discovery

self fucking with two witnesses

Photo by Eric Francis.

When my senses faded back in, I began to understand rationally that I was naked inside a dome in the middle of a tent city, straddling a selfucking machine, my ass still fucked, my breath loose and breathy. In the distance, the deep beats of music throbbed – the basic sound of the Burning Man nightworld. Naked felt first like having bare feet with toes clutching the playa, through a thin sheet of dusty plastic tarp. Then the rest of me felt naked, particularly my face, which was wet.

An inner voice narrated silently. I had just orgasmed openly onto a cum-spattered mirror in front of two women I barely knew who were in that moment looking at me. I gazed into Fun Sway’s eyes, which were full of hot curiosity and the hint of confusion, and then shifted to Siobhan. I exhaled deeply, relieved, and drew in another breath looking at her face, as if the oxygen were coming from the vision of her. That oxygen fed a fire in me that burned the self judgments as they emerged into my awareness.

There were many spaces that opened up in the course of our threshold conversation. It was an unusual experience for her and she seemed to go through what many people unaccustomed to ritual experience when they enter that space: linear time and narrative don’t quite hold up. She has asked me to tell the story chronologically as best I can, and I said I would try, though for now I am going to work from theme to theme.

One last subject is asking for a voice. I remember mentioning how it seemed like our journey and our conversation focused on her experience with him, how she is processing it and in making sure that we have a clear understanding that this is an experience in her life that we are experimenting holding space for.

Yet I did not miss that in this conversation, we tend to leave out the possibility of me having the kind of depth and contact that I need, and the sense of a safe container to have it in. I get the feeling that every time the theme of what I need from a relationship comes up directly, she feels guilty that she can’t offer it to me. That would indeed preclude taking the conversation further; at least as a topic to which we give that name. I think it’s essential to give it a name, and to recognize that so much of the fulfillment we get in relationships is from what we have to offer; from feeling like an essential part of someone’s life.

(NSFW Image after break)

Painted mirror. Photo by Eric Francis.

Emotional life is often equated with water, but I think that the element air provides some suitable metaphors for relationship. Though our feelings are obviously involved (take it from a Pisces with Cancer rising), we do a lot of thinking and theorizing about our relationships, and this can, actually, be helpful at times (this, from my Aquarius Moon). It’s possible to get lost in one’s feelings; sometimes a good theory can bubble up and if we follow the bubbles we get to the surface. Some ideas about how we feel can invoke the Buddhist concept of inner witness, as long as we don’t analyze things to death.

Consciousness is a mix of feeling, thought and creativity mixed with the presence of the body. That covers most of the elements; let’s consider air more closely.

One of my favorite moments in all of literature that describes compersion comes from the 1944 book Stick and Rudder by Wolfgang Langewiesche. This is a book about how to fly airplanes. Wolfgang begins the book by explaining to his readers that they need to, “Get rid at the outset of the idea that the airplane is only an air-going sort of automobile. It isn’t. It may sound like one, and smell like one, and it may have been interior decorated to look like one; but the difference is – it goes on wings.”

(Sculpture by Regina Reinhardt)

“Sounds like poly to me,” I confirm.

“Well, Dante knew about it back in the fourteenth century.”

“Oh,” I wonder, “what evidence do you have?”

“This sentence, ‘love, that releases no beloved from loving,’ nobody knows what he intended because it really means both.”

“What do you mean both?”

“It’s ambivalent, it means both the reciprocity of love, as in A loves B and viceversa, and the circulatory nature of erotic energies, as in A loves B loves C loves D loves E and so on. And all translators, readers, critics, theorists, have been baffled by it for centuries. Yet they all refer to it.”

“Oh, I get it, a literary trope.”

“You may say that. It’s more that the number three was in Dante’s mind, I think. He knew that perfect reciprocity is virtually impossible, that there is always some triangulation, even in the most perfect, most reciprocated type of love.”

Rabbitwhite's recent and excellent post concerning the lost of her virginity and Evil Slut Clique's recent and excellent post about 'The Secret Life of the American Teenager got me thinking about my own loss-of-virginity story. Except: At the time I had a much narrower view of what constituted virginity, because I had a much narrower view of what constituted sex. In the days of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, I was only fourteen years old and very much a virgin. I remember even then being profoundly confused why so many people cared about President Clinton's penis, but also confused by the consuming quasi-political public debate over whether or not oral sex was "really" sex. At fourteen, I was quite sure that it wasn't. All of my sex education focused on a man putting his penis in a woman's vagina. It led to babies. And, I knew at fourteen, gay people did something like putting-a-penis-in-a-vagina, except that there were either two penises or two vaginas, and I believed in sociopolitical equality but couldn't visualize the logistics of how that worked.

The first time I kissed someone on the lips, I was thirteen, and my family was about to move across the country. I overcame my shyness by telling myself that I'd never see the cute boy again, and I asked him if he would kiss me goodbye. He said yes, and then he closed his eyes and sort of puckered his lips. (He was also thirteen, and probably didn't know what he was doing either.) I remember the clear thought process of expectation that I was supposed to close my eyes, too - and then thinking, No way! I'm finally going to kiss a boy! I'm going to watch this!

Sherry from Book of Blue. Photo by Eric Francis.

In my last entry a week or so ago, I began with the idea that shame is the necessary element; and by that I mean the full embrace of shame as a factor that conditions our lives, our sense of identity, our relationships; in short, our very existence.

A few years ago I began a discussion, never quite finished, with my mentor Joe Trusso about the nature of shame versus guilt. At that point I had done a good bit of mapping out the nature of guilt with Joe, and some time around 2000, we co-wrote this paragraph from my essay How To Be Your Own Lover.

Fritz and Laura Perls, early pioneers of Gestalt Therapy, taught that guilt is resentment turned against itself. Generally speaking, children, being the powerful yet powerless little critters they are, take upon themselves the notion of “fault and blame.” They cannot imagine adults (who are personifications of the gods and goddesses) making an error. If they do, it’s still the “fault” of the child. “If only I would’ve done this or that, daddy wouldn’t hit me.” “If I was more quiet, mommy wouldn’t drink.” And so on. Since they are at “fault,” they are “guilty,” and since they cannot rage against the adults very successfully or have a real impact on the direction of events, they turn the resentment at being pruned, modified, corrected, disciplined, strongly directed, or dictated to, back at themselves.

By Teri (of Teri & Kevin, “The Ultimates”)

Last Tuesday’s Pleasure Salon was an open, successful, sex-positive experience once again.  We met several new people, many of whom were affiliated with local polyamory groups.  We were also happy to have another lifestyle couple attend.  Kev was able to introduce himself and have a short conversation with them; unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to meet them before they left.  I was dismayed to see them leave early, and I later learned that they had been expecting something completely different.

Swingers usually like to stay within their own lifestyle community when venturing to clubs for meet and greets.  Although we try to be as descriptive as possible when inviting lifestyle couples to the Pleasure Salon (it’s open to all sex-positive communities), we worry that the swingers who attend are going to be surprised or, worse, put off by the lack of couple-focused discussion.  You see, most meet and greets for swingers are designed to allow for potential hook-ups.  That is not the case with the Pleasure Salon, and I think we need to be a bit more clear about that when we invite other swingers. 

My altar, dressed for Beltane. Photo by Eric, created around April 30, 2009.

Beltane was a time marker for me, the conclusion of my fourth consecutive 45 day experiment in choosing not to have sex with other people. In other words, not being refused sex or experiencing the challenges of negotiating fair, loving sex—but rather setting the matter aside and having sex only with myself.

It happened that the last woman I was sexual with was in November, during Sahwen time (around Nov. 2). I knew then that there were certain things from that experience that I didn’t want to repeat (I haven’t told any of those stories here yet), so I took over my erotic journey and decided that I would be the one setting the terms. I decided to go in 45-day phases because they seemed manageable and short enough to endure, but long enough to be meaningful. They are also convenient points along the calendar—going from quarter-day [solstice or equinox] to cross-quarter day [Beltane, Sahwen, etc.].