, as I am sometimes wont to do on political blogs, with other bloggers, as a "gay man". Since these are progressive blogs, most straight men are pretty good natured about it, the gay guys will give it back, and the trolls won't answer. Women (or assumed women, I suppose) are very sweet about it. They like gay men who flirt with women, it's a safe way to flirt. I find all this quite mind-boggling and like a spider in my own web, I wonder how long I can maintain the fiction.

There are a couple of women on the site I frequent most whom I believe suspect that I am a woman, because I will often weigh in on feminist issues, on the side of feminists. Certain progressive blogs still contain a significant number of immature men who think using words like "bitch" or "cunt" prove them daring and cutting edge, rather than expose their limited word base as insipid and trite and sexist. I am often one of the very few male personas who weigh in in support of feminists. It is a weird twist in the anonymous internets, and calls into question assumptions about sex and gender. Perhaps this is why younger people whose childhood and teenage game playing may have included the assumption of an avatar of the opposite sex, have more fluid views on gender and on sexuality.

When I was young, I played games like cowboy where I assumed the identity of a gunslinger. Others assumed that meant I was being tomboyish, but I never actually felt as if I wanted to be a boy gunslinger, just a gunslinger who was a girl. I liked powerful figures, and while most powerful archetypes were male, not all were male.

Coming out as a lesbian, at the time I did, one did a lot of flannel and short haircuts. So I mostly dated girls who looked and dressed just like me. Since I am fairly extroverted and confident and funny (I think) in my regular life, I think there was an assumption by some friends that I fell more on the butch side of the spectrum. It took a little while to figure out that while there is a certain urban street look I like for myself (khakis or black pants, soft black tshirts, black ankle boots), there is a femme variety of this kind of dressing that I prefer in my non-work life. But I also wear sweats and sweatshirts at home, or shorts and tshirts, or when I paint (a house sucks up a lot of paint, and there are always more and more places to paint), crappy painting clothes.

When I work, I wear more typically femme clothing, but butchier femme. I rarely wear a dress or jumper or skirt or skirted suit, though I have them. I tend to wear pants (soft cotton. rayon, tencel or something with drape), a casual top (cotton, rayon, tencel or in the summer linen) and a beautiful, often expensive, scarf. I tend to wear scarves like the women's version of a tie. It dresses up outfits, and makes them more "professional". The clothes are comfortable, and I don't have to think about them, or how I sit, or how I will have to move, and I can focus on the work crisis at hand. I do notice that when I am dressed for work (or wear my work topcoat over my casual clothes) I am treated more deferentially by others.

Anyway, it's interesting how easy it is to influence a response based on malleable conditions. As a person of color, as a woman, as a lesbian, I know there are some things that are (for me) unchanging. And I live with the sometimes oppressive responses of an outside world, but it is an eye-opener for me to see how different my life experience could be if I was not who I am.

Another Day

It's humid and overcast, the day has almost slipped over the last bit of western sky, but it is still light out.

I've been reading lots of political blogs and sex blogs, as of late. I correlate this to the two things that seem to compel me most, right now: the election of Barack Obama and an increase in my libido due to exercise. Both fascinations are tied solely to the internet right now, since Barack has not invited me to join his Cabinet (he may have lost my email address) and I am away from home and from the girlfriend.

I understand men spend an inordinate amount of time on these two internet pursuits, but this duo is relatively new to me.

I have not watched any porn on the internet until recently. While I am a lesbian who enjoys what is dismissively called by some "reproductive heterosex" with girls, I don't find straight porn that interesting. Mostly because the women are, for the most part, completely unattractive to me. They just don't appear to be into it, in a way that resonates for me. And the guys have great looking dicks but no pussies or tits or clits, so it's kind of a let down. Did I mention I am not into guys? I did visit a gay male porn site just to see, and ZOWIE, okay, the guys really do do sex like it's a completely hedonistic animal act. And lucky for them, the other guys are just as into it. I was stunned by anal fisting which I had never actually seen before, and really, if it floats your boat, go for it, it's not a practice, however, that's currently high on my "to do" list.

Anyway, it's been an interesting time-waster. I've posted comments on some of the queer sex blogger sites, and a few of them are quite good writers, especially of queer erotica, mostly of the butch/top variety. Since I have femmed bottom (verb) in the past, I admit I reflexively find butch tops attractive. But I am not good at managing one consistent behavior, so I wasn't a really good femme bottom, because I don't always find lipstick practical, nor do I always agree that I should defer to what I consider impractical or arbitrary rules made by some butch top with a cock. This is why I do not belong to clubs. I make a horrible club person. I do belong to the JC Penney bra & panty club which only requires that you carry a little card and once you have purchased 6 bras (even on sale) you get the 7th for free. Now that's a club I can belong to.

Instead of porn and politics I have been trying to write a ghazal. A form of poetry that I have no history with, but I find interesting because I have no history with it. It's not what I write, but if we can't try something new and difficult every once in a while, well, I guess I would waste more time reading queer porn or watching snips of dyke porn. I actually refuse to pay for the full view, since my prurient interests are way out matched by my penny pinching. Really, if penny pinching was a sexual practice, I would be a cheap whore, really cheap.

Since I am terrible at belonging to groups with rules, (I am not so much rebellious or anti-authority as I am indifferent and easily bored), we'll see how long I keep this blog going. I hope it will be an honest interesection of the things that seem to run my life. We'll see.