i’ve learned a lot this year, some of it surprising and some a long time coming but more than anything i’ve found comfort.
i went from being the girl who never played with toys to being the one with the drawer full who bought a toy for a young virgin friend to celebrate the season.
along the way i’ve learned enormously enlightening things about myself, my sexuality, human sexuality in general, sex itself and male pleasure. i’ve become the repository of sexual knowledge among my friends and am now the person they call when they want advice about toys or gushing or really anything at all.
my walk and my attitude have changed apace.
it seems that missing the part of me connected to my sex drive also affected my femininity or at least my willingness to enhance the female aspects of my appearance. the more comfortable with my sexuality i get the better i dress and the more i’m willing to paint the face or do the hair.
not, for the record, that femaleness is determined by such simple things as mascara or pretty clothing but nonetheless it seems that FOR ME when you aren’t connected to the sex drive you also aren’t connected to the feminine or pretty part of you. i was pretty androgynous and a big fan of the baggy clothing a couple of years ago and it seems that the search for my sex drive and the search for my girly went hand in hand.
this year i took a long term lover that was not also a love partner for the first time in my life and the experience changed me for the better forever; he taught me that embarrassment has no place in the bedroom and that straight talk was the best way to proceed no matter what.
he taught me to say ‘that really doesn’t work for me but i’ll be happy to do that to you…’ or even ‘no, i’m sorry, that squicks me’ and that such sentences do not in any way impinge on an emotional or trust connection with someone.
he helped me find the way to orgasm from intercourse and he taught me that i am, in fact, multi orgasmic (whee!) and he has forever changed what i would look for in a sex partner. not to mention demonstrating that playing with myself while with a partner would turn one on rather than offend him.
i also found a lover that is also a love partner this year and man oh man is that ever awesome. funnily enough although the trust and intimacy are far greater the sex is significantly more vanilla. somehow we are so emotionally attached to each other that fucking turns into making love almost in spite of ourselves.
this is not to say that we don’t play with toys because we do but the toys are almost always used during foreplay or in addition to our regular sex (like butt plugs) and they serve more to enhance than to kinkify.
it’s interesting to me that with a lover i was not attached to we tried the menu of positions but with one to whom i feel a deep emotional connection we’ve stuck to the first page of the book. this feels like it will change and expand over time but i must confess i would have thought that it would go the other way.
more than anything though i’ve found acceptance. i accept myself as a sexual being now and have put away a lot of the conditioning imposed on my by the puritan culture in which i was raised. i no longer feel that liking sex makes me ‘dirty’ or that trying ‘bad’ things makes me a slut.
so what if i want to try ass fucking my man or myself? so what? if i like it and it isn’t hurting anyone else then why does that make me ‘bad’?
the answer is that it doesn’t. but coming to a place of comfort with that took me a very long time and i can’t wait to see what else my newfound acceptance will lead to.
sometimes i think i’ll end up a sex therapist… sometimes i think i’ll end up running a brothel and occasionally i think i might just end up publishing smut or books about human sexuality.
ah what hubris…
this has been one of the best years of my life, i grew in so many ways and you were here to help me and encourage me and masturbate with me. more than that you, by reading and commenting, helped me accept my own self.
thank you and happy new year to all of you. may 2008 bring to you a measure of the peace and acceptance i myself have found in 2007 and may the journey continue in it’s wonders for all of us :)
