January Checkmarks, Heartfelt February Goals

Mid-Year Heart Updates

1. Holy cow! The other day, my ACTUAL book came in the mail. I got overflowing with joy and brought punch and cookies and Caramel Creams and Hershey’s Hugs over to the library and had a celebration with the afterschool kids. We played a very sugared-up game of Apples to Apples. A cute grown-up friend of mine showed up to help pour the punch and sat there reading the book almost the whole time—I got to watch him laugh at the funny parts. It was truly one of the happiest days of my life, and I’m so glad that I got to share it with my beloved students.

The editing process was a joy and a breeze. I’m seriously lucky to have found a perfect match in my editor and pal Bryan Borland. I look forward to doing a book launch party or two, and a tour date here and there—it looks like there may be time after all.

2. This Friday is my last day the library. I am so very sad that it is over. When I arrived there, I was broken from my AmeriCorps service, unsure if I was fit to work with children, and the library gave me a chance to start fresh in such a nice, easygoing way. I am so proud and excited about the relationships I’ve built at the library in the past two years, both with the kids and with the library staff. The amount of art and poetry we’ve created is staggering. I could not be prouder of the way this job turned out—I will miss it very much.

3. Yesterday I was notified that this fall, my student teaching will take place at Wister Elementary, my school of choice, right down the street. It’s been my dream to work in one of my neighborhood’s public schools, and this is one step closer to that dream. I’ve been doing classroom observations at Wister since last summer, and it is, for the most part, a warm and welcoming place with kids who really need me. It’s covered with beautiful murals on the outside—I’ll be glad to see those every morning.

4. I’ve finally found a good therapist. She is on maternity leave at the moment and the interim girl is doing okay, but Dr. Alicia is kind of a miracle. She trusts me to get where I’m going—I’m sure she has an agenda for me, but her guidance is minimal and it is WORKING. As a result, I’ve made a whole bunch of progress, unloading a lot of misconceptions and thought-structures that have been holding me down over the years.

 The other day at the Trans Health Conference, one of the speakers was talking about activist work as tilling the soil—it might be difficult, it might bring up unpleasant things, but tilling is necessary if you want to plant anything. I feel like that’s what therapy is for me. I’ve still got a lot of hard-packed soil that needs tilling. Sometimes it’s frustrating and really dark, but I think if I just let the momentum I’ve created carry me forward, I’ll get to that liking-myself dream that seems so important, especially for an almost-teacher.

5. I’ve become a prolific writer of smut in the last six months. My pseudonymous blog has given me a chance to really push my writerly/bodily boundaries, and I’m so proud of that. I’m proud of how absolutely FILTHY I can be. Finding a language for sex has been part of finding out what I really want, and how to say what I really want. Now if I could only find one more person to give it to me.

6. Siiiiigh, love. As I write this, I’m in a place of deep ambivalence about relationships, even my relationship with Amy. When I wrote my year-end heart update last year, I was in a pretty good place about Amy, guys, and polyamory, but it has been a rough six months. I sent myself on a year of body adventures, and some of the experiences have been incredible (I’m talking to you, fire massage…) but they’ve also been fraught with triggers and sadness and betrayal. Lately, I am having a really hard time believing that there is a guy out in the world for me—I worry that the universe forgot to make me one. Looking back at last December’s heart updates is painful, because I felt so close to having what I wanted, and then all of a sudden, it/he was gone.

My friends, I sometimes feel like a crazy person, because I am still in love with one of the guys from last December. After six months! He was mean and scary in some ways, but in other ways he was exactly what I’d been fantasizing about all those guyless years. He pushed me past so much, he was an unstoppable force, he was one of the top three kissers I’ve known, and the chemistry between us was as irresistible as a crash. Between us, we exchanged about 250 songs.  I do my best to move on, so much has happened since then, he’s been gone for so long, but other guys just end up feeling like a ghost of him.

I know I’m just lonely, and it won’t last forever. I’m going to do my best to keep on with my adventures and hope that the invisible ribbons that tie me to him will someday soon untie and blow away.

New Adult-Content Blog

For the sake of continuity and so that I can speak more freely, I've decided to move my body-adventures story to an undisclosed location. If you decide that you want to read it, let me know. I'll swear you to secrecy and send you the link! I'm so excited for this new project!

Song of the Week: I'm Your Man

As promised, I had a fabulous Leap Day evening getting my author photos done by a pal of mine who likes to play with fire. I probably have a lot more to say about that but for now I'll just tell you that this is a guy who built a secret room in his basement which you access by taking a book off of a bookshelf, just like in Scooby Doo. That makes me feel like the world is a truly magical place.

This song's more romantic than what was actually happening, but it nonetheless suited the mood. Yay!

Made-Up Leap Day Tradition/ Mmmmm, Fire.

I totally had this idea before I watched 30 Rock last night.  Last Leap Day, I decided to make an album in collaboration with my friend Gregg Yeti--we came up with The Suddenly Nervous.

This year on Leap Day, I will be getting my author photo done by a friend who is also a fire masseur. I'm still not exactly sure what that is but I REALLY look forward to finding out.

So I propose that  Leap Day is for pushing your personal envelope in as fun a way you can come up with. Good luck!

A Nice Omen

The other night I was on a sad pajama-getting errand and I noticed this mural around the corner from my pal's house. I must've walked past it six or seven times before without noticing it, but I'm glad I finally did. My phone's camera really stinks though, sorry.

Poly Living Conference Part Six: What Have We Learned from This?

After Amy picked me up from the snuggle party, I sobbed my face off all the way home. I was saying things like “But all those people are so nice! I’m just not good enough for them!” Amy tried to argue as she always does, but mostly she just listened. We watched Zooey Deschanel host SNL up until the news, then went to bed.

The next day, I cried some more, and it felt like it was coming right out of my heart. It felt like productive crying, similar to the way it feels when you’ve finished some particularly unpleasant homework. Transformative, kind of.

Here’s a list of what I got out of the experience I’ve just spent so many paragraphs on:

1. I love those books where the author spends a year doing something special and then writes about it. This blog was inspired by one of those, The Happiness Project, but my favorite is Helping Me Help Myself, by Beth Lisick. This feels like the beginning of one of those projects.

For the rest of the year, I’m going to enjoy a reasonable number of sex-positive body adventures and write as much as I can about them. They won’t all go on here, so feel free to write me for the location of this blog’s id, if you don’t already know.

2. Happiness, self-worth, and sex-goddess-hood are so close and will do so much for me and for Amy, but to get there I’ll need to surround myself with poly and poly-friendly people more often. I need to follow my body’s advice to make everything better, and that means community building first.

3. I need to not approach community-building from a caretaking standpoint—I need to let the community take care of me for a while. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of chances to give back later on.

4. Amy and I are strong and amazing. I’m proud of the way we’ve worked to reinvent marriage for ourselves, the way every couple really does. It’s like a miracle.

5. The snuggle party helped me confront some of my fears and let them go. I think it’s so cool how that happens sometimes. Though it isn’t good to date your fears, of course, I’m glad of all of the Jungian characters who’ve come into my life and somehow helped me to see and love my shadow self, to confront my hang-ups, limits, and flaws and hopefully sometimes let them go.  Special thanks to all the good/bad influences, though in the future, I’d mostly just like to have fun.

Poly Living Conference Part Five: Of Course I Cried in the Snuggle Party

It’s kind of funny that this day happened more than a week ago and I’ve still got so many paragraphs to go…

My pal Shappy wrote a blurb for my book a couple of weeks ago and said this:  “Jane has a polymorphous heart and we all love her for it even when she runs to the bathroom for a good cry during a birthday party for someone's kitty cat!" That seems apt for this next part of the story.

I wasn’t the only one taking a break during kitty-cat time. I ran into M in the restroom and on the way out, I said half-jokingly “You know you can order me around a little if you want.” We got to talking about D/s relationships and what can go wrong if folks don’t know what they’re doing—as we opened the door to go back in she gave me a shush and I don’t know why, but that made me feel so bad, like I was too bad to be part of the snuggle party. I wanted to talk to her some more but I worried about getting fixated—I didn’t want to ruin the party for her. It’s funny how much the situation amplified my emotions and fears. In the long run I think that’ll end up to have been therapeutic.

People had stopped being kitties and had paired up, quadrangled, etc. Some were in gentle hug or massage situations and some were a bit more grindy. There was some cheerful making out and just a few spankings here and there—that made me happy even if it wasn’t what I wanted at the moment.

But my back pain had come backs and it started to hurt in my belly and diaphragm area as well. When the guy who’d liked my massage skills came back for more, I said sure, if we could trade off. As I rubbed his shoulders I just hurt more and more. I lay down on my front so he could rub my back but my middle just hurt so much that I had to sit up and get some space. A few other people sat in the chairs on the side of the cuddle area, all with sort of bewildered expressions. All women, all looking unhappy—what were we doing here?

V. the nice Aspergian gentleman from lunch, came over and asked if I was “into massage.” (Just a side note: I am decidedly not into being asked if I am “into” things. Also I don’t care for the word “lifestyle.”) I told him I was having some space but I didn’t mind talking. He was really sad because his relationship of five and a half years had just broken up, partly because of his Asperger’s symptoms. (I’d say he was about 60 and had just been diagnosed.) He said he didn’t understand why you just get cut off from somebody sometimes, and I sure don’t understand that either. I told him that I felt foolish, because his relationship had been so long and here I was feeling all sad over someone I’d known for only two months, and half of that just online. I said that I missed the friendship most and he said “Oh, did you know each other for years?” and I said “No, just the two months” and that made me feel like a crazy person.

I wanted to help V with his sadness but I was feeling really bad so I went over to ask Kamala if she had a minute to help me. I felt terrible for interrupting her fun, but she was one of three “cuddle caddies” designated to help the rest of us…carry our stuff, I guess.

She told me to take some nice sighing breaths and that helped a lot. Then she asked if I had a grief, if I’d recently had a breakup. I told her about the Bill thing and about how he was a lot of new things and first-in-a-long-time things but I didn’t really understand what the big deal was. She said “So he embodied what your body was deprived of for so long.” That made me feel understood and understanding about the grief—I started to cry a little and my belly started to feel a little better but I was very very worried about ruining everybody’s good time.

She told me that grief causes pain like that when you fight it and try to dismiss it. She told me that bonobo chimps have a town crier, a chimp who cries all of the tears so that the rest of the group doesn’t have to. She thanked me for crying so that she could have this great time. That made me laugh a whole lot, which faded the pain even more.

“No such thing as too emotional” guy came over and offered me a hug. He was humming something while he hugged me, I think it was some “healing energy” that I hadn’t consented to, but I decided to let it slide. I stayed and chatted for a few minutes, but was very excited when I found out it was 10:30, the time Amy was planning to pick me up. I interrupted a cuddle or two to say some goodbyes, put my coat on over my pajamas, and went out to the lobby to wait.

Next: What have we learned from this?

Poly Living Conference Part Four: Negotiating a Three Person Snuggle Experience

The next part of the snuggle party seemed especially daunting, because I’ve never been particularly fond of group projects. We were to choose two people to work with and negotiate how we would like to spend a five minute snuggle experience. I picked M, the nice woman from the body workshop who’d told me goddesshood is immanent, and R, a very warm-seeming beardy guy who was decidedly belle of the Poly Living ball.

M was wearing fuzzy bright blue pajamas with little polar bears on them and R had on a fancy shirt and MAGENTA VELVETEEN stretch pants. There should be an award for best pants worn to a snuggle party. Kamala told us to sit as close together as we felt comfortable and we sat in a cute knees-touching triangle. After we’d Namaste-ed each other, she told us to close our eyes and direct our attention to the person on the right. We were supposed to get a sense of the person this way and think of the best way to enjoy ourselves with them. M was to my right. She was very comfy and cozy to be next to and I imagined her petting my hair. Next we had to focus on the person to our left. I felt leery of R because he was so popular and I was worried I would get attached—when I’m not going for complete hermits, I tend to go for the social butterfly type, one extreme or the other. Anyway, my reticence was overcome by the awesomeness of his pants, so I decided I would like to pet them. On the shin, no higher.

Next we were instructed to open our eyes and each go in turn saying what we wanted to do with our five minutes. It was pretty easy to arrive at a pants-petting consensus, since we all had on very soft PJs. We spent a couple of minutes doing this and it felt exceedingly pleasant. I no longer felt any reservations about either of them, or anything else, for that matter. It was very platonic pants-petting, I feel like I should point out.

R’s a fan of rubbing feet, so he asked if I would like a foot rub. M offered to pet my hair while he did that. I wondered it they’d felt my energy or whatever and felt like I needed some help and care, but whatever the reason, I was happy they’d asked. As I settled between them, M asked if there’s a special way I like my hair petted. Nobody’s ever asked me that before! I felt so special! R asked how I like my feet rubbed and I said firmer than not. Those few minutes of just being cared for so sweetly and generously felt soooo nice. Both of these strangers felt so warm and safe, it was amazing. I was leaning on M and could feel her heart behind me. She said I had such beautiful hair.

Because I never do stop yammering, we got to chatting while the snuggling was happening and I learned that she is a professional domina. She must be really good at her job. When time was called I told her I hoped she could give me some advice about finding a dom. She volunteered for the job and I kind of felt like a jerk for saying I’m looking for a guy.

In snuggle parties as in life, I had a hard time moving on. I didn’t want to move away from M and R ever, but everyone was instructed to form a new triad. I thanked M and R and raised my hand until I found a new pair of people. I didn’t feel as drawn to these two, and I probably should have sat the next part out. It was a frustrating negotiation for me. I wanted to talk to them more than touch them, so when the negotiation started, I said “I just want to hear your hopes and dreams.” but they kept mistaking that for a request to reiterate physical wishes, and it kept looping around in a sort of who’s-on-first situation.

This is a frustration I’ve been having in my body-focused adventures. I do want to live in my body more, to entertain it more, but I feel like people often want to skip over the other parts of being human. Granted, this is the opposite of the just-friends problem I’ve been having for most of my adult life. Maybe people just take the I-like-you-as-a-person stuff as a given, I don’t know.

Anyway, we settled on rubbing each other’s backs in a row, like people used to do at raves. The guy called me the best masseuse ever, but I told him I was worried my energy was too bad for that. (Jeez, this is the most I’ve used the word energy in that James Redfield way since the early Nineties!) He said, “That’s okay, I’ll just be your only client.” The lady of the group said she’s too much of a giver to get a massage without giving one. That kind of pissed me off, I don’t know why.

After that, it was time for “free play.” Kamala ushered in the free snuggle portion of the evening by instructing everyone to get on their knees and pretend to be kitty cats. Um, NO. This was where I drew the line. There’s a whole bunch of things I’ll do, but grown people pretending to be little fuzzy animals is just...no. I decided it was time for a pee-break so I found my shoes and crept out of the room.

Next time: of COURSE I cried at the snuggle party.

Poly Living Conference Part Three: Some Background and Intro to Tantric Snuggling

Poly Living Conference Part Three: A Little Background and Intro to Tantric Snuggling

Just a little poly side note: a letter of mine got read on Poly Weekly this week. I feel so special! Plus it’s a nice racy episode. Enjoy!

I wanted to give you a little emotional background info before I start talking about the snuggle party.

Towards the end of December, an enormous chasm of grief opened up. This didn’t put too much of a damper on Christmas, thought it did give kind of a dark tint to our yearly family debates about whether Baby, It’sCold Outside is romantic or creepy. (romantic!) Overall, though, anhedonia is no match for Christmas spirit.  The chasm of grief sort of had a person associated with it, this quasi-BDSM relationship that I’ve written about elsewhere, but one person could not possibly inspire all of that sadness.

The grief was/is all that my body has been though and everything I’ve deprived it of in order to keep myself “safe.” It’s about the way’s in which my fear of men has alienated relationships and friendships and kept me separate in some ways from a whole gender, putting barriers into friendships and relationships. It’s kept me from knowing guys for who they really are. I think the sadness was also a reaction to the fact that I’d jest been through HUGE changes, all kinds of firsts and first-in-a-long-times, and I was trying to treat it like it was no big deal. It was a big fucking deal.

In the time since the chasm opened up, I’ve taken a lot of steps to move myself kindly and gently forward, to be open to more new experiences, and I really got bored with the grief. At the time of the conference, I still had some mentionitis about the guy, but I was feeling pretty good most of the time.

Anyway, back to the story. Here’s how the conference described the snuggle party:

“A SACRED SNUGGLE PARTY is a sweet sensual event where we create a safe space to flirt, touch, massage, run Tantric energy, play, laugh, cry, and share intimacy, vulnerability or whatever else spontaneously arises.  After a number of fun icebreakers, it becomes a drug and alcohol-free play party where we can relax and connect with like-minded people. Singles, couples, triads, pods, and celibates of any race, or experience level are welcome. All sexual orientations are celebrated.  This is a fun laboratory to practice expressing what feels good and what doesn’t, asking to get your needs met, setting boundaries, and perhaps even overcoming competition, envy and rejection! The evening event will close with a sacred ritual in which each player shares their most valuable lesson.”

I wasn’t convinced until I was sure that it was an organized activity with a facilitator. So many other things in life could use facilitators, I think.

When Amy heard that I wanted to go, she suggested that I get some new pajamas for it. She also brought me some gum in case dinner was too spicy. This is the kind of support I get—can’t get over how lucky I am. It was a drizzly day, so we also stopped and got me some fresh socks before we went back to the hotel. Amy hung out in the hotel atrium while I changed into my pjs. Then we got to cuddle on the hotel couch for a little bit before it was time for the party.

The snuggle party was in Ballroom A—your standard carpeted hotel meeting hall. Everyone who was staying at the hotel brought down blankets and comforters and smoothed them all out at the center of the room to make a nice soft cuddle space. A nice man from one of the couples brought down an extra pillow for me. I’d say there were about 30 people there, diverse in age, race, etc, dressed in all different styles, not as hippie-ish as you’re picturing. We all sat in a circle, getting ready to be oriented. Kamala Devi was the facilitator. She led us in some Tantric breathing and some Om-ing. I am fairly agnostic about body energy, but as soon as I sat down in that circle, if I have sacred energy, it was out of whack. I started to feel anxious-sore, like I’d been sitting there way too long. I had little prickles in my legs and an icky pain in my lower back. I tried some stretching and yoga poses, but I kept getting hurtier.

The first snuggle party was more eye-gazing. You had to look at somebody and tell him or her what your fears were, what blocked you from having a great snuggle party experience. Everything I said boiled down to “I’m nervous and I’m trying not to bolt.”  I couldn't really put whatever I was afraid of into words. The folks I ended up talking to feared being rejected or not being able to ward off unwanted affection. These seemed like very reasonable things to worry about.

After that came Kamala’s instructions about saying yes and no. You had to always ask someone before you touch him or her, and you had to say a clear yes or no. That’s part of what we were supposed to be there to practice. If you felt like something was a maybe, she said, say no, because you can always change your mind later. I’ve heard this instruction from sexperts before, but I have to admit I’ve been lazy about using it.

After that, we each had to stand up in the circle and say one thing we were a yes to and one thing we were a no to. The most frequent nos were kissing and tickling, and the most frequent yesses were massage. I said “I’m a yes to friendly and a no to sexy.” I was truly freaked out by the idea of doing anything sexual in this context. It was a clothes-on event, but still.

Next time, negotiating a three person snuggle experience. 

Poly Living Conference Part Two: Cute Lunch and the Best Amy-Date Ever

After the body workshop it was time for lunch. I knew I should continue to keep mingling, but I felt lazy about it. Luckily, a very nice asbergian gentleman, V, was getting a lunch group together and they asked if I wanted to join. I hadn’t imagined there’s be anyplace to walk to from the Embassy Suites by the airport—seems like not really a place at all. But everyone was walking to a Ruby Tuesdays.

I liked walking down the misty grey road with a bunch of people who were recently strangers. I got to meet (after just having seen them naked-yay!) the couple who runs the discussions for the Philly Poly Meetup Group, and they were so charming that I’m sure I’ll be dragging Amy to a lot more discussions in the near future.

We were a party of eight, then ten, then twelve. I sat near my new discussion group pals and a few folks who were new to or just considering identifying as poly. Two were in mono-poly situations like I am. One guy had been told by the lady he’s dating that he is mentally ill for wanting to be at the conference. I kinda want to punch that lady in the face. I feel really lucky that I’ve always had such good support from Amy.

I felt very protective of everybody at the table and also like I wanted to write endorsements for their OK Cupid pages. (You should totally be able to do that!) Guilt was a common theme in people’s stories, and I wanted to offer them a whole lot of support because guilt has held me back so much.

One of my new friends, bless his heart, said, “Well, if you’re bi, it makes sense that you should at least get one of each.” So simple! And yet I spent all of that time trying to be gay, even though I’d never ask anyone else to make that kind of a compromise and Amy never asked me not to be bi. Anyway, it felt physically different to be there surrounded by poly folks, and I’d like to give my body that treat a lot more often.

Whenever I go to a big event, I try to volunteer for something so that I’ll be forced to talk to more people. So after lunch I had a shift to mind the Philadelphia Mindful Polyamory Meetup group’s table. Mostly I just went on and on about how awesome their karaoke night is. I also yammered a whole whole bunch about love to the girl at the next table. She was inspired by my habit of asking new OKC pals for playlists, which I still do even though it gets my heart into trouble sometimes.

Because I was planning to be at the conference until late at night, Amy came and picked me up for a dinner date. I was so happy to see her—she seemed to have an extra glow, even her coat, even the tips of her hair. This is how love feels when I’m settled into my skin. We kissed more than a nine-years-married couple might expect to. When we got back to the city, we stopped at the West Philly Capogiro, the one with the boozy gelato flavors. The bourbon butterscotch is ridiculous. We sat side by side on a plush bench and caught up on our magazines, trading my Entertainment Weekly for her Believer. We were both giddy and kind of flooded with well-being. Amy was extra happy because she’d spent the day working on design. It was an ordinary date but it self super-romantic for some reason. This is what life could be like all the time, I think, if Amy got a little more creative time and I got a little more self-esteem.

Next up—we stop and get fresh socks for the snuggle party.

Poly Living Conference Part One: Icebreakers to Half-Naked

In The Notorious Bettie Page,  there’s a scene where she’s naked in the woods and the scene is just about how unselfconscious she is, how much she just enjoyed being there. That image has been my goal for a while, not so much the being-naked, (and not really the looking like Bettie, either—I’m not Kenley from Project Runway) but the idea of being as trusting, vulnerable, and comfortable in my skin as she was. I caught a glimpse of that version of myself at the Poly Living conference, and it feels like a pretty big breakthrough.

Saturdays are usually my stay in bed day with Amy, so I admit to being a little bit grumpy on the way there. I made a couple of goals for the day—to have fun, make a few connections, and push myself to be a little more open.

When I got there, I picked the icebreakeriest-sounding workshop. At the beginning of new experiences, I always imagine myself as shy, but of course this is rarely the case. We played that pretty standard icebreaker game called “allies”—one person stands in the middle and says something about his or herself, and anyone who has that thing in common steps into the circle. My favorite was the guy who got up and said “There’s no such thing as too emotional.” I skipped to the center to join him on that one. Mine was “I’ve just recently discovered my kinky side” and almost everyone moved to the center with me—hooray!

The first thing that always strikes me about poly gatherings is the diversity in ages. I think society trains us to think of sex and lovey-doveyness as the province of the young, so I am always happy to see poly folks of every age. In isolation, I feel like I might only have a few urgent years to goof around, but that is very silly and clearly not the case. I like the idea that anyone can decide to reinvent romance for his- or herself at any time in life. This gives me the feeling like maybe I can relax and take my time, and that’s good.

Anyway, after the circle thing, we arranged ourselves into spectrums, how long we’ve identified as poly, how out we are, how many sweeties, etc. I just love any situation where I can learn a how lot of really personal information about people all at once, so I left my grumpiness far behind.

As that workshop was wrapping up, I ended up disclosing my Bettie Page image to the “no such thing as too emo” guy and he suggested I take the “My Body and Me” workshop that was coming up next.

It’s occurring to me that going to a whole bunch of workshops about love might seem a little weird, but it’s my approach to anything—just suck up as much knowledge as I can. This is a research project after all.

The body workshop was in a mini conference room, very cozy. Everyone took off their shoes as they came in so I did the same. The facilitator was a cute bespectacled lady of indeterminate age—polyamory must be good for the skin because I kept meeting ladies who seemed my age but were sometimes decades older.

Anyway, the nice lady got naked pretty fast, narrating her way through the process.—her metamour had just gotten her this very nice purple push-up bra that made excited about her boobs, a photographer made her happy by renaming her stretch marks “texture.” and then she took off her pink leopard-print undies and was naked.

We were instructed to introduce ourselves in two words or less, and everyone opted to go by their OK Cupid names. The first exercise was to pair up with someone and stare into his or her eyes-which is SO HARD to do with a stranger but CLEARLY very good for you. Then you had to tell this person all kinds of statements that begin with “If you really knew me…” If it were up to me most of life would be conducted in this way.

As the conversations were happening, people around the room started getting progressively more naked. My eye-gazing friend’s partner was naked as can be right behind me, so she kept getting distracted and forgetting what she was saying. It was adorable. None of this felt awkward or unsafe to me at all—just kind of pleasant and normal. My body started to feel warm and relaxed the way it does sometimes after singing a lot or yoga.

Nothing about what we were doing seemed particularly magical, just talking about our bodies in pairs and groups. After a while I decided I was gonna get my money’s worth, so I took off my sweater but left on my bra and shiny scarf. I felt warm and my hair felt nice on my back.

At the end everybody had to go around and say what they’d gotten out of the experience. I said “I feel like I’m THIS CLOSE to settling into my skin and being the sex goddess I’ve always wanted to be. I guess what I’ve gotten from this is that I should take every opportunity to push myself in that direction, and that it’s safe to do so.”

Afterwards, there was a “mill and hug” and hugging naked or partly naked strangers was surprisingly easy to navigate. A girl I’ll call M came up to me and said she felt like she knew me, and that she could see that I would be that goddess, she could see it already. We’ll hear a lot more from M when I get to the snuggle party portion of the story.

I guess I want to make it clear that I don’t think I’m superspecial or anything—I sincerely think everyone is a sex god or goddess in his or her own way, (even if, like me, they get weepy at the snuggle party) and that part of being alive is to find and express that in our own way.

Next time, a nice poly lunch and the cutest date with Amy ever.

Songs of the Week: Valentine's Is Hurty

Things are pretty adorable over here in the Lawson-Cassady household, but I've been thinking a lot lately about love, hurt, freedom, and...outfits?

Don't watch the middle video if you might get triggered or traumatized...

Song of the Week: Close to Me

So, inspired by my nice therapist, I'm meditating this week on what closeness in romance actually is. The subject makes my tummy hurt, but it has to be reckoned with.

What Your Favorite Porn Says About You

I don't write a lot about sex directly on here, but this Psychology Today article is interesting to think about. It comes via Polyamory Weekly.

Triads and Quadrangles: Ohno, Did I Date the Beeper King?

Of course not. The dude I've been recovering from for the past month or so was mostly just an odd guy doing his best. No one gets all the blame for a good/bad match, some things just don't work out. And yet. I was watching a 30 Rock rerun the other day and when Dennis (who also plays Mayhem in those insurance commercials) entered a scene by calling Liz "Dummy" I felt a spark of recognition. Liz had dialed her ex in a fit of nostalgia brought on by a gas leak. He was smug about it until she explained that she wasn't nostalgic for him, she was nostalgic for a time when she could afford to make mistakes.

(Side note: early on, the guy told me he'd once spit iced tea on Girl Talk. The only way that that could've been more deal-breakery is if he'd spit on a unicorn.

When I first started dating last fall, I thought that being poly meant that I could be really flexible about the guys I dated. After all, I wasn't looking for a husband. But being in more than one relationship really means that I need to take better care of myself than maybe I would've when I was single. The amount of heartbreak-aftercare that Amy has performed in the last month is a testament to the strength of her love, but it also just kind of stinks.

Over the course of my adult life, I have gotten into the habit of breaking myself all the way down and building myself up from scratch. This year is the first year I've had a definite plan to fulfill, and I simply can't afford to spend time on things that drain me like that. Even things that are really good kissers.

There's still a little gasleak of feelings, I'll admit, and I do miss some stuff about him, especially the friendship element of our whatever-that-was, but all that I can do is go forward. I'ts inspiring, though, to think of the fact that I need to keep myself happy not just for me, but for the whole team. I'm going to do my best to take care of myself and keep healing. Team Jane, thank you. I know I'll make mistakes in the future and I'm sure this isn't my last heartbreak, but I'll do my best to honor your wonderfulness.

This Was Made for Me: Emotional Bag Check

A friend of the factory and my #OKCSupportgroup alerted me to this adorableness. You tell your story and people send you songs to make you feel better. They also write you really nice notes of encouragement! 

Here's my favorite of the songs I got:

Triads and Quadrangles: Mini Update

Back to this, yay. :)

Triads and Quadrangles: Poem From #OKCSupportGroup But Also Rumi

Not that I'm in any mood to go back to scrolling through matches yet, but my OKCSupportGroup friend sent me this Richard Brautigan poem that captures both what I love and what I hate about my lovey-dovey adventures. It's Raining In Love.

And as an antidote, The Way of Love is not a Subtle Argument. 

Triads and Quadrangles: Okay, So, Therapy.

Well, the last few months' adventures were rewarding in so many ways. I've come a long way since I started this, um, research project. But opening up my heart so much in the past few months brought sadness with it, too. I'm mourning the years that I've spend being afraid of men and wasting lots of time on fruitless crushes. I'm realizing that unless I deal with my teenage past, I'm going to cause myself a lot more pain. I've spent the past few months feeling like both a healthy dirty-thirties woman and a desperate teenager. I feel so grateful to the guys who were my first-a-lot-of-things-in-a-while, and I'm still sorry to have had to let them go. For the next few months, I plan to focus on spending as much time in the poly and kink communities, making friends and settling into my various new identities. I think it'll be fun. also, I'm going to watch a lot of TV with my wife, which is more happy-making than most things.

A few of you might remember that I started this blog the year before last after leaving therapy in a huff--I felt like it was impossible to find a therapist who wouldn't try to cure me with pills and/or monogamy. Today I had an intake appointment with a practice that seems different. Their policy is one of cultural competency, and the woman who did the intake made me feel like I wasn't being steered or judged. They'll match me with a therapist within a few weeks, so we'll see how it goes. It would be nice to have some support through the various transitions. The goals I gave were:
1. To not be afraid of men.
2. To be more confident and less anxious.

Isn't that always the dream.