Sexy talk

As VSF would probably inform you with very little hesitation, I am not actually very sexy. I mean, I'm pretty good looking, articulate, intelligent, etc. but my demeanor and means of interacting with people are not actually that suave. In fact, I'm rather awkward. I trip over things, fart, say really horrible things in the heat of the moment (...slugbeast...), and the time that I tried to have phone sex involved me giggling for half the time. It's a wonder that I get laid at all.

I make up for not being sexy by being highly sexual. It would seem a lot of the time that my life revolves around sex. I get turned on by the most mundane things: a breeze across the back of my neck, the smell of concrete after a good rain (that scent is called petrichor!), the feeling of damp dirt under bare feet, and, most of all, good language.

I don't particularly love dirty talk. It usually feels a little forced and artificial, but I do love and adore language and words. For example, the word petrichor has an inherently sexual sound to it. It rolls off of the tongue and has a great combination of open and closed vowels.The consonants move progressively backwards causing the word to begin at your closed lips and slowly, gently move toward the back of your throat. It's like this simple, under utilized word is a massage for your entire speech system.

I remember the first time I had an exciting experience with sound and sexuality. It involved a pretty failed date in high school. I went out with this dude and I was just not that into him, but then at lunch his mom called and he spoke Russian on the phone with her. Something about the sounds that were coming out of his mouth really turned me on quite dramatically. I ended up making out with him for two hours. Was it worth it? Not sure, I did have to explain the next day that this action did not, in fact, make me his girlfriend which was rather difficult using a high school senior's relationship vocabulary. But wow, those sounds that I did not even understand as comprehensible words were so deep and guttural and earthy that I really couldn't help it.

So, some sex advice that I am probably not at all qualified to give, strengthen your vocabulary. You never know who you are going to speak to that will be helplessly aroused by your use of "petrichor."

P.S. Someone else who is rather awkward and gets turned on in awesome ways is Erika Moen. If you haven't read DAR (which is unfortunately ended), you should. Here are some relevant samples: Awkward!
Orgasms!

A break: Religious Musings

First, and in keeping with the theme of this post, a short prayer: Dear higher power, I know that I should not be writing blog entries from my mom's computer, but I left my laptop at home. Please give me the strength of memory to remember to logout of this account before leaving. Ever your faithful supplicant, RS.

Now that that's over with...

As I have mentioned before, I am a Jew, and as most of you probably know, we are now entering into the Days of Awe or the Jewish High Holy Days. This is a time when your Jewish brothers and sisters are supposed to contemplate the wrongs that they have done over the course of the year and to ask forgiveness from friends, family, and God for their sins. While I am typically a pretty bad to mediocre Jew, this is one of those Jewish things that I take pretty seriously. I think it is useful to look back over your wrongs and ask for forgiveness. I think it is also useful to have a time to forgive. 

I'm having a problem this year, though. For some reason this year more than in years prior, I am confronting the nature of my life as a "sinner." Personally I don't see my lifestyle as very sinful. I am kind, caring, generally helpful, and dedicated to my work and study. This doesn't change the fact that many of the activities in which I enjoy engaging are "sinful" according to religious dogma. In case you didn't catch it yet, I'm referring to The Sex. I enjoy sex. Currently I'm not enjoying very much of it, but that's a different story (will this month PLEASE just end already.) I do not feel the need to beg God for forgiveness about my sex life. I am quite ethical sexually, and I try my best not to hurt people. So what do I have to apologize for? For pleasure? That is so stupid.

But it doesn't change the fact that I am a sinner and this is the time of year to change that. The whole effect of this is heightened when I'm standing in front of a synagogue of people beating my chest to punish myself for my sins of arrogance, betrayal, causing others to sin...What am I supposed to do? Just ignore that rather large part of my life? 

I have no answers for this. Do you? 

I leave you with some sexy God-Poetry:

1. I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.
2. As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
3. As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
4. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.
5. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.
6. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.
7. I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.
8. The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.
9. My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.
10. My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
11. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
12. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
13. The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
14. O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.
15. Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.
16. My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies.
17. Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether.

A History of Sex Part One: Masturbation

I am not dissatisfied with my sex life. Many people find this incredibly hard to believe as VSF is far away (though finally back in the same country) and I am not currently sleeping with anyone else. My sex life, as we define "sex life" is pretty empty you may say. The thing is, it's not. Not at all. I have a confession to make, you see, I am a Champion Masturbator. That's not to say that I've won any awards, but rather that I am really good at masturbation. I know my body. I know what feels good and what doesn't, but I'm also totally willing (and excited) to try new things. All of the things that make me a good lover, make me a good masturbator. I am GGG with myself. A funny story relating to this which my friend told me that I absolutely have to include in this entry is that one day I was really down, anxious, and generally not feeling great. I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I had slept well, eaten well, exercised, etc. Then I realized that I hadn't masturbated the night before. It's like an apple-a-day people. It'll change your lives.

Anyway, back to the story, I have enjoyed masturbation for a really long time. I think I might have started earlier than most. I remember the occasion. I was 11 or 12 and my mom had gotten me one of those "Your Body, Yourself" books. In it they do a brief discussion of female anatomy including that of the vulva. Of course they point out the clitoris with the explanation that sometimes when women are touched there, they can experience really pleasurable feelings. Well, I like really pleasurable feelings. So I sidled myself right up to a mirror, figured out where that little thing was, and touched it. I will state for the record that that first time was not really earth shattering or even minor-earthquake-that-being-a-native-of-California-I-generally-sleep-through worthy, but it was formative. I had learned how to do something that could give me a lot of pleasure. Not to get all cheesy, but the ability to masturbate and do it effectively I think has given me a lot of freedom in my choice of partners. That is, I can love sex and want sex and be obsessed with sex, but not need another person to explore it. That said, having another person there does change things, but I don't think it makes it better or worse, just different.

So, thanks Mom for getting me that book, and thanks curious brain for not letting me just read about the clitoris and not exploring it.

The relationship between a citadel and a synagogue

This weekend was seriously amazing people. Let me just say that today was spent grocery shopping then laying out by the pool and swimming a bit then doing some kickboxing then relaxing with Tristan Taormino's The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women which will be reviewed right here once I finish it. This book, however, was an unlikely centerpiece to some amusement this weekend.

Friday I went to a play party at The Citadel in S.F. For those of you who don't know a play party is a party at which kinky people "play." This play could involve any activity that your mind imagines plus one or two extras probably. My lovely friend Hobbit* brought me along with him. It was my first time at such a party, but it will not be my last. I was certainly nervous going in, and like most girls this nervousness translated into a frenzy of "Oh my God, what am I going to WEAR?!?!"I did end up clothing myself and making it out to the city where I met up with Hobbit and entered this actually pretty tame looking building.

I must say that they thing that struck me the most about this party was not that there were people having lots of very fun looking sex almost everywhere, rather it was how unthreatening an environment it was. Yes, there was flirting, but it was so low pressure. Everyone, I believe, is just so tuned in to the idea of consent that it makes for an environment where it is perfectly acceptable to say, "No, I do not want you to touch me/stand so close to me/fuck me until I can't remember which way is up."

Anyway, more on the party in some later entry, but the amusing part of this entire experience was that the next evening I had to sing at a Selichot service at a synagogue. (Yes, in my spare time I work as a cantorial soloist. My life is very well compartmentalized, thank you.) I stayed the night at Hobbit's house, and the next morning he handed me that delightful little book that I mentioned. I then left to spend the day with my parents until leaving in the evening to go be a good little Jewish girl. I did manage to have the foresight to leave the buttfucking book in my car. I did not have the foresight to turn it upside-down such that anyone looking in my window wouldn't see "ANAL SEX." This became painfully obvious to me when our rabbi walked me out to my car. My life is awkward.

Then again, isn't that the point? I mean, sex will never cease being shameful/taboo until we stop treating it as something to be hidden from our parents/rabbis/bosses. Yet it's hard to contemplate that idea especially when it's so easy to lose one's job and the economy is as bad as it is. I wish that I were brave enough to do it, but I'm stuck here on an anonymous blog talking about it.

Relationship politics, the first of many

I saw "Eat, Pray, Love" with my mom last weekend. It was not a great movie. I haven't read the book, but I gather that it is not a great book either. The movie was, however, rather enjoyable if you are able to turn on your chick-flick eyes and take it for what it is. I even found myself (reluctantly) identifying with the main character a bit. Like this character, I do tend to be that person who gets a little subsumed in relationships. My psychiatrist says it's a desire to not take risks. I agree. I don't want to be abandoned. Who does? I don't want to be disliked. Again, who does? Anyway, sometimes I can lose the core essence of myself in relationships. I like to think or hope that this has gotten better.

In fact, I know it's gotten better. Here's a roundabout way of explaining that: So I promised to say a little more about "boring sex." Now, I'm loathe to talk a lot about exes. I know it can be disrespectful, but I'll include a little disclaimer: I was with this guy for over a year. There were obviously some very wonderful components to this relationship. He is not a bad guy; he was just not a good guy for me. That said, sex with we'll call him Beige On Beige (BOB)* was really boring. At first I thought it was me. I had started some new brain drugs, and a common side effect is decreased libido. So I just figured my lack of interest in sex had to do with me, not him. But the sex was never really good. I distinctly remember from very early on trying to figure out ways to not have sex as I drove over to visit him. I can hear you all asking, "Then why did you keep seeing him?" Why indeed. Well, because I thought that I had found a special person. I convinced myself that this was the guy. I do this, you see. I managed to tell myself that I liked the things he liked like permaculture and noisy post-rock when really I hate getting my hands really dirty and I prefer Rufus Wainwright. For some reason I had told myself that this was The One and I had to Make It Work. Why I thought this at two months into a relationship, I will never know.

This whole experience has convinced me that sex is a really good litmus test. Yes, we all want to believe in romance that extends beyond sex, that is more important than sex, but you know what, sex is really important. Beyond the fact that it is the single action that has succeeded in perpetuating our species, it's also really fun. If you want to say that fun is not important, then I think you need to seriously examine how much you like yourself.

Anyway, eventually my inhibited sexual frustration made me really grumpy and moody, and BOB broke up with me because I was "mean." Two days later, though, I was okay. Angry, yes, but okay. This isn't the response of a person whose self-worth is tied up in another. Then I realized, that my self worth wasn't and that I was actually a pretty okay individual. I still catch myself in the mindset of "Well, who will I find if VSF up and leaves." I have a new mantra for this:

1. Hell no he won't leave me. I'll leave first. (Okay, not really, but kind of a little.)
2. If he does leave, I don't need to find someone else. I can enjoy singledom and masturbation. Never underestimate the power of masturbation.

So I leave you with that moral, friends. Never underestimate the power of masturbation (or self-fulfillment and all those other things that go along with it.)



* No, his name was not Bob or Robert or any derivation thereof.

Sex and literature (or sexy literature?)

When I was in middle school and high school, fan fiction was a really big deal. Maybe it's still a big deal, and I'm just not as good at the internet as I used to be. Anyway, my friends and I would spend ridiculous amounts of time hunting down, consuming, writing, and discussing fan fiction. Generally we were into Harry Potter and Gundam Wing fics. Occasionally Sailor Moon would prop her pretty little head in. Yes, I am a nerd. I never made any claims to the contrary.

Anyway, as I got older I decided that maybe I'd better start reading real books rather than stories written by teenagers on the internet. Before that happened, however, I did discover the joy of erotic fan fiction. I mean, come on, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin were totally meant to be together forever and have lots of hot gay sex. Don't judge me. These stories were, looking back, rather formative in my own sexual development. They bridged the gap between childhood literature and adult sexual existence. I did write some fan fiction as a kid. I don't remember if I ever wrote anything erotic, but I certainly did write erotic original stories that followed the same basic formula of a short fan fiction.

Here I am, though, 22 years old, and I'm back to it. Here's the story: my Very Special Friend (VSF) read Atlas Shrugged and then encouraged me to read it so that he could discuss it with someone. So I read it. In case you are unfamiliar with the story it follows this Railroad Executive, Dagny Taggart, as she discovers the incompetence of men in our society. It also has a lot of sex because Ayn Rand wrote Dagny to be a surrogate for herself. Anyway, there's this great scene that involves Dagny, Francisco (Dagny's childhood lover), and John Galt. I don't want to give away too much, but VSF and I both came to the conclusion that, although a threesome never did happen, it totally should have. I figured such a fan fiction must exist on the interwebs. Lo and behold, it does not. So I said I'd write it. Yes, I am currently in the process of writing a fan fiction based upon Atlas Shrugged. I am discovering in the process that I have a bit of a block about writing about sex. Some of it is vocabulary: Do I write come? cum? ejaculate? And what on earth do you call a penis? A penis? Cock? Dick? Man-sausage? I'm also having trouble describing sex. Which is weird, right? Because I have a lot of sex, and I spent a bit of time having a lot of boring sex (more on that later) during which I definitely daydreamed/narrated to myself. Yet I still have trouble with it.

I think a lot of the problem might have to do with the disconnect in my head between sex and literature. I know that there's tons of sex in literature. I've read Romeo and Juliet. I've read Lady Chatterley's Lover. Literature is engorged with sex, but I still see it as something pure. I see sex in literature as a tool to make a point. To write in gratuitous sex in the form of a fan fiction seems a bit...sacrilegious? I know that's stupid. I mean if literature is engorged with sex, the authors of said literature were swimming in it. So I have hang-ups. I'm getting over them. I also need to just finish this damn fan fiction before VSF gets back. Until then, anyone want to give me some vocabulary tips?