Public Service Announcement: When is a mango not a mango? March 26, 2008

When a rather attractive man casually boards a tram with a half-peeled mango in his hand and proceeds to eat it, that’s when.

Now, you can hold the mango as you would any hard fruit, but allow me to remind you that mangoes are not hard. No. They are, in fact, rather squishy and juicy. So much so that, while you may dive in with the ol’ bite and suck, some juices will nevertheless escape and start to run. Given that you will be hanging on to your grocery shopping with the same hand that’s bracing you during your ride home, you will have no choice but to catch these dribbles with your mouth. Much licking, lapping and slurping will ensue, after which, you will turn your attention once again to biting into the fruit, causing more juices to go running down the sides and onto your hand and wrist. To prevent them from traveling down your forearm and dripping off your elbow, you will have to lick them off your skin. That done, you will, with remarkable unselfconscious and laudable dedication, continue to nibble and suck on the gorgeously textured flesh of the fruit in your hand.

Incidentally, you will also be driving anyone in possession of both a cunt and eyes in your vicinity Absolutely. Fucking. Batshit. Insane.

Just thought you should know.

Freaksexual March 25, 2008

Freaksexual is a wonderful blog I found (via Bitchy Jones) in which Pepper deals intelligently and accessibly with issues surrounding polyamory and sexuality. The entries are more essays than posts but please don’t let their length put you off. They’re excellent reading regardless of how well acquainted you are with polyamory, but they’re particularly valuable if, like me, you’re just starting out with this whole non-monogamy thing. You could start with the latest post or start at the beginning or however you do it, but I’d recommend you make reading “Polyamory is not about the sex, except when it is” a priority either way.

Want! March 23, 2008

From the Blowfish Blog again. The Delight rechargeable vibrator. I don’t much like vibrators, but this one is just so darn pretty I may have to get it anyway. Seriously. Go look.

Boys, girls, rambling craziness March 23, 2008

So I ran into boy-crush while I was with H. We didn’t stop to chat or anything, but after he went by I couldn’t help grinning and asking H what he thought. Kinda like you do when you’re in junior high, you know? Ugh. Anyway. H was rather neutral (but hey that’s better than pointing and laughing) though he did help me identify who BC reminds me of – it’s been bothering me for a while – and, after I pestered him a bit, offered up a few observations. I dropped it after that though the silly grin persisted for a while.

The thing is, I want H to like him. No, not like him exactly, but to ‘approve’. He’s (jokingly) said before that he wouldn’t mind my pursuing BC even though he’s not too thrilled about the idea of other men, which is lovely of him. But I’m not too sure that I actually want to follow through on that. It might be nice – it certainly is in my head! – but even though he makes my knees go all wobbly, I’m a bit irritated by it all. Here I make all this effort to articulate my bisexuality and work out my discomfort with monogamy, putting H through the wringer in the process, and come out the other side with this idea that ok, polyamory and bisexuality are a go, and I go for a man? So what’s this mooning on about women then?

Granted there’s girl-crush and there’s more of a green light there, but this is where my laziness and fear catch up with me. She’s adorable and I’m getting to know her a little bit better, but she knows I’m married so even if she’s a confirmed lesbian (and I have NO idea – my bastard of a gaydar gets seriously compromised when it comes to people I am actually interested in) there’s a lot of work to be done before I can broach the subject with her. At the moment though, it’s at that sweet stage where you know you’d like to spend some more time together but need to meet on neutral territory a few more times before you make that investment. As friends, of course. Which is what makes me feel like a bit of a sneak. Not that I wouldn’t want her as a friend – I would. But, well, you know.

That’s why it would be so much easier with BC. I present as a straight female, so with men in general, the sexual dimension is assumed. There’s a constant looking, asking, assessing in play so – provided nobody shrieks hell no right at the beginning – hang about long enough and it’ll come up. Not so with women. With women, the more time you spend together the less potentially sexual the interaction. Obviously it isn’t impossible for things to heat up, but when the woman you’re lusting after says “Oh wow you’re married, huh?” you kinda feel what little hope you had disappear in a puff of mocking smoke. (I look quite a bit younger than I am, so people also tend to remember that I’m married because of the double take they do when they first find out.) I mean, I couldn’t very well have stood there and stammered out an explanation of how that really needn’t bother her, could I? That would have been awkward. Too much too soon, perhaps? Remember, I don’t even know if she digs women at all. Gah.

I’d really like to make it easier for those interested to identify me as bi, but how, short of wearing a placard, do you do that?

And while we’re talking female sexuality March 20, 2008

I love Bitchy Jones, and not just because she knows how to use apostrophes properly. Her latest post, On Being Straight, talks about the routine subordination of female sexuality to male sexuality. Nobody’s going out of their way here: it’s just a given that women are not sexual except in relation to men and what gets the latter off.

I’m crosser even than usual, because this statement – viewed as a kind of meta – just it feels like such a perfect encapsulation of the way female sexuality is viewed by everyone from Freud up. The vagina accommodates what’s offered! Yeah, right. Female sexuality will basically adjust itself to meet the needs of whatever is being asked of it.

‘Cause as we all know female sexuality is all fluid and undefined.

Thus a sexually liberated woman will simply be open to anything. Any sexual experience at all. Being whatever is convenient. In a way that men are simply not expected to be.

In fact, it often feels like if you are a woman who is sex positive you are required to be an adventuress, constantly searching for new things that might turn you on. You are required not to rule anything out or you’re not really playing the game. And ruling out the sex with women? How lame.

….

And it’s even worse if you’re poly too. The poly default is that it is about the woman in the obligatory couple exploring her bisectshuality. Hence the eternal quest for the hot bi babe to make the triangle complete. But you don’t have to be a bi woman to be a poly woman. It can just be about getting more dick.

She then speaks specifically about the BDSM subculture and while I’m not personally involved in it, I find everything she says relevant and applicable to wider sexual practices.

Oh and I also love Bitchy Jones because she says things like this:

If crashing waves really did feel like orgasms we’d all be at the beach.

Crushed March 12, 2008

Meg’s post on crushes was timely reading for me today. I recently ran into both boy- and girl-crush and, both times, was rather pleased at my ability to carry on a reasonably intelligent conversation while my insides tied themselves into knots and my brain threatened to turn to mush. It’s weird how much *noise* starts up in my head when I catch sight of them. The only advantage of not being 14 any more is that I now have the wherewithal to actually string sentences together and be polite and friendly even when what I want to do is pounce on them right there.

Did I mention we sort of work in the same general area?

Chances are, the next time I see them, there will be alcohol. Chances are, I will hide at the other end of the room in order to avoid the embarrassment caused by any untoward pawing, fawning, drooling or gibbery noises I might indulge in if I’m not careful. Chances are I will feel like a complete idiot anyway.

You say tomato March 12, 2008

I’ve been following Greta Christina’s blog for a few months now and I really enjoy her writing. Her latest post at the Blowfish Blog (whose tagline reads: “Let’s Talk About Sex) about sexual perspective is interesting. Here’s a snippet:

Food, music, sex: all of these are powerful, visceral, intensely personal, even overwhelming experiences. And it’s very hard to step back from them and have perspective on how other people might feel about them. Our own feelings about them can be so intense, so all-encompassing, that it makes perspective difficult, even counter-intuitive.

But when it comes to food and music, we have years of experience to teach us perspective. People talk about their musical and culinary tastes loudly, proudly, in great detail and at great length. You often can’t get people to shut up about it. We’re exposed to a wide variety of musical and culinary tastes almost every day of our lives.

…

But when it comes to sex, most of us don’t get that kind of training.

Definitely worth a read.

The Bisexual Issue March 9, 2008

Via the lovely Sue George over at Bisexuality and Beyond: Nerve.com’s bisexuality issue. The articles are good and interesting. I read the whole thing in one go though, so they’re all a general crush of good stuff in my head right now. Go take a look.

Which? March 8, 2008

First of all, bless the cacophony that is YouTube. You find the darndest things there. For instance, this video of Juliette Gréco, probably one of the last living members of the generation that sang the French chanson into the world’s collective consciousness. Here she sings the absolutely delicious “Déshabillez-moi” (Undress me). You can find the lyrics here and a reasonable, though not exact (or half as inspirational), translation here, if you want. But that’s not the point. Listen to and look at the way she sings it. Do the lyrics even matter?

I find that incredibly sexy.

But wait, there’s more. Now here’s a cover of the same song by Mylene Farmer, who has been singing it for at least 20 years herself.

Meh. The song is still fun and the update isn’t bad – the crowd certainly seems to like it – it’s just somehow too much. Everything from standing there in lingerie, to the mini pole-dancer move, to the squat-and-spread towards the end and that ridiculous scream (which is part of the way she does the song – it’s been there since at least the 80s) made me roll my eyes.

The original, for me at least, shows that you do not need to get your kit off to be sexy, or even deliberately sexual. It shows that ’sexy’ doesn’t reside so much in the body but in whatever it is that that camera captured 40 years ago. It’s the idea that arouses, not so much the physical fact (though that’ll work at a basic level). I guess it’s the difference between the sexual and the sensual or the erotic. Any mammal can be sexual (at least in the way we tend to be – no offense to any avian or reptilian readers I may have), but sensuality requires the involvement of the mind as well. Sexual is doing. Sensual is how you do it. For me, it’s Juliette all the way.

Idling March 8, 2008

I wasn’t kidding about seeing gay girls everywhere. Everywhere. At every meeting I’ve been to, around the coffee shops, at the library, at the food festival I went to the other week, at departmental welcome-back drinks, out grocery shopping. And while there’s been an influx of people now that school is back on, it’s not like they’ve all suddenly materialized – I’ve just started coming out of my shell a bit more and going along to things where I might actually meet real people on my own.

And is it just me or do queer people touch more? Their friends, I mean. This is a bias I’ve had for a very long time and it might just be that I don’t observe straight people in quite the same way. I’m an affectionate person. I like hugs and cuddles and kisses and putting an arm around someone you like just because you want to and not because you have any sexual designs on them.

In the past week I’ve met more straight people than gay people, but I’ve had more gay people – two men, one woman, and one genderqueer person – make immediate contact. Just little things like a touch on the arm when they can’t hear me over the crowd, standing a lot closer, throwing an arm around me to amble down for drinks, touching in greeting, getting my attention by touching/tugging my hair a little, and, my favorite, flashing that big grin that makes you feel hugged all the way across the room. And it’s not just with me either. It’s a general ease with touching and physical space. Or at least, it seems to be.

I may be completely wrong and might have been looking the other way every time a straight – or obviously straight – person was casually affectionate with someone other than their significant other. But yeah, of course I think I’m right. Oh and, except for one of the people I mentioned – who probably assumes I’m a lesbian after we had a chat about a local queer group – I haven’t said anything about my ‘orientation’ (or lack thereof) to anyone and, as far as I know, present as straight.

This is total conjecture, of course, but hey, join in anyway. Do you agree or have you come across something totally different? Do you find queer folk more affectionate when you first meet? (And is that a discriminatory-type question?)