Sharing my sexuality

I moderate a forum dedicated to helping men overcome body issues and social anxiety. I hang out there because a long time ago I discovered that my best sexual partners tended to have smaller than average sized penises. Since the site’s original mission was to help men with small penis anxiety, I felt it was my duty to come to the site and sing my praises of the smaller sausages.

Naturally, my contribution to the site involves a lot of detailed descriptions of my sexual encounters, including my partners’ body types and my own reactions. I love sex and I love talking about sex, so this is actually a perfectly symbiotic relationship. However, while I am not in the least bit shy about my body, my tastes, or my escapades, I make sure to maintain a certain degree of anonymity and distance on the site. I think it is important that the men who hear of my escapades do not mistakenly interpret my openness and sexuality for sexual availability. This is a fine line that needs to be respected for the benefit of all people involved, but particularly for the men.

Throughout my life, since about twelve years old when I started attending high school, I have been hooted at, cat called, hit on and harassed. I have always been attractive and perhaps because of my background in classical ballet and theatre, I have always been shameless about displaying my body. Since a very young age, my body has been a tool of expression, so to hide it from others would be akin to cutting out my own tongue and then attempting to have a conversation. I am also objectively attractive. I know it’s not polite to point it out, but after being informed so for twenty years solid, it almost seems impolite to deny it. Perhaps as a result of my lifelong exposure to unsolicited male attention I have developed certain self protection mechanisms. I am a highly sexual female and men simply react to that. It isn’t a question of should they or should they not, but simply a reality that in order for my life to carry on more or less peacefully, I have to be the one to manage the sexual energy between myself and others.

For many women in the vast majority of encounters with unsolicited suitors, feigning disgust, sexual disinterest or ignorance is the quickest, easiest and most natural response. When a construction worker cat calls you on the way to work, there is no being polite or sophisticated, the best response is usually the finger. However, there are times when you want to share a portion of your sexuality, but still keep the male somewhat at a distance. Such is the case with me when I go out drinking with my friends or when I share a personal account on the forums. Often, it feels like playing with fire.

On the forums I try my best to present myself as “a woman sharing her experience with interested people.” Contrast this image to “Pinkie Boadicea talking about sex with me.” From the reader’s perspective, if you are an interested male, then both are equally true. The important distinction is which one feels truer or resonates more strongly. In the latter case, the reader might develop some misplaced affections towards me, Pinkie, the Woman on the Forum, when what I really want to happen is that the reader takes my message as evidence that women in general are capable of having similar opinions and that some woman somewhere will in turn have those feelings directed towards him. If the reader were to misinterpret my oppenness as interest in himself, personally, it might prevent him from seeking out more appropriate validation and affection from real people in real life. I want to avoid this as much as possible on the forums, so I try to make sure my language is general even when the subject is personal. I also make a point not to carry on discussions about myself in private messages. I don’t want the people I interact with to think that I am confiding some secret in them when the reality is that I am sharing something which is only personal, but not particularly private.

In real life things are different. I’m not as eloquent or careful. Let me point out, though, that I do not for a second consider this a fault. As I mentioned before it is one thing to say that it is a woman’s responsibility to manage male affections and it is another to say that it is a fact of life that failing to do so can become troublesome. Moreover, I can log out of a forum but I can’t log out of real life. There has to be some place where I can let it all hang out and indeed I make a point to do so. Men who can handle an unfiltered me make for much more fulfilling and uplifting friendships than men who need to be managed. All of that said, there are some habits that I have developed that will skew my relationships with men in real life and for better or for worse they seem to be fairly deeply ingrained.

While I am never shy about my sexuality and will always answer honestly when asked a direct question, I make a point to differentiate my affection from my raw lust. I try to make sure that my male friends understand that loving them does not mean fucking them any more than using their cocks to scratch an itch deep inside my cunt does not mean that I have fallen in love with them or would for a moment hesitate to scratch the same itch with a different cock. Sometimes I do this by twisting the reason why I am interested in someone so that it sounds more vulgar than it really is. Sometimes I do this by suddenly becoming very busy when a friend or partner seems to be confounding my sex drive with my love. I wish I could say that I do these things intentionally, but they seem to be more like self protection mechanisms and I often feel guilty when I catch myself doing them. If I could be fully in my wits at all moments, I would definitely prefer to tell them outright: Please don’t misunderstand, I love you and care for you the same way that I love and care for that other guy that I hang out with, but am not sleeping with; that you are my sexual partner at the moment is a matter of convenience for both of us but is no indication of my heart being open to you or of a commitment to be yours now or at any time in the future.

I have lost friends because of an inability to communicate about sex effectively with them. I have lost money and sleep because of the inability to communicate about sex with men who were not so much my friends. Enabling male sexuality is very dangerous specifically when communication about boundaries and intentions fails. However, I am a sexual being. I love sex and I believe that the free expression of sex increases human well being on a personal as well as a social level. Moreover, I know that among women I am particularly capable of communicating my boundaries in a gentle way, and I am particularly capable of kindness towards my partners. So in a way, I feel as if I am particularly responsible to take the risk and put my sexuality out in public view where it can be experienced by others for what it is. It is my hope that by touching others in a genuine fashion that they will take that experience forward in their own lives and their own relationships and that, even if no one ever consciously recognizes that it was me who inspired them, they will live fuller and more satisfying lives because of me. That is the reason why I share.

Feeding Ferrets

Wilson swears he was not going to hide this meat in my underwear bin.

Meet Wilson! He’s a small ferret boy approaching seven years old. He and I have worked for his entire life to get him on a healthy diet and he has fought me every step of the way. We started when he was a baby on Marshall’s ferret food (please, never feed this food or any Marshall product to your ferrets!). It was weeks before he would accept ferretone-tinged Marshall’s food. Then it was weeks before he would eat any kibble shaped differently from Marshall’s food. Months followed before he would eat all his dinner without leaving the different flavored ones behind. Five years after he came home with me I finally succeeded in getting him to eat some duck soup (which was actually boiled chicken), and now, six years of living together and he is finally on a whole prey raw meat diet. Here is what I feed him and his girlfriend of five years, Amber CTB.

Their main diet at the moment consists of whole, pureed, raw quail. I throw it bones and all into my new Vitamix and spin it on high for about 30 seconds until it comes out pink and smooth. Often I will supplement with chicken skin or organ meat as my guys are pretty old and need the extra calories and protein. I admit, I gagged a little the first time I made it, but now it’s no big deal to me. About two months ago I started mixing up chunks of raw quail into the soup in the hopes that they would accidentally get in the weasel’s mouth, and then he would have to eat them. Luckily this strategy worked. I remember the night I woke up to hear happy weasels crunching on quail bones.

Once I had both of my smalls eating the whole meat pieces I stepped it up and added in pink mice. Weasels need a variety of meats to get balanced nutrition. I’m not sure how much variety is necessary, but in any case I found a reptile supply shop that sells individually frozen mice of all ages, so I order two tiny bags of small sized pinkies. Knowing Wilson, if I threw this little guy into his meat dish straight up he would carefully eat around it and it would just go bad, so I had to be sneaky. The first ten mice went into the blender with their quail. The eleventh mouse got cut in half and mixed into two separate servings of meat. Poor Wilson had no idea he was eating whole mouses! A few weeks later, I stepped it up to two pinkies per regular serving of meat.

In the most recent menu, one serving of meat includes about 45% whole quail, 45% chicken thigh and skin, and the last few pieces are baby mice. I divide up the meat and put one day’s worth into these tiny 80mL containers and refreeze them after they’re cut into Wilson-won’t-hide-this-in-my-underwear sized pieces. When I serve it, I put it in a small dish submerged in hot water and ladle soup over it. It only takes about five minutes in the water to get warm enough for my little things to find it appetizing. One container of meat and about three teaspoons of soup is all they will eat in a day right now, so that’s what I put out for them.

I have to say it is a lot of work to feed raw. It’s incredibly rewarding, though. Wilson and Amber have never been plumper despite their age and Amber’s recent health issues. I love being in control of my babies’ nutrition, too. I had searched all over looking for dry food that was ferret appropriate, but ultimately I came to the conclusion that no commercial product actually respects the obligate carnivorous nature of the ferret, along with their incredibly short digestive system. Pricewise, at the moment it is definitely more expensive that dry food, too. Probably about 50% more. But ferrets are tiny — 80 mL of meat for a meal! — so it’s not really a financial burden at all. More the time factor, really.

A weasel in a triple soup food coma.

The next steps for my weasels are to get them to eat meat off the bone so that I don’t have to cut it. It’s supposedly good for their teeth to gnaw on big chunks, so I’m working up to chicken wings. They also need fur and feathers to replace fiber and bulk up their stools. I bought a pair of unprocessed marmots for that purpose, but when they arrived I had no idea what to do with them. They’re huge! And furry! At this point, however, I am simply pleased that my weasels will accept the food I prepare for them. Their doctor agrees with the diet and I am able to adjust the fat, protein and vitamin content of their food as they age, which is a huge source of comfort to me. I love my little furries and I highly recommend that anyone else who cares for weasels make the effort to incorporate at least a little raw. No amount of convenience can replace the ability to give your small things the nutrition they need, especially when their health starts to decline as my guys’ is.

Very Tired

I’m tired lately for so many reasons.

My sweet little girl-weasel has been fighting illness for a solid month now. At first she stopped eating and then ran an extremely high fever for half a week. Her weight dropped precipitously and she started coughing in the night, making a sound like screaming in pain. Three courses of antibiotics and three mysteriously, and suddenly, swollen and useless feet later and we are finally beginning to understand her condition: congestive heart failure. I’ve been feeding her the majority of her meals for a month now, alarms set on my watch to go off throughout the day so I don’t forget, and taking her to the vet twice a week for the whole length of her illness. I feel like a single parent without a road map: I don’t sleep at night because every sound she makes wakes me, I don’t eat properly because my focus is on her, I never leave my house to socialize because I have such a tiny, wonderful thing in my care.

Some much needed rest

I keep myself entertained by cooking and rewatching the same 7 films I have downloaded onto my hard drive. Lately they all make me cry. I think my feelings are getting stopped up inside me and the movies pull the plug on the pressure valve and they all come gushing out. I don’t even know why there is so much cry inside me. One guess is that this is years of suppressed emotion, years of self imposed “strength” finally being stripped away and detoxified from my heart, like that cough that lingers long after the cold has passed. I’m trying not to fight it, though the reflex is to choke the tears back every time they well up. It’s natural, is it not?

I find that my emotions tend to come in waves. I’ll get a wave of happy and a wave of sad. Sometimes they’ll overlap each other and I’ll get blubbery looking up at the night sky on the way home. Lately I seem to have tapped into a well of past anger. I’m sure it’s just a massive time lag as the experience when I remember the episode is every bit as bitter as I knew it should have been back when I was busy being rational and cool headed and completely missing my life as it was happening to me. Everything that upsets me now comes out as bitter hatred, whether it’s for the constant construction that I can’t seem to escape no matter how far away I move, or the memory of past lovers’ disregard for my feelings or needs. The other day I nearly lost it because my most recent partner wants to consult my past partner, a man-child who is in our social circle, about being involved with me. Frankly, I don’t give a shit what the two of them talk about, but somehow it made me feel like a commodity being rented out and before I knew it I was spitting rage at the very idea.

Most likely, I am just tired. Everything I do these days feels like a struggle and when I get myself on top of one task, I find I’ve let another fall apart. My stomach is upset, so I go back to my candida diet only to find that my body can’t produce enough heat to keep me warm in the evenings and I end up burning up all my oil to bring the house to a tolerable temperature. Next thing I know I can’t make it to the grocery store because I have to buy more oil and I have to decide if I want to be full and cold or warm and hungry. In the background, my little girl is waiting for me, depending on me, and there is no one to help me out but me. Living alone — not having a family — it’s difficult. It’s not the way humans were built. I often wish society would get it’s shit together and realize that it’s collectively killing itself, but it’s a long way down before we hit rock bottom. It’s long, and it’s lonely and it’s incredibly tiresome.

I’m very tired these days.

Candida Recovery Relapse

I diagnosed myself with an overgrowth of Candida albicans in September of 2014. I had been fighting with an array of mismatched and otherwise inexplicable symptoms, including adult “non” acne, bipolar like depression, soft stools, and chronic vaginal yeast infections. In addition I required as much as ten hours of sleep on a regular night, and sometimes up to fourteen if I had had a particularly rough day. I had seen doctors for each of these issues separately and was frustrated by how often they would come back saying there was nothing wrong with me. If I don’t have acne, what are all these red bumps all over my face?!?

Luckily I’m both stubborn and inherently suspicious of the scientific community. So eventually I landed on candida as a potential explanation for my difficulties. I started a low carb diet, with zero pasta, bread, rice or potatoes, root vegetables only in emergency situations, maximum of half an apple’s worth of fruit in a day, and always mixed with yogurt or in a smoothie so as not to hit my blood stream full force, zero added sugar, massive quantities of active culture yogurt, natto and a daily clove of raw garlic. I quit mushrooms and even laid off soy sauce — in Japan! — for the first two weeks. The result was a two day stretch of carbohydrate withrawal, a two week stretch of mental carbohydrate withdrawal (where anything starchy looked delicious, but my body did not crave it the same way), followed by a steady improvement of my symptoms. In one month my vaginal candida healed. After two months it didn’t come back. After three months my skin was relatively red-bump free and my bowel movements were on the whole generally regular and solid. In the fourth month I relapsed.

Proponents of fancy or trendy diets can rave all they want about the “ease” of their diet, how “tasty” the allowed foods are, the health benefits, the moral superiority, but the truth is that in the modern world wheat is king and corn is emperor. It’s nearly impossible to take starchy foods out of your diet and still participate in society. I found myself feeling isolated from my friends because I was the one who couldn’t go out to eat anywhere but a family restaurant (think Denny’s) that would serve a la carte. I had to quit beer and almost all other alcohol, too, which meant people always felt awkward when it was time for drinking parties. On top of that, the world is so fast and full that I think any human would find it a challenge to prepare all of their own meals today, but almost any pre made meal or snack today is just saturated with sugar. I found myself spending whole days feeling hungry and light headed because there was just nothing that I could eat. Naturally, after I was confident that I had things under control, I started to reintroduce small quantities of the forbidden carbs into my diet. That’s when things went awry.

It’s hard to know, without writing it all down all the time, how much wheat someone consumes in a day. A sandwich, a cream sauce, a steamed bun — they all have nutrients attached to the wheat part, so it’s hard to think of the wheat as separate from the whole. For example, how much filling needs to be in a sandwich to justify the fact that it’s being put between bread slices? So, I relapsed. I was under a lot of stress between work and my sick weasel, and I didn’t have the time or energy to go out shopping AND cook. The first sign that things were bad was the poo. Then my skin started to break out again. Finally, back came the crotch rot. I was hoping I could just tough it out until the stressors went away, but no go. I had to go back on my diet and I had to do it immediately.

I quit the carbs again four days ago. I cooked with garlic, ate double portions of natto, made my own kefir and chugged it. I’m happy to say that my body is already starting to rebalance itself! The vaginal candida is all but gone (fastest I’ve EVER healed from one of those!) I’ve had a few good poos mixed in with the slushy ones and my skin hasn’t produced any new bumps in a week. It’s frustrating to have to be so strict with myself, but it’s comforting to know that it pays off and that I can be in control of my health. I hope I don’t have to stay on such a strict diet forever, but for the time being I’m just trying to be at peace with the fact that my body had gotten overwhelmed by all the unnatural crap that had been thrown at it since my youth. I’m trying to be kind to my body, and to my spirit, because we are all trying really hard in a very human unfriendly environment.

Last Day of Classes

I remember being a student. The last exam on the very last day of classes was always a mix of dread, exhaustion and elation. Suddenly you are free of the work, the judgment and the uncertainty that built up over the course of the whole semester and you are standing on the brink of a long and much needed holiday. Now that I’m a professor, my feelings on the last day of classes are largely the same, with a slight additional twist.

This semester I tried something truly wild: I made it up as I went and put enjoyment of the class above the need to force knowledge into my students’ brains. The result was unbelievable. I got to know my students on a personal level. I asked them to think about things together with me and I made it my policy to never ever tell them they were wrong. Of course, when they were off point I would steer them back. That is, after all, what teachers are supposed to do. But I would never say to them that they were outright dead wrong. I think there is nothing more destructive to the development of a young human than to be told that they are unsalvageably wrong.

I got to hear stories about their families, their own experiences traveling abroad, their dreams and their opinions on the world. I got to hear them tell me what they really think, and to me this was the greatest achievement I could hope for. After spending nearly four months together just reading and talking with each other, I got to hear them say that they didn’t like what they had been told, that they didn’t understand why things had to be a certain way, that they wanted to try and discover their own path for themselves. That’s not something you get to hear when people are afraid of being judged. No, that is something that only comes out when people truly feel that they are safe to express themselves. This is my job as a professor.

Now, on the last day of the semester, I am actually sad to say goodbye to this group. We all grew together over these cold months. I know they are grateful to me for a good class, but do they know how grateful to them I am for the chance to learn and discover and think together? Probably not. But that’s ok. Being a professor also means that there are some things I cannot teach them.

An Example of Service

Hi Readers,

I mentioned in my service section that I think it’s important for people to do service for others. I think it helps the servant to appreciate the things they have as well as their power to effect change. But I’m a big believer in fun, too. So here’s a link to an example of doing service and having fun at the same time.

Measurection — girlTALK stories about sex

How is this post an example of service? Follow the thread as it develops and you will see people finding happy. Happy, you see, goes viral without any effort beyond finding it for yourself. Then you share it and everyone who reads about your happy will find a little piece of their own happy, too. And it goes from there.