Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

"Turn and face the strange".

Since my father's death last month, something has changed, deeply, inside me. It's not about that relationship - that was always hard, and of late, very distant.

It's more to do with the growing self-realization, the part of me that now, finally, is starting to know who I am, no longer the definition of someone else.

And with that has come an odd shift in my sex and sexuality and my desire.

Whereas before it often felt (at least it was very vague and undefined) that when, for example, I wore thigh high nylons and walked about with them, it was as though part of me was trying to broadcast a message - "get laid". Was I? I don't know. (And I mean "get laid" in the broadest, most 'meta-' way possible, not just a BDT literal meaning). So when I was noticed, it was a lot about trying to see if what I imagined their conception of the meaning behind it could be something I understood in a way that opened the door to further connecting. That was me, compromising my self, in order to get the connection, whether sexual or something else.

But now, wearing thigh high nylons is more a marker of who I know I am, deep inside. And now it is not a matter of when someone sees me they say "Hotcha hotcha" and "Let's screw" but rather, I wonder, do they see the real me, and do they really know what this means as part of who I am? Do they truly understand that part of who I am, and do they grasp that the symbols are no longer a request for something like sex, but rather now are intrinsic representations or manifestations of the true self?

It is as though the symbolic language I've incorporated into the "me" of the past 15 years has suddenly jelled, morphed, into something at once deeply intimate and strangely unfamiliar. Who IS this odd person? [I KNOW this odd person well]

And with that comes the recognition, I think, that the inner person, though highly desiring of good sex contact and such, is no longer driven to that particular edge based on how I appear, no longer reaching for that fulfillment because of someone's "definition" of "me", but instead stems from a more fundamental place, and an interest in connecting that is totally free and clear of those older, familiar identities.

The person I am, really, now, finds solace, and, I hope, true self-confidence because I AM able to simply express that inner me as I feel it, and not because I am trying so so hard to "fit" into the mold of what others have tried to make me, whether real or imagined on my part.

There is one more sub-barrier, but even that, somehow, feels a lot different. I suspect I will manage to overcome that one with considerably more ease, esp since that relationship as it was is over.

It's both scary and exhilarating.

Beltane Sacred Sexuality

This was Beltane number two for me. A decidedly mixed bag in many respects save one: the event was a lot of fun!

I hosted 3 workshops. The upside is.... I love giving this. The downside is that I miss almost ALL of the workshops I would like to attend, and here, that's quite a few!

Sexual meditations is really about a personal technique, and after 2 runs, and a small audience, I am gonna rethink this one. I love the method, I know the attendees love the result, but I'm not conveying something about this in the blurb. I either have to hard sell it or change tactics.

Body Image. This is ALWAYS a hard one. I had a good group this time, and all of us really put ourselves way out there with it. This time we had enough time each, and that made it a lot better. I also managed to remember to include a connect time at the END of the workshop - a simple circle and hold hands and an embrace one-on-one for each of us. I think that's important. The REALLY cool part about this is I was asked to present this workshop at a totally different venue later this year. This was a real honor, and I am hopeful I can pull it off (long distance to travel).

Body Painting. This was a first in this format. Last year I did a piece on the sacred mark - the idea there was to draw on the 50,000 year legacy of human beings to apply colors to the body. That went well, was quite different. This year, I decided I would have fun with it, plain and simple! So that we did: assembled about a dozen people and set up a nice range of crazy colors (silver and gold were huge hits!) and went at it. Lots of very cool designs, lots of interesting ideas, and then B and I paraded up vendors row with it! It was really fun. I plan to at least bring this to LR.

The Beltane rituals are really well done here. There is just the right blend of sacred, sensual and silly. They manage to be respectful while adding in a dash or two of irreverence to make it fun. It works well. I respect the process, and in fact wonder if it would make sense to go ahead and somehow require attendance at at least one of the rituals. Don't have any idea how that might work - maybe would have to be a carrot kind of approach, but I do see parallels here to the Winterfire no community meals issue. Shared participation builds bonds in ways that nothing else can, whether it is food or ritual, it's something that I think in the end really helps all the participants.

Turning to somewhat more personal matters....

I became aware at some point that every time I went near sex, this tape rolled in my head - "I am not good enough". I worked that for quite a while, trying to both notice it and overcome it. Of course, simply overcoming something like that is often problematic - without any knowledge of its root, overcoming is a little too much like ignoring. It doesn't work too well. I did not seem to make much progress on that approach. But then somehow it dawned on me: the problem is not so much I am not good enough, but rather that the same tape - "I am not good enough" - is a response to a deeper voice that scolds and reprimands and chides and denigrates. Once I found this vector, it felt different. Where did this voice come from?

And following a deep and heartfelt conversation with another participant - a conversation I not only did not know I was going to have, but also had no idea that it would take the crying painful direction it did take for me, I made this connection more tenaciously. He asked me at one point in reference to something else "Do you know whose voice it is?". that got me thinking a lot. IT is a way, I think, to try and approach the resolution or at least the management of this particular tape. If I can get to whose voice I hear, then I wonder if I can get to stopping the tape, perhaps beginning to erase it.

These are deep wounds, and I am not entirely sure I can heal them. They may continue on until I am dead. But I suppose in the end it makes more sense to at least try and work on them, to try and ameliorate the effects, and not simply let them continue to run me.

Desire

I’ve thought a lot about my desire and the nature of it – how it manifests itself, what it means to me, how I claim it and thus satisfy it. It is in some ways more mysterious now than before, which is odd given my new found proclivity to self-expression, outing, and the like. But here is what I think I really know.

I’m pretty well settled on the idea of “being both genders”. That is new to me, but I feel it deeply. At times, I feel a strong male force, at other times a strong female force. These manifest differently, and the nexus of my desire is surely mediated by how that force feels within me at a given moment. There was a time when being bisexual seemed to be “it”, and all that flowed from that felt like it was the real me. But of late, that sometimes seems more an ideology than a claimed, real identity, so I’ve let a lot of that go. I just don’t have a lot of interest in subscribing to ideologies. Being both is nice. I simply feel what I feel internally and enjoy the variety of expressions that can emerge. It only becomes a bit of a problem when I feel constraints: social, political, etc. There really are times when that expression must take a back seat to other concerns. But this too has not been a bother. I am secure in self-knowledge, at least along gender identity lines..

Things get decidedly more muddied once I step into the realm of my actual physical desires. On the one hand, I can easily apply the feeling of who I am at the moment to a thought process that lets me exercise those desires in my head. At the same time, it is not at all clear to me that I know what I want, or what is most deeply satisfying to me. That word – satisfy – is a problem. It is not simply “getting off”. I can do that alone and at times it is what I need. “Satisfy” often feels like a two-way street, something that depends on the ability to connect with a partner, deeply, and to have a chance to really let my duality out of the box, so to speak.
I think I have recognized that, to date, there has never been a physical experience that has really touched me inside in a way that speaks to the idea of “satisfy”. It’s not that those encounters I have had have somehow been deficient or wrong, or that the partners I’ve been with have been insufficient. It is more like there is a gap between what I am actually able to manifest as the whole me at that moment and the physical experience itself that I am having. As I think back on the many experiences I have had, I realize that many of them have been very strong and deep, but that no single experience comes close to reaching inside the whole me. The problem is I have no clear sense of what such an experience might even look like (or even if such experiences can exist at all). And, to further complicate things, I think it is possible that each encounter is, in part by it’s very nature (that of two or more together trying to encounter themselves through others), inherently self-limiting, that it will never be “complete” in the sense of meeting my (or others in that particular encounter) deeper desires. I’m not positive about this, of course, but it seems like this is a strong possibility. What, if anything, can be done?

One aspect of my desire in the context of it being a shared experience is that it seems inherently a matter of compromise. Unless we can truly claim to know ourselves in a way that facilitates that true deep connection (and if we cannot really know it alone, by ourselves, can we hope to know it in a shared context, in others?) then the process must somehow involve, even demand, give and take. To a certain extent, this seems likely to mean that one or more of the involved parties will be doing something that they don’t necessarily want to do. This is a decidedly gray line, broad and fizzy, because doing something one might not want to do is not always a matter of against one’s will entirely. And besides, the whole point of top/bottom, dominant/submissive is that same against the will thing. I’m not at all sure where any of this might lead, and it surely problematizes the matter. The best one can say, I guess, is that “against the will” is both a matter and willingness of clear communications and of negotiation.

Something luscious this way comes

There's something particularly wonderful about waking up to a warmth of covers. It's not so cold (yet!) that my bits are frozen, just chilly enough so that the blankets envelop me in a kind of semi-sleepy haze. The wonderfully erotic charge that happens when wakening enhances the moments. I don't want to get out of bed - this is too nice.

The chance to touch, feel, energize - it's all good.

More, please, sir?