Sexuality Happens

Part of this post is part of my 30 Days of Letters blog endeavor. This would be Day 2, a letter to my partner/crush. However, it also just so happens to be Q’s 25th birthday, and so I’m combining it.

First of all, today is Q’s 25th birthday (she likes the TMNT a lot, hence the graphic). If you feel so inclined, leave a comment here, or head over to Q’s Twitter with your birthday wishes. Happy birthday baby! No more young driver costs on rental cars — w00t!

And now, my letter.

Dear Q/baby/stud muffin/etc,

I love you, period. I love you more and more every day. I never knew I could love a person so much, and in so many different ways, and more and more and more. I am so happy every single day of my life to have you in it.

Thank you for putting up with me. With my crankiness in the mornings, with my epic fear of bugs (although I did kill that one — I really do hope you’re proud of me, as it was one of the scariest moments of my life), with my messy house style, with my animal print obsession, with our cats and how they get along, with my late nights and travel, with my sex toys scattered around the house, with my pain issues and migraine issues and knee issues, with me being emotionally needy at times. Thank you for working on your communication skills, and for never leaving or going to bed angry (frustrated, perhaps, but never angry).

You do so many amazing things, and I am so incredibly proud of you. The work you’ve done on the campus making it a safer and more inclusive place for LGBTQ students, staff and faculty is just unbelievable, especially given not having a budget, having four campuses, 70,000 students, and the pay check of someone barely out of undergrad. You put your mind to something, and it will be accomplished; that is how dedicated (and at times, stubborn) you are. I just wish your job appreciated you more — you completely deserve it.

I know we have rough patches…whether it’s having to learn to live my my trips to doctors, hospital and ERs, or me learning to live with your sometimes wacky school schedule, we make it work. As gross as it seems, I just can’t even imagine my life without you at this point, so please don’t ever make me have to.

I’m always a little scared. Despite what might seem to be a tough and self-confident exterior, I’m always questioning. Am I pretty enough, am I smart enough, am I dedicated enough, am I good enough. When my knees came to the forefront of our lives, I questioned whether you’d think it was too much, whether you’d give up and leave me because it’s a lot of work, and emotion and scary as fuck to deal with all this. I know it’s hard, and so I will always question how someone can love me enough to deal with it. This has nothing to do with how much I love or trust you; it has to deal with me, and how I view myself. Please don’t let this push you away.

You’re smart, funny, witty, vibrant, silly, deep, introspective, hot, studly, and just over all the best partner (and cat co-parent) that I could ever imagine. Even better, in fact.

<3,

-Essin’ Em

Relationships are constantly and consistantly changing. Period. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves.

When I say relationships, I mean everything from friendships to lovers, play partners to family, etc. Relationship means two (or more) people in relation to one another.

Think for a moment about your best friend from 1st grade. Do you still talk? Do you still have the same dynamic? What about your parent/guardian? Is your relationship the same now as it was last year, three years ago, five years ago? Or your last lover/hook-up/ex? How has that relationship changed since you are no longer together?

Relationship change, everyday. I don’t understand when people say things like “this is perfect– let’s never let our relationship change.” How is that possible? Even if both (or all) people didn’t want any change, change is inevitable. As other parts of our lives change, morph, grow, crash and burn, etc, this all has an effect on each and everyone of our relationships. Resisting change is futile; only when we can accept it and work with it can our relationships truly blossom and change.

Take my moose Evey. When we first met, her primary partner was essentially trying to convince me that she would be an ideal fisting partner. However, despite that move on his part, we wound up becoming more of play partners in the kink scene. At first, it was a bit more serious styled, and then we both discovered our love of silly, amusing scenes, and we went from there. At one point, we had sex (well, not according to formerly mentioned primary, but we did according to us), and decided that we didn’t think that’s where the relationship needed to go. We didn’t repeat that experiement.

Sometimes, she’s more a service moose, helping me get around, bringing me ice, planning things, bringing people to see me. Sometimes, she’s just a moose, and we talk in ridiculous accents and plan our scenes. Sometimes, she bottoms to me, letting me play tic tac toe on her arms, or beat her up while wearing a cape. Our relationship constantly changes, depending on where each of us are (physically, emotionally, mentally, and locale-wise).

Recently, our relationship changed again. We had some play time planned at Thunder, and in the middle of it, she realized that her submission to her primary, her Master, now made it very difficult, neigh on impossible for her to get into the right head space to bottom to or submit to other people. My moose decided that while she was still open to play with others, she planned to focus more on topping.

For a moment, I was sad. I now have a bunch of beautiful new custom canes, and no one to use them on (Q doesn’t like pain). I have no one to be a silly bottom to my ridiculous top. However, then as I sat for a moment, and really thought about, I saw that this is just one more change in our relationship, one more facet for us to figure out, one more branch of growth.

Without change, relationships can grow old, and stale, and wither. It is only with change, and embracing it, can we grown, both on our own, and in our relationships.

-Essin’ Em

A poem for Q.

How do I find you sexy? Let me count that ways…

*When you open the car door for me, and close it after I’ve eased myself into the seat, I find you to be chivalrously sexy.

*When we lie in bed at nice, and you are the big spoon, holding and protecting me, the little spoon, your whole body up against me, skin on skin, I find you to be comfortingly sexy.

*When you make silly faces with me, or quote Glee and How I Met Your Mother, and our eyes connect, and there is that spark, I find you amusingly sexy.

*When you’re fucking me silly, and I look at you, deep in concentration, a bead or two of sweat rolling down your face, I find you earth shatteringly sexy.

*When I’m fucking you, sliding in and you, making you moan and groan and make those noises I love, I find you just fucking sexy.

*When we cuddle afterwards, and we are just a pile of skin and sweat and shakey-ness, I find you handsomely sexy.

*When you talk to our cats although they were our children, I find you fatherly sexy.

*When you are in my life, you make it so much better from making me food to stroking my hair, from keeping the worst issues at bay and celebrating the best. Everytime I see you, my heart jumps just a little bit. I still get those butterflies in my tummy when I see you in a tie, or you kiss my neck. You are, without a doubt, the sexiest person I know, and when I see you, or hear your voice, or get a text from you, I find you sexy. Always.

The other day, as we lay together in bed, I asked Q if she’d be willing to be a bit more romanctic. I told her that while I knew how much she loved me, and that I loved her an incredible amount, that we’d settled into a routine, and that I needed to be romanced more.

She wanted to know what that meant, and pointed out we didn’t have a lot of extra money running around (and this was even before I was robbed, which cost us $400+ in glass relacement fees, replacing cards, IDs, the cash stolen, my camera, etc).  It was hard to say what it looked like. It was Dylan Ryan tweeting about her partner bringing her a “almost done with your thesis cake.” It was other people talking about massages before bed, or wildflowers their lovers had picked to cheer them up. I had no easy answer, just that it didn’t have to involve money, just SOMEthing romantic.  Big help I was, I know.

Wednesday, she texted me that she’d been driving all around town looking for a sunshade for me. It’s 90+ degrees in Phoenix, and apparently, it’s still too cool for place to sell sunshades for cars. So she went around, desperately trying to find one.  She couldn’t, so she texted me again, telling me that THIS was why she wasn’t romantic, that THIS was romance FAIL.

But it wasn’t. To me, it was more romantic that she cared enough to try multiple places to find me a damn sunshade, more so even than if she’d found and bought one at the first place she stopped. Romance was the fact that she faced adversity and frustration trying to find something for me that would help make my life better.

Romance was when I woke up to find my car window smashed and much of my life (all in my purse) stolen, and she stayed home from work, calling the insurance and glass companies while I cancelled my credit cards.  It was her lending me money to replace my IDs, and still taking me out for Dining Out For Life that night, because she new how important it was to me.  She told me that this is what anyone would do. I beg to differ. I had an ex (F) who wouldn’t even postpone a weekly kink mentorship for an hour to come comfort me when Athena died. Yet here was Q, my knight in shining armor, helping me fill out the police report, and arranging for my window to be replaced within 3 hours of finding it smashed.

So what IS romance? I don’t know. I feel like I sound like good ol’ Justice Stewart when I say “I know it when I see it,” but it’s true. Romance is what happens when relationship go outside of the head, and trickle back down into the heart, when routine is broken, when someone goes out of their way to show their love for you. It doesn’t have to involve a single cent (although I’m still holding out for a bouquet of black calla lilies one day…for now, I buy myself my own flowers), but it does have to involve heart.

And Q is no Tinman. Her heart is there, is beating, and is plenty big enough for me. And her romance? It’s just my style, even if I don’t quite know what my style is.

What is romance to you?

-Essin’ Em

Q and I have been together almost a year and a half, tripling any previous relationship I’ve been in (she has me bested by a lot with three years). She was not changed me, but helped me find different and other parts of myself.  I never thought I’d want to spend any long amount of time with one person, want to live with one person, want to significantly share my life with one person. But I do.

Granted, I still have other play partners, and shoot partners, and of course, my loving moose Evey back in Denver. I’m not losing the kink side of my life, or the multi-partnered side of my life.

I never imagined I’d find someone who didn’t leave me when the pain was too high and I could leave the bed. I never imagined I’d find someone who would be  as silly with the cats, and sometimes even sillier. I never imagined I’d find someone who was as into social justice and rights for everyone as I was, but also wasn’t hoity-toity about the revolutionary politics, keeping people out. I never thought I’d find someone to whom my attraction never waned, but only grew as I got to learn more and more about them as a person. I never dreamed I’d find someone who would let me breathe pretend fire on them, and communicate in meow-talk. I never thought I’d find someone with whom I could share a bed and fall asleep in their arms and not feel awkward and uncomfortable throughout the night.

We’re officially registered as Domestic Partners in the city of Phoenix, so that I can share her medical benefits (until they get taken away in October, because Arizona is a conservative, queer-unfriendly state).

And today, at Pride, we’re participating in the mass commitment ceremony.  And this will be our engagement. We want to show the world that queer people are real people. We love, just like anyone else. We worry about what happens to our partners, and if we’ll be allowed to see them in the ER or the ICU (you don’t want to know how many forms I had to fill out to make sure she’d know if something happened to me during my surgery last October). We want to be recognized, just like anyone else.  Perhaps the relationships will end, perhaps we’ll drift apart, and perhaps we’ll stay together, just like anyone else.

We hope, that when we move back to Colorado, they will soon approve equal marriage rights, and we can get married there.  But for now, her titanium ring, and my onyx/boulder opal bracelet (I’m not a huge ring fan…may save that for the wedding) will show our choice to commit to one another, to be there for one another, to support one another.

I love her, more than I ever thought I could love. And she loves me back. When I’m with Q, I feel safe, and loved, and cared for and happy and silly and all of these things I’ve not ever really felt. I don’t have to make excuses for her drinking or drug use, or her flaking out on me, or her treatment of others (as I have in the past with other partners), because she is so on par with my values and ethics and morals and ideals, and that makes me one very happy panda.

I’m ready to commit to her. Not forever; I don’t really believe in forever. But for as long as the two of us can be happy and support each other, I’m there.

-Essin’ Em

I know everyone thinks of me as this sex craved, kinky as fuck, can’t get enough pervert.

I am  very much about to disillusion you. If you want to continue to think of me as such, stop reading now.

Still reading? Fair enough.

Over the last few months, a lot has happened. A LOT. I got sleep apnea from swollen tonsils and was a walking zombie. Then I had tonsil removal surgery. Then we moved to Phoenix. Which involved Q and I moving in together (the first partner I’ve ever wanted to lived with). Then I was unemployed and depressed. Then I got employed and was exhausted from getting back into a fairly regular work schedule. Then I had a cancer scare (still need to write about that). Then I had a 5 day long migraine where I ended up in the ER. Add to that the nerve/wrist pain I had, the back pain I have, and the knee and hip pain that never goes away, and is better one day and is HORRIBLE and excruciating the next.

Is it any wonder that my sex drive seems to have taken a vacation? No, but it pisses me off.

Why? Because I LIKE sex. In my head, I still want to have it 6-10 times a week like we used to. I see Q, and she’s so hot, so sexy, so much deliciousness and I want her all the time. But physically, my sex drive has gone out the window.

Do we have sex? Yes, although definitely not as frequently, and not for as long of sessions. Do I wish we had more? Again…my head says yesyesyesyesyses, my body say whatever. 

When we do have sex, things have changed. I don’t ejaculate as much, so I guess that’s a good thing, since the bed doesn’t end up as wet. And my orgasms are a whole different animal; they feel different, they happen differently, etc.  Plus, where as I used to need about 2 seconds of kissing and maybe some nipple play for warm up and was then ready to fuck for hours, I now need foreplay. A lot of it. And the problem is, I don’t even know what type of foreplay I need, because this is a whole new and different journey for me as well, as I’ve never really been in this boat.

I feel horrible for poor Q.  While her sex drive has decreased slightly too, it is nowhere near as minimal as mine. I don’t want her to think that I don’t find her sexy (because I do! And I tell her that all the time), or that I don’t want to be with her any more (I can’t imagine being with anyone else — I love her so god damn much)…but how do we make this work?

Sometimes, she’ll masturbate, and I’ll help out with kissing and touching and scratching and all of that. Sometimes I’ll fuck her, but then she wants to fuck me and I’m just not in the mood and I feel horrible and gross and like a bad partner and a failure as sex educator and at life.

So we talk. A lot. I tell her where I’m at, she checks in with how she’s feeling. We try new things. We reach outside the box.  And hopefully, slowly, my sex drive will come back, and at the very least, we’ll figure out a way to make this work for us. Because really, what do you do if you ARE the sexuality educator, you ARE the pervert, you ARE the person that people come to for answers…and you just don’t have them?

EDIT: So I wrote this post when I thought I was going to be going to New York. This is not longer the case due to ticket issues, Q’s father being laid off and more.  Ergo, I’m still in Phoenix. Le Sigh.  However, I liked what I wrote about my thoughts and issues with family. So I’m keeping it up. Just don’t get confused with me not *actually* being in NY. -EE

And I’m off, once again, to New York to visit with Q’s family.

Family is such a hard concept for me.  I have such a small family; a grandfather and aunt (and her partner) in FL, my mother and sister in CO, and an aunt/uncle/3 cousins in Israel. That’s it. The whole thing.  I’ve met all of the Israelis I think 3 times (when I was little, my bat mitzvah and my sister’s bat mitzvah), and I see the FL troupe maybe once a year, my mother and sister MAYBE twice. They certainly have no plans to visit me in AZ.

But Q is so much closer with her family. She talks to them a lot, supports them through their problems, celebrates their triumphs. They are all so excited about her coming for a few days, and I just feel so out of place, like there is something wrong with me that I don’t have a large and/or loving and connected family.

It’s been over a decade (11 years next month) since my father died.  I’ve gotten over, for the most part, people asking my about my “parents” and “so, what is it that your father does?”  It’s just so hard for me to interact with family in the way that Q does. I want her family to like me so much, and I almost try too hard, and then wind up failing at my mission anyways. Le sigh.

But, we’re meeting with PhinLi bookings on Friday night, and I’m hoping to stop by Re/Dress (the plus size vintage/thrift store) to get some cute clothes and maybe a bathing suit, so I’m getting to check some “important” stuff off my list as well.

I leave you with this picture from Q and my last trip together, on the plane (in a shirt her mother gave me for the holidays), and I’ll see you on the flip side!

-Essin’ Em

Oh, looky here. Another post on communication. Bet you’re sick of it now, right?

But it’s SO BLOODY IMPORTANT.

Q and I have gone through a lot these past few months.  My surgery (and the sleep apena that I had the surgery to fix). Moving to AZ. Starting her new job. Me looking for a job while battling depression at not having a job or friends.

The only reason we haven’t broken, that we haven’t fallen apart, and gotten filed with resentment, frustration, anger, hatred, etc is because of communication.

Every day is an exercise in communication, from sitting on the couch afterwork checking in with one another, to sitting in my car in the parking lot at Target last Friday night, with dual emotional break downs as we sat there crying and talking and asking one another how we would support one another. 

We got thrown in to this experience in AZ together.  Back in CO, we’d talked about moving in together, perhaps in January/February of 2010. We were going to have a plan about introducing the cats together. We were going to have a discussion about how to meld our very different cleaning/living styles, and do charts, and divide up chores, etc.  But when Q got the job here, we just picked up and left (3 weeks after my surgery) and moved in together, cats and all.

Without all the planning we had, well, planned on, is it any wonder that there have been some growing pains? She’s very tidy, I’m not. But I’m OCD about things like book/DVD titles, what clothes go in what drawers. Who does the cat litter, since we’ve had to had a 4th box and change brands multiple times? Who does the laundry? What about making dinner and cleaning it up? Do we eat at the dining room table, or sitting on the couch by the coffee table? When she works late multiple nights in a week, how do I combat feeling lonely? How does she take care of things when I travel alone?

All these and more have had to be discuss. Sometimes, in such a relaxed “hey, can we talk about this” way, and sometimes in a highly emotionally charged “I’m not feeling supported here – let me tell you why?” way. Is it sometimes draining to communicate so damn much? Yes.  But we don’t fight. Disagree sometimes, oh yes, but we don’t fight.

Like I tell people, dental dams aren’t always fun, but an STI in my mouth is less fun….communication isn’t always a picnic, but full scale fights and breaking up is much worse.

So take some time to actually talk to your partner(s) — don’t always let things go if it bothers you, because it will build up over time and bother you.  On that same note, it’s also really good to communicate happiness with your partner…it’s ok to just tell someone how wonderful they are an how much you appreciate them.

I have a kind of confession. It’s only kind of a confession, because my friends all know this about me.

I LOVE taking care of people.

In college, I’d drive around on many weekend nights (before I started going to the Rocky Horror Picture Show weekly) in my mini van and then Stratus, blaring 80′s music, picking up my drunk friends and driving them back to campus. Then, when I was an RA, I was the person that would make tea for sick residents, give chocolate to homesick/broken hearted residents, tuck in drunk residents with a Nalgene full of water.

I love taking care of friends who are sad, hurting, broken hearted, sick, recovering from surgery, etc.

Weird? Yes. It’s just who I am.  Someone told me it’s because I’m a 2 (enneagram something?), others because I am a caretaker personality, and some because I’m counter-dependent.

So it’s been frustrating to me that in the over 14 months we’ve been together, Q has never been sick. I’ve been sick multiple times, plus pain days, plus surgery recovery. She’s had to take care of me a lot. I never got the chance until know to do it for her. 

I mean sure, I’ve had nights where I’ve cooked of her, brought her everything she needed, given her a back massage, and fucked her silly for hours. Yes, in a way, that IS taking care of her. I’ve also been there for her during gender breakdowns and other cry sessions, but those are few and far between; she’s not one to really show her emotions.

But this past weekend, Q got sick.  It was sad, as we had to cancel plans with friends, and the couples massage I’d scheduled. Plus, she’s not sick very often (we’re talking a cold once every two years), so she was sad and grumpy about being sick.

However, it was so nice. Because it was the weekend, I was home, and I could take care of her. I made her tea regularly (interspersed with Emergen-C, Jamba Juice and Theraflu), I went out to get her lots of foods that she wanted, walked over to get more Nyquil, tucker her in, forced her into hot showers, cleaned up her tissues, rubbed Vicks vapor rub on her chest, scratched her head as she fell asleep, etc.

And I loved it.

Obviously, I don’t WANT her to be sick. I know how much I hate being sick, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. However, it’s nice to know that I’ve still got it, that I still have that Jewish mom (without kids) vibe that I enjoy getting to rock out with so much!

-Essin’ Em

I know everyone is writing about Valentine’s day, cause that’s what you do on Feb 14th right?

Q and I don’t really believe in a specific day that you tell each other you love each other; we do it every day.

Plus, I wrote about Valentine’s Day and Singles Awareness Day last year.

So we won’t really be celebrating; I got her a binder that she wanted for her chest.  Yesterday, we went and got couples massages; hers to relax, mine to work on preventing migraines. And a lovely reader of mine actually bought me a mini vulva puppet, as per my request.

So instead, you get a few old school heart pin-up pictures by Ken Norcross circa 2008: