Archive for category relating
Emerging as My Primary Partner
Posted by Marisa Black in bodylove, Bodysex, identity, marriage, masturbation, polyamory, relating on December 17, 2012
[cross-posted here]
It started with a glance that stretched into a gaze. I was looking at her, really looking, after barely-looking for months. I took the moment, savored the time.
I saw the curve of her jaw, the way her lips rested together, the tension in her forehead that smoothed out as I continued to look. We were matched, eye to eye. I noticed the red rings, the puffy places under her bottom lashes. She’d been crying.
As the gaze lingered, under the spotlights of being seen, something shifted in her eyes. She was basking in being seen as much as I relished doing the seeing. It felt like forever since we’d done this. I had missed her, missed noticing her actively, instead of just passively hauling her around my life.
Eventually, I broke the spell when I stepped back from the mirror by the back door. I flipped off the light, picked up my towel, and went outside to the hot tub.
The Shared Experience of Watching Sex (or Sexy Stuff)
Posted by Marisa Black in media, relating, sex on November 21, 2012
[cross-posted here]
The collective gasps, laughter, nods, and the rustling of audience members crossing and uncrossing their legs delight me. Attending something sexy, whether a film festival or a play or an event that is billed “sex-positive,” inevitably has me smiling in appreciation at my fellow attendees. We are all there for the same reason: we are interested in sex.
Tied Up, I Fall Without Fear
Posted by Marisa Black in BDSM on June 30, 2012
[cross-posted here]
“I’m on the verge of getting too high to drive myself home,” she whispered. “I better come out of these ropes soon.”
Last December I attended my first rope bondage meeting. In a beginner’s class, I saw the model become visibly floaty as her arms, hands, and torso were bound. The instructor told us the body often responds to bondage by flooding the system with chemicals that give a sense of being high, or “rope-stoned.”
Enthralled, I watched the grace of the instructing rigger, deftly moving rope around the model’s body, pointing out where nerves could become compressed, offering safety protocol at every step. It’s like knitting on a big scale. It also looked intensely pleasurable. And sexy.
My mind reeled. I want to make someone feel that; I want to feel that myself.
Taxes and My Second-Class-Citizen Marriage
Posted by Marisa Black in identity, marriage, polyamory, queerness on April 19, 2011
Last week I cleared out my checking and savings accounts, plus my sock drawer stash. Then I handed over that thick stack of twenties, fifties, and hundreds in exchange for money orders to pay my tax bill.
Not Reformed, Not Recovering, Not a Refugee
Posted by Marisa Black in feminism, identity, polyamory, queerness on April 20, 2010
(Cross-posted here.)
That’s right. I’m not reformed. I’m not recovering. I’m not a refugee. All those words imply a correction, a fleeing, a relief. And that just doesn’t fit. Besides, I am squeamish about labels and identity.
I am definitely on board with re-languaging around identity. Like Betty says in her video clip with Carlin about different and evolving sex styles, the question is How Do You Have Your Orgasms? How do you like to have your orgasms best? How do you have your orgasms now? Be prepared, it’s okay, that answer may well change. How fantastic is that? You can learn new, fun ways to have orgasms. That sounds pretty damn sweet to me.
My mama always told me that labels belong on cans, not on people. Then I went to college and studied gender and feminism and it was the 1990s and identity politics were all the rage. Self-identification, and all the layers of meaning, become our discourse. I was immediately wary. Did I really want to slap a label on myself? I don’t think so. In fact, no. No I didn’t and no I don’t.
But I was all about the feminism, and sought out the sex-positive ones like Susie Bright and Ellen Willis and Dorothy Allison and, of course, Betty Dodson. Later I went to law school and was one of two women with ten men taking the Feminist Legal Theory seminar. I signed up to lead discussions on Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin’s anti-pornography crusades so that I could show the counterpoint, the porn-positive, sex-affirming sides of feminism. Narrow conceptions of what is feminism infuriate me like nothing else. Because to me, perpetuating narrow assumptions about feminism is on par with perpetuating narrow assumptions about what it means to be a woman, or a man, or peach, or brown, or queer, or poor, or creative, or any of the many “things” a person might be, at any given moment.
A Married-to-a-Man Polyamorous Queer Grrl
Posted by Marisa Black in identity, marriage, polyamory on February 25, 2010
(Cross-posted here.)
That’s what I called myself. A married-to-a-man polyamorous Queer grrl.
After I came out as queer, I met the guy I would propose to and marry. I was queer, yes, but I fell in love with a person with a penis. He was more “girl-like” than my current female partner, in that way that gender is fluid and nonspecific and the spectrum is wide.
So we married, and were polyamorous, mostly because I couldn’t commit to being monogamous with him and foregoing my female sexual attraction. We spent nearly a decade together, and I have no regrets. Eventually, I chose to leave our poly family, and after doing so found the woman with whom I intend to spend many years and decades. My former husband and I are very close friends, and falling in love with, and marrying, a man helps me with empathy and makes acute my sense of injustice that now, NOW, that I’ve met the partner who is right for me, most of these United States won’t allow me to marry. Ironic.
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